Dungeon Siege Adepts 2 for Broken World

However it probably belongs to this thread as it's not an Adept's specific bug
http://siegetheday.org/?q=node/1607

It's caused by restarting the area with the nearby portal displacer, at least in my testing. If you walk through the area everything's fine and dandy but if you activated the nearby displacer portal after going through Hovart's Folly and save your game; if you restart your game at that point the Hovart's Folly nodes appear superimposed on the ground.

I remember reading the tutorials about placing the regular teleporters where this sort of phenomenon can occur if you don't specifically use regional fade_nodes in the teleporter's trigger. I don't do this in the teleporters I placed in Yesterhaven and LOA, naughty me, but I've been careful (or lucky enough) to keep the teleporters far enough from nearby dungeons to prevent this occurring in those maps. I guess in this instant the displacer teleporter is just too close to the entrance of Hovart's folly and the phantom image can manifest itself if you use it.

So perhaps the best solution to this bug is simply to delete that particular displacer teleporter. Players will just have to hoof it from Elddim instead, taking a whopping 1 or 2 minutes extra.

I agree with testing the maps with different builds as bare_elf likes to predominately use archers. There's over 100 new spells that could do with testing and many of them are unbalanced. A lot of those are defensive spells and as I'm not a defensive orientated player (believing the best form of defense is attack) I don't know how effective they are (some of these add to the repertoire of the Fist of Stone and Blood Assassin classes).

I just rejigged the start of Ehb as bare_elf reported it would be very tough for a new player to get through. This is more to do with how the level adjustment mod works and DS2 mechanics than anything as the monster density is the same as in the original. For the first few levels all the monsters practically explode into gibs and are very easy but after then they rapidly toughen up and the crypts are quite hard (especially as the monsters there have resistances to ranged and melee attacks, being undead and all). Now you can have two pets to assist you get through that dungeon which should make it easier. I could of course nerf the monsters but I like the idea of different monsters having resistances that make sense like undead being resistant to pointy objects and death magic (though this makes it tough for bare_elf who likes to use rangers).

As for what the new pet is you can recruit I'll leave it for bare_elf to find when she eventually does test the map. It's something I believe that's not been used as a pet before but fits into the DS1 bestiary types.

Just to let you know, I have been through the Kingdom of Ehb in the latest version that I have with a party of 6 rangers, a party of 2 rangers, two nature mages, and two combat mages. I just tend to post screen shots of the rangers. For the most part my characters tend to be proficient in all 4 skill classes - ranged, melee, nature magic and combat magic. As there are times when each skill is useful.
The wraths for example are bullet proof so a ranged attack is almost useless where combat magic is the solution. So in that case I will equip on character with a bow and 4 characters for combat magic and one nature mage with auto cast healing and resurrect spells and a big bag of mana. Use the ranger to draw the wraths one at a time into range of the combat mages and once the wrath is dead, repeat the process until the trail in clear. A new pet!! is it in the version of the maps that I have? If not can I please have it!! Think I must run through one of the maps and test the defensive magic just for grins.

I do try to keep my characters somewhat balanced in all four classes. This is a new character starting out in Kingdom of Ehb.


Now it is time to do a little work on combat magic and melee.

To help Bare_Elf from getting bored here's the latest beta files for testing with the DS1 MapPack
http://www.siegetheday.org/~iryan/files/Beta_1f.zip (125 Mb)

Includes the before mentioned gameplay changes in Ehb prior to Stonebridge and untested banters/quest icons in the Utraean Peninsula (I've only tested it to Crystwind).

One bizarre bug is that occasionally the game now drops the base spell template for the DS2 spells, i.e. Base Firebolt, Base Ice Beam, etc. Have to look at why that's occurring. If I can't then it may be a simple matter of renaming the Base Spell to the Lesser Version and giving it the exact same parameters so players can't tell the difference.

Iryan,
I am not bored, sleepy yes but not bored. Thank you for the updates, I will check them out for you. Starting with the changes to KoE

Things with EHB are going well. Right now we are at a lake and are busy washing the pets that got a bit dirty kicking the crap out of some Krug.

I am going back through KoE one more time with the newest updates you sent to me Iryan. I will then move on to Legends and Peninsula. Things are going fine and the new pet is working great, what a kick it has!!

Iryan Ehb worked fine with the latest files. played the game with two rangers two melee and one of each type of mage. no problems at all. Off to test another map

Hi Iryan,

I am using the latest builds of the Legends of Aranna and DS2BW Adepts as listed below.
DS1_Legends_of_Aranna_Beta_10b.ds2res
DS1_Logic_Beta_10c.ds2res
DS2BW_Adepts_Logic_Beta_1g.ds2res

I am working as a Combat Mage and picked up the "the first trial" quest. Picked up Jondar who is currently a nature mage and we fought our way to the Arhok cold storage vault. We killed off the frost giant and all the other monsters and wolves in the area. All was going good the new banters about the giant and such the last message after teleporting back to Arhok was about talking to the mayor and giving him a more up to date status. Well the poor mayor is living in another world, because when I clicked on him he just went into his story about monsters in the storage cave and could we do something about it. So could not complete the "First Trial" quest or get the quest about the "staff of stars".

Not sure where the problem is and this part worked the last time I playeed it. I do not think the issue is with Adepts. I will look at the other two files.

Iryan,
I thought it might have been the mayor's conversations so I looked at them and I could not find anything out of place. So I went through the map again with new character and I noticed that when I killed the frost giant he fell over dead and nothing happened in the quest like a message that said the frost giant was dead or a change in the quest log or lore tabs of my journal. Appears some quest trigger is non functional.

So next I compared DS1_Logic_8g to the most current for the frost giant in LocaleLoA and found the following:
From v8g
[cmd_change_questbits]
{
activate_message = we_killed;
quest_complete_1 = a1_p_bandits;
task_complete_1 = a1_p_bandits_1;

this one worked

from beta 10c
which does not work
[cmd_change_questbits]
{
activate_message = we_killed;
// quest_complete_1 = a1_p_bandits; (why did you turn it off?)
task_complete_1 = a1_p_bandits_2;

So I am going to change the one line to see what occurs

I am not sure what to look at now. Anyway it will have to wait until later as now it is time to find out what the cats want for dinner or if they will even get out of bed to eat it.

Yes my apologies, the quest line is a bit bugged in LOA. I tried to flesh out the quests by adding a few more tasks with corresponding quest icons and messed up the sequence. Unfortunately you'll have to start a new game for it to work properly.

Here's the current version that is fixed and tested right up to Illicor
http://www.siegetheday.org/~iryan/files/DS2BW_Adepts_Logic_Beta_1h.ds2res
http://www.siegetheday.org/~iryan/files/DS1_Legends_of_Aranna_Beta_10c.ds2res
http://www.siegetheday.org/~iryan/files/DS1_Logic_Beta_10d.ds2res

A few minor things have been fixed as well like missing portrait icons, etc.

Unfortunately I still couldn't fix the dying animation for the Lost Queen Tail - it just refuses to die no matter what I try! All I can think of it's because the model positioning bonding volume box is all messed up (In the editor it is actually placed in the wall in order to get it to appear in the right place) and this prevents the trigger from activating on it.

If anyone else wants to have a try fixing it, I'd be most grateful. A quick way of testing is to hack the teleporter at Arhok so you can reach the Halls of the Lost from the rear. You'll also need to disable the door (scid 0x00700010 in the interactive.gas file for the region a1_r6a_lostqueen) behind the Lost Queen so you can reach her.

Having to start over is not really a problem seeing as this is the very first primary quest in the game.
Let you know how things go as soon as I can finish the first quest and get the second one.

Thanks

Hi Iryan,
The fix worked and the "First Trial" Quest Completed. Currently my party of Jondar, Lyssa, Najj and myself have just activated the Costal Bluffs Teleporter. Currently my party members are all working on their melee skills since I have discovered some nice armor that requres a much higher melee level. I see what you mean about how the Lost Queen's Tail does not work as it should. So I think I will go back to the original map as there appear to be ambient objects near the queen's tail that did not exist in the original map if memory is working correctly. It could be something in the map preventing it (the tail) from spawning bad things and then dieing correctly. Let me see what I can see. Oh yes the act 1 secondary quest for the staff of stars shows that it has completed and I do not have the staff of stars yet. it says something like oooh the staff went this way.

That is about it for now.

I actually put the rubble near the base of the tail to block access to it as no mucosa are being spawned by it as per the original map. I couldn't get to work either. So in order to get players to concentrate on the Queen's pointy end I simply denied access to her rear. I've probably spent hours trying various things to get her working like the original without success. What I would like happen is something like what happens to the Goblin Robo Suit when various parts drop off when it has lost enough health. Once the player has knocked off about 75% of her health the tail could automatically die, making things more realistic.

There are a number of secondary quests involving the staff of stars, just like the original map. The whole questline could really be redone from start to finish as the order the secondary quests appear is out of synch with the acts. It's just how it was coded in the original but wasn't obvious due to the different way quests were presented. Maybe some day I'll get around to it. Both of these issues are actually specific to the DS1 Map Pack and DS2BW Adepts has nothing to do with it.

I had just finished visiting the Giant camp and we where on our way to death mountain when a fatal error occurred.
The text of error message was as follows:
CRC ERROR DURING DECODING
FILE ON DISK ...DS1_LEGENDS_OF_ARANNA_BETA_10C.DS2RES
RESOURCE = WORLD\MAPS\MAP_EXPANSION\REGIONS\A4_R2_DEATHMOUNTAIN\TERRAIN_NODES\DIR.LQD22
OFFSET = 0X01179818
SIZE = 908724
CRC 0X9A178882
ALGO TEST = 2_DATA_ERROR

The following zip file contains the logs of the error generated by the game and windows during the crash.
http://siegetheday.org/~bare_elf/adepts2/Logs.zip

Would it be useful to know which NPCs where in my party and who was leading? what spells and weapons where being used at time of the crash?

I'm guessing that the minor updates I made to that map upset the index somehow. See if this updated map without the dir.lqd22 files has any problems or not.
http://www.siegetheday.org/~iryan/files/DS1_Map_Legends_of_Aranna_Beta_11.ds2res

If it fixes the problem then it's best to just test without the dir.lqd22 files. Hasn't caused any issues up to now having them there but as you know the Siege Engine is a very finicky and fussy beast.

those types of errors are caused by data corruption of the resource files. some possible causes are faulty ram, hard disk, a corrupted download or a corrupted tanking of the resource file.

i used to get those errors a lot on my old machine that had faulty parts. when i ran into them, i just restarted the game and continued playing. unless u keep getting the same error on that exact same file and then it keeps crashing and stopping u from playing, i wouldnt worry about it.

As you can see I have made it to the top of death mountain. Removing the lqd file fixed the problem.
It did not appear to screw up anything else either. So to make a long story short lqd files are there to speed things up make things flow better, but when they become solid they will freeze things
just like the real world.

Makes you wonder if they are really that necessary in this day and age? Perhaps for the testing of the final distribution package we'll leave them out and see how performance is. The two best places for testing are the two castles; Hiroth Castle in the Utraean Peninsula and Castle Ehb in the Kingdom of Ehb. Both of those regions use to really chug along in the original Dungeon Siege. Possibly Elddim would also be good to check out since it has so many npcs running around it now.

If there was that much difference in all the files and we discovered that not having the LQD files did not degrade performance. Then the whole map pack would be way smaller and much easier to download. I wonder if removing all the lqd files from all the sections of DS1 Map Pack and Adepts would be worth a test run? I will think on this while I am running through the rest of LoA since I am currently at demlocks cut it will give my mind a chance to wonder for a day or two on the question.

technically since project is always changing, LQD files should probably not be used until a more finished project is available, changing anything in a map will pretty much change a lqd, just like adding things or removing to a mod will, just like iryan said they speed up the loading of the game, at least gpg thinks so, but wonder if a person has actually ran a time test to see if a mod loads faster with and without lqd?, I will leave that test to Femme, since she likes doing benchmark tests lol

lol i second what darkelf said. prolly shud leave the lqd files out of the alpha and beta testing releases/versions of the mod but add them back for the stable public releases.

tho im not exactly sure how to quantify or measure how fast the game goes with or without the liquid files. maybe it loads the starting dots on the bottom left faster? or does the map load faster when u join/start a game? or does it cause loading lag in-game when the engine tries to load the adjoining region as u walk thru the game world?

i also remember one of the gpg devs (biddle?) saying the absence of liquid files in small mods are negligible on performance but it can cause a noticeable hiccup if the mod is sufficiently large.

whatever it is, imo we shud prolly just trust gpg on their own word. since they are the devs and know the game code, they prolly know the reason exactly why the game is "faster" with the liquid files. unless someone has access to the siege engine source code and uses it as proof to say otherwise, the only choice is to trust gpg on their word.

therefore, i hope darkelf's suggestion to leave the liquid files out of the testing versions but added back for the stable versions be considered.

a quick way i found to test if the liquid files for map regions were compiled corrupt is to just comment out brain_monsters.skrit. this disables the ai and u can just dash thru the entire map without stopping. u can do lots of things, like inspecting monster placement etc. without being harassed. if any region has corrupted liquid files, the error wud come up.

this shud allow fast testing if the liquid files for the stable versions were compiled correctly. tho im not sure why the editor wud compile corrupted liquid files? is it bad code in the editor? anyone else here who used the editor heavily and often ran into corrupted liquid files?

also if it happens again, u shudnt rule out stress testing and checking your system for failing hardware too... we all know how ez the engine beotches if u got the slightest unstable hardware...

I have arrived at the Zaurask Stronghold, delivered the letter and have started on my way inside. Not having the LQD files has not slowed things down. In fact it appears that the silly Zaurask appear to be less stupid, moving faster and reacting to attacks faster. So from my point of view they might not be necessary. Once I repair the clock I will try the maps and places you suggested Iryan with the LQD files removed.

I finished the DS2 LoA map without the lqd files and nothing much changed from running the same map with the lqd files. I am now starting a game on the DS2 Utraean Peninsula (all LQD files removed from the map) So far so good. The people, environment, monsters and quests are all working correctly and to my eye nothing seems to be slower, nothing has locked up. In fact the path on the right side of the church leading to the orchard house in the past (both DS1 and DS2) after talking to the quest giver would lock up for a few seconds. This time without the lqd files just ran right past that point. Seems to there are fewer places on the maps where characters in large parties get stuck and run in place. I am starting to wonder if computers released to the world after 2006 really need the lqd files in the game and if some of the issues that we could never solve with some mods might not be a conflict between the LQD files -- newer computers and newer versions of windows. Must remember that the games came out when Win 98se and Win ME where the two most common operating systems.

Playing the Utraean Peninsula with no lqd files I have found an oddity with Rangers in very special conditions. DS1 auto engage and auto defend are enabled so the characters attack anything in range.
The Combat magic specialty "energy orb" is active and there is an auto cast healing spell.
The character attacks with the bow, when the enemy gets in range the energy orb goes active and if the character than uses the healing spell on itself or other party member the bow disappears and does not reappear after battle is over even though the character still fires arrows. An annoyance really