247 replies to this topic

[T.G.Maestro]

Now guys, lets just sink back to reality, right?

[Stone Wolf]

Astral dragons always travel in mated pairs. They make normal dragons look like wyvrens in comparison alone, a pair is insanely hard, and an epic level pair...

They're not normally aggressive, though, so you really have to start the fight.

[T.G.Maestro]

TGM... we're talking about bg2... a fantasy game... set in a fantasy world... reality... come on...

Of course.
Yet, there are invisible lines -even in fantasy games- we shouldn't cross, right?

[Littiz]

No.
Maybe in V3.

[Stone Wolf]

Actually, to make an accurate dragon it would have to be able to do flyby attacks with its breath weapon and magic.

The breath weapon can be used once every 3 rounds, so they can keep flying around at blasting at the group while being vulnerable only to ranged attacks and only on the rounds they are attacking (otherwise they'd be out of range).

Spells work well too, though they'd only cast long-range magic will flying since they have to glide to cast and they fall 1000' per round of gliding.

Once the group is badly wounded enough, the arrogant dragon might--just might--land to finish them off.

[T.G.Maestro]

Actually, to make an accurate dragon it would have to be able to do flyby attacks with its breath weapon and magic.

The breath weapon can be used once every 3 rounds, so they can keep flying around at blasting at the group while being vulnerable only to ranged attacks and only on the rounds they are attacking (otherwise they'd be out of range).

Spells work well too, though they'd only cast long-range magic will flying since they have to glide to cast and they fall 1000' per round of gliding.

And once again, lets return from the dreams, right back to our nice little BG2 Infinity Engine...

Once the group is badly wounded enough, the arrogant dragon might--just might--land to finish them off

One thing that makes me forget this obvious flaw of Dragons in BG2 is that mostly they are encounteres in their lair (where they cannot fly). The only real exceptions are Nizi and the Yellow dragon by weimer.

so what needs to be done before we get to the dragons? (as you can tell, i'm a big fan of dragons)

That depends. As you may know, we have (temporarily?) lost our scripter (Bigg). This (and the fact the Littiz has only 1-2 hours for modding every day) makes the work progress much-much slower.
Currently we are finalizing the last touches on the (once again) revised HLA System.
We also wanted to do the Five Revisions component, but without any scripting help from the community, it will have to wait.
And the same goes for Dragons, Demons and basically any other creature revisions.

[Stone Wolf]

Hey, it's possible. Have the dragon's circle shrink to regular size, and make the creature animation invisible. Play a vvc-linked bam file that plays a shadowy (partially transparent) image of a flying dragon over the smaller circle. You can change the animation to that of a bird (still invisible) to make it fly "over" obstacles. I think that makes it untargettable too, so you could only do it for the rounds where the dragon isn't attacking.

I don't actually know how that would work out, since i basically just pulled it out of my ass.

[T.G.Maestro]

Still, it is a nice idea. The only problem is that we completely lacka bunch of animations required to make thi perfect: landing animation for example. Without these, the whole thing would look rather lame - a Dragon simply "appears" beside the party from the air (causing massive damage of course)...

[hlidskialf]

- a Dragon simply "appears" beside the party from the air (causing massive damage of course)...

234 MoveGlobalObjectOffScreen(O:Object*,O:Target*)
This is like MoveGlobalObject(), but instead of moving the creature right next to the target, the creature is moved off the screen. For this to work, the object must be in the saved game.

[Stone Wolf]

Why would the dragon land within sword range? Even dumber dragons know they'll end up with a bastard sword up their arse if they did that. Hlid's suggestion would work perfectly, and a simple script block could then tell it to land offscreen and move towards the party.

Now, taking off is till a problem, assuming the party meets the dragon when it's still on the ground. I think the Wing Buffet animation could be saved as a regular bam. Make the dragon invisible and start the Wing Buffet animation at the same time. Then just have the move up by increasing the offset of each frame incrementally. If the dragon says something like "Why would I fight you on the ground?" before doing this, it should make the player panic a little.

Now it isn't totally fair to let dragons fly when there's a perfectly good Fly spell that isn't in the game. The only thing I can think of is to set the fly spell to trigger a script that moves the dragon and the character that can fly into an "air" area. It would look like ass, since you are still on a 2D area as far as movement is concerned, but it would be interesting.

[T.G.Maestro]

Why would the dragon land within sword range? Even dumber dragons know they'll end up with a bastard sword up their arse if they did that. Hlid's suggestion would work perfectly, and a simple script block could then tell it to land offscreen and move towards the party.

Again, this is not useful as long as you fight those creatures in caverns and dungeons. And to be honest, I doubt it would worth all the work for 1 single dragon battle (at Suldanesselar).
Of course a modification like this would make these battles 500% harder - very few Dragons are defeated my mortlas while in the air.

[Stone Wolf]

Actually that's another thing that bugs me about dragon battles. With the spells and abilities they have, a dragon should be able to choose where the battle takes place fairly often. The locations of the dragons in BG2 are just stupid--no chance to get to an area where they can use their abilities to their max.

[T.G.Maestro]

Bio needed to use "lair battles" to make them actually beatable...

[Stone Wolf]

Bah! Bah I say! If people want the xp and the braggin rights they should have to earn it.

[T.G.Maestro]

That is the main point behind this whole component (I mean the Revised Dragons component) after all.

[Stone Wolf]

So make the dragons able to fly.

[Stone Wolf]

Oh, one thought. You could use the MoveToPoint command to make the dragon fly past the group, and once the dragon is there it could change into the bird animation and then fly over the blocked area using the MoveGlobalObjectOffScreen command. Just a suggestion.