THIS SCRIPT WAS COMPILED IN NWN:EE. IT MAY NOT FUNCTION AS INTENDED IN OLDER VERSIONS OF NWN.
Has anyone ever wondered why torches don't really do anything in NWN? I mean...they do shed light, but unlike PnP, that light doesn't actually have any tangible mechanical effect on the characters. A human or halfling can fight just as well in a pitch-black cave as they can in the daylight. Surely they should actually be at some form of disadvantage against all of the orcs/drow/half-dragon were-bunnies that may be lurking in that cave, right? Well without further ado, I'd like to present my own little system to make all of those Rings of Crimson cluttering up your inventory actually worth their price tag. The True Darkness System is a simple pair of scripts that allow a builder to dynamically tag any area/areas they like in their module as Dark areas. Any PC in one of these areas will need either some form of enhanced vision, or a light source (carried either by themselves, or a henchman), or they will suffer penalties in combat - namely a 50% miss chance on attacks (similar to that provided by the Darkness spell), and a -2 AC penalty. Both of these numbers are easily configurable for anyone who wishes to make things easier/harder on their players. Naturally, if the PC finds some source of light, or retreats outside into the sunlight, they will be able to see again, and will no longer suffer these disadvantages.
I intend to find time at some point to add in a trigger-based system for defining lit rooms within areas tagged as dark, but this should be perfectly servicable in it's current form, so I thought I might as well put it out here for anyone who might be interested.
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I guess people just don't care for darkness based mods. i think its a great idea however and worth commenting about :)
Thanks! Always nice to have some feedback.
Don't be disheartened by the take up of your work in this instance. I have found that some more specialised items take longer to take off.
TR
Thanks. I'm not too worried by numbers on this in all honesty - I kinda knew when I posted it that it was likely to be a niche thing. Not every module really needs something like this, but if there's a module that does, there's one here now in any case.
This is incredibly essential.
I really like this! So much so that I was able to export it into non-EE modules and have edited it in a couple of ways. If you want, I can message you the edits - I was able to find one way to put in a variable check on the oArea in addition to the TAG check, figure out one way to get a trigger toggle script working and also one way to move it from the heartbeat to the "default" script. I could also just post it and link it here.
I'd certainly be interested in being messaged the edits - I'm especially curious how you got it away from the Heartbeat function, I wasn't quite sure how to manage something like that. I've been a bit preoccupied the last few days to work on implementing triggers sadly, too much to do right now.
This is a great start! Thank you so much!
Ideally, the script should apply to all of a PC's associates (incl. dominated & charmed) and also calculate how close the PC or associate is to a given light source and how powerful that light source is. After all, just because a slinger is holding a torch in his left hand, doesn't mean he can attack a goblin 40 meters away without significant penalties.
Very good points I had not thought about.
@BemusedManatee does this still work in EE after the latest patch changed the lighting system?
TR