BG2: a container bug in multiplay mode

[Timothy D Longson]

I have a LAN setup, and often have friends round to multiplay BG2.

I import their characters into a party so we can adventure - the problem is
that when I import them, they loose any containers they were carrying, such
as scroll cases, jem bags and potion bags.

This is not a one off - I have even tried importing a character from a saved
game, one I KNOW has a full backback, included in which are several
containers, but when the game starts, there is just empty spaces where the
containers where.

Is this a known bug? It is exceptionally annoying when I cant play with my
friends at full potential because they have lost some of their inventory.

Thanks
Tim Longson

[Leo Fellmann]

"Timothy D Longson" <timlo...@hotmail.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:9mlmap$5nc$1...@neptunium.btinternet.com...

It's intentional. RTFM.

[Geoffrey Brent]

Timothy D Longson wrote:

Not so much a bug as a known limitation, due to the way containers are
treated. Containers are actually handled as a variant 'store' - the Bag of
Holding is one 'store', each gem bag is another, etc. When you take things
out of a container or put them back in, you're using the same system as
when you buy or sell at a shop. Each container is a unique item (one BoH,
scroll cases 1-6, etc.)

One consequence of this is that if you have _two_ Bags of Holding, they
both refer to the same 'store', so they'll have the same contents. Same thing
if two characters both happen to have Scroll Case #3, or whatever. And
since the contents of those containers are saved whereever store inventories
are kept, not with the rest of character inventory, so an exported character
file doesn't record container contents.

Allowing characters to import/export with containers would require adding
container contents to the export file, creating a bunch of new container
items, and renumbering on import - e.g. if the party has a character with
BoH-1, and you try to import another one with the same container, it
renumbers the second one to BoH-2 and fixes inventory files accordingly.
This would be doable, but not trivial.

OTOH, NetHack seems to handle containers and even nested containers*
without any trouble... maybe that would be a better system than the 'store'
method? Either way would require some major reprogramming, though.

Geoffrey Brent
*Don't put a Bag of Holding inside another BoH, though. That's bad.

[D. Vrabel]

Geoffrey Brent wrote:
>
> [snip description of BG2 cases as stores]

Yes. This is a bit of an ugly hack. But that's what you get why you
try to take software far beyond what it was originally designed for.

David Vrabel