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fighting styles vs proficiencies


critto

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Hi, everyone.

 

Is there a specific distinction between the two on the engine level? Both are set by the 233 opcode. However, fighting styles' effects are externalized into stylbonu.2da. Is there a similar 2da file for the proficiencies?

 

Why is the club proficiency listed as a fighting style in the character's sheet?

 

Cheers,

critto

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The normal weapons use two files, the wspecial.2da and wspatck.2da... the thing is, there's two features that are not externalized: Only the warrior classes get the bonuses from the wspecial.2da, as it's locked into the bgmain.exe in the non-EE game, and the ToBEx can set it so that the normal classes get it too. And that the non specialized thac0 penalty is based on the class.

 

Why is the club proficiency listed as a fighting style in the character's sheet?

What do you mean ? A picture would help.
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Only the warrior classes get the bonuses from the wspecial.2da, as it's locked into the bgmain.exe in the non-EE game, and the ToBEx can set it so that the normal classes get it too.

 

What about the EE? Is this behavior fixed in the enhanced edition?

 

 

And that the non specialized thac0 penalty is based on the class.

 

You mean when there are not proficiency points whatsoever in a specific weapon?

 

 

What do you mean ? A picture would help.

 

See the attached screenshot. This is unmodded BG2:EE 2.3

post-3301-0-67620700-1494319816_thumb.jpg

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What about the EE? Is this behavior fixed in the enhanced edition?

You mean when there are not proficiency points whatsoever in a specific weapon?

See the attached screenshot. This is unmodded BG2:EE 2...

No. But there should be a tweak for it too. Look for the Tweaks Anthology mod(Everyone Gets Bonus APR from Specialization, well that's for the non-EE version too).

Yep.

Ahh, that must be because the club proficiency is in an odd place, probably because there was not supposed to be a club proficiency, but it was added to the original very last minute and this, is kinda a trickle down effect. The EE team just needs to be notified and have it patched.

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No. But there should be a tweak for it too. Look for the Tweaks Anthology mod(Everyone Gets Bonus APR from Specialization, well that's for the non-EE version too)

 

 

OK, thanks, I'll take look. Seems a bit complicated, but I'll figure it out.

 

Ahh, that must be because the club proficiency is in an odd place, probably because there was not supposed to be a club proficiency, but it was added to the original very last minute and this, is kinda a trickle down effect. The EE team just needs to be notified and have it patched.

 

What's the best place to do it? In their redmine bug tracker?

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That's a good question. Knowing Beamdog it's probably later than sooner. (But to be fair they have a load of tasks to complete yet, such as updating all the mobile game versions to v2.x, patching IWD:EE to v2.x, porting the games to 64-bit because of iOS requirements, and processing tons of bug reports and feature requests that have been accumulated on redmine over time.)

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The club being listed as a style is simply a display bug - it has no functional effect AFAIK.

 

As for the earlier questions before the imp jumped in with his misinformation:

 

I'm fairly sure that every class does get the benefits listed in wspecial.2da. If you want to change the benefits associated with specialization, mastery, etc. then this is the file to edit.

 

Note, there's not much you can actually do with that file, only use different values for thac0, damage, and weapon speed. Stylbonu.2da gives you more things to tweak, but it is hardcoded to work for the style profs only, as wspecial is hardcoded to only work for weapons. You can do more interesting things, in the EE 2.x engine... I have implemented an APR bonus for specialization with SWS and a Fireshield-style shield bash effect for specialization with SnS style. Similar techniques could be used to create special effects for having mastery with certain weapons... but it's a bit complicated.

 

The file which only applies to warriors is wspatck.2da, which determines the APR bonus associated with different levels of specialization. In the EEs you can allow other classes to share in this benefit by editing clswpbon.2da. But note that wspatck also controls the extra APR bumps at levels 7 and 13. If you want, for instance, swashbucklers to get extra APR for specialization but not for hitting levels 7 and 13, then you should use the Tweaks Anthology component mentioned above (which I wrote).

 

Note, contrary to what jarno said, that component should not be used with pre-EE games. If you are playing vanilla TOB or BGT, you should instead use the similar component of TheBigg's Tweakpack.

 

I have done a LOT of modding of proficiencies in the EE engine... if you have more questions I'd be happy to give you more in-depth info.

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Well, let's hope it comes some day :-) I was kinda wishing they'd push the new engine update together with PST:EE.

Btw the reason this didn't happen is because PSTEE is *not* the PST game in the awesome new EE 2.x engine... which is a pity. It's just the PST engine with some speed, graphical and UI tweaks. All of the stuff that was horribly hard-coded in the old PST engine still is; PSTEE is terribly resistant to modding (my kind of modding, anyway). You'll never see "SR for PSTEE" or "SCS for PSTEE."

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Is there a specific distinction between the two on the engine level? Both are set by the 233 opcode.

Sorry, getting back to this original question: I think in this respect there is no technical difference. They are proficiencies, 4 bytes apiece (of which only the first byte is easily accessible, and only the first three bits are used by the game's proficiency system*), set by opcode 233. There are a number of other proficiencies as well, not attached to any weapon or style, but which the game uses for detectable spells**.

 

But they are interchangeable as far as proficiencies are concerned. You can set some weapon - a dagger, say - to use SWS proficiency instead of dagger proficiency, and if a character had two points in SWS, the he would get +1 thac0 and +2 damage with that weapon.

 

* Even just using the first, easily accessible byte, this means that the game can handle proficiency values up to 255 points. Bits 4 through 8 cannot be used in regular weapons or styles, because the engine displays those in the character record screen, and it crashes if the value is higher than 7 (7 being the combined value of bits 1, 2, and 3). You can use all 8 bits of the extra proficiencies, meaning values up to 255, but...

 

** The EE engine uses all those ~20 extra proficiencies, and it uses them in a horribly inefficient way. It treats each one as a simple Boolean value, either 0 or 1. Completely wasting all of the 254 other possible values for each one. All of the proficiencies used by the engine for setectable spells could be combined into a single proficiency... which would free up the other 19 for modders' use, which could (theoretically) allow (19 * 255) modders could use to do cool stuff.

 

What kind of cool stuff, you ask?

- 0.5 APR bonus for spec in SWS (already implemented)

- shield bash for spec in SnS style (already implemented)

- thieves can cause special effects when using thief weapons... stunning with clubs, bleeding damage with short blades, tripping with staves (already implemented)

- say staves are an especially defensive weapon: give a -1 AC bonus for each proficiency point devoted to the weapon

- say daggers are faster than most weapons: give a 0.5 APR bonus with every proficiency point spent, instead of just with specialization and grandmastery

- I haven't even gotten into spells... free proficiencies could be used to implement 3E-style metamagic

- etc. etc. etc. The sky is the limit.

 

Musing: I should make a mod that converts all of the detectable spells checks to check for bit equality of bit 1 of their respective proficiency. That would free up 7 bits in 20 proficiencies = 140 stats available to do cool stuff with...

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Musing: I should make a mod that converts all of the detectable spells checks to check for bit equality of bit 1 of their respective proficiency. That would free up 7 bits in 20 proficiencies = 140 stats available to do cool stuff with...

 

There is sadly no script-based, bit-wise check for stats. However, most of the spells in the EE's that use bollean Proficiency stat checks have already been updated to also set identical SpellStates(some generic, some specific), but scripts have not been updated to replace Stat checks with those Spellstate checks.

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Thanks, subtledoctor.

 

Stylbonu.2da gives you more things to tweak, but it is hardcoded to work for the style profs only, as wspecial is hardcoded to only work for weapons. You can do more interesting things, in the EE 2.x engine... I have implemented an APR bonus for specialization with SWS and a Fireshield-style shield bash effect for specialization with SnS style. Similar techniques could be used to create special effects for having mastery with certain weapons... but it's a bit complicated.

 

Is there some place I can take a look how did you do that?

 

Btw the reason this didn't happen is because PSTEE is *not* the PST game in the awesome new EE 2.x engine... which is a pity. It's just the PST engine with some speed, graphical and UI tweaks. All of the stuff that was horribly hard-coded in the old PST engine still is; PSTEE is terribly resistant to modding (my kind of modding, anyway). You'll never see "SR for PSTEE" or "SCS for PSTEE."

 

Well, that's a bummer. On the other hand, it'll probably be easy for modders to port stuff that already exists. IIRC, there were a couple must have mods for PS:T back in pre-EE days.

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Btw the reason this didn't happen is because PSTEE is *not* the PST game in the awesome new EE 2.x engine... which is a pity. It's just the PST engine with some speed, graphical and UI tweaks. All of the stuff that was horribly hard-coded in the old PST engine still is; PSTEE is terribly resistant to modding (my kind of modding, anyway). You'll never see "SR for PSTEE" or "SCS for PSTEE."

 

Well, that's a bummer. On the other hand, it'll probably be easy for modders to port stuff that already exists. IIRC, there were a couple must have mods for PS:T back in pre-EE days.

PST:EE is based on a heavily modified EE game engine, but a lot of stuff has been tweaked to simulate the original PST behavior. However, many features supported by BGEE or IWDEE are still working in PSTEE (e.g. 3E Sneak Attack, or how banter frequency is controlled).

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