364 replies to this topic

[Daulmakan]

Just wanted to say how much I appreciate your continuing work on this. Kudos.

[Qwinn]

Thanks!

I'm excited about version 4.0... not due out for a while yet, but honestly I never thought there'd be so much good stuff to add after version 3.0. Hell, the fixlist for 4.0 could wind up being bigger than v2 and 3 combined at this rate.

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

In addition to tweaking the engine so that PC deaths while in the party do not change all the Law, Good, Murder and Lady variables, scient has also discovered another bug that was preventing the death variables for PC's from being set properly when they died after the first time they were resurrected by you. This would cause the Dead("PCName") trigger to fail if you ever resurrected them, and then they died. This does actually matter in a few conversations. Yay scient!

Not really important, but for those interested in this sort of thing: In the process of my testing on this issue, I discovered that the fix (which came from both Platter's Fixpack and KungFuMan's Restoration Pack) which supposedly kept Annah and Grace's comments from playing in Fell's Studio if either of them was dead was unnecessary. This could only happen in 4CD version 1.0. It was fixed by the official 1.1 patch. (The original fixpack and restopack added a check for the Dead trigger on Annah and Grace, but this was unnecessary because the 1.1 patch replaced the Exists() trigger check with InParty(). The latter correctly detects if the PC is also dead, so the !Dead() trigger is redundant. Yanking this fix from my Fixpack.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 03 July 2009 - 10:14 PM.

[Kung Fu Man]

Not really important, but for those interested in this sort of thing: In the process of my testing on this issue, I discovered that the fix (which came from both Platter's Fixpack and KungFuMan's Restoration Pack) which supposedly kept Annah and Grace's comments from playing in Fell's Studio if either of them was dead was unnecessary.

Dunno if it matters, but to toss in I actually had the 2CD version when that fix was necessary, so you might double check to see if it's the same case for that version to be safe. (Of course that was years ago too and we did a lot of odd workarounds at the time...)

EDIT: Interesting odd bit: when you start a new game, if you walk into the center of the room with the Dead Book, Morte will comment on it...but be facing the complete opposite direction (in fact he almost seems to look around just before talking).

EDIT: There's something else that's always bugged me about this section talking to Dhall, you can insist he tell you about Pharod, but then you can loop the discussion back around to insist again. Why would he resist telling you after he's already told you once? o_o'

EDIT: Since I'm having a bit of fun playing through the original game here again, an interesting bit: when you have Ei-Vene fix you up, you can choose the option to give her "the needle and embalming fluid". However despite the fact it states you've given these to her and she's clearly used them on you, they're never removed from your inventory.

EDIT: Okay this is an interesting bug, though you're probably aware of it at this point. After installing the fix pack and restoration pack of yours, it seems you can't talk to Annah in the Hive at all. o_O' EDIT again: Alright, finally got her to talk, it didn't want to fire at all at first, which is still odd. Only worked after I talked to a few folks and killed a group of Thugs. It seems this is happening pretty consistently on the playthrough too, in that many characters can't be talked to until I leave an area and then return.

EDIT: After siding with Krystal, a group of Darkalley Shivs ended up fighting the Razor Angels, and I attacked one. What was odd was none of them turned hostile, even though attacking the Shivs normally results in all of them going hostile.

Edited by Kung Fu Man, 04 July 2009 - 05:39 AM.

[Qwinn]

Discovered a new bug: Because the thugs that stole Porphiron's necklace shares a script name with half the thugs in the Trash Warrens, you can get Porphiron's quest, go kill Trash Warrens Thugs, and then come back to Porphiron and say "I killed 'em, here's your necklace" without actually ever talking to the thugs that actually took the necklace.

EDIT: Interesting odd bit: when you start a new game, if you walk into the center of the room with the Dead Book, Morte will comment on it...but be facing the complete opposite direction (in fact he almost seems to look around just before talking).

In my game, Morte and TNO will walk up and approach the book, and then Morte turns to face TNO when delivering his line. This is fairly automatic behavior in dialogue. I don't think his turning to face TNO can be turned off, and it doesn't bother me that much.

EDIT: There's something else that's always bugged me about this section talking to Dhall, you can insist he tell you about Pharod, but then you can loop the discussion back around to insist again. Why would he resist telling you after he's already told you once? o_o'

Eh. Lots of conversations in game can be looped like that, in fact most of them can. The ones that you -can't- loop are ones that advance quests and such, or set important variables. This one does not. I don't really consider the possibility of repeating dialogues to be a bug.

EDIT: Since I'm having a bit of fun playing through the original game here again, an interesting bit: when you have Ei-Vene fix you up, you can choose the option to give her "the needle and embalming fluid". However despite the fact it states you've given these to her and she's clearly used them on you, they're never removed from your inventory.

Odd. I can't duplicate this. Are you sure you didn't just have multiples on you? You can get more than 1 of each. Perhaps you are seeing the extras?

EDIT: Okay this is an interesting bug, though you're probably aware of it at this point. After installing the fix pack and restoration pack of yours, it seems you can't talk to Annah in the Hive at all. o_O' EDIT again: Alright, finally got her to talk, it didn't want to fire at all at first, which is still odd. Only worked after I talked to a few folks and killed a group of Thugs. It seems this is happening pretty consistently on the playthrough too, in that many characters can't be talked to until I leave an area and then return.

This bug happens in the original game, it used to happen to me too, it was reported many many times before I ever came along. I'm not positive of what caused it, BUT, I suspect it has to do with the game's method of handing banters. Did you install the Banter Accelerator in the Tweak Pack? If not, I recommend it, it disables the engine method of doing banters and I haven't encountered the bug you're describing since.

EDIT: After siding with Krystal, a group of Darkalley Shivs ended up fighting the Razor Angels, and I attacked one. What was odd was none of them turned hostile, even though attacking the Shivs normally results in all of them going hostile.

Strange, I'll test this and try to duplicate.

Note: I -think- you actually have to -hit- a target before they go hostile. If you attack and whiffed a few times, and the target was killed by Razor Angels in the process, then what you describe might be expected to happen.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 04 July 2009 - 07:09 AM.

[Qwinn]

Corvus and Lenny's dialogue were supposed to recognize at certain points if Byron Pikit was dead, but failed to do so because his death variable was missing. Fixed.

The game was also not properly tracking how many githzerai you'd killed... not only was Dak'kon getting counted when he shouldn't have been, but killing regular githzerai townspeople -didn't- count when they should have.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 04 July 2009 - 10:44 AM.

[scient]

The game was also not properly tracking how many githzerai you'd killed... not only was Dak'kon getting counted when he shouldn't have been, but killing regular githzerai townspeople -didn't- count when they should have.

This is caused by code that resets a death variable setup offset at 0x2e0 for NPC's loaded through ini files (like gith townspeople). After resetting it, it then goes through and toggles certain things based on variables set in ini file like good_mod, law_mod, lady_mod, etc. Problem is when reseting it the engine sets bit in bitfield to false for "KILL_NPC". This is used by pretty much all NPC's and set in their CRE files.

Fixing it is a matter of either enabling it always by default or adding in a new variable for ini files to toggle it using one of unused bits. This may be kinda tricky to do but depending on how Qwinn needs it setup it may not be necessary.

Edited by scient, 04 July 2009 - 02:19 PM.

[Avenger_teambg]

Just nitpicking, but It was Black Isle. Bioware coding is a bit cleaner
Even though i like the projectiles in PST/HoW, i tear my hair out when i have to reimplement it.

[scient]

Black Isle did IE? Oki my mistake.

[Qwinn]

Just found out (from SKARDAVNELNATE over at Gamespot) that you can actually join 3 factions at once in the game, without infiltrating. The first two are deliberate - yes, you can join the Godsmen and then the Anarchists. But a bug allowed you to then, if you had already done all the quests he wanted you to do, go to Emoric and join the Dustmen too without being booted from the other two. You -should- be quietly booted from the Godsmen at that point. Fixed for v4.0.

Also, under the conditions where you are renouncing a faction in order to join the Dustmen, you aren't getting the Dead Truce, and you're missing a journal entry about the Dead Truce.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 05 July 2009 - 03:12 AM.

[Qwinn]

Here's something else neat.

I've mentioned previously that you get more shadows in the Fortress if you suffered a lot of deaths. The amount increases at 5, 10 and 15 deaths. However, being a Dustman takes that one step down. So, for example, if you died 16 times, but you're a Dustman, you only get as many shadows as you would if you were a non-Dustman who died 10 times.

And I bring this up because I do have a fix to do. What I just mentioned there works even if you're an Anarchist who infiltrated the Dustmen, and didn't really join them. I'm fixing it so it works based upon whether you have the Dead Truce, which is only active if you really are a Dustman.

From a gameplay perspective, once you've outgrown all the weapons the Godsmen offer you, this may actually make the Dustmen the most valuable faction to belong to, heh.

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Found yet another one!

Marquez, in Curst. There's three dialogue paths along which you can complete his quest. Two of them, if you saved Jasilya, you get 131250 xp. If she died too, you get only 65000. But in the third, and this is the one most people will run into, the experience awards are 65000 either way, which is clearly an error. Fixing the third so it gives the better reward for successful completion.

EDIT: Hmmm. Maybe not. The first two paths take place if you saved Jasilya before you get the quest to do so. That might've been intentional... brownie points for being proactive, I suppose. So, I'll leave it the way it is. I'm glad I noticed this though, I suspect dialogues might get a bit strange and jump ahead too quickly if you do that. Will post again here if that's the case and I need to fix it.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 05 July 2009 - 07:51 AM.

[kayekatarn]

First off allow me to thank you for your exhaustive, timely and most impressive work on this excellent game. When I found I could play it again after so long with all this new stuff I was quite happy as you might imagine

Regrettably I seem to have run into a bug that I haven't managed to find the answer to on these forums (or maybe I'm not putting in the search keywords right).

I've done the proper full install with my 2CD version, installed the widescreen mod, ui fix mod, fixpack, tweakmod and unfinished business with no errors. The game started up and looks and runs fine, with no problems...

Until I try to bash a locked chest or talk to Morte. Then I get an immediate CTD. Upon experimenting I found this seems to happen anytime I do something to change the cursor graphic (say, typing 'a' to turn it into that axe attack icon, or use the radial menu to turn my cursor into a dialogue box), then when I click anywhere on the screen, CTD.

Would greatly appreciate any help on this... thanks!

[Qwinn]

Urf. That's sounding like corrupted files to me

Since you said it seems to have something to do with cursors, here's CURSORS.BIF. Unzip this into your main torment directory and see if it helps.

If that doesn't do it, then I don't know what to tell you, other than to get a new copy of the game, cause it sounds like your copy is bad Though you could just try to do a completely fresh install too, and hopefully the bad file copies right on the next try.

Qwinn

Attached Files

•  Cursors.rar   29.89K   207 downloads

[Qwinn]

Ok, here's the lowdown on the Jasilya/Marquez thing I mentioned:

1) Yeah, I'm going with "it might've been intentional, leaving it the way it is" on the disparate xp rewards. There are other cases in game where doing a quest before it's assigned can give you better rewards. (I fixed/restored one of those in the Pregnant Alley quest, for one). But this is a little metagaming knowledge reward for my regular forum readers - if you want a bonus 70k or so xp, save Jasilya before getting the quest from Marquez, then when he finally gives you the quest, give him the "They're already dead" option

2) Assuming you do this before talking to either Tainted Barse or Marquez: If you kill the harmonium guards and Jasilya dies, nothing gets screwed up. But if you actually manage to save her, then you can get Marquez's quest giving dialogue before Tainted Barse assigns you the overarching quest. Fixing that. In the meantime, if you want to take advantage of the little metagaming tip I gave up there, just make sure to talk to Tainted Barse and get him to send you to Marquez BEFORE you talk to Marquez after saving Jasilya.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 05 July 2009 - 08:24 AM.

[macabroid]

A few more findings:

30. Speaking with Sere: "I *didn't* crawl out of any crypt." She mentions Hamrys in her answer. As a response, choose any dialog option except "Who is Hamrys?" (for example, just end the conversation). Now, in your dialog tree will appear a branch "Can you tell me about Hamrys?", where you can learn all about his father. But in dialog with Hamrys, a question about his father won't appear if in your talk with Sere you won't choose a specific dialog path with "Who is Hamrys?" in it. As a result, sometimes you can't receive the whole "Hamrys father" quest line even if you've learned from Sere all info you can get.

31. Dreams in dreambuilder: who is this "Townsperson, Male" animation clearly visible in the upper part of the screen during "You find yourself floating through a maze of twisted plants and black barbs that tear at your insubstantial body.Creatures of nightmare pull themselves from the ground and walls, and rip at your flesh."- sequence? You may even hover a cursor above it and read that he is a "Lower Ward Townsperson". Quite nightmarish, I must say. My guess it's a previously invisible bug, made visible by a Widescreen resolution mod.

32. When you leave the dreambuilder (upon finishing your first dream), in a Foundry you'll see a floating text "This door is locked. You'll need a key" Which is nonsensical, the door remains opened, and you may enter it again.

33. Quest "Find the portal key to Ravel's maze" disappears from the "Assigned quests" when you asked a drop of blood from Kesai-Serris, but don't have a handkerchief. But it won't appear in the "Completed quests" until you've actually brought her a handkerchief.

34. Visit the Sensorium, see Deionarra's memories. Talk to Iannis, ask him only about the fire. End the conversation. Then, start it again. You will get the dialog line "Iannis, there is a sensory stone in the sensorium that contains a fragment of your daughter's experiences." although he haven't said the name of his daughter yet.

[Qwinn]

30. Speaking with Sere: "I *didn't* crawl out of any crypt." She mentions Hamrys in her answer. As a response, choose any dialog option except "Who is Hamrys?" (for example, just end the conversation). Now, in your dialog tree will appear a branch "Can you tell me about Hamrys?", where you can learn all about his father. But in dialog with Hamrys, a question about his father won't appear if in your talk with Sere you won't choose a specific dialog path with "Who is Hamrys?" in it. As a result, sometimes you can't receive the whole "Hamrys father" quest line even if you've learned from Sere all info you can get.

Good catch. Fixed.

31. Dreams in dreambuilder: who is this "Townsperson, Male" animation clearly visible in the upper part of the screen during "You find yourself floating through a maze of twisted plants and black barbs that tear at your insubstantial body.Creatures of nightmare pull themselves from the ground and walls, and rip at your flesh."- sequence? You may even hover a cursor above it and read that he is a "Lower Ward Townsperson". Quite nightmarish, I must say. My guess it's a previously invisible bug, made visible by a Widescreen resolution mod.

His presence is not a bug. He is one of your victims further along in the dream. You're right that it's caused by the widescreen mod showing you more of the area than you're supposed to see. There's no known way to fix this beyond someone greatly altering the area files to spread the cutscene areas farther apart, and then going over every set of coordinates to map them to the newly sized area. Not part of my skillset, I'm afraid. An unfortunate price of using the widescreen mod. Ghostdog and I once discussed the possibility of overlaying borders around the edges of cutscenes, but it would be extremely tricky to pull off, requiring serious engine tweaks among other things. No one's excited to try it, and I wouldn't get my hopes up.

32. When you leave the dreambuilder (upon finishing your first dream), in a Foundry you'll see a floating text "This door is locked. You'll need a key" Which is nonsensical, the door remains opened, and you may enter it again.

Do you mean if you try to click the door again? In the original game, the door -does- remain locked and you can never open it again. I lock it in an open position as part of the Expanded Deionarra's Truth mod. Not sure if I can get rid of that message in those circumstances, actually.

33. Quest "Find the portal key to Ravel's maze" disappears from the "Assigned quests" when you asked a drop of blood from Kesai-Serris, but don't have a handkerchief. But it won't appear in the "Completed quests" until you've actually brought her a handkerchief.

Fixed.

34. Visit the Sensorium, see Deionarra's memories. Talk to Iannis, ask him only about the fire. End the conversation. Then, start it again. You will get the dialog line "Iannis, there is a sensory stone in the sensorium that contains a fragment of your daughter's experiences." although he haven't said the name of his daughter yet.

Sigh. Yet another new Iannis related variable. Will fix.

Qwinn

[Kung Fu Man]

His presence is not a bug. He is one of your victims further along in the dream. You're right that it's caused by the widescreen mod showing you more of the area than you're supposed to see. There's no known way to fix this beyond someone greatly altering the area files to spread the cutscene areas farther apart, and then going over every set of coordinates to map them to the newly sized area. Not part of my skillset, I'm afraid. An unfortunate price of using the widescreen mod. Ghostdog and I once discussed the possibility of overlaying borders around the edges of cutscenes, but it would be extremely tricky to pull off, requiring serious engine tweaks among other things. No one's excited to try it, and I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Can I propose the alternative of making him invisible until he's needed? You should be able to have the cutscene that engages his part remove the item that makes him invisible when he's needed.

The borders idea does sound interesting though.

Kinda related to UB, but you can encounter Rake-Chaser at night before knowing he's really a she, but you still get the option "Leave 'him' alone" or something like that.

Edited by Kung Fu Man, 05 July 2009 - 05:07 PM.

[Qwinn]

Can I propose the alternative of making him invisible until he's needed? You should be able to have the cutscene that engages his part remove the item that makes him invisible when he's needed.

Honestly, and please don't take this the wrong way, but I have no desire to do this. There are TONS of aberrations as a result of the widescreen mod, TONS of cutscenes that have inexplicable crap all around the corners. For example, during the Ravel/TO cutscene in Ravel's Maze, you see your entire party bunched in the lower left hand corner. It's REALLY bad in Fhjull's cutscene after you kill Trias, it looks like part of his house is sectioned off and floating in a void. Also plenty of weirdnesses around the corners during all the Fortress cutscenes. It's not just people, it's terrain too. I've no desire to start down the road where I'm trying to cover these up one by one, when success is impossible anyway since I can't make the terrain invisible, and I'm -really- not interested in starting down that road by trying to remove a guy from a cutscene that's a -dream- and in which the presence of some random odd guy out of the corner of your eye is probably the most plausible of all the many aberrations precisely because dreams can get a lot weirder than that, heh.

Were you able to check on that Eivene embalming fluid and needle thing, btw? I suggested that perhaps you had multiples of them, and you saw the leftovers. Was curious if that bore out.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 05 July 2009 - 05:17 PM.

[Qwinn]

Okay, a whole bunch of fixes to Emoric's dialogue. This came about as a result of this bug report:

http://www.shsforums...showtopic=41363

Andkat sent me his save game, and I was able to figure out what was going on. When you ask to join the Dustmen, Emoric leads you down a long conversation path. At a whole ton of places, you have the option of saying things like "I don't think I want to do this after all, farewell." or "No. I would like to withdraw my request to join the Dustmen faction." Sometimes, Emoric will respond with "Nothing more will be asked of you." If he says that, he means it. If you walk back from asking him to join, you'll never be able to join the Dustmen. (It sets the Join_Dustmen variable to 3.)

There is a bug here, in that you do get the option to ask him to join again after this happens, and if you do so he'll give you the quest to see Noroch. But then, when you complete Noroch's quest and go back to Emoric, he won't acknowledge it. I can fix this in one of two ways. I can either remove the option to let you ask him to join again after you've done that, or I can reset the Join_Dustmen variable back to 0 when you do. I think I'm going to go with the former. I know, it seems harsh that if you "Never mind" once during that dialogue you can never do it again, but that is essentially what happens in the vanilla game and it does seem to be the intent (I'm only removing the confusion of being able to do Noroch's quest and then getting inexplicably stopped in your tracks). Well, people are always saying they want 'choices and consequences'. This is one, then, harsh tho it be.

EDIT: Just discovered that you -only- get to ask to join a second time after cutting yourself off like that if you belong to the Sensates, Godsmen or Xaositects. If you don't belong to any other faction, or if you belong to the Anarchists, then it does the proper check and you don't get the option to ask to join the Dustmen again after you've cut yourself off. So, yeah, that's definitely the right way to go.

While looking into that, I also found something else. When you ask Emoric to join the Dustmen, if you already belong to a faction, he asks you if you're willing to renounce your old faction. But the state where you actually -do- renounce your faction is orphaned. I'm restoring it, seeing as how the only other faction leader that gives a quest chain as a requirement for joining, Keldor the Godsman, also requires you to actually renounce your other faction membership before he'll start you on his quest chain. Interestingly, you can actually still avoid renouncing your faction at the beginning and still get Emoric's quest chain by lying to him with a high charisma, which is a pretty cool option that becomes trivial unless the actual renunciation if you don't lie is restored. Either way, when you finally complete his quest chain and actually become a Dustman, at that point you WILL lose any other faction memberships (except Anarchists, since you'd be infiltrating). This won't always be acknowledged in dialogue, but it will happen, so the lying doesn't actually allow you to join two factions, it just lets you remain in your old faction until you actually take the Dustman oath.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 05 July 2009 - 06:27 PM.