I see they do cause a stuttering animation (Though they play out fine from what I'm seeing). I'll try a different approach via setting a timer and having an area check for expiring, then the area calling the banter script rather than the character. It seems clean and promising so far.
Aura's script properly converts to SoD version upon importing from BG1
Moved banter script out of creature script to (hopefully) eliminate stutter issues
I've caved in and moved banter scripts over to the background BDBALDUR.BCS script. This should eliminate any cases of stutter since the banters are not activated by the NPC itself, but might cause other weird issues. Should it function as intended I will do the same for my other NPCs.
I never knew about bdbaldur. I'll let you know how it works.
Edit: It seems to work without issues in limited testing. It seems a better solution than my own, so I'll adopt the same process. Given eventually several NPCs will use it, I can also let you know if any weird isssues happen as I work along.
Second edit: The triggers seem to fire a bit on the fast side. I think having timers run in bdbaldur cuts the timer to about a third of its actual value. This isn't bad persay, but would fall under weirdness.
so i was going about installing the new version and i keep getting this error
[Aura_BG1/scripts/baldur.baf] PARSE ERROR at line 12 column 8-36
Near Text: )
Type mismatch in "Allegience" argument of [Allegiance].
Expecting type "integer".[Aura_BG1/scripts/baldur.baf] ERROR at line 12 column 8-36
Near Text: )
Parsing.Parse_error
ERROR: parsing [Aura_BG1/scripts/baldur.baf]: Parsing.Parse_error
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
ERROR Installing [Aura NPC for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition], rolling back to previous state
Unable to Unlink [Aura_BG1/backup/0/OTHER.0]: Unix.Unix_error(1, "unlink", "Aura_BG1/backup/0/OTHER.0")
[Aura_BG1/backup/0/UNSETSTR.0] SET_STRING uninstall info not found
Will uninstall 698 files for [AURA_BG1/SETUP-AURA_BG1.TP2] component 0.
Uninstalled 698 files for [AURA_BG1/SETUP-AURA_BG1.TP2] component 0.
Unable to Unlink [Aura_BG1/backup/0/READLN.0]: Unix.Unix_error(20, "unlink", "Aura_BG1/backup/0/READLN.0")
Unable to Unlink [Aura_BG1/backup/0/READLN.0.TEXT]: Unix.Unix_error(20, "unlink", "Aura_BG1/backup/0/READLN.0.TEXT")
ERROR: Parsing.Parse_error
Please make a backup of the file: SETUP-AURA_BG1.DEBUG and look for support at: Artemius_I
Made another BG2-style portrait. The first one I like but the style was off and I couldn't make it work so I tried again from scratch. This one will probably be the default but both will be available for BG2.
I just installed this mod on my new computer, but it's had some unintended side effects. Specifically, every time I try to start EE now, it does the first time setup procedure and then ceases setting up. I tried uninstalling the game and reinstalling it, and it started up normally, but when I installed the mod again, I got the first time setup nonsense all over again. I'm not sure how to deal with this, since none of the fixes for this bug on the Steam forums seem applicable to my situation.
Owing to a message I received I think it's worth mentioning that Aura-BG1 is not recognized by EET at the moment and trying to install EET with the mod installed on BG:EE will not work. Unfortunately this is something whoever manages EET needs to deal with, but it's possible to fix it locally by opening the EET/tbl/compatibility.tbl file and add the following line:
AURA_BG1 0 //Aura NPC Mod for BG:EE
I think that's all that's needed according to my memory, but I haven't tested. If there are errors do tell.
I don't know if it's enough to do this. If I run the mod checker (a little tool included with EET) to see if the Aura would be compatible it says a few files conflict, namely:
I know the fire2b.vvc and famcat01.wav files are there because they are missing in BG2 and BG1 respectively. I have no idea why the .bcs files would have incompatibilities, the mod extends to them, nothing should be overwritten or affected.
A preview of a few craftable and upgradable items:
I've caved in and moved banter scripts over to the background BDBALDUR.BCS script. This should eliminate any cases of stutter since the banters are not activated by the NPC itself, but might cause other weird issues. Should it function as intended I will do the same for my other NPCs.
One possible reason for the stutter before was caused because the setting of the area script was done without a closing variable, i.e. the NPC script set the banter area script every time the "BD_BANTER_DELAY" timer run out during the banter, making the NPC quit the current action.
By moving this into the bdbaldur.bcs there might be no stuttering of NPCs to be witnessed, but the same "stutter" potential is there for the script, unless you add a closing variable to the script block setting the banter area script. (bd)baldur.bcs usually triggers overall game events that can't be pinned to one specific area so having a temporarily stuttering block in there should be avoided. I know you are well aware of this, I'm stating the obvious.
In addition: I'm an old-school modder, so adding "unnecessary" (i.e. blocks that could easily go elsewhere) script blocks to the (bd)baldur.bcs is something I try to avoid in general (in the old engine, this could actually lead to lagging behavior - something the EE is immune to, hopefully.)
For my private NPC I simulated the SoD-own way of triggering the NPC banter. It's the same principle, the only difference is which timer to use where and what to use for the mentioned closing variable. I will put it into a quick tutorial and you can decide whether it'll be helpful or not.
This may not matter if set up correctly in Drake's, but:
Probably a copy-paste error, you probably meant SetGlobal("C02DrakeRomanceActive","GLOBAL",3
I also had a question on this section, I notice the crossmods are set at 1 rather than 2 as their criteria, and was wondering why? This is mainly for me to know if I need to set a check for 1 or 2 when writing a check for my own mod to auto-kill the relationship or not. I didn't see any global that seemed to relate to the if angered criteria, though maybe that is within the dialogue, and not the script.
Whoops, forgot about responding to this. Too busy working on a poetry project for class. Yep, that issue needs to be fixed. As for the big chunk of romance script checks... you know, I don’t remember why it’s like that. May have something to do with where I set the romance variables in the talks, but I’m not sure. It could be that I copied a mistake without thinking and it should be 2 instead of 1.
A slightly bigger update to fit an proper v2 release.
v2.0
Replaced Scribe Scrolls HLA with Grand Artifice - not really relevant unless the XP cap is removed AND the a HLA-compatible UI mod is used AND Aura somehow reaches 3M experience in BG1
Illusionist/Artificer Aura can dispel voidstone effect at Bridgefort
Added crossmod banters with Sirene and Drake
Fixed Story Mode bonuses not being removed when kicked out
BG2 Progress Update: Two major character quests and two minor sidequests are confirmed for SoA. One major quest takes place in Chapter 2, the other in Chapter 6. One ToB major quest to close things out.
BG2 Progress: Banters have mostly been plotted out and just need to be written. Compared to BG1 Aura is more mature and tries to get along with everyone, even the evil companions so there’s no likes/dislikes/ambivalent categorization. The only truly antagonistic relations are Dorn, who doesn’t appreciate her attempts to play nice, and Wilson, who she’s terrified of.
I may post a a general outline of her relationship with the party members later.
Really enjoying her in SoD. Am wondering if I use her sleeping potion later in the game if I can still claim I acted properly on this point at the trial, I assume so? Many thanks
Completed BGEE portion of the mod. Great stuff. Awesome character, personal items and abilities! Final battle was wow! Just WOW! Chosen of Cyric encounter level in both quality and difficulty.
Maybe a little too much anime here and there and some weapons are too op but overall great mod.
Hi! First let me say, thanks for this mod. I've enjoyed the BG1 portion immensely. Aura is by far my favorite mod NPC, from her personality to her class. She's really fantastic.
I'm a bit into SoD now and I'm a little bit worried, though. Can someone tell me when she's supposed to start to talk to CHARNAME? I don't meen interjections such as the trollbane arrow one, or banters with NPCs. Those all work just fine. What I mean is the dialogues with the PC that lead to the romance part and everything. I've picked her up first opportunity and had her with me in the party all the way (also I've been always nice to her and didn't tell her not to talk to me in the forcetalk dialogue) and I'm now just through with Boareskyr bridge and she has yet to initiate a single talk.
I've peeked into the scripts and saw the first dialogue should be something along the line of "I'm glad to be travelling with you again, CHARNAME", which strikes me as something I'd expect her to say not too long after joining up, not after several days of ingame time and several real time hours. I've tested it by setting the COAuraTalk global to 2 and the timer to 1 and that indeed triggered the dialogue. It's just that, without me changing it, COAuraTalk is stuck at 1 and doesn't seem to budge from there. As a comparison, Drake's skips merrily ahead and is now at 11.
Basically I'm just looking for some assurance that this is normal or, if it isn't, what could be wrong and what can I do about it? I have a few other mods installed but nothing that should interfere with Aura (neerabanters, Drake, PPE, cdtweaks and SCS, that's it), the version of the mod is 2.0. The BG1 portion worked like a charm, though I did a fresh install on transition into Dragonspear because I encountered the stutter bug in the starting crypt that has been mentioned here - I re-installed and then started a game where I just imported my PC, not the whole final save. Thanks to AionZ for making this grat mod and any knowledgable people who might help me out!
Location: If you're in a dungeon it won't fire.
Reputation: If it's less than 8 she never talks.
She was told to stop talking.
I think we can safely say it wasn't those, and move on to:
The stutter bug re-install you did, so the timer isn't expiring properly.
So you would probably need to adjust it manually like you did. Uninstalling messed up the timer, probably causing confusion.
Also to help, though they don't need to, the modder could add !AreaType(DUNGEON) to their initial timer line though in Aura's SoD script that initializes their talk timer, as it's weird it starts so early where it could potentially fire immediately after she joins your party in the forest for a playthrough where you take her into SoD. In contrast an SoD only playthrough would always have the first conversation an hour after joining. It also helps as that first dungeon is a bit buggy for mod characters, so your situation would be avoided.
Hey, thank you for the quick reply! I love how alive and helpful the modding community for this game still is, after all these years.
Anyway, you're right, it's not about the first three possibilities you've listed.
About the re-install messing up the timer, it's possible but I'm sceptical as well. What I forgot to mention in the first post is that I did the re-install not only because of the stutter bug but I had the same problem before. I imported my final save from BG1 into Dragonspear and had the stutter bug. I got around it at first by just telling Aura not to talk to me. Later I picked her up as normal in the forest and only after a while when I noticed I had several banters with Drake but none with Aura that I decided that maybe my whole installation was messed up and I'd better do a fresh one.
I didn't only re-install the mod but the whole game, wiped the installation directory completely (didn't wipe the directory in My Documents though because I wanted to keep my saves/characters). I even re-downloaded the mod. Then I started a fresh new game in Dragonspear with the default party in the starting crypt. So basically, it should be a clean slate.
One more thing that might be of relevance, if I just manually set the timer to 1, that doesn't do anything. I also have to set COAuraTalks to 2 (or to 4 or to any of the numbers that trigger dialogues in the script). The dialogue also doesn't trigger automatically, I still have to forcetalk Aura at which point the banter comes up instead of her standard dialogue (the one where you can flirt, tell her to shut up, ask her for burst orbs and so on).
It's all very weird and I have not the faintest idea what could cause that behavior.
I am really enjoying this mod with no problems other than Aura seems a bit overpowered. Perhaps the result of other mods such as Level 1 NPCs. I like the concept very much.
Comments
- Aura's script properly converts to SoD version upon importing from BG1
- Moved banter script out of creature script to (hopefully) eliminate stutter issues
I've caved in and moved banter scripts over to the background BDBALDUR.BCS script. This should eliminate any cases of stutter since the banters are not activated by the NPC itself, but might cause other weird issues. Should it function as intended I will do the same for my other NPCs.Edit: It seems to work without issues in limited testing. It seems a better solution than my own, so I'll adopt the same process. Given eventually several NPCs will use it, I can also let you know if any weird isssues happen as I work along.
Second edit: The triggers seem to fire a bit on the fast side. I think having timers run in bdbaldur cuts the timer to about a third of its actual value. This isn't bad persay, but would fall under weirdness.
The timers can be tweaked easily enough. I’ll play around with the values and see what works best.
Near Text: )
Type mismatch in "Allegience" argument of [Allegiance].
Expecting type "integer".[Aura_BG1/scripts/baldur.baf] ERROR at line 12 column 8-36
Near Text: )
Parsing.Parse_error
ERROR: parsing [Aura_BG1/scripts/baldur.baf]: Parsing.Parse_error
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
ERROR Installing [Aura NPC for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition], rolling back to previous state
Unable to Unlink [Aura_BG1/backup/0/OTHER.0]: Unix.Unix_error(1, "unlink", "Aura_BG1/backup/0/OTHER.0")
[Aura_BG1/backup/0/UNSETSTR.0] SET_STRING uninstall info not found
Will uninstall 698 files for [AURA_BG1/SETUP-AURA_BG1.TP2] component 0.
Uninstalled 698 files for [AURA_BG1/SETUP-AURA_BG1.TP2] component 0.
Unable to Unlink [Aura_BG1/backup/0/READLN.0]: Unix.Unix_error(20, "unlink", "Aura_BG1/backup/0/READLN.0")
Unable to Unlink [Aura_BG1/backup/0/READLN.0.TEXT]: Unix.Unix_error(20, "unlink", "Aura_BG1/backup/0/READLN.0.TEXT")
ERROR: Parsing.Parse_error
Please make a backup of the file: SETUP-AURA_BG1.DEBUG and look for support at: Artemius_I
*grumble* something, something, SHS, outdated... uploaded the latest version there.
When in doubt, fall back to github uploads.
edit: improved hair and shading
I don't know if it's enough to do this. If I run the mod checker (a little tool included with EET) to see if the Aura would be compatible it says a few files conflict, namely:
Incompatibility BG1: BALDUR.BCS
Incompatibility BG1: BALDUR25.BCS
Incompatibility BG1: FIRE2B.VVC
Incompatibility BG2: FAMCAT01.WAV
I'm no modder so I don't know what to make of this but I suppose you would understand this so... thoughts?
I know the fire2b.vvc and famcat01.wav files are there because they are missing in BG2 and BG1 respectively. I have no idea why the .bcs files would have incompatibilities, the mod extends to them, nothing should be overwritten or affected.
A preview of a few craftable and upgradable items:
By moving this into the bdbaldur.bcs there might be no stuttering of NPCs to be witnessed, but the same "stutter" potential is there for the script, unless you add a closing variable to the script block setting the banter area script. (bd)baldur.bcs usually triggers overall game events that can't be pinned to one specific area so having a temporarily stuttering block in there should be avoided. I know you are well aware of this, I'm stating the obvious.
In addition: I'm an old-school modder, so adding "unnecessary" (i.e. blocks that could easily go elsewhere) script blocks to the (bd)baldur.bcs is something I try to avoid in general (in the old engine, this could actually lead to lagging behavior - something the EE is immune to, hopefully.)
For my private NPC I simulated the SoD-own way of triggering the NPC banter. It's the same principle, the only difference is which timer to use where and what to use for the mentioned closing variable. I will put it into a quick tutorial and you can decide whether it'll be helpful or not.
Probably a copy-paste error, you probably meant SetGlobal("C02DrakeRomanceActive","GLOBAL",3
I also had a question on this section, I notice the crossmods are set at 1 rather than 2 as their criteria, and was wondering why? This is mainly for me to know if I need to set a check for 1 or 2 when writing a check for my own mod to auto-kill the relationship or not. I didn't see any global that seemed to relate to the if angered criteria, though maybe that is within the dialogue, and not the script.
Whoops, forgot about responding to this. Too busy working on a poetry project for class. Yep, that issue needs to be fixed. As for the big chunk of romance script checks... you know, I don’t remember why it’s like that. May have something to do with where I set the romance variables in the talks, but I’m not sure. It could be that I copied a mistake without thinking and it should be 2 instead of 1.
v2.0
I may post a a general outline of her relationship with the party members later.
Maybe a little too much anime here and there and some weapons are too op but overall great mod.
I'm a bit into SoD now and I'm a little bit worried, though. Can someone tell me when she's supposed to start to talk to CHARNAME? I don't meen interjections such as the trollbane arrow one, or banters with NPCs. Those all work just fine. What I mean is the dialogues with the PC that lead to the romance part and everything. I've picked her up first opportunity and had her with me in the party all the way (also I've been always nice to her and didn't tell her not to talk to me in the forcetalk dialogue) and I'm now just through with Boareskyr bridge and she has yet to initiate a single talk.
I've peeked into the scripts and saw the first dialogue should be something along the line of "I'm glad to be travelling with you again, CHARNAME", which strikes me as something I'd expect her to say not too long after joining up, not after several days of ingame time and several real time hours. I've tested it by setting the COAuraTalk global to 2 and the timer to 1 and that indeed triggered the dialogue. It's just that, without me changing it, COAuraTalk is stuck at 1 and doesn't seem to budge from there. As a comparison, Drake's skips merrily ahead and is now at 11.
Basically I'm just looking for some assurance that this is normal or, if it isn't, what could be wrong and what can I do about it? I have a few other mods installed but nothing that should interfere with Aura (neerabanters, Drake, PPE, cdtweaks and SCS, that's it), the version of the mod is 2.0. The BG1 portion worked like a charm, though I did a fresh install on transition into Dragonspear because I encountered the stutter bug in the starting crypt that has been mentioned here - I re-installed and then started a game where I just imported my PC, not the whole final save. Thanks to AionZ for making this grat mod and any knowledgable people who might help me out!
Location: If you're in a dungeon it won't fire.
Reputation: If it's less than 8 she never talks.
She was told to stop talking.
I think we can safely say it wasn't those, and move on to:
The stutter bug re-install you did, so the timer isn't expiring properly.
So you would probably need to adjust it manually like you did. Uninstalling messed up the timer, probably causing confusion.
Also to help, though they don't need to, the modder could add !AreaType(DUNGEON) to their initial timer line though in Aura's SoD script that initializes their talk timer, as it's weird it starts so early where it could potentially fire immediately after she joins your party in the forest for a playthrough where you take her into SoD. In contrast an SoD only playthrough would always have the first conversation an hour after joining. It also helps as that first dungeon is a bit buggy for mod characters, so your situation would be avoided.
Anyway, you're right, it's not about the first three possibilities you've listed.
About the re-install messing up the timer, it's possible but I'm sceptical as well. What I forgot to mention in the first post is that I did the re-install not only because of the stutter bug but I had the same problem before. I imported my final save from BG1 into Dragonspear and had the stutter bug. I got around it at first by just telling Aura not to talk to me. Later I picked her up as normal in the forest and only after a while when I noticed I had several banters with Drake but none with Aura that I decided that maybe my whole installation was messed up and I'd better do a fresh one.
I didn't only re-install the mod but the whole game, wiped the installation directory completely (didn't wipe the directory in My Documents though because I wanted to keep my saves/characters). I even re-downloaded the mod. Then I started a fresh new game in Dragonspear with the default party in the starting crypt. So basically, it should be a clean slate.
One more thing that might be of relevance, if I just manually set the timer to 1, that doesn't do anything. I also have to set COAuraTalks to 2 (or to 4 or to any of the numbers that trigger dialogues in the script). The dialogue also doesn't trigger automatically, I still have to forcetalk Aura at which point the banter comes up instead of her standard dialogue (the one where you can flirt, tell her to shut up, ask her for burst orbs and so on).
It's all very weird and I have not the faintest idea what could cause that behavior.