14 replies to this topic

[Anomaly]

Today I fought an ogre-mage and something interesting happened. I blinded him with the Glitterdust spell and attacked with ranged attacks. Then the ogre-mage said "Two can play at that game" and a red-circle invisible creature called "Target" appeared. The red-circle disappeared some times after the ogre-mage died.

So my question is : what is this "target" ?

[GeN1e]

Grrr... This "target" sometimes is a real pain in ass!..
One of such meetings has happened when I was being inside of slaver's ship. I was running out of firepower but wanted to deal with yuan-ties without resting. I've trapped the nearest room, then moved Yoshi out of yuan-ti's sight and threw his special trap to the room with snakes. Well they got damage and became angry . But before any of them showed itself in trapped room, little nasty invisible goblin-target has run from there and triggered all of my traps!..
Reload couldn't help.
Why does this baddy appear?

[seanas]

it's an invisible (and invulnerable) creature that allows the ogre mage to cast area effect spells at you whilst ensuring that the ogre mage itself is outside the area effect of the spell.

the original game actually makes pretty heavy use of these invisible creatures (in many cutscenes, for example); Horred adapted it to allow enemies to cast spells at you without afecting themselves being in the are effect of the spell. it also allows eneimes to target yuo when yr attacking them but they can't see you - the script summons the target, which runs towards you, the enemy attacks the target. so it's an anti-cheese device. good to know it's working!

Edited by seanas, 10 August 2006 - 07:40 AM.

[GeN1e]

Invisible in this case doesn't mean unaimable. Not only by traps but even by characters.

I think I'll try to make a changes in that script...


Anti-cheese? Do you mean that setting traps is cheese? This target distracts fighters, by the way, and they spend their time hitting this goblin instead of more dangerious enemy fighters.

Edited by GeN1e, 10 August 2006 - 07:48 AM.

[maximus2001]

Ha! And I thought it was a wizard's familiar called target which would home in on me. Actually I've seen it a lot with the upper level mages. Came back from NEJ2 where most mages did it. Even happens in Amn, and random encounters. So I concentrated everything on it and its unkillable. Even cntrl+y ,heh. One time it hung around for 5 minutes after mage died, but I left it alone because they don't actually attack you - just sit around being well - a target.

[seanas]

Invisible in this case doesn't mean unaimable. Not only by traps but even by characters.

I think I'll try to make a changes in that script...

you've got a fair bit of work ahead of you: it's one of the basic BP scripting routines. you'll be removing it from many scripts.

Anti-cheese? Do you mean that setting traps is cheese? This target distracts fighters, by the way, and they spend their time hitting this goblin instead of more dangerious enemy fighters.

meta-gaming is cheese, of course. and by meta-gaming i mean doing things using knowledge that you the user possess but CHARNAME doesn't. the setting off of traps wasn't an intended effect of the routine, but i can't say i'm opposed to it - altho the D0Tweak that makes summonable creatures not set off traps should cover this, i think.

it's a routine to counter - but not prevent - the most common cheese, the 'attacking things from a distance where they can't see you': it gives enemies a means to respond. it simply means you have to think about their tacitcs for a few seconds longer, instead of doing the same thing every run-thru of the game - i'm not sure i can see how that could be a bad thing.

as for fighters targeting the wrong enemies - disable their combat scripting, turn off the party ai, or edit the combat scripts you use so that they ignore the target (i might get around to adding this to the BP Series one day, but it won't be one day soon).

[GeN1e]

meta-gaming is cheese, of course. and by meta-gaming i mean doing things using knowledge that you the user possess but CHARNAME doesn't. the setting off of traps wasn't an intended effect of the routine, but i can't say i'm opposed to it - altho the D0Tweak that makes summonable creatures not set off traps should cover this, i think.

I'm actually regretting about installing that component of D0Tweak. Game was more interesting without it.

As for target I suggest to make it neutral towards party. Well, at last if its possible. And reduce it's size too.

Edited by GeN1e, 10 August 2006 - 08:16 AM.

[seanas]

As for target I suggest to make it neutral towards party. Well, at last if its possible. And reduce it's size too.

it's already as small a size as possible; and the price of making it blue circled is either masive increase in the size of the scripts (to account for all the situations where the target might be onscreen), or random enemy attacks on civilians instead of attacking the party. under the circumstances, having the target red circled is the best option.

[GeN1e]

What about rabbit?
Is it not possible to make an action or condition with BPTARGET been chosen as object of them?

[King Diamond]

Is it really a problem to make a creature completely invisible, without foot circle at all?

I'd recommend to check effects with 2 opcodes: 'Remove animation'(271) and 'Remove feet circle'(287). I hope that will do the trick....

*** EDIT ****
Plz try this version - just put it into \override\ - and check if that 'Target' will be visible....

Edited by King Diamond, 10 August 2006 - 10:13 AM.

[seanas]

What about rabbit?

i'll look into the rabbit - it's a good idea.

Is it not possible to make an action or condition with BPTARGET been chosen as object of them?

as it is, it's very efficient: BPTARGET targets player1; enemy scripts function as normal, without change, using See(Enemy) (which obviously they can - they can see the target).

either we add an Or(2) and See(BPTARGET+ approriate qualifiers) to every script block with a See(Enemy), or we duplicate every See(Enemy) script block with See(BPTARGET+ appropriate qualifiers). neither really strikes me as a great idea: the first cos it unnecessarily complicates all enemy scripts to account for a relatively rare event (and we're entering [Not-so-Super]Scripts territory at that point - that way leads to madness and game lag) or we slow the game engine down another way by doubling the size of scripts.

if you want, you can try it out on yr game and tell me what effect you can see - but the idea of changing every combat script (one way or the other) to prevent a relatively rare event that can be readily avoided by the user not targeting the target doesn't strike me as the greatest idea, to be honest. i'd rather just modify the read-me to inform uses of the target and its function, and advise them not to target it.

Edited by seanas, 10 August 2006 - 10:15 AM.

[King Diamond]

Plz look at the CRE above...

[seanas]

see, now this is why i like the workroom - very few ppl can see me when i'm being an idiot.

i've just chdecked the script (and yes, the .cre :sigh:) and the enemies aren't targeting BPTARGET - they're targeting a global the BPTARGET sets; so there's no reason for it to be ENEMY. yada yada yada - just ignore me whilst i add this to my list of fixes....

[melkor_morgoth75]

KD rocks ... always

mm75

[maximus2001]

Just got through a battle with Cowled Mages in the Promenade, after casting without paying bribe. Target was summoned, my fighter ran out of sight, and the mages started first beating on target and then on each other. It was pretty funny, mm, lightning, abi dalzim, all wasted on target and themselves. Laughed until one of em saw my fighter and imprisoned him. Reload...