temnix

I don't know if there is a general and broadly applicable, convenient way to do this (but use "ActuallyInCombat()" instead of the combat counter, it works better), but you could invent something for special cases. For one area or for one type of creature with special effects on it. One possibility is to patch AOE spells (but how will you know all AOE spells out there?) with a double Set global variable effect, one immediately setting the global to 1 and the other delayed by 6 seconds setting it back to 0. The target should be Party - at least somebody will be alive there for the effect to latch on. Then you can script your creature to check for that global OnCreation() and DestroySelf() if it is set. It would look strange for creatures to blink out of existence, so you would need to equip them with a few effects - remove the feet circle and the animation for, say, 5 ticks, and give them protection from opposite allegiance for the same duration so that enemies don't start attacking empty air. Give them protection from Sleep too. 5 ticks should be enough to run the check and disappear without disturbing the burgers. If it's your area script doing the spawning, you won't even all that, just put in a check, but then you will be limited to that one area, whereas with the creatures themselves checking you can create something universal and interesting, like a spell that only summons monsters out of combat - or only in combat, for that matter. The best option in this case would be to summon an intermediary, an invisible minion with Translucency 255, no circle and with all these protections and "Hide status" to run the check. If all okays, the minion can do CreateCreatureObjectOffset off itself in any direction you want, at any distance, with any creature files, then eliminate itself. It needs an animation, not NULL_ANIMATION, to count off the offset. Other than that, this is very flexible and the only way to do many things.

All right, so what are the options for removing a spell's effect in an old installation? That's the one I want to know about, really. The old engine doesn't have "Remove effects by resource," so how can I clear a custom spell off a creature? I could use old Dispel, but that's not selective and won't do anything about dispel mode 0 effects anyway.

Does SoA crash when trying to run opcode 365 from a newer mod, or does nothing happen at all?

When somebody installs Shadows of Amn, and Throne of Bhaal, by themselves, the game starts at some indeterminate time from the beginning in Candlekeep. I'm not talking about what it says in dialogues, I mean the game clock - it starts from 0. When a trilogy-type install is played (BGEE + SoD + BG2EE or EET and so on), plot developments are strung along for convenience, the move from the North to a little farther north to Amn is charted, but there is still no connection to particular clock time, is there? I'm thinking of advancing time after the move to Amn in a trilogy game to get the engine to apply a custom effect. I'm changing the appearance of commoners, noblemen and children in the games to reflect racial differences between the north and Amn. Amnians are going to be duskier. The problem is that there is nothing to distinguish a commoner in the BG part of a trilogy to one encountered in Athkatla. They use the same animation, they are called the same. A player of a trilogy would either see everyone fair-headed and light-skinned, even in Amn, or everyone swarthy, even at Dragonspear. But if I apply the fair recoloring to creatures with timing mode 9, right away, and dusky recoloring with timing mode 7, "Permanent after duration," delaying it by some large number of clock ticks, by a game year let's say, then advance time ahead this much at the start of SoA, I should be able to make the dusky coloring trigger instantly for everyone from that point onwards. There is no danger to rewinding the clock ahead, is there?

Okay, the tutorial was of no use. DLTCEP is too different from Near Infinity, and anyway I suspect it's not about the right stuff. What I want to do is: export an area's ovelay to PNG, redraw a portion of it in an editor without changes to the number and position of tiles, lightmaps or anything else - a looks-only change, then convert the whole to PVRZ, because I assume that's how it's done. There are converters for this in Near Infinity, but the program gives me an error at this step, "Unknown error," in fact. Is that anything familiar to anybody?

Unfinished Business' version of Kagain's quest is "superceded" by BGEE 2.5. By this they probably mean that in BGEE, I don't know since which version, it's possible to reach the place of ambush with Kagain, at which point the quest is pronounced completed and the boy dead. This is a closure, and that's what I wanted to know - how the Enhanced Edition handles this quest, because my mod is going to be for BGEE. I think the boy's body was put on the ground by Beamdog, and they arranged the resolution. That's good, I can take it from there without worrying about Unfinished Business.

Okay, good.

The Enhanced Edition Trilogy has changed the numbers of all strings for BG1 by prefacing them with "2." Is that correct? String number 5 became 25, 25 became 225. I know this generally, but I want to make sure this is absolutely how it was done for all string numbers.

Kagain wants the party to look for Entar Silvershield's son. When the party travels to the crossroads, the place of the ambushed caravans, Kagain suggests giving up the search. I don't know how this is implemented exactly, but the boy is there among the dead, and his has his own script name. Maybe it is used, maybe it isn't. From what I heard, Unfinished Business completes or restores this quest. How does it actually go there? I have a better way to handle this quest than any mumbling or made-up excuse - I can resurrect the dead. But I don't want to mess up compatibility in such a way that neither method of completing the quest will work.

@Angel Thanks for the link. Hopefully PVRZ won't be too different, because this mod will be for the EE engine. The area is a dungeon, it has no daytime-nighttime specials, and I only want to redraw a patch of the floor.

I want to edit the overlay of an area. There is a room I want to redraw. Then I'd like to put the changed area back into the game-recognizable format. How do I do that? Near Infinity makes it possible to export overlays (TIS files) as PNG, but an "Unknown error" appears when trying to convert them back into MOS. Plus, I've managed to change the look of an area once, converted the file (I don't remember how), and the area ended up missing one tile, like a gap tooth, with just a black square there. It might have been a tile with a hidden door. What's going on there? I would look into tutorials for this, but links to them from a few years ago are all non-functional.

Is it possible to set or remove the Day/Night flag for an area while playing? With the flag off, it's always day in an area. I would like to turn a normal area into one with perpetual daytime at some point - I have a quest idea. I know there is no action for changing this, but maybe something with setting-unsetting bits?

How about a general patch? All dialogues get ADD_TRANS_ACTION setting a global, say, "MET%deathvar%" to 1. I see no harm in that. Anyway, that's just idle musing. Thanks for the answers.

Have you thought of writing this as a text adventure? There is software for that, Twine, for example. You have planned this out, the writing should be easy enough. And then you could publish it here, or on Spellhold, or on Beamdog's forums. Lots of people like Boo and would want to read it. With the tools that are available to modders, inside the game itself, this, unfortunately, can't be implemented.

Final version. This one covers Call Lightning.

What they are saying is that you need to adjust the Y coordinate of the VVC file (or Z, which is the same thing, apparently). Positive Y axis values (1 is enough) will put the animation in front of the character, obscuring him unless blending is enabled. -1 will play the BAM behind. 0 is a compromise and sort of keeps the character in the center. Often that's convincing enough. But if you really want an imitation of depth, you'll have to split the BAM - or turn on blending. Y at 0 and regular or 3D blending usually does the job.

I could set a global, but how would I do that for an existing dialogue? Rewrite every reply line's actions? The check in point is about meeting Volo - whether the party has spoken to him. The game is actually pretty loose with such things, information from Volo is labeled under "Rumor from Volo," even though he doesn't introduce himself. So I went about it this way also and just put the global in OnCreation() of the tavern's script. If they have been there, it can be assumed they talked to him. But I would like a real way to take account of an encounter. The TriggerOverride(NumTimes... works, by the way, but only if the NPC is in the same area as the speaker.

Updated.

I'm posting an update with important fixes. Everyone should download it.

I would like to have a trigger in one NPC's conversation that registers whether I have talked to, that is, met, another NPC, in another area. I have tried it in the form of "TriggerOverride("scriptname",NumTimesTalkedTo(0))" for the negative condition and "TriggerOverride("scriptname",NumTimesTalkedToGT(0))" for positive, side by side in the same dialog. But neither appears, even though I made a point of assigning a script name to that NPC. So, is there a way to reflect an encounter? Besides putting a global in every branch of the NPC's conversation.

If that works, I might end up making the little mod I was thinking of. Thanks anyway, Ardanis. The macros would be too complicated.

This isn't about replacing blocks, though. Inserting blocks, maybe, in the more important longer addition.

Okay, I'll look that up in Weidu. Is this going to adjust the number of actors and all the other derived numbers?

There is an NPC at the Nashkel Fair who doesn't fit there any more. I'd like to get rid of him, but Weidu doesn't have any ready functions for deleting such things. I can type "None" at his actor's offset, for the resource field, but maybe there is a cleaner way to eject him?

What's the diff? ADD_MUSIC extends SONGLIST.2DA, and assuming that does the job for writing at Songs offsets of areas, what is the IDS for?