Skip to content

Ahungry's Deletefier

ahungryahungry Member Posts: 29
in General Modding
Hi all,

https://github.com/ahungry/ahungry_deletefier

I made a small mod that goes through and attempts to delete a percentage of items off stores/creatures/areas based on a user input percentage.

The thought is that instead of "nerfing" mod added items, keep them around but make it very exciting when a given play through actually has one.

This is more on the POC/initial feedback phase - I need to do a lot of playtesting to try to keep as many vanilla and mod added quest related items present, as the hope is to just make magical gear (off mod added mega-merchants etc.) dynamic each play through, and overall much rarer.

Comments

  • EndarireEndarire Member Posts: 1,519
    edited September 2022
    @ahungry
    Thankee for posting this for people who want lower magic games!

    How does this affect balance? It seems like casters still rule, and a 'Vow of Poverty' Sorcerer is one of the most powerful classes in this setup.

    Does it affect quest items? If not, and from a technical standpoint it shouldn't, the Flail of Ages is again the go-to mid-to-late-game weapon for melee.

    Does it affect vendor items? If not, parties can still buy power.

    Does it affect convenience items like containers? Someone would like to be able to ensure containers like Bags of Holding and Scroll/Wand/Potion Cases & Ammo Belts are guaranteed but not necessarily their contents.

    How does this mod interact with Item Randomizer?

    Ensure at installation, users can't enter negative numbers or garbage input.

    Thankee!
    Post edited by Endarire on
  • ahungryahungry Member Posts: 29
    Thanks @Endarire for the response and thoughtful talking points.

    For balance - it makes scrolls harder to find (on creatures, areas, or vendors - based on user settings). You're right that some classes which hold most their power as innate skills are less impacted by this update (sorcerer, shaman, monk).

    It does affect vendor items (that was one of the driving incentives - keep bonus merchants from mods, but limit their selection to a small sliver of their usual items based on randomization).

    Regarding convenience items - I'm intentionally trying *not* to remove any containers (of any sort), or any quest items (this one requires a lot of work, as every mod adds quest items with unconventional item names vs a standard item name format like "xxmisc00.itm" (where xx would be a mod prefix).

    I always use item randomiser - this works great with it (if installed afterwards at least). The thought in my testing is, let item randomiser mix up what it's able to, and then after mixing it up, go through and deletefy some percentage of items.

    The install script will prompt for a value between 0-100 - you're right, I only have an integer check atm, I wasn't checking for min/max (although a negative value or 0 would cause nothing to be deleted, while a 100 or larger would cause everything to be deleted). But, it could definitely save the mod installer some heartache if they chose the wrong value and had to uninstall to fix.
  • EndarireEndarire Member Posts: 1,519
    edited September 2022
    @ahungry
    When I worked in IT, we had a moment to reference Bobby Tables.

    Is there some sort of quest item/key item flag? Disintegrate doesn't destroy those.
    Post edited by Endarire on
  • ahungryahungry Member Posts: 29
    I mentioned on another chat location that one issue with using item flags is it would require nested references - currently I'm just iterating on the list of items as stored in a store/creature/area file and adjusting the names (so my only checks are stringly checks on the ASCII name itself).

    It would definitely save a ton of time in trying to manually build item lists if I did a nested lookup on a given item (https://gibberlings3.github.io/iesdp/file_formats/ie_formats/itm_v1.htm) - but I imagine it would take much much longer to keep opening/inspecting items and seeing if I want to act on it or not.

    Currently the component takes about 5 minutes to install (iterating over ~20k files + looping through ~0 to 20 or so items for each of these) - to then do 20k * 0..20 item lookups as well....well, I imagine that'd be some orders of magnitude slower (especially since my mod scripting is pretty rudimentary, and I'm not sure if it'd be possible to cache/memoize the item lookups in memory, vs having to read/parse from disk each and every time).

    That does give me an idea though, if there was a "quest" flag (I didn't see any such flag on the format link, but I just skimmed) - or even just the intent to snag all the items flagged as weapons, I could make dynamic code - some loop on all items to generate my allow-list/deny-list regexes from an initial item parse....
  • EndarireEndarire Member Posts: 1,519
    Acting upon items based on type (1H weapons, 2H weapons, quarterstaves, body armor, robes, notes, etc.) would be handy.
Sign In or Register to comment.

2024 Overhaul Games, a division of Beamdog. © 2024 Hasbro, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Baldur's Gate, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, Baldur's Gate, Wizards of the Coast and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries, and are used with permission. Hasbro and its logo are trademarks of Hasbro, Inc. and are used with permission. © 1998 BioWare Corp. All Rights Reserved. BioWare, the BioWare Infinity Engine and the BioWare logo are trademarks of Bioware Corp. Black Isle Studios and the Black Isle Studios logo are trademarks of Interplay Entertainment Corp. Atari and the Atari logo are trademarks owned by Atari Interactive, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.