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Creature Colouring with scsii


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#1 -Guest-

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Posted 11 July 2010 - 06:08 AM

The distinctive creature colouring does not seem to be affecting some of the scsii summons, in particular the pit fiend looks very different from how it usually does. It would be nice to see it applied to the pit fiends that scsii mages summon.

#2 Wisp

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Posted 11 July 2010 - 10:59 AM

I'll have a look at this when I get to aTweaks (long list of things to do).

#3 Miloch

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Posted 11 July 2010 - 05:40 PM

Or you could just install Infinity Animations (Pit Fiends component) if you don't want them glowing in the dark :whistling:.

Wisp, if you do update the aTweaks code, you can grab the list of mod-added creatures by type from the IA tp2 (dw#pitsu is probably the one in question here, but there are others).

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#4 Wisp

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Posted 12 July 2010 - 02:30 AM

Wisp, if you do update the aTweaks code, you can grab the list of mod-added creatures by type from the IA tp2 (dw#pitsu is probably the one in question here, but there are others).

Yeah, at least that makes this bearable.

#5 -Guest-

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Posted 19 July 2010 - 05:37 PM

Might be worth considering that list in regards to the revised fiends/fiend summoning aswell. I know in the readme it states that not overwriting scsii fiend ai is intentional but I really like the atweaks versions and it would nice for the summons to be consistent for both the party and the opponent. Would it be possible to have an option where the scsii fiend summons were replaced by atweaks versions?

#6 Wisp

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Posted 20 July 2010 - 01:38 AM

Might be worth considering that list in regards to the revised fiends/fiend summoning aswell. I know in the readme it states that not overwriting scsii fiend ai is intentional but I really like the atweaks versions and it would nice for the summons to be consistent for both the party and the opponent. Would it be possible to have an option where the scsii fiend summons were replaced by atweaks versions?

I can look into it but I can't make any promises. It may be sub-optimal if the enemy mage summons a fiend, only to have it run away with some peasant.

Edited by Wisp, 20 July 2010 - 01:40 AM.


#7 Miloch

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Posted 20 July 2010 - 01:53 AM

I can look into it but I can't make any promises. It may be sub-optimal if the enemy mage summons a fiend, only to have it run away with some peasant.

Well, reading the creature's ea.ids value (enemy vs. summoned etc.) should suffice for that, no?

Infinity Engine Contributions
Aurora * BG1 NPC * BG1 Fixpack * Haiass * Infinity Animations * Level 1 NPCs * P5Tweaks
PnP Free Action * Thrown Hammers * Unique Containers * BG:EE * BGII:EE * IWD:EE
================================================================
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BAM Batcher * Creature Lister * Creature Checker * Creature Fixer * Tutu/BGT Area Map & List * Tutu Mod List
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#8 Tonton Fred

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Posted 20 July 2010 - 02:03 AM

I can look into it but I can't make any promises. It may be sub-optimal if the enemy mage summons a fiend, only to have it run away with some peasant.


Sub-optimal, maybe, but the look on the mage's face would surely be priceless. :lol:

More seriously, something like this was discussed for SR & aTweaks a while ago :

a custom script for SR+aTweaks, which uses SR's fiends (statistics and abilities) with your added features (Blood War, rampaging behaviour, ...)


Anyway, the Revised fiend summoning as it is is not coherent : if SCS is not present, fine, everybody uses aTweak's fiends. However, if SCS is installed, the party's aTweaks summons will get trounced by the stronger SCS summons (more hitpoints, HD...). I agree with the previous guest poster that "it would nice for the summons to be consistent for both the party and the opponent."

The fastest solution would be to patch ALL summons, including SCS', with aTweaks versions, if Revised Fiend summoning is installed. However, it would then unbalance other summons (SCS/SR Devas and Planetars would probably be too powerful).

Another way would be to patch SCS summons (keeping their stronger stats) with aTweaks AI and abilities (run for your lives ! :ph34r: ). This can either be done by aTweaks when RFS is installed ; or, aTweaks features could be (wholly or partly) incorporated by SCS/SR directly (I believe that's what Demi had in mind for SRv4, see link above).

Cheers,
Fred

Edited by Tonton Fred, 20 July 2010 - 02:08 AM.


#9 -Guest-

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Posted 20 July 2010 - 04:59 AM

I believe the summoned varietys allegiance always matches the caster anyway, meaning the fiend would be an enemy. The only problem is under atweaks summoned fiends target anyone not protected from evil. Luckily I think they still target the party as a priority so the enemy mage would be safe until the party was destroyed or protected from evil, and it might then be interesting to see a fiend turn on its former master. Liches also I believe have an innate protection from evil.

If we wanted to make absolutely sure the fiend behaved correctly there are several ways to do it:
1 - Patch in a protection from evil spell onto the buff routine of wizards liable to cast any fiend summons.
2 - Just use the standard (non-summoned) aTweaks versions of those fiends for the enemy casters. This would mean they would have all the same stats, they would just function as a normal enemy and not be prone to changing targets. Summoned demons are typically not affected by spells designed to work against summons anyway so that wouldn't be a problem and I think this is pretty much how scsii deals with the fiends in the first place.

I suppose a little testing may be needed.

As for the celestials being stronger, I actually do not think it is a problem. I don't think scs modifies celestials and they ARE supposed to be an epic spell. The balor/pit fiend may still be comparable in power to those creatures and that is the only spell which is the same level. You can also have several demons summoned at once. I actually found with scsii balors in particular were arguably stronger than planetars and certainly devas. The level 7 and 8 summons I felt were a little too powerful for their level. Sure they have the right to be a little more powerful than genies and the like but aTweaks keeps them a bit more reasonable. The cornugons in particular feel a little unrealistic with their infinite lightning bolts.

#10 Wisp

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Posted 20 July 2010 - 01:37 PM

So I gather there are two issues here.
1. Some fiends have X HP and other fiends of the same kind have 2X HP and stuff like that.
2. If e.g. SCSII is fully installed the fiends summoned by enemy mages behave differently from the aTweaks fiends.

I can probably do something about the first issue. It should be simple enough to offer some additional options. E.g. to have aTweaks fiends boosted to match, say, the SCSII fiends or whatever else is installed.

The second issue is more tricky. I could maybe replicate the SCSII scripting in sufficient detail while including the appropriate aTweaks features, but you run into all these fun potential problems. I haven't looked at SR or other mods that alter fiends so I can't say what would be involved in writing aTweaks scripts for them.

#11 -Guest-

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Posted 20 July 2010 - 07:07 PM

So I gather there are two issues here.
1. Some fiends have X HP and other fiends of the same kind have 2X HP and stuff like that.
2. If e.g. SCSII is fully installed the fiends summoned by enemy mages behave differently from the aTweaks fiends.

I can probably do something about the first issue. It should be simple enough to offer some additional options. E.g. to have aTweaks fiends boosted to match, say, the SCSII fiends or whatever else is installed.

The second issue is more tricky. I could maybe replicate the SCSII scripting in sufficient detail while including the appropriate aTweaks features, but you run into all these fun potential problems. I haven't looked at SR or other mods that alter fiends so I can't say what would be involved in writing aTweaks scripts for them.


Yes those are indeed the issues. The first is only a concern when considering the difference in player summons/ai summons. We can all imagine that there are many different types of demons and that some balors found during the game will have different stats/abilities. It doesn't seem fair though when all the ai ones are more powerful than the player ones. So it would be nice for the revised fiend summoning to level out the summoned fiends.

As for the second issue, the most important part of the aTweaks fiend's script is the part which allows it to intelligently decide what colour circle it should have, thereby making it possible for the party to use it. But there are other reasons why it is more useful for the party, for example several can be summoned at once and they will work together as long as they are of the same alignment. As for the combat spells and abilities the scsii/aTweaks fiends possess, well they both have some interesting abilities, but its the way the aTweaks one is better suited for party use that makes it more desirable.

I also believe the fiend summoning spells of aTweaks summon slightly different devils, aTweaks being cornugon at 7/gelugon at 8/pit fiend at 9, scsii being bone fiend at 7/cornugon at 8/pit fiend at 9.

There is also one last thing I have noticed. To test what would happen, I installed scsii with no fiend improvements and then installed the aTweaks fiends. In this case the enemy mages did use the vanilla(which aTweaks modifies) version of gate, but they unfortunately did not use the other demon summoning spells. Probably scsii tells its casters not to use those demon summoning spells if its own improved fiends component isn't installed, and in the case of it being installed, uses new copies of the spells for the ai. This I think gives us the different summons we are seeing. If there were some way to tell it to use those spells if aTweaks is installed we'd be fine. But I suppose that is something that might need to be looked at on the scsii end of things.

These are I suppose minor problems, but being that these are two of my favourite mods it would be nice if they could synergise a little better.

#12 -Guest-

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Posted 20 July 2010 - 07:15 PM

In fact, if it is as I have described - wouldn't it be simple enough just to give an option where the vanilla demon summoning spells are pasted back over the top of scsii ai versions. That would solve all the problems. E.g. file dw#gate or whatever its called and the others are reverted to being vanilla versions of those spells. In this case there would be no need to modify the demons or scripts themselves as the scsii versions would not be being summoned.