Some questions on moddability

[Juku121]

Some questions on moddability

I would like to know whether people who have been modding the game for years now can share some of their wisdom about the following::1) I'd really like to introduce at least another sword material ("medium", meteorite iron is what I have in mind actually), if not more to the game. After glancing at the Lua scripts, am I right in guessing that it will basically require just cloning most of the corresponding sword style section of witcher_att.lua, changing the "medium" and weapon type entries and creating/changing some swords to a "placeholder" type instead of Witcher...Sword? And a silver dagger, for example, would have to have just the dagger section and dagger parry section copied, changed to accommodate a new medium and weapon type, and have a new item of corresponding placeholder type to go with it? And I'd need to add relevant vulnerabilities/resistances to creature ability scripts, of course. One way I can see the above not working is if "medium"s are actually predefined and not changeable on the fly via scripting. 2) Does anyone have or at least know how to approximate the effects of the Ingredient Extraction talent on monsters? After some script reading, I think it may have something to do with either ingr_add.ncs or ingr_gather.ncs, neither of which seems to have a readily available source. As an aside, I have modified Corylea's herb script to provide higher yields, scaled to character level and the presence of the IE talent. If anyone is still interested and Corylea does not object, I can upload my modifications along with sources so anyone with the compulsive herb gathering syndrome can tweak the plants to their liking. 3) Is there a way to speed up the level 4 special attacks and spell powerups? Is it hardcoded, tied to animation speed or something else?Thanks in advance.Edit: No replies? This forum does not seem to be that dead. In the meantime, Flash has even managed to post in the FCR topic above mine and promised improvements. Am I asking completely unreasonable questions here? I'm kinda loath to commit to doing anything extensive before I know if its at least theoretically feasible. And I take it that no-one is interested increased (or at least more varied) herb spawns? I won't bother with it any more then. Edit 2: Are the descriptions of the rune swords actually accurate? In the unpackable weapon_abil.lua, the bonuses are quite different from what the game tells you. I've read e.g. that people prefer the two moon one earth sword, and its description is quite good. Yet the above script looks like the bonuses are actually, if I recall correctly, 15% damage, 40% sensitivity increase and 25% KD chance increase, which is generally inferior to the three moon sword's 60% sensitivity increase. And is the fact that Witcher swords do not apply critical effects increases if the selected style does not feature them based on that the corresponding entries in witcher_att.lua do not have a line that reads something like AlawaysApplyCriticalEffects (do not have a reference at hand at the moment, could be a little different).

 

[Flash]

Sorry, I haven't seen your topic. I mostly use Show new replies to your posts in English section of the forum.1. Entirely possible but I can't see any benefit of introducing it and there's nothing in the lore to support it, just my opinion though. You'll need to start with witcher_att.lua and add resistances or vulnerabilities to enemies. The rest you'll need to playtest as I can't guarantee it's enough to make it work. Some additional editing may be needed in other scripts. To give you precise answer I'd have to make it myself :Just be aware that medium is tied to attack in *_att.* files, not to the weapon type. One way to make it work on particular sword is to attach medium type damage with ncs script to sword file but that's just another problem because ncs damage ignores resistances defined in lua files. There's a lot of scripting, not sure if it's worth the effort.2. No access to script sources so we can only guess. New mods are always welcome. Upload yours if you want.3. No way that I know. D'jinni obviously have options to edit it but it's restricted to devs.ad Edit 2: I'm not sure if it's working correctly. Looks incredibly suspicious to me, these bonuses doesn't have much sense. Because of that I've completely rewritten forged swords abilities for Flash Mod and FCR to do precisely what it's written in swords descriptions.To make any critical effect work, you need to add at least BaseIntensity = 1 to that particular effect in *_att.lua. Only then bonuses from other sources, like sword and talent multipliers/modifiers will work.

And I take it that no-one is interested increased (or at least more varied) herb spawns? I won't bother with it any more then.

Witcher doesn't have big enough audience aware of mods' existance. You can make an exceptional high quality mod and get only few hundred downloads after few months. People just don't know that The Witcher game is a game which offers great mods. When you think of Dragon Age, Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, you think of mods. Even simpliest crap quality mods recieve huge feedback in these games. What you can do is to advertise your mods wherever and whenever you can, otherwise nobody will know they even exist. Like with this thread. I missed it too.

 

[Juku121]

Thanks! At least someone is still keeping the modder flag flying. ;D1. Lorewise, I have only read the books in English (Last Wish and Blood of Elves), plus an ancient localised version of the "Wiedźmin" short story (locals still have a minor war going on how to translate "wiedźmin"). But I've always gotten the impression that witchers carry two swords for monsters, not one for men and the other for monsters. The swords are forged of meteorite iron exactly because some critters are sensitive to it and not silver. I even believe there was a point in the game when a woman asked Geralt if the steel sword was for men and the silver one for monsters, and Geralt more or less said what I wrote above. I may be mistaken though. As for gameplay, it would certainly improve variety if there were monsters resistant to silver and vulnerable to steel, so you would have to keep different swords for different occasions, not just equip the steel sword for story-related battles with humans. But then every village guard would be able to hurt those, say, drowners, and lore at least suggests that witchers are needed to kill even those, if you do not have access to large numbers of armored professionals. Hence universal steel resistance, but occasional meteorite iron vulnerability. I'm aware that medium is tied to attacks. Attacks in turn seem to be tied to weapon types, if I'm not mistaken. So a meteorite iron sword needs to have a nonstandard (i.e. not WitcherSteelSword) type, an attack (style) assigned to it in the combat styles script, which has a new medium in the damage application section. My question is, essentially, are those script entries just strings and the game compares strings in resistance scripts against those in attack scripts, or is there another step in-between? And I'm not going to do a lot of scripting. The idea is to copy the steel style entries, change weapon types to a placeholder instead of WithcerSteelSword, assign a new medium, change some swords to that placeholder type and put in resistances/vulnerabilities for creatures that would warrant it. Sounds easy enough in theory. 2. So basically it is just everyone's best guess that the add_ingr.ncs or somesuch activates on monster death (why?) and assigns an extra loot item based on some table (perhaps within the script)? Just my luck. I was not really going to make and maintain a mod, since the maintenance part eats lots of time and effort, not to mention code-cleaning, testing and listening to feedback. And mods tend to grow. I just don't have time for this. I was just curious whether someone would find those files useful, if s/he did not want to do the scripting his/herself, or wanted to look at them for inspiration. I basically stole the idea from Corylea anyway. Ed. 2. So the AlwaysApplyOnHitEffects=true line does nothing? Or is it needed in addition to BaseIntensity? Weird. I've already described my stance on modding. I thought the Wicther sold way better than e.g. Black Isle orTroika classics, which have always had an ongoing mod presence. But yeah, FO3 does have an insane amount of mods and a reception far above its actual value. It's basically a breathtaking hiking simulator with FO elements randomly sprinkled in.

 

[Flash]

1. Lorewise there are monsters vulnerable to steel and other vulnerable to silver. Meteorite is just another type of ore used create steel swords. Meteorite swords are light, durable and high quality but it's still a steel sword.You won't be able to add new attack styles as it would require to assign them to talent tree. You can edit talents, you can remove them but you can't add more. You could try to replace one steel style with meteorite specific medium and restrict it to meteorite swords. Very tedious work because definitions created in one script are used many other scripts so you'll have to find it all and replace accordingly. Creating new item type might be necessary, fe. now we have base item type steelsword. You'll need to differentiate meteorite swords from steel swords. Ahh, the more I think about it the more necessary work I see. Plenty of things to cover.The worst part will be to seperate meteorite swords from other steel swords and assing them exclusively to style. Editing medium and adding resistance in monster charts is easy. To make it work on monsters you'll just need to add entry in MediumResistance for chosen monsters. Other thing will be which monsters will you choose. Pretty arbitrary since there's no such thing as meteorite vulnerability in the lore.Lastly you might want to edit journal entries in bestiary. Be aware that players tend to ignore everything you'll write in game, readme, changelog, etc and report new features as bugs , I know that from experience with FCR mod.2. I don't know really. It's pure guessing without the access to script sources.Ed. 2. I assume everything is working as intended. You just need to add BaseIntensity in attack which I find useful because I can enable/disable bonuses for each attack. For example if weapon adds a chance to inflict bleeding, it only works on the attack you want, not on all attacks.

 

[Juku121]

1. So in, say, D&D terms "meteorite iron" = "masterwork" and not "cold iron", as I initially understood? I don't want to add attack styles. I want Strong Steel to have two varieties of swords, steel and meteorite iron. Steel styles are underused in the game as is, so I'd welcome the chance see the steel style animations on other enemies than wolves and Salamanders. The Group Steel powerup attack looks way cooler than the Group Silver one, for instance. But it seems that it does involve some more work. I did a test run last night, copied the witcher_att.lua entries for steel swords, replaced WitcherSteelSword with Placeholder3 and all instances of 'Medium = "Steel"' with 'Medium = "Attack"' (as it seems that there's a finite amount of damage types, and "Attack" is, I guess, the generic type of damage inflicted by monster appendages). I granted Drowners immunity to silver and steel, redefined Gwalhir as Placeholder3 type weapon and loaded an Act IV save game. Bought a new Gwalhir and went to the beach. As soon as I draw anyweapon and click on a Drowner (or anything else), instant crash. So I do need to do something extra. Perhaps I have to change attack names as well? Choosing monster vulnerabilities is quite arbitrary, yes. I'm not capable of adding new critters, so I just have to do a representative selection for each style and go with it. But this is probably the easiest thing to tweak afterwards. I've been thinking that (completely from a playability/gameworld consistence and not Sapkowski-lore point of view) most monsters should be resistant to steel and wood, and vulnerable to either silver or meteorite iron, depending on which Act(s) they appear in. So wraiths could go noonwraith - vulnerable to meteorite iron and immune to anything else, including fire and poison, moonwraith&wraith - vulnerable to silver, and immune to everything else; all Necrophages except devourers are vulnerable to silver and resistant to steel and meteorite iron, Devourers immune to steel, vulnerable to meteorite iron and reststant to silver, etc. If I ever go public with it, this would have to be discussed in more detail, but I'm not going to for the moment. Ed. 2. This does seem to confirm that AlwaysApplyOnHitEffects does nothing, and BaseIntensity is where it's at. Some extra questions: a) since it's the author of the Scabbard mod I'm conversing with here, I take it's normal for the scabbards to kill game performance, as bad as if not worse than excessive grass? In theory, my PC is superior to anything from the days of The Witcher's release in 2007, but there is still stuttering/slowdowns in highly populated areas (worse with scabbards) or very grassy areas. Not really bad, but noticeable. And pretty much the only graphics setting that improves anything is turning grass off. Otherwise performance is the same at low and high settings. b) How do critical effects work on enemies anyway? From what I've noticed, they are not very worthwhile in the vanilla game. Pain basically just informs you that the enemy is in pain and on some human enemies there's a pain animation. Bleeding and poison are very mild HP drains. Blinding I haven't seen yet, since the one reliable way to inflict this, Fast Silver 4, tends to kill its target. Knockdown and stun are good, but I haven't really seen its duration increase, so its improvement must be in greater chance of infliction instead. Disarm probably works, but fast style kills Salamanders so fast I don't really see if they get disarmed. I haven't managed to dislodge a shield yet. Incineration tends to be too mild compared to raw Igni damage. Precise hit is god mode. Geralt, on the other hand, suffers from critical effects as he should. Poison, incineration and bleeding are slow death sentences, knockdown, stunning, pain and blinding are very bad and stop him cold and no-one has ever managed to perform a disarm or precise hit on my Geralt. So I' kinda stumped as to why there are so few enemies that reliably inflict critical effects and why Geralt's versions apart from Stun/Knockdown are so wimpy. This kinda makes a third of the oils useless. c) Is there a way to remove the annoying special effects from Cat and De Vries potions? They are supposed to improve visibility, not degrade it. d) Why do attacks under the influence of Blizzard suddenly speed up compared to the generally slo-mo Blizzard trip? Geralt swims around in a red haze, hits someone and suddenly goes zip, whacks the badguy quickly with whatever style he's currently favouring, and slows down again. e) Does the Wolverine potion apply its effects all the time or when Vitality is less than half (current?, original, non-Full Moon?) maximum? f) Is the time a powerup attack takes defined in any of the accessible scripts? Or can I perhaps shorten it by cutting out some of its ~4 animations?

 

[Flash]

1. Yes, it's high quality iron, not "vs race" armor penetration.You can't assign medium to a sword with lua scripts. You can assign it to attack but attacks work regadless of steel sword. Also you can't duplicate the same attack with 2 different weapon types. Each attack has its place in sequence of attacks and the game won't be that smart to choose the right one basing on weapon type, instead it will crash. If you want to operate on medium within the same attack, don't duplicate whole definition, just add an alternative ("Alternates = {}") with desired condition. The problem is we don't know what is the pool of conditions possible to use. In witcher_att.lua there are only 2 condition types: AbilityRequired and FreeDirection. Being limited to AbilityRequired you'll need to create ncs script which adds placeholder ability. This ability is only needed to use the alternative attack with different medium, ability itself can do nothing. Attach this ncs script with add ability to meteorite swords userdefined slot. Ideally this ability should be added with on_equip_to_hand event and removed on_unequip_from_hand. Drawing the sword will add ability, sheathing it will remove ability. This way ability will enforce alternate attack with desired medium.Ed. 2. Yes, although setting AlwaysApplyOnHitEffects to false might have unpleasent results. Haven't tested it though.a) Scabbards themself are low poly models which shouldn't hit the performance. Shouldn't but they do. It is engine fault, nothing I can do about it. It's the same ancient Aurora engine we see in Neverwinter Nights... If you want to use scabbards try 1.01 version of the mod with scabbards only for Geralt, not for NPCs.b) Check crteffects.lua. All critical effects are very worthwile. In vanilla game both pain and bleeding reduce enemy attack values by 50 points. Without going into details, it's like reducing enemy accuracy by 50%.c) You need to change StartingAction and EndingAction of these potions in potion_abl.lua but I don't see the reason why bother. Cat is working very well, can't imagine going into dark crypts, caves and sewers without it. De Vries I just never use.d) Attack don't speed up, it's other moves that slow down. You movement is slower but attacks are at normal speed. Attack animations can't be modified the way movenent speed is.e) Only when Vitality is lower or equal to half of current maximum value.f) There's no way to edit attack animation speed and events.

 

[Juku121]

1. Why doesn't it choose an attack based on type? I thought that was basically the reason why attacks had weapon types in them, to link attacks to weapons. How does it differentiate between sword, dagger and two-handed attacks then? And if the game is does not distinguish between attacks based on weapon type, how come it crashes instead of picking the first one? I can see it crashing maybe because the names of the attacks were still the same, so I had two entries with the same name. The script idea is nice, but I'll go with it only as a last resort. There's gotta be a way to simulate the dagger/axe/hammer distinction with swords. And at least Geralt's statistics are also possible conditions, e.g. the Bloody Rage series. a) Having only Geralt use scabbards does work better. On occasion I get the "feature" of having an extra scabbard on my hip if I only have two swords on my back, but this isn't immersion-breaking. b) OK. I still gotta say that Geralt gets hit with both pain and bleeding way harder than a lot of enemies though. He basically freezes/loses significant portions of his health bar, in addition to whatever attack maluses. Is there any way to simulate this? c) Cat works nice, except the blurred screen edges effect which actually degrades vision for me in outdoor areas, even at night. It does not seem to happen all the time though, so maybe it is supposed to be stress-induced tunnel vision? De Vries basically kills most graphics. It's good to experience once, for novelty. d) Oh. Yes, that does seem to be the case. I can live with it, even if its kinda awkward. e) In this case the interface description (on the circle surrounding the medallion) is misleading and the journal entry is correct. f) No, I mean if I took out some of the animations from the attacks script entirely. There are about 4 of them for sword powerups, if I took out 2, would it make the powerup phase faster in addition to skipping the animations?

 

[Flash]

1. The game does distinguish weapon types, it's just that it doesn't place an attack in sequence tree basing on it. Weapon type is one of many things that describe an attack but the game use attack name, not weapon type, to place it in correct order in the sequence. You can't have 2 attacks with the same name and if you change the name, it won't be used in sequence because the game won't recognize new custom name. Names are stored in other scripts which modders don't have access to.b) Simulate where? On enemies? You can try copy/paste settings from the effect level which affects player to levels which affect enemies but it's good as it is. You'd become overpowered if inflicting critical effect would render enemies immobile.e) Vanilla descriptions aren't too precise. Many things are simplified or not mentioned.f) Each of these animations is full attack animation. Removing one won't shorten your attack, it will remove whole attack. There are 4 because same attack has animation in which Geralt swings from the left side and from the right side with 2 different conditions.

 

[Juku121]

1. OK. So basically I can define new attacks for new weapon types, I just cannot have more than 1 attack (well, technically a bunch of them, with alternates) to link with others in style combos. So if I went and copied the Steel tree and renamed attacks, all I'd ever get would be the first attack, just like daggers/axes/hammers? This sounds kinda counter-intuitive, but the developers also seem to have a dozen or more slightly different "templates" for each creature, so...b) Yes, ideally the effects should be identical and there should be more enemies who inflict them upon Geralt, to compensate for his improved performance. As it is now, inflicting pain gives little in the way of visible benefits. They may be hitting less often when in pain, but usually I'm either untouchable anyway, or they can mess me up bad and I'm not going to fight them in hand-to-claw combat. If pain did the same (but a definitely not as long-lasting) disabling trick on enemies, I could reasonably engage in swordfights with difficult enemies, not run around and blast them with signs. My basic idea is that there should be more instances like men-at-arms trying to put out the fires in their clothing or cringing in pain AND Geralt doing the same. Too much of the combat relies on pure damage as it is. f) Oh. So I'm basically stuck with what I have. There does seem to be a bit of difference between how fast the progress bar fill for different powerups. I am not completely certain I'm not seeing things though. Perhaps it varies with, say, sign level?

 

[Flash]

1. I'm not sure I understand you. You can make as many attacks as you want and assign them to enemies but you can't assign new attacks to Geralt, because his attacks are connected with skill tree, sequence system and user interface. It's more complicated for Geralt and modders don't have access to all necessary files. You can't add new attacks for Geralt, you can only modify existing attacks.b) Yes, critical effects give little in the way of visible benefits if visible means graphical. The benefits from bleeding and pain are huge already. You might not notice it because vanilla game is already so easy that you are almost at godmode without criticals. You can easily notice how powerful critical effects are in difficulty mods, like Flash Mod where enemies accuracy is much higher and pain + bleeding is absolutely necessary to survive.

 

[Juku121]

1. Tested it and it seems you're right. If I just put in a single attack for type = Placeholder3, nothing crahed (the previous crash was probably due to an extra comma :wall, but the Placeholder3 sword functioned exactly like a steel sword. I can also see why: since Geralt's abilities are added at the beginning of a module, my spanking new attack just falls through the cracks. Even if I got to load up my new abilities without breaking something else, the combo linking problem would still be there. I kinda looked at putting in a new weapon ability (Meteorite_iron), increasing damage several times if the opponent happens to be of susceptible race. It's simple and it does work, but this way steel damage will always be a multiple of meteorite iron damage. And I couldn't get to allow for several races. I cannibalized several scripts into a part that looked like (I don't have the file on hand and the calls are not syntactically correct, but the gist of it is there):

DefAbility{     Attr{         Damage_mult=100     },     Condition{         Opponent_Race = {             3,             4,              5,             6,             7,             8,             op="OR"         }    }}

and it didn't work. But

DefAbility{     Attr{         Damage_mult=100     },     Condition{         Opponent_Race = 3    }}

did work. Any idea why? b) Fine. I should get to playing FCR at some point and see what you mean firsthand. In the meantime, is there no way (i.e. no animations etc.) to have non-human(oid)s cringe in pains etc? At the moment they seem to circle a bit without swinging if "Pain" flashes over their head, but again I'm not sure I'm not imagining things. I thought up a number of other things I'm not so certain about, so I figured I can just ask some more stupid questions. A) What exactly determines when a monster spawns/respawns. I can't see much difference in the spawnsets for e.g. Act IV drowners and the Bruxa+Alps squad in the Lakeside Crypt. And do several opponents go to the same spawn point if there are too many of them in the spawnset? B) I take it its impossible to have enemies go down with the strike that kills them instead of at the end of the corresponding attack animation?C) What governs the night-time Salamandra appearances in the Trade and Temple Quarters of Vizima? D) How can I make Act V and Epilogue enemies drop their weapons for good? All templates I've seen have weapons as unlootable, but earlier enemies do drop stuff. E) I guess the shiny Aerondight model hasn't been improved upon by fans? It would be nice for Aerondight to have a unique model, but the current alternative is just a shiny shell. F) What are Koster's settings for gambling, i.e. which line does he correspond to in the gambling .2da?G) I take it there is no way to collect rune swords as we can do with the meteorite ones? H) Is backstabbing actually in the game? There's a talent to defend against it and FCR/Flash mod seem to have it, but vanilla?I) I guess having stun/KD finishing moves for short/2-handed weapons falls under 1, i.e. no new abilities allowed. J) Do spawnsets scale with Geralt's level and how?K) Are talismans also among those items the scripts of which we do not have access to? The anti-vampire talisman is a particularly bad specimen. L) Is there a way to make Places of Power only show up if you've got your medallion set to detecting them?

 

[guenthar]

Just to let you know Steel is aniron and carbon composite so having creatures be vulnerable to Meteoric Iron and not Steel doesn't make sense. Also the reason why the Witchers kill monsters rather then normal people or mercenaries is because the monsters are stronger then humans and the Witchers are made stronger through the mutation they go through. I do agree that some monsters should be vulnerable to steel so does anyone know what monsters in the books are vulnerable to steel?

 

[Juku121]

I'm well aware that steel is an iron and (mainly) carbon alloy. But there are myhological grounds for "faeries" to be sensitive to "cold iron" (i.e. cold-worked), not to mention the D&D tradition with a mind-boggling variety of demonic and lycanthrope sensitivities to all kinds of mediums and substances. As to why it works when it shouldn't, this is easy. It's magic. While ingame even common folk know what genetic mutations are (or at least the appropriate slogans), I do not see the Witcher universe as inherently "hard" fantasy as, say, Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions". So specially worked meteorite iron can have the same kind of impact as silver, or virgin tears, or pure love, whereas weapons-grade steel fails, as do prostitute tears, selfish love and Eternal Fire vs the Beast. And if steel was good enough against monsters, at least those from the books could easily be dealt with by a few men-at-arms, except the only-sensitive-to-silver variety. Why does Geralt hunt ghouls, drowners and kikimores, if all it takes is half a dozen men who do not shy from violence and know which end goes into the monster? I don't actually know, since at some point in the Last Wish, Geralt mentions a bunch of peasants killing a dragon, but my personal take is that most monsters are either insubstantial or so heavily armored that to stand a reasonable chance of defeating them, you'd need a company-sized unit with steel weapons or a witcher with specifically tailored weapons (or a squad with special weapons). That'd make it cost-effective to hire a witcher. Any idea where I went wrong with the disjunction condition in the script though?