Ribald's Genie v1.0
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This small mod lets you teleport, through the aid of a genie, to and from the Adventurers Mart. Talk to ribald and ask him what other items he has that arent on display. He will offer you an item to summon a genie (you must have talked to him 5 times for this to happen - a regular customer). The genie can't be summoned during combat and can only be summoned once per day.


Why did I create this you ask (ok you probably didnt but anyway...)? Because I got tired of carting loads of junk around with my solo mage - continually having to travel to the adventurers mart to sell it all off. So Ribald's Genie was born.


Warning Note: If you sleep after being teleported to the adventurers mart and a dream sequence starts you wont be able to teleport back to your previous location.


Thanks to Sir-Kill for making the flute bam.

What a nice idea. So much more convenient than CLUAConsole:MoveToArea...

Topic pinned.

Good to know who the cheaters are

Great mod, dragon_lord

What happens if you use this at Spellhold or in the Underdark for example?

You can travel back to the A Mart; its up to the player's discretion where they want to use it.

Ehm, in this case it would be nice if using it would be denied once you leave Athkatla - it would be reasonable to say that the Genie has limited teleportation powers. And this would avoid players to incidentally stuck with the plot.

The only problem I see is if another mod uses the "StorePartyLocations()" for some purpose that gets incidentally activated while the PC is in Athkatla teleported from those unaccessible areas via the Genie (some romance using special teleport cutscenes in its dialogues or whatever). With no other mods installed it should be no probem as long as you keep in mind not to rest.

If there was a choice I wouldnt use StorePartyLocations() for that reason, but since none of the other save/move functions work I'm stuck with it. I attempted to use SaveObjectLocation(S:Area*,S:Global*,O:Object*) and SetTokenGlobal(S:GLOBAL*,S:Area*,S:Token*) so you could ask the genie what your previous location was but that didnt work (does SaveObjectLocation actually work at all?). For the next version I might make the game autosave before teleporting just incase something like that happens.

The underdark I think I'll leave as teleportable, but spell hold I'll block (it is spell hold afterall).

I don't think SaveObjectLocation works in the way you need. It stores co-ordinates, but I doubt it stores area code too.

I think, what would solve the problem is cutscenizing the entire act and disabling it from being cast in dream sequences (in one of them, you are in control of your character).

So, a genie would teleport you, you would talk to Ribald, and the genie would teleport you back, all in a single cutscene.

-Galactygon

Not a bad idea. I think that it isn't too realistic that the teleportation depends on the discretion of the player in several cases. Especially in Throne of Bhaal, and yes, in Spellhold too.

It's not terribly realistic, say, when you've just defeated Irenicus in Brynnlaw and you want to get back to shore. You could get Saemon to take you back, but from an in-character viewpoint, why bother when you've got this magical item that can do it for you? Except, oh, it just broke the game. Oops!

You could say the "magic of the genie" projects an image of you in the adventurer's mart for only a minute or two.

Or, you could teleport Ribald to you rather than vice versa, or even better, open a small portal that allows the two of you to deal from afar.

-Galactygon

Is it possible to make the genie teleport you to select Vendors depending on where you are?

In Athkatla or the surrounding countryside it is Ribald, in Spellhold...eh...no one...in UD it's a Drow merchant or the Snirfebelin (or are they Duergar?), in Watchers Keep it is back to the Cleric on the top level etc

It might make more sense...it is also more work!

I think I quite like the portal idea, personally.

Posting at the same time as Galc...didn't see Portal idea.

Portal idea sounds cool and plausable!

Coming from another angle, why Ribald at all? How about utilising the Djinn in Trademeet (or another Djinni somewhere, you could create a little quest). One of them could give you the flute to summon him in order to trade, the same dude all the time and no connection to the Adventurer's Mart or anywhere else.

I like it, saves the problems teleporting the party brings.

I might expand it to include a few other merchants.

I hope to have the next version of Ribald's Genie finished in the next few weeks, if I can find the time. Ribald's Genie v2.0 will allow trading through a portal so you dont have to travel to the A Mart, trading with the noble looking merchant in trademeet, and still allow teleporting to the A Mart/Trademeet for those who want to. What other merchants do people want to be able to trade with/teleport to?

Thanks to Sir-Kill for making the portal animation.

Cool!

I don't know how you planned to handle this, but my suggestion would be: Include the destinations of the traders after the PC visited them once (so the list of destinations would grow over time), and while being in the underdark maybe only allow travelling to the Underdark merchants (or make sure the party has to return after trading, to ensure the game flow).

As for destinations, maybe you could also include Cromwell as a direct destination, for the cases where the PC has gathered all ingrediences for one of the special items.

What happens with the Genie in ToB?

Maybe you could have the portal animation display part of the destination area with the shopkeeper in.

I have only one problem with this mod (otherwise it is just great, especially the features of 2.0!): the ToB problem. Most players didn't like that they still had the choice to visit Adventurer's Mart from ToB and from Spellhold. The "mobile merchant"/portal concept is much better, and in my opinion only this should be applied if you don't restrict ToB/Spellhold/Sahuagin usage.

The portal animation looks great, I suppose that a Watcher's Keep portal animation was used as a base animation, wasn't it?
Sim's idea should definitely be applied, by the way!

Someone has to make the graphics, though.

-Galactygon

What exactly is "Sim's idea" in this case? Are we talking about extra areas, where the party can only exit via portal (remakes of the original areas, so to say?) If this would get to work it would be great, but there is not only the graphics that are needed, it would also require "fake" merchants to be spawned, which could lead to problems with local variables etc. Or did I get it all wrong?

ok anyone mentioning of area graphics in the animation will be put on my s**tlist

BTW sim that is part of the A mart

@jastey: what is being proposed is that you trade through the portal, not actually moving through it but you are on one side and the shopkeeper on the other. See how you can see a different area inside the circle of the portal? The shopkeeper would be in there and you could talk to them and trade without moving to the other area...when you finish shopping the portal closes and the shopkeeper disappears.

Now if SK would just volunteer to have create different backgrounds for the portal for the different shopkeepers...

Are you sure? It looks more like the last level of Watcher's Keep: the Demogorgon's chamber.

-Galactygon

My suggestion would probably be to cut out a small piece of the Adventurer's Mart area to fit within the portal and play it as an animation. You could then create ribald.cre over the top of it to give the appearance of him standing in the area, and in turn play the portal animation over the top of him to give the illusion of depth. (Better to have an invisible creature play the animations then turn into Ribald than to play them from the spell itself, because otherwise there's potential for the CRE to spawn outside the animation if you cast on an impassable area.) You'd also need to find some way to prevent the player walking within the portal or Ribald being nudged out; I'd suggest doing the whole thing in a cutscene.

[EDIT] Sir K wouldn't have to do any modification of the portal animation, because all it'd take is somebody else cutting out the right shape in a separate file.

yep, the fist version was of Demogorgon's layer, this version is of ribalds store there is a peice of the rug that is just instde of there that goes up to the counter. and when the animation plays you will see why that just cutting or pasting an area will not work.