#16052 - Random party questions during housekeeping

dreamrider

Hurricane said:

Party members should not make random selection sounds upon failed banters

1. Use NearInfinity to modify BANTTIME.2da so that party banters occur with 100% probability every 10 seconds (this is only to make the bug occur more often):

2DA V1.0
0
                        VALUE 
FREQUENCY               150       
PROBABILITY             100     
REPLAYDELAY             150      
SPECIALPROBABILITY      100       

2. Start a new BG:EE game with Abdel
3. C:CreateCreature("minsc")
4. C:CreateCreature("khalid")
5. Ctrl+Q on Minsc and Khalid
6. Have all characters stand idle
7. Observe the banter attempt that occurs every 10 seconds between two of the characters in the party

Observed
Even though there are no valid banters between Khalid, Minsc, and Abdel, the game still tries to make them banter. The two prompted characters turn around to face each other, but then one of them just says one of his selection sounds, e.g. Minsc says "You point, I punch." or Abdel says "Your wish?". Since the other character does not respond anything and there is no dialog, it looks as if the speaking character has just uttered one of his selection sounds at random.

Expected
Party members should not face each other and make random selection sounds if there is no valid banter between the party members who were prompted to banter.

Notes
The bug is especially disruptive if it happens while you are accessing a container. The banter closes the container interface, so you might trigger an unwanted action if you click the interface in that moment.

Expected behavior:
Character color dialogue will not pop in to interrupt / suppress interface for actions like moving items between containers/shelves and backpack.

Bugged behavior:
Sometimes when I am shuffling items between container and backpack, another character's "attention" or "click upon" dialogue will pop into the dialogue box. This suppresses the container exchange work box and brings back the normal screen display with a medium dialogue box, and the character buttons along the bottom.

Where this gets really annoying is that when the screen reverts to this mode, the quick item boxes are in exactly the same place where some of the backpack inventory boxes are on the container exchange interface. This has caused me to unintentionally consume a potion from a quick item box on several occasions when the random question and screen layout change has happened just as I was clicking to move an item.

Gate70

@dreamrider‌ could you describe an example please. e.g. a stray banter from Kagain while you are using the container toolbar. Or a dialogue from a non party member while using the container toolbar, if so who (Noober for example). Or Jaheira annoying Khalid. etc.

My experience of this tends to be in multiplayer.
Thanks

dreamrider

A stray party member banter sums it up. Seems it is most often Neera saying "You rang?", but it could be any party member. The CHAR with "If you insist" or Kivan with "Don't bother me!".

psyact

I've experienced this a couple of times too, all in singleplayer. Thought it was a little odd.

Franpa

I've been interrupted when looking through containers with Imoen whenever she automatically toggles Detect Traps (Thief Ranged script) but I assume that's intentional behvaiour?

Gate70

Edited to remove a lot because I now understand (I hope)

I was trying with the protagonist and waiting for dialogues, then testing the protagonist while other characters have active scripts but believe the repro case is as below.

1 Select Imoen.
2 Make sure she has a script active, Thief Ranged, and AI is on.
3 Move her to a container and open it.
4 Start clicking on the bottom container slot.
5 Keep clicking to go through several items.

*Observed*
The container inventory toolbar switches to the game toolbar and items in it can be accidentally clicked.

Not sure about the expected case at the moment, will look at that once the scenario is confirmed.
Thanks

dreamrider

Close. You can be going through inventory exchanges with any character, as far as I can tell, though for me it is most usually the protag. Then you may be interrupted by, apparently, any other party character, and the interruption dialogue is NOT necessarily related to scripted trap detection. It IS possible that the interruption is somehow triggered by the background action of trap detection, but with a neutral comment.

I have always thought that the interrupting text that I remember best, "You rang?" in a female voice, was Neera, but I suppose it may be Imoen. There have been other interruption comments, however, from other characters.

Of further note. I usually leave the AI turned off when I am in town or other familiar zone. I can't SWEAR it hasn't been on when I have been interrupted in inventory exchange, but that scenario does not fit my play habits.

I will try to take special note of these possibilities next time it happens. It is not constant, but it is not a rare occurance.

Related: I sometimes get random comments from the party members, of no particular current events note, in ordinary play, moving around, etc. Kivan, for instance, often generally grumbles. I have always assumed that these are just intentional "color commentary", however.

Gate70

Not close enough by the sound of it. I'll try and have another go tomorrow...

dreamrider

Tomorrow is Sunday, dude (or dudet). See your family, your significant other, etc. Play a game. throw a Frisbee around. See a movie.

This can wait. ;-)

Franpa

Gate70 said:

Edited to remove a lot because I now understand (I hope)

I was trying with the protagonist and waiting for dialogues, then testing the protagonist while other characters have active scripts but believe the repro case is as below.

1 Select Imoen.
2 Make sure she has a script active, Thief Ranged, and AI is on.
3 Move her to a container and open it.
4 Start clicking on the bottom container slot.
5 Keep clicking to go through several items.

*Observed*
The container inventory toolbar switches to the game toolbar and items in it can be accidentally clicked.

Not sure about the expected case at the moment, will look at that once the scenario is confirmed.
Thanks

----------
That is what I've observed personally, the other (originally reported) issue definitely sounds plausible as well.

dreamrider

OK, just had it happen. Stopped game and noted circumstances.

Party recently had a shopping spree at Thalantyr's, got Good/Neutral RoAMs and other stuff. Then stopped by party base at Kagain's warehouse to rearrange items and store now redundant items like Bracers and low-level Robes.

Neera went to set of shelves used for collection of potentially further useful enchanted and unique items that don't fit the outfits of current party characters.

Neera put a couple of random items on the shelf (Bracers, Cursed 2-Hander +3).

Neera transferred about 7 assorted Robes from the shelf to her person, in prep for re-shelving with all the like items (Robes) grouped together. She had two other Robes in her possession at the time, the ones that she and Imoen had replaced with the RoAMs.

As Neera began returning Robes to the shelves (i.e. I started clicking on the Robes in Neera's backpack), Kivan interrupted the process with the question "Yes?" (i.e. interface reverted to dialogue scroll with Kivan's text), as if I had clicked on Kivan's character icon.

Just to confirm, cursor was on the upper right box of the backpack side of the inventory exchange interface when this happened, which was, I believe, the #4 slot of Neera's backpack.

AI was turned OFF at the time.

FWIW, AI script for Kivan was Fighter Ranged Attack.
Coran's script was set to Thief Controlled, Imoen's was CUSTOM (None), but since AI was OFF, there were no trap detection checks occurring that I am aware of. Certainly none visible on the dialogue/event scroll window.

Character activated immediately preceding Neera was Imoen.

After the single comment from Kivan, further backpack transfers proceeded normally.

Gate70

Thank you @dreamrider‌ it just happened to me after a few minutes of moving items around. Will see if I can do it again and try to see if there is a pattern.

Edit. & now I can't recreate easily. First one was Kivan fairly quickly with "Don't bother me", second after a long time was Imoen with "Yep?". Starting to think this is just their bored timeout but selecting the wrong line, so have reduced the bored timeout to see what happens. Another day rolls by

dreamrider

I TOLD you not to work on this on a Sunday, right after a patch release crunch. Don't you listen to your seniors? I hope it was a rainy, boring day there, to justify your actions, grasshopper.

Gate70

It was 12.47am in the UK so Monday. Not rainy. Not day. ;-)

...and... ticket 7528 looks like it might be the issue Franpa is having. The other one is proving trickier to narrow down.

Gate70

I think it is the characters Select_Common1 dialogue triggering, so far with AI off I have had containers interrupted by;
Khalid: C Can I help you
Kivan: Yes

Taking a random (long) time though, so not great for a repro case.

dreamrider

Sounds about right. I get it fairly often when shuffling goods, but I am a packrat and do a fair amount of container shuffling.

For instance, I like to go to the trouble to group like items in my cache shelves so I know when I have a full load of 16 in order to get the most out of each un-depreciated vendor. (Hey, if you do this conscientiously in the early game, it is ultimately worth thousands.)

Hurricane

This topic is quite old but I may have figured out what @dreamrider originally observed. I've added a repro case to the initial post that relies on modding tools to make the bug appear more frequently.