Rannos and Gremag Redux

The 8000s are the 'name' for important NPCs. Elmo starts at 8000, and so it goes through 8001 (Paida), 8002 (Lareth) etc. Name and protoype number are 2 different things.

Damn thats a complicated thing. Just glancing at it, I can't tell whats wrong.

 

Yeah I tried that. Allyx (I believe it was) has a variety of Sitra's stuff commented out, but I substituted the original code (such as I could identify it) using the .py files from 5.0.0. But then you can't even initiate dialogue with R&G, even though the pointers are all there in their .py files. :shrug:

 

Update:

I've finally got this stuff working again. :joy: Replacement mod to come in the next day or so.

All of Sitra's scripts will be utterly and completely removed, which was the key to getting things working the way they used to. What I eventually discovered was that I had to restore the Raimol and Burne's Badger .py files to their Livonya state, in addition to the Gremag and Rannos .py files, to make R&G selectable again for dialogue. Once that was done, everything was ready to be modded again from scratch.

I should point out that I have absolutely no disdain for Sitra and his work as far as this goes. I in fact have a great deal of respect and admiration for him, and I think that if his scenario had been seen to completion it would have been a great mod. My own alternative will be nowhere near as ambitious, but hopefully it will restore the playablity of the whole thing and address what the original shortcoming was perceived to be: that there was no way to actually engage the matter head-on and that you were left to just walk up to R&G and attack them if you wanted the mod to play out in it's entirety ... which of course we all do.

Here are a few teaser details:

• Once you are attacked by the assassin, resolving the matter will become a new quest issued by Burne. You will be able to talk to him about it (complete with new audio), and as is the norm, have the full range of quest possibiities available to you - mentioned, accepted, completed, botched.
  
• Burne will grant his, well, not so much 'blessing' as grudging acceptance to your dealing with R&G in the form of retribution, if you so choose. I justify this by the fact that Burne is a St. Cuthbert follower, and St. Cuthbert is the god of retribution, after all. In that light, I don't think he would begrudge you your fair chance at payback for an affront of the magnitude of an attempt on your life. Plus, it's just much more fun this way.
  
• Retribution will be available to all alignments. Retribution for evil alignments is a no-brainer, and lawful is justified for the reasons I suggested above, IMO, and anything goes for chaotic anyway. As for NG and TN, well, they might be the more forgiving or ambivalent types, but what fun is that? Abiding by your alignment is all well and good, but I think we have to be careful not to let that get in the way of fun gaming. I don't think anyone starts a new ToEE campaign thinking how much fun it will be not to confront R&G, or to not get the revenge encounter later in Nulb. Besides, you'll always be free to not do this stuff if you don't want to. I'm just allowing you the freedom to choose. :thumbsup:
  
• I'm happy to report that the R&G fight in Hommlet works as intended again with all configurations - lots of PCs, only a few PCs, PCs and NPCs, PCs and ACs, PCs and NPCs and ACs - you name it. R&G will try to get away.
  
• The ability to get the option to confront R&G after you've already gotten paid off for keeping quiet about their temple association (if you have) will be restored.

Stay tuned.

[yet another edit]

I see after re-reading Sitra's original thread on this that one of his concerns with the original scenario was that it was too easy to kill R&G before they could run off. Does anyone else actually think this is a problem? I was never able to kill more than one of them myself, but I'm not a tactical battle master by any means. I would think that no one would be doing this battle at more than level 3.

I should point out that I don't consider exploits and meta-gaming to be things that modders should have any obligation to try to provide for. If you're going into the shop and strategically placing your rogue to backstab R or G before you know there's even going to be a fight, well that's you're own fault. You've stacked the deck in your favor by using information your party should not be privy to. Likewise if you backstab or start launching spells without even entering dialogue.

If people are easily killing them without doing those things, then maybe we could change the HP monitor to get them to flee earlier. At any rate, while I'm interested in your thoughts, let's not turn this into another far-ranging debate about how things should go, with complex suggestions and considerations for subtle nuances that simply aren't present in the rest of the game. Simple is good, for the most part. And with me at the modding helm here, things aren't going to get much more complicated than they are now.

 

That's not a bad idea about the note, George. We'll see.

I checked into R&G's run-off conditions a bit further, and they're already basically set to flee once they've been hit even once. I guess there's a lot of potential for AoOs when they're using their dust and whatnot, but I'd really rather not fiddle this anymore unless it's absolutely neccesary. Hell, I sometimes have trouble killing them both with my 10th level test party, particularly when they get initiative. :shrug:

(btw, I think I've also fixed the zany bug where Rannos' line "Raimol! Get over here and help me out at once!" sometimes got substituted for Gremag's line "No! Death is not part of my plan...!" A shame really, as that was kind of funny. Rannos basically had a conversation with himself, because he would then answer himself by saying, "Yes Gremag, you are indeed correct ..." :grin: )

 

I guess I should have said 'the next week or so' ...

This mod should be posted later today. It has actually grown to be fairly ambitious, although I never really intended it to be. This has come about not because the scenario is really any more complicated, but rather from just trying to account for every possibility introduced by the things I added. I see now that this is simply a function of the square of variables, basically (hope I'm putting that the right way): if there is 1 'variable,' there is 1 possibility; if there are 2 variables, there are 4 possibilities; and on and on until you get up to 8 variables and 64 possibilities and you're going insane. :dizzy: I honestly don't see how some of you guys (like Ted and KotB) do this in such a broader sense without losing your minds. Hats off to you, at any rate. :clap: So here's the run-down:

Primary Features

• Re-introduces the dialogue option to confront the traders about the assassin, limited by whether or not the assassin told you about the traders and whether or not you have the note from Smigmal (thanks to wizgeorge for that idea). Your dialogue options, and ultimately your ability to get to combat through dilaogue, are of course determined by your sense motive skill. If you choose unwisely or send some oaf in to work the problem, you won't get to that point. These dialogue options also include non-violent alternatives.
• Enables pursuing the courier, labor camp spy, and assassin plotlines concurrently. No more losing out on the assassin if you've confronted R&G about the courier.
• Fixes the R&G-don't-flee-properly problem. (I actually didn't fix it, just restored the files that had it working properly.) All different kinds of party configurations should have no problem getting R&G to flee during combat now.
• Adds a new quest, 'Retribution,' wherein Burne authorizes you to investigate the assassination attempt if you consult with him about it ahead of time. Be very careful with this: you can still confront R&G without talking to Burne first, but if you go back and tell him about it later he may not be very happy with you.
• Adds two new reputations, 'Rabble-Rouser' and 'Dominatrix.' Both of these are fairly difficult to attain and come about from pursuing the R&G matter by unorthodox means. The former is a result of getting Burne pissed at you, and the consequences are that he'll no longer talk to you. (That could be changed if it proves to have too much of an impact on the later game, but I like the idea of consequences and repercussions. ) The latter, well...let's just say that it also involves Burne, and is available only to females. :icon_chuc Neither of the reps themselves have much affect on the game (reaction adjustments, etc.). They are mainly just there for fun.
• Adds a bunch of new custom audio, mainly for Burne. (Note that you will be able to talk to him about R&G at different times and in different conditions. This is where much of the variability effort came in. I really wanted this to be fairly intelligent and to avoid that one-off feel. Burne should never be stumped on this stuff, and now he won't be. You can even talk to him about it after you get the revenge encounter in Nulb, and he will comment. )

Secondary Features

• Streamlines Burne, Rannos, and Gremag's dialogue files, and to a lesser extent those of Pishella and Burne's Badgers. What I mean by this is that they are thoroughly restructured to do away with that irritating redundancy problem we see so much in ToEE. No more will you be able to accuse R&G of having too high prices a hundred times over, or to ask Burne to (re)tell you of his adventures until the cows come home, or to accuse R&G of having a spy in the labor camp over and over with them reacting like it's all new to them every time, or to learn what it means to be a Badger ad infinitum. Things that should be one-time-only now will be one-time-only. The Badger is smart enough to know that he already told you what it means to be a Badger. You are smart enough to remember that you already confronted R&G about the spy. Etcetera. I hope to do this with every additional NPC .dlg file I encounter down the line.
• Along the same lines, fixes some incidental passage-of-time weaknesses. For example, you can no longer show Burne the Orb, have him say he'll need some time to research it, and then immedaitely click on him again and see that he's got all his findings ready for you two seconds later. Now it will take him some time.
• Tunes up the R&G courier dialogue tree.
• Gives the volume normalization treatment to a bunch of Gremag's lines (something I didn't really do properly the first time).
• Changes the text of Smigmal's assassin note to include mention of the traders (thanks again WizG).

A couple other notes: description.mes and protos.tab are included to revert to conditions pre-Sitra. Also, bear in mind once again that the new voice audio is limited by what's already there to pick from. If I could magically get Burne to say "My god! Rannos and Gremag tried to kill you? Holy f*cking shit, that's nuts!" I would, but instead he may say things that are a bit more obtuse. That's just the way it is.

One other thing - that Rannos talking to himself bug is still there, unfortunately. I've noticed that this happens when Gremag is the first trader to declare that death is not in his plan and either Raimol or one of the traders has initiative in the next combat that starts. By 'next combat' I don't mean the final combat wherein R&G flee, but a little seen 'middle' combat that will start and only last for one turn in the above circumstances. The one turn is where Rannos says "You are indeed correct..." but instead of Gremag's remark prior to that, you have Rannos' "Raimol! Get over here and help me out!" line substituted. In these cases, the combat intro and music start playing but end right away after the mixed up dialogue. Weird.

Extract to your ToEE directory and overwrite. Shouldn't be any need to start a new game, but once again if you load a save from right in the middle of this, things will probably be goofy. Be sure to clear the game cache before playing.

The Long Awaited Rannos and Gremag Fix

 

I somehow managed to not include in the original .rar archive half the files neccesary for this mod, so please re-download and re-install. Sorry. Rest assured that everything else is completely under control here. _O:

 

Thanks for the feedback, Qwinn - good to know that it seems to be working. :thumbsup:

It makes no difference which trader escapes beyond what loot they may be carrying individually. The revenge scenario will play out the same regardless. If Rannos is dead, Gremag will acknowledge that during the later encounter. Likewise, if Gremag is dead, Rannos will acknowledge that. If neither is dead, Rannos will do the talking later and their 'revenge' is of a more general kind. (This later encounter was all previously scripted by Livonya, btw. I had nothing to do with any of that, and it didn't really need any fixing the way the Hommlet part did.)

Curious about Burne being in the party btw. He's not supposed to be able to join until you get to the temple. Had your party made it that far? At any rate, in more conventional situations the scenario will play out with him just acting as a 3rd party to the whole thing.

 

Yeah, that explains it. You get the temple location from the assassin's note, and once you've got the temple location you can get Burne to join. I may have to change that - it seems a bit early to be going to the temple, for one, and any party that has the note could potentially have this little snafu with the whole R&G thing. There's plenty of other ways to get the temple hook later anyway.

Thanks for the intel. :thumbsup: