4 replies to this topic

[temnix]

I'm only learning the modding business, but I think I made a little discovery. I'm putting it up here for those who may not know about this. I was trying to get a Summon Creature effect for an invisible creature, and it kept appearing in clouds of smoke. It had no avatar, but the smoke was there. Apparently it's an integral part of the Summon effect. Well, I looked at Animate Dead, because it uses a different visual, and I saw that instead of a direct Summon Creature effect it calls on Use EFF File instead.

 

The EFF was a Summon Creature again, but it had more fields, and in Resource 2 it had SPRAISE. This it the climbing-from-the-grave effect in the list of Effects here: http://gibberlings3....pcodes/bgee.htm (the version for BGEE). Apparently if you put one of those effects in that field, it overrides the default smoke animation. Well, I didn't want a skeleton either, especially since these set effects come bundled with sounds, a sinister one in this case. So in that list I looked for an animation that would do nothing, and I found a couple. By typing in SHSKULL I was able to get the creature appear truly invisibly.

[aquadrizzt]

I use a lot of invisible creature tricks in my mods, so this is actually quite useful to know. 

[temnix]

There is something else I found - downright incongruous. Suppose you want to apply a state to a creature, like Held. So you create a Spell Ability, then Effect, then choose Set State from the list. That's effect no. 328. Well, it only gives you a limited selection of states to choose from, about 6, and not the most popular ones either. I don't remember if it has Held, but you can get Chaotic Commands, if you really wanted that. However, if you copy an existing spell that changes a state (I took Greater Malison) and look at what it does, the same effect - Set State, no. 328 - is completely different and lets you choose from the full list of states. Wowzers, Batman.

[Argent77]

You can use the Special field to toggle between IWD and IWD2 mode in opcode 328. IWD2 mode supports a lot more states than IWD mode. There are several opcodes added or improved by the Enhanced Editions that make use of the Special parameter.
 

[temnix]

I rummaged in it some more and I think the effects, the states that is, are there in both cases. But one shucks them off to separate effects, so if you want Hold, you just apply that effect, and so on for Pain, for example. In Set State there are just left-overs now. On the other hand, I don't know how to check for a state that I can set a creature at, if it's not in STATE.IDS. I type StateCheck and HELD or PAIN aren't there. But maybe I shouldn't get into this depth, the engine is finicky and old and all these iterations, I may not even need to learn them to do what I want. Probably not. This is just giving me a headache.