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Vampiric Touch issues

TressetTresset Member, Moderator Posts: 8,268
edited December 2012 in BG:EE Bugs (v1.2)
Expected bahavior: The spell vampiric touch does one hit and heals the caster every time
Current behavior: On some occasions, for unknown reasons, vampiric touch will do two hits and fail to heal the caster. (The two hits happen as if the spell was cast twice at once, doing damage on two separate rolls)

I remember this occasionally happening in BG2 as well. However when it happened in BG2 both hits would heal the caster.
Edit: Now it just drained health without doing any damage...
Post edited by Tresset on

Comments

  • TressetTresset Member, Moderator Posts: 8,268
    Seriously, every time I cast this spell it malfunctions in some way or other. Sometimes it does no damage and heals me; sometimes it does three packets of damage and does not heal me; sometimes it seems to do nothing at all!

    Some acknowledgement please?
  • DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
    Are you using the spell, or the special ability? We're looking into it now.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 3,675
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • TressetTresset Member, Moderator Posts: 8,268
    @Aosaw The spell. I don't know if the special ability has the same issues or not. I never got any characters with that.

    @Bhaaldog ...not exactly what I was talking about, but I'll take it.
  • CamDawgCamDawg Member, Developer Posts: 3,438
    @Tresset Are you using the default AI update speed of 30?
  • TressetTresset Member, Moderator Posts: 8,268
    @CamDawg Yes I am. This spell seems to be more unreliable than reckless dowemer with effects ranging from doing nothing to working properly to overkill damage to healing without damage to damage without healing. It is very strange and I'm not sure what gives. Like I said before this also happens in my BG2 game (but the effects are much more consistent, in that game it usually only does extra packets of damage and that's it for the randomness). From the responses I get I'm guessing that most people don't have this problem, right?
  • CamDawgCamDawg Member, Developer Posts: 3,438
    Yeah, the same fix has been in BG2FP for years and we've never had a problem.
  • TressetTresset Member, Moderator Posts: 8,268
    @CamDawg Huh. I have your fixpack for my BG2 but vampiric touch still acts up on me all the time just like in EE (though less random). If it is only me then I can't imagine what the problem is. I didn't mod EE and have only a couple tweaks and a bunch of fixes in BG2. But I guess that would explain why no one responded to me at all in the space of 3 months. Any ideas as to how I can get this working?
  • CamDawgCamDawg Member, Developer Posts: 3,438
    Well, we've got some ideas but nothing solid yet. This appears to be related to a longstanding bug with spells with staggered probabilities--i.e. a spell where X happens 25% of the time, Y on the other 75%--but that generally manifests itself when folks start cranking up AI updates. In the linked thread, aVENGER generally plays at 45 updates, whereas the rest of the 'I'm not seeing anything' folks all play at 30. A couple of the devs have already gone through the probability handling and not found anything, so we're continuing to look.
  • TressetTresset Member, Moderator Posts: 8,268
    CamDawg said:

    This appears to be related to a longstanding bug with spells with staggered probabilities--i.e. a spell where X happens 25% of the time, Y on the other 75%

    @CamDawg Aaaahhhh. That explains why my elemental summoning spells would double cast too (2 elemental princes?!). But I always play at the default AI update setting of 30 so why does this happen to me? Is my computer too fast or something?

    Anyway thanks for the help and good luck fixing this one.
  • AndreaColomboAndreaColombo Member Posts: 5,530
    Personally, I failed to replicate this at either AI 30 or AI 45.

    The elusive nature of the bug makes it positively hard to fix for we can't seem to get a reliable repro case to submit to our programmers.

    Perhaps you could share a savegame in which this regularly happens to you? I doubt it will make a difference, but we're at the point where all kinds of tests are worth trying.
  • MilochMiloch Member Posts: 863
    I have never experienced this, but I've always played on relatively crappy computers. If it's not the AI update frame rate, then I'm at a loss. Back in the day, I remember older games would start to misfunction on newer computers though, so you had to use a utility to forcibly slow down the CPU speed. Not sure of that makes sense with what's happening here, but when @Tresset asked if his computer was too fast, it made me remember it.
  • TressetTresset Member, Moderator Posts: 8,268
    edited March 2013
    Well I have a fairly standard issue windows 7. I'm no expert on hardware specs but here is some of what I have:

    Processor: Pentium D 2.80GHz
    Video Card(I think): NVIDIA Quadro FX 3500
    System Type: 64-bit OS

    @AndreaColombo I seriously doubt that save files would help as both my EE and BG2 have the exact same problems even though they are supposedly fixed and all my files have the bug; but, just because you asked, I will provide you with some from both BG:EE and BG2:ToB(I assume you would have that). Abdahn is the one in ToB and Starkon is from EE.

    In the mean time I will see if fiddling with the AI setting will do anything on my computer.

    Edit: Well that did nothing. I turned updates down to 20 and nothing changed. It seems I can't not reproduce this bug.

    Further Edit: It seems this spell is also boosting my HP (when it actually does that) far above and beyond what should be possible even for the maximum possible damage the spell can do (sometimes a 50+ HP boost with one cast). Needless to say this does not seem to have anything to do with how much damage the spell does to its target.
    Post edited by Tresset on
  • TressetTresset Member, Moderator Posts: 8,268
    Ok, this is starting to drive me nuts... How is it that only I have this bug? I keep finding more and more spells that this bug affects including contagion and Otiluke's resilient sphere. If ANYONE at all out there can help me I would be very grateful.
  • Sese79Sese79 Member Posts: 478
    I think this is related to: http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/1152/vampiric-touch#latest

    Tanthalas wrote: "The Infinity Engine doesn't have a way (or at least an easy way) to add the same amount of damage that is inflicted to your own HP, so that part of the spell is still a problem."

    Related to this one too:
    http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/1591/bgee-bg2-bug-larlochs-minor-drain-vampiric-touch-bugs
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