Has anyone managed to make target type 7 spells target Living actor or Any point? By channeling them through other types, with redirects... and so on? To make a really Instant ability. It would be especially nice to have something to speed up item abilities.

Kaeloree, is there any responsibility you are going to take? Like the responsibility of making sure your and Creepin's methods are correct? Or are you just going to impose on people from your high horse? Creepin is civil! Ha, what a joke. He called me names in that portion of the thread, where I did look eventually, on account of some ridiculous tea-reading, even though it would have made absolutely no sense for me to even use an alt. A little bit of thinking would make this obvious. Why would I impersonate someone in a thread I had just written in under my own name and to a completely different purpose than to argue? If I wanted any part of that silly argument about Roxanne's identities (or maybe not so silly after all), I would have gotten into the delicious catfight much earlier. Instead I wrote there to nudge the complaining "debate" towards a rational purpose so that modders who continue to enjoy the games would feel needed and those who no longer care would admit it to themselves and simply leave for better pastures. And you - welcome to the boards! You haven't graced this one with your presence in my memory, but you have nearly 10000 posts, you must have written somewhere about something. Did you bother to read the topics in those cases, or did the high horse just gallop you in to chop off heads there as well?

How can people be so useless? A timeless mystery only geneticists of the future may hope to solve.

Maybe Creeping is again using his method, as with Roxanne, and the method is simply no good all around. The technical side of this is about as interesting to me as the Internet of Things. You can all connect dots, or whatever you like to do in your spare time instead of modding, but spare me your false conclusions.

I would rather write on these boards about the games, but apparently this is a time when I must talk about some irrelevant foolishness. I thought I would wait for Creepin's response to my message, well, it's all the same. He is mistaken. I don't know what it was that was written in the Roxanne thread that he connected to me - I haven't looked there since my last post, but I don't use alts. I might have made a spare account on the boards, for the Chimeric name, if so, I haven't posted from that identity for years. If there was someone who was insulted in the other thread, I would have done any insulting to his face. Creepin seems to have vested his faith in some software or indicators or astrological charts that don't deserve it.

One possible explanation for this error, if IP addresses are involved, is that I sometimes come to the boards, and might have posted here, without switching off proxy servers that I need elsewhere. There are several of them from several countries. Maybe that threw off the system. I don't really care, and Creepin may persist in his conviction, but if there are any more administrative actions, I'm going to raise the issue with administrators. Now I will only say two things: that, if this trend continues, you can all expect dozens of "my" accounts, and probably everyone else's, posting in all sorts of topics, and that if Creepin was wrong about me, he might very well have been wrong about Roxanne.

You'll forgive me for not reading that article. And you will provide an alternative solution.

If not Weidu, then invisible minions will do the job. It's not a problem that items decay if they are plants.

Yes, I can put the naming inside a minion's script. Good idea.

This is the to-hit bonus given to ranged weapons that don't make attack rolls, like basilisks' eyes. It is the highest attack bonus the game will allow. That's good to know. But is it necessary to go that high? Wouldn't a thousand do it?

CONTROLLED is not doing it. Obviously no party-side options explain to the engine it's the party that is to blame.

The problem: a party character casts a spell that summons an invisible minion to kill someone, because there seems to be no way to select that kind of target with effects. The minion checks its summoner and kills it. It can do it with Kill() or cast a deadly spell on it. But there is no reputation loss or XP gain, even if the minion receives a GOODCUTOFF allegiance. This is handled as gangbanging between neutrals. I've got to make this recognizable as a crime and an attack somehow.

I'm interested in doing the reverse of this - applying effects only to people who are asleep. How would I go about that?

I'm working on a naming function, to give one of many available names to a custom object - a creature. The basic mechanism I described here a few months ago: a name is chosen, and this dialogue option sets a global. When the creature appears, it scans a list of values of that global, and finding the right one fixes its name with SetName(,,,). This name-setting persists in saved games, because it doesn't use tokens. But I also want to name an inventory item this way, to match the creature's name, and here I've been using a token. The item is called, let's say, <ITEM>, and then at some point outside scripts include the action SetTokenObject("creature"). The token and so the item takes on the creature's name. The problem here is that while the name stays on reloads, it disappears if one exits and game and starts it again. The token empties. I'm open to ideas about how to either do this, rename items, without tokens, or where to hang such a list of global checks. With the creature renaming is easy - it has an Override script, finds the matching name and phases out the script. But items don't have running scripts. I don't want to insert this long list into BALDUR.BCS. What else can I hang these checks on?

Let's say on topic. My topic. What would these containers look like? Nothing? Barrels in a forest?

How long is a while? Days, weeks?

Seems like a once on a blue moon scenario.

Does a talking item creature an invisible minion somewhere that talks to the character? Or does the item itself somehow speak with him - an exception from the rules? If it is actually the item, is it possible to change the name of the item with SetName(Myself,23434) in that conversation?

If you mean an actual container, yes. But you would have to define it visually somehow. Redraw that tile to put a chest there. But there are more of ready containers available than we get to see, not all are enabled on all maps. In some areas you see five chests but only two can be interacted with. That's because the others have been disabled. Another interesting possibility is a creature posing as an object. Something with a blue circle, immune to everything and nameless and equipped with a ring that plays a chest BAM over it. Start a conversation with it and interact with it there.

By the way, anybody know if free-lying items decay? Do they disappear with time?

What are my options if I want to have a sword lying around somewhere in an area? Can this be done with area tools, or do I have to resort to spawning CREs who will drop the item and disappear?

I'm patching familiars to cast something on themselves. This is a Self-targeted Cast Spell effect, the spell is of the Caster type and has a Preset target-targeted summon creature effect inside - something I have done a hundred times. The familiar is the summoner in this case. The invisible minion that appears strikes up a conversation with the main character, and the dialogue options end with effects imposed on LastSummonerOf. This object without further details defaults to Myself, so the minion should change the familiar. Instead the effects are put on the character conversing with the minion. I tested this with a Kill(LastSummonerOf) action, and it is the main character who dies. Anybody know why this redirecting happens?

I wonder what challenge the next paragraph of that tabletop adventure will throw at you, Creepin. What are you going to do when it reads "And they are teleported to a great citadel in Limbo with death slaads riding nightmares"?

There is no medusa animation, you know. That's why I asked.

The obvious simple solution here is to just make the shield give a +2 bonus on Petrification/Polymorph saves. Or you could make the shield give a shifting immunity to GAZE.PRO. Add an Instant/While Equipped Use EFF File on Condition effect, applying a spell every second. The spell lasts 1 second and makes the wearer immune to GAZE (or reflect it, hey) at 25% probability. Let people take their chances with this, if they care to.

...Medusae? What medusae?

My last and already hopeless attempt to steer this "discussion" towards something constructive: why don't modders who don't care about these games anymore just leave? What is the point of bickering over... I don't even know what. If you don't care, then stay out. There may be reasons to care other than love for the particular games, like the BG series. I do modding not because I still admire and enjoy the games but because the Infinity Engine is one of the very few adventure creation tools with solid gameplay in place, good music by Mark Morgan, pleasing graphics which can be augmented easily with BAM files, unlike the case of Neverwinter Nights and its Aurora engine, and I don't have to buy into the assumptions of Skyrim, Dark Souls etc. These games are my D&D-in-a-box, my Make Your Fantasy Adventure. But if you don't care for them from this angle any better, there is just no reason to stay or gab.

I want to respond to something Visiting User there said, which is that the Enhanced Editions very much improved the coding of the games and brought in many additional modding options. I agree, and that's the reason I myself always guarantee only compatibility with EE, even though that limits the number of downloads. I simply don't want to severely restrict my creativity by sticking with old technology, not at all superior to the new - unlike with, say, vinyl records or hand-made musical instruments, which might have an important edge over new stuff. In the case of EE vs. the old technology I don't see any real advantages to sticking with old stuff. However, I do recognize and feel, more acutely than many others probably, that the gameplay changes and "improvements" of Beamdog's were in many cases for the worse - as were some decisions about presentation.

For example, while no one has enjoyed long loading times in the 1990s, those picturesque loading screens should not have been eliminated completely when the EE technology (or was it even Bioware with Shadows of Amn?) made loading instant. The screens, in my opinion, should have been retained and displayed for a second, and a little waiting time is actually good medicine against the constant-reload disease. The extreme ease of reloading and other breaks from Beamdog, too numerous to list, were probably the reason why an uncommon number of players started to play in Iron Man mode. Self-imposed challenges are a symptom of problems with gameplay and erroneous design decisions. The classic interface was superior too, this is agreed-on. Yet the technology of EE is great.

But this does not have to be a divisive issue. Long-time players and modders should not feel irrelevant just because the games' technology has been appropriated by a company that pushes the games in, ultimately, a wrong direction. They should not feel forced out into a retirement - which is probably part of the reason this place looks abandoned sometimes. Likewise, new modders like myself should not feel that they are modding and brainstorming for the sake of a sliver of the audience. The IE games, in their different incarnations, are still quite popular today, but new players can't access much old content because it is incompatible with EE, and old-time modders do not care to update and develop their mods, more important, start something new, if they have to swallow the whole redesign and presentation of Beamdog.

And what can be done? What I have already talked about on the Beamdog forums: a reverse engineering of the design and presentation changes of the Enhanced Editions! Take the EE technology and keep it, but roll back all or most of the decisions Beamdog thought wise. No wakizashi proficiency for Safana, no three guiltless-kill Flaming Fist mercenaries on the road with freebie suits of field plate, no Taerom making the ankheg plate in one day (convenience...) and so on. Make Sleep strong again, because "nah" is not good balance. We who played the games in the 1990s don't remember them being too easy or worrying about balance - they were just fine and exciting. This means that Bioware's design decisions were fundamentally right and inspired, and Beamdog's adjustments on the side of caution, ease and rather primitive logic were a mistake by and large. If it isn't broken, don't fix it. If it is broken already, restore it to a proper state and keep the good bits. Of course, some people would still be dissatisfied, decisions would have to be made, but a firm resolve to stick to the original gameplay whenever at all possible would be a guiding light. Think also of restoring, wherever possible, the original interface, making the "classic" selection circles the default, switching off the cartoonish "sprite outlines" and so on. Because all of that matters for the final impression and sensation.

I really believe that for modders to perk up and for this place to revive people should stop treating the games either as a sacred cow or as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Modders, especially those who are nostalgic, should band together and apply their knowledge and skill to make themselves a cure for their nostalgia - a version of the games that's robust and modern and open to the future, but inspired and true to its spirit. Something to recommend to new players as well - and they might quite like it, possibly better than Beamdog's version. If everyone here feels relevant and busy, then petty squabbles and ego-tussling on these forums would also largely go away, or we could just laugh at them together.

Gee, just a couple of days and already three pages in the topic. I wish engine features received this much attention... and wrath.