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I like Serena

For those interested, I have just release a new version of the Tweaker (0.2.8) that allows you to conjure any of the prefab artifacts. jive

Oh! There are also a couple of other new features and improvements. See this post.

Anthony · March 28th, 2014, 20:01

Okay, I was thinking about this, and I realize that the Insecticide code is borked, because what the 'special' flag really indicates is 'does this item have any abilities that can only be added with Create Artifact' (cost 250+). Anyway, item fixer results:
All 'misc' items with stat bonuses are priced wrong and don't charge double for stat bonuses on a misc.
All 'chain' and 'plate' items are priced wrong and don't give the defense bonus for chain/plate.
Many items have the wrong book requirements, usually it's just in the wrong order (e.g. cloak of the aerie is chaos 3 life 2 and should be sorcery 3 death 2).

I created a fixed version of itemdata.lbx in this thread.

FrancoK · March 14th, 2015, 05:23

(October 26th, 2013, 07:12)I like Serena Wrote: Investigated some more and there is more.

Here's the table how the function that selects a prefab item is called.

Code:
Source Type Spellbooks Value Event gift of the gods 2 Receiver 0 Merchant 0 12-12-12-12-12 0 Lair v1.31 registered-item-value Receiver 0 Lair v1.40n 0 Receiver registered-item-value Lair failed special 0 Receiver 1200 AI casts enchant item 1 Receiver 1000 AI casts create artifact 2 Receiver 30000

Quote:When generating an item with random powers, we get:

Code:
generate an item with random powers(type, value): if (value = 0) treat as random value 700 - 1700 if (type = 1) generate 2 powers with max cost 200 if (type = 0) generate 3 powers with max cost 20000 if (type = 2) generate 4 powers with max cost 20000

So value 0 for gods given and merchant means the item value is between 700 - 1700, correct?
But if AI fails to finds a precreated item will generate one 3 powers with max cost 20000 for merchant and 4 powers with max cost 20000 for gods given, I'm right?

Where can we mod this values? rolleye

Expecially those:

Quote: if (value = 0) treat as random value 700 - 1700
if (type = 1) generate 2 powers with max cost 200

Quote:The algorithm (v1.31) is:

Code:
find_item(type, spellbooks, value): try 50 times or until found select randomly from the 250 prefab items if (item in game) try again if (not enough spellbooks) try again if (type = 1 AND special item*) try again if (type = 2 AND NOT special item) try again if (value != 0 AND (item cost < value / 2 OR item cost > value)) try again if (no item found) generate an item with random powers

*The Unk37 column indicates if the item is a "special item".

The algorithm (v1.40n) is:

Code:
find_item(type, spellbooks, value): try 50 times or until found select randomly from the 250 prefab items if (item in game) try again if (type >= 1 AND not enough spellbooks) try again if (type = 0 AND special item) try again if (value != 0 AND (item cost < value / 2 OR item cost > value)) try again if (no item found) generate an item with random powers

As you can see there are some subtle differences in Insecticide.

Sure: special items can't be found in lairs.

How can I mod the 50 times to make them, let's say, 250 times?

(October 29th, 2013, 18:56)I like Serena Wrote:
(October 26th, 2013, 08:38)I like Serena Wrote: In Insecticide 1.40n we can make a "fix".
Currently wizards.exe:8da06 contains 7Ch.
Change it into EBh and you'll drop the requirement that an item in a lair or from the merchant must be non-special.
(This won't work in v1.31.)

I'm going to try this now.

I have checked that my "fix" for Insecticide works.
You still won't find the most powerful items, since lairs never have items of value over 2500.
But any item up to a cost of 2500 can be found now.
That leaves 41 items cannot be found in a lair, but they can come from a merchant or from the gods.

Very good, maybe we can revert this in Insecticide O.
Exactly what is the new code with this "fix"? popcorn

kyrub

Hi guys,
in 1.40, I tried to fix the item giving ACCORDING to what the Official standard guide says in Appendix C, pp.418-420, about giving treasure. I am quite sure there was a definite bug in the 1.31 routine.

I believe I was correct to
a) separate the Divine gift routine from book requirements
b) correcting the book requirements reading (I hope I did it right, this was one of my first fixes in Insecticide) - I admit that the rewards have become more predictable, but that's how Insecticide works: it corrects according to the OSG.

What I totally missed, is the special flag removing some objects from the consideration. This is a gross mistake and it should be corrected as ILSE points out.

---

It was Lydon, who discovered the bug through thouroughful testing (see spoiler below with 1.31 test he undertook with Jafar (all Sorcery books), but Jafar only got artifacts with Nature book requirements. The bug is, that the data for book requirements (this is mentioned in the OSG that you should only find the items in the lairs that you have the book requirements for) are incorrectly written in the Itemdata.LBX. I think that the Item creator writes the data incorrectly into the LBX file. This resulted in a very limited poll of items (see Lydon's test!).

These are my email notes from a discussion with Lydon, who discovered the bug in 1.31:

Lydon's 1.31 test that lead to the discovery.

FrancoK

(March 23rd, 2015, 19:32)kyrub Wrote: Hi guys,
in 1.40, I tried to fix the item giving ACCORDING to what the Official standard guide says in Appendix C, pp.418-420, about giving treasure. I am quite sure there was a definite bug in the 1.31 routine.

I believe I was correct to
a) separate the Divine gift routine from book requirements
b) correcting the book requirements reading (I hope I did it right, this was one of my first fixes in Insecticide) - I admit that the rewards have become more predictable, but that's how Insecticide works: it corrects according to the OSG.

What I totally missed, is the special flag removing some objects from the consideration. This is a gross mistake and it should be corrected as ILSE points out.

Agree.
Except for the book requirements, I'll discuss it later, fixing the special item flag check (along with all the previous fix you've done) should let the game generate the right kind of magic object. jive

Since a premade object is more balanced than a random one, I would increase from 50 to 250 the number of time the games tries to find an acceptable object, before giving up and creating a random object. nod

As already noted (Anthony, few post before) the plate and the mail for already generated object do not get the +2 or +1 bonus. In effects I've replicated a plate found in a lair and, with the same enchantment, and the final value of the created plate defense is 2 point higher than the premade one. Can this be fixed?

Finally IMHO defeating a node that should be worth 1 book should give more than an object with a value of 1200, after various checking (to premade objects) I think 5000 is more likely. For a node worth 2 book, double it to 10000.

About book requirements.

Some objects have a book requirement so high they could not be found, maybe they are made this way so only from a Gift from the gods can handle it; maybe they was "temporary" set to be unavailable waiting to fix a bug (merge?). Maybe we can remove/substitute them?

Other book requirement are simply illogical (death+life) AFAIK, the requirement to "find" an object cannot be higher than the one to create it. It should be lower or equal at best. What do you think?

Anthony · March 23rd, 2015, 21:18

The easiest fix for the book requirements is just changing itemdata.lbx, which I did here. Also fixed several too low defense ratings for chain and plate, too low cost for misc items.

FrancoK · March 24th, 2015, 07:26

(March 23rd, 2015, 21:18)Anthony Wrote: The easiest fix for the book requirements is just changing itemdata.lbx, which I did here.

Good! So using that itemdata.lbx let me (or another user) change the items with itemmake or tweaker and the object will have the correct value in the game, right?

kyrub · March 24th, 2015, 07:27

@FrancoK
50 => 250 cycles
I agree.

Itemdata.lbx seems to be a mess. @Anthony presumably did all that was necessary. Did you (Anthony) test the book requirements, do they work as intended? Also, if the requirements are higher than the threshold needed to create them (as @FrancoK says), they should be leveled, no? Anthony, can you do it or did you already? I am ready and willing to incorporate your work into Insecticide, if you permit (with recognition of the author, obviously).

@FrancoK
I refuse to change the reward prices in Insecticide, it is a conservative patch. Mods are another story.

Last idea:
I struggle to understand the game logic behind book requirements for lair findings (I mean: you find what you find, even if you cannot create it). The only one I can imagine is technical: they tried to preserve the importance of creation of artifacts so they did not want the lairs to be a better source of items. It seems like poor design and items tend to be repetitive. I'd be better with lesser items with no book requirements or substantially cheaper creation. Maybe I could insert a Game option that bypasses book check for lairs.

Anthony

(March 24th, 2015, 07:27)kyrub Wrote: Itemdata.lbx seems to be a mess. @Anthony presumably did all that was necessary. Did you (Anthony) test the book requirements, do they work as intended?

I never actually tested my mod, since I use a patch that removes book requirements for lairs, though the defense fix works. What I did was create a master list of what I thought each enchantment should require, and then overwrote the requirements for the item. I also put in a book requirement in the range 1-8 (1 for the first 5 commons, 2 for the next five, etc) for spell charges, since there's no way to support 'must know the spell being enchanted into the item').

As far as conservatism of mods goes, a conservative mod would allow finding items you can't craft in lairs, since in fact (because of bugged books) you could do so before. It would also allow finding powerful items, since again...

The only items that require impossible numbers of books are items with Merging, or items that have multiple traits that require large numbers of books (e.g. the Sword of Pendulum, which has Lightning (5 chaos), Vampiric (5 death), and Phantasmal (6 Sorcery). There's no really clear way of fixing that other than removing one or more traits from the item, though since it also costs 3700 it's unlikely to matter.

FrancoK · March 24th, 2015, 13:13

(March 24th, 2015, 07:27)kyrub Wrote: @FrancoK
50 => 250 cycles
I agree.

Quote:Itemdata.lbx seems to be a mess. @Anthony presumably did all that was necessary. Did you (Anthony) test the book requirements, do they work as intended? Also, if the requirements are higher than the threshold needed to create them (as @FrancoK says), they should be leveled, no? Anthony, can you do it or did you already? I am ready and willing to incorporate your work into Insecticide, if you permit (with recognition of the author, obviously).

What about the volcanoes fix and round count by Asfex? smile

Quote:@FrancoK
I refuse to change the reward prices in Insecticide, it is a conservative patch. Mods are another story.

Good. I've already inserted it in my mod and found it more balanced, but I appreciate your distinction between patch and mod. bow

Quote:Last idea:
I struggle to understand the game logic behind book requirements for lair findings (I mean: you find what you find, even if you cannot create it). The only one I can imagine is technical: they tried to preserve the importance of creation of artifacts so they did not want the lairs to be a better source of items. It seems like poor design and items tend to be repetitive. I'd be better with lesser items with no book requirements or substantially cheaper creation. Maybe I could insert a Game option that bypasses book check for lairs.

That would be VERY nice. thumbsup

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