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#606984 03/08/17 12:47 AM
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Another post from the guy who hasn't tried to mod anything since like 2005 for the few of you messing around with DOS2 already.

I have this idea for meta magic skills. I would probably tie them to Loremaster instead of a primary stat or preferably add it as a talent depending on how hard that is. .

I would want to add add abilities that modify the next damaging spell cast so that you could cast multiple meta magic abilities before casting the actual spell if you wanted.

Here are the main boost I would be looking at
Extended spell. Increase the spells range by X.
Empowered spell. Spell does X% more damage.
Careful Spell. Spell does not affect allies.

I assume the first two would be easy but not sure about the third. Then there's things like bouncing spell to hit a second target or something akin to piercing arrow except with the spell. I'm pretty sure these things would be far above my current skills.


WMC51 #606991 03/08/17 01:38 AM
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Very cool idea, but quite tough to pull off. For many effects (like boosting range) you'd basically have to make an empowered variant of every single spell, and have the empowering ability grant you the empowered versions of every skill you have. Nevermind making multiple types of empowerment and combining different empowerments. If there was a limited set of empowered spells (like 10-15), and empowerments didn't stack, it'd be feasible, but still a bit clunky.

Other kinds of ways to empower skills would be a bit easier. You could fairly easily empower your next spell to cause poisoned or burning, or various other statuses, for example. You can make casting your next spell heal you X amount. And actually, a damage empowerment spell would be pretty simple if it just granted you an X% damage bonus that went away when you cast a spell. It's hard to explain what kind of things would be hard and what would be easier. Basically it depends on what is scriptable and what ain't, and what statuses can do.

This post gives all the character scripting commands and triggers, which might help you see what kind of things are easier to manipulate. Lots of things are possible if you're clever, but there's not necessarily an explicit way to do something.

http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=605357#Post604994

Last edited by Baardvark; 03/08/17 01:41 AM.
WMC51 #606994 03/08/17 02:00 AM
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"but there's not necessarily an explicit way to do something."
That's a phrase that keeps popping up when we talk about modding around these places.
Seems to me a bad omen for the future of modding in D:OS2 if you ask me...

Noctro #607003 03/08/17 05:56 AM
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Originally Posted by Noctro
"but there's not necessarily an explicit way to do something."
That's a phrase that keeps popping up when we talk about modding around these places.
Seems to me a bad omen for the future of modding in D:OS2 if you ask me...


No game ever has an explicit way to do everything modders want. In this case, I meant there's no command that can directly modify a skill. That would be amazing and would open many things up, but that's a big request that would probably require reworking how the skill code work to a certain degree, and whatnot. But there's probably ways to accomplish what WMC51 requested.

It's up to Larian to add all the fundamental components for modding and make as much of it the game as accessible as they can. Which so far they've done a fairly decent job at. Despite D:OS EE's flaws, it was actually one of the most moddable games of its quality and scope in a long time. User interface and documentation left a lot to be desire, but the capabilities were there. Obviously the combo of power and ease of modding is the holy grail, but power is more important than ease in my book.

It's up to modders to develop systems with the tools we're given. Often it just takes developing a systematic approach to doing things, and whole new things are possible, and other people can just plug their own things into those systems, or follow tutorials to do something similar. Larian can't predict everything we might want to do, nor can they code everything up even if they did, so other modders fill in the gaps.

Ideally we can get something like a "modding patch" a month or two after release, that adds new scripting commands and various features in response to the limitations and difficulties modders find. Like, something that might help WMC15's request without being a huge deal to code would be to add a "stack priority" to skills, where you can know either an empowered skill or its default variant, and not both at the same time, and the empowered variant would automatically replace the default skill. There maybe a way to script something like already though, if you're clever enough.

WMC51 #607414 12/08/17 02:58 AM
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Figured out how to make "upgradeable skills," either through items or skillbooks a status, talent, or whatever trigger really. You basically just check if the character has the skill, remove it if they do, and then add a new skill. It's trickier for non-permanent skills, but you can save the old skill in a variable so you can remove the new skill and readd the old one on unequipping that item or what have you.

For a sculpted spell (no friendly fire), you might have a status a "Sculpt Magic" spell applies, with the following script. You'd need to make the "Projectile_Fireball_Sculpted" skill first, which would only have enemies as viable targets (worth noting that the fire surface would still damage your allies though, unless you reworked the spell to make it create a 1m surface under enemies or something like that.)

EVENT FireballSculpted
VARS
ON
OnCharacterStatusApplied(__Me,SCULPTEDSPELL)
ACTIONS
IF "c1"
CharacterHasSkill(__Me,"Projectile_Fireball")
THEN
CharacterRemoveSkill(__Me,"Projectile_Fireball")
CharacterAddSkill(__Me,"Projectile_Fireball_Sculpted")
ENDIF

EVENT AddSkillBack
VARS
ON
OnCharacterStatusRemoved(__Me,SCULPTEDSPELL)
ACTIONS
IF "c1"
CharacterHasSkill(__Me,"Projectile_Fireball_Sculpted")
THEN
CharacterRemoveSkill(__Me,"Projectile_Fireball_Sculpted")
CharacterAddSkill(__Me,"Projectile_Fireball")
ENDIF

It even auto-memorizes and hotbar slots the new skill in combat if you have a free memory slot (or you could just make it 0 memory if it didn't).

Obviously you would need to do this for each and every sculptable spell, but I don't think there's THAT many AOE spells that would work for this.

Ranged extended spells, or anything else could work just as well. You'd want to pick a relatively limited set of spells for each kind of meta-magic so it doesn't get too out of hand, though with recycling the scripts and mostly copy-pasting the skills, it actually wouldn't be THAT much work to create variants of every spell.

Baardvark #607609 16/08/17 05:10 PM
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Okay that's pretty awesome.

BTW. A few of my players are starting to come up with special request for skills etc. They mentioned partying someone to add the things they want. I didn't think I'm going to have a ton of time to get good at modding when i sit down and think about it since ill be building a huge campaign to run from day 1.

As another side note they never mentioned paying me to run this huge campaign lol.

WMC51 #607610 16/08/17 05:24 PM
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I'm all ears :P You mean paying someone to make them? I've actually considered making a thread about the possibility of commissioned skills, items, scripts, etc., as well as the concept of paid mods in general. A very controversial subject to be sure, but I think there's a discussion to be had.


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