Any way to disable core component for deflection/turning? Options

[Ithildur]

From the Readme:

'... changing the Spell Deflection, Turning, and Trap spells so their visual effects do not turn off when they have absorbed or turned their spell levels. You will still know when they are expended by looking at your PC's state icons. The spells listed will still function the exact same way; they are simply patched to use a different animation.The reason for this change is due to a hardcoded feature of the engine to play those animations if creatures carry certain effects that SpellPack patches to items and spells'

I'm quite interested in installing just a few of the spells (mainly Otiluke's sphere, the fact that casting on a friendly bypasses save/MR is a terrific feature), but really would rather not change spell deflection/turning the way it's described above. I'm considering comment out the relevant lines in the core.tph file, but wanted to confirm that would not cause serious problems as long as I don't install components that have these animations.

Or perhaps it would be better to simply copy your version of Otiluke's (with all the accompanying spl, 2da, bam, vcc, eff files copied as well) over to my install? Would simply copying these files into the override folder work or would I need to copy them to different folders, or are there scripts that need to be run/compiled for the spell to work properly?


Again, would really prefer to install a handful of spells and just not have the spell deflection/turning change be forced on me, but if that's not possible I'll settle for the option of 'manually' installing a couple of spells.

thanks

[edit] It seems being under the effect of the new Otilukes allows the PC to physically attack certain types of targets; I observed this behavior specifically when dealing with Ascension Illesara, PC was able to attack her (with difficulty, she is hasted with boots of speed after all) while under the effects of the new Otilukes.

This post has been edited by Ithildur: Sep 21 2013, 03:18 PM

[Ithildur]

I'm guessing the author isn't actively modding/keeping up with things currently. Hopefully that'll change at some point soon, imo this mod has a lot of potential though like most fairly ambitious mods I'm sure it'll have it's share of kinks to iron out.

[Ithildur]

Removing the version of SPTURNI2 bam and vcc files Spellpack adds seemed to do the trick as far as the Spell Turning animation being restored. Quite critical in some fights i.e. a Cleric with Physical Mirror up vs Ascension Illesara absolutely needs to know if the spell duration runs out, and the only way is by looking at the animation (or else keeping count of rounds precisely)

This post has been edited by Ithildur: Sep 23 2013, 04:52 PM

[Galactygon]

Hello Ithildur! I am at a difficult point in my life, but I do check these forums from time to time! I have no plans to leave the modding scene permanently, and am hopeful that future versions of BG(II):EE and/or ToBEx will allow me to deprecate this constraint feature. In subsequent versions I will deprecate as much as possible from the core component.

I make liberal use of hardcoded opcodes that carry these animations, so disabling this would mean you would excessively see the turning mirror or the whiffle ball. That's the tradeoff if you decide to disable this part of the core component.

You will need to comment out the relevant block of code as well in the core component, because the core component modifies those .spl files to keep playing the animation (was it LCTURNI2 or LCTURNI I can't remember). I don't have access to that right now to help in greater detail, but IIRC I've been liberal in commenting everything, so I hope you find it. It's in one of the tph files under the macros, so you might have to do a search for the text "CORE" and look under that macro, but once you find it, everything is in one place.

Otiluke's Resilient Sphere is meant to completely disable but permit the character to so to speak "roll the sphere" at a snail's pace (note the spell description!). I've set the number of attacks to zero, so if you were able to attack, that is a bug. I cannot promise to test this right now, but will add to the list of things to do. Are you able to attach a savegame, or better yet the .cre file of your character? I think it could be done with DLTCEP.

Hope you enjoy the mod!

Galactygon

[Ithildur]

Sorry to hear about the difficult time in life; hope things improve soon.

One other issue; it seems your version of Silence 15' can result in a zone of silence being in effect in a location where the spell was cast (which is closer to pnp), but the problem is the duration is much longer than 2rounds/lvl; in fact I cannot get the NPCs I need to trigger the quest to speak because of the silence effect apparently being in place permanently. Anything I can do to get rid of this?

I'd actually prefer to uninstall the spell outright because it's too overpowered as is for the enemy AI to deal with; SCS's ai for instance has enemies walk out of lingering aoe effects like web fairly intelligently, but because it doesn't account for Spellpack's version of Silence enemy casters are pretty much screwed even if they make the save as the AI doesn't account for the change to the spell and make the NPC walk out of the area.

Problem is Weidu uninstalling this one spell in the middle of a rather large installation is going to be a pretty huge headache (will take a long time and I suspect will cause potential problems with strings/dialog.tlk etc); I was hoping to find files for the original spell in the backup folder of this mod but it seems like they're not there!

[Galactygon]

One other issue; it seems your version of Silence 15' can result in a zone of silence being in effect in a location where the spell was cast (which is closer to pnp), but the problem is the duration is much longer than 2rounds/lvl; in fact I cannot get the NPCs I need to trigger the quest to speak because of the silence effect apparently being in place permanently. Anything I can do to get rid of this?

IIRC I use a terminating invisible .cre mechanism for the silence spell if the initial save is successful. What it does is set up an invisible .cre that continuously tries to terminate itself but is protected by another shell spell cast by the caster. This shell spell is dispellable, and the purpose is to allow dispel spells to affect the invisible .cre to end the spell prematurely.

While I don't have the game with me to make the tests now, I remember extensively testing to see if it works but not with a heavy install of mods. It sounds like this mechanism is broken in your game. What are the symptoms? After say a rest you are still affected if you move the characters in the area?

The most I could do is put it up to the list of things for eventual testing (and I would need your WeiDU.log).

I'd actually prefer to uninstall the spell outright because it's too overpowered as is for the enemy AI to deal with; SCS's ai for instance has enemies walk out of lingering aoe effects like web fairly intelligently, but because it doesn't account for Spellpack's version of Silence enemy casters are pretty much screwed even if they make the save as the AI doesn't account for the change to the spell and make the NPC walk out of the area.

In PnP the Silence Spell is less overpowered because not all spells have verbal components and the AI was assumed to be smarter; this is not the case in BGII so the context is different. I'm always up for suggestions and flexible to change things.

I haven't touched the AI and am going to leave it to other mods, so the AI will behave suboptimally from time to time. This also applies to other similar spells. For example, the AI will unintentionally destroy its own web if protected by a fireshield by simply passing through. I plan to cooperate more with DavidW in the future and make changes/compromises as necessary. Thanks for the feedback.

Problem is Weidu uninstalling this one spell in the middle of a rather large installation is going to be a pretty huge headache (will take a long time and I suspect will cause potential problems with strings/dialog.tlk etc); I was hoping to find files for the original spell in the backup folder of this mod but it seems like they're not there!

If you don't find the .spl file in the backup folder that means no other mod has changed the spell. There was no SPPR211.spl in the override folder before installing the mod and you can safely rename/delete the SPPR211.spl in your override folder to revert back to the default.

Galactygon

[Ithildur]

It seems like it may have something to do with the LCDSELF files missing from my install; examining Spellpack's version of Silence reveals a couple of points where it tries to reference LCDSELF2 and 1 (which seem like they cause the invisible creature to move away from the immediate area and thus end the zone of silence?). After I copied these files over into the override folder manually, the unending silence zone seems to be gone...

The tp2 section that covers installation of Silence doesn't seem to include copying over the LCDSELF files into the override folder.

However, I'm observing a new bug/strange behavior: I notice that if I cast the spell on a party member and the party member fails the save, that character (and him alone) becomes immune to silence while carrying the effect around with them. Seems like there's various 'Protection from Spell: Silence' things going on, specifically with SPPR211A)

As far as uninstalling by removing SPPR211 from override, what about the various SPPR211A, SPPR211B, etc? Those seem like they're all modified by Spellpack as well; I'm guessing they all need to go.

This post has been edited by Ithildur: Sep 28 2013, 09:24 PM

[Galactygon]

Thanks for the catch, the LCDSELF spells are used by more than one component, and chances are I forget to include shared files in one of the components. Will fix by the next version.

I don't remember and can't give an explanation on the friendly immunity feature, it might actually be intentional. Will look into this as well, thanks.

Yes, unless you find SPPR211A.spl and SPPR211B.spl in the backup folder then delete them as well, otherwise replace them from the backup folder. Don't worry about the other files, they simply won't be used in the game.

-Galactygon

[Ithildur]

Sleep spell tries to use a resource named SLEEP.SPL ... there is no such spl file in either vanilla or Spellpack's contents.

Though I'm not sure how that explains the behavior of the spell, which is that it does seem to work vs enemies a good amount of the time, but when enemies cast it vs the party it never works, no saving throws are ever rolled (party is below lvl 4 so HD limit shouldn't be the issue)

Looks like I'll be going back to the vanilla version of this one as well.

This post has been edited by Ithildur: Sep 29 2013, 01:49 AM

[Galactygon]

I will take a look at that one as well, thanks.

-Galactygon

[Ithildur]

Otiluke's Resilient Sphere is meant to completely disable but permit the character to so to speak "roll the sphere" at a snail's pace (note the spell description!). I've set the number of attacks to zero, so if you were able to attack, that is a bug. I cannot promise to test this right now, but will add to the list of things to do. Are you able to attach a savegame, or better yet the .cre file of your character? I think it could be done with DLTCEP.

Figured this one out at least; it's due to a TBTweaks Pack component adding 1/2 attack bonus at lvl 7 for warrior classes. The extra 1/2 attack gets applied as an effect to the cre file; not much that can be done to address this so I simply added the Hold effect from vanilla Otiluke's to completely disable all attacking and moving. The slow movement is an interesting feature but not critically important imo; what I was looking for was the ability to ignore saves/MR for casting on allies/self while having them apply for enemies so otilukes can be put into contingency: disabled (can be a life saver) without being cheesy auto success vs enemies.