Circle of Eight Modpack v6 / v6 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Re. Lareth audio,

can you elaborate? What is the time interval between the segments?

Also note that the timed scripts fire at 2.5 second intervals.
The system also has to take into account that sometimes the timed script fails to fire, so tailoring the time intervals for each sound clip could cause overlap (unless we skipped part of the sentence entirely if it failed to fire).

Also note, that that's the reason for the occasional 2.5 second pause - sometimes the timed events simply don't fire... and so they are delayed till the next 2.5 second interval.

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

I just tried the chaotic neutral opening. Is it normal that the spider in Deklo Grove doesn't have Jay's ring then?

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Are you running the vanilla game through ToEE Front End X?

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Yes I am! I deactivate CO8 and activate vanilla then hit play.

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

About moving/wandering monsters.

The thing Geaer is that when you clean out parts of the temple it stays so and those areas are safe to walk, it would not be that in real life so to speak as all five temples would be interested in keeping strategic places guarded at all cost.
The story line is that the temple is rising which means that new recruits should come during the game and they would reinforce the different temples. As it is now that temple is fully populated when you first enter.
If you finish the temple in one go then of course it would have time to recruit but usually people will take several stabs at it.
A possible thing is to have a patrol from Hedrack patrol from the stairs of the 3rd floor to secret door leading to the wizard with the skull, whos name escapes me right now.

But most of all new recruits as we go along to the temples that has not been wiped out, this who force the player to act sooner as the temples are getting stronger.

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Hmmm. So if I understand you correctly, this is what happened:

1. You cast grease.
2. Lareth shows up, gives his speech via floating text messages every few seconds.
3. You injure Lareth to the point he breaks up the fight on his turn and initiates normal dialogue (not via floats; the "Enough of this madness!" part).
4. This causes the grease to disappear and combat to halt.
5. You refuse his offer, and he attacks again, summoning his Lolth spiders.
6. He continues his villain speech, and every time he speaks out the grease disappears.

Is that correct?

Further questions:

1. Do you remember if Lareth happened to have healed himself?
2. Up to the point Lareth broke up the combat, did the Grease spell work ok?
3. Did you save/load during combat?
4. Can you elaborate on what Lareth said during the text-bubbles?

Edit:

Ok, I replicated the problem. Thank you Forglaz for reporting with feedback.

It has to do with continuing the fight after Lareth offers to surrender, and it is indeed borked - it seems Lareth tries to break up the fight each time it's his turn. Will try to have a fix up today.

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Ok, that was shorter than I thought. Fortunately I already had a flag in place for the same purpose.

I've tested the circumstances in which I observed it to be broken - namely continuing the fight after Lareth breaks it up - and it seems to work. Can anyone else also test it?

@ Gaear re. audio

Do send the files, please.

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Great that you managed to make sense of my spotty report! This encourages me to present another observation, which may or may not be related to the Lareth thing, but also has to do with breaking up and resuming combat (but maybe it's well known and perfectly normal behavior and I just haven't played the game enough to notice it earlier.)

In abstract terms, the phenomenon seems to be this: If hidden hostiles join a fight in progress, and you kill the last non-hidden hostile in the round where the hidden ones decide to join and already show their pic in the initiative bar, but before they get their turn and would actually materialize, the fight breaks up and immediately resumes with the formerly-hidden guys dropping in. This is mildly annoying since, as you already know they are coming, you may have actions readied or area spells cast which you then lose, and they may get the drop on you although you knew they were coming, which seems also counter-intuitive.

This happened in at least two places, namely the big goblin assault in the Welkwood Bog, and the zombie/green slime fight in the first room downstairs in the moathouse.

So more concretely, this is how it goes: My party comes into the goblin village from the left, a batch of gobs wakes up and attacks. The party makes short work of them and proceeds some steps. Combat mode starts and three more gobs show up in the initiative bar. One of them actually wins initiative, flip-flops out of hiding and charges up. My barbarian dispatches him with a single hit, while the two other gobs remain still hidden. Combat stops, party takes casual stance. Combat immediately resumes (no movement or other action on my part in between), the two missing gobs show up and fight. This can happen two or three times in a row there, as they all attack from hiding.

Strangely, I don't seem to remember this from the kobold fight on the second map (the sergeant never died before they all had showed up, but I one-shotted many kobolds from the other group in the upper right without sergeant), although the overall situation appears very similar - one after the other attacks from hiding. Now that I think about it, maybe it's because it was actually "one after the other" and not "more than one at the same time".

In the zombie fight, a similar thing happened with the green slimes. I don't know what triggers their appearance (I even had one fight where it didn't trigger at all), but I had one fight where they decided to join in when I had the zombies down to one. The two green slime pictures had appeared already, my cleric readied against approach, my barb cut down the remaining zombie, fight stopped, fight resumed, and one slime dropped right in front of my cleric and hit him for 5 hp.

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

But why do they show in the initiative bar then? Things that happen in a combat round happen more or less simultaneously, with only the minor timing difference given by the initiative order. So if they show in the initiative bar, it means they have joined combat and people can react to them. Actually, I would think it's wrong that they can show up there while still having "concealed" status. In any case, combat should not be interrupted, because of effect on readied actions and spells. Is this an engine limitation?

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Okay I uninstalled everything and then reinstalled to patch 2. Then I installed CO8 and everything seems to be fine. The only quirk is that on exiting the game it closes and goes to a black screen and has one of thise windows from microsoft pop up and say the program had to close, do you want to send the info or not.

Patch 3 seems to have been the problem. If so I think you may need to change the CO8 installation instructions to say "Do not install patch 3" instead of "It Doesn't matter!

I can live with the game exit error if it means both versions will work. Thanks Gaer for pointing out the patch 3 problem.

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

@ Forgalz


I think I understand what you're saying. It's happened to me as well. I wonder if the enemy shows in the initiative bar because they are potentially within range of your character's weapons (particularly AOE spells). They may not attack you because they might be out of range of their particular weapons. Sometimes, however, an enemy spellcaster that shows up like this (concealed), has taken potshots at the party. So I wonder if the range of your weapons is the deciding factor. Now as far as the incident of the next group initiating combat (without you moving the party at all), I could only take a stab in the dark and say that it had something to do with where you moved in the previous combat-possibly triggering the next group unknowingly. Maybe they stay concealed the first time until all active combatants are mopped-up. I know it doesn't seem fair, but I wonder if it IS a game engine-limitation ?!

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Perhaps it's possible to script a workaround from critters' san_enter_combat script or somesuch, issuing an "attack" command for all nearby NPCs that are supposed to enter the fray.