821 replies to this topic

[i30817]

edit: spoke too soon

Edited by i30817, 18 December 2011 - 05:56 PM.

[Dakk]

This is something I thought was already wished for (but I can't find it in this thread) or implemented (but it's not in the readme) - so here goes.

Using BG2Tweaks, the component Higher HP on Level Up reads as follows:

Higher HP on Level Up
This component provides the player with a choice of two options that will increase average HPs when characters level up.

• Maximum. This option will ensure that the dice roll will always be the highest available.
• NWN-style. This option will ensure that the range of possible HPs gained will always be in the higher half of the range, i.e. results will always be 4-6 on 1d6, 5-8 for 1d8, etc.

Please note that barbarian characters will interact badly with this component due to their hardcoded nature. The Maximum option will not affect them, and the NWN-Style will cause them to roll 5d12 for their hit points.

As the last section states, this component really screws you over if you have a Barbarian in your party. Is it possible to do anything about it?

Edited by Dakk, 21 December 2011 - 06:22 AM.

[Ascension64]

I believe I already corrected that by externalising the HP bonus

-----840 Externalise HP Tables [M]
Externalises two things:
1. Externalises the barbarian HP table to HPBARB.2DA
2. Externalises which HP table to use by subclass to HPCLASS.2DA

HPCLASS.2DA should ONLY contain single classes

Options:
-0: disabled
-1: enabled

Someone needs to make a mod to fix it up.

[i30817]

edit: nvm, realized its bg2tweaks that needs updating.

Edited by i30817, 21 December 2011 - 06:23 PM.

[Dakk]

I believe I already corrected that by externalising the HP bonus

-----840 Externalise HP Tables [M]
Externalises two things:
1. Externalises the barbarian HP table to HPBARB.2DA
2. Externalises which HP table to use by subclass to HPCLASS.2DA

HPCLASS.2DA should ONLY contain single classes

Options:
-0: disabled
-1: enabled

Someone needs to make a mod to fix it up.

Ah right, my memory served me right then. I looked for anything HP-related in the readme, but I get it now. It's actually BG2Tweak that would need to use that (TobEx) component before their HP-raising component? Or another mod, for that matter.

Thanks A64!

[Lollorian]

Going off a leg to suggest something that's really something I find extremely useful in many games

Would it be possible to implement multiple rotating quicksaves? As in:

Hit Q, Quicksave1
Hit Q again, Quicksave2
Hit Q again, Quicksave3
Hit Q again, Quicksave1 (rotating quicksaves ftw!)

[Ascension64]

I'm sure its possible. Would be useful if you wander into a quest/game-breaking bug but you only had one save.

[Salk]

Ascension64,

for the component: Disable Stoneskin Grey Colour [C] would it be possible to give feedback to the player informing of the Stoneskin protection being active on the target and it being the cause of the no damage dealt?

More or less in the same manner we get the "Weapon Unusable" feedback.

Thanks!

[Ascension64]

for the component: Disable Stoneskin Grey Colour [C] would it be possible to give feedback to the player informing of the Stoneskin protection being active on the target and it being the cause of the no damage dealt?

More or less in the same manner we get the "Weapon Unusable" feedback.

On todo.

Also: it's possible to overflow the thieving skills, since they're stored in an unsigned byte (you can't spend more than 250 points at level up, but once you factor in the bonuses from race/ability points/equipment it can overflow). This is another "don't do this", but I think it should't be hard to enforce a 0-250 cap via the .exe.

From a long long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away...)
Is there an example I can use to make the thieving points overflow? I'm trying to reproduce this but have not been successful.
Also, does the dex penalty to thieving skills work? I think it does, but the thieving skill points are not correctly modified in the record screen (e.g. I have a newly created ToB thief with Dex 9 and I put 250 skill points into hide in shadows, but the record screen shows 250 rather than 250 - 10 = 240)

[10th]

Also, does the dex penalty to thieving skills work? I think it does, but the thieving skill points are not correctly modified in the record screen (e.g. I have a newly created ToB thief with Dex 9 and I put 250 skill points into hide in shadows, but the record screen shows 250 rather than 250 - 10 = 240)

I assume you did take SKILLRAC.2DA into account? Moreover, I think that even if SKILLRAC.2da is taken into account, a starting value cannot be < 0.

Did a test with an elven thief in ToB in a custom BWP install with level 50 rules and the bigg's gain statpoints as you gain experience and refinements and finally Rogue Rebalancing amongst a lot of other mods.

Final DEX was 25, Open Locks maxed out at 305, Move Silently at 300 (Boots of Stealth only gave 5 instead of the expected 40 [item revision version of those boots adds 40 Move Silently]), Hide in Shadows at 300.

It seems that the maximum values displayed are somewhere in the 300 to 320 range, but I didn't play with SKILLRAC and SKILLDEX by increasing the bonuses for chosen race or high dexterity in order to test if it's a hard cap.

10th

[Azazello]

Hmm. My TobEx wish is more of a question, I think...
(I haven't read thru all the posts so forgive me if this was asked before. I did search using both internal system & google):

Would it be acceptable to roll the YacomoPatch ('CtB experience limit patch') into ToBEx?

I was recently thinking that the ToBEx philosophy of leaving the original bgmain.EXE untouched would go well with such standalone tweaks. Since TobEx has become a required install, and removing experience limits a standard part of most installs, putting YacomoPatch as an option component looks attractive.

Plus, it means one less mod players have to extract & install!


btw does the current YacomoPatch use the 25 million or the 50 limit? I've been using the 50mil limit value ever since the patch was created.

[Ascension64]

With the test version of TobEx, you can simply make a .patch file and chuck in the TobEx_ini/patch directory. That looks like 25 million to me. You can even make the mod just copy the file into that directory. The caveat here is that it forces the mod to use TobEx, so that is something that needs to be mulled over.

[Yacomo_XPPatch]
Enabled=1
Address=b6B7260
Source=70,03,2D,00
Target=40,78,7D,01

Edited by Ascension64, 04 January 2012 - 02:30 PM.

[Azazello]

Hmm. My TobEx wish is more of a question, I think...

Would it be acceptable to roll the YacomoPatch ('CtB experience limit patch') into ToBEx?

I was recently thinking that the ToBEx philosophy of leaving the original bgmain.EXE untouched would go well with such standalone tweaks. Since TobEx has become a required install, and removing experience limits a standard part of most installs, putting YacomoPatch as an option component looks attractive.

Plus, it means one less mod players have to extract & install!

btw does the current YacomoPatch use the 25 million or the 50 limit? I've been using the 50mil limit value ever since the patch was created.

With the test version of TobEx, you can simply make a .patch file and chuck in the TobEx_ini/patch directory. That looks like 25 million to me. You can even make the mod just copy the file into that directory. The caveat here is that it forces the mod to use TobEx, so that is something that needs to be mulled over.

[Yacomo_XPPatch]
Enabled=1
Address=b6B7260
Source=70,03,2D,00
Target=40,78,7D,01

lol, I'm gonna take that as a 'No'. I was thinking more in terms of the patch being new component of ToBEx.

[Ascension64]

I'm heavily skewed for the development of TobEx to be a resource rather than a mod. That is part of the reason why this concentration check for damage thing has been in WIP for yonks.

[Lollorian]

I'm sure its possible. Would be useful if you wander into a quest/game-breaking bug but you only had one save.

Hot damn awesome!

[DavidWallace]

Any chance of tweaking opcode 295 so that it genuinely prevents permanent death? At the moment, it prevents some but not all perma-deaths.

[Ascension64]

Don't know what that opcode does, but will have a look.

[cremo]

Hi there!

Glad to see that the project is still alive and kicking!

I would like to have information on two "wishes" that were expressed before but that didn't receive a clear or definitive answer from Ascension64:

1. damage reduction (aka damage threshold)
2. externalization of the list of levels that recive CON bonus to HP (currently hardcoded)

About the first issue - which is the most vital to me - please allow me to reiterate its importance by insisting on the fact that the AD&D AC system, used by vanilla BG, pretends to address with AC both the situation of "dodging" incoming attacks and that of armor "soaking up" the damaged received: that's why both dexterity and heavy armor simply affect AC.

This leads to a Thac0-centric combat system where we can't have the diversity we could have with a damage reduction mechanich that would, in substance, work as an "ac vs damage": whereas to hit an agile combatant thac0 would matter, to hit an heavy armored one the fundamental issue would be that to deal enough burst damage to penetrate over the thickness of the armor.

By introducing damage reduction not only chars would have to choose how to rely on AC/damage reduction (the pursuit of the two being in opposition due to the progressive cumbersomeness of heavier armors), since they would also have to choose how to focus on dps vs burst damage (the latter being better against foes with damage reduction, making 2h weapons most suited in this situation than dual wielding, which would instead be more usefull against lightly armored opponents: note that this isn't possible with the % damage resistance currently present in BG, which flatly reduces the final damage done per round without matter of the number of hit producing them), and, again - in a more relevant way than that currently possible with % resistance - between thac0 and damage, with, for example, slashing weapons having a thac0 bonus but a greater damage reduction to face than a blunt weapon with the same damage (currently it's the opposite, with heavy armor receiving AC malusses against blunt but whose damage is no less soaked up than slashing).

Wouldn't it be funnier, instead of necessarily having an high AC/Thac0 warrior to fight effectively in melee, to have an heavy armored warrior go against the ogre mob a mage just summoned (knowing that, even with critical auto-hits - that actually prevents high AC characters to be invulnerable - he would soak up much of the damage, unlike what an high ac char could do, being able to avoid most of the hits but risking, with just some of them, to receive some burst damage high enough to either be lethal or, at least, hard to takle for an healer) while having a swashbuckling rogue (with high thac0 and multiple attacks thanks to dual wielding) go against a weak hp mage with a robe (and thus with no damage reduction and a meager damage resistance) whose AC and % to miss temporally skyrocketed thanks to blur/mirror immages and such?

A system like this can't be realized with just the % damage reduction that BG currently has. Mods who have tried it (like "full plate and packing steel") are loaded with the complaints of player which argue that the % damage resistance heavy armor get is - at least in bg1 and against regular foes - far worse than the lost AC.

Just immagine two chars being attacked by 12 cobold archers: even with 99% damage reduction the heavy armored one would get 12 damage (often lethal at the beginning of the game), while an high AC char could probably avoid them all together due to the poor thac0 of the monsters. Against multiple enemies is thus much better to have an high AC unless those have uber thac0/damage (that's why damage resistance becomes usefull only later on, against dragons, giants and such).


With the introduction of a damage reduction mechanic and just by adding a -4 damage reduction on the heavy armor in the above depicted situation, we would instead have a much different scenario, whereas, even if all the arrows caught the AC, only those with a damage of 5 or 6 would dish a 1-2 damage.
Averagely, such a char would receive 6 damage: same damage that an high AC would suffer by being hitten only by 2 of those arrows.

Finally note that vanilla BG vanilla doesn?t even contemplate ? with few exceptions ? an ?agile fighter? (since, with heavy armor simply raising AC, having AC be risable at teh same level with just dexterity would mean to have cahrs dressed differently but totally equal in the substance), making heavy armored chars having low AC and thus being cannon fodder, generally useless in melee even with high thac0 since many mob will focus on the low AC chars (thus preventing them to even act as "flankers" to the main tanker, unless you can equip them with a 2 hander, which, at least to me, spoils much of the "finesse fighter" appeal it should have unless we are playing with a Barbarian).

In conclusion, adding a damage reduction system to Tobex wouls allow the BG saga thac0/AC/armor/weapon system to be deeply revamped and transformend in something much more complex and interesting, which probably wasn't fancy in a p&p game like d&d (where we would have had to roll all these checks), but which is not a problem at all on a PC game (where the math is dome in a matter of instants).


The second tweak, instaed, is dear to me since it will allow to make mods where HP are not level-based (now you could remove the extra hitdice hp per level but not the con bonus), since many don't like the idea that with "experience" a char will be able to extend ten times his life with not even some magic mumbo jumbo to his constitution (yes, i know that it's said that hp isn't "life" but something like fatigue and such.. but i can't help to think like this when i see blood being spilt and "healing wounds" spells). Personally I would rather prefer to have HP depended on CON at first level, like 2hp for each point between 1-8, 3hp for points between 9-16, 4hp for 17-24 and 10 at 25.

In this way we wouldn't have lvl 10 chars outliving 10 times their lvl 1 counterparts.. and the increased power of opponents due to magic weapons and incrased number of attacks per round could be simply coped by raising damage resistance (and, hopefully, damage reduction) of enchanted armors.



P.S. About the issue of interaction of damage reductionw ith damage resistance, I think that the best soultion would be, if someone took the time to script this mechanic, to have 2 resistance check, one mitigating the damage BEFORE damage reduction, and one AFTER. This would allow more flexibility to try with different systems.

If this ain't possible due to time/complexity, I think that, unless different damage reductions were introduced for the various surce of physical/elemental/magical damage (but being, imho, at least fundamental a distinction between physical damage and magical/elemental forms of damage),it would be better for the resistance check to apply BEFORE the damage reduction check: in this way we could indirectly have a varied damage reduction by mitigating, before this mechanic operates, the damage that has to be reduced (thus beign able, for example, to actually have a 1d8 mace and a 1d8 sword having different chance to go over damage reduction thanks to the precedent % reduction of the damage received, even with base damage of the 2 weapons being equal).


Thanks for the attention, and congrats again for your project!

[Ascension64]

It's all sitting on a todo list, which is very very long at the moment. I'll think I'll get to thinking more about these in time.

[cremo]

Thanks for the fast reply!

I'm so glad to hear those two features are on your to-do list.. i'll start ASAP to write down the ideas for a mod to use them!


P.S. if it's possible, it would be really nice to be able to read that to-do list of yours.. maybe modders could start to think at how to implement those features!

Thanks again and keep up the good work!