The effect icon for the Oil of Speed potion changed from "haste" to "improved haste". According to the devs this change is intented because it matches now the Oil of Speed description. The icon was wrong for 20 years.
It's like they don't want me witnessing them leaving.
I agree, and everything in the scripting backs this.
My speculation is that it's a realism thing from the original devs--speaking to the little girl followed by an immediate mass stampede for the exits probably looks silly, or would raise the inevitable question of how they get out while there are still monsters and/or they're wounded, etc. Having them quietly disappear out of sight means the player can assume that they rested, prepared, and then moved out organized and with due precautions without having to, you know, script and dialogue all of that.
My only objection is that you would never get to see the "Time to make me some lizard skin boots. Ha! That'll show 'em." or "Thanks for not letting them turn me into a skeleton." lines. Doing it after a delay of a few (game) hours would work, though.
Whoops, you're correct. I thought the level 1 villagers changed their lines on the escape variable set by the little girl, but they change based on the Lizard King's death--mea culpa.
The villagers on level two do swap their lines on the same conditions as their escape, so it would need a bit of a delay at least. Perhaps they could wait on Sheemish instead.
@Shandaxx and @Skatan Make sure you report this pathfinding problem, especially as you say that it's worse than in BG:EE and BG2:EE (btw, have you checked pathfinding in the beta of BG:EE and BG2:EE?)
Are you sure it's not intentional @JuliusBorisov? There are a number of encounters in BG1 where autopause is disabled (and introducing more and more of those was one reason why I stopped using it entirely). That tends to occur in situations where someone has decided the party should be surprised by encountering enemies (such as finding the spiders in Landrin's house for instance). It's a long time since I played IWD, but from the screenshots it would seem possible that both the encounters you and @Thels referenced have been treated in this way.
I don't think you can take that auto-pause disabled behavior off (certainly not using in-game controls) - that's what makes it annoying. If you're in a situation in which the response time is critical (as it is going into Landrin's house with a low-level character) and you're not sure if auto-pause will work there's every chance of getting into serious trouble as a result of unpausing when you intended to pause. Turning the auto-pause off entirely at least means you are in full control yourself. I agree that's not explained well anywhere though.
Are you sure it's not intentional @JuliusBorisov? There are a number of encounters in BG1 where autopause is disabled (and introducing more and more of those was one reason why I stopped using it entirely). That tends to occur in situations where someone has decided the party should be surprised by encountering enemies (such as finding the spiders in Landrin's house for instance). It's a long time since I played IWD, but from the screenshots it would seem possible that both the encounters you and @Thels referenced have been treated in this way.
I had no idea it could be the case (not using the Auto-pause, I've thought it should work in each case). The ticket is filed, though - https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/34348 - so the devs will look.
It doesn't make sense for it to be intentional, though. Why implement an auto-pause feature, if you then cannot rely on it. Especially since pausing and unpausing are the same button. You may very well be unpausing when you want to pause.
And what's the motivation for it? All it does is force people to quickly hit the space bar in specific situations, or, if they want to be sure auto-pause doesn't accidentally trip them over, disable auto-pause and hit space bar for every single encounter. Overall, this 'feature' (if that's what it truly is) is only causing issues.
@argent77 that's the encounter I was just posting about - one of the ones where BGEE introduced disabling of the autopause in an earlier update.
The game doesn't seem to matter. I've just triggered the same issue in BG2EE.
It seems to happen only (or primarily) when entering new maps with hostile creatures. Sometimes you need several tries.
Again that's the same sort of encounter where it can be argued that the party should be surprised to be attacked. In PnP there were rules about surprise and this seems to me to be an attempt to model those. I agree with @Thels though that undoing a specific game mechanic provided in the original game is not a good way to do that - I'll be interested to see the reaction of developers to the ticket Julius mentioned.
Running through the BG2 campaign, I managed to get Aerie stuck in ogre form. However, I can't reproduce the error. But after deleting my baldur.lua file now the game seems to run like everyone has drank a potion of speed. Quite annoying.
Furthermore, is it me or is quicksaving via pressing 'q' not working? Nor are there portraits in my save games.
Comments
Also, the crashes you had could be caused by an Antivirus blocking changes in Documents, as explained in https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/34312#change-203173
Do you find similar changes?
My speculation is that it's a realism thing from the original devs--speaking to the little girl followed by an immediate mass stampede for the exits probably looks silly, or would raise the inevitable question of how they get out while there are still monsters and/or they're wounded, etc. Having them quietly disappear out of sight means the player can assume that they rested, prepared, and then moved out organized and with due precautions without having to, you know, script and dialogue all of that.
It does fall down in a few spots, as noted above.
The villagers on level two do swap their lines on the same conditions as their escape, so it would need a bit of a delay at least. Perhaps they could wait on Sheemish instead.
Haven't registered a redmine account yet.
Auto-Pause Disabled
Is that a bug, or...? What's preventing the Auto-Pause from working? This is a singleplayer game.
The auto-pause is working fine for some encounters, and it isn't working for other encounters.
I don't think it is intentional though, as it happens randomly. Sometimes auto-pause is disabled, sometimes it's not.
It seems to happen only (or primarily) when entering new maps with hostile creatures. Sometimes you need several tries.
And what's the motivation for it? All it does is force people to quickly hit the space bar in specific situations, or, if they want to be sure auto-pause doesn't accidentally trip them over, disable auto-pause and hit space bar for every single encounter. Overall, this 'feature' (if that's what it truly is) is only causing issues.
Furthermore, is it me or is quicksaving via pressing 'q' not working? Nor are there portraits in my save games.