12 replies to this topic

[Qwinn]

In this thread, similar to the last one, I will accumulate issues that I have learned about and that are planned tol be fixed in the next version.

The next version will, if all goes well, introduce fixes to the game engine. The current issues I'm hoping to address via fixes to the game engine are as follows:

1) Fix to the FullHeal and FullHealEx functions, which are used when you are healed via dialogues - most significantly, by Mebbeth and the Curst Hermit. Currently, the functions do not heal hit points granted by magical items, and can even hurt a character that is currently at their full hitpoints including such items.

2) Fix to the "Usable by Xaositect" flag on items, which currently makes an item completely unusable. At this point, it would only apply to the restored Rat Charm item.

3) Deactivation of the engine's mechanism for triggering banters. This would obviously only be packaged with the Tweak Pack Banter Accelerator. If the engine can be made to stop producing banters, I can improve the functionality of banters over how they work now. This won't produce any new banters however.

4) Removal of the "feature" that resets every creature's morale to 10 every 8 game hours. What this means in practice is the possible restoration (usually but not always for when you treat your NPC's badly) of one dialogue line from Morte, about 3 from Annah, and about 3 from Dak'kon. You'll also actually be able to get Dakkon's sword upgraded without the application of major metagaming knowledge, and in light of that, the highest-morale version of Dak'kon's blades will be upgraded to provide the same AC bonus as the mid-morale blade.

5) The prybar will be given a +10% chance to bash locks, as implied in the description of that item. See Lock Fixes in the non-engine fix fix list.

6) PickPocketFailed() trigger fixed, which allows the activation of the code meant to have Eli Havelock teach you pickpocketing if you tried to do it to him and failed.

7) A number of portals would stop working if you changed class, and you'd have to save/reload or reload the area to get them working again. This is fixed.

8 ) If you had a class-restricted item equipped, and you changed class, the item would be unequipped automatically. But if you had a faction or alignment restricted item equipped, and you changed faction or alignment, the item would stay equipped (outlined in red) until you unequipped it. This is fixed so that changing alignment and faction will unequip items in the same way changing class does.

9) The problem where, if any of your stats were changed in dialogue, then your item stat boosts would stop working until the dialogue ended is now fixed in the engine. The various workarounds in previous versions of the Fixpack (to the various pickpockets and Ravel) will be deprecated as a result.

10) Expanded journal. In my test game for version 1.0 of this Fixpack, I accumulated about 470 dialogue entries, but only 128 were actually visible in my journal by the end. After that point, an old entry scrolls off the top for every new entry you get. Scient has already produced a patch that allowed me to see 370 out of 470 entries, and hopefully will be able to nail all of them. But it'll at least be greatly expanded, even if we can't get them all in in the end.



Note that all of these fixes to the engine were designed by scient, who deserves -tremendous- credit for some really phenomenal work. He's been working like a slave to make all these engine fixes possible, and my only contribution (other than helping test and providing information on the nature of the bugs) is the WeiDU patching of the engine itself, but the information of what bytes to find and what bytes to replace them with, all him. And that's the seriously hard part. Huge thanks to scient for making this Fixpack way more comprehensive and solid than I ever thought possible.


EDIT: At this point, if you're planning on playing a game sometime soon, I'd wait. It looks like the next release should be pretty major, lots of new stuff going in to both the Fixpack and UB that I promise will make it seem like a whole new gaming experience. ETA? Eh, a month, I guess - I plan on doing a full run through and test every last thing, like I did for version 1.0. The current release version 2.0 didn't get a full test.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 17 September 2008 - 01:11 PM.

[Qwinn]

This post will track non-engine related bugs, and will be edited as new ones come in.

1) My casting speed fix in version 1.00-2.00 to Power Word Blind applied to the wrong spell (Conflagration). Unfortunately this means that Power Word Blind's casting speed remained at what it is in the unmodded game, 8 (it should be 1), and Conflagration, which was originally speed 0 and should be speed 9, was changed to speed 1 (so at least it was a change in the right direction, heh). Thanks to SKARDAVNELNATE for spotting this error on my part. This error will be fixed next release, however minor.

2) If strref 106498 in the dialog.tlk file had a sound file attached, that sound file would often play as your NPC's voice-only banters. Put in placeholder so that string will never have a sound file attached. (Note: The original dialog.tlk file had 106497 strrefs, which sort of explains what's significant about that particular strref number)

3) In conjunction with the engine fix to the PickPocketFailed function, fixed the scripting and dialogue bugs that prevented Eli Havelock from giving you a boost to pickpocket skill when you failed to pickpocket him in the Festhall.

4) Lock fixes. Most locks in the game were set to trivial difficulty, making the open-locks skill essentially useless. I did a comprehensive review of every locked door and container and set locks to be a reasonable difficulty for where you come across them in game. (I did not add locks to any existing unlocked doors or containers). Note that you now -will- need the prybar to open a couple of important containers in the Mortuary unless you're starting with a respectable strength - the prybar has been modified to give a +10% bash bonus when it is equipped as your primary weapon, as the prybar's description implied it should (thanks to scient for that engine tweak). Note that yes, you can still go through the game as a solo fighter bashing every chest you come across, but you'd need a -very- high strength to bash them all. Also note that there is a luck element to attempting to open a lock (via any method), so if you fail the first time, later tries may succeed. Finally, note that this makes the previously useless Knock spell actually very useful now.

5) Couple of big fixes to Agril's dialogue. You will no longer get his "Free me" dialogue when meeting him again in Curst in Carceri, which could lead to getting his reward twice.

6) Significant changes to the alternate versions of Dak'kon's Zerth Blade to properly reflect the improvement in the blade that one is supposed to see as Dak'kon's morale improves, which thanks to scient's engine fix will actually work properly now. There's a poll thread on the Fixpack forum with more details for those interested.

7) Fixes to the Foundry Alarm system. Angering the Foundry citizens will no longer necessarily cut off all quests. If you mildly anger them, leaving the Foundry as everyone yells at you to and coming back in will calm them down. If you -really- made them mad, but didn't kill anyone in the Foundry, come back in 2 game days and they'll have calmed down. If you really angered them -and- murdered a Godsman in their home via combat, then as before this will cut you off from any remaining Godsman quests. They won't be getting over that anytime soon.

8 ) If you managed to anger a joinable NPC enough that they leave the party and attack you, and then you die or leave the area, when you return to that NPC they would still be an enemy (red circle) but would just stand there and not attack you again (because their AI script is useless outside of the party). Henceforth, they will remember your dripping ebilness and attack you whenever they see you. (Thanks to Per Jorner for noting this issue with Vhailor at the Pillar of Skulls, led me to discovering it for everyone else)

9) Fixed a bug in my fix to Sarossa's curse dialogue that prevented you from being able to apologize to her, making her curses permanent. Sorry about that.

The following fixes came about, one way or another, as a result of investigating reports from Per Jorner's buglist. Credit and thanks to him for identifying the bugs.

10) The Festhall is divided up by room into various mutual defense pacts, meaning if you attack someone in a given room, everyone in that room will attack you, but no one else will. Unfortunately, all named NPC's would protect others in a given room, but were not themselves assigned to that room's "team" and would therefore not be protected by anyone else. This caused all sorts of very weird behavior, such as a lecturer's audience asking you to not interrupt the dead lecturer from giving his lecture. This is now fixed. Jumble Murdersense will no longer defend anyone but himself, which prevents his quests from being very easily broken as they were previously (and stop TNO from getting cursed permanently in some situations).

11) On a one-time basis, Diligence can fix your reputation should you anger the Harmonium guard for some reason. Previously, though, any -existing- guards that were aggroed would remain aggroed. Now, when Diligence helps you out in this manner, summoned guards will go neutral and leave the area, and permanent area guards will go neutral and go back to their normal duties.

12) The required lawfulness to get Vhailor's various strength bonuses was set too low, so low that the +1 bonus was actually impossible to get. You now need to be a bit more lawful to get each level of his strength bonuses. The requirement for the best bonus went from 25 to 35 - in my test game, by the time I found him I'd already reached 50, and I got my fair share of chaotic hits along the way.

13) In Grace's dialogue, when you answer her question about the tenth student, you'd get an experience reward in some paths but not in other identical paths. The experience reward now exists in all paths.

14) You could renounce the Dustmen for the Godsmen and still keep the Dead Truce. Fixed.

15) From Per's buglist: "Bug: The three twig plots in Ravel's secret garden were only supposed to create one Black-Barbed Branch Wand each, but they're bugged so only the first one is flagged as taken no matter which one you use." Confirmed and fixed. This is actually a fairly important fix - there is a use for an unconverted seed later on in the game, but this bug would allow you to convert all the seeds into wands, so you wouldn't have any left when you needed them.

16) From Per's buglist: "Bug: Many items in the game don't have weights matching their descriptions, for instance the Rods of Modron Might which weigh nothing." I went through and did a comparison of description weight to actual weight for all items in game. Indeed, there was a number of items where they did not match. Set all items with discrepancies to match the description weight. Affected items: Cheese, Crimson Veil, 4 out of 5 versions of the Entropic Blade (this included 2 changes to weapon speed as well), Mortuary Front Door Key, Gehraise's Ring, Mirror of Imaging, Rod of Modron Might, and Tarnished Silver Bracelet.

17) Ignus's xp rewards for a particular conversation choice were inconsistent - one path gave you 10k xp and two others gave you 6k xp, with no apparent reason for the discrepancy. Standardized all three paths to an 8k xp reward.

18) Two conversation paths when claiming Deionarra's legacy from Iannis were bugged, giving the xp reward twice. Fixed.

19) Giving Conall the Anarchist password before Leena would cut off Leena's quest. Fixed.

20) More duplicate journal entries removed, more misspellings fixed in the english version, yadda yadda.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 17 September 2008 - 01:13 PM.

[scient]

I thought I would add an updated changelog of fixes thus far for v3.0. If anyone can think of potential engine bugs even if work arounds exist, please post them and I will look into each. So far the list below fixes the majority of major bugs in game engine from, oh past 9 years. I came across threads about Choasmen/morale stuff from 2002/2003.

edit:
Due to a potential bug with game mechanics that Platter pointed out, I've revised how morale system works. In the end, it comes out to be a more efficient system with less areas patched (removed patches to PC triggers, Dak level up) and did away with using 2nd proficiency byte. I've updated changelog to reflect these new changes. Also I've found that there is a larger problem with thief roll over than just in PermaStatChange. I believe it is a display problem with profile window but until I fix it I've moved it to unresolved bugs.

I thought it might be possible to have PC's morale act in the same way that NPC's do but due to bug that Platter pointed out this is not possible. I don't feel comfortable now with the level of changes require to try and implement this. Basically a third morale value would have to be added that was independent of max. Both cases of PC's either in party or NPC mode will be handled in the same way. PC's morale is mainly used in dialog options and Dak's sword quest while NPC's use it to calculate when they go into flee mode during combat.

General Changelog:

• Fixed Chaosmen (Xaositects) item flag. A conditional check was opposite of what it should have been allowing Chaosmen only items to become usable by anyone but Chaosmen. This only effected RATCHARM which now has had its item usability flags rolled back to original.
  
• Fixed FullHeal() and FullHealEx() to use MAXHITPOINTS instead of base hp. This would cause healing from Mebbeth and Hermit to actually damage you if you had hp bonuses from items or spells.
  
• Fixed PermanentStatChange() so that once it is finished, item and spell stat bonuses aren't reset. This fixes countless problems where triggers could fail because of incorrect stats (pickpockets, Ravel, etc). All the associated work arounds for this problem have been rolled back.
  
• Fixed thief skill roll over bug where it was possible to get negative skills if level went above 127. This was due to an incorrect maximum skill value check inside PermanentStatChange(). The associated work arounds for this have also been rolled back.
  
• Added a check into SetGlobal if faction is altered to call a check that removes any unequippable items (red) for the new faction. A string compare is done, so this check is only triggered when SetGlobal handles the various JOIN_FACTION's. Also added the same check without string compare into alignment update function. This is only accessed if alignment actually changes so not necessarily after every alignment modification. Both emulate the way SetNamelessClass() does item usability check. This fixes instances where items that were no longer usable due to faction or alignment changes would turned red but still stay on paperdoll giving stat boosts.
  
• Fixed how morale is handled for both NPC/PC. See separate morale changelog below. This is by far the most extensive of all the fixes.
  
• Disabled engine banter to prevent interference with Qwinn's superior method. Engine banter was triggered by an internal ACTION id 168 which is now set to NoAction(). This will require Qwinn's banter modification which it is now possible to disable the banter restart if no more banters are available. Before the engine banter would conflict with Qwinn's banter by modify banter associated globals.
  
• Roll back all known no cd patches and instead use a more efficient method which allows a large amount of "dead" space used by various of the above fixes. It doesn't matter which version of exe you have (2/4 CD) or who's patcher was used (platter/mofo/ProfDrMorph/Rover) because they all patch the exact same things.

Morale changelog:

• NPC/PC: created a new global variable as part of CRE structure to handle max morale. This is done within the exe itself upon loading a NPC/PC into memory so there were no modifications to CRE files. This will not break other mods who have CRE files in override folder as long as modder adheres to CRE structure. The offset used for max morale is one of two weapon proficiencies left over from BG1 and unused by PST (offset 0x74). This is setup similar to how hp works with two values (current/max).
  
• NPC/PC: rewrote part of a function that would normally reset PC/NPC morale to 10 after 8 game hours or RestParty() to instead reset morale to PC/NPC max. This is so temporary effects on morale wear off over time. Added a check for NPC'ed PC's to handle them the same way as PC's.
  
• NPC: rewrote part of function where "morale recovery time" is used to trigger a check whether or not current morale is less/greater than max. Then it sub/add 1 to current morale in direction of max morale. This is so effects will wear off with game time like when a NPC is in flee mode (yellow circle). Before it would move current morale toward 10. This would cause certain NPC's who had high morale like Abishai, Moridor's box fiend, etc to start to lose their morale when they shouldn't. The same goes for NPC's with low morale like certain merchants, etc who would actually gain morale. In same function, any NPC who has morale recovery time of zero (Ravel) would actually automatically get morale set to 10. This has also been fixed to instead set morale to max. Added a check for NPC's who are PC's to automatically reset morale to max and exit out of function. This prevents a potential bug where PC's with low morale who leave group could end up in permanent flee mode (thanks to Platter for pointing this out).
  
• PC: modified function that handles all changes to morale by script actions to also update max morale.
  
• NPC: changed a morale reset from 10 to max when NPC dies
  
• NPC/PC: various roll over fixes where negative morale would turn into 20 -> integrated into above fixes

Unresolved bugs:

• Problem with high and low values of lore, resistances and thief skills showing incorrect values or disappearing completely from player's stat profile.

Edited by scient, 28 August 2008 - 11:47 AM.

[Qwinn]

Added these to the non-engine bug list in post #2:

2) Per's buglist contained the following bug description: "* Bug: The three twig plots in Ravel's secret garden were only supposed to create one Black-Barbed Branch Wand each, but they're bugged so only the first one is flagged as taken no matter which one you use." I've confirmed this bug, and it will be fixed in the next version. This is actually a fairly important fix - there is a use for an unconverted seed later on in the game, but this bug would allow you to convert all the seeds into wands, so you wouldn't have any left when you needed them.

3) If strref 106498 in the dialog.tlk file had a sound file attached, that sound file would often play as your NPC's voice-only banters. Put in placeholder so that string will never have a sound file attached. (Note: The original dialog.tlk file had 106497 strrefs, which sort of explains what's significant about that particular strref number)

4) In conjunction with the engine fix to the PickPocketFailed function, fixed the bugs that prevented Eli Havelock from giving you a boost to pickpocket skill when you failed to pickpocket him in the Festhall.

Edited by Qwinn, 13 September 2008 - 08:24 AM.

[Qwinn]

From Per Jorner's list: "Bug: Many items in the game don't have weights matching their descriptions, for instance the Rods of Modron Might which weigh nothing."

I went through and did a comparison of description weight to actual weight for all items in game. Indeed, there was a number of items where they did not match. Set all items with discrepancies to match the description weight. Affected items: Cheese, Crimson Veil, 4 out of 5 versions of the Entropic Blade (this included 2 changes to weapon speed as well), Mortuary Front Door Key, Gehraise's Ring, Mirror of Imaging, Rod of Modron Might, and Tarnished Silver Bracelet.

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

I had the honor of hearing from the original designer of the Foundry (will leave his real name out for privacy reasons, though he didn't request that, I just don't want to presume).

One of the fixes made in Platter's Fixpack 1.37 was to change around some options in Thildon's dialogue that would cause everyone in the Foundry to get upset with you, cutting off all Foundry quests permanently. There are actually two levels of "Alarm" in the Foundry, Alarm1 and Alarm2. The OD (original designer) informed me that the intent was for the alarms to reset if you left the Foundry and came back. At least for Alarm1, this seems quite fitting, and in version 3.0 forward I will remove the changes to Thildon's dialogue regarding the Alarm1 status, and make it so that entering the main Foundry area from the Lower Ward will turn off the Alarm1 status so you can move forward with the quests.

The Alarm2 status is a bit more problematic, as it usually is set by causing the Godsmen to actually go hostile. While the intent -was- apparently to reset Alarm2 also - ("Still, it can be reset over a period of time, or maybe when the player leaves the ward.'), I'm not sure how to implement that reset in a way that makes sense. It just doesn't seem right that the Godsmen would forgive you for killing one of their own right in front of them. I'm going to hold off on that change until I can come up with a good way to handle it... but the Alarm1 fix will be going into the next version.

Current working idea: Add scripts to all of the Foundry denizens to track if they're actually killed (unless they're supposed to be for some reason, of course). If Alarm1 is set, turn it off by reentering the Foundry from the Lower Ward. If Alarm2 is set, turn it off after 2 game days unless you actually killed a Godsman. If you got Alarm2 and -did- kill a Godsman, it won't reset, you've killed a Godsman in their own home and you'll never get back in their good graces. I've asked the OD if that matches original intent, hopefully I'll hear back.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 15 September 2008 - 03:01 AM.

[Qwinn]

From Per's buglist:

"If you anger anyone in the Clerk's Ward, alerting the Harmonium, you can talk to Diligence to call them off. It doesn't do anything about already spawned hostile guards, however, and you can happily kill those off."

Confirmed and fixed. Now, having Diligence call off the guards will cause summoned guards to go neutral and leave the area, and any permanent guards that were enemies to go neutral and return to their normal positions. Note that Diligence will only do this for you once, and it's perfectly possible to have someone in the Clerk's Ward summon them again.

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

From Per Jorner's buglist:

"* You can't get the lowest STR bonus from Vhailor. If you don't qualify for the STR +2 option, you don't qualify for any bonus in the first place."

Confirmed. To even get the conversation option that leads into him giving his strength bonus, your Law rating has to be at least 15 (any less and you'd be Neutral). But then, the bonuses are: Law < 15: +1 STR. Law 16-24: +2 STR. Law 25+ : +3 STR.

It seems very odd that it was -intended- that you'd get even the smallest bonus for a score that doesn't even register as "Lawful", but rather "Neutral". And frankly, 25 Law is pretty damn low for the +3 strength megabonus. Very easy to get. I checked and I had 50 Law in my test game when I found Vhailor, and I wasn't even being particularly zealous about avoiding chaotic hits.

I'm going to resolve this issue by making it: Law 15-24: +1 STR. Law 25-34: +2 STR. Law 35+ : +3 STR. (Adding 10 points to each of the 3 brackets) In my judgment, this very likely fits the intent more than what actually shipped with the game, and it will make the 3 intended bonus levels available. Still totally possible to get the +3 strength bonus and spawn Adahn, too, with some cushion to spare.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 15 September 2008 - 03:41 PM.

[Qwinn]

Dangnabbit...

A fix I made in v2.0 had a problem. Sarossa was supposed to be able to curse you if you lied to her, and on subsequent conversations you can apologize and get her to take the curse off. The problem is that, due to a bad state weight, once you were assigned to talk to Sandoz or became a Godsman, you'd never get the opportunity to apologize again. This will be fixed in version 3.0.

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Posts 1 (engine fixes) and 2 (non engine fixes) have been updated to reflect all changes going into the next version as of the date of this post.


Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Oh, just to add... the above lists are in regards to the Fixpack.

Unfinished Business is slated to have three new components.

1. Restored Mebbeth will restore a couple mid-length conversation paths with Mebbeth. This is the smallest of the three, but still pretty good stuff.

2. The Restored Sounds and Banters component gets a -hell- of an update, with 15 restored and fully voiced new banters, 27 new voiced flirts by Morte when you talk to female zombies, and one new voiced banter by Grace when you first enter the Hive with her in your party.

3. Expanded Deionarra's Truth mod. This rather sizable mod will contain a bunch of new content written by myself, the intent of which is to give a basis for restoring a conversation path with Iannis where you tell him his daughter's fate, and a short bit with Yves the Storyteller afterwards. I think you'll all really enjoy the new content, I'm pretty proud of how it came out. It'll be a challenge, and there'll be a very nice prize at the end, tho be warned that the prize is both class and alignment restricted. But for that class and alignment, it's probably in the top 5 best items in the game.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 17 September 2008 - 05:11 PM.

[Qwinn]

Most of the secondary bestiary entries that were restored originally in the Restoration Pack will also be restored in the next version of the Fixpack. Credit to Cilantro for doing it first.

All of these entries exist in the original dialogue file, and thus will not need additional translation.

These are secondary entries, meaning that you will get the original bestiary entry until you meet some condition (often by accepting the person into your party, or getting some information from them) at which point their entry gets updated with additional information.

The alu-fiend entry added by the Restoration Pack is -not- being added. (I would if there were a distinct bestiary picture for the alu-fiend, but there isn't. Restoration Pack just reused the Clerk's Ward Female picture)

NPC's that will get references to their secondary bestiary entries added to the beast.ini file are: Annah, Dak'kon, Dhall, Dustmen (both male and female), Grace, Ignus, Lothar, Nordom, Trias and Vhailor.

The placing in the Fixpack, rather than UB, is based upon my normal standards for what goes where in this regard. The Fixpack generally gets minor restorations for which the technical aspect of the fix is quite simple and there's no grounds to believe they were intentionally removed or passed over. In other words, Fixpack gets it when in my judgment it wasn't precisely unfinished, more like simply overlooked (and thus more of a bugfix than a true restoration).

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 23 September 2008 - 04:10 PM.

[Qwinn]

Just for the sake of thoroughness, and predicated on the idea that every bestiary picture available should have a bestiary entry (and every entry should have a distinct picture), I compared the list of all the available pictures with all the actual entries I got in a full game, just to see if any others were missing.

Results:

1. Midwife. I restored that in Fixpack 2.0.

2. Secondary picture of The Transcendent One. The image you get in the unmodded game is of "Unknown" TO - JRTRZKN.BMP - shadowed and mysterious, that you get before you actually ever meet him. There's another picture - JRSHTKN.BMP - which is a well-lighted, complete picture of TO. There's a mechanism in the bestiary file that suggests that the image was supposed to get updated to the new one when you finally met TO face to face, but if it works at all it's probably based on a variable setting (similar to the "global" that updates the descriptions, but for the image) and since no other bestiary entry uses it, and no other IE game has a bestiary, there's no real way to know what the setting is. Doesn't really matter much though, everything indicates that if you did get the update, it would be for a bare few moments before the game was over, and you'd pretty much have to check the bestiary while in combat to ever see it. If I ever find out what that setting is, I'll make it work, but I'm not sure how that's ever going to happen.

3. Ghoul Male Stone Golem. It doesn't even have a description in the dialogue file (well, it does, but the description is ~Ghoul, Male, Stone Golem Description.~) Shame, cause it's one of the cooler bestiary pictures. Those with NI can check it out, it's JRGSTKN.BMP.

And that's it. All of the other pics have a working bestiary pic attached, so not much room for additional restorations in that respect.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 24 September 2008 - 02:27 AM.