287 replies to this topic

[Qwinn]

If you kill not 5, but even 1 person or attack a guard, the variable is set to 1000 and you are hunted down for the rest of your life

But this is only true of a few shopkeepers and Clerk's Ward residents.

Low variable indicates that you verbally offended some residents of aroused their suspicion. I can come up with plenty of evidence.

I know what you're referring to here - there's a number of dialogues that increment that MK_Counter. And yes, I forgot that getting Diligence to help you in earlier versions required -talking- to them to get that counter incremented... although you could then finish killing them off, and Diligence would still help you.

In fact, you can get MK_Counter set to 1000 just for stealing coins from the actor's hat. The entire implementation is so haphazard that it's very hard to draw any conclusions.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 21 January 2010 - 02:34 PM.

[Qwinn]

Hmm, looking at it further, you may well be right that that was the intent. In -some- areas, such as the Lower Ward Market, and some shops, yes, killing even one person is enough to get the Harmonium on your ass forever. Should this be the case everywhere, including the Festhall? Perhaps. For me the real stickler becomes QuiSai... do you *HAVE* to get the Harmonium on your ass forever to become an Anarchist? That seems like a pretty big change.

Qwinn

[nevill]

You can always make an exception just for him. Not very logical, but if you can avoid killing anyone else, why not? You still won't be welcome in Festhall, and that is a big enough drawback in itself.

Or you can come up with an 'explanation' that Sensates will keep the matter private if just one of them is killed, but report a mass murder to Harmonium. That way a player can choose between Jumble LongName and QuiSai. Or think up something else entirely.

Besides, an Anarchist wouldn't hesitate to kill the soldiers and then explore the area normally. By that point in the game they have a sufficient level to do so, too. So it isn't even that big of a problem.

Edited by nevill, 21 January 2010 - 03:15 PM.

[Qwinn]

I was able to get an instance where the gears did disappear BTW, and toggling the "Permanent corpse" flag in the CRE did in fact keep the gears from disappearing, so that really should fix that issue.

And the gears didn't become conversable as a result?

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

You still won't be welcome in Festhall, and that is a big enough drawback in itself.

Why would you not be welcome in the Festhall? Splinter only teleports you out if you kill people in the room he's in, and if you return afterwards, he'll be fine again. Killing people in one room of the Festhall does not aggro people in other rooms (this very much appears to be by design). In the original game you can kill QuiSai without making Splinter mad, of that I'm fairly certain. It does get the guard called on you. Now what I need to determine is, if you -kill- that guard that come after you, does that set MK_COUNTER to 1000? I don't believe it does. So I *think* what happens in the original game, if you kill QuiSai, you get one wave of guards after you, but once you kill them everything's pretty much fine again. Can anyone confirm?

At any rate, if you really *could* be permanently not "welcome in the Festhall", that's pretty much a game-ender if you did it before hitting the private sensoriums and getting the info you need to reach Ravel. So I don't think that's ever the case.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 21 January 2010 - 03:37 PM.

[Qwinn]

Oooh, I see, gotcha, devSin. That'll go into 4.1.

Qwinn

[scient]

To those that have v4 quick load installed and want to avoid crashes, make sure your mouse is not on ANY UI control when quick loading. This includes PC portraits and all UI buttons like spell book, inventory, etc. I'm trying to come up with a solution for v4.1 that will prevent this but for now, it's fairly easy to avoid.

[Qwinn]

devSin, leave the No Corpse flag on too? That seems... counterintuitive. Given that flag being on, I'm surprised the gears ever show up at all.

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

On the matter of the Harmonium... it appears to me (since I make no real changes to the way it works, other than letting Diligence have influence) that I was correct... in the vanilla game, or even with my Fixpack, the consequence of killing anyone in the Festhall is you get exactly one wave of Harmonium guards spawning in the Clerk's Ward to come after you, and once you kill them, it's as if nothing ever happened.

That... *is* pretty flaky. I am actually now leaning toward the view that the MK_COUNTER = 1000 variable should also be set for killing anyone in the Festhall. Right now, it only gets set for killing people in the Lower Ward Market or various merchants (tailor shop, apothecary, Giltspur). It can also be set in dialogue if you choose "Attack" options with random wandering people in the Clerk's Ward, or various Cafe Patrons, or even just stealing money from the artist's hat with low enough dexterity.

I'm going to go do one of those things now, and see just how bad it gets if the Harmonium are set to permanently hunt you down. Never really did that before and stayed with it.

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Ok, just documenting here, these are the people that, in the vanilla game, when you kill them, get the Harmonium on your ass permanently, and Diligence can't help you with it:

Giltspur the Auctioneer, in the Lower Ward
ANYONE in the Lower Ward Market
Iannis the Advocate
Gonclaves the Tailor
Pestle Kilnn
Pestle
Kilnn
Finam the Linguist

In addition, you can get permanent Harmonium hatred during dialogue with these people, but only via dialogue, just force attacking them doesn't do it (except for Goncalves):

Telling Able you're an Anarchist, then attacking him.
Stealing money from the actor's hat and getting caught.
Telling Cafe Patrons ~"You mean I look dead, right? Well, I am, you know. Dead!"~ and following this till they call the guard, then attacking them.
Forcing wandering Clerk's Ward citizens that are in a rush to answer your questions, then attacking them when they call the guard
Daring Goncalves the Tailor to call the guard on you, in dialogue.
Get Malmaner (guy who wants you to buy him costume) angry enough to call the guard, then attacking him.


Finally, here's the ways you can get the Harmonium a -little- mad... a wave of Harmonium comes after you but Diligence can call them off in the vanilla game... or at least, she's supposed to, but in the vanilla game it doesn't actually de-aggro the currently hostile guards and that makes it completely useless as in this state there will be no more waves of guards, I make it so they actually do de-aggro in the Fixpack. If you don't involve Diligence, then once you kill the wave of guards, it's as if the Harmonium forget the whole thing:

Telling Able you're an Anarchist, but choosing the "Try to Leave" option when he calls for the guard.
Annoying the Actor and Poet spectators enough for them to call the guard.
Telling Cafe Patrons ~"You mean I look dead, right? Well, I am, you know. Dead!"~ and following this till they call the guard, then "Try to Leave"
Forcing wandering Clerk's Ward citizens that are in a rush to answer your questions, then "Try to leave" when they call the guard.
Get Malmaner (guy who wants you to buy him costume) angry enough to call the guard, then "Try to leave".




Now, in addition to the above, killing almost ANYONE (besides the few hostiles like thugs and Sarhava) in either the Clerk's Ward or the Festhall gets that single wave of Harmonium after you, but killing that wave ends the Harmonium hate.

There's an exception: Killing Harmonium Guards -themselves-, they call for help from whatever other guards may be nearby, but they do not call for reinforcements or get that wave of Harmonium after you. Bizarre, huh?

That's the status of the vanilla game. Comments? "Sounds legit to me?" "WTF, that needs fixing?"

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 21 January 2010 - 08:07 PM.

[Qwinn]

By the way... while I did remove the swirly effect and sound from Grace's Kiss, she still speaks her spell-casting "Shiawasay" and "May my faith lend me strength" lines when doing it. That's -really- inappropriate, I think. Anyone know of a way to get rid of those? I suspect it involves changing the same field I do to get rid of the swirly effects, at 0x22 in SPIN107.SPL. Changing it from 44 to 45 gets rid of the swirly effect and sound, but I bet another value would get rid of her spoken lines for it. Anyone know what it might be?

Qwinn

[scient]

Yeah, that flag does something else in PST (scient??)... "Permanent corpse" looks to work like the other games (thankfully), but most the other flags probably do something different (the labels are only accurate for BG series and maybe IWD 1).

What bitfield are we talking about in CRE? Like which value is it in NI?

edit:
Nm, I see under flags.

Edited by scient, 21 January 2010 - 09:55 PM.

[Qwinn]

By the way, devSin:

was going to cover the dialogues, but then I actually looked at the dialogues. And now I'm not going to cover the dialogues.
Unfortunately, my changes are too numerous and the way I work makes it hard to know where the exact changes are and I don't remember most the differences from your Ds anyway. Maybe some day, but more than likely never.
You can have permission to call me devSuck, sorry, but I can't help it lazy is my only superpower.

If you want, you could just send me the file where you make your changes and I can do the analysis. I'm familiar enough with my own changes that I can probably spot differences pretty quickly.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 21 January 2010 - 10:08 PM.

[nevill]

You are right on the whole Festhall thing. I've never tried to murder someone in Festhall and live with it.

On the Harmonium issue:

1) Force attacking ok killing any of the residents with some obvious exceptions should set the value to its max (as per dialogue).
2) Same goes for most of the Lower Wards denizens.
3) Killing any of the guards also should set 'MK_Counter' to 1000. I thought that something like this already was in vanilla. I'll check it out. Anyway, there should be some merit in *not* fighting back.
4) I am personally leaning to let Sarhava set that variable too if you attack her. She does threaten you to summon the guards and she is a noble. That is enough for them to care.
5) Stealing money from the hat is obviously a less heinous crime than murdering someone, don't you think? I am for changing that so it increments 'MK_Counter' by 1.
6) Harmonium waves should respawn, though the actual mechanics of that action should be discussed. Once in a set amount of time, perhaps?

I actually saw incrementing 'MK_Counter' by 5 or greater somewhere which exceeds the limit for the Harmonium Officer to start his non-existent dialogue. Which is what made me think about whe whole system of minor and major crimes. What happens when you try to steal something in the Lower Wards Market?

Back when I was experimenting with the game, I made a few changes locally:
a) Each time the guards were called, a timer would start based on your current 'MK_Counter' value. It ranged from one or two hours to three days.
b) Slaying each guard would spawn two more. Just so I wouldn't go the easy route.
c) If any of the guards see the party while the timer still haven't expired, the timer is reset.
d) If the timer expired, they all would EscapeArea()
e) If 'MK_Counter'=1000 and any of the Harmonium soldiers see you, the alarm goes on again.

I don't remember if it was possible to aggro every Harmonium soldier and then make them all leave during 'd)', though.

P.S. Added (3).

Edited by nevill, 22 January 2010 - 01:32 AM.