screamingabdab Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 Simple question for you guys, I've made some Orc NPC's, set up patrol routes for them using Idle Patrol Markers. They set off & follow the patrol route fine, but the don't do any Idle Actions. I've changed how long they wait at the markers, how long they should do each action for, etc but nothing seems to work. Have I missed a very basic point that Orc models simply can't use Idle Animations? (which would be very lame on behalf of bethesda) or is there something else I'm missing? Cheers for any help you can give me :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
6Domino6 Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 I've never had much success with using an idle patrol marker to make them do anything besides stand there. Perhaps you should try another idle marker? Like if I want the npc to pray I use "PrayerIdleMarker" instead of the patrol one. I've had no issues with that one or the 'warmhandscrouch' one either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
screamingabdab Posted March 13, 2012 Author Share Posted March 13, 2012 (edited) Cheers, I'll try dropping in a different one and see what happens EDIT yup that worked, nice one. Another issue with normal idle markers is that all my NPC's want to do is sit down, there's plenty of other ones about but they don't use them. Is this just a matter of time once the package has run for a few days things will of evened out and they'll be using them all? Another question, if I leave my mod location when I return the NPC's are all spawned in one spot, stuck on a rock that doesn't have any navmesh. Any ideas on what's causing that and how to stop it? Edited March 13, 2012 by screamingabdab Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
6Domino6 Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 If the NPC isn't moving onto the next idle marker after the set amount of time run through http://www.creationkit.com/Bethesda_Tutorial_Encounters and make sure you're referencing the next place you want them to go and have the right amount of seconds you want them to stay. I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to get them to do but typically if the patrol doesn't work within the first few cycles after reentering the area it's not going to work :/. As for your bug where they all appear in one spot I haven't had that issue but I may have heard something similar before where NPCs weren't responding to the navmeshes the modder put and standing in one spot. The only similar thing I've had is NPCs I place not showing up exactly where I wanted them but instead off to the side about an adult's length. I had the same issue when loading my merchant NPC from a 'clean' save where the mod hadn't been enabled and reloading it several times helped put him back where he needed to be. But I'm still not sure what happened. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SinderionsBones Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 (edited) the NPC's are all spawned in one spot, stuck on a rock that doesn't have any navmesh. lol. This is always funny. I had this happen in an inn I made, there was like, 1 piece of horizontal surface I didn't put navmesh on, and they would spawn there. I never really addressed it, because as soon as I gave them their packages they stopped this behavior. I'll continue my comment assuming you are linking patrol markers based on suggestions from the tutorials, if you know plenty about NPC AI and just needed to throw in some different ai markers for animation, then please disregard :D Ideally your NPC's should have at the very least, some sort of sandbox package. If you don't want them sitting down, turn sitting on the sandbox off in an overriding package during a certain time. That's how it is for shop keepers and others working. It's not a sandbox package, but they're specifically not allowed to sit during... work hours.. The average NPC in say, whiterun, has like, six packages by default, before any quests or whatever add more. Stuff about when and where they work, where they sleep, where they eat for each meal, it can get crazy detailed. If they're in an open sandbox package (they can do anything) they will spend most of their time sitting down. they just will. even if you have 5x more special animation patrol markers (sweeping, praying, wall leaning, bar leaning, rail leaning, etc) they will greatly preffer something sitting down for some reason. This is from from many hours of experience testing cells that had three or more npc's with default sandbox wandering around while I was doing my various script testing and whatever else. No patrol data was on anything, the markers were just out on the floor for messing with. And they usually took the hard, uncomfortable looking common chair. Long story short, do not expect NPC's to behave rationally unless you give them a package that gives them some rules. Patrolidlemarker is exactly for that. When an npc is 'on patrol' they will stand there for the time you specify in the patrol data. As 6Domino said, animations in the average day of an NPC, if not scripted(not worth it most of the time), are dictated by the markers they are using. There are tons of these. Patrols and the linking of references in a chain is for if you want them to literally patrol. It also works great for enemies, and people doing a specific job (innkeeper, mining, woodcutting etc...) Edited March 13, 2012 by SinderionsBones Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flobalob Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 If they're in an open sandbox package (they can do anything) they will spend most of their time sitting down. they just will. even if you have 5x more special animation patrol markers (sweeping, praying, wall leaning, bar leaning, rail leaning, etc) they will greatly preffer something sitting down for some reason. This is from from many hours of experience testing cells that had three or more npc's with default sandbox wandering around while I was doing my various script testing and whatever else. No patrol data was on anything, the markers were just out on the floor for messing with. And they usually took the hard, uncomfortable looking common chair. I always thought that the odds of an NPC sitting down was relative to the Energy (on the AI tab) specified for that NPC. Leastways that was how it was explained on a Bethesda tutorial for Oblivion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
screamingabdab Posted March 13, 2012 Author Share Posted March 13, 2012 it weird because they have a sandbox package, very basic only thing I changed was not use special furniture and increased the radius. They have their patrol packages which work fine. and they have eating packages which also work fine. haven't added a sleeping package yet, maybe that's effecting it. good to know that NPC's loving chairs is just normal behaviour. i'll take a look at changing some of the Energy settings, see what, if any difference that makes. many thanks for the suggestions guys :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SinderionsBones Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 I always thought that the odds of an NPC sitting down was relative to the Energy (on the AI tab) specified for that NPC. Leastways that was how it was explained on a Bethesda tutorial for Oblivion. Indeed. It seems, and I didn't experiment with it tons, that the difference between 100, and 0 energy is like... changing the chance they sit down from like... 50% to 80%... nothing huge. I may have been doing it wrong, I didn't double check cause I wasn't that concerned, but it never seemed to be a value worth taking into account. Some more specific checking results would be nice :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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