That's a generous offer I wouldn't miss for no hurry in the world I'll drop you details in PM shortly.

I was afraid of that. Guess I'll have to learn that old trickery once again Thank you Gwendolyne!

1. Is there any difference, regarding protections, resistances, saving throws and most importantly limited/exhaustable protections, between applying several effects directly from within weapon attack or applying 100% probable non-saveable non-resistable spell within weapon attack, which in turn contains exact same effects?

 

2. Which is the better setting to ensure utility spell, which is merely a container to certain effects, always deliver these effects: "natural/nonmagical" or "not dispell/bypass resistance"?

2.1 Am I getting this right that if a target has 50% chance to ignore the effect, this chance will still be applied even if the effect is delivered to the target not directly as the attack effect but wrapped in such utility spell?

I have an effect for which I chose sphlysmt.bam as its graphical representation. Upon testing I noticed weird thing: it plays only in about 60% of times when the effect is used. I'm sure the effect itself happens as the second bam launches each time. The way I understand either the bam is broken and shouldn't play at all or it's fine and will play each time, thus I'm baffled by this random faultiness of sphlysmt.bam and would welcome any ideas on how it's possible at all?

One bam and one vvc/bam. I've just started testing visuals so haven't get to tidy them up yet.

 

Hmm, while we're at it, do I get it right that 1 tick of effect's delay (timing mode 3) equals one second and thus equals 30 ticks of vef's delay?

Is it generally considered by the community ok to use opcode 272? The way I understand it repeating effect is an additional burden for the engine to calculate. Or is this additional load so minuscule its negligible? Megamod-wise, what if 20 opcodes 272 from 20 different mods are running at the same time, still negligible?

I'm more concerned about synchronising 215 containing vef with other effects that are actual core of the ability, but I guess that's just another case of synchronisation. BTW toying with vef is a fun, mainly clean, process, I'm thankful you mention it to me back in that NI thread

 

What I'm more curious by now is the behaviour of sphlysmt.bam: how comes it sometimes work, and sometimes doesn't?

Thanks Miloch but I don't think there was any bashing going on
 

I don't know exactly what he's trying to achieve either.

This post has an explanation, with a nice picture as well, on what I am trying to achieve

Starting from its latest version G3Fixpack started handling basilisk's petrifying effect, so I need to rewrite my code for it to work with both not fixpacked & fixpacked games. To do so I need to be able to adjust saving throw bonus of all effects of a given spell, like this:

COPY_EXISTING crspl005.spl override
	LPF ALTER_SPELL_EFFECT
		INT_VAR
			match_opcode = -1
			savebonus = savebonus+2
		STR_VAR
	END

No doubt you have noticed a line that would not work . I'll try to study tomorrow myself on how should I change this code for it to work (I feel there will be a healthy dose of dreaded "read_byte" which I understood once, about 10 years ago, and forgot completely by now ), but if someone would lend me a hand with that it would be ever so cool!

 

Bonus question: if I accidentally alter save bonus for an effect having no saving throw at all, I won't screw anything, right, this save bonus simply will be ignored by the engine?

temnix, thank you for your suggestions, but unfortunately they are of little help in this exact case. See, I'm not looking to do something, anything, I am interested in the exact, to the letter, implementation of this:

Only if it will be totally dismissed as impossible I'll compromise, swaying as little as will be absolutely necessary

...Medusae? What medusae?

My 1 year old Big World installation has at least 2 Medusas: cmmedus.cre and f_medusa.cre, and Gwendolyne promised to bring more.

Well, you don't technically, but you subject the victim to another delayed effect. So you first cast the spell with the save throw penalty, preferebly without being able to resist it, and another effect that using the opcode #177 with delayed effect. The then reffered .eff file containing the damage and save etc.

Ok, I don't see yet how is that better than delaying damaging effect directly, but I'll check that out. Still, even within #177, where do I put delay amount?

I am trying to make weapon attack modify target's saving throw before applying core effect of that attack.

 

My testing rig is a dart doing 1 damage upon target failing save versus death. Target have save vs. death 10, so under normal circumstances dart hits 10 times out of 20 attacks. Then I am adding prior (slot 0) effect #33 adding 6 to target's save. If that would work in theory hit to fired ratio should fall down to about 4 per 20 attacks, but testing gives same 10 of 20, so my #33 obviously not working.

I have filed it with target 2 (preset target), value 6, modifier 0 (increment), timing 0 (instant/limited), dispel 3 (dispel/bypass resistance), duration 0 and probability 100. Which of these is wrong?

 

I am attaching the item in question just in case.

Thank you, this is an elegant idea but alas, not only I do lack #326, I'm also reluctant to touch main engine of basilisk gaze attack item: it is not a spell but embedded effects in vanilla, which at some point changes into .spl in Big World, so I will had to dynamically read and wrap said engine into my custom .spl - a feat I wouldn't dare even with the help of the community...

 

wait... ok it's 2AM so I might be wrong but...

 

subtledoctor, that is in fact brilliant! What if I insert, as a first effect, toned down by -2 version of the main gaze engine AND block original not toned down attack? That could actually work perfectly "on the old & busted engine" Now I wonder what will happen if I will give immunity to the gaze projectile from the middle of the stack of effects in this very same projectile

Ok folks, this one is really hard, and I'm certain I will need help from some of you WeiDU ninjas because the thing is way beyond my understanding of WeiDU.
 
I need to implement the following logic:

for each creature having inside its name letters "basilisk", "Basilisk", "medusa" or "Medusa" (no matter if in the beginning or in the middle)
	for each its weapon having projectile = "gaze" inside weapons item ability AND save type = "paralyze" inside such item abilities current effect 0
		add to such item ability two effects that must become effect 0 and effect 1, in that exact order, shifting all previous effects down by 2
BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES

I believe I might figure out how to do so if I'll spend a month or two learning WeiDU, but I would be really happy to have help from someone for whom this is a matter of a 10 minutes to write

 

P.S. Hooray for my 1000th post in the last 14 years... damn how the time flies

I believe--and I'm sure I'll be corrected if this isn't accurate--that the engine rolls for saves on an item/spell once and at the time of the attack.

Thank you for an explanation! There goes down the drain my shield of +2 to save vs. petrifying gaze. And to think I've already made paperdoll and icon for it

Have you tried to delay the effect a second for the save throw to get reduced ? -got ninja'ed-

Nope. Will certainly try it out, thanks!

Edit: hmm, what field should I put delay amount to? "Special" (in terms of NI)? Or perhaps I should externalize it into Eff v.2 and use parameter 3?

Thank you for this exhaustive explanation Sam!

Sam., can you please explain why would one want to compress bams at all especially considering hindrances you mentioned in the readme? Bams that are bmps made with photoshop and converted with Miloch's BAM Batcher, are they not compressed? Is it a bad thing? Why?

Yep

I have finally finished version 0.2 of The Old Gold, and know what - it's now twice bigger!

 

Well someone might say it's only 10 items against 5 in previous release, but "twice bigger" got some nicer ring to it In addition to a new content it got compatibility with 1PP fixed and got some visual bits improved here and there.

You know, if you did actually show those 5 items the mod has to offer and maybe tell us how they are available in-game, people might be more interested in testing.

Right now, all the information you give is "this mod has 5 items". Not very much to go on...

You are correct, and thanks for the hint, but then again - what surprise would that be if I did so? And what are mods for if not to be surprised a little bit (and hopefully in a pleasant way) in a game you know inside out? Not to mention I have already fixed a bug of compatibility with 1PP, so I would rather have not over-exposure this until 0.2, which is 60% done by now.

 

BTW, two of these are actually shown in the logo

Yay indeed

Ok my english might suck but there's no way twice bigger and double the size means different things, you are pulling my leg here!

And it has glowing mushrooms too! Ahem... I meant, congrats on that release Lava

Not arguing with your personal experience I want to notice for the greater picture that I was able to finish the mod several times: apart for a nagging feeling there should been some other way to finish part 2 than by slaughtering all of duchess palace the mod was doable with the help of walkthrough.

Tho my issue with bard spells predates this failed Song/Silence installation. Any advice in that regard?

Contrary to your second post here you still haven't attached your WeiDU log. Note that it's not enough to just browse to needed file when composing a post, after that you had to click "attach this file" button.