Charon117

Which file do I have to check ? spells.txt ? Wiki says it speeds up weapon speed, which of dimitry is right, "should" increase Ruthless Mutilations animation speed. Unless Ruthless Mutilation at one point gets defined as "causesSpellDamage". Edit: I only tested it with staffs + shield, so it could be a mage staff only problem. Edit2: So the wiki doesnt state anything that attack speed% increases execution speed of weapon based CA. Either the wiki is correct, or it misses information. http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:Weapon_Damage_Based_Combat_Arts Edit3: Or it could be an fanatiscism only bug. Edit4: I tried it with Callous Execution, and the attack speed indeed seems to increase animation speed. Ever so slightly, but it looks like it does. This seems to be concerning Ruthless Mutiliation only, maybe Fanatisiscm only.

Wrong assumption by me: On another note. the wiki states that there is somethin like >Attack speed cap raised by 20%<. Is that actual code ? Does it affect the game beyond the SpeedMax ? Or does everything get capped at SpeedMax ? Or does that individual code line increase the SpeedMax for weapons by 20% ? Questions over questions. @FlixCongrats on the halloween skin.

I havent been following anything recently. Is anybody still working on the next CP version ? Its kinda a big wish for some people. General bug fixes and stuff. I think the core problem is the hardcoded stuff. Or ? That would also be kinda my wish. Like having these kind of hardcoded fixes be available as a standalone thing. And stuff.

@Flix When you say >resolved while in this last development cycle< you mean in EE and other projects you have been working on, right ? Have all of these fixes been applied, or are they waiting to be released ? Or are you talking about having theses fixes added to an ongoing CP version ? Thx for the work.

The most hilarious thing so far:

If I address a certain person I can ping them in an edit like @Flix, no problem. But if I ask a general question, which more people should read about, or post information, which I want people to read about ASAP than it is kinda detrimental to put it in an edit, because people dont go into threads without new content. Am I allowed to make multi posts for the general public, boss ?

No, thats a complete different matter and concerns @gogoblender. Already resolved. This is about which I appended information to, in form of edits, which propably didnt get taken, because the post was deleted while I edited it. Edit2: Was completely technical information so couldnt have been deleted due to rudeness. Also, no way to refresh edits ? The point of making another post is to inform people of new content, or a new question. I know I am not going to check threads which dont have unread content. Hard to push new content, or a question, without informing users of new, unread content. Any solution for that ? Edit1: Or was that an auto-merge ? Is an auto-merge-bot here ?

Double post, and you can merge it if you want, but I made extensive changes to the now merged posts, with extensive information, which is now lost, because a moderator deleted the original post. Just an info, I will append the information next time. Edit: but the posted information is lost. Edit2: I would ask moderators to ask me to merge content first, before they take any drastic measures, like deleting content, because it can just so happen im working on them while they delete it. Edit4: I dont like that. Just as a headsup. Edit3: So how do I push an edit than ? @Update ? #refresh ?

@Flix I made another post above. Which got merged into the Now post above. Pretty sloppily at that. Only an moderator could have done that. Is that a sign that I should not double posts @moderatorsaround ?

If I would want to add another ring slot, or talisman slot. What files would that concern ?

>< Just dont say it literally affects everything. "SpeedMax raises the speed % cap of things executed in Sacred 2, including Movement, Attack and Animation Speed, but can affect speed execution beyond that ( we dont know those things beyond). It doesnt inherently raise speed in itself, it just removes the cap until the specified value."

I beg your pardon ? I think I have to pull a dimitry here and say thats not my job. Writing a modmerge tool and explaining what each code line does are 2 completely seperate things. I agree that explaining what each code line does would be useful, but it would best situated in a wiki, for everybody to read, or in a stickied post here, for everybody to read, comment and discuss on. Dont take it the wrong way but the internet hasnt managed to come up with a complete explanation of each line the balance.txt, and most information is wrong, or misleadingly formulated. If you are changeing a code line you already need to know what it does in the first place, if you want to publish it. Great idea ! I will leave it up to you . And you ended up with a lot of manual work. And even if you back up your files they will only be viable with exactly that build. Once you want to change your setup you will have to do all the work again. The modmerge system provides people with a way to add/overwrite their own content in 30 seconds, without breaking everything else in the process. Lets say you prefer to play with 10 changed lines in balance.txt. Every time you make another build, you will have to go into the balance.txt and change this yourself. Or you could put all preferences into the modmerge installer and it will do the rest for you. Lets say a mod adds a new weapon to the game. Normally you would need to go into that file, and extract all new coding lines into the relevant files. With the modmerge system you could just write the new weapon, and the system will append all relevant information to all relevant files. And we are talking just small here. The reason why no medium sized mods are here is because you cant merge them with other things without doing manual work. If the modmerge system works, you could have mods that just have 10 added weapons, and you could apply it ontop of any build, EE, Addendum, or any other random build that you have on your machine in 30 seconds. It will fall onto the mod author to provide all relevant information so that the build doesnt crash. Downwards compability, eg. a higher mod overwriting a needed line in lower mod is a risk that we have to live with. It usually shouldnt happen, and even if, the mod author would just need to inform of the risk. Speaking of risks, I think it will be more efficient to write modmerge rules based on what a mod is doing. Anyway, thats for later. Thx. @Flix I looked through EE and found Attributes.xml and Inventory_Templeguard.xml. head scratch .. first of all I dont know even know what they do, and how they are modded, but my question is this. Are they better overwritten, or merged ? Eg. do you think its likely that anybody wants to ADD anything to attributes.xml, or is the data mostly taken as a whole, and changed as a whole ? Edit: Basically how likely is it that somebody wants to make his own Attributes.xml ontop of EE ? And would that need a merge.

There is no magic modmerge command which generally applies to all files. Every file has its own identifiers, and I need to write a special ruleset for every single file. Since my time is limited and there are only a handful of popular modular changeable files all other files will need to be treated differently. I can make them to be overwritten if they exist, or I can make them to be skippable, if they exist. I think to make the modmerge installer to be as usefull as possible is to insert non existing files, and to overwrite existing ones. Yes, there will be a wishlist for people who rank their files after which one they would like to have a modmerge ruleset for the most. But we will definitely end up with a finite number of modmergeable files. Which is why I am asking people who have been here longer than I am to tell me what they think are the most important files beside .txt ones which they want to be modmergeable. Cracking open files doesnt tell me anything about their importance ;). If I can write rulesets for files in 5 minutes there will be a lot of modmergeable files. If not there will be fewer. But I am definitely depending on the knowledge of experienced modders to tell me files with similar structure and/or things they want to have as I won´t be able to dive through all files. If I dont get any input I will just do the ones I want, and thats that. Cheers.

@Flix @dimitrius154 Can someone of the more experienced modders tell me what kind of files a mod may contain, except for .txt. Or to put it into other words, can I safely insert/overwrite files which are not .txt files AKA excluding non-.txt from the modmerge system ? Or is there any special case where some file really needs a modmerge ?

Well, I dont have any actual experience with this, but I still fail to understand how it could break the AI. All the AI does is consider different states for its attacks. Nevertheless anything can break everything in the game. Like adjusting SpeedMax breaks the game for my 264% Attack Speed seraphim. Anybody who mods risks breaking something. The Rinarn quest is less than 0.01% of Sacred 2 content. But fixing the doppelganger makes a whole playstyle even viable. The payoff is immense, and the deprivation minimal. Concerning those kind of things I will have to rely on testers, which means I need some exporsure. After stuff is working ofcourse. Thx for the heads up.

The glorious days of full servers and massive multiplayers are over. And with it gone are the stronger mobs, the better loot and the bigger experience. With this in mind I would like to get a polished SP experience. ESP stands for Enhanced Single Player. Or ESP for short. ESP will be a mod containing balance changes ontop of the Enhanced Edition by @Flixcurrently at 2.1 . I consider EE2.1 to be a very close vanilla experience as it changes just the right amount of things without altering too many variables. If you have a decent understanding of the vanilla game, you will feel right at home with EE. Additionally EE also has a SuperSpawn (SS) option and a challenge mode (C), both which are more than fertil grounds for a long lasting and eventful experience. Too easy ? Change to the challenge mod. Too hard ? Turn it off again. But this isnt about advertising EE, as ESP aims to be applicable to ANY version, be it Sacred 2 Gold, CP 1.60, the Enhanced Edition or any other random mod. The forum has a lot of good ideas, but you are missing a modmerge system. The main problem of any fix, change, or option is that it usually comes in the form of a whole file. If somebody changes 3 lines in the balance.txt and somebody else changes 6 different lines in the balance.txt you will have to manually merge them into one file. Oh yes, and if anything goes wrong with your install you have start from scratch. Every mod has to be manually merged with another one, and every time every file gets fully replaced, leaving no room for partial changes without at least half an hour of fiddling with your build. This is the reason why most mods slowly disappear from useage, and only the big ones remain. Nobody wants to fiddle with 50 manual settings, no matter how good the endproduct is. As far as my software skills allow me to make an installer that I might be able to make one which overwrites single lines in files. Though that might be hindered depending on how I have to encode the files again. I might even make an installer which everybody can use, where they can just dump all their changes into a single zip, run the installer, and enjoy hundreds of changes in a matter of minutes. But lets see. If you dont want to have certain changes you will literally be able to go into the modmerge files and delete the lines you dont want to have overwritten. ESP will use EE as the base, so the balance will always be in line with EE. Now for the content: I have proposed a better loot progression system close to the vanilla progression here: http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/23824-s2gcp16ee21ssc-esp-enhanced-perception-and-loot-progression/ It decreases the importance of Enhanced Perception down to an eqivalent of 5 socketed talisman, and raises the importance of MF by a magnitute of x10. x8 is debatable though. balance.txt. Text in brackets are former values AdjustCriticalDamageFactor = 2000 (1200) --- I always found the crit to be too underwhelming in any case. Never was worth to take crit chances for anything. I suggest this as the new bases, and maybe, but not necessarily, will lock this with decreased crit chances in general. SpeedMax = 4000 (1500) --- Maxspeed makes your game more unstable, but also unlocks all the speed. Find your sweetspot. RangeAggro = 4000 (400) --- How can you farm faster ? More damage, more attack speed and more run speed. Whats faster than running to the mobs ? Having the mobs run to you. IsUsableByHero = 1000 (700) --- One of the more important lines. If I want to raise an Inquisitor I dont want to get HE stuff. If I would want to raise a HE, I would play one. 99% of the loot is for your class. IsRuneForHero = 1000 (400) --- Yes, sorting through 15 x 3 x 7 = 315 different runes is fun in the first 2 hours, but you only really need the runes for your char, and you are not playing for the first 2 hours, your are playing for the 100 hours after that. Saves you a lot of nerves and a little bit of gold. PotionHealCooldown = 1000 (700) --- potion spamming never dies, not even with this. SkillMagicFindFactor = 2000 (200) --- In line with the loot changes outlined above. behaviour.txt. Overwrite the Hireling_distance AI with the Hireling_brave_ex AI for a better mage staff users doppelganger. The ranged (non-magic) weapons doppelganger is still as it was before. Dimitry fixed the doppelganger AI here, but it comes with a whole package of other changes: http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/23302-dimitriuss-cm-patch-addendum/ The things here are there to be discussed, to be added to and to be criticised. I will also go through the forum and collect all ideas, mods and changes which enhance the Single Player experience. Yes, I will test them personally first. It will be a personal mod, but the modmerge system might enable everybody to run 5 different mods ontop of their build in less than 2 minutes. Edit: Post content reminder: http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/21916-sacred-2-enhanced-edition/&amp;do=findComment&amp;comment=7015906 http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/21916-sacred-2-enhanced-edition/&amp;do=findComment&amp;comment=7015930

Thats what I said. I appreciate @dimitrius154work, and as newcomer I would like to give him feedback about his work. Stickying this thread HURTS the potential exposure he can get with it. I dont read stickies, most people dont. Because stickies contain CP, Fixes, rules and guides. They dont contain mods. Misrepresenting this thread HURTS his potential feedback player base. 90% of all people come here, expect a fix, and then realise they stealthily get 95% of game content changed. They all leave angrily about this. This is not an oppinion. 70% of all posts in this thread say they wont install the "mod" for one reason or another. And thats just the ones who write posts. Extrapolate that to the ones who dont even write about it. And this is in your own thread. The moderators here are not doing whats best for mod, they are doing what a child wants, spoiling it in the progress. They dont keep the mod happy, they keep the mod maker happy. Which is fine I guess. If Dimitry wants to have this level of exposure im totally fine with it. I dont care honestly. Sometimes a stranger will need to say what you dont accept from your friends. Thats my contribution. Take it or leave it .

I think running some tests will shed a bit more light for me on the matter. Thx for the explanations so far.

I dont think we are on the same page here. As far as I can see you are the only one around who can change the dll. 99% of other people cant change it. The Aspirant cant do it. Flix cant do it. Sorry, but the work load is on you, if you decide to do it. If I want to change the "Rings, amulets, other forgeables are now affected by item auto-collect quality filter settings in the "Gameplay" menu." I wouldnt be able to do it, no matter of how much of an aspirant I am. Flix cant take the things he would want for his Diablo mod. The work load is on you, because you are the only one competent enough to do, if you decide to do it. Thats why I said its much work. Thats for the moderators and admins to decide. Here are their oppinions: This thread has been stickied because you asked for it, and because of your work epic, not because your oppinion about it matters. As far as I can see all moderators I read about think this is a mod, and they underhandedly try to tell you that. But never mind, each its own.

Isnt ... that exactly what we need ? A "code" that converts a mages staff base attack into a spell ? Could be wrong, but I think tactics lore affects angels wrath ? Doesnt matter, it would be easy enough to change this. BeeEffGee + AW is a common combo, no ? It takes the attack of BFG and puts AW ontop of it ? Isnt that exactly what we are talking about ? Very good idea, will take a look at it later. You mean the spell that gets called for mage staffs is THAT entry, and it gets hardwired to being a "normal" attack ? I cant really see the problem here otherwise. Following the above idea of causesSpellDamage and defining the tokens for it in the same way as Archangel Wraths would do the trick ? Worth a try.

So, I have read this 15 pages of posts. I have read the full CP1.6 patchlog and I have thought about Community Edition changing gameplay vs Fixes things. This is a preliminary post as I didnt have the time yet to make a full appendum setup, and this may take a while. Since I heard you are working on a big and maybe final update to this I thought I would give my thoughts on the matter. Simply put, I agree with @Flixthat I rather want to see all the fixes put into a CP 1.70 and put all gameplay changing content into a seperate mod. As it stands now, the appendum holds too much personal flavor that I would consider playing it. As a preliminary rundown I would like to sort the changes into things I would like to have and the things which make me not want to play it. ... I was halfway through a list of what I consider CP worthy changes, when I realised the whole thing is more intertwined than I thought. Is ""Raving Thrust" now affects energy creatures and ghosts" a fix, or a simply gameplay change by somebody who can change the code ? Raving Thrust wasnt intended to hit ghosts, which makes it so special. The more I read the more I come to the conclusion that this is just a mod, by somebody who can code ( eg. go beyond values other users can change ). While I agree that some of the changes would be nice to bundle, they are too few uncontroversial changes to make a CP 1.7 . The fact that the code gets changed is beneficial and detrimental at the same time, due to it excluding everybody who cant code. This makes these modifications akin to a different game, because "Rings, amulets, other forgeables are now affected by item auto-collect quality filter settings in the "Gameplay" menu." is something I wouldnt be able to change back, even if I wanted to. The reason of extracting such code lines into changeable .txt documents is so that everybody can choose what they want - the very fundament of modding. Changing code without extracting it into modifiable lines for other users makes this into a non-moddable game again. In the long run it splits the community into 2 different versions. One for CP 1.60 and one for the Appendum. They become mutually exclusive as they change features people cant alter. Head scratch. The proper solution would be to extract everything the Appendum changes into a modifiable .txt. Which means to maintain 2 codes at the same time. Thats quite difficult. Really a lot of work. Anyway. Unsticky this thread. Its not a Fix, its not a Guide, its not a CP, its not a rule, its just another mod. Its place belongs down where all the other mods are. Stickying this thread was misleading in the first place. Change the name for Gods sake. This is not an addendum, its its own full mod. Call it "Dimitry´s Shining Glory on Ancaria" (Alpha and soon in Beta available at your closest retail store ;) ). People LIKE mods that change gameplay. What people dont like is something advertised as a fix and then they have to deal with gameplay changes. You are telling everybody that you are selling wine, and then serve them fish. the end. @gogoblenderon an unrelated note, is there still a time limit for editing your own posts, and if yes, can I attend this rank in a reasonable amount of time ?

Thx. My desired fix would be that you are looking for the code lines which "freeze" the model when X distances away. X should be around 40 - 50 distances and needs to be set to 0. Yes, that means as long as you hold down your mouse you will be moving, but there is an easy fix for that: release your mouse button. Definitely easier and smoother than clicking on 10 000 monsters.

Here I believe ? I got more replies to come.

Carrying a mage staff makes the doppelganger take the Hireling_distance AI. I fiddled around with the AI for ranged weapons, but none of the Hireling_ AIs seem to apply to the doppelganger when he carries ranged weapons. The results are obvioulsy an immense improvement, so I suggest to incorporate this into either CP or EE. Somebody can try to find the AI for ranged weapons until @dimitrius154can tell us exactly which one of them is being used. If he can.

I can tell you that its the identical AI that also the Cobold Mage Elite uses. Looking this up we get behaviour = "Enemy_mage", So its most likely the Hireling_mage_no_defense one. Now the proper solution for this would ofcourse, 1. be desynchronising mage staff from mage AI or 2. fix the actual AI 3. actually adding AI behaviour only concerning the doppelganger I dont acutally think that making the mage AI attack more often would break any behaviour. Will do some tests. Good luck with the release !