46 replies to this topic

[Jarno Mikkola]

Hmm, question; Is the Mistmoor town destination supposed to be revealed soon after I return from smuggler Ship? Asking cause I just was going to exit from the Saltmarsh to the Swamp and map destination was accessible then. I am lazy to read all the text and so I may have missed something essential.

[Miloch]

My Japanese operating system uses romaji(English letters), kanji and kana. My keyboard is a different set up then the US keyboards. I have noticed that when I play BG and want to CLUA anything I have to remember where the keys are in the US. I think the symbols do not exist because of all of the new characters needed for three different writing systems used in Japan. The characters become strange symbols on a Japanese computer.

None of those characters exists on an English keyboard either, with the exception of the pound symbol (£) on British (but not US) keyboards. You have to use the Character Map (usually under Start > Programs > Accessories) to insert them. I'm pretty sure the Japanese yen symbol (¥) exists on your keyboard! If you can read English text at all (obviously so if you're reading this) those characters should be available. In MS Word, the same characters are under Insert > Symbol (see the first and second rows after the z). What's more, *all* single-byte alphabets are included in that same keyset, so that includes Cyrillic (Russian) and even Arabic and other languages. Now if I switch to a double-byte character set like BatangChe, I get Korean, Chinese, Japanese *and* I still get those special characters, still in the first and second rows after the z (¢ £ ¥ µ etc.).

So you say the characters "become strange symbols on a Japanese computer" - well they are strange symbols to begin with, but what do they shift to? Can you confirm that happens if you just download an IA content module and look at the content? Does it happen before extracting, if you just browse it in WinRar? After extracting to your hard drive? Or only after copying the files with WeiDU? A screenshot or two might help. With enough information, we can narrow down what's happening here, but so far it's been a bit vague.

[leahnkain]

The number of characters needed in order to write English is very small, and thus it is possible to use only one byte to encode one English character. However, the number of characters in Japanese is much more than 256, and hence Japanese cannot be encoded using only one byte, and Japanese is thus encoded using two or more bytes, in a so-called "double byte" or "multi-byte" encoding. Some problems relate to transliteration and romanization, some to character encoding, and some to the input of Japanese text.

There are several standard methods to encode Japanese characters for use on a computer, including JIS, Shift-JIS, EUC, and Unicode. While mapping the set of kana is a simple matter, kanji has proven more difficult. Despite efforts, none of the encoding schemes have become the de facto standard, and multiple encoding standards are still in use today.

For example, most Japanese e-mails are in JIS encoding and web pages in Shift-JIS and yet mobile phones in Japan usually use some form of Extended Unix Code. If a program fails to determine the encoding scheme employed, it can cause mojibake (misconverted {garbled/garbage characters, literally "transformed characters" from the combination of moji 文字 meaning character and the stem of bakeru 化ける meaning to change form) and thus unreadable text on computers.

To understand how this state of affairs has arisen, it is useful to learn a little about the history of the encodings. The first encoding to become widely used was JIS X 0201, which is a single-byte encoding that only covers standard 7-bit ASCII characters with half-width katakana extensions. This was widely used in systems that were neither powerful enough nor had the storage to handle kanji (including DOS and old embedded equipment such as cash registers). The development of kanji encodings was the beginning of the split. Shift JIS was developed to be completely backward compatible with JIS X 0201, and thus is used in Windows (for backwards compatibility with DOS), and in much embedded electronic equipment.

However, Shift JIS has the unfortunate property that it often breaks any parser (software that reads the coded text) that is not specifically designed to handle it. EUC, on the other hand, is not backwards compatible with JIS X 0201, but is handled much better by parsers that have been written for 7-bit ASCII (and thus EUC encodings are used on UNIX where much of the file-handling code was historically only written for English encodings). Further complications arise because the original Internet e-mail standards only support 7-bit transfer protocols. Thus JIS encoding was developed for sending and receiving e-mails.

In character set standards such as JIS, not all required characters are included, so gaiji (外字 "external characters") are sometimes used to supplement the character set. Gaiji may come in the form of external font packs, where normal characters have been replaced with new characters, or the new characters have been added to unused character positions. However, gaiji are not practical in Internet environments since the font set must be transferred with text to use the gaiji. As a result, such characters are written with similar or simpler characters in place, or the text may need to be written using a larger character set (such as Unicode) that supports the required character.

Unicode is supposed to solve all encoding problems in all languages of the world. The UTF-8 encoding used to encode Unicode in web pages does not have the disadvantages that Shift-JIS has. There are still controversies. For Japanese, the kanji characters have been unified with Chinese, that is a character considered to be the same in both Japanese and Chinese have been given one and the same code number in Unicode, even if they look a little different. This process, called Han unification, has caused controversy. The previous encodings in Japan, Taiwan Area, Mainland China and Korea have only handled one language and Unicode should handle all. The handling of Kanji/Chinese have however been designed by a committee composed of representatives from all four countries/areas. Unicode is slowly growing because it is better supported by software from outside Japan, but still most homepages in Japanese use Shift-JIS.

Maybe thislink could explain more:. The easiest way I can explain the charatcers I see is it is usually random japanese characters which most computer cannot read.

Edited by leahnkain, 16 January 2010 - 10:06 PM.

[leahnkain]

Hmm, question; Is the Mistmoor town destination supposed to be revealed soon after I return from smuggler Ship? Asking cause I just was going to exit from the Saltmarsh to the Swamp and map destination was accessible then. I am lazy to read all the text and so I may have missed something essential.

Actually it is showing after Oakhurst. It shouldn't show at all until you finish the swamp.

[Tieflingz]

The Non-Unicode changing thing worked on mine, I think? Decapus showed up as I reinstalled CA 0.51, I'm still getting some (But much less) crashes due to unknown reasons



// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]
~SETUP-CLASSICS051.TP2~ #0 #0 // The Classic Adventures TC mod, version 0.51
~SETUP-CLASSICS051.TP2~ #0 #1 // Install Banter Accelerator
~SETUP-CLASSICS051.TP2~ #0 #3 // Infinite Weapon, Potion and Ring/Amulet Stacking
~SETUP-CLASSICS051.TP2~ #0 #5 // Wear Magical Armor AND Magic Rings (etc.)
~SETUP-CLASSICS051.TP2~ #0 #6 // Allow Multi-Player Created NPCs to "Wait Here" When Kicked Out
~SETUP-CLASSICS051.TP2~ #0 #7 // Turn Off The Hideous Cloak-of-Mirroring and Spell-Trap Animation
~SETUP-CLASSICS051.TP2~ #0 #8 // Install 1PP's Flaming Sword animations pack
~SETUP-CLASSICS051.TP2~ #0 #9 // Install the Ion Stone animations pack
~RR/SETUP-RR.TP2~ #0 #0 // Proper dual-wielding implementation for Thieves and Bards: v4.31
~RR/SETUP-RR.TP2~ #0 #1 // Thief kit revisions: v4.31
~RR/SETUP-RR.TP2~ #0 #2 // Thief High Level Ability revisions: v4.31
~RR/SETUP-RR.TP2~ #0 #3 // Proper racial adjustments for thieving skills: v4.31
~RR/SETUP-RR.TP2~ #0 #4 // Bard kit revisions: v4.31
~RR/SETUP-RR.TP2~ #0 #5 // Bard High Level Ability revisions: v4.31
~RR/SETUP-RR.TP2~ #0 #6 // Proper spell progression for Bards: v4.31
~RR/SETUP-RR.TP2~ #0 #7 // Additional equipment for Thieves and Bards: v4.31

Also I found the potion that caused Orcs to keep quaffing! (Maybe, he stopped chucking after I showed up in his line of sight)
It's the blue one, umm, Mind Focusing (?) Potion I believe, here are the screen shots

[Sir BillyBob]

I thought I had already fixes the Mind Focusing potion. An orc shouldn't be using it at all. They aren't the right class. Okay, I'll try again in the next release.

[Erephine]

For those experiencing problems with language settings and IA:

Could you see if this solution works for you and reply there?

Edited by Erephine, 19 January 2010 - 08:42 AM.

[Jarno Mikkola]

By the way, the Sahuagin Queen and Priestess of Sekolah work extra fine(without bug, with the new animation).

Also I found the potion that caused Orcs to keep quaffing! (Maybe, he stopped chucking after I showed up in his line of sight)
It's the blue one, umm, Mind Focusing (?) Potion I believe, here are the screen shots

I would suspect that the Rogue Rebalance could have something to do with that bug... hmm, I might have to take those words back, as I just ran into a Sahuagin Captain that began to drink a potion multiple time, and when it saw me, if gulp-ed it and attacked.
But then again, I might have installed the RR too, as I lost the WeiDU.log .

Now, to bugs:
1)I noticed that when I returned to the Fieldings Magic shop to turn in the flower/plant, I already had a dialog option to ask is the potion ready while I hadn't given the flower yet. Of course I suspect that as I hadn't given the flower, the timer wouldn't set, so I wouldn't get the amuletpotion without giving the flower, but it's silly to have the option to ask if it's ready yet.

2)Puf, and they came out from no where...

This might be just a bit too strong counter strike.
Well, actually the bug I think is that the script doesn't complete, so the same monsters are spawn time and again in quick succession.
Yeah... The timer never gets reseted: From TC0080.bcs:

IF
	GlobalTimerExpired("TCMoreSpawnsTimer","TC0080")
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		SetGlobal("TCMoreSpawns","TC0080",1)
		CreateCreature("TCSAHUAW",[250.1890],15) // Sahuagin Mage
		CreateCreature("TCSAHUA4",[100.2000],0) // Sahuagin Captain
		CreateCreature("TCSAHUAW",[490.2160],0) // Sahuagin Mage
		CreateCreature("TCSAHUA4",[670.2200],9) // Sahuagin Captain
		CreateCreature("TCSAHUAW",[440.2400],10) // Sahuagin Mage
		CreateCreature("TCSAHUAW",[2030.2700],0) // Sahuagin Mage
		CreateCreature("TCSAHUA4",[790.2390],9) // Sahuagin Captain
		CreateCreature("TCSAHUA4",[1800.1700],1) // Sahuagin Captain
END

It needs a: Global("TCMoreSpawns","TC0080",0) -check, or something... I got over that by including that and recompiling with Near Infinity.

3) The Elmo dialog is interrupted by (Althon with)Candella and it exits without anything happening if I accept what she proposes... and I can't heal Elmo with my spells.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 24 January 2010 - 12:10 PM.

[Sir BillyBob]

War area (TC0080) now corrected.

I don't see anything wrong in the Althon/Candella dialog. Who else is in your party. Right now, only Rurik or Blush can heal him. I haven't added Erky, Cath, or any other cleric just yet (including the PC).

Orcs with potions - The requirement is that the creature must have an Intelligence below 10. Orcs are at 9, so it should be able to drink the potion. I just tested this by having creature TCORC04 (the ones in the Silver Palace) join my party and giving it a POTN37 (Mind Focus) to drink. Everything works fine. So maybe another mod changes the potion but I doubt anyone changes the WTASIGHT.BCS script.

[Jarno Mikkola]

I don't see anything wrong in the Althon/Candella dialog. Who else is in your party. Right now, only Rurik or Blush can heal him. I haven't added Erky, Cath, or any other cleric just yet (including the PC).

No other than the PC, my PC is a Ranger/Cleric, so that would explain it.

[Yowenir]

Stuck in Lizardman Lair , and some minor bugs and quirks

Game stuck:
After routing the Wyvern I went back to the Lizardman chief who told me to report to Saltmarsh Captain. Instead of sending me to the Sahuagin Fortress the Captain is repeating the pre-swamp dialog routine (which she had already given before I had set out to the swamp). Even though she is located in the study, she starts out with "Yxburt(hero) has screwed up on the smugglers, we have come together in this council... and so on, finishing with "your map has been updated" (which of course isn't).
Can't get out of that.
I ran into Eldarin and his Band of Pirates twice between Swamp and Saltmarsh, this is probably part of the same bug.

Lizardmen quaffing potions
When I entered the swamp-area for the first time, lizardmen on the bridge (still in the shadows) kept quaffing potions like the orcs in the Palace of the Silver Princess.

Combat algorithm/to hit and damage irregularities:
When I ran into Eldarin the first time, Rurik finished him off with a 20hp-blow. Just that Rurik had an attack-roll of 15 (+11) which were added up to 26 (??? should be 20, only a natural 20 should yield higher results, with bonuses). First, I cannot account for all bonuses(+11) though maybe weapon vs. armor type might add up some odd ones there. But most importantly, he was equipped with mace+1 (max8) Ogre gauntlets(+6) and he was chanted(+1)for a total max of 15p with a single blow... BG Engine fault?
Had a similarly strange high hp blow by Shadow backstabbing, in my first try of v0.51 within the Palace of the Silver Princess. She did 24 damage with a natural 20, which would imply max roll quadrupled, while by rules a x2backstab with a natural 20 should come out as x3 (the natural 20 raising the backstab multiplier by 1). But for that one I had just assumed a misinterpretation/programming error already present in BG/BG2.

Item misbehaviour:
Also on a random encounter between Saltmarsh and swamp I wasn't able to kill a prone(0 HP) Troll with my (new) flaming sword (nice animation! ). I needed a scroll of burning hands to finish the job since I hadn't memorized any fire spell. A flaming sword with a special bonus vs regenerating creatures should suffice to kill a troll, shouldn't it?

Enemy-assignment-bug:
I sent Shadow pickpocketing in Saltmarsh. Failing an attempt, the victim turned 'enemy'(red), while the nearby guard stayed neutral, starting to attack and finishing off the victim, not Shadow. Can't rember to have bribed the guard though I believe this goes for all over Saltmarsh, also indoors (but didn't check all areas).

Probably no bug?:
Can't get beyond the first secret door in the Mayor's cellar, even though the former Mayor handed over his key. Second key necessary?

Minor Quirk:
Two scrolls of 'protection from evil' and 'ray of enfeeblement' won't stack up.

Game equilibrium:
Strange but maybe on purpose - both Hucrele rings can be worn by the same character for +2 protection and 100% fire resistance. Rurik will combine them into one ring+2 with 75% resistance. You gain another ring-slot and sacrifice 25% resistance, 300gp and a scroll of protection from fire?
Maybe the two rings shouldn't be allowed together on one person at all, so the combination feels more like a gain than a loss.
Levelling up, I noticed that Shadow can train in Katana and two weapon style. So she could even be weilding two katana at the same time? Maybe these blades are a bit long for a halfling. As a DM I wouldn't allow anything longer than a short sword, and the weapon in the off-hand shorter than the main hand. No scimitars, no katanas. A halfling fighter might wield a katana -two-handedly.
But this is the difference between Ad+d1st/2nd and BG/BG2?

regards
Yowenir

ps. great design job on the swamp area and the lizardman lair. Bridge to the lair better than in the module. Wyvern+X leagues better than the giant crocodile in the module. Good dialogues. Strong and fearsome Lizardmen. Didn't dare to go in by force. Excellent swamp/jungle ambience (sound design).

[Sam.]

I ran into Eldarin and his Band of Pirates twice between Swamp and Saltmarsh, this is probably part of the same bug.

I think I ran into them twice also.

Item misbehaviour:
Also on a random encounter between Saltmarsh and swamp I wasn't able to kill a prone(0 HP) Troll with my (new) flaming sword (nice animation! ). I needed a scroll of burning hands to finish the job since I hadn't memorized any fire spell. A flaming sword with a special bonus vs regenerating creatures should suffice to kill a troll, shouldn't it?

Which sword was it?

Can't get beyond the first secret door in the Mayor's cellar, even though the former Mayor handed over his key. Second key necessary?

I couldn't open the second door in this version of CA either, and I did make doubly sure I got all three triggers.

Minor Quirk:
Two scrolls of 'protection from evil' and 'ray of enfeeblement' won't stack up.

That probably means they have identical descriptions and effects, but are different item files.

Strange but maybe on purpose - both Hucrele rings can be worn by the same character for +2 protection and 100% fire resistance. Rurik will combine them into one ring+2 with 75% resistance. You gain another ring-slot and sacrifice 25% resistance, 300gp and a scroll of protection from fire?

I hate that the total fire protection decreases. I always edit the item myself to set it back to 100% .

[Yowenir]

pps.: Missed Oceanus and the pseudo-dragon though on the smuggler's ship. There seemed to be a secret hold close to the bow? Couldn't find a way in there, not even with potion of perception. Also the ship had a bit strong recycling-feel to it. The gambling tables gave it away...

Edited by Yowenir, 07 March 2010 - 06:44 PM.

[Yowenir]

Hi Sam,
thanks for your quick reply. Had to restart the game system to get the answer exact:

Which sword was it?

flame tongue +4
found it close to the Wyverns

Spoiler

in the Ogre Magi
Cave

goodnight
Yowenir

[leahnkain]

pps.: Missed Oceanus and the pseudo-dragon though on the smuggler's ship. There seemed to be a secret hold close to the bow? Couldn't find a way in there, not even with potion of perception. Also the ship had a bit strong recycling-feel to it. The gambling tables gave it away...

Oceanus became Aesdale, an aquatic elf who joins the group wouldn't really be feasible due to the limitations of the game engine, the same for the pseudo dragon. I guess Aesdale could have the psedo dragon as a familiar...but honestly I needed a place to put Aesdale and removing Oceanus(whose name really is terrible) seemed to make sense. As for maps, this really is a minor area, a TC the size of CA needs to recycle maps otherwise we would be spending way too much time on a single area. There are many maps which I slaved over but the boat is one area which players race through so we feel no need to give it an original map.

[Yowenir]

Oceanus(whose name really is terrible)

Latin ancestors?

As for maps

c'mn, admit it - you only put that quick and dirty one in, so I'd be so much more impressed by the swamp

---

Anyone out there who can get me out of the lizardman/saltmarsh loop to get on with my game?

regs
yow

[Sir BillyBob]

Who is to say that the gambling tables aren't there to sell to a town that bans gambling.

Not sure where that sword comes from. A +4 sword at this point is not from us. Is it the +1 Flame Tongue with +4 bonus to certain enemies? If so, it would hurt a normal troll. Some trolls, like Desert Trolls, are immune to fire damage. You have to use acid.

[Yowenir]

Thank you for your replies, but

P L E A S E - someone help with the biggest problem first - my game is stuck in a loop!!!
How did this happen? Where can I beam myself into, or at what point should I start over again? I would really like to continue!

Stuck in Lizardman Lair [...]

Game stuck:
After routing the Wyvern I went back to the Lizardman chief who told me to report to Saltmarsh Captain. Instead of sending me to the Sahuagin Fortress the Captain is repeating the pre-swamp dialog routine (which she had already given before I had set out to the swamp). Even though she is located in the study, she starts out with "Yxburt(hero) has screwed up on the smugglers, we have come together in this council... and so on, finishing with "your map has been updated" (which of course isn't).
Can't get out of that.
I ran into Eldarin and his Band of Pirates twice between Swamp and Saltmarsh, this is probably part of the same bug.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.


Nice one, SirBillyBob. lol

Who is to say that the gambling tables aren't there to sell to a town that bans gambling.

... Is it the +1 Flame Tongue with +4 bonus to certain enemies? If so, it would hurt a normal troll. ...

Yes it must be the same one you have in mind. In the description it is just called Flame Tongue +4, while it actually has Thac0 of +1, with damage bonuses +1, +2 vs regenerating, +3 vs cold using, +4 vs undead.


The random encounter was with a giant troll, just like the two in front of the wyvern lair. Here's a pic of the situation. Dirbert with free action (thus ignoring his failed save vs. web) attacking the prone(0HP)+ webbed giant troll. Shouldn't he kill the troll with this blade? Instead: Troll was immune to my damage.



Thanks for your help


regs
yow

[Sir BillyBob]

We don't modify the standard Flame Tongue sword. So unless the BG2FixPack does something, that sword should work like it does in the basic game.

Jarno -
Mistmoor appears due to a setting I had tried to make for seeing it from Selgaunt Bridge. You should not be able to see it in the latest version. Right now, it should only appear if you arrive in Selgaunt Bridge or I think the Sahaugin War area as well based on revealing it through scripts now.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Shouldn't he kill the troll with this blade? Instead: Troll was immune to my damage.

No, because the sword doesn't do fire damage! As the troll is immune to all else type damage but fire and acid based one, while the Sword you use Damage type: shashing ... as you can read from the discription above. There is only one melee weapon that can kill the trolls that I remember(that does fire damage), it's the one in the Silver Palace, it's the one the statue holds and you have to kill it to get it, if I remember it right.

Jarno -
Mistmoor appears due to a setting I had tried to make for seeing it from Selgaunt Bridge. You should not be able to see it in the latest version. Right now, it should only appear if you arrive in Selgaunt Bridge or I think the Sahaugin War area as well based on revealing it through scripts now.

So it will be in the current version(0.52)? I haven't gotten very far in 0.52... thanks anyway.