1 reply to this topic

[IchigoRXC]

I have been tweeting with Trent Oster, one of the lead designers on BG:EE, and I asked him about usability flags.

"@IchigoRXC We've had a few conversations about the usability flags. No easy fix without reprocessing all the data and breaking mods."

I wondered how badly this would break existing mods, and how easily fixed it could be. I know a lot of people have had frustration with usability flags, looking through various topics on here and many other forums focused on games such as Baldurs gate
Would it be worth the hassle to fix these mods if it gave use that extra freedom to add usability to more than just 32 kits/classes. How much do you think the modding community would benefit from it. If the consensus is pro changing this from the modding community, maybe it could be brought to the designers attention.

It was just a thought

[Sasha Al'Therin]

for all I care they could reduce the stack amount size from 2 byte (word) to 1 byte. currently the field can store a max value of 65535 but there is a non-game breaking gui glitch that appears for all equipped stacks greater than 999. so they can cut back on the stack amount field and use the free byte there for an additional 8 bits of usability. It will be much easier to adjust any mods that change stack amount than reworking mods that tweak with the usabilities.

shoot the weight entry is 4 bytes (dword) long. certainly don't need that much. They could easily shorten that down to a 1 byte or 2 byte field and use the free space for more usability features.

Tho not too sure why they need to as what we have works well with the 2e rule system as far as I'm concerned.

I think the main problem with frustration with the usability flags is the lack in understanding how to work with them. I know it can be quite confusing to go from making a new item and checking boxes in an item editor to trying to edit the usability field via WeiDU on a pre-existing item.

As far as changing existing mods that tweak the usabilities to work with something new, that will take a lot of work UNLESS they are willing to provide concrete and correct file structure so that IESDP can be expanded/updated. Otherwise, we'll be stuck with trying to figure out what has changed and how to adjust all the mods and there are a lot of mods that tweak usabilities on items.

tl;dr
my 2 cents worth