A few frustrating issues

Possible spoilers for those who haven't played through.

I'm finally stepping out of the lurking shadows. I got the game when it first came out, and have been following along over the years, have successfully played through with most of the alignments (all the G and N and NE also), and reinstalled it on my new-to-me compy, running xp pro. I'm patched up, running the front end, though I'm not using the most recent beta (it was doing really weird things, like spawning billions of butterflies/fireflies/whatevers in Hommlet, causing screen freezes, so I reinstalled without it).

I'd really like some help with the issues I've listed below. I haven't done any modding with this game on my own, though I'm not averse to getting my hands dirty. I really just want the issues taken care of.

In order of importance:

1. I was running through with a NG party, quickly going through Hommlett, the Grove, Emridy Meadows, the Orc cave, the Moathouse, Nulb, and Imredys Run (in that order) with little issue, then went to the "broken tower" guardhouse battle, defeated the guards, and went down to the cavern. When I tried to enter the "back door", I get kicked. I tried every PC in the party, tried again from an earlier save game, and still got kicked from the game. I even restarted with a LG party and got back to the same point, and still, kicked.

Occasionally, when I click on the entry icon I seem to move to the new area, but all of my PC's portraits are blank (generic "grey model" pics) and the NPCs are marked like they are ready to level (Trying to level, naturally, gets me kicked). This recurred in both games.

Coincidentally, I tried going around the other way, through the "main entrance" of the temple and into the round Air Temple staircase entrance where the 2 med and 1 lg air elementals ambush you, and then trying for the secret door next to the Air temple High priest gives me an identical error. The door I'm speaking of is the "top of the stair" entry leading to Scorpp's Pleasure dome, et al. This error is crippling, and seems specifically isolated to these specific regions. It's really disheartening to not be able to continue because of these bugs.

2. Nulb-specific: I invite Otis along for the ride, and he joins the party with expenses paid. I wander in the temple for a bit, then return to Nulb, and Otis leaves (expected), then I return to the temple, return back to Otis, and try to recruit him, but I am unable to recruit him again, even though, by all accounts, I should. If it matters I tried this with and without Elmo in the party and with and without the Otis-Elmo initial dialog. I was doing this to try to bring Mother Screng and her daughter into the party (I really wasn't too interested in Otis actually being in the party). This is using an LG party. Do I have to reach a specific point in exploring the temple (without going over level 5 with the PCs of course) in order to re-recruit him, or is there another problem going on?

3. Nulb-specific (Brothel): I get Mona's orb back and purchase Serena's freedom, then enter the brothel. I can't "procure services" (because the party is LG), but I can initiate the "get Riana out of the brothel" dialog with her, after the two-sister dialog, and it shows up in the logbook. It also says I'm helping the Madame with the girl upstairs that eventually only likes the ladies.

The dialog options keep me from asking to purchase Riana's freedom, because it keeps telling me that I'm "still working" on the girl upstairs. Trying to talk to this girl, of course (even with my friendly female cleric), sends me back to the madame because I "haven't talked to her" yet. I can't talk to the madame, though about a specific girl because of the dialog limitation due to alignment. It's a bit recursive, really, and I'm pretty sure that a different alignment party would have no issue (since I'd be able to ask about hooking up with the girls). I even brought in a dummy NG "diplo-bard" PC, but the party alignment restricts his dialog options, too. Is there some way around this?

 

That sounds like a corrupted series of save games to me. But there could be other explanations so will try to replicate.

Yeah it does sound like a corrupted save game. The other alternative is that ye olde secret door bug has mutated into a CTD bug. Will run a few games to see if I can replicate.

However, I would say this - I've not had this bug myself which indicates that it is user-specific or a randomly occuring bug based on user-specific circumstances rather than a bug within Co8.

Might be worthwhile if I check specifics of dialogue here. Will do that and see if there is anything obviously functionally wrong.

Confirmed bug. Will be posting an amended set of files in a few days once I've done everything I need to do and am able to test properly.

 

Thanks for the quick response.

With point 1 above, I followed the advice for the "secret door bug" and deleted all save games and started a new game. If it is user specific, what might I be able to do? I never once had this issue when I was running the game on my old box (setup basically the same, though it was pre-front-end)

 

No, that is helpful, Gaear. I may just have to reinstall everything, depending on Zebedee's response. I'll try and follow his exact instructions, too. Again, it'll depend on his response.

Why are there so many issues with save games? I know that I've historically had issues with save games acting goofy.

 

Don't expect any quick answers regarding your specific problem Chris. I've got to try and break the game to see if I can get the results you've experienced - if I can't after 20 or so reinstalls trying different things, then it's probably your specific game on your specific system. If I can reproduce it then we do have a problem

So reinstall may be your best option at the moment and those save games are 99.9% likely messed up beyond reuse no matter what. On the upside, it doesn't mean you can't save the characters and use them in a new game.

re. Save game issues. Just happens I guess. Autosave is fubar so never use (and especially so if using Co8 for script problems result if you do). Never save in combat. And do saves in batches of three to minimise the chance of a random corruption messing up an entire game. Otherwise, that's a question for someone who knows how the game is saving the data and can go into the source code to fix it. Which sadly isn't us

 

The out of control mobs of butterflies by the new signpost near the Welcome Wench is what I got if I forgot to check "Clean Game Cache On Start Up" when I restarted after unzipping a new 5.0.+ cmf on top of an old 5.0.+ one. (say 5.0.3 on top of 5.0.2) Try that first, if it's not too late.

 

i got that one. Otis came with me, do the bulk of the fight of course. Leaves party, and when i talk to him there's no option to get him again to have Mama Screng on board.
Tbh, i never, and i mean never, thru all this time, was able to recruit her and Cachetes :shrug: (and yes, i know all the requisites)
I know it will be a drastic change to the game...but it could be possible to take out the level restrictment? It doesn't make much sense...

Btw...how the hell the witch (Moathouse respawn) cast fireballs of 10 dice of damage?? She's not 10 level certainly...grumble that hurted

 

It's so simple to take out the level restriction, I could do it. Not sure I'm keen on the idea of removing it, although tweakage might be in order.

The point of the low level cap is that Otis and Screng are quite powerful NPCs and they are designed to give good parties who have had a lot of deaths a chance of catching back up in the harder parts of the temple.

Do people really want to recruit 10th level NPCs for their regular groups? The actual module says that Otis will only help out if the party really, really, really needs it. Which is probably where Troika's thinking on this came from.

 

Yah, i figured that.
But, i believe that having Otis as a prerequisite is enough.
Now, with the level un-cap, it doesn't make much sense. I know that a good deal of players play without it, but by the time that you reach Nulb, you're much more powerful than them...and far better equipped.
they also would make much more sense in the party by the final stages of the game, where you confront priests and Zuggy.
I wouldn't have problem to draw a few new endings if they are in the party

Hum...maybe when you reach the higher levels you can take the three of them for the final battles?

Cheater -_-
If you cast a spell from a scroll thats higher level, you have a high chance of frying yourself instead. And the wand argument is as cheap as my underwear
Meh, i was just annoyed by the fact that the damned mersenne struck me by 59 points of damage, and only one of my party approved the ST roll... lucky the "massive damage" rule doesn't work. Anyways, 6 of my 8 party members died instantly :roll:

 

Speaking of frustrating issues, i noticed that the party still cant buy scrolls in verbobonc in 5.06.
Also i was goofing around with console commands and the cloak of the manta doesnt exist and crashes the game if u try to save after consoling it in.In addition i belive if u buy the rage scroll anywhere it also crashes the game,aithough u can choose it normally on level up.
On a brighter note i loved the ambush in the courtyard. i tried to sneak out the front like i always did in 5.0,but surprise, i wasnt expecting that .... god bless glitterdust!! and god bless the modders :notworthy

 

I think I know why the second recruitment isn't working.

The condition for him journeying into the Temple again in the first place is that you've found out about the Temple factions (game.story_state >= 5), as well as your party being good aligned of course. All that's required for that is to have a chat with one of the Temple priests (no need to take on any quests or anything like that). I can imagine that if you've made your trek into the Temple short on purpose, you skipped that part.

Also, note that your group's average level (as detailed below) decides if he recommends having Screng on board or not.

I updated the FAQ to reflect these things, and also added spoiler tags.

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A note on group average level:

The group_average_level() command from utilities.py was changed (by Cerulean I think) to take group size into account. So the command is more like group_effective_average_level(). The reasoning is that obviously a 5th level party of 8 characters is much stronger than a 5th level party of 4.

The formula is currently calculated as:

n = number of party members (including animal companions, charmed creatures, etc.)
level = sum of all of the group's character levels. (animal companions are all level 0, from chicken to brown bear)

average_level = [level/n] + [(n-4)/2]
Where [ ] denotes rounding down.

So for a party of 4, you get exactly the average level, but every two PCs/NPCs beyond that add another 1.
Animal companions can also skew it down, since they increase n without contributing to level.

In vanilla ToEE, it seems like there was also an attempt to take group size into account, but it was "bugged" (or perhaps nerfed), because the result would be rounded down in most cases, and would theoretically add 1 at most.

 

I have had Problems getting the doors to show up as well. The spiral stair case and hall by falrinth- smegmal. It seems to only occur if I have a search skill that is over 17 or so.
Confessions of a console cheater
Perhaps this will held in replicating the problem.

 

Cheers. Will look into it early next week.

To be honest though, this is a problem which has been around since the game came out. It's a rare bug but seemed to have been fixed with re-sectoring the maps. Could you just confirm you're using the latest CMF?