Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Crucial update - download again!

This mod used to be called "Out of Commission." I made it five years ago. Now I'm adding a logical feature to it, which makes rest only a part of the concept. It is compatible with all of the games, Icewind Dale included, but only with Enhanced Editions.

Description

The Infinity Engine games approach rest with a severe ellipsis: the player clicks the "Rest" button, a movie plays, and the next moment 8 hours have rolled by, everyone has healed up and spells have been memorized. The game will even cast healing magic for you, all to shorten the downtime and get the characters on the road ASAP. If one rest session is not enough, you can just repeat it. While this approach has its merits, I suggest a different dynamic to make time matter and place adventures in time instead of redacting it.

Separate Paths does nothing to the "Rest" button or inn rooms, which still work as before, but I suggest refraining from their use. Instead characters can rest with a special ability all party members get. They can rest severally - at different times and away from each other. When the special ability button is clicked, the character needing rest will leave the party, without superfluous dialogue, and lie down. There is no sleeping in the presence of enemies or on city streets, otherwise you can recline anywhere. In 8 hours the character will get up, refreshed, with magic at the ready and 1 hit point healed, and rejoin the party automatically. While he sleeps, the rest of the group is free to leave the area to explore, fight, trade or take on other members. They can stay away for any length of time - when they return to the area with the sleeper, he will step in. If the character is the only party member in the area, he will still sleep, but without leaving the party (that would make the area and himself inaccessible). 

Example: Dorn the half-orc has been hurt, and Branwen the cleric has run out of spells to heal him. Both settle down to rest, leaving just 4 characters in the party. These are relatively fresh and head out to explore the rest of the area, getting a better split of the experience for the greater risk. Had the player wanted to keep character progress equal, he could have hazarded Dorn and Branwen.

When rest happens in real time, several things change: you only want to have rest those characters who require it and you are likely to be more frugal with spells, because depleted casters will need their full recuperation. A sleeping character can be roused - just move another party member immediately next to the sleeper for a few seconds. In a pinch you can hurt sleepers to wake them up quickly, and enemies wandering into the vicinity tend to get through after a while. A roused character will be groggy for a short time and must restart his 8 hours to get the benefits of resting, so camp in a quiet corner.

Having laid down a few people, if there is no dungeon nearby or not enough manpower for it, you do not have to pace around the room the whole 8 hours. The special ability works differently for the main character: he will recline but stay in the party, the screen will fade out, the "Rest" movie will play, and time will advance by 8 hours.

A technical note: resting with the special ability uses an effect, not the Rest() action, so the PartyRested() trigger will not check true. I am not aware of official scripts of BG:EE relying on that trigger anywhere but in one case where it seems to be for convenience, but mods might use it. In BG2:EE romances and dreams with Irenicus are tied to this trigger. Therefore, the old "Rest" button should still be clicked for special moments in storylines, such as the dream sequences that give you special abilities - after the death of Mulahey, after the Cloakwood mines etc. These moments are well-known to those who have played the games a lot, which at this point is almost everyone. You should also periodically click it in the second game if you want romances to advance.

In the second Baldur's Gate the belt Imoen wears, the one that protects her from all disabling effects and death in Irenicus' dungeon, will also interfere with the Rest ability. She will not pass out as the others and therefore will rejoin the party right away. Use normal rest while she has the belt.

Updated: separate adventuring

When I first read the Dragonlance books by M. Weiss and T. Hickman, I was surprised that the original band of characters - Tanis the Half-Elf, Laurana, Flint, Raistlin and Caramon, Riverwind and Goldmoon and the others - split up after the first book. They mixed up with some others and a few went to Silvanesti, while the others sailed south to Icewall Glacier. Later a few characters infiltrated Sanction to find out the provenance of draconians just as the others defended Solamnia. Tanis and Raistlin dropped out and rejoined. This was novel to me at the time, and it brought home the point that heroes (and antiheroes, and villains) only cross paths for a time, travel alongside and then separate to follow their individual destinies again.

With this update for the IE games parties can do the same and adventure in different parts of the world. There are no more requirements to do that thing before venturing forth. It is possible for two or three characters to travel to the Tombs Valley while the others follow Minsc to the Gnoll Fortress; and some one may even risk another place by himself. This makes the game play more like Jagged Alliance, with squads in different places, although the characters are still part of the same group and share experience, and there is still a maximum of 6 active personages. Scripts and conversations that used to check for the presence of someone in the party now also require that he be in the same area and ready to talk, and Dynaheir, for instance, will not think that Edwin is with the group if he is somewhere away. (Conflicts can be prevented this way.) Characters will no longer dial long-distance, but checks for romances between NPC and the main character will be made as before for technical reasons, so there may be surprising telepathic exchanges of love. It's not possible to foresee all eventualities in the games, and where, for example, the games used to teleport every party member to the same area, for instance, sailing to the Lycanthrope island, it will still do that, gathering them from around the world ("and there was much rejoicing"). This sort of event should be expected from time to time.

The separate rest mechanism is still available, and characters who are out of the party completely, snoozing, don't consume experience. Of course, an active character must return to the area with the sleepers for them to step back into the ranks, and if the party is already full of others, the player will have to decide who to keep. Finally, the engine demands that the group be together for resting with the "Rest" button.

Download

Edited by temnix
Link to comment

This lacks modder prefixes.

 

Games:

 

Made and tested on BG:EE, but should work with all Infinity Engine games.

NextTriggerObject requires an EE game or TobEx.

 

A technical note: resting with Out of Commission uses an effect, not the Rest() action, so the PartyRested() trigger will not check true. I am not aware of official scripts relying on that trigger anywhere but in one case where it seems to be for convenience, but mods might use it.

This is true for BGEE, but PartyRested is used in pretty much all of the BG2 romances at one point or another. No rest button also means no dream scripting, another needed BG2 romance mechanic.

Link to comment

This is true for BGEE, but PartyRested is used in pretty much all of the BG2 romances at one point or another. No rest button also means no dream scripting, another needed BG2 romance mechanic.

Termix didn't say that the Rest button is disabled, it's generally just not used as a part of the party goes to do more adventures while a few of them rest outside the party.

The use of this will likely be inconvenient to romances as those generally work in via scripted actions in a one way streak which can break under these circumstances(same way the 9th level Imprisonment does), so watching out is of course encouraged.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola
Link to comment

 

This is true for BGEE, but PartyRested is used in pretty much all of the BG2 romances at one point or another. No rest button also means no dream scripting, another needed BG2 romance mechanic.

Termix didn't say that the Rest button is disabled, it's generally just not used as a part of the party goes to do more adventures while a few of them rest outside the party.

The use of this will likely be inconvenient to romances as those generally work in via scripted actions in a one way streak which can break under these circumstances(same way the 9th level Imprisonment does), so watching out is of course encouraged.

 

I know this; temnix even states using the rest button to get the regular Bhaalspawn dreams in BG(EE). I was directly addressing the claim that 'official' scripts don't use PartyRested, when it (and dream scripting) are used fairly regularly in BG2(EE).
Link to comment

I use a suffix, if you must know, CamDawg. You can see my files by the _# suffix, e.g. REST1_#.SPL. As for romances and such, cutscenes with Irenicus, what I said about dreams in the first game applies here, naturally. You should use regular resting every once in a while, if you want those to be available.

 

Those who want to discuss the actual mod, if you have a Beamdog forum account, please do so here:

 

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/65855/out-of-commission-mod/p1?new=1

 

It will help me answer to comments in one place.

Link to comment

I use a suffix...

Yeah, and if people in mass would follow your example, they begin to use the same excuse and things get bad when there's 5 mods incompatible with each others cause someone uses an ..uffi...

And you had better tell kulyok, that she can't use ##STage1_#.spl cause you "OWN" it, while the whole rest of the Infinity engine community has her assigned as the owner of the file. While you could just do a simple thing and request a prefix from this thread. It can't be that hard to do. You could even ask it here and there will be a person that will go and ask it there ... aka, I can even do it for you. You just need to request one.

Link to comment

I'm going to respond for the benefits of players who might be thinking of downloading the mod. They might not understand the situation and, at a glance, think that my convention will somehow jeopardize their files. It won't. Here is a brief explanation: there is a convention that modders will take up personal two-letter prefixes for all of their files to avoid overriding files already on a system during installation. A file name for Infinity Engine is 8 characters long maximum, so every modder picks two characters that are always the same and six that can be anything. While this is a good idea, I have reasons to want to use a suffix instead - in my files the first letters are arbitrary, but all end with _#. That I don't use a prefix is no danger to your setup, because files ending with _# are certain to be rare. Even when there are some, as in the Imp's example, for a conflict the other six characters would also have to be the same. Sometimes I also use a name shorter than the maximum. So while it is possible that e.g. ##STage1_# might end the same way as my files, that my file will also feature six other characters, and the same ones, is for all intents and purposes impossible. The likelihood is slightly larger than being hit by a meteorite when you walk on the street. I'm simply using an alternative convention. So please ignore this commotion and give the mod a try.

 

P.S. To the modders: thanks for the comments about romances and this being only for EE games. I'm incorporating them into the description.

Edited by temnix
Link to comment

Join the conversation

You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...