The Charname Who Saw Everything Twice

Contemplative_Hamster

hi,

Serious question:

over here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/62903/cleric-thief-appreciation-thread#latest , I've suggested that one might run a party with two Tiaxes - or indeed, two of any one NPC. Will consoling in a clone of a party NPC break the game? Will I get two identical quests, or one quest and one guy leaving at the end of his unfulfilled quest timer? Will I get twice the amount of dialogue, or will I get the same dialogue twice? What happens if this is a NPC with unavoidable & lethal conflict with another NPC - say (for the sake of argument), two Kagains and one Yeslick?

Is this even advisable?

I really only want to do this with Tiax, but still.

(This topic named after a great chapter of a great book: Joseph Heller, Catch-22 , http://www.mit.edu/afs.new/sipb/user/yoav/athena/text/text/The_Soldier_Who_Saw_Everything_Twice)

Contemplative_Hamster

@elminster @Aquadrizzt @subtledoctor @LavaDelVortel

Summoning the Titans of Code. Please forgive my impertinence. I just don't want to get this wrong, and if I'm wrong I think I might really, really mess up my install.

LavaDelVortel

Everything that uses Global variables will fire just once. Most things are handled just by global variables (however some may use "locals", too, but mostly in less... significant matters), so it wouldn't cause huge problems. I'm just not sure how Dead("XXX") trigger would work if one of the clones is dead and the other one is alive. I think you would play something like Schrodinger's Gate, but... I think it would mostly work fine. Quest are always (at least that's what I believe) handled with global variables, romances too, I think, so content wouldn't be doubled. Again, it would mostly work fine, BUT some (mostly) minor problems may appear.

EDIT: But if I were you, I would think if you really want to play that way... also wait for some other replies, @argent77 and @agb1 may also have some thoughts worth sharing, no?

Ardanis

I'm just not sure how Dead("XXX") trigger would work if one of the clones is dead and the other one is alive.

It will be dead, i.e. SPRITE_IS_DEADxxxx=y, where y=number of dead clones.
Also it should be noted that engine will prioritize the first/last object that appeared in the game as a subject of triggers/actions (too much voodoo to explain further in layman terms), so you can have one Tiax standing near PC and another one across the map, and See("tiax") trigger will fail because it checks for the far away one.

Global vs local vs area variable conflicts, as Lava says, may or may not result in a clone stuttering when trying to initiate a quest that has already been done by the original.

BG1, however, is noteworthy for a total lack of complex scenarios, so chances are high there'll be only inconsistencies or minor bugs that will be easy to fix on the fly. I will not vouch for BG2 and EEs, however, as things start getting difficult to track there.

chimeric

What you can do, OP, is create an actual clone of an NPC you want - with a modified Project Image opcode. It will be a permanent simulacrum, and you can have any number of these in your party. I wrote about this in the "Do anything" thread. All clones, no matter whose, have the COPY script name, so they don't trigger romance dialogues and other NPC-specific checks.