Edited by Arkain, 13 December 2008 - 03:50 PM.
Version 3.0 release date update
#121
Posted 13 December 2008 - 03:49 PM
#123 -BLA-
Posted 13 December 2008 - 05:30 PM
I want to ask about some issues that I remember from Vanilla. Now this might have been addressed already, but I can't detract from my game experience by checking it out (I'm a selfish bastard) .
When someone casts a spell that involves some lengthy eye-candy, like "Fire and Ice" for instance, all units freeze (as we all know, this isn't the issue) except those affected by "Litany of Curses", "Horror", or something else that has to do with morale. So everyone stops to watch the beautiful orbs of hurt, but some critters just don't follow the rules. Also, during the freeze time, spells that hurt over time, like "Adder's Kiss", still do their thing.
Note: Might be related, IDK. While critters generally walk, those under the effect of "Litany of Curses" or "Horror" run.
So, if it's already been changed, I'd be grateful if you'd tell me, how?
#124
Posted 13 December 2008 - 07:23 PM
Edited by scient, 13 December 2008 - 07:25 PM.
Those interested in the classic TBS game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri / Alien Crossover should check out the unofficial patch I work on here.
#125
Posted 13 December 2008 - 11:35 PM
I'm really not sure how this could be fixed, though. You can't simply -pause- the game, because then -everything- would be stopped. If you could issue every critter a ClearAllActions() and then get scripts to stop executing for the duration, then that would stop the FFG healing thing, but it would also kinda suck that you'd have to reissue your attack commands to everyone, and spells you were casting would get interrupted/lost, etc. And I can't think of -any- way to get the Adder's Kiss damage to stop while it happens.
So, yeah, it's a real issue, but one I'm not sure there's a logical way to handle it. May just be a price we have to pay for the coolness aspect of spells with cutscenes.
Qwinn
Edited by Qwinn, 13 December 2008 - 11:37 PM.
#126
Posted 13 December 2008 - 11:38 PM
http://www.shsforums...showtopic=38041
Oh, and I'm okay with Morte remaining vulnerable to fear. As pointed out, he regularly shows he's quite capable of the emotion.
Qwinn
Edited by Qwinn, 14 December 2008 - 01:24 AM.
#127
Posted 14 December 2008 - 03:12 AM
It occurs to me that everyone does freeze when the flashy spell is initially cast, so something in the engine is already clearly capable of handling that and having them resume their previous activity when the spell finishes. I'm thinking that just getting the engine to stop running any -new- script rounds while a flashy spell is showcasting would eliminate 99%, if not all, of the issue. It would at least definitely stop FFG's healing AI working during them, anyway.
Scient, you're going to have to teach me how to do all this engine stuff so I don't have to keep bugging you for it. Sigh.
Qwinn
Edited by Qwinn, 14 December 2008 - 03:14 AM.
#130
Posted 14 December 2008 - 10:12 AM
I don't think the issue with the spell animations and NPCs actions qualifies as a bug. Completing the game is not hampered by it in any way, IMO.
Well, I dunno, I'd say that spells with spell effects essentially giving Fall From Grace a Time Stop spell allowing her to cast multiple heal spells on you mid combat would qualify as a bug.
I don't think a bug is defined as "that which hampers completion of the game". If that were the case, might as well play the game unmodded cause it's perfectly completable as shipped, and anything that qualified as a nerf, regardless of the merits of the fix, would be a non-starter by definition. Honestly, "making the game easier to win" isn't anywhere on my priority list of what to evaluate about a potential bug. If this game has any major problem, it's that it's too easy (and the issues to be fixed by the fixes under discussion in the "Profound Changes" thread is a big reason why, IMO)
Qwinn
Edited by Qwinn, 14 December 2008 - 10:23 AM.
#131
Posted 14 December 2008 - 10:45 AM
I agree, perhaps I phrased that poorly. What I meant is, I don't recall the game being affected by it the way it's being described, for better or worse. I never came upon the thought of casting a certain spell to gain leverage for other actions, and I surely don't recall Grace having free timestops as you put it. And if it did happen, I'm guessing the spell conditions are the same for everyone (for Trias, the construct from the modron maze, etc).I don't think a bug is defined as "that which hampers completion of the game".
Somehow I get the feeling that this is more about policing the player rather than making the game work better. I don't see anything in this that amounts to being *fixed*, as it doesn't read as broken to me in the first place.
#132
Posted 14 December 2008 - 11:30 AM
Okay, you remember that scene in the Matrix when Keanu Reeves leans way back in ultra-slow-motion as a dozen bullets slooooowly fly over him?
Imagine that same drawn out slow motion scene, but in the background there's a jogger running from end of the set to the other at normal speed. Never mind the healing issue, it's quite jarring and totally breaks the fourth wall.
That's why it's a bug.
It's easy to recreate, by the way. If you have a save game right before the Evil Wizard fight in Rubikon, load it up, go in, and don't give Grace any commands when the battle starts, just run in TNO and let him get whacked enough to need healing before the Wizard gets his Mechanus Cannon spell off, and you'll see Grace run up and start healing him during the "time-frozen" cutscene. I suspect most people don't see it because I suspect most people just "select all characters" (including Grace) and tell them all to start whaling on something. Grace won't do it if she was given the order to attack before it started.
P.S. It doesn't necessarily -always- happen... Grace's script just needs to kick in during that brief interlude. Sometimes scripts rerun really quickly and sometimes not, it's kinda random. But once I knew how, I recreated it several times.
Qwinn
Edited by Qwinn, 14 December 2008 - 11:41 AM.
#133
Posted 14 December 2008 - 11:54 AM
As for Adder's Kiss before lengthy spell, this might qualify as smart spellcasting, rather than exploiting a bug. Either way, it might be difficult to correct.
#134
Posted 14 December 2008 - 12:49 PM
After all, if there's a certain way in order to make this thing happen (which not everyone knows) and then take advantage of the situation, the issue might never arise ingame. And when it does, it's not necessarily a problem.
Nothing new there. Human AI > Game AI.This fix would be far from "policing the player". After all, it favors the player more than it does the critters.
The problem here is that it's something that's potentially exploitable (even though it goes both ways). I can't say for sure that this wasn't intended (and I haven't been convinced otherwise) or not. To use a clear example, this isn't like fixing Hamry's dialogue to prevent infinite XP loops.
#135
Posted 14 December 2008 - 12:55 PM
Then you haven't seen it. It is very very obviously not intended. It's very clear that what is supposed to happen is that everything - all combat, all movement, everything, -stops- while the spell effect plays out. And almost everybody DOES stop, they freeze in their tracks, in mid-swing. It's supposed to be like a pause button while the fancy graphics play. When the spell effect is over, the game is unpaused, time resumes and the combat continues.
Can you explain to me under what possible circumstances it could be -intended- that almost everybody on a battlefield stops and freezes in midswing EXCEPT for Fall From Grace healing and the guy beating Morte to death after he used Litany of Skulls while Morte remains frozen in place?
If you were to hit the space bar to pause the game, and everything paused -except- FFG kept running around healing people and fleeing creatures kept fleeing, would you consider that possibly intended? Because that's exactly what's going on here.
Qwinn
Edited by Qwinn, 14 December 2008 - 01:01 PM.
#136
Posted 14 December 2008 - 01:43 PM
If that's what's happenning (never to me IIRC), then it's certainly an error.If you were to hit the space bar to pause the game, and everything paused -except- FFG kept running around healing people and fleeing creatures kept fleeing, would you consider that possibly intended? Because that's exactly what's going on here.
Anyway, what would be the way to resolve this? I'd rather the way the spells are depicted ingame is changed in the most minor way possible, or preferrably none at all (ie the game will still pause for the fancy spell animation).
#137
Posted 14 December 2008 - 01:58 PM
The way the game works, every creature has an AI script attached, and the game is -constantly- rerunning every AI script for every creature in the area every few seconds (or even multiple times a second). At least in the case of the Fall From Grace healing thing, what's happening is that in that brief interlude while everything is frozen, the game is rerunning her script which is causing her to run around healing people. It makes sense that during the frozen spell-casting cutscene, that the engine stop running every creature's AI script until the spell effect is over. This would have no impact on the graphics or the spell casting itself, it would just stop her from being weird.
The morale fleeing thing -may- be script related, and it may not be. I'm not sure. Some creature AI scripts do have code that specifically says things like "If you're at less than 50% health, run away", so it could be that that's causing the behavior. I'd need to know precisely which creatures were observed running away during a spell effect to tell you if their script contains code that could explain it. If it's not in their script, then the engine's morale/flee mechanism must be overriding the pause.
The Litany of Curses thing is also another matter. If there -is- a .BCS script out there that creatures get switched to for the duration of "Litany of Curses", I haven't noticed it. More likely it's also something in the engine that is overriding all other behavior.
Qwinn
Edited by Qwinn, 14 December 2008 - 02:00 PM.
#138
Posted 14 December 2008 - 02:05 PM
You all know that you need several attribute points to boost your strength from 18 to 19. This is what the developers intended and no one could possibly argue otherwise. This isn't -always- the case, though. When you gain strength due to reaching lvl 7 or lvl 12 Fighter (AKA specialization bonus if I'm not mistaken), you can get from 18 to 19 directly, saving a few attribute pts that way. The magic items also work that way, bypassing the huge step from 18 to 19, but you might argue this was intended. I'm fairly certain Whispering Flask was meant to raise Dak'kon from 17 to 19 directly. Strength and Power of One spells are the only temporary effects I can recall that raise Strength in small steps.
OK, that's enough from me, let's hear where the rest of the community stands.
#139
Posted 14 December 2008 - 02:37 PM
The only thing left on my end for next release is to get the 1/10 hp on lvl up working for TNO (won't be too hard, already know what needs to be done). I've already got a tentative fix for +1 hp on level up for levels already reached in the other classes. The main function that looks up amount of hp to give from 2DA files was returning zero, it was an issue inside level up code where it was checking this value to see if it was less than 1 and if it was setting it to 1. I think this was just a redundant safety check, so I just set it to check and set to zero. I still need to run some QA tests to make sure this is ok. Last, is the enigmatic mortuary crash near end game. I'm woefully behind in my playthrough so if Qwinn can duplicate it I'll see about sorting it.
Those interested in the classic TBS game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri / Alien Crossover should check out the unofficial patch I work on here.
#140
Posted 14 December 2008 - 02:51 PM