IAv6 for BG2EE, public beta Options

[Azoth]

Hi critto,

i didnt play BG2 for a long time (finished once SOA with IA v4 or v5, cant remember...) but stumbled recently upon bg2ee in itunes store, bought it, played a bit on ipad but its somehow no fun without IA no more ...so i wanna give it a try again with IA v6 :-)
Did some research about jailbreaking, but unfortunately already updated to iOS 8.3 and there are some doubts if ipad control with clumsy thumbs is accurate enough for IA. So, back to good old notebook. Damn but i cannot find my original CDs anymore, lol dont know how many times i bought the game so far, 3 or 4 times ?!? But whatever. im a bit undecided now whether i should get my hands on bg2ee or bg2 + tob. Any advice? How serious is the bug you are speaking of and how long to be fixed?
Im planning a lightly modded game, Tower of Deception and The Four would be nice. There is a ToD v4 out which works apparently for bg2ee but is it based on the compatible one for IA, any ideas? What about The Four?

Cheers

[critto]

Hi, Azoth.

How serious is the bug you are speaking of and how long to be fixed?

They are kind of serious in a general sense, but I've found ways to work around them for the current build of IA. So it should be safe. In fact, we already have a release prepared, I hope it'll go live until the end of the week.

Any advice?

Personally, I like the bg2ee more (works on my mac, modernized interface, etc.). However, there are many issues that came up in EE specifically and devs are working on fixing it, but it's work in progress. ToB with relevant patches and a fixpack is much more bug-free experience. So, depends on what do you prefer. Modern version with some new content (which is unmodded at this point except for some tuning of overpowered treasures and such) or stability? We did a test run on BG2EE and fixed some issues, but I pretty sure we didn't catch everything so something may come up in your playthrough.

Im planning a lightly modded game, Tower of Deception and The Four would be nice. There is a ToD v4 out which works apparently for bg2ee but is it based on the compatible one for IA, any ideas? What about The Four?

I have no knowledge whether ToD or The Four are compatible with BG2EE. We've never tried or tested it in any way. To my knowledge, The Four wasn't really compatible with IAv6 even in ToB, although I may be wrong. Hopefully, somebody will correct me if I am.

Overall, if you haven't played IAv6 at all, I'd go with ToB for better stability and, therefore, experience.

[Krell]

I have no knowledge whether ToD or The Four are compatible with BG2EE. We've never tried or tested it in any way. To my knowledge, The Four wasn't really compatible with IAv6 even in ToB, although I may be wrong. Hopefully, somebody will correct me if I am.

Overall, if you haven't played IAv6 at all, I'd go with ToB for better stability and, therefore, experience.

The Four is compatible with IA v6. The only issue is that the Guardian of the Ring somehow becomes immune to all damage types (compared to v5). Can still be killed via Energy drain though (BBoD).

[critto]

The Four is compatible with IA v6. The only issue is that the Guardian of the Ring somehow becomes immune to all damage types (compared to v5). Can still be killed via Energy drain though (BBoD).

Maybe I'll take a look at it for the next release.

[Azoth]

Thanks critto.

Out of the Document IV-Installation.txt file:

Note(3): "The Four" version 3 (and newer) is compatible with Improved Anvil and is the *only* mod which can be installed *after* Improved Anvil. Older versions of "The Four" are incompatible.

Note(6): Tower of Deception mod "upto version 3.2" is compatible with IA. Do not use any newer versions of that mod with Improved Anvil

I guess i will go for original BG2+TOB. Just found it at gog.com.

Hopefully there will be IA v7 at some point :-) Do u think v7 will be compatible with bg2ee and TOB?

This post has been edited by Azoth: May 27 2015, 07:18 AM

[critto]

Hopefully there will be IA v7 at some point :-)

I intend to release it sooner or later, since it's been promised for so long. There's plenty that's done already. I've picked up the development after a long hiatus and working on it steadily. Many things that were originally made for IAv7 are back-merged into IAv6.1 (practically everything that is not related to the new stronghold). I want to do a bunch of minor releases that'll bring us closer to IAv7. Shorter development cycles are easier to perform. And it'll help to find and fix more bugs so that a major release will be as bug-free as possible.

Do u think v7 will be compatible with bg2ee and TOB?

Yes, I intend to support compatibility for both versions of the game.

[Krell]

@ critto:

I have noticed a lot of double standard issues in this mod which you may want to somehow fix. Double standard meaning - monsters can do it while players cannot. Examples:

Invisibility or Improved Invisibility:
If a player attempts to cast a targeted spell on an enemy who suddenly becomes invisible in the midst of casting, spellcasting stopps, spell fails.
If an enemy attempts the same, the targeted character still becomes invisible, but the enemy successfully finishes and casts the spell.

Targeted special abilities and/or spells:
A player cannot cast Chain Lightning without a legal enemy target. A player cannot cast Doom on an Invisible or Improved Invisible enemy. Both of these spells will deflect off an enemy's Spell Turning.
An enemy (Guardian Spirit, Spellhold level, Kobold encounter) can cast (improved) Chain Lightning disregarding a player's Improved Invisibility and Spell Turning.
An enemy (random improved Dragon or Balor) can cast Greater Doom, disregarding a player's Spell Turning and Improved Invisibility.

Time Stop:
All enemies become immune to all weapons under Time Stop.
All players are still vulnerable under Time Stop and enemies who are immune to the TS effect can harm a party member physically.

(Normal) summons:
Players - 5 summon limit (except for Sikret's special summons from powerful items like Noble Spider etc).
Enemies - unlimited summon limit. At least the 5-deva issue was fixed in v6, but for example I noticed the Kuo-Toan prince summon 7 monsters.

After all, Sikret stated a long time ago that his improved monsters don't cheat, by which he meant "monsters can't do anything which a player cannot".

[critto]

Double standard meaning - monsters can do it while players cannot.

There are many things that players can do and monsters can't. The most important of those would be possessing a real brain and an ability to think. Keep that in mind, this is a two-way street.

Invisibility or Improved Invisibility:

Many of the AI's scripts check for II prior to casting. If there are opposite cases, I'll investigate those and decide whether it's a bug or Sikret's judgement. If it's the latter, I'll leave it untouched.

Targeted special abilities and/or spells:

Same thing as above.

Time Stop:

This is an anti-cheese feature of Sikret's. His vision of the mod was to enforce as mush as possible a way of playing that he judges to be fair and relies on tactical thinking rather than butchering helpless enemies. That's his right to do so and I seriously doubt that I'll ever remove that feature from the mod. You and everybody else should just take it or leave it.

I do intend though to make the internal structure and composition of AI more modular and flexible, simply as a way to enforce a better engineering practice. This will allow players to tune and tweak it privately if they desire to do so, but this won't be an IA experience anymore as Sikret intended it to be.

My main goal right now is to extend the mod in a way that doesn't break Sikret's view on IA design and provide players with possibilities. For instance, make more NPCs to be viable and playable choices. Two good-aligned NPCs from BG2EE are already made to be so, and two vanilla NPCs will be in IAv6.2 which I am working on right now.

[lambada]

Targeted special abilities and/or spells:

Enemies - unlimited summon limit.

Dragons, Demons and similar creatues don't obey rules on invisibility. This isn't new to BG, it has always been so. Very powerful creatures don't even suffer -4 THAC0 when attacking II enemy.
Summon limit for enemies has an ugly workaround with Globals, maybe. Not really something clean.
Going invisible while enemy is casting the spell should prevent succesfull spellcasting unless the creature can see invisible creatures by default. Or the script is intentionally doing so. I haven't really played Anvil in few years or used invisibility much even when I did, so can't report on such cases.

[Krell]

Invisibility or Improved Invisibility:

Many of the AI's scripts check for II prior to casting. If there are opposite cases, I'll investigate those and decide whether it's a bug or Sikret's judgement. If it's the latter, I'll leave it untouched.

They do, that's not the case here. The case is going invisible in the midst of a spell. Plain human mages (who definitely shouldn't and cannot see through invisibility or improved invisibility) have no trouble finishing their Ruby Ray of Reversal or Breach casting if the targeted character suddenly goes invisible or improved invisible in the middle of the spellcasting. Opposing to that, if a party mage starts chanting for Breach at an enemy who then decides to become invisible (potion, minor sequencer, etc), the spell is cancelled.

Double standard meaning - monsters can do it while players cannot.

There are many things that players can do and monsters can't. The most important of those would be possessing a real brain and an ability to think. Keep that in mind, this is a two-way street.

Wrong expression, allow me to correct that. Double-standard meaning - monsters can do it while party members or PC cannot (even though the latter are guided by a player with a real mind).

Time Stop:

This is an anti-cheese feature of Sikret's. His vision of the mod was to enforce as mush as possible a way of playing that he judges to be fair and relies on tactical thinking rather than butchering helpless enemies. That's his right to do so and I seriously doubt that I'll ever remove that feature from the mod. You and everybody else should just take it or leave it.

I do intend though to make the internal structure and composition of AI more modular and flexible, simply as a way to enforce a better engineering practice. This will allow players to tune and tweak it privately if they desire to do so, but this won't be an IA experience anymore as Sikret intended it to be.

My main goal right now is to extend the mod in a way that doesn't break Sikret's view on IA design and provide players with possibilities. For instance, make more NPCs to be viable and playable choices. Two good-aligned NPCs from BG2EE are already made to be so, and two vanilla NPCs will be in IAv6.2 which I am working on right now.

Well aware of that. Was not suggesting of removing the Time Stop immunity feature. A logical suggestion however will be giving party members an Absolute Immunity effect, equal to those which enemies have while a Time Stop is active.

Otherwise, I commend you on your efforts working on the IA mod.

Targeted special abilities and/or spells:

Enemies - unlimited summon limit.

Dragons, Demons and similar creatues don't obey rules on invisibility. This isn't new to BG, it has always been so. Very powerful creatures don't even suffer -4 THAC0 when attacking II enemy.
Summon limit for enemies has an ugly workaround with Globals, maybe. Not really something clean.
Going invisible while enemy is casting the spell should prevent succesfull spellcasting unless the creature can see invisible creatures by default. Or the script is intentionally doing so. I haven't really played Anvil in few years or used invisibility much even when I did, so can't report on such cases.

In Improved Anvil v5, everyone obeyed the rules of Invisibility. Demon, dragon - didn't matter. If you're talking about the vanilla game and unmodded monsters, I could accept that. However, tweaking honest IA v5 monsters with cheating abilities which can be targeted under Improved Invisibility is...well...not in the spirit of the IA mod at all.

As stated above, a party member going invisible doesn't prevent any enemy's successful spellcasting. An enemy going invisible while a party member is casting a spell at them results in the "spell cancelled" message. One action, one situation - different results for party mages and enemy mages. Either in both cases spellcasting on enemies-went-invisible-during-casting should be successful, or in both cases the casting should fail with the "spell cancelled:" message.

[critto]

have no trouble finishing their Ruby Ray of Reversal or Breach casting if the targeted character suddenly goes invisible or improved invisible in the middle of the spellcasting.

It may be a limitation of the engine in how the game handles casting (there are various ways to cast a spell programmatically, see iesdp for that) but I might be wrong. This needs to be tested first.

Wrong expression, allow me to correct that. Double-standard meaning - monsters can do it while party members or PC cannot (even though the latter are guided by a player with a real mind).

Party members can do things and use items that a monster cannot. The original thought still applies.

A logical suggestion however will be giving party members an Absolute Immunity effect, equal to those which enemies have while a Time Stop is active.

I don't see any practical sense in doing so. There's only one instance of the AI using Time Stop: Layenne in Twisted Rune battle. And even there it is used more for dramatic effect and a unique extra challenge to overcome in a fight which I back in the day when I played it found to be quite enjoyable. Intelligent behavior during time stop is challenging to program well which is why none of the enemies use it. No enemy employs TS to run around and hit frozen foes.

Otherwise, I commend you on your efforts working on the IA mod.

Cheers

[Krell]

A logical suggestion however will be giving party members an Absolute Immunity effect, equal to those which enemies have while a Time Stop is active.

I don't see any practical sense in doing so. There's only one instance of the AI using Time Stop: Layenne in Twisted Rune battle. And even there it is used more for dramatic effect and a unique extra challenge to overcome in a fight which I back in the day when I played it found to be quite enjoyable. Intelligent behavior during time stop is challenging to program well which is why none of the enemies use it. No enemy employs TS to run around and hit frozen foes.

When a party member casts Timestop, the first action of enemies who are not frozen in time is to engage party members who are frozen in time. This renders both the Timestop spell and the Wish option of the Timestop + IA spell a bad choice to cast/pick. Which is senseless for a hard to obtain 9th level spell. If not Absolute Immunity to characters, then perhaps monsters can be scripted not to engage in melee while under time stop. The TS double-standard has little or no practical effect for a soloer. However for a party with a couple of pure arcane casters that change can do a lot, making the Time Stop choice actually viable once again for sorcerers for example.

[critto]

While a curious idea, it is hard and impractical to implement, at least at this stage. I'd rather remove the spell altogether and replace with something powerful, but useful in context of IA.

[nicoper]

My 2 cents about timestop:

- Disabling possibility to butcher enemy frozen in time should never be touched. Only slight complain I would make is that enemy immunity to physical damage is not instantly removed at the end of timestop (lasts a couple of seconds)

- Timestop remains a tremendous (even more double TS+alacrity through wish) weapon against many enemies (destroying them with spells, wasting their protection duration, rebuffing party, refreshing summons and buffing those,...)

- Let's not forget that IA is made to be challenging, not impossible. This to say that player is allowed a lot of things creature don't do (while they obviously could) to overcome them; comes to (my) mind: greater restoration seldom (just once) used, High level mages not using TS nor alacrity (imagine 4 grave lich on globe machine starting with TS+ alacrity, or graves in old one fight using alacrity, ancient dragon using TS to debuff/doom/breath party a couple of times in a row or using GR on itself and Nishruu, Sendai GR on golems, ...)

Side note: Layene can "legally" (no exploit, cheat, ultra high level party...) be turned to use her Wish for party rest instead of double TS+ alacrity, just depends of how you handle encounter....

[Krell]

While a curious idea, it is hard and impractical to implement, at least at this stage. I'd rather remove the spell altogether and replace with something powerful, but useful in context of IA.

This is a very good suggestion, and I think many other than me would approve it.

Edit:

- Let's not forget that IA is made to be challenging, not impossible. This to say that player is allowed a lot of things creature don't do (while they obviously could) to overcome them; comes to (my) mind: greater restoration seldom (just once) used, High level mages not using TS nor alacrity (imagine 4 grave lich on globe machine starting with TS+ alacrity, or graves in old one fight using alacrity, ancient dragon using TS to debuff/doom/breath party a couple of times in a row or using GR on itself and Nishruu, Sendai GR on golems, ...)

Side note: Layene can "legally" (no exploit, cheat, ultra high level party...) be turned to use her Wish for party rest instead of double TS+ alacrity, just depends of how you handle encounter....

Karun the Black uses multiple chaining alacrities. Dragons and DemiLiches have permanent alacrity. Grave Liches are explained to be high-level Fighter/Mages upon death (check the Old One quest for reference) so they (abiding IA v6 rules) cannot have Alacrity at all. Elite Nishruu should not be considered a party member of the Ancient Dragon but rather a powerful gated summon, so it shouldn't get anything even if the dragon casts Greater Restoration. About Layene, I think it's a well-known fact, and I wasn't really talking about her when pointing out the Time Stop inconsistency - after all, she's the only one who follows the timestop rules and actually releases a bunch of spells instead of engaging frozen in time party members in melee.

This post has been edited by Krell: May 28 2015, 12:23 PM

[blastermaster]

A logical suggestion however will be giving party members an Absolute Immunity effect, equal to those which enemies have while a Time Stop is active.

I don't see any practical sense in doing so. There's only one instance of the AI using Time Stop: Layenne in Twisted Rune battle. And even there it is used more for dramatic effect and a unique extra challenge to overcome in a fight which I back in the day when I played it found to be quite enjoyable. Intelligent behavior during time stop is challenging to program well which is why none of the enemies use it. No enemy employs TS to run around and hit frozen foes.

In fact, at least one other enemy does. The Grave Lich who guards Daystar used Time Stop and hit me a couple of times during it. I would suggest making player parties immune to physical damage during time stops if possible, for fairness and thematic purposes.

In terms of "countering" a spell by going invisible during the casting, I am not sure that is something easily modified. It might require a patch to .exe, or a very complex script to be added to basically every spellcaster. I think there are a handful of things like "Chain Contingencies" and "Spell Triggers" that could have invisibility checks added to them though. Dragons, liches, and demons, should ignore invisibility IMO, as was the case in vanilla BG2.

The summon limit seems like a very easy fix, given that it only appears for perhaps a few enemies. But I don't understand why it is acceptable that the 5-summon limit should be waived for things like Noble Spider figurine and Swanmays, but it is objectionable if it is waived for the Kuo-Toa Prince's summons. Beyond the mechanical "fairness" of this working for both players and enemies, aren't the Kuo-Toa's "summons" just more Kuo-Toas (Dukes)? Or are you talking about Invisible Stalkers and such? If he's summoning more than 5 Dukes, I think that's perfectly fair given that it's intended to be less of a magical summoning and more of him just sounding alarms and his guards physically moving to the location to help battle an intruder :-)

Speaking of summons actually, I'd suggest a duration increase for a handful of them. There's a number of them that have durations of 10 rounds (Berserker, Elemental Prince) which is very short in the battle preparation process. I'd also suggest allowing Cerebus and Joolon to be usable by any character, since this mod advises and assumes the players are using the all-stronghold tweak.

[Krell]

The summon limit seems like a very easy fix, given that it only appears for perhaps a few enemies. But I don't understand why it is acceptable that the 5-summon limit should be waived for things like Noble Spider figurine and Swanmays, but it is objectionable if it is waived for the Kuo-Toa Prince's summons. Beyond the mechanical "fairness" of this working for both players and enemies, aren't the Kuo-Toa's "summons" just more Kuo-Toas (Dukes)? Or are you talking about Invisible Stalkers and such? If he's summoning more than 5 Dukes, I think that's perfectly fair given that it's intended to be less of a magical summoning and more of him just sounding alarms and his guards physically moving to the location to help battle an intruder :-)

Speaking of summons actually, I'd suggest a duration increase for a handful of them. There's a number of them that have durations of 10 rounds (Berserker, Elemental Prince) which is very short in the battle preparation process. I'd also suggest allowing Cerebus and Joolon to be usable by any character, since this mod advises and assumes the players are using the all-stronghold tweak.

The summon limit question was raised because as I understood, in IA v6.1 the player summon limit would be fixed to 5, including gated summons like Swanmays and Greater Djinnis. As for the Kuo-Toan prince, I don't mind him getting gazilion weak summons, but I watched him curiously as he gated two Aerial servants, three Skeleton Warriors and a couple Mountain bears (a total of 7) plus his Fallen Deva was still present (so 8) when I finally decided to whack at him. Pointed this out just for the mechanical "fairness". BTW I don't see the reason of "gated" summons like Swanmays, Greater Djinni, Noble Spider or Skely Lord to fall under the 5-summon limit rule since enemies definitely go easy over that limit with their gated summons - like a Greater Elemental Golem being able to gate in nine minor golems at a time or a single Ghost spider gating in more than 12 additional minor spiders if left alive long enough.

[critto]

The summon limit question was raised because as I understood, in IA v6.1 the player summon limit would be fixed to 5, including gated summons like Swanmays and Greater Djinnis.

No, it was fixed only for the usual, over-the-counter summons. It's a bug of vanilla game. The behavior of advanced, powerful summons left untouched.

[critto]

Speaking of summons actually, I'd suggest a duration increase for a handful of them. There's a number of them that have durations of 10 rounds (Berserker, Elemental Prince) which is very short in the battle preparation process. I'd also suggest allowing Cerebus and Joolon to be usable by any character, since this mod advises and assumes the players are using the all-stronghold tweak.

Joolon can be used by anyone. Cerebus will remain only for ranger protagonists. Duration for Berserker will be increased to 30 rounds as it is for the rest of IA's summoning items.

[Azoth]

Need some help again, please.

I played a bit BG2+TOB+IAv6. Killed Suna and did some other minor stuff but then i noticed that for the full necro quest line a good aligned necro is mandatory. Why the heck do i have an evil one
Ok, decided to start again but this time with BG2EE. Bought BG2 the 5th time...hopefully it does some good for the developers

So tried to install EoU v33, doesnt find the Dialog.tlk. The folder structure is a bit different to good old BG2 and there are three languages, de, us, es. Ok most probably first Weidu238 (http://www.weidu.org/~thebigg/) but how to install? There is a Weidu.exe with a lot of different arguments and a tolower.exe. Ive read something about Weidu and problems with lower chars. Can someone please give the foolish me a hint how to set up things properly?

Cheers