Weapon Glow Effects

well if we really want to drop the glow one simple way to do it is to remove the effects number from col 55 in the proto. thats what causes the glow, its a different number code for each different type of item in the game. the downside to this is i think that is also the one the game uses for weapons like the flametounge, course we could just leave special ones like that alone.

 

If that's the trick, then drop it from most everything except the swords & daggers. In keeping with the spirit of the new rules, I believe that it's also ok for certain miscellaneous weapons to keep their aura, too. These are the ones that probably ought to be glowing or radiant when found. If you're willing to mod it, I'll submit a list for the ones that should keep their aura to the modders-in-chief to review before final alteration. Or, they can just chime in here.

 

are you sure thats the fix? IIRC there are some weapons which glow that don't have anything in colum 55.

 

Heh. You *know* the game's bugs and gameplay has been pretty much fixed once the mods start discussing glowing magical weapons.

 

<looks around shifterly> do you know some thing? who told you?

 

Thanks for your ongoing work with this

I'm going to 'try' to play with the proto...eep :sadblinky

 

That's why the spell is there. This auto-identification of magic items was one of the minor foul ups that Atari made, and I'd guess that with fixing all of the CTD issues it's been low priority, but I'm glad that people are looking at it now.

Even prior to being identified a sword will state "magic longsword" when you put your mouse pointer on it. This is definately not in keeping with the spirit of the rules from which the module originated (old school AD&D). In many published products, this one included, the TSR designers would put magic items in that were hidden, had been disguised, or just didn't look all that special. It was up to clever PCs to make educated guessses or lucky ones and figure out which items they should test for magic. I am definately in favor of a PnP style two-stage approach to magic item identification.

First, in most cases (exceptions might include a glowing blade, or an ioun stone actively orbiting an NPC), PCs won't even be sure that an item is magic at all unless the detect magic on it or with it in the area of affect when scanning a room. Second, until identified the PCs won't know anything other than it is magic. That part has been implimented pretty well already.

I would also like to see that with the magic aura spell. Maybe some crooked traders could sell or try to bribe a party with an aura'd item that isn't magic? It'd be so very old school for the charcater to find out his magic shortword isn't when he's facing some shadows that are only hit with magic weapons.

 

Woah, hold up a second, here.

Yes, by the rules, one needs to cast detect magic to tell if something is magical (unless it glows, of course.) However, do people really want to, after every single combat, cast Detect Magic and sift through the inventory of everything you killed using the character that has detect magic active? In PNP it's fine because the caster just has to stand there and stare at the bodies for a few rounds. In ToEE, this would be a major PITA.

I personally don't have a problem with something showing up in inventory as "magic x". I figure my spellcasters are just casting Detect Magic in the background (it's a 0th level spell, I'm not super-worried about abuse) before I go to loot. The only time there's an issue for me is things that end up pre-identified, like the Amulets of Natural armor or the +1 katana and wakizashi.

 

Me? Don't need someone to tell me that a good deal of the bugs have been fixed by the folks here.

I think that's a very good point. I still remember casting detect magic at the end of combat in those old old games like Curse of the Azure Bonds and the like. That was fine - the loot was listed out and the spell gave an asterix next to the magic item. Unless you've got some way of making detect magic automatically highlight items on the ground or a monster's or corspe which are carrying magical items, well, looting is going to be very very tedious.

I noticed Lareth casts detect good - I don't recall my pcs lighting up in response to that though.

 

At the very least, those things which are blatantly "out there" should be brought into compliance. Whether anything else is done or not to all the other stuff is a seperate issue, IMO. Everything shouldn't glow, but the magical stuff which isn't readily detectable as such still offers clues in many cases to its magical nature. That is another possibility to go along with the party's spellcasters casting Detect Magic in the background. So, things ought to have a different description, perhaps, if they aren't something which would glow by default or design.

 

well i was wrong i tried it several times and couldnt get rid of the glow in the proto, sorry about that. i guess it just couldnt be that easy eh, im not sure what the visual effects in col 55 is for now. the glow might be tied the Weapon Enhancement Bonus that is col 168. that is something we cant just drop since i pretty sure you can have a magical weapon without it.

 

nope, the enchancement bonus is what gives the weapon its +X to damage and attack rolls. but at least you're trying so you can ignore the following rant.

Would-be heroes are stepping forward to have a go, all to be shot down. I actually figured it out a few days ago. I was hoping that one of you new guys might've been able to figure it out and I'm suprised that no-one asked me if I had any ideas. I was going to give you 7 days, which is what I figured it would've taken me when I started modding (instead of the 7mins it took me) but I'm sick of waiting for someone else to figure it out so here's how to do it.

get a dat extractor from the downloads section.
Then extract toee1.dat
once its extracted (this may take several minutes) got to...
toee1/data/art/meshes
find the file called
wg_magic.mdf
copy this file to data/art/meshes(this also works for all other effects, file names look like wg_*****.mdf)
open it (in notepad) and use the following code

Code:

Textured
Color 64 128 255 0
NotLit
ColorFillOnly

(note the only difference between the original code and the new code is the last 255 becomes a 0)
save the file.

this code breaks the glow effect by turning it invisable (255 is fully on 0 is fully off). the colour line what makes up the glows colour and opacity (red, green, blue, alpha) changing any of the other number in that line will result in a different coloured glow (might be useful).

so who's going to be the guy that posts the moded file here?