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cogwheel

Member Since 29 Nov 2014
Offline Last Active Dec 02 2014 01:45 AM

Posts I've Made

In Topic: BP Series for BGEE, BG2 and BG2EE

29 November 2014 - 11:09 AM

- Characters WILL CANCEL MID-ACTION YOUR MANUAL INPUTS!  This means you will waste spells in crucial situations because the scripts decide to force the character to do something else (like attack with a ranged weapon), even during the middle of a casting animation! Even the game's default scripts don't do this; they will never cancel a manual command, especially not one already in progress. (note: this problem is especially noticable with a dart-throwing spell-caster, presumably because of the 3 attacks per round)

 

- Related to the above, you will also have extreme frustration getting a character to use items with longer than a 1 or 2 casting/activation time during active combat, like scrolls or wands.  After you input the command, the character will keep automatically reseting its next action to do something the script is mandating instead, usually a physical attack on the nearest enemy.  So two rounds later you're still trying to get Rasaad to throw a flask of fiery burning that you needed him to throw immediately.

 

- The Wild Magic support seems pointless.  You get the 3-second floating-text warning that a Dweomer is about to be cast... but you still can't cancel the imminent casting by any means but disabling the AI completely, and you still must have the character selected to manually pick which spell the Dweomer casts anyway (or else the Dweomer just fizzles out and is wasted), so why even bother scripting it in the first place?

 

- Forget about using your melee characters tactically, i.e. going after specific targets.  The scripts will cancel any such specific direction.  You'll actually see your boots of speed equipped fighter turn around halfway to that enemy mage in the back to go attack some low-threat mob instead.  And now the mage has his spell off and just screwed your party.

 

- Weapon-switching in every mode that allows it is unreliable. Another thing the default scripts actaully do much better. I see fighter tanks set to 'melee intuitive' using a longbow on a mob right in their face, and the cleric/druid/multiclass scripts in particular usually just ignore 'melee intuitive' in favor of attacking with a ranged weapon 90% of the time.  'Absolute Mode' works a little bit better, but still not as reliably as the vanilla scripts with the same function.

 

- One great feature of the default scripts is a function in which ranged characters will actually automatically create distance between themselves and the nearest enemies.  This is very effective for keeping your squishy characters alive.  No such functionality exists anywhere with any of the scripts in BP-series.  So many options in these scripts, and yet they ignore one of the few really robust and useful functions of the default scripts.

 

- Appropriate spell usage, even with ballyhooed 'detectable stats feature' is still... not good.  I see mages commonly wasting Glitterdust on the last puny kobold or xvart, and clerics wasting Remove Fear when no character is under a fear-effect (this happens routinely).

 

- In 50 hours of gameplay I have yet to ever see my berserker charname using Enrage or any of his innates via the script.  Yet the script claims full support of these features.  I do see Monks and Blackguards reliably using their kit/innate abilities, but some other kit support doesn't appear to be working.

 

- I have yet to ever see a character use an equipped wand on their own.  Setting them to "use all items" hasn't mattered. This feels ironic, considering how trigger-happy the same scripts are regarding using memorized spells on low-threat enemies.

 

 

Tested on BG:EE.

 

 

The party-healing, potion-usage, goodberry script, and monk scripts (the 'target far enemy' + stealth mode is a great combination for the class) are very nice, but there's just too many other problems with these scripts to make them worth using.  For all but monks, I'm forced to go back to using the game's default scripts.  They attempt to do far less, but what they do do is much more reliable, and won't screw you over in pressure situations.  It seems the only way to use BP-series scripts safely is to routinely disable them, ironically.


In Topic: [MOD] BP Series Party AI for BG

29 November 2014 - 10:43 AM

Most of these scripts just provoke a lot of hair-pulling.  They try to do to much, and then fail hard at incredibly simple things (which even the game's default scripts get right), to the point that it gets you killed in game or seriously handicaps you.

 

 

- Characters WILL CANCEL MID-ACTION YOUR MANUAL INPUTS!  This means you will waste spells in crucial situations because the scripts decide to force the character to do something else (like attack with a ranged weapon), even during the middle of a casting animation! Even the game's default scripts don't do this; they will never cancel a manual command, especially not one already in progress. (note: this problem is especially noticable with a dart-throwing spell-caster, presumably because of the three attacks per round)

 

- Related to the above, you will also have extreme frustration getting a character with more than one attack per round to use items with longer than a 1 or 2 casting/activation time during active combat, like scrolls or wands.  After you input the command, the character will keep automatically reseting its next action to do something the script is mandating instead, usually a physical attack on the nearest enemy.  So two rounds later you're still trying to get Rasaad to throw a flask of fiery burning that you needed him to throw immediately.

 

- The Wild Magic support seems pointless.  You get the 3-second floating-text warning that a Dweomer is about to be cast... but you still can't cancel the imminent casting by any means but disabling the AI completely, and you still must have the character selected to manually pick which spell the Dweomer casts anyway (or else the Dweomer just fizzles out and is wasted), so why even bother scripting it in the first place?

 

- Forget about using your melee characters tactically, i.e. going after specific targets.  The scripts will cancel any such specific direction.  You'll watch your boots of speed equipped fighter or speedy monk actually turn around halfway to that enemy mage in the back to go attack some low-threat mob instead.  And now the mage has his spell off and just screwed your party.

 

- Weapon-switching in every mode that allows it is unreliable. Another thing the default scripts actaully do much better. I see fighter tanks set to 'melee intuitive' using a longbow on a mob right in their face, and the cleric/druid/multiclass scripts in particular usually just ignore 'melee intuitive' in favor of attacking with a ranged weapon 90% of the time.  'Absolute Mode' works a little bit better, but still not as reliably as the vanilla scripts with the same function.

 

- One great feature of the default scripts is a function in which ranged characters will actually automatically create distance between themselves and the nearest enemies.  This is very effective for keeping your squishy characters alive.  No such functionality exists anywhere with any of the scripts in BP-series.  So many options in these scripts, and yet they ignore one of the few really robust and useful functions of the default scripts.

 

- Appropriate spell usage, even with ballyhooed 'detectable stats feature' is still... not good.  I see mages commonly wasting Glitterdust on the last puny kobold or xvart, and clerics wasting Remove Fear when no character is under a fear-effect (this happens routinely).

 

- In 50 hours of gameplay I have yet to ever see my berserker charname using Enrage or any of his innates via the script.  Yet the script claims full support of these features.  I do see Monks and Blackguards reliably using their kit/innate abilities, but some other kit support doesn't appear to be working.

 

- I have yet to ever see a character use an equipped wand on their own.  Setting them to "use all items" hasn't mattered. This feels ironic, considering how trigger-happy the same scripts are regarding using memorized spells on low-threat enemies.

 

 

Well, that's most of the bad.  A mountain of it.  In the interest of fairness, I will list what the scripts actually do well:

 

- Party healing is very robust.  Healers auto-cast their healing spells very reliably, and there is an excellent Goodberry script (makes the creation, sharing, and using among the party 100% automatic... this is quite nice in BG1).

 

- the monk's "target far opponent" option works well so long as you can accept not ever manually directing him

 

- auto-use of healing potions and antidotes is very reliable

 

- stealth and detect trap modes with thieves/monks are reliable

 

- the spell Sleep is very effective with the mage scripts, because the 'detectable stats' feature does at least seem to work in regard to knowing when enemies have 4 hit-dice less; no more guessing/hoping

 

 

But that's just not nearly enough to make up for all the bad.  Unless you're playing on Easy difficulty and thus don't need to do anything but throw your guys into aggro-range of enemies, I strongly discourage use of these scripts. I gave them many hours of gameplay to win me over, and they're just not worth the trouble.  Ironically, the only way to use these scripts safely is to micromanage disabling and re-enabling them.  Which defeats the point, really.