Yet another show stopping bug (SPOILERS)...

Discussion in 'The Temple of Elemental Evil' started by ithildur, Sep 17, 2007.

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  1. ithildur

    ithildur Established Member

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    this is getting to the point where I'm thinking about shelving TOEE permanently, even with Co8's wonderful fixes, it's so buggy I have had to restart my game about 5 times from lvl 1 due to show stopping bugs that kept me from proceeding as I should've. This time I didn't play ironman so i can go to an earlier save, but still... really really pissing me off.

    I'm in Falrinth's lair, just finished killing off both him and smigmal, which isn't easy to do as they both get away often, and detected the secret doors that lead to a very important chest, as well as the secret door that leads to another part of the lvl. I save the game, quit game to take care of other stuff, come back the next day to play, load up and... the secret doors are gone. Both of them, undetectable, unselectable, unopenable... just not there at all it seems. I cannot get to the chest that contains the quest item necessary to finish the game if I'm guessing correctly because of this stupid bug.

    Any known fixes out there? Anyone else have this happen to them? I'm running 5.0.4 patch; I've also had secret doors become unusuable on me with 5.0.0 before, leaving me in the bind of having to go around a roundabout way to get out of certain areas... this time I am really stuck, if I can't get to that chest.

    :doublethu
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 17, 2007
  2. ithildur

    ithildur Established Member

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    Sorry about the spoilerish content. I did some more searching here and it seems this is unresolvable.

    Co8, again I laud your many wonderful fixes and additions to the game which made it playable enough and interesting enough to hold my interest for the past few weeks. I'm going to take a break for a bit I think, and maybe go back to BG2.

    I still cannot believe how buggy the original game was, and am discouraged that Atari/Hasbro will continue to have the license for DnD CRPG games for a very long time to come... I'm frustrated atm so forgive me, but maybe in about 25 years when Hasbro/Atari is no longer the publisher they'll have a great representation of the game out on CRPG format, perhaps a blend of TOEE style by the rules combat with many of the subtleties of PnP tactics and details along with some of the graphics/moddability of NWN2 as well as online play. We can only dream...
     
  3. Greylan

    Greylan Established Member

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    Yep, this bug has been around since the game's release. Sometimes, you can click in the "undiscovered" area you want to get to, and your characters will simply open the door on the way in, or, less frequently, just walk through it. You'll have to get out the same way though, because the door still won't be considered discovered.
     
  4. Shiningted

    Shiningted I want my goat back Administrator

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    It would seem the secret door bug has something to do with how the game saves itself, considering the 'fix' is to delete all your save games.

    Hmmm...
     
  5. Zebedee

    Zebedee Veteran Member Veteran

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    I remember suggesting sometime back that there may just be a line of code which goes missing and so it forgets to tell the game which secret entrances have been found. But then it was a shot in the dark...
     
  6. Shiningted

    Shiningted I want my goat back Administrator

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    I'm not sure we can fix how the saves are saved, though. It strikes me as similar to how normal chests and doors reset themselves to locked - maybe secret doors try to reset themselves too, and something gets lost in the save.

    We should probably implement a thing of 'never save on a map with a secret door' but since folks don't know secrets are there at first, its a poor workaround :( Have to be tested to se if it works, too.
     
  7. maggit

    maggit Zombie RipTorn Wonka

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    Hmmm... I was thinking of a workaround for the
    secret door bug (just theoretical) using something
    similar to the signposts in Hommlet and Nulb...
    IIRC these are just NPCs with an invisible mesh
    who you can click on, right? This means you can
    "tell" them to hide, right? And if you'd found one,
    violla! You could talk to him and teleport to the desired
    place. Of course this would involve problems like them
    being killable or being discovered accidentally by
    usage of area-of-effect spells... Hmmm Bad idea I
    guess.
     
    Last edited: Sep 19, 2007
  8. ithildur

    ithildur Established Member

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    Alright.... I found a save that didn't take me too far back that seems to be working so far with as yet undiscovered secret doors... so it seems in this case I did not have to 'delete all saves and start over' thankfully.

    While I'm glad and much relieved, I still have to shake my head at major bugs like this potentially destroying days of game play time; and just think, if it weren't for Co8, there would be dozens of other bugs that are show stoppers in this game still...
     
  9. Shiningted

    Shiningted I want my goat back Administrator

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    Nah its a good idea - the problem is the 'hand' doesn't show up for invisible meshes like that (unless they mask a container). So people would have to run around clicking on everything to see if it si a secret door.

    We gotta do something, though...
     
  10. Pygon

    Pygon Member

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    When I got the secret door bug, I still managed to finish the game. It so happens that if you go all the way to the edge in the circular room with the secret trap door, you can just barely make out the corner of the room with the artifact in it. If you have access to a dimension door spell, you can zap to that little tiny section of floor and grab the artifact.
     
  11. Cujo

    Cujo Mad Hatter Veteran

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    clavoiance helps with being able to see the map as well ;)
     
  12. maggit

    maggit Zombie RipTorn Wonka

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    Hmmm how about using a door's mesh (for example) and texturing it
    with the secret door icon? Or even better, using the blue door "icon"
    mesh and textures.
     

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    Last edited: Sep 19, 2007
  13. maggit

    maggit Zombie RipTorn Wonka

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    If this would work we could even have usable item icons. Something pretty
    useful for KotB... but also adding interactivity possibilities to the whole game.
     

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    Last edited: Sep 19, 2007
  14. RICK-DOG

    RICK-DOG Member

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    I always had trouble with that if I used the same character in two different games.
     
  15. Cujo

    Cujo Mad Hatter Veteran

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    two games at the same time?
     
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