Generaic Adepts Oops

I have discovered a problem with Base_Axe_CM_template.
it displays as a black and yellow box when on the ground or when equipped.
the inventory icon is pink
there is no screen_name
I can not find any of the images noted in the template such as active icon within adepts, I will look in the ds2 resources and the map pack as well. The template itself has not changed it is exactly the same as is found in beta 1a so it appears that some image was deleted or is being overridden by the by the last build of the adepts resources file.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// TEMPLATE: base_axe_template
//
// ITEM: Base Axe Template
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
[t:template,n:base_axe_cm_template]
{
category_name = "DS2_Weapon_Melee_Axe";
doc = "Axe";
specializes = weapon_melee;
[aspect]
{
material = mediummetaledge;
[voice]
{
[attack]
{
priority = high;
* = s_ma_swing_sm_wpn;
}
[put_down]
{
* = s_ui_inv_place_axe_1h;
}
}
}
[attack]
{
attack_class = ac_axe;
damage_min = 0.85 * (3.4 + 0.74 * #item_level);
damage_max = 1.35 * (3.4 + 0.74 * #item_level);
is_melee = true;
reload_delay = 0.67;
skill_class = melee;
}
[gui]
{
active_icon = b_gui_ig_i_ic_w_axe-1h-01;
equip_slot = es_weapon_hand;
inventory_height = 3;
inventory_width = 1;
use_class = IST_FIGHTER;
}
}


Weapon and spells bases aren't meant to appear in the PCContent of dropped loot. They are meant as bases for specialized templates which do appear in the PCContent loot generated by monsters and containers.

However as I moved all the DS1 axes that use to exist in Adepts to the Legendary Pack, the CM Axes base has no templates specializing off it. As such DS2 treats it as a leaf template so generates it in the PCContent pool.

Unfortunately I couldn't find any 3rd party axes in any mods that were able to be used in the mod. So I'll delete the base axe template which will fix the problem.

With moving several items from Adepts to the Legendary Pack there would be a bit of fallout. Is there any specific requirements for the Ax Iryan? I think I may have a few DS1 Axes hanging about in one of my old mods that could be used as a replacement. You could also use one one handed axes from DS2 or Broken World could you not?

All the Adepts base templates do is make the items a little more powerful than the DS2 ones, so to make them more attractive to use. If there are any worthy axes laying around that you think would look good in Adepts, I can certainly include them. The same with any other 3rd party weapons or armour, or even small mods that aren't yet in Adepts and are marked by their creators as open source or able to be used in other projects.

Adepts isn't just an anime conversion mod but the biggest compilation of 3rd party mods available for DS2.

or just add the flag is_pcontent_allowed = false since its unused. tho if u wanna use it again to base your axes off it, u need to remove the pcontent disallowed flag or all the child templates based off it wont drop... lol

I have seen this problem over the past few revisions of Adepts however I did not report it because I was on a quest to discover what was causing other problems. The problem does not occur when playing without Adepts. This problem occurs on the converted maps, the DS2 and broken world maps and a few third party maps.
When attacking the screen goes white or light blue except for some in map features and the GUI.

The problem occurs no matter the size of the party, occurs more frequently with larger parties however.
It does not matter if the party is mixed (ranged, melee, combat mage, nature mage), all ranged, all melee, all nature mage, all combat mage.
It is not being caused by the see far hack because it occurs with the see far hack operating or disabled.
It does not appear to be related to the monster level adjust mod as I have tested it with the mod enabled and disabled.
It does not matter what type of monster or combination of monsters is being attacked.
I have not been able to tell if it is caused by a monster attacking or my party attacking a monster.
It also does not appear to be related to my graphics cards or the drivers of said cards. I say this because it occurs with the Nvidia graphics card on my desk top, the built in generaic graphics chip set on the desk top or the Radeon chip set on my laptop If no one else has seen this problem I can live with it..

It reminds me very much of the purple aura that the furies generate which was fixed at one point but has returned.

Here are some screen shots to show you what I am seeing.

I started to look around at things like screen resolution and 32 bit or 16 bit color.
I discovered that I have the problem when the screen resolution is 800x600, 1024x768 (which I was using) however as soon as I switched to 1280x1024 no more problem. I verified this by switching between 1024x768 and 1280x1024 while playing. fight monsters in a white out. pause switch resolutions and fight monsters with all things normal. So at least for me the screen resolution needs to be 1280x1024 -- harder to read signs but I know where I am going anyway.

Still I need to track down the problem and fix it if possible. I have seen something like this in the past and I believe it's linked to the moods. However Adepts doesn't alter any of the game's moods except for DS2 so I would think the problem is probably linked to the DS1 Map Pack, except you said that it doesn't appear to be.

You do get that effect if you declare an indoor mood as an outdoor mood for example but you obviously get the white out in outdoor areas as well.

I'll have to think about the problem for a little while and if anyone has any ideas I welcome them submitting their thoughts.

No matter what map I play at what screen resolution I can not duplicate it playing with just the map pack. The only time it occurs is when I am playing a game of adepts. Instead of a mood could it be like the monster's aura? I will try getting a screen shot of what I mean at more than one resolution.

Iryan it is not a mood, but it is Adepts and could be the Legendary Pack also. I was running different tests with screen resolution, color depth, shadows, etc. Just before the white out I noticed one of my rangers twitch like they where casting an automatic spell. I checked and sure enough she had been given the DS2 combat magic spells decay armor and drown upon creation. So I paused the game and removed the spells from the spell book. The white out vanished when the spells timed out and did not return for the next twenty minutes of game play. At this point I put decay armor back into the spell book and played about 5 minutes against a major krug mob and no white out however as soon as I put the spell drown back into an autocast slot the white out returned as soon as my ranger twitched. I guess how Adepts and or the legendary park handles the DS2 spells is different than how broken world or DS2 handles them. I tried every screen resolution and video setup I could think of with no drown spell and got a good hour in with no problems. I will when time allows advance a character to level 100 in combat magic and pick up all the spells like drown, decay armor, dehydrate and so on and test each of them to see what happens.

UPDATE The problem occurs with or without Adepts. So The problem is The Legendary Pack and the Combat Magic Spell Drown. I used the presaved combat mage from both Adepts and Standard DS made sure they both had the spell DROWN and started the Kingdom Of Ehb. Both Combat Mages caused a white out when they cast DROWN. Therefore I must assume that the DROWN spell is being messed with by something in the Legendary Map Pack Sorry I thought it was just Adepts, but I never had a combat mage using DROWN in the non Adepts Game! Stupid Elf

Still I'm confuse at the cause since the Legendary Pack doesn't alter those two spells at all, nor is it suppose to touch any of the original DS2 or Broken World spells. If it was Adepts then it was quite possible that the mod was responsible and there would be several things to investigate as the cause. During testing of some of the new spells there were some quite bizarre effects but the Legendary Pack contains no new spells at all.

I know KillerGremal has introduced a few custom effects into the mod and maybe one of those influences something Drown also uses but I can't be sure.

The other spells like decay armor, dehydrate, etc. cast a normal aura around the attacked monster. The drown spell seems to be the only one that is messed up.. it is exactly like the what are they called monsters that are just a big head and cast a purple glow all over the screen when they are near. There are quite a few of them running about near where the king is hiding in castle ehb.

Actually I have no real idea what the reason of this matter could be, quite weird is the dependency on the resolution (or size?) of the screen...

I posted this comment in the Legendary Pack Forum but it is I believe closely related to the problem with the drown spell because it has to do with screen resolution and what appears to be an aura of some type. The purple sky effect is there in both Adepts and Broken World with map pack installed.

Hi Iryan,
It appears that the DS1 Rector has a similar problem as the DS2 Drown Spell. At least on my system at screen resolutions at and below 1024x768 they look like this note the purple glow.

At screen resolutions of 1280x1024 and above they look like this.

Not sure why this has anything to do with screen resolution but it seems to

I am more out of my mind than ever now. I have tested checked and verified all of my computer's hardware. I have tried 2 different monitors. Tweaked every setting on my video card and in the game itself. I have totally removed all versions of Dungeon Siege from my computer and reinstalled everything. Why, because if I am the only one seeing the screwed up aura for the Drown Spell and The DS1 Rector, then it must be a hardware or software error on my computer. The problem is as you can guess still there. So for the time being I guess I will just not use the Drown Spell and ignore the purple sky when a rector is someplace near. Hope someone else sees this problem at some point, because I really can not afford to purchase a new computer or even a video card for my old computer especially if after doing that I find out that was not the problem.

The screams and runs off into the darkness, thinking to herself it can not be a hardware problem if only one spell and one monster exhibit the strangeness, however stranger things have happened. thinking again to herself okay elf what is stranger than this? A wolf that thinks he is a house pet?
That you have been playing Dungeon Siege almost half your life? ..........

I'll try some more testing and see if I get the same result. I can always send you a mini-mod to disable the effects on the Rector and the spell. I wouldn't get any new hardware just for those, especially if playing at certain resolutions you don't get the bug.

Iryan if you can not duplicate it I guess a mini mod that disables the effects for the spell and the rector would be useful. As I have noticed that there are several monsters that cast the drown spell with the same problem as when my characters use it.

i've taken a look at the screenshots and the problem appears to be related to sumthing called the fog table or fog rendering. the fog appears to be discoloured or wrongly coloured. sumhow the drown spell effect and/or the rector's aura effect appears to cause corruption of the fog table.

i wud look at anything that was recently added/changed in adepts or to ur private/custom version of adepts for the source of the problem. the fog discolouration is most likely NOT a hardware prob if it persists on completely different PCs using hardware manufactured from different times.

what video cards do u have and what program did u use to check your video card for errors? there arent many or any at all programs out there that can properly check a dx8 or earlier video card for errors.

video card error checking programs out there like rthdribl and occt only work on dx9 video cards. there are other programs like furmark and 3dmark but they are more for stress testing and benchmarking than for catching errors and corruption on a video card. i.e. its quite subjective and dependant on your eyesight thus its not easy to spot the errors/corruption.

not likely this is causing the problem but did u check if ur video card's fan is still working/spinning? some video card's fans are notorious for failing suddenly one fine day and causing problems like these that werent there before...

Renaming DS1_Objects.ds2res to Objects_DS1.ds2res has restored the buttons/levers and such on the Kingdom of Ehb map through the Glitterdelve mines. Have not found any buttons stuck in walls or mislocated. So that problems is solved so far.
The patch you sent me iryan for the drown spell and rector aura is 50% fixed. The rector now looks correct and is not a glowing purple thing spread out over a large area. However the drown spell still has the problem. I looked at the patch after untanking it and I can not see where the problem is. So will leave that up to you or to make it easy I will not use the drown spell, as decay armor, dehydrate, and blind are all curses that work just as effectively as drown and they do not exhibit the messy aura.
I will continue on with the ehb map as time allows.

The rector was easy as there was only a single effect component. For Drown I disabled what I thought was the most obvious component but there's several others. The component I disabled was the custom_effect but it appears the problem is in the spell_mass_enchant block.

From what you are saying it definitely appears something in the DS1 Legendary pack is influencing the way this block works in Drown. You can try untanking the mini-mod and disabling one by one charge_ffx, charge_efct, cast_ffx and cast_efct found in the spell_mass_enchant block of Drown in spl_ds2_spellscmagic.gas and see what's causing the issue.

It is definitely "cast_ffx = ffx_spell_drown_cast;" that is messing up the drown spell. All of the other ones work either stand alone or together. I wonder what within the DS1 Legendary Pack might be causing this?
I noticed that Norick's Dog when full grown casts a purple aura correctly I wonder if the same would work on the rector?

Food for thought

UPDATE
I searched DS2 Objects SFX folder for the drown spell. There are 4 images and a gas file that calls those images. Other than the the image called for spells like dehydrate, decay armor etc. the Gas file for the drown sfx images is the same as the others. So from this I would expect that all of these types of spells would exhibit the same problem but they do not. I checked the DS1 Legandary Pack for gas files and images that had the word drown in them and there are none. I could replace the images called to say dehydrate which I know works to see if the drown spell still has the problem. But would that get us any closer to the solution?

The DS1 Legendary Pack doesn't alter any of those images as you discovered. However there are new gas files for several images like b_sfx_063 which originally didn't have gas files. Can't really see any connection there.

Your little experiment could still be useful as it would eliminate the image as a problem. The most kilely cause then is most likely skrit which is incorrectly trying to display the image. The most likely image is b_sfx_drown-01 as the others are icons displayed on the effected creature, I think.

Meanwhile I also checked effect code and involved images, but no clue what it could be. :puzzeld:
Since it depends on a speccific resolution, is possibly the system_detail.gas file messed up anyhow?

Perhaps this problem has several reasons at the same time, so it could help to temporarily disable as many mods as possible, incl. All*Saves, to find a minimum of game components to reproduce it.

 
By the way, the Rector already had a glowing bottom in DS1, I guess it was added to represent some kind of anti-gravity magic or so.
The instructions of this effect code have an unusual order, but I don't think this can the the reason to cause conflicts with curse effects.

Using a different image instead of b_sfx_drown-01 I used b_sfx_infect_01 with the Drown template returned to normal where "cast_ffx = ffx_spell_drown_cast;" is enabled does not fix the problem.
Therefore I am starting to think the problem may be with ffx_spell_drown.flick and how it handles the images. I know nothing about flicks however. So I will leave that up to you.

To answer your questions Killer I have discovered the problem with the rector's effect does happen at all screen resolutions. I was tricked as changing screen resolutions only fixes the problem in a very temporary fashion. Once you leave tha area of the map where you changed resolution and enter another with a rector in it you get the spread out purple glow.
My system detail gas is correct for the video card I have installed (remember you helped me write it about a year ago.
I did remove all mods except for the DS1 Legendary Pack and the problem still exists.
The problem with the rector and the drown curse are totally separate issues. I just was saying that how the rector's purple aura is spread out looked very much like the Drown Spell when it does not work and covers the whole screen. Sorry for the confusion there. As far as I can tell they have nothing to do with each other and from what I can tell now are not a hardware problem since I can duplate both problems on two separate computers with totally different video cards, processors and versions of Windows.

It appears that I had tested all of the combat magic curses except Infect because none of my characters where far enough along in combat magic skills. It was in one of my character's spell book so when she reached a level where she could cast it she did. The effect is the same as with drown the only difference is the colors that cover the screen with infect the colors are black and yellow where with drown it was blue and white. I will comment out the same line as I did in the drown template and let you all know what happens. BE slaps her self with a rainbow trout (IRC reference and also monty python reference)

Yup commenting out cast_ffx in the template for the infect spell, fixes the problem just like it did with drown spell.

I'm starting a full play through to try to squash most of the remaining bugs in the mod so I'll be certain to try out all the curses. I just tend not to like them as typically the monsters head for the mage who casted the curse first, since Drown causes damage to them as does Infect. With the dumbed down ai of DS2, monsters always target whoever hurts them first. So they'll run right past the melee fighters to get to the mage. That could be an advantage depending on how you play the game but I find the damage potential of curses aren't enough to warrant using them in lie of a more damaging attack spell, which I believe are more efficient time and mana wise.

Still its interesting that the same type of effect is causing the bug for you. Again as per the other thread have you updated your graphic drivers recently? Having the latest drivers isn't always the best thing especially with older games. Also do you have the seefar setting turned on and if so at what setting? Other than that I don't know as nobody else has reported this bug.

Incidentally concerning the seefar setting, the phantom walls don't appear at any resolution at a setting of 65. They do appear at a setting of 81. So the sweet spot is somewhere between those two figures. I hope to eventually find out what it is.

I have not updated any drivers Iryan. In this case I do not think it is a hardware issue since it is very area specific. I can repeat it over and over with this party but can go kill bandits, swim in the swamp, and take the bridges all the way to the church with the skellies. I have another party a town back which I will advance tomorrow and I also have one which I can bring back from the the fortress. They made it into the area and visited what is blocked now, I will have to do a bit of looking around with the other parties and see what occurs.

Well at least for now it looks as if we are back. Learning windows 7, getting my modding programs to run on windows 7, trying to figure out which windows update screws up the system. (got updates turned off right now). Talked to tech support about problem, they want the computer back, fat chance there. I will make a back up of C Drive then try updates again that way I will not have to reinstall all if the system crashes.

Anyway I got into playing the map pack and Adepts for a bit and have discovered that the drown spell now works correctly I will let you know about the rectors when I reach them. Yes I remembered to remove the patch that you gave me iryan. Have started with a totally new character just to make sure.