Instances of Polymorph in cut scenes and Shapeshifter compatibility. [SPOILERS SoD/SoA]

[Ulb]

This post contains SoD/SoA spoilers.

 

 

Hey, I'm working on (another) shapeshifter kit and was wondering how to make it work best with those various instances where the game transforms charname.

With my other kits I mostly just let my polymorph weapons get overwritten by the cut scene ones and the character would just have to re-cast the spell to fix things (like shapeshift natural form abilities remaining while not shapeshifted anymore). This time I can't do that because the character gets special abilities while shapeshifted and spell casting remains enabled in some forms so I need to protect them from “create weapon” effects to not get overwritten by various spells that create weapons. Also, I just want to polish this kit a little more and make it work flawlessly.

 

So I obviously have some ideas how to go about doing this but recent discussions have shown me that my first idea how to do stuff is often not the smartest/best solution, at least when it comes to modding..

 

First off, are there any other instances of polymorphing I am missing apart from these:

• SoD Skie murder scene (haven't found that one in the game files yet) (no charname polymorph here)

• SoA Spellhold Bodhi encounter

• Resting event after Spellhold encounter

• At least one dream later where you transform into the slayer and kill the party

• Adalon transformation (need to check this one, haven't played without the “no drow avatars” tweak in a decade I think)

These are the relevant slayerchange spells I have found so far:

-> SPIN783
-> SPIN822
-> SPIN823
-> SPIN852
-> SLAYER2.SPL
-> SLAYER3.SPL
-> SLAYER4.SPL
-> SPIN717.SPL

From the looks of it it seems that simply “patching” the relevant transformation spells with the effects of my “shapeshift natural form” spell would be enough to ensure everything works fine?

 

If that is the case, am I right to assume the best way to do that would be to use WeiDU's ITEM_EFFECT_TO_SPELL function with a dummy item that has all the effects from my “shapeshift natural form” spell and the code would look something like this:

 

*edit* the following code seems to work fine, so unless this is a bad way to do it I am mostly looking for more polymorph events within the game..

ACTION_IF FILE_EXISTS_IN_GAME ~SPIN822.SPL~ BEGIN
    COPY ~Test/UB#SW1E.ITM~ override
    LAUNCH_PATCH_FUNCTION ~ITEM_EFFECT_TO_SPELL~
        INT_VAR
        type = 99                                                                  
        header = 99                                                                   
        STR_VAR new_itm_spl = ~SPIN822.SPL~                                                 
    END
END

[Roxanne]

The SoD scene is BDcut60a.bcs initiated from BD4100.bcs if that helps any (I cannot see it directly related)..

[Ulb]

Ah yes, I mixed things up.. it isn't YOU that turns into the slayer in that scene. So I can skip that one.

Thanks