CrevsDaak

IESDP mentions the bug as occuring only when param2 is set to 5, which is the Mode that makes the creature be aligned with the opposite alleigance of the caster. A quick test (on BG2EE) done by setting param2 to Mode 3 (creature becomes ALLY if cast by party, ENEMY if cast by an enemy) on spgate.eff and dw#hlba.eff shows that summoned fiends can be controlled just fine (however they will still try to attack the party if you're not protected from evil, which I think is just fiends working as intended). The fiend will move around and do its own thing (akin to Planetars) due to its script, so if that's actually what the bug is then I'm out of ideas (though then it could just de-script itself via ChangeAIScript() to avoid that). I also tested Mode 5 and it is most likely bugged, as it just always summons the creature as hostile to the party, but I can vouch for Mode 3 working in regards to both the creature being actually controllable when the spell is cast by the party and in making it an Enemy when necessary.

I should've posted it sooner but forgot, so apologies for the delay. I've not delved into what modifies the fiend summoning spells themselves so I was reluctant of assuming how they worked, but it seems like they are fairly straightforward. The issue consists of summoned fiends all being given the CONTROLLED — 5 alleigance which causes them to be controllable by the party when summoned by enemies. This is done by explicit writes to field 0x270 to their creature files on dw_talents/fiend/friendly_fiends_core.tpa on the friendly_fiends_resources function. Note that this isn't necessary, though let me explain why first. Opcode 67, in this case as it is used by the secondary effect file triggered by the alignment mask checks on the Gate et al spells, has an option (parameter2) that allows for the caster's alleigance to be considered when adding the summoned creature file to the active game, however the Gate spell has it set to 2, "EA from CRE file" as a leftover from vanilla functionality of the spell. Changing this would fix the issue however it would mark them as ALLY — 4 rather than the desired CONTROLLED — 5 however the achieved overall goal would be similar enough and it'd fix this bug. Mind that opcode 67 has to be set to either 0, 1 or 3 to preserve the targetting on where (position) the fiend is summoned (on target vs. on caster). I thought this issue was ridiculously complex and thus hadn't mustered up the courage to look at it yet, big mistake as it doesn't seem to be that complicated, and you would've found it pretty fast either way.

Hmm, I assumed it used spin104a as well but it appears that that's a BG2Fixpack change, what changes is that SCS patches spin104.spl instead on BG2 for it's spell tweaks so it isn't even bugged—it does in fact deal 4 flat damage and heal/give extra HP for the same static amount.

I think creating a new spell for the sword to use (by copying the old LMD it was using prior to it being modified) is the most sensible thing to do, since if other mods decide to modify LMD they would also be editing the sword's spell (though it's going to be a bit late by the time SCS is installed to prevent that). Also doesn't require any engine specific code and works if Foebane has been changed to apply LMD in some other way (you just alter all the effects to change only the resource name to the new copy of the spell).

Cross-checking on a bunch of liches and the tables, and it's definitely working fine, seems like I just had protections against just about everything, forgot Ultroloths/Energy Blades are HLAs and have been rather unforgiving on mages (they are dangerous!). Thinking about it, I've almost died to Demilich Kangaxx casting Air Elemental Swarm back when I fought him (he got me cornered due to the huge animation circles on the elementals, and they were smacking the shit out of me. Thankfully a rather buffed Jaheira statchecked them pretty hard), and Lich Kangaxx used Greater Boneguard, so it's just some pretty tall confirmation bias on my part (saw Abyssal Fury once but remembered it well because the slash animation was looping, and IA is used quite often). What I meant was that they shouldn't need to spend an HLA pick on the different schools' Arcane Knowledge abilities (I do think they should get the bonus either way, it is unfair but they have fewer HLAs otherwise, though it's a fantastic system for limiting players) and that they should get access to a few more other schools. Not that vanilla has a big amount of usable Wizard HLAs but there's many ToF ones that enemies would largely benefit from using any number of them (Foresight, Aegis, Reveal, Pierce the Veil, Mirrored Clones, Shadowcloak, Rune of Immunity), even if enemies just have two or three more of them, and have been picked to match the caster's kit flavour, it should do plenty to shift the balance against the player. I do plan on writing about IWD spells and SCS balance, so this will probably get added on top of that, and I do have a lot to say about it but I need to collect my thoughts and produce good feedback (you already saw the issues twisted perception causes with my last post regarding HLAs usage, so unless I think things out stuff like that can happen, and it's not good enough feedback), while also checking if it's possible to code certain things (been wondering this in relation to making casters focus on having party-wide buffs if they are in a group, since that's something that SCS could do more often to make encounters much harder) or if it's even a balance issue and not an issue of party composition/playstyle (I do most encounters in a rather streamlined fashion but it's because of how successful it is that I bother with it at all. This leads to an extremely efficient anti-Mage pattern and they usually die too fast due to it).

Currently it is a massive net decrease in difficulty. Once you get access to the ToF HLAs, and have been able to pick more than a handful of Feats, enemies can hardly match your power levels. However if SCS was to fully integrate ToF HLAs and Feats that would make the game harder, but not harder than non-ToF I think. You just have a lot more to work with and enemies won't ever have enough XP to have a relevant amount of HLAs (though this isn't an issue inherent to either SCS or ToF but rather ToB/SoA enemy levels). Kits are definitely applied, but HLAs I've yet to see any more aside from Abyssal Fury and IA being used in an actual fight, and would love to see all the new defensive ones pre-casted. Considering that the average enemy survives less than two rounds I might just not be seeing them cast anything, or wizards might not be getting HLAs outside of their own schools which is definitely something that they should not be subject to (it's a good way of limiting party resources but the impact on enemy wizards' spellbooks is bad IMO since they aren't that high level either) outside of school opposition hijinks. AFAIK subracial bonus are not applied, but I might be wrong. Feats aren't applied (I'm fairly confident on that). It definitely is worth trying. Mind it's still in beta though, so you might run into some bugs, but it definitely does upset the game's balance. I think if SCS made good use of the ToF resources we'd be getting our asses whooped basically, but I'm not sure how realistic it is to assign them intelligently to enemies, as you can do a lot of min-maxing beyond what you'd normally do on non-ToF SCS runs. I also want to point out that it makes for fantastic hands-on practice for no-reloading (I am in ToB on my first (I had another BG1 run before it but it got benched as ToF Barbarians had a couple of bugs) run after *years* of not playing seriously), since while it makes the game easier if you build and play your characters correctly, it actually only makes the game easier IF you do those things correctly, which helps a lot with general no-reloading.

Considering I've been SCS Planetars cast Globe of Blades during other Mages' Timestops, it is definitely the case that scripts are run during Timestop, but effects are never played (though you might have to use a cutscene or creature script instead of an area script, but that shouldn't be too hard to do). My suggestion is to instead use the "Unsummoned" visual effect instead since that will cover charname when the first frame of it plays, and teleport out almost immediately. You can order inactive creatures via script to move during a Timestop but I'm not sure if the action actually happens if the creature isn't immune to Timestop, and I'm not sure if you can apply immunity to it while it is active either. But if it's any creature you want active, then it should be fine, I'm fairly certain that works.

My suggestion is to add a trigger to this existing block and copy it into a new one, checking instead that Sarevok indeed isn't dead and changing the dialogue string. I don't think REPLACE_SAY is bad though (it really is the easiest way of achieving it) and don't know enough about dialogue coding to point out why it might cause issues either.

As far as I know, triggers are regions with their short field at 0x2 set to 0. The value of 1 is for stuff that puts a ? on your cursor, and when set to 2 it's just an area travel region.

I was thinking that they'd sort of escort you to the stronghold of sorts and then send you off into the Maze, but that could work too. I think the dead bodies in the Maze and maybe a few surviving, traumatized and injured soldiers (how we make them suffer, just for the tiniest bit of realism...) that could warn you about 25 years old traps and how their expedition failed could work pretty well, too. While I do prefer the idea of adding more areas, it's really tough, so this might be a better way to do it. Yeah, I know, I just wanted to make it so there's something more interesting to it than just skipping it, which I don't have anything against even, it's just the ever-burning desire of adding mooore and more content. Which obviously, of course, in practice I don't do (yet). AFAIK ActionOverride() is action number 1 (it starts from zero which I think is NoAction()), so it should be in every game. Though moving items between containers/changing area scripts and a few other actions aren't even on ToBEx. Yeah, if that was to be done in any way it'd have to be in the BGT WeiDU style of having SoD installed somewhere somewhat sane being a requirement and just unpacking and converting what you need from SoD at install time. Would most likely need to have the DLC merger installed and whatnot but I have no clue about that stuff. I hope if it's just one area its fair game though, extracting from SoD vs. BG1 doesn't sound nowhere as streamlined when it comes to the tileset conversions, and it'd be a bit too much for one or two areas (personally I would be OK with it, but I'm not sure if the majority of players would want to deal with it). Sure, BGT has its own subset of issues either way and developing a first version for multiple platforms is awful for progress.

Sounds like a good idea to me, I've had an idea very similar to this, but had no clue where I would put the entrance where it concerns existing areas, and don't currently have the skills to produce new areas. My plan was to: Move the Maze entrance somewhere else, preferably forcing the player to look for it and allow for the Eltan et al quests to be completed. Remove the need to trace back trough the Maze in BGT by adding a small passage-way dungeon that becomes accessible after Sarevok dies (feels really anti-climatic to me, just to walk back through the Maze again). Add an area south of the Cloudpeaks so that you can travel back and forth to Amn through it (or a couple of areas, forcing you to actually cross them, and have going there trigger the Mae'Var ambush that's currently just a cutscene after you talk to Belt). While it's practically what EBG1 does, my idea was to bring similar behavior to BGT, and add a couple of areas and touches to the BG1 finale while at it. While your mod is aimed at the EEs and integrating SoD I think plenty of what can be done in BG1 is fully applicable to both games. Then the Undercity exit would be a short dungeon with some low level undead so it isn't just a walkaway out, and you'd exit outside of the City walls, which I was also planning on making an area for. As for where to place the Maze entrance, the best idea I came up with was to make an entirely new guarded compound composed of secret tunnels, which you would have to access through the Iron Throne after killing Cythandria (a door in the basement would get added, and something to hint at it being there), and then that would eventually lead you to the Maze itself, or you can enter said tunnels through the basement of a random house with very powerful guards. And just to keep a part of the vanilla feeling, the Thieves would get their own set of hidden tunnels, that aren't so secret and connect to the Sewers and a few other areas (I didn't think this one through). The idea of putting it on the Northern gate is pretty good though, I've only recently found out that zone is walkable even rofl. And you wouldn't have to walk too far from the Palace itself (my quest would send the player on a Marco Polo styled journey through the whole city basically, which is pretty similar to your idea about going in with the FF into Korlasz' dungeon. Storming the new underground complex with the help of the Flaming Fist, for which the area would have to be on the larger side then, and there aren't that many above-ground huge spaces in the city, though coming up with new below-ground ones is fairly trivial to justify—it must've taken them a LOT of digging to find the Undercity itself, at least that's how I think of this, so it'd make sense that in uncovering it they left a lot of tunnels/big empty spaces dug out. Also explains why they are on the Mining business). The issue? So far that's like five or six areas, and I have graphics for none. I plan on learning out Blender for real on my next break from uni but atm I'm absolutely swamped in homework (so progress on the tools for this + other projects is really slow and all non-pure-code mods are just on halt for a couple of months). Making areas out of existing graphics in Photoshop takes too much time sadly, but given the variety of areas to work with and that the aim is integrating the new areas into BG1's finale, it could work. And if you take them from SoD or just add new entrances it'd require no such work.

I always thought of Balors' attacks as having a chance to decapitate due to their claws, however I might just not know how it's supposed to be. The Cornugons with clubs look very cool btw, I wish you luck on your overlay editing endeavour, I'm not sure if there's really anything you can do but brute force it through sheer time spent tinkering with it. I always wonder what Erephine did to realign some of the old BG1 shield animations or how the new ones were created but I honestly have no idea.

No problem, glad I could help. It's quite interesting to look into such complex and specialized WeiDU code.

Could most likely add other spells so that they're also patched in this way (though I can't think of any others that need this treatment), but I think the majority already act this way rather than making creatures hostile. Also, strangely enough this behaviour on Grease is only like this on my modded (though this is how the spell is in vanilla) BG2EE install, but non-hostile on every other similarly modded game. Either way I don't think this is relevant enough to warrant a component of its own and the code is simple enough that it really shows how trivial this is, but it already exists, here it is. BEGIN "Remove hostile effect from Grease" REQUIRE_PREDICATE FILE_EXISTS_IN_GAME spwi101.spl "Your game does not contain the Grease spell" COPY_EXISTING spwi101.spl override PATCH_IF (BYTE_AT (0x19) BAND BIT2) == BIT2 BEGIN WRITE_BYTE 0x19 (THIS BXOR BIT2) PATCH_IF enhanced_edition BEGIN WRITE_BYTE 0x19 (THIS BOR BIT1) END END BUT_ONLY

Yeah I don't think its feasible at all then, unless you unlock several of them all at once. On the topic of issues with the mod: the Cleric HLA Divine Shell doesn't give the 80% slashing resistance it should (it does confer the proper resistances to everything else though, including the other physical damage types). This is on beta 7, but I don't think it had been reported before. Edit: the Paladin Holy Aura HLA has the wrong projectile set: it uses 1pp_sleep_cloud - 280 instead of something sane and reasonable like In Area Party Only - 158. Affected file is tg#hol1.spl.