Arelith

So I received a message informing me that the "UV bug" where everything turns invisible when UV wears off (but not reliably) is actually a bug with how the spell interacts with darkness. So I suggested a few alternative methods of fixing the bug, only to find out the people who PM'd me aren't affiliated with the Dev team, and would have no way of implementing said suggestions. So I figured I'd start a thread to help out. I worked as a programmer for years, and found out that some of the time the best ideas come from people who don't know what they are talking about, so hopefully, if nothing in here works, it at least sparks an idea in a developer that does work.

Idea 1: Create a spell (DarknessJunior) that is just a copy/pasted version of darkness with two exceptions. First, reduce the radius to a size so small it only envelopes the target, and nobody else. Second, reduce the duration as much as possible, just long enough for the character to register that they are in darkness. Finally, add to the UV script so that, when the spell wears off, it applies this "DarknessJunior" spell to the creature it wore off of. I have tested IG to see if casting Darkness on someone under the effects of the UV bug fixes the bug, and it does when the spell expires, so theoretically, if this is possible, it should work. And luckily, it doesn't even break immersion, it could simply be RP'd as your eyes adjusting to the sudden lack of magical vision.

Idea 2: Create a -command such as (-UVbug) that checks if the user is blind, in darkness, or any other sight-effecting spells, and, if they are not, refreshes the user's vision.

Please, feel free to post your own ideas alongside. I know this bug is old, but ~every~ bug can be fixed, all it takes is the right combination of time and ideas.

Darkness also seems to take away improved invisibility's concealment effect sometimes (not every time, but often.) I wonder if that's related to the same bug.

We could just change the Darkness spell to blind people for 1 round, with the duration refreshing every round they're in the AoE. (Basically like Incendiary Cloud.)
Ultravision could then simply prevent this scripted blindness effect from triggering, without granting people the "actual" Ultravision effect.

That way we'd circumvent the entire issue, no matter the cause, without changing much about the way things are right now :)

Kalopsia wrote: Sun Nov 22, 2020 8:01 pm We could just change the Darkness spell to blind people for 1 round, with the duration refreshing every round they're in the AoE. (Basically like Incendiary Cloud.)
Ultravision could then simply prevent this scripted blindness effect from triggering, without granting people the "actual" Ultravision effect.

That way we'd circumvent the entire issue, no matter the cause, without changing much about the way things are right now

Ooh, nice!

KeldonDonovans wrote: Sun Nov 22, 2020 7:50 pm Please, feel free to post your own ideas alongside. I know this bug is old, but ~every~ bug can be fixed, all it takes is the right combination of time and ideas.

This is not actually true. A lot of things are hardcoded and we can't do anything about them.

As far as the darkness bug, Bioware/Beamdog haven't fixed this in almost 20 years, so it's not something we can just wave our hands and magically make go away. While I would like to see it fixed, I wouldn't get your hopes up on it happening anytime soon. It's a much less pressing issue than the dispel CL breaking earlier this year, and Aniel spent dozens of hours fixing that one bug, because that one was much more game-breaking. We are all aware of the bug, and if we had an easy solution, we would have implemented it already.

garrbear758 wrote: Tue Nov 24, 2020 8:03 pm We are all aware of the bug, and if we had an easy solution, we would have implemented it already.

I agree with you on almost everything except this one line. I spent years as a programmer. In those years I have seen that a lot of programmers tend to approach things in the same way, or at least similar ways. A key point of that way is fixing the problem. That's not what the point of this feedback thread was, the point was to come up with a "rigged" way of working around the problem. Kalopsia alone came up with an idea that never would have occurred to me, and its a brilliant work around.

And every bug like this can be fixed or worked around. Even if Darkness and Ultravision both have hardcoded issues on Beamdog's side that we cant touch, we are still capable of making our own spells, and fixing those with our own spell scripts. That's all I was trying to say.

This is literally a hardcoded engine problem. It doesn't matter how good your coder is, it's literally not fixable because the engine's not open source.

The "fix" is just to not use the Darkness effect anymore and instea djust apply Blindness to anyone who walks within the AoE. I don't believe Blind has the same issue that the Darkness VFX does, but I also think the Darkness status is currently keyed to some thing for effects for Vampires and light sensitive races, so just removing it isn't really a fix so much as it breaks other things.