287 replies to this topic

[Qwinn]

Never mind, I see where you can say "I'll be back with some money.". I don't think this really requires fixing or tracking. For one thing, if you haven't blackmailed her, then she's lying to you, she -does- have money (at least 75 copper, I believe).

I don't really care if you come across as a "heartless bastard" in that situation... so you're a heartless bastard, that's your choice. The poison thing is different, there the dialogue really doesn't make sense, as it alludes to your creating a distraction that you never actually do. I'm still inclined to fix it the way I mentioned in my last post. Not to mention, there's no reason that the DEX stat check shouldn't be consistent across all the poison options.

You'd only be given the distraction option if you -had- the embalming fluid, of course, and that would lead to a (stat check corrected) state 15 where you could then actually do the poisoning, or back out if you wished.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 16 January 2010 - 01:27 AM.

[nevill]

2) Well, I didn't think that PC actually does something to distract her in most cases. After all, that's how thief skills work - you clean their pockets while they are looking away. Distracting them makes the job easier (hence no check in STATE 15, I thought it was a feature), but they will eventually look away on their own.

Besides, just changing the lines won't do you any good. You also need to change the conditions (and consequenses, but that's obvious). It wouldn't make sense if you could distract her only when you know of her debt and not before (though why would you do it before that?) Though I suppose it would still be better than vanilla behavior.

3) STATE 14, "Can you think of another solution?". The lines there that read:

IF ~PartyGoldGT(99)~ THEN REPLY #10650 /* ~Lie: "I'd lend you the money, but I don't have it. Answer some other questions, will you?"~ */ GOTO 7
IF ~PartyGoldLT(100)~ THEN REPLY #10651 /* ~Truth: "I'd lend you the money, but I don't have it. Answer some other questions, will you?"~ */ GOTO 7
IF ~~ THEN REPLY #10652 /* ~"I'll be back with some money."~ */ EXIT

Sounds like a promise to me. You see, I'm roleplaying a goody-two-shoes and this situation disturbed me. As well as the fact that you can pay her without knowing how much she owes to Barkis (how can you decide if your statement above is true or false if you don't know how much do you need?) So I added a valuabe to keep track of what she said:

0, if you have never discussed payment
1, if you have discussed it but you are not sure how big is her debt
2, if you know she needs 100 GP

The line with "How much?.." should also be present in STATE 14 (and possibly require a 'variable < 2' check), while those promises, lies and truths, as well as the option to actually give her money should either be moved to STATE 13 where the aforementioned line leads or require a 'variable = 2' check.

(I can't believe we are discussing a dialogue with a total of 27 STATES to such great lengths )

P.S.

I don't really care if you come across as a "heartless bastard" in that situation... so you're a heartless bastard, that's your choice.

No, I'm not. I actually volunteered to help her but the game makes me behave like a bastard and demand payment in spite of my true intensions!

You'd only be given the distraction option if you -had- the embalming fluid, of course

That would make even less sense. At the very least the condition to check for embalming fluid should go where the actual poisoning takes place, not the distraction. Though I can see why you came up with that solution.

Edited by nevill, 16 January 2010 - 02:05 AM.

[Qwinn]

2) Well, I didn't think that PC actually does something to distract her in most cases. After all, that's how thief skills work - you clean their pockets while they are looking away. Distracting them makes the job easier (hence no check in STATE 15, I thought it was a feature), but they will eventually look away on their own.

Except that every one of those poison attempts (other than state 15) result in this:

You swiftly pour the embalming fluid into her half-empty glass in the moment she's looking away. The stench rises immediately, but she doesn't seem to notice. She turns back around and downs her poisoned beverage in one swallow. "Um, what was it? What was I s'posed to see?" Suddenly, she begins choking.

That implies that you deliberately distracted her in each and every case. If there was a resulting state that implied that you waited for her to look away on her own, then I'd agree with you, but that's a dialogue line that you want me to create because it doesn't exist. I think it's a cleaner change to have the player always create the distraction and always have to go through state 15 on poison attempts.

Besides, just changing the lines won't do you any good. You also need to change the conditions (and consequenses, but that's obvious). It wouldn't make sense if you could distract her only when you know of her debt and not before (though why would you do it before that?) Though I suppose it would still be better than vanilla behavior.

I think you're answering your own question here: why -would- you do it before that? I see nothing wrong with keeping the conditions that you must be on Barkis's quest -and- you must have the fluid in order to get the "Distract her" option. Those are both original conditions for your poison attempt, and the distraction is just a part of that attempt.

Yes, I could make it more explicit and change the line to ~Distract her so you can poison her drink: "What's that over there?"~, but that would require translators... if I ever get them available in every language again, I'll do that, but till then the shorter version is fine IMO. If you distract her and don't want to poison her, you have an out.

That said, I do need to shuffle the alignment hits from all the various places into state 15, and add a dex check there, and change a couple of transitions, but it's actually a lot less messy than it probably sounds.

Lemme review the other thing you're discussing, but honestly it only comes up if you have less than 100 copper when you talk to her and I think this is turning into serious overkill, but I'll look it over.

Qwinn

[nevill]

Lemme review the other thing you're discussing, but honestly it only comes up if you have less than 100 copper when you talk to her and I think this is turning into serious overkill, but I'll look it over.

Well, now I'm walking the streets of Sigil without any coppers whatsoever, spending what little I have on women and drinks. It's fun playing this way, I do not know who the pickpockets are anymore, because I do not pick their interest.

Yes, I could make it more explicit and change the line to ~Distract her so you can poison her drink: "What's that over there?"~

That would work, yes.

P.S.
A question to scient. Can you enable scrolling with a mouse wheel in the engine somehow? It would be very useful in a dialogue window and while browsing journal entries.

Edited by nevill, 16 January 2010 - 02:42 AM.

[Qwinn]

Ok, in the second situation you're describing, I can see as a legit fix removing the 3 replies you quoted from state 14 and adding them to state 13. They make a lot more sense there and you're right that there's paths to state 14 that make those replies inappropriate. It in fact is so much more appropriate there that I'd say it's more probable than not that they were intended to go on 13 and were just misplaced, so I'm willing to do it. That removes the need for tracking knowing how much copper she needs to pay the tab.

The other part, about not wanting to re-traverse the dialogue after having made your "promise" to bring her money... no, I think I'm gonna just not go there. Not only would it require adding new dialogue, but it's hardly an unusual situation - there's dozens of dialogues that require you to re-traverse lines you've already gone through in cases where for whatever reason you don't immediately complete whatever action is required of you. That's just the way it is in RPG's, and I'd have to write way too much dialogue to make it happen, and I'd probably lose more people willing to use my mods on that account than I'd gain by fixing stuff like that. It's such a common thing in RPG's that I don't think most people are really bothered by it, and the gain is too little to be adding that much dialogue in. Sorry.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 16 January 2010 - 02:54 AM.

[scient]

A question to scient. Can you enable scrolling with a mouse wheel in the engine somehow? It would be very useful in a dialogue window and while browsing journal entries.

Agreed, the difficulty of this would be determined by following.

1. Are there any windows which will take mouse scroll already in PST? (going to assume this is no because I can't recall any)
2. Are there any IE games which have this functionality? Say BG1, BG2 or IWD2? I have a copy of pretty much every IE game installed so if there is an iteration of IE which has this I can dig through it and see if it's feasible to port over to PST.

While I wouldn't say it is impossible if no IE game has this mechanic, trying to implement it at assembly level without some kind of template would suck+.

Edited by scient, 16 January 2010 - 04:24 AM.

[nevill]

OK, at this point I have already quit playing and started to decompile random files just to see if there is something wrong with them. Now it's Vaxis' dialogue.

1) You miss your chance to fool him into giving you all his items if Morte is near. There is no reason all this extra replies with INT checks that were present in STATE 8 were cut out from STATE 9, leaving you with one-word responses like 'Huh?'. I'm not Clueless, you know!

2) Compare Morte's STATE 85 with his STATE 90. Not only the responses in 90th are weird (you can't lie in that one), but you can actually go through both of them in a single conversation (pretend that you are a spy then intimidate Vaxis). As always, a single variable check to keep track of whether Morte had commented on a topic might save the day.

If Morte had commented on who the Anarchists are you might borrow the line from Vaxis' STATE 71 for his STATE 23.

IF ~(VariableCheck=1)~ THEN REPLY #4650 /* ~"The Anarchists, huh? That who you're watching this place for?"~ */ GOTO 70
IF ~(VariableCheck=0) + (Whatever contditions were there)~ THEN REPLY (Whatever was there)

3) Do you remember me saying something about reversed CHR checks somewhere in the Mortuary? They are there in Vaxis' dialogue, STATE 61. He tells you that you would make a good zombie if your CHR is 9 or less. Well, it might be argued that was the intention, though it doesn't sit well with me.

What IS a bug though, is that the checks in STATE 61 and STATE 62 are different (CHR must be 12 or less for the latter).

Edited by nevill, 16 January 2010 - 06:11 AM.

[Qwinn]

I know that's not true, I've gotten all his items lots of times and I always have Morte near me. I'll see if I can find the path.

EDIT: Both States 3 and 6 (one or the other of which is unavoidable) have the reply ~Lie: "Why... I was looking for you."~ which leads to the whole series of lies that gets you his stuff, and isn't Morte dependent.

As for the specific state you're arguing the option should be in, I see it as Morte is destined to cut in at that point to explain Anarchists to you, and you're not going to get away with Morte explaining Anarchists to you AND your fooling Vaxis into believing you are one. Those are mutually exclusive and rightfully so. And as noted, you can still get all his stuff with Morte nearby, you just can't take this path -and- that path on the same playthrough, which I'm fine with.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 16 January 2010 - 05:04 AM.

[Qwinn]

I must add, I really would've thought what would bug you the most is the fact that you know his name is Vaxis without him ever once telling you it The only way I know of that you can actually learn his name is by the note on the other side of the portal he tells you about, but by that time you can have half a dozen journal entries with his name all over 'em. Really wish there was something I could do about that, but I don't see any place in his dialogue to work his name into that wouldn't be totally out of character.

Qwinn

[nevill]

I see it as Morte is destined to cut in at that point to explain Anarchists to you

I didn't ask him, mind you. I can't see why I must look more stupid if I'm with Morte than without him.

you're not going to get away with Morte explaining Anarchists to you AND your fooling Vaxis into believing you are one

Indeed. That's why I propose that STATE 9 should look exactly like STATE 8. Either you pretend to be an Anarchist and there is no interjection, or you go 'Huh?', let Morte explain it to you, and then miss the opportunity. Right now the first option is missing.

I must add, I really would've thought what would bug you the most is the fact that you know his name is Vaxis without him ever once telling you it

That's the default behavior of all NPCs since Fallout and even before that. I got used to it. Nothing that can be changed here anyway.

Edited by nevill, 16 January 2010 - 05:28 AM.

[Qwinn]

That's the default behavior of all NPCs since Fallout and even before that. I got used to it. Nothing that can be changed here anyway.

Actually, in PS:T this isn't really the case in most situations - Vaxis is unusual in this regard. Just about every NPC does have an introductory state where they tell you their name. Now, it is often possible to -avoid- this introductory state, by picking the "Ignore this person" option that shows up nearly every time you click on someone, and then clicking them again, wherein the game uses the person's name despite your never having been told. This is because of the NumTimesTalkedToGT(0) logic that's just about everywhere... in many cases, there really should be a variable check such that if you just ignored the person, you should get the NumTimesTalkedTo(0) state until you actually DO talk to them.

I think the only undocumented fix in v4 is that I correct that behavior in one place where it's really egregious - Roberta's dialogue. I was considering doing a sweep of all dialogues and correcting that behavior wherever it was worthwhile, as essentially a global fix sort of thing, but I also figure I have a year to think about and/or work up the enthusiasm over it to actually do it.

As for your Vaxis/Morte issue... let me think about it. I see what you're saying, but I also see it as possible that while you can lie when you're alone, there might be a single-syllable pause before you can start your lie with "Yes...", during which Morte interjects. It's not that you'd be more stupid with Morte around, it's that he simply reacts to Vaxis giving himself away before you can really get your lie off the ground. It's plausible enough that I don't think the way it is qualifies as either "nonsensical" or "probably unintended", anyway, and generally my threshold for considering something a fix needs to meet one or the other.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 16 January 2010 - 05:49 AM.

[nevill]

As for your Vaxis/Morte issue... let me think about it. I see what you're saying, but I also see it as possible that while you can lie when you're alone, there might be a single-syllable pause before you can start your lie with "Yes...", during which Morte interjects.

These cases require a certain indication that you've been interrupted, such as your lines ending abruptly or with "--" (Annah's dialogue when you first see her, from the top of my head). Which is not the case with this dialogue. Anyway, I did not choose to start with 15 INT to go 'Huh?' left and right. If I didn't, that option being the only one available would be logical.

That's what the INT check are for. The way it's present only when Morte isn't around is certainly not logical (I should be able to at least start spelling what I wanted to tell). And 'Huh?' being renamed to something else or adding an implication that you've been interrupted is definately more work than restoring the replies that should have been there from the beginning.

Please check the original post. I've found something else that might attract your attention.

Edited by nevill, 16 January 2010 - 08:06 AM.

[ScuD]

scient, what about a tweak to use mouse wheel in Torment? For example, when viewing the items and shops. Is it possible?

Edit: Damn it, I should read the forums better, I'm not the first one to request that

Edited by ScuD, 16 January 2010 - 08:56 AM.

[nevill]

scient:

2. Are there any IE games which have this functionality? Say BG1, BG2 or IWD2? I have a copy of pretty much every IE game installed so if there is an iteration of IE which has this I can dig through it and see if it's feasible to port over to PST.

Pretty much each and every one of them, PST excluded. I've just checked it with IWD1 and I'm pretty sure it was there in BG2.

Qwinn:
I did not quite catch the meaning behind one of Bariaur's lines in dbaria.dlg:

The bariaur shakes his head, laughing. "No, no, two-legs... no bariaur could live this zhis."

What was 'zhis' supposed to mean? Perhaps there was a misprint and the line was supposed to be written as 'live like zhis'? How else could he spell 'th' correctly just for this single line?

Edited by nevill, 16 January 2010 - 09:43 AM.

[scient]

scient, what about a tweak to use mouse wheel in Torment? For example, when viewing the items and shops. Is it possible?

Edit: Damn it, I should read the forums better, I'm not the first one to request that

scient:

2. Are there any IE games which have this functionality? Say BG1, BG2 or IWD2? I have a copy of pretty much every IE game installed so if there is an iteration of IE which has this I can dig through it and see if it's feasible to port over to PST.

Pretty much each and every one of them, PST excluded. I've just checked it with IWD1 and I'm pretty sure it was there in BG2.

Hm ok, next time I boot into windows (in snow leopard atm) I'll look over my IE games and see if I can find closest IE wise to PST which has it working. Will add it to list as potential tweak to look into.

[Qwinn]

The bariaur shakes his head, laughing. "No, no, two-legs... no bariaur could live this zhis."

I agree that this should've been "live like zhis". Corrected for next version.

Don't wait on responses for me on stuff in general, I have to focus on TBH for a while.

Qwinn

[nevill]

Killed Krystall, leader of the Razor Angels, and none of her subordinates lifted a finger to help her. Litany of Curses could've overwritten her script, though. If I talk to one of the Angels after that, their dialogue seems to imply aggression but lacks an actual 'Enemy()' command.

[Qwinn]

PFixPack.tph:

L276: I actually approve of the change to only recognize and address Nameless... if you ran a PC by her never having seen Nameless at all, it makes no sense. If she is throwing out her lines about TNO without TNO around, then that's an additional change I should make, and she should just throw her standard lines instead, not turning to face anyone, just muttering/talking to herself.


QwinnFix.tph:

L50: The script does return them to their saved location once they stray too far... or it does if it has a saved location to return them to, which is why I add that. I agree that the problem is in RandomWalk() basically seeming to send critters to the west more than any other direction (you should see how much effort I put into dealing with that in the Hive section containing the Smoldering Corpse... you'd frequently get all the randomwalking critters stuck on the southwest edge of the area, I added similar "go back to your starting spot" logic to correct taht), but adding the SavePlace() will at least sometimes make them head back to their starting location if they stray too far, splitting them up every so often. Can't hurt, anyway.

L77: Hmm, looking at quests.ini, I think you're right, I'm probably making the "completed" entry for this quest drop out of the journal via this method. I'll create a variable to make sure Anizius only gets his spawn variable set once for the prison so he doesn't get spawned prematurely for Curst Gone.

L135: ... weird. Wonder why I did that. Maybe just a typo on my part. I'll change 2 to 3 in the script, and still increase it to 4, as it still seemed to be going too fast to me.

L278: Nice catch! I've been wondering why I'd still sometimes manage to see a duplicate Matter of Course. Been working at this one for a long time, so, thanks!

L1999: Nother nice catch, I was wondering why the nearby Sensates didn't aggro on my last test run, thought it was similar to that BV issue. Cool, fixed.

L2885: Bleah, you're right... I'll extend the fix to those as well.

L3016: Sure.

L3128: Nother nice catch, thank ya!

L3165: Ah, okay, interesting... never ran into an instance where it worked. I think my changes are still appropriate, yes?

L3271: If you look, most of the rail critters in that area do odd paths like that, it didn't seem any worse (or better) than the other paths. Though I think at the end of this path, the "north wall of the blacksmith" is close enough to the door that I think it's implied he's headed there, just mostly out of sight.

L3287: Eh, well, there's no way the duplicate header is a -good- thing, so even if it's not doing much I'll leave it in. If I find a reason to reactivate team 1 someday, at least I won't have this interfering.

L3358: I don't think other areas serve for comparison, because no other area with abishai has any sort of police patrolling the streets. It was a tough decision, but what finally made me decide to comment it out was that in the vanilla game, the Harmonium WILL defend Grosuk, if you bring him close enough for them to see the fight/death. I'm willing to hear more arguments to the contrary on this, I was really 50/50 on it.

L3470: Huh! I didn't notice the CGAMESPRITE state in the original CRE, I thought it was getting set to that in the save game -because- of the negative hp. Unfortunately in my own test game, by the time I discovered and fixed this problem they'd already "died" in my test game and I would've had to backtrack WAY too far to test my fix all the way till the endgame. I'll change the state as well for the next version, but maybe the low hp was causing him to die again or something? Hopefully if someone sees them disappear in their game, they'll mention it, then we'll know going forward (not that there's any other graphic that's a CRE, to my knowledge).

L3498: Well, depends on what you mean by spells. Quint's Poison Charm cures poisons and is conversable, for example. I was thinking that "gain experience points" should always be invokable from the menu, but looking at TTSOURCE, without my mods that's the one example of a tat that ONLY has an XP gain and that one wasn't invokable from inventory, so yeah, the preponderance of the evidence backs up your position. I'll reverse my fixes for those two tats and for the tattoo of the source as well. I think the Tattoo of the Cutpurse should stay conversable though, as it's not techinically a spell effect and similar items are conversable.


RestoFix.tph:

Yeah, both changes are very very trivial. The description on the sword item, might as well leave it in just for people looking in Near Infinity. Don't really see a reason -not- to do them either.


SkardFix.tph:

L135: I don't think I ever had those traps crash my game, so I couldn't really evaluate the worth of this fix. Have you had those crashes?

L166: I'll have to investigate this one more as well. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate the Warrens of Thought? I really really do.

L323: Hmmm, I'm actually thinking this actually -caused- the problem I just fixed in v4.0... see QwinnFix.tph, line 3170. I'll review what you're saying and maybe I can come up with a simpler way to resolve all the issues. The best option probably is to, yes, set them to THUGP instead of THUG in Skardfix.tph, then I can get rid of my v4 fix.

L341: I'll take a look, but yes, that sounds like the best solution.

L1114: Hmmm, weird, that sound file sounds awfully familiar. Maybe I -should- activate it?

L1166: Your suggestions here sound good.

You can have permission to call me devSuck, sorry, but I can't help it lazy is my only superpowe

Why, -yes-, everyone ELSE is pulling their weight around here by going through my tph code and my .d code line by minute line, you lazy bastard, how dare you?! You're fired!

Really grateful for the help, you gave me lots of good stuff, in fact I may do a 4.1 for it (luckily, none of these should invalidate save games from 4.0).

I -would- appreciate your at least coming up with -some- way to identify you when you post though Register or fill in devSin as your guest name or -something-, it was like 30 posts before I figured out who you were and I *still* have to guess more often than not

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 17 January 2010 - 06:53 PM.

[Qwinn]

Actually, I'm gonna leave the Godsman tattoo invokable from inventory... it doesn't cast a spell, and other tattoos that do experience points and other stuff as well (like boosting a stat permanently) are invokable, so I think it can be safely argued either way on this one and making it invokable is more convenient. I know from reading boards that a lot of players don't even realize you -can- invoke stuff like this from the Quick Slots (I didn't realize it myself for some time), and I don't feel a need to reintroduce this confusing mechanic for them for no good reason. The standard that all invokable spells have to go through quick slots, though, is a good enough reason, so yeah, I'll retract the changes to the Shattered Lock and Shadows tattoos.

Qwinn

Edited by Qwinn, 17 January 2010 - 08:30 PM.