Serpent Isle Fixes - A bunch of issues

[Gotcha!]

No idea if I should post it here, since you guys aren't directly related to this mod, but the creator is around here as well, are you not?

Anyway, I'm playing Serpent Isle, latest snapshot (1.5.0,2015-03-19) with the Serpent Isle Fixes mod (0.15.09) and am encountering a lot of small issues, including a game breaking one.
I haven't really been keeping track, but here are some important issues:

Flikken's dialogue doesn't always pop up when talking to him at the gate at the start of the game. Some lines are invisible, portrait included.
Siranush has the same issue, as well as the three banes when you peek at them through the lens/web of fate etc.
This also happens without the mod installed! Just did a quick test with Flikken. Hmm...

The only reason I use this mod is to see Chantra normal again, don't really care about the other stuff. Although I was kinda disappointed that the Serpent Bond trick doesn't work anymore when going into the dream realm. (I'm a hoardaholic.)
However, to my amazement my party popped up after spending some time in the dream realm, so this issue isn't fixed. They were just there after spending, dunno, 10 minutes in there.

After the Great Dying (Batlin's Death) Lydia and Voldin turned to 'living bodies' again. Lydia is kneeling down in my game and Voldin is lying down. They both can't be interacted with and can't be attacked.
So yeah, they're not living I guess, but they are no longer 'container bodies'.

The three banes can't be picked up when you defeat them on the elevated platform where their thrones are at. They drop dead below this platform.
If you're lucky you can drag their corpses out into the open if they're not completely buried, otherwise you have to hackmove the platform away.

The thing that makes me want to post here though is that Dupre can't be resurrected after you defeat the banes. I am nowhere near his sacrifice yet so there's definitely something broken here. I had to fool around with Exult Studio to resurrect him, bring him to me (he was invisible or below the floor, somewhere in Skullcrusher) and, well, did some other random stuff until he was in a resurrected state, standing next to his twin body. So right now the mod is a game breaker, or at least it is in my game.

Just wanted to toss this out there.

Disclaimer: I figure these problems have to do with the mod but since Flikken's dialogue seems broken in a modless game as well...
I am aware a newer version for the Serpent Isle Fixes mod exists, but it only seems to fix some sails.
Also, in my opinion it's a pity that you allow the avatar to ask Shamino to change the display of time. It's rather immersion breaking. Would work better as a menu option.

[Dominus]

Thanks for reporting!

1. you NEED the latest SI fixes from our download page. Not only the sails were fixed
2. we need savegames to test, verify, fix, verify these
3. Flikken is a known bug in the bug tracker

[Gotcha!]

"1. you NEED the latest SI fixes from our download page. Not only the sails were fixed"

I was afraid of that. To be honest, I picked up the mod from another website (http://exult.info/seventowers/downloads.php?section=0), only finding out later it could be found right here, and ofcourse a newer version. Doh. x)

If still needed I can pass on my savegames, have been saving regularly in new slots throughout the game, but it seems to me it'd be better to replay the game with the latest SI Fixes installed. :\

[Dominus]

It might be better, yes. But the fixes might also just work.
The version on Marzo's site is just really really old and a couple of usecode compiler bugs were fixed as well as other little stuff. I begged Marzo to point at our download page a couple of times... ;(

As for the Flicken bug, see https://sourceforge.net/p/exult/bugs/1901/

[Gotcha!]

Thanks for the feedback.
Next time I'm playing through the game I'll remind myself to be sure to get the mod from here.

[Dominus]

If you don't plan to do that soonish, I would still like to have the savegames to do some testing
So if you have time to sort them out, please send then to my email address!

[Gotcha!]

Oh, it wasn't clear to me that you wanted them. Sure thing!

[Gotcha!]

Okay, this is rather infuriating.

With my last savegame I went back to find Lydia and Voldin's 'corpses' to make screenshots and they're gone. Lydia was close to the well. Checked the whole of Monitor to be sure and she's gone. So that problem sorted itself out somehow. (Possibly by saving/loading? See below.)
Teaches me not to make screenshots right from the start. >_<
So scrap that I guess.

To make matters worse, I didn't have a savegame anymore from the point where I couldn't resurrect Dupre so I killed the banes again and took their bodies to Monk Isle... where Dupre was properly resurrected! That made me go back to the banes fight again and redo exactly what I did last night, and this made the problem thankfully return. However, it seems that saving and loading the game fixes the problem regardless!

This is what I did: At the fight I poisoned all banes from the two nearby wells, just for laughs. This might or might not be important. You be the judge. I also cast Mass Sleep for an easy fight. And I noticed, just like I noticed last night, that Dupre says his "Vanquished! By a mere mortal!" line twice. Once when I killed him and once weirdly enough after all three banes were dead. I didn't notice this when I killed them without putting them to sleep.
After that I went to Monk Isle to have them resurrected and Dupre couldn't be resurrected.

Then I tried it again, poisoned them, put them to sleep and killed them. This time both Dupre AND Iolo said their death line twice and BOTH couldn't be resurrected. So there's something about them being killed while sleeping, perhaps also due to being poisoned. To reproduce this you really need to be sure they're asleep while you kill them, casting Mass Sleep more than once when needed. If they're awake when I killed them there wasn't a problem.

I don't know if the vanilla game would also have this problem since it has been eons since I last played it and memories can be deceiving.

If you want to try out the Serpent Bond-Dream Realm thing, just load the Gorlab Swamp savegame, turn into a serpent and go on your business in the dream realm. For me my party appeared after a while. I basically visited nearly all locations, came across the chest with the gold bars in it, pitied myself for not being able to hoard all that for making a mountain of gold later and not long after that my party appeared.

Mind, I haven't installed the newest SI Fixes or anything, just started the game unchanged.

Here are my savegames, uploaded them together with some screenshots of the banes hiding below that platform. I got really unlucky last night and could hardly grab all the bodies. Tried multiple times now and usually there's at least a leg to grab. I've screenshotted 3 instances where bodies were gone or nearly gone.

http://avatar.home.xs4all.nl/crap/u7si-saves.rar
http://avatar.home.xs4all.nl/crap/u7si-banes1.png
http://avatar.home.xs4all.nl/crap/u7si-banes2.png
http://avatar.home.xs4all.nl/crap/u7si-banes3.png

[Dominus]

hmm, seems Voldin/Lydia (probably the Banes, too) is a problem of Exult
Happens in a non modded game as well. Need to investigate

[Dominus]

more hmmmm,
I think it has something to do with using the teleport cheat too often/early. When I teleported to Fawn directly after the Batlin death scene (and Guardian and Earth Serpent speaking) I'd get a weird Voldin body. But if I walked a bit first away from the wall and then teleported everything was fine.
Did you make excessive use of the teleport cheat as well?

[Gotcha!]

Not excessively, but I did teleport now and then to the place where I store my loot.
Whenever my inventory was full and didn't have a direct path to Monitor (where I store all the loot in the broken ship), like when you first get to Moonshade, I'd quickly teleport to the ship and then back to where I was.

I also left useful stuff on the ground at the beginning of the game (magebane/spellbook etc.) and teleported there to pick them up again. So I did teleport right from the start.

Other than that I didn't teleport, and not too often, but I did teleport early, that's for sure.

[Dominus]

So, could it be that you teleported right to your storage because of the stuffthe three stoiges left behind?

[Gotcha!]

I dunno what stoiges are. Did you mean stooges?
If you mean the banes, then nope, I didn't teleport out or in of the castle. There's almost no noteable loot in that castle and the banes don't leave anything either. And there was no need for it, with a serpent gate so nearby and the tooth in my possession.

I teleported maybe 3 or 4 times in total. Once in Moonshade after the Mountains of Freedom, once in Spinebreaker, just before the encounter with Batlin and once after the Ice Dragon island ordeal, all situations where I couldn't resist doing a quick teleport to stop my own spine from breaking due to my item hoarding OCD.

I sometime dream of doing a playthrough where I just leave items behind in favour of a better item I just found, but my OCD keeps forbidding it.
"Oooh, another Sword of Defense! I have 14 of them already, but it's magic, so need to store it!"
It's terrible...

[Dominus]

Sorry, typo, yes stooges
And I meant after the Batlin death scene, when they leave all their belongings on the floor after the banes take over.
Anyway, strange.

[Gotcha!]

Nope, after Batlin's death I just took Iolo/Shamino/Dupre's stuff and traveled to Monk Isle normally, where I dropped off their backpacks so they could pick them up later.

Now that you mention it, I did wonder what would happen if I'd take the Dispel Field scroll after killing the stooges and didn't immediately visit Batlin. I'm sure I teleported directly from where the stooges were to Skullcrusher, got the Gwani Horn, teleported to the Gwani Island 'o Death, got Gwenno, resurrected her at Monk Isle, got the Water of Discipline (can be done without Petra, by healing yourself after every few steps) to make her normal again and, well, nothing game breaking happened.
Funny thing was that pre-bane Iolo and Gwenno didn't say hi to eachother.

So I teleported quite a bit there, since I figured I'd break the game anyway and had to reload. But nothing broke and so I kept playing.

[Dominus]

So far I thought only Monk Island was error prone when you teleport there. I need to investigate further but it is likely a strange error only... (at least Voldin and Lydia)

[Gotcha!]

I can imagine, since you're basically avoiding a bunch of triggers whenever you teleport. But I don't exactly know the workings of the game ofcourse.

I do know that I never teleport anywhere where I can't normally get to yet, out of fear of triggering something game breaking.

[Dominus]

Serpent bond trick -> that's curios, with latest SI fixes and your savegame the companions *did not* arrive in the dreamworld. I left it running for quite some time.

With an old savegame I had they *did* arrive... after a long time, longer than serpent bond is supposed to work but it happened.

With a new game, it worked correctly as well...

Soooo, no idea, seems it is fixed by a newer version of SI fixes and newer savegames while it isn't fixed for old saves...

[Dominus]

I couldn't reproduce the banes bug as well. tried my best to poison them and put them to sleep but everything went fine.
I didn't haul them to Monk Isle, though. I just called Thoxa through the hourglass and she instant resurrected them (of course they just ran into the fire fields and died again )

The body placement is bad though and I can reproduce both in normal and modded play.

[Gotcha!]

I installed the latest SI Fixes and loaded the banes savegame to give it a go and indeed, I couldn't reproduce it either. With the previous SI Fixes I could reproduce it every time.

I bet I would have had no issues whatsoever if I took the SI Fixes from here. Ah well. Here's hoping you didn't waste too much of your time. ^_^'

Here's hoping no one else downloads that old version from that website.

Thanks for your interest and devotion.

[Dominus]

Thanks to you for reporting all this. We need this (even when it ends up as invalid bugs)!

[Gotcha!]

You're welcome. Will report stuff when doing another playthrough, as always.
Have to say, there's not much to report, had nothing to report in The Black Gate even.
You guys are awesome, but you know that.

[Dominus]

let me look at our bugs list... I wish we were truly awesome

[Gotcha!]

I played Ultima 7 back where I had to boot my 486 with a bootdisk to scrounge together every bit of memory to run it. And the games still ran like a 3-legged dog.

Thanks to you guys people can run these hard to run games widescreen, in Windows 10, with a ton of added options. I still think it's unbelievable.

They're by far my favourite games ever made and you kept them from falling into nothingness, so yeah, you bet you're awesome.
No modesty needed.

[Dominus]

Marzo fixed the Flicken bug (use newest Exult snapshot) and I have a proposed fix for the bane bodies disappearing beneath the carpet (but need Marzo to nod the fix off ).

[Gotcha!]

Awesome, thanks.