temnix

You can randomize them at installation time with RANDOM. Offer players to reinstall the mod to get a different spread. This only randomizes items between different CRE files, not between spawned instances of the same CRE file, but it is something. More to the point, why limit scrolls to spells with IDS entries? I, for one, have many all kinds of spells that don't follow the SPWI-etc. format. They are just not available for selection when starting up, they have to be found on scrolls, but that is more or less how I want them anyway. Instead of the IDS entries you should look at the standard properties of wizard scrolls: two abilities, the second with the Learn spell effect, not critical items, "Magic" and so on. 

This is a question for experts on adding music and music lists and switching to them. I'm bringing new music to an area, and in one place one of the NPC that comes out to greet the party causes this daytime music (DAY) to fade away, because there needs to be a change of mood. The usual music is merry, but he plays a sad tune (a sound file, not a MUS playlist). As he walks up to the party, he causes the fading with his script that includes the action StartMusic(COMBAT_LOSE,QUICK_FADE). COMBAT_LOSE is a tune that never gets played, here I use it as a dud, because there must be some real MUS-figuring tune to switch to, if a piece of music is to drop off gradually and beautifully. This far everything works: the tune fades away. Now, that day tune I made by cutting the music file into little pieces and matching small fade-away fragments to each, as the tutorial in the guide teaches. When fighting begins or in this case, with an impelled switch to another tune, the daytime music fades perfectly. What I don't know is how to get it to play again after this sad conversation is over. The switch to COMBAT_LOSE doesn't go away on its own, the DAY music doesn't come back the way it does after a fight, probably because COMBAT_LOSE is not a real coded function. I must, therefore, resume DAY manually, from the concluding action of the conversation. I should be able to type StartMusic(DAY,PLAY), but that does nothing, and when I type StartMusic(DAY,QUCK_FADE) - or SLOW_FADE, the melody of daytime plugs in abruptly and jarringly, right at one of the cut peces.

What I seem to be missing is files for a gradual fading IN of music, in addition to the fade-out bits. But how is this supposed to work? How do I arrange this kind of playlist?

I don't know if anybody has done this, but stores have a field for capacity limit. And potion bags and scroll cases are connected to stores (and can even provide cures, if that's enabled; cures can be any Self-casted spells; make a bottled imp or lamped genie who dispenses bonuses for money). And this is the spectacular part: the limit is in the number of items, not total pounds! It represents item bulk. Limit 2 means 2 bottles of anything. And since this is a suggestion thread, someone ought to make a mod that limits those ordinary bags to 20 bottles or so, ditto for scrolls. Now they can hold 100 items. Add capacity to the item description.

Two days, and none of the chatterboxes have said anything. You can uninstall anything anytime, it's only going to matter for the content you have already come across in this playthrough: areas you have been to, NPC who have already appeared in those areas, start-of-the-game conditions and so on. They may be kind of strange, but Weidu rolls back most changes cleanly. Scripts and dialogues are updated every time you launch the game, so there you don't even need to start over.

I experimented with area of effect projectiles that emit rays, and those rays are area of effect projectiles themselves. They fly out in every direction and explode there, or, if they are triggered-type, hover in place along the perimeter. It was an accident, but I happened to test what might happen with Skull Trap as the ray. They were harmless, no damage attached, but working the same way. The result was interesting: the skulls spread out in a circle. Then I had tons of enjoyment walking my characters through that line. Bam crash badam! This could be used to guard a whole area.

It would be nice, wouldn't it? But no. It would have to be hard-coded, which it isn't. And there is no script condition for a successful steal.

I remember reading about a mod or even several different mods that revamped the whole of the invisibility mechanics. I don't remember how they went about this, though. Everyone wants real invisibility, of course. I can think of two ways to implement it without getting into the question of WHO sees what: everybody, just the people with Detect invisibility effect and so on (which is really messy when you look into it).

One is to remove the avatar and foot circle. Include this in invisibility-giving spells and potions and let dispelling spells lift those opcodes along with the rest. This doesn't leave room for individual invisible-seeing, it's an everyone-sees or everyone-doesn't solution. The Detect invisibility effect can be used in the absence of a dispel to let PC attack invisibles, in the form of low-level spells, if the player risks turning on the AI. I have done something like this in "Sniff" as an optional component, a form of blind fighting. The principle is only good for use by the computer, though, where the challenge for the human player is that he really doesn't have anything to attack with the mouse. That would be invisibility in the literal sense, and the AC bonus etc. are just a cherry on top. Perfect, but wouldn't work for the party side, because the computer doesn't see with eyes, and attacks/casting still disrupt the state, avatar or not. The computer can attack characters without foot circles, too. This is not a hopeless method, but something else would be needed for the player side.

The other option in my mind is to furnish invisibility-bestowing whatevers with a spell state and patch all spells and weapons to apply a subspell on the character that uses them instantly, on swinging or at the end of the casting - targeting Self. If the character is in the special state, he is put back into invisibility, so attacking and casting only cause him to pop out for an instant, and probably not even that. Here there is a question of the duration of reapplied invisibility, because it's self-renewing. If an enemy wizard keeps casting and disappearing, his Improved Improv will never end. But a delayed removal in the main spell bundle can be used to put a definite finish to this process. Include a dispel after 60 seconds or what it is for Imp. I., and the party can wait the wizard out, if they can't break the spell before. Besides, in practice fights only last a few rounds anyway. This method would work for both sides, the player and the computer. Now how to make it so that an invisible wizard opening a container phases out again? Container scripts could be patched to look for that spell state and cast the extension on the robber. They are not so quick, and nearby NPC might notice and raise hell before the curtain drops, but that's probably for the better. A touch of realism.

I hope they don't change state numbers. I took pains to patch my silver dragon armor into the dialogue as it is.

Shit, Jarno, you are useless as punctured tire.

Why don't you just tell me instead of sending me on a link?

bump

I sit in the bedroom in front of the stool with the laptop, hunched over it, typing, moving the mouse along the sofa on the right. The room is starkly lit by a light bulb of 80 or 100 Watts, hanging close by to my left in the center of the room from a cord, partly covered by a makeshift lamp shade. The door to the balcony is open, and as it is hot, air is allowed to come in from the night past and around some heavy curtains. The floor is linoleum, sort of yellow in some meaningless ornament. I type. Half a meter of so from my left foot, almost directly under the light, a mosquito is struggling. I had plugged in a fumigator, the invisible, odorless fumes must be in the room, sparing me from night life. I give a mosquito a distant look. He has dropped down, as I said, and is wriggling on the linoleum. He is sort of grayish green, longer than he is wide, as usual, and kind of large, but not plump, so not full of my blood. At first I am not sure it is a mosquito. Then I lean over, still sitting, and confirm that it is. The fumes must really be working, though it is a quiet night. There are no other bugs, moths or those jumpy transparent green things that sometimes fall in my lap, and I shoo them away. Sometimes a spider skitters across the floor here from somewhere. It is summer, after all. But tonight there is no one else. The mosquito is alone. I look at him some more. I've read long ago that it is only female mosquitoes that seek out blood, they need it to develop fertilized eggs inside them. So this is a she, strictly speaking, but I still think of it as a he. He is walking on the floor. I have never see a mosquito walk. He is moving one leg, another, rising and wobbling, but not getting anywhere. It is hard to say where he would want to go, if he could. Maybe by millimeters he would get to my ankle and bite into it. That is what he will try to do, if I take the fumigator from the socket. In ten minutes or half an hour he will recover, rise back into the air, try to get at me from my naked back, at the ankles, maybe my neck. And I will wave at him without looking away from the monitor, then eventually try to pin him to a wall. It is a familiar pattern to us both, except that to him that would be the first time. This is not how it will go for this mosquito, though. The fumes have gotten him instead, and now he is making this ridiculous striding motion on the floor, over and over again, doubly strange for something that is meant to fly. He is like a horse. I can almost distinguish his proboscis, bending against the floor, and thrashing legs. He is silent, too, no whining. I wish he would just die. But the balcony door is open, the night is just outside my peripheral vision on the other side, the concentration must not be high enough. If I close the door, the stuff might kill him after a while, but I would be too hot. Anyway, he is already here, and I have to deal with him. What am I going to do? There is only one thing to do. I can't talk to him. I don't know the language of pheromones or whatever they use between themselves, and even if I did, what would I say? This one has to have my blood, and nothing else would do. All it would take to crush him is to stretch my leg, though I would have to get up, too. The foot would get dirty, and if I crushed him with my hand, the hand. Then I would have to go to the bathroom and wash them. If I swat him with one of these thin paperbacks I have lying around (fairy tales, children's stories), then I would need to wash that, too. Still, this would be the best. Anyway, the mosquito is already there or still there, depending on how you look at it. I have to crush it, then drink some tea, maybe, finish modding on the computer, close it, turn off the light, go to bed. I can't just leave him there. It is action time: nothing between me, sitting there in green shorts and nothing else, and him. Nor is there any other opportunity, rescue plan. If I shift to pick him from the floor in a T-shirt or rag, wrap him up and toss him from the balcony, as I have done with flies, spiders and knocked-out moths, he will just come back at me. By the way, I was supposed to continue reading Ivan Goncharov's "Oblomov" today. It is a classic of Russian literature, and a few days ago I had decided I would finally know what it is about, what it is like. Words have texture, the fantasies of their authors have a texture, the source of expected enjoyment. The book is about a nobleman who wastes his life by sloth and procrastination. The first chapter rang some shameful bells in me, to be sure. I made some comments to myself, in my head, also some rejoinders, where Goncharov might not have been sufficiently fair and sensitive to his subjects, where there was too much satire. I started on the book the other day and went about 120 pages - not bad. For the next day I half-hoped I could get in as many, but it did not work out that way. I was busy making this mod, something else. Today I also did not read anything from it. It is not really such a great crime with a novel that is not exciting in any way, but the fact remains. What will tomorrow bring? Jains, if "Wikipedia" is to believed, go through life with medical-like masks on their faces so that they don't accidentally breathe in any small flies from the air and kill them, and they sweep the ground before them with brooms. Jains revere living things. I wonder how they manage to get by? Besides eating meat sometimes etc, I myself have killed all sorts of insects in my life, like everybody. When I was a boy at my grandmother's house I used to swat flies with such enjoyment whenever they flew in. Whack, whack. There was a memorable swatter. I can still feel its heft. At that time I did not consider insects living things at all, I think. Later, when I was on that hike by myself through the woods to the rock festival that never happened and sat for a nap in a hut in the forest, mosquitoes poured from every crevice. I swatted them with my hands, a whole flock, so to speak. I did perceive them as living then, but I knew they had to be extinguished. Protoplasm, basically. Now is the next stage. Now all those memories have shortened and can't help me. I wish I had something to hide behind, some idea of Insect or Enemy. Something I could imagine about this mosquito - still on the floor in the same place, because no time has passed. Clotho weaves the thread of life, Lachesis measures it or stretches it out. The line, my line, is now before me as a stretch of flax between one place I can't see and another. And still I have to make a decision. By God, how much of the animal kingdom I have already squashed or flushed down the toilet. I have to get up now and quickly get rid of the insect and shift my mind to important things on my scale, the human scale. My pose, sitting cross-legged like this, is very uncomfortable, it takes some time to get out of it. I disentangle arms, I lean to the left, I half-rise and extricate the right leg from its place on the ground. At this exact moment, meaning in my life ends. "It is now," I think. All fantasies that have dragged on through my childhood, my graced youth, finally ended.

I get up, walk to the cabinet across and pick up one of the candy wrappers lying in a pile there. They are made of paper, vivid scarlet and green, showing a flowering poppy. I kept the wrappers after eating the candy to make a collage for the lid of the notebook. I have the beginnings of one there already, from long ago, glued to the top - foil, some pictures of birds arranged, never finished and kind of tattered and dirty now. With the poppy wrappers I hoped to improve the collage: a field of poppies, with other wrappers to end later on. I never got around to it. Now the wrappers are a little dusty from waiting too long, and it makes no difference anyway. I take one, walk over to that little damn horse on the floor, zoom in and catch him in the paper. The wrapper is now a wad: the colorful upper side is to myself, the white underside must be where the mosquito is. I carry the wad to the bathroom and throw it down the toilet tube, kind of scummy below the yellow water and stinky. It floats, still red, and I look at it. What I don't get is the difference. Just now, before I moved my fingers together, there had been something there, in that precise spot in space, something tight and stubborn - a personality. Now the wrapper is no different from the mosquito it is blended with, who has turned into a carbon material. It has fled from there, the phrase comes to mind from a TV series with a mortuary scene. There was a body on a stretcher - a long beautiful woman. "It" has fled from there, the doc said. Well, it's not there any more, that is for sure. But I don't believe in the soul, and it makes no difference anyway. And what I am doing now, in this abstract place, is not commemorating him, but what I did.

Another thing that should be changed about Mislead and Shadow Door is the spell names. These spells are supposed to fool opponents into thinking something else has happened, but how is the player supposed to wonder if the AI has teleported away when the message window says "CASTS SHADOW DOOR"? Oh, thank you! Enemies should be patched to use a version of Shadow Door that is called Dimension Door, a Mislead that is called... something else, and these spells should include Teleport Field effects, lasting 1 second, at 300-400 range, as well as a 1-round-long disabler. That way enemies will not immediately attack the party from the very spot where they vanished but may actually deliver a surprise strike from an unexpected direction when the party marches off to search for them.

I don't think they are. The latest version of NI lets you see animation files directly in the CRE file's window, from there you can click to open the BAM editor. All recolorable creatures are rainbow-like: skin one tone, armor another and so on. None of Beamdog's creatures are recolorable. If in the editor you see a creature who looks just like it does in the game, then it's not recolorable. Those can still be darkened using the Character tint solid opcode - if you set the value there very low for either Skin or Character color (this second only works in EEs, choosing it will crash a "classic" game), you can make them pitch black or just about. I once wanted to add at least this effect to petrification from basilisk gaze and spells so that those creatures would look A LITTLE like they have been turned to stone, but it wasn't convincing.

First BG: "TASLOI" and "KOBOLD." Tasloi aren't recolorable, kobolds are, so you should see a difference.

The conditions GAME_IS ~bgee~ and GAME_IS ~eet~ are different, right? They are not going to double up for content for the first BG? Or is ~bgee~ included in ~eet~?

I didn't look at the log, but you may be looking in the wrong place. It's possible that you were dealing with enemies whose avatar is not recolorable, like basilisks or tasloi. Most creatures aren't, actually. They don't turn gray or blue, all you get is the message. And if frozen, they will shatter in a round. You might have been too hasty, that's all.

On 6/8/2022 at 10:12 AM, jastey said:

I have suggestions how to spend your time more constructively for the IE community: translate a mod into your native language. If you are English native speaker, proof read your favorite mod. Test any mods tagged as Beta where the modders asked for tests and bug reports. Install your most favorite mods and do things in the game you usually don't do or think only a few players would, and/or you think the mods could break, and report your findings to the mod author(s). Write a tutorial about something mod / mod install related you just figured out. Install mods that interest you, play the game, and have a good time.

There is so many things one could do that would actually bring the community foreward.

In other words, you are telling him to shut up? On the board for off-topic threads? Nice, nice, Ms. moderator.

That would still have to be done through a script. Or an area-wide projectile. I have never tried adding projectiles to areas. It might work, but there probably won't be much visible difference between doing it with an OnCreation(). And the idea is exactly not to time the end of the carnival to the group's first visit there but to the beginning of the game.

I have tried using the head turn. The NPC still jerks for a brief moment, it looks unnatural. Applying that through a spell would probably look no better, because that must still be done by the minion.

How long does it generally take in the first BG to get to Baldur's Gate city? How many days? How long to the bandit camp? What about starting Durlag's Tower? On one hand, it is near, even without taking Ike's tour from Ulgoth's Beard: it is to the east of the Nashkel fair. On the other, to survive getting to it the party must be able to go through a battle horror and some dopplegangers. The world map invites to relaxed exploration, but I would like to know what "speed runs" people have gone on: resting little, trying to get to the next objective ASAP.

I made this setup for rogues' (thieves' and bards') item-planting. The Fallouts have a handy interface for putting items on creatures, but here one has to improvise. This arrangement works, and it could be contained in a special ability, patched into thieves' CLAB files for the 1st level. It's not far from here to a ready mod, all it would take is an ability icon and some TRA strings, but, as the British say, when leaving, leave. Anybody who wants to make the mod is welcome, though.

The hypothetical special ability is non-combat and invokes two Summon creature EFF files on NOTEVIL targets: one invisible minion (A) is summoned on Self, the other (B) on the creature to be given the item - the stooge. For this script the rogue has put the item in the first quick item slot, SLOT_MISC0. But since many items can't be put in quick item slots, one may instead focus on the first inventory slot - SLOT_MISC3, I think. Then it becomes a problem how to take that particular item with the script action that is used here, but with some ingenuity it can be done. Here I have a sort of tested prototype.

The script for A:

IF
    Heard([ANYONE],15665) /// the "Item Bein Taken" shout from B
THEN
    RESPONSE #1
        SetInterrupt(FALSE)        
        SmallWait(5) /// During the transfer
        DropInventory() /// A safeguard for worst-case scenarios
        DestroySelf()
END

IF
    ActuallyInCombat() /// In case fighting broke out while it was materializing
    Global("HAS","LOCALS",0) /// Has taken nothing yet
THEN
    RESPONSE #1
        DestroySelf()
END

IF
    Global("HAS","LOCALS",0)
    !HasItemSlot(LastSummonerOf,SLOT_MISC0)
THEN
    RESPONSE #1
        DisplayString(LastSummonerOf,@X)  /// Where did I put that thing? - It's always better to write engine strings in-character, if possible
        DestroySelf()
END

IF
    OnCreation()
THEN
    RESPONSE #1
        SetGlobal("HAS","LOCALS",1)
        TakeCreatureItems(LastSummonerOf,QUICKITEMS) /// Another check would be needed above to make sure only the leftmost slot is occupied
        Shout(56651) /// Signaling to B
END

IF
    Global("HAS","LOCALS",1)
THEN
    RESPONSE #1
        Shout(56651) /// Continue to yell to be heard for certain
END

The script for B:

IF
    Heard([ANYONE],56651) /// A is loaded
THEN
    RESPONSE #1
        ActionOverride(LastSummonerOf,TakeCreatureItems(LastHeardBy,ALL)) /// The stooge takes the stuff
        Shout(15665) /// A is free to disappear
        DestroySelf()
END

These minions need to be furnished with a bunch of immunities it always makes sense to give in such cases - to Damage and Slay so they don't accidentally die in a Cloudkill, to visual effects and so on, but especially to deafness. Deaf creatures don't hear shouts. As far as representation goes, the only weakness here is that the stooge will visibly strain after being made to take the item, when he should be pleasantly ignorant of the deed being done to him, but I don't think that can be avoided. Maybe it can be covered by making the creature turn around or something like that.

These scripts are for instant success, but because planting should work as a reverse of picking pockets, A's script should really be more complicated than I wrote and include Pick Pocket checks for the rogue. It's not necessary to count every point, increments of 5 points should be enough. No points would mean automatic failure, anything higher would involve checks like this:

IF

CheckStatGT(LastSummonerOf,PICKPOCKET,0)
CheckStatLT(LastSummonerOf,PICKPOCKET,6) /// Under 5%

THEN

RESPONSE #1
SetGlobal("HAS","LOCALS",1) /// And so on
...
RESPONSE #20
Shout(88445)
DestroySelf()

END

B would, of course, have

IF

Heard([ANYONE],88445)

THEN

RESPONSE #1
DisplayString(LastSummonerOf,@Y) /// Plant Item failed
ChangeEnemyAlly(LastSummonerOf,ENEMY)
DestroySelf()

END

Another reason why I'm not making such a mod myself is that, alas, there is no point to planting items on NPC. In the Fallouts you could equip people who had to go away with ticking dynamite stacks, there might have been one or two times when planting something on someone was involved in a plot, but it wasn't commonly called for even there. In the fantasy games there is nothing of that sort. Still, inventive modders could come up with items for assassination, planted evidence and so on.

But a minute is a round in this system, or it's supposed to be. I'm talking about spell durations here. A spell that lasts 1 round has a 6-second duration, 2 rounds - 12 seconds and so on, 1 turn is 60 seconds, all well and good, but when it is supposed to last 1 hour (6 turns), the duration is as often as not 300 seconds instead of 360. And from there you get multiples going up to 7200. It just doesn't make sense. It's two parallel systems, one for timers and the other for spells. Well, Bioware wasn't bothered by this, and nobody notices this except myself, apparently, but if you have to decide by exactly how long to delay some far-away effects, then this becomes a problem. Which is a nice illustration that a problem only exists on a certain level of complexity. If you don't have mechanics with these long delays, you never know or pay mind to this difference.

OnCreation() for the tents would only apply an area-wide spell with the Perm. after duration. If the time is already past, the NPC will vanish immediately. I don't need scripts for them, and there are too many different CRE files there. I can copy some of the visitors and gamesmen over as custom creatures to give them a new look, but I don't want to change the basic gamesman files. The permanent amusements in central BG, other places with roulette - I can't change them all. Remember, I'm just one man. But I can make the Nashkel fair special. However, I will edit the roulette and big-wheel dialogues to allow bigger bets and different bet types, to make gambling worth the effort, and those dialogues will be used by gamesmen throughout, why not? Some time ago, in my third-trimester-aborted update to "Adventurer's Miscellany," where I made all the nameless inns in the city unique, I made it so that in one of them the tables were rigged. It was impossible to win. But a pissed employee downstairs was eager to blow the whistle on this and everything else. 

Reality bites, that's all there is to it. But I'm not going to shock the burghers with any more of the R rating. Keep it PG between yourselves! I need a place to post my final mod, I don't want to get banned before I'm finished. Yes, and the original point: the Icewind Dale games need more mods either aimed at them or making special allowances for them. I once had a spell that produced a deluge of rain if installed on a BG game but sleet if on an IWD. That sort of thing. Now I'll just tip my hat and return to business.

4 hours ago, jastey said:

@temnix this is the second time I read a statement from you that sounds like you trivialize paedophilia. This is not funny, and it's not ok. This is a serious warning in my moderator voice.

I'm not going to talk to you, so you have nothing to worry about.