Moonboy187
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Posts posted by Moonboy187
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During the final battle in the Throne of Bhaal, Melissan is scripted to appear once any member of the five are killed. Is it possible to change this so that appears once atleast 3 members are killed? This is more for personal use as I am modifying a bunch of areas, looking at the .BCS for the ToB, I am out of my depth. I get that once a member dies the item she has equiped is destroyed and she subsequently takes damage and loses its buffs, but I cant find the mention of her appearing in the first space.
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5 hours ago, DavidW said:
For baseline scripting, there is an (ancient, but still good) scripting guide by SimDing0 at https://www.pocketplane.net/tutorials/simscript.html. (Largely ignore its advice about tools - use Near Infinity or WEIDU). Read it, and then look at some of the scripts from the unmodded game to get the idea of how it works.
For my SSL tool, there are some informal lessons at https://www.gibberlings3.net/forums/topic/13725-coding-scripts-in-ssl-some-lessons/.
There isn't really a tutorial on how to do AI SCS-style - to be honest it's complicated enough to be beyond tutorials. You need an advanced understanding both of scripting and of WEIDU.
(The bottom line is that there isn't really a simple modular way to get lots of in-game creatures to use your added spells. AI is fairly holistic.)
Thank you much for this, ive been struggling with scripts for a while now since im not really an adept programmer, il give these a good read
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4 hours ago, DavidW said:
That's actually a fairly complicated question. Almost no SCS script is literally created manually, i.e. typed as a BAF file - most are written in the SSL metalanguage. But mage (including Rakshasa) scripts are more automated than that - the code generates a list of spells for each creature (from a mixture of .tph files that specify their defensive spells, and .2da files that specify their attack spells) and then puts together their script (from a series of prewritten blocks) according to what spells they have.
I thought as much, with the amount of scripts which were created in SCS for a whole load of creatures would have taken forever. Is there a tutorial available on how to go about making scripts ? I have downloaded some mods which add new spells and also created spells myself, but I dont really know an effective way to implement them in to creatures.
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As a bit of a side question in regards to Raksha and SCS scripting in general, were the scripts created manually and the conditions set for using/memorising spells or was it generated via another program? Is it safe to say that the .2DA file stores what spells certain creatures gain access to and are allowed to use in combat or is the .2DA independent of what's written in a script for the AI to use?
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Hi,
What I have been trying to do is to make a gauntlet during the first challenge room in Pocket Plane. Looking through the AR4500.BCS I wanted to make a few more battles take place before fighting the last encounter. Currently I am playing a modded game using SCS amongst others. From playing it (Good party with six members on LoB difficulty) the battles progress as normal, fighting kobolds and dopplegangers > Sahugain, Ogre mage > Drow > Jon/Bodhi/Sarevok. What I am wanting to do is add other battles in between as to simulate the party experience from BG1 creatures through to BG2 end game creatures. After 2 or so waves of encounters I want to implement a wait option for you to be able to save your game so you don't have to do it all again, it will become far too tedious otherwise. What I had in mind of what I wanted to do :
- Kobold/Doppleganger
- OgreMage/Wolves
- Battle Horror/Helmed Horror
- Rest point
- Duergar/Mephits
- Elementals
- Golems
- Rest point
- Troll/Umber Hulk
- Sahugain/Kuo-Tao
- Vampires
- Rest Point
- Githyanki
- Mind Flayers
- Drow
- Rest
- Balor/Cornugon
- Dragon
- Rest
- Final fight Jon/Bodhi/Ellesime
This is roughly what I had in mind to do however I am stumped as to how to get the creatures to spawn in before the previous wave has been killed. Attached is a notepad of what is currently in the BCS file, I have made some changes and added in a Dragon fight (marked with */) to take place after the Drow have been killed, however the dragon seems to spawn in too quickly and with the drow still being alive I am not sure how to go about it as I am not too good with programming. I would be grateful for any help and if someone could explain what some of the Global and GlobalLT terms means because I have no idea. If I could figure out how to do one wave then I should be able to replicate it for the others.
Thanks again.
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Thank you all for the replies.
Basically what my intent was that if the players party has some characters wearing items which grant a cumulative +50% damage resistance to Slashing, would it be possible for the ai creatures to attack said character and deal more damage than the current resistance would normally protect against. That was my thinking, one of the mods I have installed allows for Shadow Magic and one of the spells lowers the physical resistsance of a creature by 20% for 1 turn. I wasnt sure if you could replicate a similar effect, but instead of it being a spell, it was a passive effect.
The 20 slashing damage was just a damage example i was giving assuming the creature was wielding a weapon which only dealt 20 damage.
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Hi,
I wanted to ask is it possible for melee attacks to bypass the natural resistance of a creature?
For example, creature A using a weapon which deals 20 slashing damage every hit, hits creature B who has a passive +50% slashing damage resistance = 10 damage dealt.
Is it possible for creature A's slashing damage to be able to bypass the 50% resistance which would allow the damage dealt to always be 20 or would I have to modify something on the weapon itself to allow it to happen. I know for magic you can set dispel/bypass but I am not sure when it comes to creatures/weapons.
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Thank you guys so much for your help, its very much appreciated !
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Thank you so much for the reply and the explanation, I was not sure about how the variables worked out and couldn't figure out when I had implented it as a test why it was not working correctly. When I had used the Yaga Shura camp script which spawns enemies off screen, I had assumed it would place them near from where Player1 was located. But in the case of the AR1304 D'Arnise hold restored, the placings of the spawns were really randomly placed , some extremely far out.
I had also tested using Gromnir barracks, as that used a transition in order for the solider to reach and then leave, subsequently returning with reinforments, but when I tried to use that method and had coded a particular script for one of the npcs to move there, he just did not respond and kept looping the string overhead words. I will try again today and post the code I use in the hopes that it might actually work this.
Thank you again for your help !
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Hi,
So I have been playing around with modding scripts and have taken a look specifically at the Yaga-Shura camp and Gromnir barracks as they are both instances I remember where hostile foes will keep respawning for a certain amount of time. I have been trying to replicate this in another area but I cannot seem to get it to work. The area in question is the restored D'Arnise hold, specifically during the final Roenall questline with the invading force. I am wanting to make a big battle take place, in which enemies will respawn continously until a particular enemy is killed which would then trigger a cutscene in which the player and party are teleported away. I have managed to get the cutscene activation working but cannot get the reinforcements concept to work. I tried creating Global triggers in which enemy units spawn in, which they do but its just a single wave of enemies. My other alternative was to make .bcs scripts so that when particular enemies die they spawn in other people elsewhere, but that feels way too cumbersome and time consuming. Is there an easier way to go about this?
Any help would be appreciated, thank you.
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I have installed this mod with features enabled however I have noticed that I only have a few IWD priest spells and no wizard spells at all, has anyone else had a similiar issue?
Also as a side note, I remember Bodhi having a skill in an earlier version called "Drink Blood" or something to that effect which would instant kill like a vorpal attack but she does not seem to have it anymore, was it removed?
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Just now, Vreejack said:
You should not be modding your Steam folder. Copy the two EE games to a separate location and then build a new EET folder from those sources.
To be honest, that's how I have always been modding my games even with my last playthrough. As an update, I have installed a bunch of mods to my game and it seems like the menu is still broken and some of the mods including SCS are not installing. I have tried different versions of it and I seem to get the same error each time. The new class mods I installed also are not functioning correctly either. I tried to use Near Infinity to see if some of the new item mods which I installed were actually placed into the game, but for some reason the Dialog file cannot be located.
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Hi,
I recently returned to BG after around a year to play again and there seemed to have been a new update to Baldur's Gate. Steam in its infinte wisdom decided to update the game without my knowing and as soon as I started the game, I was greeted with a black screen but with very faint writing displayed (I was running EET). I managed to load a old file to take a look and all the mods I had installed previously were no longer displaying correctly. The new classes were not being shown, there were countless Invalid String Ref showing up. I am currently planning to play through the game again with mods, however my question is, Is it safe to install the mods I used before like SCS/EET Npc mods etc without it affecting the game or would I have to wait until the authors of said mods update them so that they will function correctly?
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19 hours ago, InKal said:
Did you try Improved Irenicus Tactics remix from SCS2 v21?? Imo even harder than Improved Anvil version of this fight.
I think I am currently running a later version of SCS, I think it is v34, I will need to double check. Because of the other mods I have installed and since I am having to use EET in order for them all to work correctly, I don't really want to have to reinstall everything again as it will take too long, plus I will have to send the changelogs to my brother machines and have it installed there, which will take far too much time to get done. I was looking for the .CRE files so that I could manually make some changes to the current stats by adding passive resistances in order to make him more resilient.
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Hi,
I have played a lot of versions of SCS combined with a plethora of mods which modify the game but even while playing on LoB difficulty with all SCS settings on the most difficult I still found the battles with Jon Irenicus to be a bit stale and one-sided. For example, during his first encounter with the Cowled Enforcers he literally doesn't take a hit from any of them calls their magic "pathetic". During your first encounter with him in the Spellhold after freeing all the inmates, he spends a bit too long trying to pre-cast some spells and he targets the inmates before your own party but gets completely overwhelmed, which granted is fair enough due to the story and all. The 2nd encounter at the Tree of Life is where I thought he would go essentially bat-s*** crazy and start churning out spells left right and center, but one or two debuffs and his health drops to 0 in a couple of seconds ending the fight. Essentially what I wanted to ask is I have been using Near Infinity to look for the instances where you fight him on those two locations and including the final fight in Hell but I cannot seem to find it. Because of the other mods I have installed as well and with my Override folder containing 20k+ files, I was wondering if possible if someone could guide me to those instances of Jon Irenicus so I can modify his stats a little better to give him better resistances and hopefully prolong the fight. The mod itself is fantastic and I don't have any issues with it, it's just the fights with him seem to end too quickly and personally I wish it was longer.
Kind regards,
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5 hours ago, Guest Ront said:
Moonboy, are you planning to release your mod?
Erm, I havent really thought about it to be honest. My initial version was made for me and my brothers to play by making the game play a bit different to Vanilla and to improve a lot of aspects. If people would want to play it I wouldn't mind releasing it.
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Hi,
I created a post a whole about my making of a Baldurs Gate 1 mod designed for the original game. I have had a lot of progress with it and managed to play through until the end, as I hadnt modded anything from ToSC as of yet.
My question I wanted to ask, Is it possible using Near Infinity to load Icewind Dale 1 and possibly take resources for example spell/weapon icons or even creature animation models and transfer to Baldurs Gate ? Since they both run using the same engine I wanted to ask if its possible to do that as I would like to be able to merge some of the contents of the game.
Hi @DavidW , apologies in advance for tagging you in this post, but from playing SCS and how you were able to essentially transfer the spell animations/spells themselves and import them into BGEE, wanted to ask if you had tinkered with the original game for this sort of thing.
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On 8/2/2020 at 3:19 AM, DavidW said:
Back in 2004, when I was first messing with AI for the BG games, I discovered exactly this issue in BG1. So far as I can see it's a hardcoded feature of the engine and can't be worked around. It's the main reason I stopped trying to do AI for BG1 and moved to TUTU.
Ah right I see, that sucks quite a bit. At the time of designing the mod I was too was thinking if I should simply just create the same thing but for EE instead as it has a huge number of additional resources to take advantage of. As incredible as it was, I still felt that I preferred the feel , aesthetic and game-play of the original over EE. One of the reasons I'm not a big fan is the inclusion of a lot of BG2 spells and also the kits. I would not have minded so much if only the kits were added - even though it just ridiculous to choose at level 1 and personally for me just ruins the game - but the main thing I really didn't like was the inclusion of BG2 spells. I know that using modding tools you can simply remove them from the spellbooks and drops but that would have taken far too long.
One thing I wanted to ask you though is that is the scripting of BG1 basic elements similar to BG2 in the sense of attack priority and spell casting?
For example Script A for mages - Target weakest character and use Fireball, once casting is complete use a range weapon to attack while waiting for next round. Determine next target etc. Because BG1 only really has Mirror Image as a sort of defensive spell against physical and sometimes magic attacks, is there a way to tell the wizard to check if he has it on and if does not then reapply it if he has the spell available? I had actually partially created a spell which acts like a high level defence spell which grants a % bonus against all physical attacks in order to try and keep them alive longer and allows them to go through the spells that they have, but because I had given it a small duration - like Prot from Magical Weapons - I wanted to know if it was possible for the script to check what status affects are active and reapply those which aren't.
I couldn't figure out a way to get the spellcasters to attack while waiting for the next round and also I had scripted Mulahey to target the weakest character and use Glyph of Warding on them, but when it came to playtesting, he simply only locked target to that 1 person and chased them without changing target to someone else and I didnt really know how to implement other code to tell him to do something else if said person moves out of range
. I can attach or paste what I coded in on this thread if someone could help point me in a right direction if thats alright?
On 8/2/2020 at 8:02 AM, jastey said:Most things you asked (scripts, BAMs) I don't know how exactly they work for original BG1. I tried to make my (quest) mods compatible for original BG1 for a long time, but at least since the EE came out and most players moved on to Tutu/BGT, I am no longer supporting it because its restrictions is really frustrating and tedious to work around.
Yeah I saw the Balduran tower mod which actually looks really interesting. I wanted to see about adding new areas to the game in order to slightly expand on the ToSC quests, particulary his since most of the content isn't difficult or even lengthy. It took me a good while to fish through using Near Inifinty to understand how a lot of the data was stored for spells, items etc because it was really confusing at first.
On 8/2/2020 at 9:25 AM, Angel said:First of all, let me warn you that modding for old BG1 is a real pain and just not worth the effort. You're far better off aiming for Tutu/BGT and/or EE. And this is from someone who stubbornly stuck to BG1 modding for years after Tutu and BGT came out, and stubbornly stuck to BGT for years after EE came out.
Here's a few more issues with the old engine that I remember struggling with:
- Opcode 98 (HP: Regeneration) ignores timing mode and always uses duration. This makes creating a Ring of Regeneration for example nearly impossible.
- Targeting dead party members is bugged, this makes Raise Dead spells a real pain to use.
Yes, but considering how crowded the BG1 map already is, it's very tricky. You might try this old area editing tutorial: Dragonflight Design DLTCEP Tutorials
Yes, but it requires a bit of fiddling. Icons for BG1 must be RLE encoded and must *not* be compressed. DLTCEP's bam editor can do this, or BAM Batcher can do it in bulk.
Creating AI scripts is not easy in the best of circumstances, but as you are already discovering it's nearly impossible to make a script of any complexity on old BG1. Many triggers and actions don't quite work like they do in BG2, or don't work at all. And several effects that are essential to making AI mods like SCS tick simply don't exist in the engine at all.
Your first paragraph made me chuckle. I knew that the other content and options were available too but still I thought I want to stick with the original because its what my brothers and i prefer to playthrough.
Regeneration was a bit of a pain, but I only used it specific creatures, and even then I tested it on my party first to see how much it actually gives back to not make it too overpowered. I also managed to create the resurrection spell which fully works now. I have not tested it to allow the AI to use, but when I used it on the party members who had died, they were resurrected with full hp and cured of all ailments which I was glad to see. To be fair I have taken some spells from BG2 and put them into BG1 but it is only a few and they are not too overpowered, even though I feel like I can contradicting myself even though I said I didn't like EE because of it lol.
Yeah the map is quite big and packed but I still felt like adding additional quests which take place in other parts of the map, sort of a like a huge battle sort of thing.
The icons were such a pain especially for the weapons because I added in quite a few new of everything but didn't know how to implement the BAM images which just made it terrible to work with so ended up just having to use recoloured sprites from the old ones.
Scripting is hard, but from what I had done with my current knowledge it did make the game harder, even though pausing sometimes messes up spellcasting which is a pain, it did not happen too often thankfully. I wanted to AI to smartly target the right people and use the right spells in order to make a lot of the battles more interesting. End of chapter battles and Bounty Hunter fights I managed to tweak to make them that much more difficult to beat, but the payoff with the some new equipment did make it worth it.
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Hi all,
Basically I have been designing a mod for BG1+ToSC which essentially turns the game into a more hardcore version of the original. Much inspiration came from the Heart of Fury Difficulty in Icewind Dale 2 in which it added in more creatures, tougher enemies, enhanced items etc. Other inspirations are from @DavidW Sword Coast Strategems, in which battles are far more tactical and require a bit more thinking before going in gung-ho. I have currently completed a version of the mod which I had play tested with my brother online via Gameranger. However there were some bugs we encountered as we played, some of which I didn't notice myself while playtesting. I had been working on it for a few months before stopping due to personal reasons,. However I do wish to continue to polish it up and add some more new content into the game. I had only modded up until the Final Battle in BG and did not have time to make changes to any of the ToSC areas, although I had a word document saved with all the content which I will put in eventually. At the current moment I have created a number of new equipment and weapons, added in new merchants which sell new and old items, created some new spells and placed in some spells from other Bioware games such as Neverwinter Nights and Icewind Dale. I have also modified all existing creatures in all areas of the game, changing their stat values and also placing new creatures giving them new items. I have also made some changes to the main storyline progression quests and moved several NPC's to different locations which help make some battles a lot more intense and interesting. From inspiration from SCS, I was also able to figure out a way in order to allow spellcasters to pre-cast magic upon becoming in range. Spellcasters are always targeted first and always killed before they pose a major threat to the party, so I had made sure to give them adequate protections in order to at-least keep them a threat a while longer. I wanted to try and make enemy monsters more realistic. An example being the Ankheg. It is literally a huge beast and yet can get taken down by just pummelling it with arrows. Because of this, I have altered the physical resistances of most creatures to reflect their size and power. I have read through @jastey post about BG1 modding, but a lot of it contains information which I did not fully understand lol so apologies in advance for that. There are a couple of questions I do want to ask though.
Is it possible to create new areas and add them to the world map? I know that you can alter map scripts and such, but I was wondering if it was possible for example to clone an area like Gnoll Stronghold and place a copy of it somewhere else?
Is it possible to get the BAM image files from Icewind Dale or other games and place them into BG1 and get them to work? I do not understand how it works and the only way I could differentiate the new items I added in was to create copies of the original icon and simply change the colours around. An example being could I take the Resurrection spell icon from BG2 or Icewind Dale and place it into BG1.
Is there a easy way to create scripts for the AI or does it simply come down to trial and error? I have noticed while tinkering that some commands(/triggers?) do not actually work. An example of this would be the ability to allow NPC's to use items like healing potions. I had created a script to allow them to see if they have one equipped or in the inventory and if the health value drops below a certain %, they should drink. However that doesn't seem to be the case at all. They simply stand idle and do not resume attacking. The way I had used to circumvent this was to simply create a spell which only NPC's had access to and allowed that to function as a heal of sorts, but it isn't realistic and is just ridiculous.
Another thing I noticed is that sometimes when an NPC is casting a spell, if you pause the game, for whatever reason the spell they were casting gets interrupted. I don't know if this is a bug or maybe something to do with a script, but it is incredibly frustrating to deal with.
Thanks again for any help or tips that you can offer.
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Hi,
I am currently doing a playthrough online on BG2 EET and have been playing through starting from SoA. However we seem to have stumbled across an issue with the SoS mod. I had accepted the questline from Selence and we had been powering through the normal game, we then got stuck at the point in which she requested we go to find William in the Goverment District, we found the home and his servant, however he had told us to go to Brynlaw, which was a problem because we have already completed all the main story quests until literal endgame Suldenesslar so we could not go back to Brynlaw. The only way I could resolve this was to use console and give myself the key in which to open the safe. We are now currently stuck at the point in which she gives us a key and tells us to go to an inn and open a chest containing some items. For the life of me, we could not find it, I then checked a walkthrough online and it mentioned that we need to go to the Copper Coronet and upstairs there is a locked room. There is no locked room at all, there is no locked chest or anything and we completly stumped on what to do next. I even tried to console said letter to inventory and travel to Umar Hiils to trigger the next part of the cutscene, but nothing happened. I'm not sure if we have done something at some point or maybe there is a global variable I can change via console in order to progress. I have made a backup save of before completing SoA in the hope that we can go back and do this quest because it does look and sound really interesting. Any help would be much appreciated.
Kind regards,
Ps, my mod list is ModMerge > Ascension > Sword & Fist > Song and Silence > Wheels of Prophecy > SoS > SoD items to BG2 > SCS and then finally Cowled Menace
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Yea sorry, I wrote this at 2am lol. Let me clarify what I meant to say, When I was installing EET(Not BGt) after the installation had finished it gave a prompt stating that if I wanted to install any mods then do it just now and then run the EET_End file to finalise the installation. I ran the _End file first and then continued to install my mods in order. Thr only reason why i had to install EET was because one of the mods I wanted to play required it for some reason so I had no choice. As I did have Sod, I did have to install Modmerge first before I could do anything.
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Hi,
Thanks all for the replies. I ended up reinstalling everything starting with BGT and then doing BGT_End and then working my way through the list of mods I wanted installed and ending with the installation of SCS. I did a new game on SoA since I had played BG1EE earlier and didnt want to play through it all again. So far I havent encountered any issues or conflictions with the install process or during gameplay. So it does seem to be running fine, I didnt try to install BGT after everything else because I had a feeling something might go wrong, so I simply just took the longer route.
Thanks again for all the replies
Kind regards
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Hi there,
I have installed a fresh copy of BG2EE from Steam and also the following mods in order:
ModMerge > Ascension > Sword & Fist > Song and Silence > Wheels of Prophecy > SoD items to BG2 > SCS and then finally Cowled Menace.
However, upon trying to install Cowled Menace mod, it told me that I needed to have Enhanced Edition Trilogy installed beforehand. Unfortunately I didnt read that part and continued to install all the mods.
My question is, if I was to install EET now, would that have an effect on the other mods which are currently installed? Judging by what the EET adds, it feels like that it might make some changes to what I currently have installed and I do not really want it to mess around, since it took me over an hour to install all the other mods, I would hate to have to go through all that again. The quest line does seem really interesting and with the other mods installed, I thought it would make a nice challenge since I havent installed any of the other mods before apart from SCS, but the last version I completed was V25 or something.
Kind regards,
Hugh
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Not sure if a bug, but when you enter the Temple Ruins dungeon area, for some reason the Lich inside already starts casting spells like Suffocate continuously and the game doesnt allow you to save because of the aoe gas.
Sword Coast Stratagems v34 (edit: 34.3) now available
in Sword Coast Stratagems
Posted
I didnt realise it was dependant on dificulty. The last playthrough I did was a few versions ago and it was on LoB, she showed up after only 1 member of the Five had died, it didnt matter who it was. I am currently modifying their previous encounters and I do want to add those changes to the final fight, but I remember it was just a hot mess before having to deal with Mel and the Five. Is it possible to give all members the same points and to ensure that she will only show if 2 or 3 are dead regardless of who it is?