[v1.5.0+] Proper Possession/Possessor Tweaks

[Zizzo]

Although if we are thinking outside the box I guess an alternative would be to boost the healing by the amount of the Solipsism reduction. Well if you want to be accurate the boost would itself be affected so the numbers would be 18%-200% based on the level of reduction

That would also increase the amount of Psi restored by the heal, though, which would be a difficult-to-justify power boost to the talent.

[Hunter]

I already knew you were a prolific add-on developer who had made my game-life much less aggravating, but looking at three pages of newly updated add-ons, I realized just how much I've used your stuff. I like the Proper Possession one almost as much as the Zomnibus one, not for any perceived advantage (in the long run, it's really not particularly unbalancing because the Cannibalizing pretty much does the same thing) but because my preferred playstyle is creating a varied core of go-to bodies for various situations and various goals, which I consider a legitimate approach.

I had one idea I considered running past you for consideration, a quality-of-life one, but it seemed like it would be a difficult bit of programming. But as I was updating my add-ons today, I figured it couldn't hurt to ask, especially I actually have no idea what sort of programming it would entail and whether it was too difficult to be worth the effort. One of my main aggravations with possessors is the fact that different bodies have different priorities in talent placement on the toolbar. So one body might have certain talents that I want toward the beginning (I tend to group my talents according to general function, as I imagine most players do) but those same talent numbers will be associated with all sorts of different talents depending on the body, e.g. Nature's Touch might be possessor talent 6 on one body and put in the middle of my toolbar, but another body might have a sustain associated with possessor talent 6 that I might prefer to put in an entirely different section of my talent icons. What I'd really like is some sort of "persistence" in bodies. In other words, if I associate a possessor talent with hotkey shift-1 in given body, it will be remembered if I swap away from that body and then return to it later.

As I said, that sounds like a difficult, or at least annoying, bit of programming to me, but I figured I could at least suggest it. Even without that, I love the Proper Possession add-on for the flexibility it gives me in choosing my own playstyle.

[Zizzo]

What I'd really like is some sort of "persistence" in bodies. In other words, if I associate a possessor talent with hotkey shift-1 in given body, it will be remembered if I swap away from that body and then return to it later.

Yikes. I'm pretty sure some deep wizardry is involved in those hotkey assignments. I'll poke around in that area, but I can't promise anything.

[Hunter]

Yeah, even to my unexperienced (I took one computer science class, in high school, and don't remember a thing) eye, it sounded like a tough assignment. Thanks for looking into it, but even without, I love being able to create a kit of bodies like some people like to create equipment kits, so this is a great add-on.

[Zizzo]

In the meantime, pushing out v2b.2 for both, fixing a screwup in localization handling that would have blown up the Assume Form dialog if you had the "UI | Show body resources in Assume Form dialog" option turned on. Also, for Proper Possession only, a fix for something reported by a Steam user: apparently, Assume Form remembers a body's currently life when you possess it and caps the body's life at that level when you unpossess it — which is inconvenient if you unpossessed the body while it needed healing and repossessed it to heal later. We bump that cap up to the body's max life.

[Hunter]

Assume Form remembers a body's currently life when you possess it and caps the body's life at that level when you unpossess it — which is inconvenient if you unpossessed the body while it needed healing and repossessed it to heal later.

Yeah, that was an oddity. I never got inconvenienced by it because I never switched to said body in the middle of a fight, but it did stand out.-

[Hunter]

I think I have a more reasonable suggestion than my last one -- would it be possible to prominently mark stored bodies as "Antimagic" on the Possessed and Stored Bodies list? Or even a pop-up dialogue (perhaps even toggled in the Options menu) that warns the player and/or asks for confirmation? There have been a few times where I accidentally possessed an antimagic body, costing me access to runes and certain items with activated powers. It's killed a couple of my drem possessors when I used Frenzy as an emergency body swap in the midst of battle. Sometimes the list of talents gives it away, but not always.

[Zizzo]

I think I have a more reasonable suggestion than my last one -- would it be possible to prominently mark stored bodies as "Antimagic" on the Possessed and Stored Bodies list? Or even a pop-up dialogue (perhaps even toggled in the Options menu) that warns the player and/or asks for confirmation? There have been a few times where I accidentally possessed an antimagic body, costing me access to runes and certain items with activated powers. It's killed a couple of my drem possessors when I used Frenzy as an emergency body swap in the midst of battle. Sometimes the list of talents gives it away, but not always.

Well, assuming I'm detecting that correctly in the stored bodies (I'm keying off the "forbid_arcane" flag, which seemed like the most obvious choice), that should be covered in v2b.3, just pushed out for both. You should get a bold red [Antimagic] note at the top of the talents list. Let me know if it doesn't flag bodies that it should flag (or vice versa, I suppose…).

[Hunter]

Well, assuming I'm detecting that correctly in the stored bodies (I'm keying off the "forbid_arcane" flag, which seemed like the most obvious choice), that should be covered in v2b.3, just pushed out for both. You should get a bold red [Antimagic] note at the top of the talents list. Let me know if it doesn't flag bodies that it should flag (or vice versa, I suppose…).

Worked like a charm. Thank you.

[Zizzo]

Pushing out v2b.5 for both, with a small typo fix for our talent annotations in the Assume Form dialog.

[Zizzo]

Sorry to keep bumping these addons, but I keep finding things to add. In particular, v2b.6 for both adds the following:

• The Assume Form effect's description reads: "You use the body of one of your fallen victims." …seriously? The body's name is right there. We amend this to "You have assumed the form of Stone Troll." (or whatever)
• Along the same lines, why are we using the basic character doll on the online character sheet, when we've got an image right here for the body we're possessing? Mind you, this one's optional, controlled by new game option "Online | Show possessed body image on character sheet". It's also a bit experimental, since I have no idea whether the characters vault has all the necessary images on-server; if you end up with an imageless character sheet, We Apologize for the Inconvenience.™

[Zizzo]

Well, that escalated quickly…

So, y'know how the Mind Steal talent at level 5 will pop up a dialog to let you choose which talent to steal from your target? And y'know how that dialog doesn't include any descriptions of the talents it's asking you to choose between? Well, that was obviously not on, so v2c, going out for both, adds tooltips to each entry on the talent list with corresponding talent descriptions.

And that's all I was going to change, but having to make the same change in two separate hooks files and make sure they were both properly synced got me started trying to re-architect stuff. See, most of the functionality provided by these two addons is identical, but because the changes specific to Proper Possession were intermingled with them, I couldn't just symlink the relevant file between the two like I do with various parts of ZOmnibus and its component addons. Now, with a bit of rearrangement and cleverness, I think I've got the differences between the two addons isolated to their own separate files, so that the common functionality can be shared between the two without having to copy stuff manually. Of course, that probably means I've broken something, so let me know if anything breaks; We Apologize for the Inconvenience.™