The Road to v1.3: Phase II

Dee

We're pushing an update to the beta build now. The full list of changes are at the bottom of this post. The counter has been set back to zero, so be sure to submit the form below when you're done.

Phase II: Fine Tuning

Check out the fixes listed below, load your existing saved games, and generally make sure that everything is working that was working before.

When you get to a point where you've tested the waters and are satisfied that the game is still running great, open the Google Form linked below and send us your feedback. When we have received 100 confirmations for each task we will move to the next phase.

Testing Survey

Successful Tests: 6 / 100

Change Log (3/4/2014):

In addition to the following fixes, the combat log window has been reverted to its previous size.

3802: Baeloth will now fight back if you choose to kill him in the main campaign; he will also grant experience if you defeat him
5267: All spells and innate abilities should now show the correct descriptions when right-clicking their icon from the gameplay screen
5634: Shandalar now casts a teleportation spell before the player goes to the ice island
5830: The CLERIC1 script has been updated to fix a formatting error
5835: Zeke will now let you initiate dialogue (this is a fix from the previous build)
5857: Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere no longer displays erroneous Magic Resistance messages in the combat log
6432: Journal entries in Chinese should now handle line breaks and word wrapping correctly
7544: Brage’s corpse now disappears when his body is looted
7545: Wudei no longer speaks Seniyad’s lines when spoken to
7546: Rogdok now grants 400 experience points when defeated instead of 20
7550: The Aldeth Sashenstar quest now completes correctly when in multiplayer
7551: The totem druid’s spirit animals can no longer murder Jondalar during the combat tutorial
7552: Kirinhal can no longer be interacted with once she starts casting her teleportation spell, eliminating an exploit where the player could mine her for infinite experience
7553: Lothander can no longer be interacted with once he starts to leave
7554: Areana no longer runs out of gold when blackmailing her
7558: The Heavy Crossbow +1 and The Guide +2 now require a Strength of 12, as is appropriate for their being heavy crossbows
6785: (Italian) Belt’s tooltip text now correctly reads “Belt” instead of “cintura”

AstroBryGuy

I see the OSX beta for BGEE listed in "My Games" on Beamdog.com, but I don't know how to download it. I don't recall (and can't find in my gmail) getting an email from Beamdog on how to access the beta and the BGEE Launcher only seems to look for the release version.

I'm probably missing something completely obvious, but if anyone knows how to access the OSX beta, I'd be most grateful!

notking

6432: Journal entries in Chinese should now handle line breaks and word wrapping correctly

Oh,yes. let's bottoms up!

notking

Journal entries in Chinese is OK.but dialogue dindow now is not correct yet.
How terrible.

Adul

Dee said:

In addition to the following fixes, the combat log window has been reverted to its previous size.

Yay!

StoneAngel

Adul said:

Dee said:

In addition to the following fixes, the combat log window has been reverted to its previous size.

Yay!

I want the bigger font instead. This for me was the improvement definitive, the only thing that would convince me to abandon the old versions. I hope that I can have them with patch 1.3.

Necdilzor

Will there be an option to choose different sizes of font?

StoneAngel

It would be the best solution.

Pecca

I'm glad that they reverted it back. It's a delicate issue and if it's implemented, then it should be optional. On a relevant note, the on-screen text is still large. It should be reverted as well.

Dargnon

Dee said:

3802: Baeloth will now fight back if you choose to kill him in the main campaign; he will also grant experience if you defeat him
5267: All spells and innate abilities should now show the correct descriptions when right-clicking their icon from the gameplay screen
5634: Shandalar now casts a teleportation spell before the player goes to the ice island

7545: Wudei no longer speaks Seniyad’s lines when spoken to

Good to see another patch is in development!

3802 - Killing Baeloth certainly is something most of us tried, nice to see some XP reward now

5276 - This was bothering me pretty frequently. Some of the NPC abilities take time to remember and it took a lot of clicking to open the kit description.

5634 - Little touch, but nice. Shandalar and his teleportation....

7545 - Nice, actually I proudly reported this, happy to see its fixed!

marrowj

hmmm, reverting the combat log size is a shame, for me!, ofc many obviously does not like it, so the best thing would be to make it optional witch has been said before, it might be bothersome to code, but i do believe it would make many people quite happy

Jace

5267: All spells and innate abilities should now show the correct descriptions when right-clicking their icon from the gameplay screen.

I like it. However, I noticed a mix-up. Faldorn's summon dread wolf ability has Tiax's summon ghoul ability description, and vice versa. Plus, Minsc's berzerk ability description is just a copy of the Berserker's rage ability, which provides some misinformation on what Minsc actually gains from it.

Jalily

Jace said:

5267: All spells and innate abilities should now show the correct descriptions when right-clicking their icon from the gameplay screen.

I like it. However, I noticed a mix-up. Faldorn's summon dread wolf ability has Tiax's summon ghoul ability description, and vice versa. Plus, Minsc's berzerk ability description is just a copy of the Berserker's rage ability, which provides some misinformation on what Minsc actually gains from it.

Thanks, I've submitted the fixes.

MrSexton

This may have been fixed ages ago but has the non-existent house i Baldur's Gate bug been fixed? If I remember correctly there was a house you could enter but the game would then crash since there was no interior... /J

elminster

@MrSexton yea that was fixed before launch. It was in central Baldur's Gate.

zealot

Quick loot bar still not in plans?

Hurricane

@CamDawg
I need your expertise on this one. From the list of bugs fixed in this beta (posted in the Phase I thread):

Dee said:

5849: Cursed weapons no longer proffer a bonus to their speed factor

I don't understand this. You may remember how I explained in the Fixpack forum that the speed factors of all cursed weapons in BG2 comply with the enchantment levels of those weapons, and that only the descriptions of two of them, namely Backbiter (SPER03) and the Berserking Sword (SW2H03), state misleading values. This is the same in vanilla BG1. I was glad to notice that those two descriptions were corrected in BG:EE at some point, so that all cursed weapons, including the new ones introduced by BG:EE, have their "enchanted" speed factors and a corresponding description as of version v1.2.0. Now, the beta changed this again. Currently in v1.3.2032, most (but not even all!) of the cursed weapons now indeed have "non-enchanted" speed factors and adjusted descriptions. Obviously, I think this is a mistake, given the facts stated before in the Fixpack forum. What happened here? Could you please make sure this gets sorted out?

elminster

@Hurricane Yea it seems like they nerfed all four of them. Which really makes no sense to me. They already adjusted all four descriptions so that they were consistent so I don't really see myself why this was a needed change.

Dee

The decision was made that cursed weapons shouldn't receive their enchantment bonus to speed factor. The descriptions have been updated to reflect the change.

(Really, though, it's a small change; how often do you actually use a cursed weapon in combat?)

CrevsDaak

Dee said:

(Really, though, it's a small change; how often do you actually use a cursed weapon in combat?)

Actually the Two Handed Sword of Berkserking+3 is very good for Fighter solo runs, you don't even need to turn the AI on, as well as Kiel's Morning Star+3 if you use Morning Stars, but out of that, all the other cursed weapons aren't good in combat.
But I only used them in one run, a Paladin solo, with 3 INT that 'raged' for justice, so used Morning Stars and Two Handed Swords and got both of them.
EDIT: I still don't care much, since I don't think I'm going to make a run like that again.

Hurricane

Dee said:

The decision was made that cursed weapons shouldn't receive their enchantment bonus to speed factor.

Why though?
What warrants this huge exception to the otherwise consistent rule about enchanted weapons' speed factors? If anything, a Berserking Sword +3 SHOULD be quicker in combat, considering the frenzy the wielder is whipped into!

Dee said:

(Really, though, it's a small change; how often do you actually use a cursed weapon in combat?)

That's the point: I don't. I'm arguing for what makes sense to me, not because I have a stake in it.

That being said, I have no problem with accepting developer intent, I just don't think this is a very logical decision. Anyway, if you really want to go this way, you should apply this to all cursed weapons, which is not the case in the current build, because SW1P01.itm and SW2H99.itm were missed.

elminster

Why would cursed weapons get any enchantment bonuses then? If you are going to arbitrarily remove one benefit normally given to enchanted weapons why not remove the Thac0 bonus, enchantment level, and damage bonus as well?

Kedric

elminster said:

Why would cursed weapons get any enchantment bonuses then? If you are going to arbitrarily remove one benefit normally given to enchanted weapons why not remove the Thac0 bonus, enchantment level, and damage bonus as well?

I agree. And though I don't normally use cursed weapons, I still don't sit comfortably with this, because it doesn't seem like a decision that was born of logic. It actually worries me a little...

I think we're lucky it's something as minor as cursed weapons that's being changed... but what's next? How many other random things in the game are going to be changed without reason?

Tisamon

Generally, I agree with the previous posters, though I find their slightly hysterical tone unwarranted Indeed, there is nothing to base this change on, either if we go with 2nd ed. rules, or with in-game logic. A cursed item in AD&D is an enchanted item having, intentionally or otherwise, some negative properties. In other words, a cursed weapon (e.g. Sword +1, Cursed) is fully functional as far as its +1 aspect is concerned. There are several items that actually grant -X instead of +X (Sword -2, Cursed from 2nd ed. DMG), but in this case, it's also a consistent - not to mention an explicitly stated! - characteristic, i. e. the sword in question is also -2 to-hit and damage.

Musigny

Hello @Dee, Guys

With this new release (phase II) it seems I am no longer able to import a character file to create a new pc.
Both former and new character files.
The game crashes.

Is it just me or is it generalized ?

Edit: Creating a game with a predefined character (Abdel) works fine.
Edit bis : the internal revision number reamins v1.3.2032 after update - something wrong with my update ?
Edit ter : importing a character from a former gamesave file is ok.

Dee

@Troodon80 noticed that too. It didn't happen for me, but if you send me the crash file we should be able to find out why it's happening. Send it to dpennyway@beamdog.com, we'll take a look.

Musigny

I sent you the dump file a few hours ago.
As the issue does not seem to be widespread, if there is something specific to put to the test, just ping me and I will be glad to proceed.
If this relates to a localization/internationalization issue, I may have extra info to provide.

Troodon80

@Dee, would you also like to me e-mail my crash dump and associated files? (I uploaded to RapidShare before since there is no way to attach files to the survey)

@Musigny, I don't really understand why it's not widespread. I've tried on three different computers, all getting the same issue. Maybe it's just incredibly bad luck? :P

I did find in my own testing that if you step through:

• Import
• Saved Game
• Select game
• Next
• Select character
• Done

Then immediately following that before starting the game:

• Import
• Character File
• Select character
• Done

It works fine. Every subsequent time it works fine during that session. When I quit the game and relaunch it, it's back to crashing on importing a character. If people are testing this and importing a character from a saved game first (that's the order of the check-boxes), then going back to the main menu to test importing from a character file they will never encounter the problem.

Musigny

I also confirm that once you have successfully created a game with an imported character, the subsequents attempts to create a game based on a character file are successful (even if you launch an initial game, hit quit game and restart the process).
As stated in your example sequence, it might be worth noting that it is not required to actually launch a game to set the working conditions. And you have to entirely quit the game/exe to reset those conditions (moving from single player to multiplayer sessions is still ok for instance).

Flashburn

This is good news and all, but why is the extra pause text still there? Can anyone explain what its purpose is? I could just look at the in-game clock and get the same information. Why clutter up the combat window with the day, month, hour, and year when it is thoroughly redundant? It is made even worse when many auto-pause conditions are set.

Troodon80

@Flashburn, people cannot hover over the clock in the corner when using a tablet (noting, of course, that there are Windows tablets). My assumption is that they have included this feature in order to try and harmonise all versions (which cuts down on the amount of work they have managing multiple versions on different platforms). It might be nice to have an option in the Gameplay settings, something like 'Game Options', 'Verbose Pause', '1', will have the new text while setting it to 0 will disable it in favour of just having "PAUSED" and "UNPAUSED". It's probably too much work when considering some of the bugs that need to be taken care of in both games.