Looking for help to make something great out of this

[temnix]

Sometimes a brilliant gnomish scientist or a genius goblin alchemist will produce a formula that, while it promises great power, requires more mundane and practical expertise. At those times he must turn to his comrades in the guild, old hands and better versed in the humdrum nuances of this and that, even if they have been short-changed by fairies in the cradle. Together - he providing strategic insight and they scurrying with little tools and bottles - they can rise to swooning, Babel heights of innovation, embossing themselves forever on the history of game engineering.

Watch both movies.
https://youtu.be/nkIPY7oe1qM
https://youtu.be/qQTt8Ai57bc

The answer to the question is 151.

I've done very little testing, so I can say only this: as the second movie shows, the game retains memory of the name of the Protagonist. When a CRE file of a non-NPC is used, e.g. the ogre, the replacement cannot participate in dialogue, just like regular party members if you try to talk to them, even if you make the creature "PC" in the EA list, and I know of no way to make it join the party. The game continues after the death of the creature. Area travel is possible as usual without the Protagonist. If the CRE file of an NPC is used, as in the first movie with Edwin, the game ends as usual after the new Protagonist's death.

This is all I know, and here is the place for people to pour out their knowledge of CRE files, their properties and everything else.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Could you actually make sense ? Is there a question you lack the intelligence to construct, that you wanted to ask ? Such that can have a question mark at the end, for example.

[Roxanne]

This is not so much about cre files but about dialogue.tlk (Despite its name it not only stores and displays dialogue texts but each and every bit of text you read anywhere in the game.)

 

Your protagonist's or NPC's names, gender, class etc shown anywhere in the game are filled into <TEXTBLOCKS>s set into dialogue.tlk with data stored in your present save.

 

Example

Dialogue text ~<CHARNAME> received a letter from <PRO_HISHER> brother and gives it to <PLAYER3> to read. ~..

appears in game >>>> Kendell received a letter from his brother and gives it to Edwin to read,

 

Where ever in dialogues, screens, item descriptions etc. the text <CHARNAME> is found, it is replaced by the name you have selected at the start of game, Same for <PRO_HISHER> or <PRO_LADYLORD> or many other gender specifics which take the gender you selected for your protagonist etc etc.

[Ardanis]

Seems like the game over condition includes the object being both Player1 and PC. Screw that, there was just no Player1 object in existence until the slot got refilled.

Changing party doesn't update PlayerX order until the next reload. Try to kick PC out, then save and load, then kill the new Player1 - should result in death movie.

 

At any rate, if you want to allow Player1 death, you can simply set the "arena" flag in all the areas. Just make sure to not release it, as the game anchors on the assumption that player is always alive, so you'll really break it travelling with dead PC.

 

When a CRE file of a non-NPC is used, e.g. the ogre, the replacement cannot participate in dialogue

 

Likely because it doesn't have any dialog with valid state conditions assigned in the first place.

 

Could you actually make sense ?

 

Well, I think you've met a worthy rival

[Roxanne]

Well, I think you've met a worthy rival

They already called eah other *brother*.

 

Guess who is their father - Noober?

[agb1]

Pot, meet kettle. So... why might we want to use opcode 151 (summon: replace creature) to transform our CHARNAME into an ogre and kill him? Perhaps we can have a mod called "Assassins of the Iron Throne", wherein the goal of the player is re-cast from the story of CHARNAME to the role of CHARNAME's antagonists: through a series of disposable characters representing individual assassins or raiding parties, the player (actual player, not CHARNAME) is transported around the Sword Coast and given the opportunity to attempt to murder the actual party of CHARNAME as it goes about its quests ... and presumably, mostly, failing. Hilarity ensues?

 

Edit: perhaps this can be done through dream sequences, sort of like "omake" bonus scenes showing the opposing perspective, and triggered only for areas the party has already visited and bands of assassins already defeated. A chance to play both sides, as it were. And if, by chance, you happen to "win"... well, I don't know. What then?

[Roxanne]

Pot, meet kettle. So... why might we want to use opcode 151 (summon: replace creature) to transform our CHARNAME into an ogre and kill him? Perhaps we can have a mod called "Assassins of the Iron Throne", wherein the goal of the player is re-cast from the story of CHARNAME to the role of CHARNAME's antagonists: through a series of disposable characters representing individual assassins or raiding parties, the player (actual player, not CHARNAME) is transported around the Sword Coast and given the opportunity to attempt to murder the actual party of CHARNAME as it goes about its quests ... and presumably, mostly, failing. Hilarity ensues?

 

Edit: perhaps this can be done through dream sequences, sort of like "omake" bonus scenes showing the opposing perspective, and triggered only for areas the party has already visited and bands of assassins already defeated. A chance to play both sides, as it were. And if, by chance, you happen to "win"... well, I don't know. What then?

A similar concept is what I use for the third part of the Sandrah Saga - provide you with an alternate character to play another version of the story - in order to avoid issues with all the existing mods and contents. this option is provided after (not instead) you finished the original game. Mystra offers you to find the truth of what has happened at the Time of Troubles and before your birth and you do that by giving up your own self (Charname) and playing as one of the heroes of that time (Midnight) to meet Bhaal, Myrkul, Gorion, Melissan, Irenicus and Bodhi in Suldanessalar etc. Among others, you have the still mortasl Cyric.and Kelemvor in your party and you face situations and decisions that woud ripple back to the future you have experienced before...

[subtledoctor]

Feh, I had a moment and watched the actual video. Doesn't seem like anything I understand or care about.

 

 

How about using it to turn the Raise Dead spell, which is honestly too convenient and too low-level for its rather astonishing effect, into the PnP 'Reincarnation?'

 

You can come back from the dead, but there is a chance you return in the form of a different species. 7th level Resurrection can reliably raise the dead, and greater restoration would be able to convert a reincarnated character back to their original form.

 

Foibles ensue. I can see a fun, old-school-style adventure being made about this. Someone (Anomen?) gets KIA and raised as a bugbear or something. It just so happens that the Temple of Waukeen is all out of restoration scrolls, and the Athkatla guards won't let you into the city, and the humanoids in the Umar want to recruit him for their rag-tag army. Cernd and the druids think he should stay the way nature changed him. Maybe the only way to restore him is at the temple of Amaunator... it's BG2, do everything has to be about the dumb dead sun god, right?

 

Afterward Anomen could periodically say stuff like "ick, I think I still have some Amaunator in my boot. Gross!" Or, maybe he has an epiphany, a personality turnaround, and starts worshipping Lathander instead of Helm. With all the fervor and creepiness of a newly-reborn convert. And then maybe there's a reckoning as the uptight Helmites come to give him what-for. ("Once you're in, you're in for life," etc.)

 

[kreso]

Epic thread...keep going.

[Fiann of the Silver Hand]

Needs long spears.

[temnix]

My god, you people are astoundingly stupid. I just showed you how to play the game in two completely different ways: with a different NPC in place of the main character and without the main character at all, instead with an all-NPC party - things requested on the forums - and you aren't even interested? You are thick like tortoises. Like stones. Even if testing shows that Ardanis is right and the game ends in the death movie on reload, even if the whole thing is nothing, you still should have been curious and excited. But. You. Just. Can't. Do. It.

 

This is your brain wave profile:

 

______________________________________________

 

And this is the measure of your curiosity and creativity:

 

 

What a wasted effort it was to try anything with this crowd.

[agb1]

That's your response to my suggestion, temnix?

[Roxanne]

My god, you people are astoundingly stupid. I just showed you how to play the game in two completely different ways: with a different NPC in place of the main character and without the main character at all, instead with an all-NPC party - things requested on the forums - and you aren't even interested? You are thick like tortoises. Like stones. Even if testing shows that Ardanis is right and the game ends in the death movie on reload, even if the whole thing is nothing, you still should have been curious and excited. But. You. Just. Can't. Do. It.

 

This is your brain wave profile:

 

______________________________________________

 

And this is the measure of your curiosity and creativity:

 

 

What a wasted effort it was to try anything with this crowd.

Like all your other suggestions - they are maybe new for you.

 

But it has all been done already, just you do not know (and surely do not care).

 

This place is not dead - but you are ( at least for me and anybody else who is sick of your permanent insults,)

[Ardanis]

I just showed you how to play the game in two completely different ways: with a different NPC in place of the main character and without the main character at all, instead with an all-NPC party - things requested on the forums - and you aren't even interested?

 

Not to say your ideas hold no value, but the effect-to-effort ratio is pretty low. If you're interested in a game with all those features, you'd be better off making your own. This is not sarcasm, but estimation, because game development is a lot more accessible nowadays than two decades ago.

 

PS Also what Roxanne has said - I'm aware that such discoveries are thrilling to make and share, but many already been done before.

[subtledoctor]

Srsly. Been there, done that. Play without the protagonist and break the game at the first dream sequence? Lovely.

 

On the other hand, WAIT. What if there was a whole campaign built around a party with no protagonist?? What if it took place somewhere cold - icy, and windy. And it involved tons of tactical combat, and scheming demons and angry dragons and undead elves and warring barbarians...?!?!

 

THAT would be super cool. Alas, I guess it's just a dream.