199 replies to this topic

[Jarno Mikkola]

Strontium Dog, on Dec 19 2009, 04:59 PM, said:

1 interesting solution:- 1 of the really annoying things about some NPC mods is that some of them leave permanently if you kick them out of the party. Callisto is one example, who I'd hoped to use to replace the godawful Drizz't NPC as soon as the party came out of the Underdark and have the empty Imoen slot filled until we reach Imoen in Spellhold. My solution was to keep Callisto and my Bhaalspawn PC far away from each other, kick her out of the party, and then when she goes up to the Bhaalpsawn PC amd asks to eb taken back, then cast the imprisonment spell on her(my Bhaalspawn PC has something like -4 to casting speed so it's really quick). Then all I have to do, presumably, at a later stage, is to return to the relevant area Callisto was imprisoned and use the "freedom" spell on her, and she can then get back into the party.

Reading the Scroll of Stonecurse will do the same too. Or you could store her out somewhere you don't intend to return really fast, like into the BG1 areas with:

CLUAConsole:MoveToArea("xxxxxx")

...when only the kicked out character is selected, and after they have moved to the safe zone, kick them out.
The only risk in the stonecurse and imprisonment is that their romances etc. script files may keep running when you visit the area you teleported the NPC away from, and it can cause Lags too, so be very careful.

[Lollorian]

Strontium Dog, on Dec 19 2009, 08:29 PM, said:

Well, I solved things in a simpler way, I just got rid of Wulfgar from my party.

Getting rid of a perma-crit hitter??

Strontium Dog, on Dec 19 2009, 08:29 PM, said:

1 of the really annoying things about some NPC mods is that some of them leave permanently if you kick them out of the party.

Please tell that to Callisto herself (now that a new version's coming and all )

Cheers,
Lol

[Strontium Dog]

Next issue:- Having finally left Chateau Irenicus, I had Hrothgar(from the NEJ mod) pestering me, on 2 occasions, to go to Ulcaster. I fobbed him off while trying to get together all my party-members(well, all except Viconia as I can't have more than 6 characters in my party and Imoen is in Spellhold). Anyway, now that I want to go to Ulcaster, that area (along with all other past BG1 areas) is designated "unreachable" when i click on it. How can I get to Ulcaster? I haven't had Hrothgar pester me again to go to Ulcaster despite resting 3 times more than I needed and the last thing I want is for him to pester me to go to Ulcaster when I'm in the middle of some quest in or around Athkatla. So what command/global affect value should I change via shadowkeeper in order to get Hrothgar to ask me again to go to Ulcaster?

Lastly, the spoilers for the Callisto mod all state that there are 4 mod-specific encounters(3 in the Athkatla area) and the 4th and last encounter in the area in the Underdark just before the Drow city. What I want to do is use movetoarea() command to get my party along with Callisto to that underdark area just before doing the Bodhi quests and Spellhold, finish that 4th encounter, and then go back to Athkatla and do the Yoshimo/Kachiko big quest and Spellhold where I will temporarily dispose of Callisto and replace her with Imoen onwards. Can anyone tell me what the specific area-code is for that Underdark area? Thanks!

I also want to finally get rid of Drizz't just after exiting the Underdark. From what I understand from some past postings, I don't need to have Drizz't (or any other ROT character in my party from that point onwards - the chapter 6 icewind dale adventure can be done without him - is that correct?

My mistake:- it seems the Callisto mod 4th encounter only occurs after the party has done some business in the Drow city. I suppose I'll have to get rid of Korgan temporarily so as to have both Imoen and Callisto in the party for that period.

Edited by Strontium Dog, 19 December 2009 - 09:32 AM.

[Strontium Dog]

Just read a spoiler on that forum stating that Callisto will stab you in the back at the gates of Suldanessellar. Can't say I want to invest much into a character that I am forced to kill before reaching TOB. I want the perfect(evil-aligned) party after all, preferably from the start of Bg1 to the end of Ascension in TOB. Trouble is Sarevok can only be gotten in TOB , which is too late, and only Kagain/=Korgan and Viconia and Shar-teel are any real fun as evil-aligned characters(Edwin being boring, Montaron(BG1 and 2) I've used too many times and he has no character-specific quests) and the few other evil-aligned characters in various other mods don't seem too interesting - unless someone knows something I don't ). I would love to have an evil-aligned Faldorn or Safana or, best of all, a (non-vampiric Bodhi(after killing her in chapter 6) in the party(Faldorn and Safana were never convincingly neutral-aligned, IMO) but, sadly, no one else has thought of it(except for the tiny part that Bodhi can play as a party-member right at the end of Ascension and her participation in the Tortured Souls major quest), and my own modding skills are so puny that I've only been able to do some BG2- soundsets and portraits and that's it.

Edited by Strontium Dog, 19 December 2009 - 10:25 AM.

[Solaufein]

So much for spoilers eh? Then again this forum doesn't have any spoiler tags.

NPCs that get kicked and leave forever, would you go back to a group that tossed you aside like yesterday's trash to make room for someone else?

[Jarno Mikkola]

Solaufein, on Dec 19 2009, 09:41 PM, said:

So much for spoilers eh? Then again this forum doesn't have any spoiler tags.

Spoiler

Ouh

?

Solaufein, on Dec 19 2009, 09:41 PM, said:

NPCs that get kicked and leave forever, would you go back to a group that tossed you aside like yesterday's trash to make room for someone else?

Well, I didn't went to the bathroom in 'the situation'... so the NPC might ask if you really wish to never see them again, and if they say you would,where should they meet... ... but I did wait at the door.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 19 December 2009 - 11:53 AM.

[Solaufein]

[Strontium Dog]

Apologies, I meant no offense re Callisto mod. In fact, I rather like her dialogue. It's just that I feel forced to do some power-gaming as I have the BWP installed along with the truly fearsome SCS2 AI and a few Tactics components, and every time I have to switch to another character because some blasted mega-mod requires a particular NPC to join you for you to play that mod, I have to change the new character to a fighter/mage/thief or fighter/mage/cleric, complete with wholly new spell-list of 24 spells per spell-level, and that takes ages, so I would far rather be allowed to play the same 6 characters for most or all of the BG1/BG2/TOB game if possible and not have to switch to new characters at a constant rate .

1 possible way out:- If I have to kill Callisto around chapter 7, I suppose I could resurrect her and she'd then be no longer hostile?

I must admit the SCS AI, after not being too challenging in the BG1 portion of the game has now become truly terrifying in the BG2 portion of the game. Whereas in previous games I easily creamed opponents such as Mencar Pebblecrusher and gang in that inn in Waukeen's Promenade, I now find that the enemy mage in that battle is a seriously lethal threat against my 5 14/14/17 fighter/mage/thieves and 14/14/15 fighter/mage/cleric, and that I now am going to have to plan as carefully against enemy mages as I used to have to do when I first played the game all those years ago. Of course, it hasn't helped that I deliberately installed the spell-50 mod in order to make mages more powerful than the weakling wizards they normally are in AD&D games, though the latter was a necessary measure.

[Strontium Dog]

An utter, gamebreaking disaster has occurred and I would deeply appreciate any help in solving this problem. Basically, after getting Korgan into my party in the Copper Coronet, Korgan would constantly stall if I tried to move him. I would, for example, point him to a corner some distance off, and he would very slowly walk towards it and then stop well before he got to the destination I pointed to, so that I would have to click several times , every few seconds, on the required location, before he finally arrived there. If I pointed to a spot only a short distance away, he would stop and face round towards my Bhaalspawn character, if moving further away, he would still have this slowed behaviour but not face back towards the Bhaalspawn.

On top of that, when i tried to get Kurgan to drink a potion, as an experiment, he was absolutely incapable of doing so. I presumed, at first, there must be something wrong with the script, yet I thought I turned that off when I switched Korgan's script from "default" to "none".

So, basically, Korgan, my most favourite character in the whole of the BG Trilogy, is the only character so far which has this gamebreaking bug. Does anyone here have any suggestions on how to fix this? The only hope I have is that when I got rid of Korgan, and he then came up to the Bhaalspawn to ask him to reconsider him being chucked out of the party, Korgan was walking at a normal rate, obviously without this bug happening.

I should mention that this bug happened immediately after Korgan joined, so subsequent savegames in which I'd added extra abilities/spells to Korgan's stats couldn;'t have had anything to do with it.

[Lollorian]

I've got this stutter bug with Jaheira and Nehtaniel before. It was fixed in the case of Jaheira by setting some kind of variable (damn me for short-term memory loss )

Did you know that you could check if your game's stuttering (even minimal) by using tooltips?? Set tooltips to refresh instantly through options and keep the cursor on any NPC, if the tooltip refreshes without you doing anything, you have a stutter

In case of jaheira, turned out that she was set to conflict with someone, but couldn't because the other NPC was not in my party... so the script kept firing, which causes the entire party to walk like Crysis-on-a-PIII

About Nehtaniel, this happened when I summoned him through Fate Spirit in ToB, still dunno why though

Save the stuttered game somewhere, try the stutter solutions in Jarno's FAQ (in the stickied threads) ... especially #19 and whatever the case, DON'T overwrite the stuttering game (in case someone wants to debug the problem )

Cheers,
Lol

Edited by Lollorian, 20 December 2009 - 05:01 PM.

[Hoppy]

Strontium Dog, on Dec 20 2009, 02:57 PM, said:

An utter, gamebreaking disaster has occurred and I would deeply appreciate any help in solving this problem. Basically, after getting Korgan into my party in the Copper Coronet, Korgan would constantly stall if I tried to move him. I would, for example, point him to a corner some distance off, and he would very slowly walk towards it and then stop well before he got to the destination I pointed to, so that I would have to click several times , every few seconds, on the required location, before he finally arrived there. If I pointed to a spot only a short distance away, he would stop and face round towards my Bhaalspawn character, if moving further away, he would still have this slowed behaviour but not face back towards the Bhaalspawn.

On top of that, when i tried to get Kurgan to drink a potion, as an experiment, he was absolutely incapable of doing so. I presumed, at first, there must be something wrong with the script, yet I thought I turned that off when I switched Korgan's script from "default" to "none".

So, basically, Korgan, my most favourite character in the whole of the BG Trilogy, is the only character so far which has this gamebreaking bug. Does anyone here have any suggestions on how to fix this? The only hope I have is that when I got rid of Korgan, and he then came up to the Bhaalspawn to ask him to reconsider him being chucked out of the party, Korgan was walking at a normal rate, obviously without this bug happening.

I should mention that this bug happened immediately after Korgan joined, so subsequent savegames in which I'd added extra abilities/spells to Korgan's stats couldn;'t have had anything to do with it.

I remember having a problem with Korgan a long time ago. Sounds the same and if you do kick him out, what does his dialog say? If it says something about any nonsense other than being kicked out, then there is some global setting for his quest that has been set already.

Did you clear out the mummies in the tomb underneath the graveyard? There is something about clearing that area early as it sets a global and Korgan wants to start dialog but cannot because the area check is not valid.

I bet it is this:

IF
	Dead("mummy")
	Global("TombEmpty","LOCALS",0)
	InParty(Myself)
	See(Player1)
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		StartDialogueNoSet(Player1)
END

This would ring true for any creature that has a script name of Mummy; probably many in BG1 portion of your game. But his dialog may have a specific check for the area AR080x, whatever it is.

CLUAConsole:SetGlobal("SPRITE_IS_DEADMUMMY","GLOBAL",0)

is what I did a long time ago. This should have been a fixpack thing but I guess it still exists. I assume, too much though as it could be something entirely different.

Edited by Hoppy, 20 December 2009 - 08:41 PM.

[Strontium Dog]

Hoppy, on Dec 21 2009, 04:40 AM, said:

I remember having a problem with Korgan a long time ago. Sounds the same and if you do kick him out, what does his dialog say? If it says something about any nonsense other than being kicked out, then there is some global setting for his quest that has been set already.

Korgan just talks about getting kicked out and asking if he can rejoin(or not). No mention of anything else.

Quote

Did you clear out the mummies in the tomb underneath the graveyard? There is something about clearing that area early as it sets a global and Korgan wants to start dialog but cannot because the area check is not valid.

I only just got into Athkatla from Chateau Irenicus. I thought, though, that the whole point of joining with Korgan in the first place was to clear out those very mummies in the graveyard after joining with him.

Quote

I bet it is this:

IF
	Dead("mummy")
	Global("TombEmpty","LOCALS",0)
	InParty(Myself)
	See(Player1)
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		StartDialogueNoSet(Player1)
END

This would ring true for any creature that has a script name of Mummy; probably many in BG1 portion of your game. But his dialog may have a specific check for the area AR080x, whatever it is.

CLUAConsole:SetGlobal("SPRITE_IS_DEADMUMMY","GLOBAL",0)

is what I did a long time ago. This should have been a fixpack thing but I guess it still exists. I assume, too much though as it could be something entirely different.

OK, I'll try that CLUAConsole command to see if it works.Hope it's the right one. Now, I have to find the Jarno stuttering threads, presumably 1 of the stickies at the top of this forum.

Edited by Strontium Dog, 21 December 2009 - 02:07 AM.

[Strontium Dog]

I just did a search for "Korgan stuttering" and found an old thread on this forum which stated that someone had had the exact same problem with Korgan - apparently, killing a mummy in the Northern Citadel NTOSC quest in BG1 sets the sprite is dead mummy global command, with Korgan trying but failing to give his speech in the tomb of Kaza. Removing the command via shadowkeeper should do the trick, apparently.

Incidentally, I started my current game in November last year. I'm curious as to whether there's been any significant changes to the standard BWP install since that time(ie lots of new, minor mods, repair of bugs etc.) - or is it just much the same?

Edited by Strontium Dog, 21 December 2009 - 02:19 AM.

[Ranadiel]

Strontium Dog, on Dec 21 2009, 05:16 AM, said:

Incidentally, I started my current game in November last year. I'm curious as to whether there's been any significant changes to the standard BWP install since that time(ie lots of new, minor mods, repair of bugs etc.) - or is it just much the same?

Well there is the BWS now, so downloading mods is automated now. I think there have been a few versions since last November, so I can't really recall all the major changes since then. Obviously new mods have been added and they are trying to constantly add new fixes. I can't really think of any maj....oh right Taimon's hacks. Scrollable spell books have been added.

[Lollorian]

Ranadiel, on Dec 21 2009, 04:48 PM, said:

I can't really think of any maj....oh right Taimon's hacks. Scrollable spell books have been added.

And probably soon ... scrollable kits and new animations Great times for BGII

Also, BWP7 turned out to be buggy as hell and the version was almost unusable ... not because of the BWP per se, but because there were a large number of major updates to the big mods, which changed component numbers and such effectively screwing up your install So, with BWP8.2, they've started releasing more regular updates for the BWPFixpack (small ones with just fixes) so that updated mods are no problem now

Cheers,
Lol

[Strontium Dog]

Lollorian, on Dec 21 2009, 11:43 AM, said:

Ranadiel, on Dec 21 2009, 04:48 PM, said:

I can't really think of any maj....oh right Taimon's hacks. Scrollable spell books have been added.

And probably soon ... scrollable kits and new animations Great times for BGII

Also, BWP7 turned out to be buggy as hell and the version was almost unusable ... not because of the BWP per se, but because there were a large number of major updates to the big mods, which changed component numbers and such effectively screwing up your install So, with BWP8.2, they've started releasing more regular updates for the BWPFixpack (small ones with just fixes) so that updated mods are no problem now

Cheers,
Lol

Interesting, I'll check Taimon's hacks etc, and I love the notion of scrollable spellbooks- about time. My BWP install seems to have been v8 since there are v8 mentions from before Nov 2008, so that's fine.

Other question for future reference:- I read a past post about some trick, doing a multiplayer-game for the BG1 portion of the game, then transferring that savegame from the mpsave folder to the save folder. This would make it much easier to keep all 6 characters from BG1 all the way through to BG2:TOB(I like having Faldorn and Safana in the party but BGT doesn't allow it, sadly.

Edited by Strontium Dog, 21 December 2009 - 07:10 AM.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Strontium Dog, on Dec 21 2009, 05:06 PM, said:

Other question for future reference:- I read a past post about some trick, doing a multiplayer-game for the BG1 portion of the game, then transferring that savegame from the mpsave folder to the save folder. This would make it much easier to keep all 6 characters from BG1 all the way through to BG2:TOB(I like having Faldorn and Safana in the party but BGT doesn't allow it, sadly.

Well, the trick is to actually to start a multiplayer game with only one player, make as many characters you wish, and save the game, then you just quit the game and just move/copy the save from the 'mpsave' folder to the 'save' folder and thn start regular single player game but instead of starting a new game you load the previously saved and moved multiplayer game and vola, you have as many player created NPCs as you wish, they don't have talks but it doesn't matter, as their classes are the one you decided, so it's a power gamers dream. Or as they say, must for Improved Anvil.

[Strontium Dog]

Jarno Mikkola, on Dec 21 2009, 04:58 PM, said:

Strontium Dog, on Dec 21 2009, 05:06 PM, said:

Other question for future reference:- I read a past post about some trick, doing a multiplayer-game for the BG1 portion of the game, then transferring that savegame from the mpsave folder to the save folder. This would make it much easier to keep all 6 characters from BG1 all the way through to BG2:TOB(I like having Faldorn and Safana in the party but BGT doesn't allow it, sadly.

Well, the trick is to actually to start a multiplayer game with only one player, make as many characters you wish, and save the game, then you just quit the game and just move/copy the save from the 'mpsave' folder to the 'save' folder and thn start regular single player game but instead of starting a new game you load the previously saved and moved multiplayer game and vola, you have as many player created NPCs as you wish, they don't have talks but it doesn't matter, as their classes are the one you decided, so it's a power gamers dream. Or as they say, must for Improved Anvil.

It seems a silly trick as all I have to do is use shadowkeeper to change classes to make perfect characters for a party. That way I can get existing characters in the game along with all the lovetalks while changing stats etc. The only catch is that roleplayable evil-aligned characters are few and far between in BG2. Ah well, there've been a few newer NPC mods, so maybe next time things will improve.


I've decided to get round Callisto's "issue" with the Bhaalspawn by simply leaving her out of the party via stonecurse etc. when travelling to the Forest of Tethyr and adding her back in after entering Suldanessellar.

My other problem re the party being unable to reach Ulcaster for NEJ2 has been solved by looking at the NEJ2 are. folder and choosing the 9800 area-code and movetoarea().

Only issue left is the fact that, after some testing, the game automatically CTDs every time I reach the forest of tethyr. I believe there is some area-code fix for that somewhere?

So far, I'm impressed with BWP as I'd expected far more bugs to appear than actually did.

* 1 other point:- If I add in a new NPC mod such as Ninde etc. will that seriously affect my BWP installation(assuming I haven't done anything that's required in that NPC mod already prior to installation)? It's just that I'd thought, previously, that it was really dangerous to add in extra things once the final biffing was finished, in the main installation.

Edited by Strontium Dog, 22 December 2009 - 08:12 AM.

[Hoppy]

Strontium Dog, on Dec 22 2009, 02:42 AM, said:

My other problem re the party being unable to reach Ulcaster for NEJ2 has been solved by looking at the NEJ2 are. folder and choosing the 9800 area-code and movetoarea().

This movement is done by script from what I remember, not a Worldmap travel thing.

Strontium Dog, on Dec 22 2009, 02:42 AM, said:

Only issue left is the fact that, after some testing, the game automatically CTDs every time I reach the forest of tethyr. I believe there is some area-code fix for that somewhere?

Does it crash after the area loads and you see the landscape, party, etc.? Or does it crash in the load screen. What is the error message that comes up if the crash is On Creation? Or if the latter scenario, what is the error in your error log?

Strontium Dog, on Dec 22 2009, 02:42 AM, said:

* 1 other point:- If I add in a new NPC mod such as Ninde etc. will that seriously affect my BWP installation(assuming I haven't done anything that's required in that NPC mod already prior to installation)? It's just that I'd thought, previously, that it was really dangerous to add in extra things once the final biffing was finished, in the main installation.

You can always try. If the mod fails then it won't mess anything (maybe). If it installs, then it might work well or maybe with some bugs over a huge installation. It's risky if you aren't comfortable with hotfixing things yourself.

Edited by Hoppy, 22 December 2009 - 10:13 AM.

[Strontium Dog]

The trouble with the script option is that Hrothgar , I think, asks you twice immediately after leaving Chateau Irenicus, and then a 3rd time c.20 or 45 days after the 2nd time he asks you.As for the Forest of Tethyr bug, the screen loads and the forest appears and I get that first dialogue with Callisto as per usual, as soon as I click on a reply to her dialogue, the game CTDs immediately.

I now have a serious gamebreaking bug happen to me. I used movetoarea() to go to Ulcaster to see tilorn and do NEJ part 2, BUT, Tilorn asked that I remove all my armour and weapons, but when I did so, he continued to state that I still needed to get rid fo my armour and weapons (I even went to the trouble of keeping absolutely ALL my character inventory slots empty, even technically irremovable ones such as Drizz't's panther figurine etc, but no luck. I even tried to cheat and use movetoarea() to go to halruaa without having to deal with Tilorn, but the mages there , just like Tilorn, also refused to accept that I wasn't wearing any weapons or armour and started fighting with me. What is the global command and value that I need in order to convince Tilorn and the Halruaan mages that I don't possess any weapons or armour?