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[MOD] Undivided: Keeping NPCs Around

AquadrizztAquadrizzt Member Posts: 1,069
edited August 2019 in PST:EE Mods
Undivided is a mod that changes Vhailor and Ignus to be followers rather than party members. Thus, this mod allows players to have all seven companions present as they progress through the game.

The newest version of this mod is available on GitHub.

Features

This mod is being actively developed, and will be expanded as my free time permits. This mod currently allows Vhailor and Ignus to adventure with the party as followers without using party member slots. Followers will still interject and be identified as a member of the party for script/dialog purposes and will progress in levels along with The Nameless One.

To make Vhailor and Ignuus work as followers, the following functionality changes have been made:
- If Vhailor or Ignus would be killed in combat, they instead "plays dead" for the remainder of combat, lying on the ground and not being controllable until combat has been concluded.
- Followers cannot carry or use any equipment other than their default gear.
- Followers will not be available to fight by your side in the Fortress of Regrets.

Upcoming Changes

As of this release, I am quite happy with the state of this mod, other than minor balance/AI tweaks. If you have ideas for things you would like to see in this mod, please let me know in the comments.

Technical Limitations

I am aware of the following issues and would welcome suggestions for how to handle them:

- Followers do not respond to the "run vs. walk" system, meaning that Vhailor will always walk everywhere, making him significantly slower than any party members who are running.

- Followers can interject, but will not banter or comment on party deaths.

- When selecting a weapon for followers, the image of their weapon does not show up in the weapon selection quickbar, but is visible if you right click the apparently empty slot.

Feedback

If you encounter any bugs while using this mod, please let me know.

As with all of my mods, if you have any ideas, comments, or criticism, please do not hesitate to post in this thread.
Post edited by Aquadrizzt on
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Comments

  • DoubledimasDoubledimas Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 1,286
    Added to the list.
  • NicolBluetoothNicolBluetooth Member Posts: 48
    edited June 2017
    I've been watching the development of this mod on GitHub, and I was wondering if it was in a complete enough state to safely install. I'm glad it's finally ready for a public release; I never liked the thought of leaving any companions behind.
    One question though, if you aren't maxed out on companions, can you keep Morte and/or Nordom in your party as party members and use the party interface with them until you are?
  • AquadrizztAquadrizzt Member Posts: 1,069
    edited June 2017
    @NickBluetooth , I do not believe there are any progression breaking bugs associated with this. However, I also have not playtested it beyond making sure that the mechanics present work properly. Proceed with caution.

    Also, allowing Morte/Nordom to switch between party member and follower might introduce some... instability that I'd rather not address quite yet. That's not to say it is entirely off the table, but it certainly isn't a priority right now.

    EDIT: The Morte kidnapping scene currently doesn't fire properly (because the game teleports the party into the Lower Ward, but doesn't bother with followers) and will cause you to get stuck. I'm working on a fix right now.
  • AquadrizztAquadrizzt Member Posts: 1,069
    Okay so big update for this mod. The first and largest change is that there is now a second component that lets you convert Nordom to a follower as well. Other fixes include handling of the Tomb in the Drowned Nations, and a few scripting blocks to handle TeleportParty actions used throughout the game.

    To my knowledge, there are no longer any explicitly gamebreaking bugs, although there are still some issues that need to ironed out (e.g. Morte doesn't always exit the Pillar of Skulls upon pulling him out, Morte and Nordom will join you in the Player Maze, etc.)
  • AquadrizztAquadrizzt Member Posts: 1,069
    Okay so I've managed to stamp out *most* of the noticeable bugs with the mod. There remain only two problem areas to my knowledge. These are the Pillar of Skulls and the Fortress of Regrets.

    These both have major spoilers, caveat lector:


    The Pillar of Skulls will still allow you to give it Morte, in exchange for information. However, the game can't seem to return Morte to active play when you should have successfully pulled him out.

    The Fortress of Regrets simply does not know how to handle the fact that you could have more than 5 companions with you upon entry; this is only really an issue with how the Final Battle scripts/dialog plays out. I am working on making sure that it can allow you up to 6 companions in the Final Battle (because Vhailor/Ignus turn on you), should it come to that.

  • NicolBluetoothNicolBluetooth Member Posts: 48
    The updates are doing much to provide Undivided with dialog options which would otherwise be available in the game normally. By the way, if you install this mod, then load a save made before the mod was installed, could you still recruit Morte and Nordom as followers? If so, would it have to be a save where Morte and Nordom aren't currently in the party for the mod to work properly?
  • AquadrizztAquadrizzt Member Posts: 1,069
    @NickBluetooth , yeah, the updates to this mod right now are me trying to fix the issues with doing something to purposely subvert a core aspect of the game engine. Most of the issues now come from the fact that the same approach to a problem has different outcomes depending on when the problem occurs in the game. (e.g. getting Morte back from the Pillar of Skulls' doesn't work but getting him back from Lothar runs fine). Sorry for all of the inconvenience.

    And to be honest I don't know if you can install it mid game. You might be able to but I generally don't test my mods for midgame installs because they can usually break catastrophically...
  • dgmellodgmello Member Posts: 1
    Is anyone having problem with “Making Nordon a Follower” component?
    I’m testing it in a clean 3.1.3.0 game, with no luck.
    If I install both components, the game crashes when I start a new game or load a save.
    If I install only Morte component, it works perfectly, at least the game starts when I start a new game or load a save.
    If I install only Nordon, the game crashes when loading or starting a new game.
    If I Install both components and later remove Nordon, the game starts normally again.

    I download the mod yesterday, 07/12, so I don’t think it’s an old bugged version.

    Any thoughts?
  • AquadrizztAquadrizzt Member Posts: 1,069
    @dgmello , I haven't tried it with the new update yet, but I'll look into it and see what I find. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Strange that Nordom misbehaves when his code isn't relevant, whereas Morte behaves fine when his is the one you would notice earlier if it broke in-game...
  • Dead_SiriousDead_Sirious Member Posts: 4
    edited September 2017
    @Aquadrizzt Do you own Planescape Torment EE for Steam, GOG, or Android? Installing Undivided causes my save or new saves to crash upon loading. Thanks for creating this wonderful mod. Do you got Paypal for donations

    UPDATE. Only Morte works correctly, Nordon causes the game to crash upon loading. :(

    UPDATE after further testing, Nordon actually works and doesn't cause the save to crash if present in the same cell.
    Post edited by Dead_Sirious on
  • AquadrizztAquadrizzt Member Posts: 1,069
    @Dead_Sirious, which other mods are you using, which platform, and what is the version of PSTEE you currently have?

    I don't know why Nordom causes such issues when Morte doesn't; I'll try to give the code I used for Nordom a pass when I have a spare moment (soon™ because of grad school.)
  • Dead_SiriousDead_Sirious Member Posts: 4
    @Aquaflute Thanks for the response! I only play with Undivided. Steam version, along with the latest patch. The Nordom component actually works, but it requires the player to have spoken to Nordom in the save before use without crash.

    One final strange bug I'm noticing, for some odd reason; cell spaces become incredibly difficult to ( enter / exit ) with both components enabled. It becomes nearly impossible to activate town gates for fast travel with the 8 party following the player. Do you have any tips
  • AquadrizztAquadrizzt Member Posts: 1,069
    @Dead_Sirious, hmmm that's bizarre (re: Nordom crashing unless you've met him). I'll look into it when I have an opportunity.

    The cell transitions issue is because followers don't "gather" when you click a zone transition. You have to manually make Nordom/Morte stand within the area of the zone transition. I have no idea if there is a way to fix this that doesn't require a boat load of scripting, but this entire mod is a bit of a hack so I'll see what turns up when I do an editing pass.
  • CanzahCanzah Member Posts: 37
    Has there been any updates to this to fix banter and other remaining issues?
  • lujolujo Member Posts: 236
    edited February 2018
    Um, is Morte still able to use Litany of Curses? Because PST is one game with that ablity, and a different game entirely without it. I'm not sure it's possible to recommend a mod that would remove that, honestly. (I'm personally quite sure that ability is overpowered to the extreme, and it belongs to a whole different generation of RPG abilities, so having it or not having it available sort of changes what system you are playing. Silly but true.)

    If you're looking to make a total-party mod, you're probably way better off just making the party count go up by two and adding a slider to the party faces screen to be able to scroll them or something. Quite a number of things in the Modron Maze are Nordom equipment, and Morte doesn't have automaticaly scaling teeth (especially not enchanted ones, it's rather a big deal). The effort is admirable, the intention is... understandable, although the game plays best with 4 companions (more than that and you're way too strong), but this isn't a very good way to do what you're looking to do.
  • DeltharisDeltharis Member Posts: 124
    @lujo "just [emphasis mine] making the party count go up by two" would be a monumental undertaking, and achieving it would grant you a celebrity status in Infinity Engine modding community. Such a mod has not happened even though I'm sure there were requests for it and attempts at it ever since the first release of Baldurs Gate 20 years ago. Please take that into account before discarding this brilliant piece of work as "this isn't a very good way to do what you're looking to do".
  • lujolujo Member Posts: 236
    edited February 2018
    This might be a brilliant piece of work, in terms of effort, it's just that making Morte and Nordom followers is waaaaaaaaay more unwise than whoever sets out to do it is aware of. I've seen such mods before made by exceptionally motivated and talented engineers/coders/hackers who just didn't understand the game they were tinkering with well enough not to do certain things.

    If this mod makes Morte unable to use Litany of Curses, then it does more damage to a playthrough than making Ignus or Vhailor a follower would. It's not that you can't play without Morte entirely, you can and I have multiple times, but the difference is enormous.

    There are other things you lose mechanically, as Nordom is supposed to be the lore guy and equipping him with different lens does different things for him. Over half of the point of the Modron Maze is farming equipment for Nordom, if he doesn't have an inventory you did a lot of damage to plenty of game content.

    And this isn't even getting into story reasons. TNO has no idea Morte is a "follower". That's a huge plot twist to a new player, even bigger than Dak'kon because you find out he can't leave you much later. And he isn't even bound by anything but his regret, he's not lawful, in the last conversation before the end area he even explains that he's not following you for any magical reasons but his own free will and feelings of guilt.

    Just sayning, might be fun for some people, IDK, but it's wong on so many levels. With access to Litany of Curses being the pirmary thing. There's simply no way to recommend a mod which cuts access to it, unless that mod's primary motivation was "Litany of Curses is the most unbalanced ability in an infinity game, ever, and it was only put there to make combat trivial, so this mod removes it for that exact reason," but that mod would then probably need a different AI for all or most enemies.

    I'm trying to come up with a Baldurs Gate analogy of removing access to LoC, and it's very difficult because there isn't anything nearly quite as stupidly gamebreaking / gamedefining as that ability in BG. It's like if somebody made a mod which removed all trap detection from the game, in a sense, just way worse. Like if somebody removed all healing apart from resting?

    I do have a rather good Dota analogy for you to consider.
    In all of Dota only 3 characters can "taunt". One is a single target taunt like Morte's, but touch range, locks you in combat with the target only for a few seconds. You've got no crazy defenses like Morte has, the other guy doesn't get debuffed, and if you lose the other guy gets a permanent damage increase for the rest of the match. This is waaaaaaaaaay weaker than whay Morte does and it's a very strong ability on a cooldown high enough to only make it once-per-combat. It's an "ultimate" ability, and you need to level up to get to it, and it also takes farming items to be able to apply it.

    The other guy who can taunt does it in a very short range / microscopic area of effect, and only he gets a huge armor buff. It lasts only a few seconds. There's also a guy who can do the reverse, cause people in a small area to attack a target. Both abilities have hefty cooldowns.

    Morte has a lvl 0, long range, low cooldown, effectively-forever-lasting taunt on top of being ridiculously tanky, and the taunt not only disables anyone he casts it at forever, it also debuffs them harder than most if not all debuff spells in PST do. This is one of the most ridiculous abilites in the history of gaming.


    EDIT: And one unobvious small thing abut the Litany of Curses is that when enemy morale breaks and they run for it, it's very tedious work chasing them down because there are no ranged weapons in the game until rather late. If LoC had no other use but this I'd understand anyone who wouldn't put in a mod which made it unavailable etc etc.
    Post edited by lujo on
  • lujolujo Member Posts: 236
    edited February 2018
    If the mod author made this sort of thing for Vhailor - probably way fewer problems with it. At least big glaring ones. All he does is attack, and he should be dead anyway, so him just re-forming after he dies ought to be no biggie.

    Everybody else needs their inventory and skill/spell bar. Of them the only one who'd qualify as a follower is Ignus, and he's even less well integrated into the game than Vhailor, so for him the only real issue is one of spellcasting, and possibly equipping rings and bracelets.

    But they have no specific equipment, and, really, nothing that can't be replicated, while Morte and Nordom very much do. There are 2 assassination quests which require LoC AFAIK, and there's many interactions whose sole reason is to buff LoC, so if the mod disables it it's quite disatrous. There's also teeth, lens and bolts to be gathered for Morte and Nordom.

    EDIT: Oh, and I've also made several things related to followers official requests lately, to improve things with monster summoning items and Lim-Lims.
    • Sorting out the ability of followers in general to run
    • Sorting out the ability to give orders to followers unrelated to ones you give the rest of the party (this makes them effectively unusable in general, especially when combined with point 1)
    • Sorting out the area leaving issues with followers (in case of the Lim-Lim to pick the thing back up whenever you leave the area and place it in your hand slot)
    • Several others
    So if the developers take a look at that stuff, and they should to make the Lim-Lim and the summoning items usable in a sensible way, this might help the maker of this mod out a lot. However, making Morte and Nordom followers is still something I would not recommend doing, or recommend anyone doing to their game. Vhailor - sure, even Ignus, yeah, sure, but not Morte and Nordom. Noble intentions, nice work put in, but horribly misguided, I'm afraid.
    Post edited by lujo on
  • AquadrizztAquadrizzt Member Posts: 1,069
    I haven't forgotten about this mod, but engineering grad degrees eat up a lot of time that I'd otherwise spend programming/modding/screwing around. I am well aware that this mod might be "good intention, poor design", and that is fine for me, because there is always opportunity for better design. All of my mods have stuff in them that most people told me "no this isn't possible" or "that seems like it'd break". Solving problems that don't have easy solutions is one of the things that appeals to me about modding IE games in the first place.

    If you're looking to make a total-party mod, you're probably way better off just making the party count go up by two and adding a slider to the party faces screen to be able to scroll them or something.


    This is literally impossible outside of GemRB. I believe it was CamDawg who said that, while looking through the code, "the number of times the 6 player party cap is hard-coded is staggering". I still think that it is a missed opportunity to have to skip out on 2 NPCs each run, hence the mod.

    To my knowledge, the zone transition with followers works fine (other than that players are required to manually bring the followers close to the map transition, because they won't automatically run there).

    The choice of Morte and Nordom was an arbitrary choice among the Fighters. It could certainly be configured in different ways. And you raise a fair point that Vhailor is much less mechanically involved than either of the other two.

    I was working on a way to give Morte/Nordom their items and have them equip them, but it wasn't working when I tried it last (with code copied from follower mods for other IE games), so I gave up on it and pursued other things like ensuring that the Morte abduction sequence still runs.

    When I have some time, I'll come around and do a pass and see what I can improve. It does work (in some sense of the word), but it isn't as seamless as I would like.

    As with all of my mods, caveat utilitor.

  • lujolujo Member Posts: 236
    Glad to hear all of it. Making Vhailor a follower in stead of Morte would be kind of neccessary. There is at least one assassination quest in the game, if not 2, which I'm not sure are even doable without Litany of Curses. This would also save you any hassle with any number of other things Morte needs to be around for. As long as he can be talked to and registers in dialogues (which he should as long as he's in range) Vhailor is basically a follower already.

    Making Nordom a follower is quite a bit more unfortunate than it might look at first glance. Ignus only really needs to be able to converse with TNO, other than that he has more or less no interactions with anything, and him dissapearing from the party in the fortress of regrets only matters for an evil TNO. There's well respected guides on PST which recommend just dumping Ignus right after having a conversation with him anyway.

    He'd probably be a bit useless as a follower without the ability to cast spells, apart from the fact that he's a ranged attacker and that alone is a very nice thing to have. There's also fine enough story reasons for him to be a follower - you made him, and now he haunts you because he's your responsibility which just won't go away. If you're up for a challenge, make him a follower instead of Nordom, just make him randomly cast spells in addition to his ranged attacks.

    That would make a fun mod, and it could be recommended to people.
  • NicolBluetoothNicolBluetooth Member Posts: 48
    I agree with Vhailor being made into a companion, instead of either Morte or Nordom, for this mod. What little equipment he can switch out, like his axe, is so good already, you almost want to keep him as-is. I'd almost want to also keep Morte as a follower, because the only equipment he can switch out is his teeth. But if he's needed for a quest, it might be a good idea to keep him as a regular party member. I'd almost agree with Ignus being made into a follower, because he is also an optional character who can't really equip new items either (I think), except then I don't think he can learn new spells like that, and his default attack sucks. If one could teach him new spells as a follower, and if he could cast his spells in combat without being told to, then he would work as a alternate second companion to Nordom. I think what's most important, though, is finding a way to equip character-specific items to companions so they're not just sitting in your inventory. It's unfortunate that all attempts to code that in have led to such a brick wall.
  • AquadrizztAquadrizzt Member Posts: 1,069
    edited March 2018
    Vhailor and Ignus as followers could work.

    I don't know why I overlooked Vhailor... he has literally no abilities and his base weapon is better than almost all other axes one can find in-game. I could use the trick I'm using with Morte to upgrade his weapon over time, but he appears so late in the game that it's not worth it.

    Ignus could be interesting as a follower. I'm not sure if you could make him cast spells manually, but if I coded his AI properly, you wouldn't care. That actually might be thematically appropriate that you can't control his casting... insane pyromanics don't need your lectures about not burning down the Hive after all.

    When I have a chunk of time, I'll definitely try this stuff out.
    Post edited by Aquadrizzt on
  • AquadrizztAquadrizzt Member Posts: 1,069
    Vhailor is already in the bug-squashing phase. I also identified the issue with why the Nordom component was crashing the game. I have him handling party teleport just fine, and he works (almost) seamlessly with the Tomb of the Nameless One.

    The Player's Maze is giving me no small amount of grief though...

  • TigerWolfeTigerWolfe Member Posts: 1
    Is this still being worked or has it been abandoned?
  • Dead_SiriousDead_Sirious Member Posts: 4
    edited August 2019
    @Aquadrizzt Is there a possibility I could test out your unofficial Vhailor update before 2019 is over? I stopped playing PST in 2017, hoping to hear Morte's interaction through out the story.
  • AquadrizztAquadrizzt Member Posts: 1,069
    edited August 2019
    @Dead_Sirious, I can't find the Vhailor files at the moment, but I'll see what I can do. I'm probably going to rewrite the code base to have it be Vhailor and Ignus who are the followers, and I have some ideas about how to fix some of the issues present in the past versions of the mod. I'll let you know when I get an update out. Thanks for your continued patience.

    Update: I found the Vhailor files, got a few things fixed up, and am currently working on the functionality for Vhailor to not follow TNO into certain protagonist-only areas.

    Update2: I believe Vhailor now (mostly) behaves with respect to protagonist only areas and the endgame area. I have not encountered the game-breaking crash that entry into the final area used to cause. The Player's Maze still interacts weirdly with him; once that is fixed, I'll release a preliminary version of Vhailor.
    Post edited by Aquadrizzt on
  • AquadrizztAquadrizzt Member Posts: 1,069
    edited August 2019
    Alright, a version of Undivided that turns Vhailor (and only Vhailor) into a follower is available on the project's GitHub page, linked in the top post. This release should be much more stable than previous versions and should properly handle the handful of protagonist-only zones through the game as well as the Trial of Impulse in the Fortress of Regrets.
    Post edited by Aquadrizzt on
  • Dead_SiriousDead_Sirious Member Posts: 4
    @Aquadrizzt Thank you for the fast response! Really awesome the files were recovered. Just read the second post regarding the fastest fix ever. I'm creating a new save right now to try Vhailor out in game. Thanks for coming back to Undivided
  • AquadrizztAquadrizzt Member Posts: 1,069
    @Dead_Sirious , happy to be of help. :)

    Just a reminder that Vhailor is procured rather late into the game, so if you haven't finished the game before, be sure to savor it; you only get one first play-through.
  • AquadrizztAquadrizzt Member Posts: 1,069
    Alright so in a fit of boredom, I finished the Ignus component of this mod as well (separable from the Vhailor component). Ignus functions similarly to Vhailor (e.g. plays dead when reduced to no HP, interjects when necessary, levels-up with TNO).

    I'm on the fence about whether to give him more spell casts per day as his level increases. An extra mage that doesn't require a party slot (especially a mage with a full amount of spells) might be kind of unbalanced, so for now he just has his 4/3/2/1 spell casts of an assortment of his custom spells. Let me know if you disagree with this choice and I can assess.

    As always, get the latest release from the GitHub repo linked in the top post, and happy planeshopping.
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