5 replies to this topic

[SConrad]

The NPC Damage mod is not for the faint of heart. As your party NPCs take Damage, their appearance will change accordingly to show the injuries they sustain.

This mod is inspired by Planescape: Torment, and was originally conceived and developed by Immortality, Grim Squeaker and SimDing0. As development slowed down to a full stop, the mod fell away from the community, until khayman and SConrad decided to take up the idea and finish the mod.

Here is the FAQ, taken from the mod readme:

Q: Is NPC Damage compatible with mod XYZ?
A: Probably, but there are a few exceptions. NPC Damage will not work as intendend with other mods that change the portraits of the joinable NPCs. NPC Damage will not work as intendend with custom NPC portraits.

Q: How does NPC Damage work? When will the portraits change?
A: There are four levels to the changes. If the NPC has more than 75% of his hitpoints, the normal (unaltered) portrait will show. Once below 75%, the portrait will change, and then further increase in severity (and gore!) when the NPC's hitpoints decrease to below 50%, and finally 25%. Healing will restore previous portraits, relative to how many hitpoints the NPC has.

Q: Does NPC Damage alter the game in any way other than by changing the portraits?
A: No. NPC Damage only affects the portraits of the NPCs in your party.

Q: Is NPC Damage changing my PC's portrait, too?
A: Unfortunately not. This is mostly because of the difficulty in determining the PC's portrait in the game. We are currently working on an idea that would allow the PC's portrait to change, too, but there are no guarantees that this method ever will see the light of day.

Q: What about mod NPCs? Will NPC Damage affect them too?
A: Currently, no. NPC Damage v1.0 is only for the Bioware-developed NPCs in a vanilla game. You can still play mod NPCs while having this mod installed, but be aware that while Minsc and Aerie will have their faces beaten up, your mod NPC will not.

Q: Will you expand NPC Damage to include mod NPCs in the future?
A: Maybe. As of v1.0, no decision has been made about mod NPCs. We might take up development of them sometime in the future, and/or allow for people to submit their own damaged NPCs, but nothing is certain.

Q: Can I make suggestions for improvements?
A: Of course! Stop by the mod forum at Spellhold Studios and share your thoughts with us. We love input and feedback, but don't expect us to automatically agree with you, though!

Q: How would you rate the violence level in these portraits? Are they appropriate for children?
A: Everybody has different levels of tolerance; what might be too violent or even offensive to some, can be perfectly acceptable to others. The best way to determine whether NPC Damage is for you or your children is to either download the mod and see for yourself, or see the examples we have posted in the mod forum.

Q: I take exception with these faces!
A: That's okay. We take exception with your face, too.

Q: How come Minsc is severely beaten up but Boo looks completely unharmed?
A: We are not hamster molesters. However, if you look closely, you can see a few drops of blood on Boo's teeth and chin--he must have gone for the eyes, as per Minsc's request.

[SimDing0]

Wow, this finally got made. Did you use any of Ana's original portraits in the end? (They were pretty neat, if a lot more gory than the ones you've posted. It'd be a shame not to use them, but obviously there's a consistency issue. Blah.)

The current coding of the mod means that if the creatures' scripts stop running, their portraits won't change. Consider using baldur.bcs at the risk of lag (I don't believe it will be that much of an overhead), or dick around with the Cast Spell On Condition method I suggested on the old forum.

(On which note, I'm pleased to see that there's still no sign of the original NPC Damage forum, which of course I definitely asked to be removed!)

Edited by SimDing0, 23 March 2008 - 03:13 PM.

[SConrad]

Wow, this finally got made. Did you use any of Ana's original portraits in the end? (They were pretty neat, if a lot more gory than the ones you've posted. It'd be a shame not to use them, but obviously there's a consistency issue. Blah.)

Hey, Sim, glad you stopped by. I don't think any of the originals were used--as you say, consistency issues were the primary reason for that...

The current coding of the mod means that if the creatures' scripts stop running, their portraits won't change. Consider using baldur.bcs at the risk of lag (I don't believe it will be that much of an overhead), or dick around with the Cast Spell On Condition method I suggested on the old forum.

I considered both baldur.bcs and Cast Spell On Condition--I didn't want to flood the former as there'd be 72 new blocks in total for it (and that's just the first version with only Bioware NPCs), and that wouldn't be very practical. CSOC didn't have sufficient conditions (no 75% delimiter, and no clean reversal when the NPC was healed); the alternative would have been to cast the spell each round (or something) and check for hp level, but I figured that would make it even more difficult to check hp levels and only decrease performance even more.

[SimDing0]

Well, I really don't think the baldur.bcs overhead would be that huge, and it'd only depend on how many mod NPCs a person had installed anyway. baldur.bcs issues kind of get overplayed a lot in my experience--Virtue adds thousands of lines with no noticeable performance decrease, and you'd only ever be checking 20 blocks at once (make the first trigger on each an InParty check). I'd say try it and see what happens.

The only other alternative I can think of is an invisible creature following the party around. Invisible creatures lick, though.

[the bigg]

Virtue adds thousands of lines

Ditto for Refinements. The only real issues are HasItem() with bottomless bags of holding, and total size of override versus RAM.
EDIT: multiple spell graphics are also a candidate problem, E.G. multiple Teleport Fields or (Magic Missiles in Time Stop + Improved Alacrity).

Edited by the bigg, 23 March 2008 - 04:02 PM.

[SConrad]

Hmm, fair enough. Will give it a try for the next version.