PS

Am I Roxanne?

Yes, you are. Deal with it

EDIT to say: I also thought it was pretty harmless. Everyone has their oddities, including yours truly and everyone reading this post. When Roxanne used and alias to, say, "review" her own mod I thought it was more lol-worthy than problematic. She has always seemed a bit... competitive about mods; and this may have been a symptom of that. But ultimately this seems more quirky than outrageous. So I counsel leniency...

You are quite correct. That said, using alts still goes against commonly accepted ethics, so even if you deem it a minor infraction (I kinda do, not to mention how much she's been proactive in assisting players and maintaining abandoned mods), it still warrants an administrative action if other people start complaining. And in this case the investigation had only begun after users started reporting alts.

If being welcome to stay with community is not acceptance, then I don't know what is. Compared to what we've seen in the past, this debacle of a thread is hardly even a drama.

I'd like to thank my good friend Moongaze

Imposter! Sikret was no friend of Moongaze

 That said, using alts still goes against commonly accepted ethics

You must not be a very ethical person then... Ardanis.

(and forget it, I'm not telling who I used to be. GTFO)

I consider being called ethical an insult

That said, I think I at least wouldn't use the same avatar across all forums if I wanted to keep my identity concealed. Speaking of which, back in 2007 I actually had it written in my signature which username I was using where.

It seemed indeed rather obvious, but I hope this public pillory won't drive a much-needed active member from a shrinking community... Whatever floats their boat, I guess?

What if precisely that is intended?

 

A modder who promotes EET and new BWS and large mods must be a thorn in the side of Beamdog. With the big game installations she.enables, players can spend months and months exploring the Baldurs Gate world.

 

This keeps them away from purchasing additional products about to be released.

 

The ones that come under false disguise are those that call themselves modders in a community forum or moderators while their names appear in the end credits of industry games. Their company's interest is to sell more games and not to have people to stick to a single large modded game.

 

That's what I call obvious.

It's not the first time I hear the idea that Beamdog was trying to compete with mods https://forums.beamd...#Comment_956449 and I still don't get where that comes from. The only example of a mod successfully competing commercially with the base game (that I know of, at least) is the DotA mod for Warcraft 3, and we're talking about millions of players there.

In any case, I don't expect you to believe a word I'm saying, being affiliated with the company and having my name in the credits, but I think your knowledge of the modern video game market is severely limited and/or outdated. Players don't stick with one game for years anymore, they now consume games as they are being released and move on to the next one. Even those who do keep re-playing the same game over and over again, still buy new titles like everyone else. Ever heard about the "pile problem" that Steam users mention every now and then? Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about. And the ones who stick with one title and never buy anything else? These are negligible fraction, as far as marketing is concerned.

Lastly, I don't get who's trying to drive whom out of where? Unless I miss something, the accounts here and on G3 remain untouched. While the ones on Beamdog forum were banned for explicitly violating local rules, and only after no response has come to messages sent by the staff.

PS I don't consider myself a modder anymore, btw. After couple of years spent working on Siege part-to-full time, I can't bring myself to so much as play the game, let alone mod it. I just hang around familiar place, like an old geezer.

I can't believe temnix decided to use an invisible minion irl

It's an invisible guy that spawns to talk to you. Just like when you get those talking to yourself Slayer dialogues!
 
sometimes, invisible minions are official

However, any forum member in a good standing is welcome to ask me in PM for that proofs.

May I instead ask not to lock this thread as well? It's damn too amusing a read to pass it

Hmm, do I get it right that I should put that (or rather translations thereof) in .tra files of my mod?

Yeah.

UPD. Indeed, forum software acting up lately 

Not just lately, I always hated this particular engine, it's just that sometimes it pisses me off more than usual

Right, I forgot you were a diehard luddite

Summons - there's usually no other way. It's just that they're too bad with timing to be considered a precise enough tool.

I'm sure I used save vs breath when it made sense to think of trap effects as physical attacks.

Problem is it won't catch the creatures if the player's game is not in English...

Using TRA is simple

/*
@1000 = ~\([Bb]asilisk\)\|\([Mm]edusa\)~
*/

OUTER_SPRINT basilisk @1000
// Scanning all creature resources...
 COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP ~.+\.cre~ ~override~
 READ_STRREF NAME1 name1 ELSE ~~
 READ_STRREF NAME2 name2 ELSE ~~
 PATCH_IF (~%name1%~ STRING_CONTAINS_REGEXP ~ºsilisk%~ = 0 ||
           ~%name2%~ STRING_CONTAINS_REGEXP ~ºsilisk%~ = 0) BEGIN

Not sure I understand every quirk of it though: for example why do you apply patch if "STRING_CONTAINS_REGEXP ~\(basilisk\)\|\(medusa\)~ = 0", should not it be "STRING_CONTAINS_REGEXP ~\(basilisk\)\|\(medusa\)~ = 1", as in, a hit?

Because WeiDU readme explains so 

String STRING_CONTAINS_REGEXPString

As STRING_MATCHES_REGEXP, but it evaluates to 0 if the first string contains the second regexp. Thus "AR1005" STRING_CONTAINS_REGEXP "[w-z]" evaluates to 1 (“mismatch”).
Be warned that this does the exact opposite of what the name suggests.

PS Also f*** Invision and its forum shitware

You could read the target's AC via splprot, temporarily set its save vs breath (since it's technically a dodge thing...) to the same value, then roll the saves instead of attacks.

I don't remember if it there was a trick to read myself when targeting someone else, however, so the attacker's thaco will be unaccounted for.

summoning invisible creature

When people will finally understand it's a no way to do things   

Also frustrating is when expression of that opinion gets decried as "censorship..." which, I mean look that word up in a dictionary - it does not apply here.

Also frustrating is when people act shitty towards others and justify it with "go find a safe space if you don't want people to be shitty!" ... but then start crying when you give it back to them.

I thought, for some reason, that you in particular would understand. Though perhaps the fault is mine for not recognizing the message in your first post

I apologize if anything in my posts has caused you frustration or offended you in some way, that was never the intent.

God someone please lock this thread before it starts up again. Here's the tl;dr:

Modders: "please report bugs so that we can fix them."

Others: "No screw you! I shouldn't have to! And stop updating your damn mods, when you update them it screws up the fixpack! Also, update your damn mods more often and fix all the bugs that I refuse to tell you about!"

There, you've read the whole thread. Now please let it die.

Let censorship die instead 

No I suggest closing thread because some people lost their cool and started acting like immature assholes and nobody needs to deal with that shit. There's nothing wrong with arguments - even heated arguments. But trolling and flaming is not that. This thread mercifully died, and now it's been necro'd for no good reason and nothing productive has been added so... what's the point? 

Probably because you can use the Beamdog forum if you need a safe space, and this forum if you need some freedom.

It seems I'm done with the BG modding. This year is a 20 anniversary of my BG modding.   I think it's enough.

We didn't exactly see eye to eye about how modding should be conducted, but regardless of that NEJ featured the best story of all the mods I have seen, it had an actual intrigue going on. Thanks for that, and good luck to you, Vlad.

You ask too much of IE, I'm afraid

The so-called smart AI is really quite simple if you look at the actual scripts (which is especially visible in their source, e.g. .SSL). A bit of randomness, some basic sanity checks, and a few simple tactics is usually enough to create the appearance of intelligence. And this is the upper limit of how much you can improve it before hitting diminishing returns from ever-bloating size - I know because this is how SoD AI was designed, yet players still called it smart and SCS-like, despite it being 5-10 times smaller and not even checking for protections/immunities when selecting targets for spells.

I personally am unaware if it's used somewhere or not. The idea behind a dedicated stat, however, seems very obvious to me - if I was hit by KWW, I should avoid re-casting spell protections, because they'll be dispelled the next round and I'll just waste both spell and a round.

FWIW, True Sight has been assigned the CANNOT_TURN_INVISIBLE spellstate for this very reason - to not waste potions of invisibility if someone nearby is spamming true sight every round.

PS Same goes for Insect Plague too (although it probably could've been substituted with spell failure check - I'm pretty sure I used the latter in SoD... if I did at all).

I see no difference on screenshots. Also I assume that "low" refers to low/high quality (whatever it actually means) rather than short/tall height.

COPY_EXISTING ~BASILG1.ITM~ ~override~
LPF ~ADD_ITEM_EFFECT~ INT_VAR type=2 opcode = 146 target = 2 timing = 1 probability1 = 100 probability2 = 0 duration = 0 parameter2 = 1 resist_dispel = 0 savingthrow = 4 savebonus = ~-4~ insert_point = ~1~ STR_VAR resource = ~PETALL_#~ END
LPF ~ADD_ITEM_EFFECT~ INT_VAR type=2 opcode = 146 target = 2 timing = 1 probability1 = 100 probability2 = 0 duration = 0 parameter2 = 1 resist_dispel = 0 savingthrow = 4 savebonus = ~-4~ insert_point = ~2~ STR_VAR resource = ~PETANI_#~ END
BUT_ONLY

ADD_ITEM_EFFECT is a little pricky, it only updates magic type abilities by default, but not melee/ranged:

SET type to the type of header to which the effect should be added or 99 for all types. Defaults to 3 (magic).

Also it should be "savingthrow" rather than "save"

type=1 // melee

type=2 // ranged

type=3 // magic (default)

type=4 // launcher with ammo

type=99 // all

Code looks correct, although casting_level/mode aren't used by that function, and I only have it on hearsay that 255+ states actually work.

However, yes, I don't have an exact clue what you're talking about, because this:

LPF ~ADD_CRE_EFFECT~ INT_VAR opcode = 328 target = 1 power = 1 casting_level = 0 casting_mode = 1 timing = 1 duration = 0 parameter1 = 0 parameter2 = 522 resist_dispel = 0 special = 1 END

just sets the spell state, it's not supposed to display any menus, whether in game, in NI or in DOS window.

I think his problem was with the "special" field not setting at all, regardless of the state value.

Do the new versions create file copies immediately? If you "Add copy of," does the new file appear immediately

Yes.

This reminds me how the game would crash when equipping an item into specific slot, if there was a running script with HasSpell(Player1,SOME_INNATE) check and the innate's level was not 1.

But otherwise everything worked perfectly fine, as long as it wasn't checking for memorized spells in the items' structure.

https://github.com/G...ib/ds.tph#L1025

LAF ds_resolve_stat INT_VAR ids=1 STR_VAR id= MY_NEW_SPELLSTATE RET stat_ind=stat_ind END
PRINT ~MY_NEW_SPELLSTATE was assigned %stat_ind% value~

For more context/commentary, see from around here https://github.com/G...lib/ds.tph#L605