Custom Skillset

[Wynna]

I offer this without reservation and possessing inestimable admiration for your Brobdingnagian efforts:

You rock.

[peterdin]

pretty amount of work you have been doing here.
thumbs up!

[AcadiusLost]

Another few days of off and on work scripting this framework- accomplished a few more of the goals, still have a few things to fix.

- The skill adjustment dialogue now opens automatically as a new PC enters an ACR module. Rather than using a persistent variable to track this, I'm using the long-deleted Animal Empathy skill (skill number 0) - once a PC is LETO'd with the custom skill ranks, they are also given one hidden rank of Animal Empathy, which can't be achieved any other way than LETO. This also means a failure to write to the .bic will allow another attempt on next login.

- The scripting logic that determines the .bic filename is working for most PC names. I had to adapt the logic to fit NWN2, which allows 30-character filenames (to NWN1's 16). Only drawback to this currently is characters with apostrophes in their names (or GSIDs with the same, I suspect) are being misinterpreted by the plugin. So, "Valsharess" would work, but "Val's'har'ess" would get locked into retrying the skill selection convo indefinitely. If LETOscript has some kind of escape character to ignore these, I can still make it work- so far I haven't found it.

- I've also written code that schedules a bic modification for a PC's next logout, after a level-up, if they have increased Knowledge: arcana (to boost the hidden Lore value), or if they have increased Perform subskill(s) such that their maximum rank is increased, warranting a boost to the hidden Perform skill. For now, I'm not differentiating between classes for the hidden Perform skill.

The apostrophes are the only significant bug left here, from what I can tell. I'm still a little leery of the timing issues (NWN2 writes the .bic as the player logs out or is booted, at approximately the the same time we're giving the order to LETOscript to mod the .bic for the skill ranks). However, when I've tried to DelayCommand the order to LETOscript, it's either 1) not fired at all, or 2) crashed the module. I'm hoping adding the LETOscript command to the OnClientLeave() event as I've done is enough to ensure the .bic has time to write- I suspect this is something that will need significant testing - first in the test module, and soon after in a fullsized module like 003.

[Wynna]

Sounds like you've overcome some barriers with hard work and creativity, AL. Good job and thanks.

[indio]

There's never been a time that I can remember when the tech department actually outpaced the building. But here we have it. Keep it up AL. And by that I really mean, take a break soon for as long as you need.

[AcadiusLost]

Not out of the woods yet on this one, I'm afraid- had a lot of unexplained server crashes while testing with Darren earlier today, most at the moment of logout (and bicfile write and modification). The doomsaying of my DMFI contact and the fact that nwn2server.exe won't even load properly with even a single extra row in skills.2da (56 to our 55) still haunt me somewhat about the feasibilty of this.

As usual, I've got a few ideas that are worth a try to improve what we've got- just hard to shake the feeling that I'm over-investing resources in a dubiously supported direction. We'll see how it goes- but if it's often crashing a tiny, clean basemod with just one player on, seems like a bad sign, since it'll need to be working among the massive Beta modules from day 1.

[indio]

Well, take a few days and mull it over. If after a few days it's still in your mind as a priority then keep at it. If you figure it's worth shelving until you can proceed with greater certainty in the technical hurdles, then mull over what else you can do instead. I guess my point is to avoid the day where the frustrations of successive failures comes to a head...you most of all I don't doubt recall my frustrations around the time In00b flirted with the idea of doing something, which resulted in some poor decision-making on my part and a loss of momentum. Better that I had taken a few days off instead and done some mulling of sorts.

[AcadiusLost]

Heh, no worries yet- just trying to temper expectations. Come a long way on the project, but it's by no means a done deal at this point. Scripts not doing what I expect is something I'm used to wrestling with- mystery server crashes and troubleshooting undocumented languages is a whole other story- harder to get any useful feedback from the latter sort.

[AcadiusLost]

I'm hosting a skill test module in PW story now, called "ALFA ACR Test Server" - same password as normal.

Note: you should update your haks via worldgate before joining, lest you be missing important 2das for the custom skills.

The PWC is http://www.alandfaraway.org/downloads/N ... uetest.rar

Feel free to log on and test the system- I've improved the LETOscript functions so they seem more stable for me, but YMMV- one significant improvement is a delay of the DMFI language selection until after you rejoin with the new skill ranks, this also takes your initial Speak Language ranks into account when choosing how many languages you can take.

Still working on getting the expanded skillset to show in DMFI or Heed's for rolling checks.

[Rusty]

If this is definitely impossible for Live, we need to assess:
(a) desirability of later implementation;
(b) necessary actions to facilitate that; and,
(c) if there is any possibility of a limited/temporary 1:1 skill replacement?

[AcadiusLost]

As I posted here: http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpbbforum/ ... hp?t=37998

These are not currently feasible, nor do I have a fraction of the time it would take to reimplement limited ones as skill replacements- it was more than a solid month of obsessive work that lead to the setup I arranged for them, and I am /still/ finding modules I can't use because they were affected by being /once/ opened using the extended skills.2da file.

If I hear included in a later patch that Obsidian has found and solved the instability issues, I'll look into the matter again- but for now, as far as I'm concerned, the matter is closed.

[Rusty]

1.14 is meant to include pre-creation haks. Wait and see on that though.

[darrenhfx]

I'm still a'hopin'.

[Rusty]

There an the issue over the removed engine skill (Set Trap); presumably, players will still need to know not to invest in it.

[AcadiusLost]

There an the issue over the removed engine skill (Set Trap); presumably, players will still need to know not to invest in it.

A simple 2da change can make it removed, but it'll still show at character creation, and without reworking all the skill point reallocation / convo / letoscript bic editing / nwnx4 plugin stuff that I developed, there would be no way to "return" those skillpoints to the PC after they'd entered an ALFA module.

So, it's an open question- if we're not adding custom skills, are we still removing Set Trap? Seems like the two changes went hand in hand before.