SCS and the difficulty slider

[subtledoctor]

...I imagine party AI scripts are an absolute requirement on tablet?

Heck no, I never use those. I'm a micromanager in these games. A tablet is in many ways more natural for this engine than a keyboard+mouse are. The only issues are 1) no hotkeys 2) no console (important when playing with 50 or 75 mods) and 3) the pause button is an actual button on the screen, so slightly less convenient than mashing the space bar.

Edited October 22, 2018 by subtledoctor

[Bartimaeus]

how

 

(e): Like, I'm trying to imagine trying to play this game with a touchscreen, and it makes me want to die. Playing stuff like freaking Hearts or Solitaire on tablets is already so much worse compared to M+KB, I just cannot imagine a hotkey and cursor-heavy game like this being fun to play on one.

Edited October 22, 2018 by Bartimaeus

[subtledoctor]

Well, the game itself has an inherently difficult UI: way more mousing and clicking, with way more very small click targets, than just sbout any other game I ever played. Really an invitation to carpal tunnel syndrome. Rather than control a mouse in your hand to move a pointer on the screen to select Minsc, on a tablet you just touch Minsc. It's way more natural and intuitive - a good example of how touchscreens can be more natural and intuitive when done right. (For an example of how not to do it, there is the FF7 port: the original game has a little cartoon hand, and you used the PS1 controller to move the hand to different buttons. It screams for removing the silly hand and letting you just touch the button you want; but instead they give you a virtual D-pad overlaid on the screen, and you have to virtually click the virtual direction buttons to move the virtual hand to virtually touch a button. It's insane.)

 

Anyway this is quite off-topic.

[Bartimaeus]

But I only select characters via homerow numbers...

[Lavoisier]

Hey, DavidW, not sure where to ask, so I'll just do it here. Did you decide whether or not you're going to try to improve compatibility with SCS and the latest version of Spell Revisions in SCS v32?

Edited October 23, 2018 by Lavoisier

[DavidW]

Hey, DavidW, not sure where to ask, so I'll just do it here. Did you decide whether or not you're going to try to improve compatibility with SCS and the latest version of Spell Revisions in SCS v32?

Yes.

[Lavoisier]

Oh, so it's happening? Guess I gotta put off my next playthrough then.

Thanks a ton for the mod, I've been playing BG 2 since I was a kid and only found out about it 3 years ago or so, and it completely revitalized the game for me.

[DavidW]

Technically I only said, "yes, I've decided".

 

I'll say something more about spell systems in v32 shortly. (But yes, short answer is that I've improved SR compatibility.)

[Ardanis]

Enemy numbers, mostly no: I've mostly implemented difficulty sliding in the AI part of SCS, not the tactical-challenge part, and there's not much scope there. But it shows up in a couple of places: most importantly, random spawns are tied to the slider.

I suppose it does have more to do with individual encounter design, i.e. a lot more hand-craft work compared to general AI, but since you already have the tactical challenges group of components I would still encourage you to give it a shot. Judging by the insane playthroughs posted on Beamdog forum, particularly Temple of Cyric, Coalition Camp and Dragonspear Basement, the extra numbers were about as fine a challenge as insane-specific AI, and a good change of pace too.

[bob_veng]

Yeah, extra numbers were quite good.

 

However SoD areas were seemingly designed to have enough space to handle larger numbers of creatures.

 

Narrow corridors in BG1, and, also some relatively cramped interiors in BG2, can't really handle more. I'd limit more creatures only to those encounters that happen in sufficiently large spaces, and where it makes sense for to spawn continuously.

 

for example, ankhegs and umber hulks can spawn continuously in various places because they emerge from underground.

the encounter with the army in ToB (the oasis) can have large groups of enemies spawning continuously

 

i remember one example where it's strange how few enemies there are: the green caves in durlag's tower lvl 4

[DrAzTiK]

 

 

Narrow corridors in BG1, and, also some relatively cramped interiors in BG2, can't really handle more. I'd limit more creatures only to those encounters that happen in sufficiently large spaces, and where it makes sense for to spawn continuously.

Unfortunately,there is too much fucking corridors , especially in BG2. So everytime we have a large space/area, I nice fight with spawns and respawn should occurs. This is the goal of my futur mod.

Edited October 23, 2018 by DrAzTiK

[Daxtreme]

Thanks a lot David, just read this, incredibly excited, great work! Amazing even, I'm really hyped about a next playthrough now. Awesome idea.

 

Going to wait for this eagerly.

[agris]

 

By default, yes, but you can change the default if you want.

 

On EE, reactivating the old difficulty system is just a matter of toggling a control. On vanilla, it's an install-time option controlled via stratagems.ini.

 

If I'm using an EE release and I want SCS set to a specific set of difficulties, plus use the vanilla slider's option of enemies doing 50% more damage, I would: enable SCS's slider, set it and my widget to whatever I want, then "toggle a control" to revert the slider to it's vanilla control behavior and set it to the appropriate setting for 50% more damage. And this would preserve the SCS settings I dialed in prior to toggling said control?

[DavidW]

Not quite. The slider doesnt have a memory that way. If you want vanilla difficulty effects, reenable them and set them via the slider, then fine tune SCS difficulty with the widget.

[zenblack]

David,

 

I was wondering if you would consider adding in a "SoD" start component (on top of the improved start tactical component)? This component would adjust CI and initial Slum/CC encounters to reflect the massive jump in power that importing a party from SoD gives. This power evens out roughly after the first major quest line you complete but until then the encounters are trivial simply because they reflect the XP cap from BG1 or initial creation XP of BG2.

 

If you feel that is outside the scope of the mod and/or not worth the time for the effort I can understand but it is one thing that both EE's and EET run into where the difficulty (even with max v31 components) curve is way off.