Dynamic package stacks

[ElyonItari]

I just downloaded Creation Kit yesterday, and have been toying around with it while reading the wiki.

 

Right now, I have a specific feature in mind: Dynamic Actors that travel independently between cities in Skyrim at random, sandboxing for a few days in meaningful locations of the town or city they've travelled to.

 

I have already made the Actor sandbox at various places in Whiterun, and commence travel to Riverwood when the player interacts with them. This is of course a tiny step, and mainly to acquaint myself with the Creation Kit. I have gathered that AI packages is the way to go, I think?

 

For starters though, I would like to approach this is a meaningful way. Several approaches I have already tried somewhat, that feel "dirty" or fruitless:

• Category-none quest, ForceRef'ing the Actor into a "Traveller" alias on that quest - not adequate as I want an arbitrary amount of travellers active at any given time
• SM Script Event Quest Node, starting quest based on custom keyword - not adequate for the same reason as above
• Mother-of-all-package-stacks on every Traveller Actor, conditionally sandboxing in meaningful places based on all the factors I want to alter behaviour by

I was hoping there would be another approach, requiring less "duplicate" configuration than the third option - I know of Actor Templates, but they seem hardly useful as I cannot both inherit AI packages and add new AI packages to the same Actor, I think.

 

Anyway, any suggestions as to a sensible approach to this issue will be much appreciated, thanks!

 

Note: Just joined and started, wish me luck :)

[jayne2132]

If I'm understanding your question correctly, I would approach it with a package template, and then make individual packages for each actor, and fill in the locations you want them to visit, and in which order.

 

I did a sample one (see picture), haven't tested it. Could change 'random' and 'sequence' as wanted, and add conditions if you need to.

 

http://i57.tinypic.com/2napapz.jpg

[jayne2132]

Edited to add: You can put the sandbox nodes in a separate 'simultaneous' branch, and add a wait procedure to the branch with how long you want them to sandbox there.

 

Edited again: Thinking about it some more, for sake of organization, I'd probably do a template with only one travel to location and several sandboxing locations, then make a separate package for each character (Character1-Whiterun, Character1-Riften, Character2-Falkreath, Charcter2- Whiterun) etc.

 

I'm working on packages right now, too... spent way too long troubleshooting why my characters were just standing dumbly in the same place and then realized that I'd put in a single ref for location instead of a location. All the little things...

 

(and I realize I"m not actually editing but this is a new post, duh, got the boxes mixed up)

Edited January 21, 2015 by jayne2132