OK, so nope. What I thought was the cause of the constantly firing dialogue trigger turned out not to be the culprit. It must be due to some mod conflict somewhere. Is there an easy way (like a script or a small program) that can determine whether or not multiple mods are conflicting with each other? Or do I have to do a complete purge and uninstall everything and slowly reinstall them until I find the offending mod?
EDIT: Also maybe try going through Global values to see if they are in the ranges expected by the script that is stack (and not some nonsense number). Sometimes other mods modify the globals and mess things up.
*follows links, checks WeiDU download page, reads a little of the instructions* I... think that that's probably beyond my modding/scripting abilities. XD I'd love to know which is the actual script causing problems in my game, although I'm very certain that it's one of Imoen's scripts, because I discovered a workaround of sorts; by equipping the Staff of the Magi and going invisible, Imoen stops "stuttering", presumably because she can no longer find me as a target to talk to.
It's still super annoying, but I'm going to press a bit further into the game and see if maybe the next encounter in the mod will somehow fix this issue. If that fails, I'm gonna do a reinstall and then slowly install the mods back in.
For the curious, I have the following mods installed:
- The Tweaks Anthology v9
- Unfinished Business
- Ascension
- Imoen Romance
- Skie: The Cost of One Girl's Soul (I could also leave this out if truly necessary, although it's a very well done mod and I'd like to leave it in even if I'm not bringing Skie in my party.)
- Hidden Adventure (I can probably dump this one easily if it's somehow the cause. I only installed it because I wanted a more complete resolution to Anomen's story arc if you aren't romancing him.)
it might be acension due to the imoen banter part. but that should not do anything as all it does is make those banters fire more frequently and all imoen romance does is expand those banters.
It may be a conflict because I didn't install Ascension till quite late (just before starting ToB, in fact). The other mods were installed fairly close to the start of my SoA playthrough.
*follows links, checks WeiDU download page, reads a little of the instructions* I... think that that's probably beyond my modding/scripting abilities. XD
Welp, progressing further into the game to trigger more of the mod romance dialogue didn't stop it. I even tried reloading an early save and changing the variables to stop the trio of banters (for Aerie, Jaheira and Viconia) that I initially said preceded the problem, and the stuttering still occurs out of the blue even with no dialogue popping up! Something is seriously borked, so yeah, looks like a repair and mod reinstall is in order.
I believe I've found the culprit! It WAS the Ascension mod, specifically, the "Improved Imoen-Player Interactions" part of it. I think that part of the mod was trying to force a particular conversation to occur, and that conversation in question was one that was modified by the Imoen Romance mod and thus had additional triggers that weren't being met. I'll have to keep playing more tomorrow and see if it really is resolved, but the fact that two completely different convos play depending on whether or not I have this component installed seems pretty conclusive.
This component ensures that the key interactions with Imoen, likewise, actually happen; they trigger (if not before) on resting after: (i) you start Throne of Bhaal; (ii) Yaga-Shura is defeated; (iii) Balthazar is first encountered.
Perhaps it would be possible to do a little more gently.
Something that wouldn't break this interaction.
like i said imoen romance has the same dialogue it's just expanded. and they fire just fine with out ascension. so it may be a good idea to just not use those components if you have an imoen seravok mod [friendship and romance for both].....i now i have redo my whole mod set up sigh. good thing i'm currently playing nwn modules so it's not that big of a loss just a waste of time.
it's odd as the original version of acension that was in beta had these firing fine. something about 2.0 is breaking triggers that wernt breaking before.
From what I could see while studying the dialogue files, it seems the problem might be caused by the fact that the conversation Edvin mentioned above is scripted to occur when Yaga-Shura is defeated (according to the Ascension mod), but that same conversation is also scripted to occur when Gromnir is defeated (according to the IR mod, because this conversation, which is slightly modified, is intended to set up further dialogues where you can convince Imoen to either embrace the Taint, learn to control the Taint and harness its power, or resist it altogether).
So I guess what was happening was that the IR mod was trying to force the conversation to happen because I'd just defeated Gromnir, while the Ascension mod was refusing to let it occur because Yaga-Shura isn't dead yet, resulting in the constant stuttering.
It occurs after you finish the side-quest to rescue Sorenthis if you brought Imoen's special bracelet "Bob" into ToB with you. If you take the Good path and refuse to deal with the demon, the special ability that Imoen's supposed to get that allows her to summon Sorenthis 3/day instead lets her cast Spirit Fire
(the Shaman spell). I suspect there must be a conflict between the mod's custom ability and the fact that at the time the mod was written, the Shaman and its unique spells didn't exist, so it's probably pointing to the incorrect skill. It's not a BIG problem, considering I'm now high enough level to summon Devas/Planetars on my own, but it does mean that anyone who takes the Good path for this quest gets a very pitiful reward for their efforts.
I am not in ToB yet, but I looked into the scripts and identified the spell, then assigned it to Imoen in Shadow Keeper. It indeed has the wrong description, but
I used to post in the imoen romance forums and know how to contact the original coder for the mod.
I asked the coder about some issues reported here and the coder said that they keep on top of this thread are fixing anything raised.
The coder wrote some more information below:
- All npc mods, especially mods for existing npcs. Should be installed after any gameplay mod, and generally should just be installed last. This was known to old baldurs gate players but newer EE ones may not know this general guideline. It is in the readme of this mod.
- Old Ascension was never tested in combination with the mod personally, but i made adjustments based on feedback and people said they finished it both ok. However the new ascension was not finished prior to this mod so it is a complete unknown if it works.
Based on my working knowledge of the code, if the new ascension changes how the original variables used to highlight the death of a bhaalspawn, that will break this mod.
- Sorenthis spell works, description is wrong. Have fixed it but not really critical bug.
- The forums for the imoen romance website has been removed by the owner, unfortunate since i wrote a big guide on how to do the romance, variables to check and timers etc.
From memory:
1. You need to see 2 out of 3 imoen dreams prior to rescuing her
2. You need to have 7 talks (last one mentioning duergar) and imoen will prompt to rest at underdark exit.
It is not required to have all these talks prior to exitting underdark, she will prompt you at any point even if your doing quests topside after exitting underdark and then hit the required talk. This was a change done awhile back to accommodate players that like to rush to imoen.
The romance variables are patterned after the traditional vanilla romance variables, from the readme.
ImoenRomanceActive: 1=Romancing, 2=Success, 3=Failed romance and Imoen is angry,
4=Imoen is just a friend, 5=Failed romance but she is on good terms with you
4 and 5 really are only relevant in TOB, i recommend checking variables after every talk, and really after every interaction if possible.
variable 4 is the one that breaks tob last section for some reason. it is recommend to set it to 3 or 5 [ 3 works but it give her her default base tob epilogue] if your not romancing her.
@amberCoffeeCat I did try out using the Sorenthis summon and yep, it does work correctly, although the description is incorrect. Imoen has a new friend! \o/
@itfoj Thanks for the info, and that's great to hear that the original modder is still working on this. Please pass on my appreciation to them for their effort; I'm not sure if they did any of the writing for the IR mod, but it's absolutely superb, one of the best written mods I've ever played.
One thing that I've also noticed in this playthrough (and that I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the way I've installed the mod or whether it's due to clashes between the CD Tweaks and the IR mod) is that multiple romances, while supported, are somewhat truncated. For example...
At the Forest of Mir, the IR mod does an (excellent) rewrite where Imoen is the main candidate instead of the other romances, but this then skips all the other romanced partners and skips the associated post-event dialogue as well. From studying the dialogue files, I've noticed where it's been edited to skip those particular conversations. It's not a HUGE issue, although in Jaheira's case in her next convo she apologises to you for losing her temper when, as far as the player is concerned, she never lost her temper at all.
There are also minor quibbles such as the conversations for romantic partners at key junctures (such as before the fight with Irenicus in Suldanessalar, or the final conversation with the Solar at the end of ToB), where the dialogue immediately concludes after talking with one of the multiple romance partners. Again, I'm not sure if this is due to an installation conflict between CD Tweaks and the IR mod, but I would love it if the conversation scripts were adjusted to allow each of the multiple romance partners to have their say, if that component is installed.
I asked the coder about some issues reported here and the coder said that they keep on top of this thread are fixing anything raised.
The coder wrote some more information below:
- Old Ascension was never tested in combination with the mod personally, but i made adjustments based on feedback and people said they finished it both ok. However the new ascension was not finished prior to this mod so it is a complete unknown if it works.
If that is the case, I'd like to bring to their attention a post from another similar thread on Imoen Romance, originally by Ballad:
Ascension and Imoen Romance have some serious compatibility issues, it seems. This is unsurprising, given that Ascension is not fully compatible with BG2:EE yet. However, I experiences frequent crashes and bugs, including a nasty one where I couldn't exit the pocket plane after the final challenge. Also, during the final battle I ran into a game-breaking glitch which caused Melissan to disappear, dead-ending the game. Ultimately, I am not sure if this has anything to do with the Imoen Romance mod, but I just thought I'd give you a heads-up if you're planning on running the two mods simultaneously.
in SOA there should be 3 different talks about money when you have 30000~60000/60000~100000/>100000 gp, but only the second one will fire and regardless of the amount of money.
started trying fix some small bugs today and heard the original coder is still around @itfoj thanks for the good news!
Is there a possibility that music of this mod be changed to be handled as "music" rather than "voice lines"? currently the in-game music must be turned off or it would be a complete mess, and as soon as dialogue ends the mod music can be suddenly interrupted by other random voices (often Cespenar is a good servant oh yes!) tried to change it myself but I'm a complete noob and have no idea how to change music in the middle of a talk in .baf script without breaking a dialogue in half. Will the coder work on that as well?
Edit: tried cutting a dialogue and adding a cutscene inside to change music, could work but also resulted in a blink of the UI, maybe it's simply not worth the effort to go through every lovetalk and quality time talk... Anyone else find the music thing annoying?
For me none of them fired ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also, @itfoj, if the coder is fixing the bugs, will there be any new version available for download? The version on blindmonkey is more than two years old.
One thing that I've also noticed in this playthrough (and that I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the way I've installed the mod or whether it's due to clashes between the CD Tweaks and the IR mod) is that multiple romances, while supported, are somewhat truncated. For example...
"Allow multiple Romance" component of this mod basically just allows Imoen to
ignore it during the after-sex talk if you've already successfully romanced other vanilla NPCs, otherwise whatever you say you simply can't get ImoenRomanceActive to 2
can't find anything else written with multiple romances in mind.
Ahh... So it might be a situation then where the CD Tweaks component of multiple romances ought to take priority, assuming that that component incorporates all the different romance dialogues.
Also found a minor bug in a Sarevok-Imoen dialogue last night. It takes place at the very end of the dialogue where you convince Sarevok to change his ways; Imoen pipes up and expresses disbelief that he's just gonna be good now. The bug results in Sarevok's responses to Imoen (there are 2 of them) not firing, so it looks like Imoen's just talking to herself.
About the Version of the mod on the website. Actually the mod you download is a newer or higher version then what the website says.
Last i downloaded the mod is at 3.9.
It sounds like the coder is not the website owner
maybe the coder only can update the download link file on the website.
I can tell because of the installation saying 3.9 when i install it and the readme file also says this.
How can you say that the mod is currently supported by a coder if there are over 10 bugs I witnessed inmy game not to sum the bugs being constantly reported in this topic. We reach over 30 bugs. I m not a coder and I asked around for a maintainer and the answer was by all of them that this mod is so complex it would be a full time job fixing it. There is no more support. also I find it weird that people talk about ascension conflicting. That was known since first ascension and even after the rework there is a topic where it is written about the clash between ascension 2.0 and IR...
How can you say that the mod is currently supported by a coder if there are over 10 bugs I witnessed inmy game not to sum the bugs being constantly reported in this topic. We reach over 30 bugs. I m not a coder and I asked around for a maintainer and the answer was by all of them that this mod is so complex it would be a full time job fixing it. There is no more support. also I find it weird that people talk about ascension conflicting. That was known since first ascension and even after the rework there is a topic where it is written about the clash between ascension 2.0 and IR...
Umm, you do realize that we are talking about people investing their free time into the mods, right? Both Ascension and IR are complicated creations, and every update to one or the other (not to mention game version changes that happened in the meantime) can have and do have large impact on compatibility with each other. It WOULD be a full time job to maintain those mods 100%, and a mostly thankless at that.
Comments
You can really do that? With whom?
Yep!
http://www.shsforums.net/topic/33937-how-to-gather-clues-when-debugging-stuttering/
EDIT: Also maybe try going through Global values to see if they are in the ranges expected by the script that is stack (and not some nonsense number). Sometimes other mods modify the globals and mess things up.
It's still super annoying, but I'm going to press a bit further into the game and see if maybe the next encounter in the mod will somehow fix this issue. If that fails, I'm gonna do a reinstall and then slowly install the mods back in.
For the curious, I have the following mods installed:
- The Tweaks Anthology v9
- Unfinished Business
- Ascension
- Imoen Romance
- Skie: The Cost of One Girl's Soul (I could also leave this out if truly necessary, although it's a very well done mod and I'd like to leave it in even if I'm not bringing Skie in my party.)
- Hidden Adventure (I can probably dump this one easily if it's somehow the cause. I only installed it because I wanted a more complete resolution to Anomen's story arc if you aren't romancing him.)
Sorry, I actually meant this one: https://www.baldurs-gate.de/index.php?resources/stutter-debug-tool.38/
(don't be discouraged by the German description, English is below)
I haven't tried it myself, but the instructions in the readme are much simpler.
This is a really valuable discovery!
Improved Imoen-Player interactions
This component ensures that the key interactions with Imoen, likewise, actually happen; they trigger (if not before) on resting after: (i) you start Throne of Bhaal; (ii) Yaga-Shura is defeated; (iii) Balthazar is first encountered.
Perhaps it would be possible to do a little more gently.
Something that wouldn't break this interaction.
@DavidW
Do you think that would be possible?
it's odd as the original version of acension that was in beta had these firing fine. something about 2.0 is breaking triggers that wernt breaking before.
So I guess what was happening was that the IR mod was trying to force the conversation to happen because I'd just defeated Gromnir, while the Ascension mod was refusing to let it occur because Yaga-Shura isn't dead yet, resulting in the constant stuttering.
(the Shaman spell). I suspect there must be a conflict between the mod's custom ability and the fact that at the time the mod was written, the Shaman and its unique spells didn't exist, so it's probably pointing to the incorrect skill. It's not a BIG problem, considering I'm now high enough level to summon Devas/Planetars on my own, but it does mean that anyone who takes the Good path for this quest gets a very pitiful reward for their efforts.
I used to post in the imoen romance forums and know how to contact the original coder for the mod.
I asked the coder about some issues reported here and the coder said that they keep on top of this thread are fixing anything raised.
The coder wrote some more information below:
- Old Ascension was never tested in combination with the mod personally, but i made adjustments based on feedback and people said they finished it both ok. However the new ascension was not finished prior to this mod so it is a complete unknown if it works.
Based on my working knowledge of the code, if the new ascension changes how the original variables used to highlight the death of a bhaalspawn, that will break this mod.
- Sorenthis spell works, description is wrong. Have fixed it but not really critical bug.
- The forums for the imoen romance website has been removed by the owner, unfortunate since i wrote a big guide on how to do the romance, variables to check and timers etc.
From memory:
1. You need to see 2 out of 3 imoen dreams prior to rescuing her
2. You need to have 7 talks (last one mentioning duergar) and imoen will prompt to rest at underdark exit.
It is not required to have all these talks prior to exitting underdark, she will prompt you at any point even if your doing quests topside after exitting underdark and then hit the required talk. This was a change done awhile back to accommodate players that like to rush to imoen.
The romance variables are patterned after the traditional vanilla romance variables, from the readme.
ImoenRomanceActive: 1=Romancing, 2=Success, 3=Failed romance and Imoen is angry,
4=Imoen is just a friend, 5=Failed romance but she is on good terms with you
4 and 5 really are only relevant in TOB, i recommend checking variables after every talk, and really after every interaction if possible.
Unfortunate indeed. Do you know why did he decide to remove them? They were really useful for troubleshooting in the past...
@itfoj Thanks for the info, and that's great to hear that the original modder is still working on this.
One thing that I've also noticed in this playthrough (and that I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the way I've installed the mod or whether it's due to clashes between the CD Tweaks and the IR mod) is that multiple romances, while supported, are somewhat truncated. For example...
There are also minor quibbles such as the conversations for romantic partners at key junctures (such as before the fight with Irenicus in Suldanessalar, or the final conversation with the Solar at the end of ToB), where the dialogue immediately concludes after talking with one of the multiple romance partners. Again, I'm not sure if this is due to an installation conflict between CD Tweaks and the IR mod, but I would love it if the conversation scripts were adjusted to allow each of the multiple romance partners to have their say, if that component is installed.
If that is the case, I'd like to bring to their attention a post from another similar thread on Imoen Romance, originally by Ballad:
started trying fix some small bugs today and heard the original coder is still around
Is there a possibility that music of this mod be changed to be handled as "music" rather than "voice lines"? currently the in-game music must be turned off or it would be a complete mess, and as soon as dialogue ends the mod music can be suddenly interrupted by other random voices (often Cespenar is a good servant oh yes!) tried to change it myself but I'm a complete noob and have no idea how to change music in the middle of a talk in .baf script without breaking a dialogue in half. Will the coder work on that as well?
Edit: tried cutting a dialogue and adding a cutscene inside to change music, could work but also resulted in a blink of the UI, maybe it's simply not worth the effort to go through every lovetalk and quality time talk... Anyone else find the music thing annoying?
Also, @itfoj, if the coder is fixing the bugs, will there be any new version available for download? The version on blindmonkey is more than two years old.
"Allow multiple Romance" component of this mod basically just allows Imoen to
Also found a minor bug in a Sarevok-Imoen dialogue last night. It takes place at the very end of the dialogue where you convince Sarevok to change his ways; Imoen pipes up and expresses disbelief that he's just gonna be good now. The bug results in Sarevok's responses to Imoen (there are 2 of them) not firing, so it looks like Imoen's just talking to herself.
Last i downloaded the mod is at 3.9.
It sounds like the coder is not the website owner
maybe the coder only can update the download link file on the website.
I can tell because of the installation saying 3.9 when i install it and the readme file also says this.
Umm, you do realize that we are talking about people investing their free time into the mods, right? Both Ascension and IR are complicated creations, and every update to one or the other (not to mention game version changes that happened in the meantime) can have and do have large impact on compatibility with each other. It WOULD be a full time job to maintain those mods 100%, and a mostly thankless at that.