grmblf

I'm pretty confused with this. The wiki states this function creates a copy of a reference and makes a new base object, and that deleteFullActorCopy deletes both the base object and that reference, so in theory if used carefuly this function should be safe to use, right? But something is bloating my savegames and I fear it's this. I tell you what I'm doing and if someone could lend a hand or give a clue on what's wrong with this process then please tell me, it'd be much appreciated! Currently, scriptA: - createFullActorCopy on a permanent reference - waits a frame - places it in position - setScript scriptB to the copied actor - addItem to the actor, wich makes scriptB runs ScriptB (attached to the actor) is where I deleteFullActorCopy, and it seems it does so (the actor disappears, and no disable function has been used) but I don't know if the base object persists or maybe it's the item I add to them, ?? Any clue ?? :thanks: !

Hey I forgot to mention, there's a very interesting mod made by Reneer that replaces the name of every NPC for their race name until you talk to them, then they show their name. Link. It's quite the opposite to your request as it makes NPCs appear with an even more generic name, but it greatly improves immersion as it makes no distinction between quest key actors and respawnable actors. It's confussing, indeed, but that's precisely it's main goal, to make it more challenging and realistic. How do you know that guy in robes is a necromancer or a mage from the guild when you approach him from behind? Are you missing the chance to strike a power sneak attack or maybe you're avoiding being expelled from the guild? I encourage you to try it out, it's something that must be felt.

They are .nif files, you can find the path in the CS / Gameplay / Magic Effects, but I think you need some tool to uncompress .nif files from the game and another program to edit those files. I'm pretty sure all this is covered in the cswiki. Sorry for such a vague answer, at least I hope it points in the right direction so you have something to start from.

wow, such thing would be great. Let me know when you need beta-testers for your mod, I'd be more than happy to give it a try.

Try using GetCreatureType == 2 to check if the creature is undead. Ohh, now I see... enchantment clothing? So you want kind of repeling undeads? This won't work so easy, enchantments affect those who wears the enchanted clothes, so TargetRef returns the player as well, I think. It would require checking constantly for references around the player and then applying the code above for each one.

There are only a few specific NPC's with such generic names, the rest that reads 'bandit', 'marauder', 'conjurer' and so are respawnable actors, so if you give them a name they'll be respawning with the same name, unless you want to change their names randomly on the fly, assuming the risk that they could repeat, or you might simply create an immense list of names and track wich name you give so you never repeat one, but that's a lot, and I don't think this transposition system you say would be nice for the game, as each race has it's own "kind of names", they sound somehow similar, and it seems that this could make some names to be unpronounceable and unreadable.

It's not very common to find such sincerity among modders, and only for this I'm giving you my advice again, but notice that there's nothing wrong about what you've said here. No modder would have made a quest mod if modding entirely for him/herself. What an stupid thing, playing a story that you know perfectly. Btw, modding entirely for the community leads to no good, but normally it's a mix of both, simply you enjoy what the community is making and you in return make something else so others could enjoy it as well. That's what make a community. Don't you think it's quite incoherent pretending to do such amazing stuff without any basic previous knowledge about the matter? Not for being amazing yourself your mods will be amazing too if you don't put little effort in them. Modding for Oblivion is relatively easy as you're given all the needed tools, a wiki full of tutorials and several forums, like this one, to ask all your questions, but you need to put something from your part as well. Modding is not like making a painting, you won't make a mod in a moment of inspiration, it's rather another kind of creative process that requires a lot of patience. Every idea you might have will exceed your capabilities until you decide to learn modding. Start with the Beginner's Guide and make the suggested tutorials and more that you'd like. Make them as described, and then re-make them applied to your mod, see what changes, fill the gaps, and expand them as you like. This is a very different thing as it will require some knowledge about 3d editting and texturing. I suggest you to start with things that can be made only in the CS (quests, NPCs, races, etc) and once you know how these things work then start modelling if you want. Good luck mate! I hope to see some mods from you in the future if you finally decide to go into modding.

Yay! Thanks Vagrant0, you've made my day! I have a lot of ideas for a new set of magic schools and I've spent a long while thinking about it but when I realized that I need to change skill's name so it all could make some sense I thought I had faced some kind of hardcoded stuff, but you've proven it's not and I'm more than happy for your quick answer. Kudos to you!

yeah man sometimes it's hard but try to start small and let your mod grows as you can handle it, otherwise... well, you know what happens. My advice is that you try to focus your mod on a very specific goal so you could always have a clear reference of what you're doing and what you should do next. Don't let your mod to be a placeholder for all your dreams, decide wich kind of mod you want to make and simply make it, but do what you have (carefully) designed, nothing more and nothing less. Let's say you want to start building up a big castle. First it'd be convenient that you think a bit of what's gonna be inside, to have a vague idea of the number of people it should host, etc, but once this is clear and you know wich kind of castle you want then go for it. If in the middle of the process you start to think of very cool NPCs and quests, writte it all down in a text file but don't start to mess things up, continue with your castle, and once you've finished it, then you can start making the other additions. It's what bben says about going by steps, it's the only way to go, actualy.

It's a short question: Can I change skills' name? In particular I'd like to change a magic school name (I guess this and skill it's the same for the engine), but I don't see any option in the CS to do so, ... maybe it could be edited from one of those files that handle menus? I'm pretty lost so I'd appreciate some help. :thanks: !

I assume you play some mod that delays the reloaad screen, because otherwise it's almost unnoticeable. I do have it delayed and now that you mention that it could be a cool addition. I guess there is some way to place an invisible creature where your body lays, so foes would attack it, or make they still consider your body as an enemy. Yeah, a little carnage would be cool. This afternoon I give it a try. Btw, does somebody know if some of this things I've said are possible? Thx!

Chargeable Spells has been updated to v0.361 Spells purchase system and the spell converter feature have been rewritten into a more optimized and bug-free code, and a lot of settings have been made customizable via ini file, so now it can be better adjusted to everyone's taste. I think it's the first time in this mod's short existence that there's no bug on sight! yay! :D Seriously, it's working pretty fine, I just need some more people to confirm it's performing properly and I'll tag it as "finished", althought I'll still adding new spells and features in future releases. Compatibility with Supreme Magicka and Midas Magic has been confirmed.

1 - Dialog is a nightmare, either one way or another. Even with "jobs" you need that generic dialogues and also the specific dialog for each NPC, so on that department it makes little difference. 2 - I didn't mean NPC having deep conversations, in fact I didn't even mention those dialogues being voice-acted nor publicly spoken. First I don't have the need of those lines being voiced, so if they're silent that'd be ok for me. But also I was thinking more some kind of generic speech that NPCs could use with the player, first to show it's "personality" but also to gather info about the player's personality. Once this "test" is passed then it could start a conversation about some matter the NPC cares about. But this conversation will be only with the player. A practical example: You enter the inn and a redguard approaches to you and says something to start off like "are you new here?" and you can answer: - "go bother someone else" - "please, leave me, I want to be alone" - "I'm just passing by" - "Yes, I've come recently and I don't know yet the surroundings" - "No, I think the new here it's you" Depending on your answer you'll be showing a behaviour or another so the NPC could check it against it's "preferences" and then decide next question/comment. A second and maybe a third row and the NPC could know a bit more about you, and if you both are "compatible" then a "conversation" starts. By conversation I mean actually speaking of some matter (ie expressing opinion). There would be a limited amount of matters to talk about, and a limited number of opinions about each one. This "opinion" could be summarized in a line, like the dialogues we have in vanilla oblivion, and don't need to be extensive and detailed, it'd just suffice a sentence showing the NPC opinion about that single matter. It would be nice if the player has also the oportunity to say his own opinion among the pre-def opinions about that matter, to conclude the conversation. All this would happen only between the player and a NPC, because it would be impossible if we would have to track what a NPC knows about each other NPC, so what I was suggesting is making NPC auto-calc this stuff so each one knows perfectly each other. Imagine you know a priest you meet every day and every day he's talking about the nine and all this stuff, and you meet another religious that also uses to speak about divinity. If those NPC meet each other, you might guess what they're talking about. If you approach them you'll probably hear a generic dialog, like "I found a mudcrab. Nasty creatures!", so you'd have to assume that the sentence you've heard is just the anecdote and not the main point of their conversation. To make it simple, the answers the player has could correspond to several "behaviours/personalities" always in the same order. Let's say option 1 is the cruel, evil one, 2 is an emo, 3 is the rude lonely soul, 4 is the good samaritan and 5 is the boss. This would be to match somehow the options above but this might not be the right ones, the point would be setting a few personality archetypes and choose the right sentences. I know that I'm focusing a lot on the persuasion aspect, but in my opinion this is a key element of this interactions system. At least this is the thing that most annoys me in vanilla oblivion, not that I cannot ask marriage to the innkeeper's daughter, but rather all these other things khravv commented, like being the Champion of Cyrodiil and actualy be treaten like garbage, that a total stranger could share his/her most intimate secret with you, etc. Really, I can't imagine taking further interaction with NPCs without improving the persuasion system to a point that could, at very least, determine if two actors are "friends", "enemies", or simply they know each other, beyond the current faction-based disposition, wich is useful to make enemies but not friends or other kind of relationship. 3 - I absolutely agree with the modular stuff, and I actualy think this "slots" system would do the job, I only try to draw a procedure so all the NPC could have a "personality", with real preferences and "opinions" so it's not only that they act because of their needs, but because of their will, so don't look at it as an alternative or something incompatible with your suggestion, rather it's meant to make it richer and more complete. I have to assume you already have a procedure to make NPC take decisions based on their own preferences, because you mention so, but since I don't know how is this done in your mod all I can do is posting what I think that could be a feasible way to obtain it, and that's what I'm doing. If I'm going too far... I coudn't tell you, I haven't tried to make it, that's simply what I'd really like to see in the game.

@ rdamstrom: today I've learned how tose arrays work for oblivion because I needed it for my mod and I get what you say about making an array per NPC with all the info about them. I haven't worked before with non-numerical indexed arrays kinda attributes but I see it has a lot of potential. Every day I script something I fall deeper in love with the OBSE team, this stuff is amazing! Anyway this concerns storing info, but I still don't get how do you "activate" them, put them in the "job slot" or whatever the procedure is, in the end, how they are "updated", altough I assume you have a good way to do so. I think one of the big points here is actually making a good system of inter-actions that could work either for the NPCs and the player, because if the difference is very big then it could seem a fake, like they're very deep with you but then they don't act according to what they say, so I think whatever this system finally become it should consider the player just like another NPC the more it could. So if NPCs have a pre-set of possible moods let's make the player has one as well. In my opinion that could be done via dialogues, just a few questions with 4 possible answers, kinda bar chatting, and you can determine how inclined is the player to certain behaviour, so that's something that NPC may evaluate from you. I've thought about buidling the "disposition" upon 4 parameters, please share your thoughts about that: - first-glance affinity: simply because your PC is a young girl or is dressed with quality clothes or because s/he has green eyes s/he might be in a better (or worse) position to befriend someone. In this category falls everything "objective" that the player cannot lie about. - personal affinity: assumin NPCs tend more to some moods than others, they could have preferences about other's moods, and prefear kind people over those that shows to be arrogant, etc. In the case of the player it could be given several answers to a question showing different behaviours, even the same answer with different words but that could connote different attitudes, and also use some deeds of the player the NPC has witnessed or has known about and the opinions the PC express in game. The problem here is tracking how much and what an NPC knows about any other NPC, but I'd leave that for impossible and rather make they "discover" the other each time they talk or make they already know this things. - time spent together: could be a factor, just to roleplay a bit, and also could be a tool to create groups within small comunities, so even if they don't like each other at least there's some tolerance. - special (inter)actions: this probably would be the most important part. It could include things like offering a drink, confess a "sin" or a secret to a friend, make a gift, obtain something for them, run a prank on someone like those in Bruma, and all the own small quests each NPC could have, but it would require some more generic actions. Last point, about updating the AI when player isn't near, maybe it's a big mess but we could run a script when the player enters the city and then update each NPC. Instead of checking their packages and the places they're suposed to be, we could set some places they use to visit as attributes of each NPC (to know who will he probably meet). This could be randomized, representing they don't have the strict routine they actualy have. If they meet then it's checked the initial disposition and affinity, if they "match" then at least they "spent their time together" (they do talk each other), and then there's a small chance that the NPC performs one of this "special actions" that obviously you won't see reflected in the game except that they might seem more friends. The point of this is making it quite linear and not reciprocal, so when you're evaluating a NPC you only consider those actions that affect positively the disposition of that NPC towards some other, so the work doesn't grow exponentialy. To make people could meet new people we could give a random chance to meet everyone in the city according to the sociability of each NPC, so when evaluating the chances for two npcs to meet that would be: npc1 sociability + npc2 sociability + concurrency factor. I think this is doable, but that would be only a part of the work, because once there would be a system to check NPC's sympathy for each other there'd still being all the interactions themselves and all the dialogues needed, wich probably will require more work than the scripting part. C'mon people, the best Oblivion mod (n)ever made needs you! PD oh damn I apologize for the lenght of this post.

You don't need a script. Simply link that door to an x-marker and there won't be a way back. The x-marker is invisible in-game so the player will be just like being teleported there.

The more I read and the more I think about it, the more I want to mod this. If you want I could help with scripting - and spell-making, I'm about to obtain the apprentice level in that skill :P I assume rdastrom makes some good scripts, considering the engine he described and also that he can make some packages for the AI, so maybe we could do the scripting part, but there should be some more people doing dialogues. Yeah, that would be easier. They could be marked as "having a duty" or "no duty" and make their duty always take preference over any other thing, so there would be people with some inclination to adventuring, leaving home and following you, and there will be some other that will never leave their city. I guess it makes sense. Uuhh... but it shouldn't with this mod! Then, if not chatting, how do you plan to befriend someone in the game? Of course if a warrior watches you fight with bravery he may show you respect, or if you save someone's life s/he may be in debt with you and please you in all what s/he can, but that's not friendship, these are other kind of relationship already present in the game. Friendship needs confidence and spending time with the other person, in an inn taking some beers, for example. I think that's important because there's a big difference IMO between making kinda pre-set moods/behaviours and make each NPC switches from one to another of his own pre-set list of moods according to some external input (player's deeds and dones), than giving them a full mentality, with very specific preferences, ambitions, fears, etc. I'd go for that second and more ambitious one, but IMO that would require A LOT of dialogues, so you both could share at least once your opinion on every relevant matter that makes them be the way they are. Otherwise is like you meet someone and in the first talk you will know if you can be friends or not, making it all more based on first glance affinity than on relationship and interaction, wich I think is the aim of this project. Maybe the best and more feasible option would be a mix of both, but I think I'm rambling because I don't have a clear idea of what you wanted in this mod and maybe all this has nothing to do with what you thought, so maybe you could detail it a bit more. I think the aim of this mod is clear: "making NPCs more human", but the means and procedures may be not. I absolutely agree, that'd be a good way to start. Although this are really cool features it might be somehow counterproductive if applied on "normal" NPCs. Having specific quests for each one of them might give the feeling that there's a linear story behind, that maybe you haven't started it from the first page, but that from now on will continue straight forward, and having to help everybody to advance in their life could be just even worse than vanilla oblivion where you're the center of the universe. Of course it would be very different if NPCs had some criteria and wound't gonna ask for help only to the player, in other words, that if you're not in good terms with him/her s/he doesn't ask you for help, so you don't help him/her, so you don't adquire that high degree of confidence and friendship that you could achieved helping a friend. I'm not saying this features hasn't to be useful, rather I'm saying they're great, but that have to be used carefuly. I don't know if this could work with so many NPCs, considering that some of them will have their own routine, and that more than one would be "affected by their mood" at once, but you made me think of something that might work. Instead of having a script per actor, having one that checks who is the PC talking to, and then run the necessary script/s on the AI to "update" their behaviour. A script running once each in-game hour could clean "short-term" moods, or randomize it according to NPC's rancor/forgiveness, etc. And now let's jump to the funny part of all this: wich ones are the main features you'd like to see reflected in NPC's mood or behaviour? - very deep principles and prejudices, like being worshipper, "imperialist", be intolerant with necromancers, etc; - some other strong psychological factor like fears, phobias, hatred, insecurity, shyness, self-confidence, narcissim, and a long etc; - differenciated preferences that could form a personality: - based on daily actions: about jobs and specially about "key" actions like spellcasting, stealing and kiling, but also they could have preferences for small things like quality and kind of dressing and appearance in general (jewelry, armed/unnarmed, etc), quality and type of food and drink, who are your friends, if you have a known partner or if you're known to have so many partners or none at all, if you're seen so often in the inn drinking cheap wine until late, etc. - based on opinions: about almost every matter, from the dead of the emperor to the particular aroma of the beggars, how well is the city count ruling the city or how the taxes given to the chapel are used. - a personality already formed upon certain "universal" factors, like mercyful/severe, shy/sociable, impetuous/cautious, loyal/interested, etc. This are only a few suggestions, there may be much more things, and I'd like to have them all but maybe that's not what you want so that's why I ask. I'd use for sure something related to what you do, not only with each NPC but what you do on your own, so it's less stuff that has to be set via dialogue and can be somwhow "auto-calc'd" according to their preferences and your actions. I'd make an empty quest for each one with a script that doesn't run, but only stores the values for each NPC, so it allows for a lot of info for each NPC without having all the scripts running at once, but maybe then the problem is not with the cpu but with memory. EDIT: hey QQuix I didn't see your post, I had the topic open and I didn't update the page when I was going to post. It's great that you're working on something similar. Man, making NPC choose their bar-mates naturally is really great! May I ask you how did you make it to give them some preferences about the conversations they might enjoy? A thread you could point to?

I must admit that I love the idea, and only adding all the dialogues needed to create that interaction that could affect their mood would be absolutely amazing on it's own but also would require a lot of work, but IMO there's a bigger challenge here, setting NPCs' AI packages and routines according to that. Woudn't a good friend of you accept your invitation and go to the inn to take some beer after a day of work and then go to sleep later than he uses and perhaps on next day open the shop later? This is not difficult for a companion that goes wherever is told, but it could pose a problem for NPC's that have a routine. I don't know how AI packages work and my english is not very good so I couldn't offer so much help with dialogues and all this stuff, but if someone is taking the challenge I'll make new illusion spells for this "deeper" mood, so you could make people shy or hot, or make a countess acts and speaks like a peasant, depending on the behaviours it might cover.

Of course there's people interested in this mod, and I'm sure it will have several downloads once it's released, but this topic has evolved so much from it's origins. You started it to ask for feedback on your story, and I think you got plenty, from there you developed the story and now it seems you took charge and you're doing pretty well so I don't think you need help or other's approval because it seems you have a clear idea of what you want. My advice, if you want some more feedback regarding your mod, then ask for it explicitly, instead of posting a pic so people could say "ohh, cool", first develop the idea a little bit, identify it's weakness and then ask for other's opinions about it or some workarounds. I saw your pic of ouroboros, and I was going to say that I find the body part to be quite low-poly, but I didn't writte it because you wasn't asking our opinion, you was simply stating what you did so far, so I didn't know if you already planned to work more on the body. Man I don't mean to be rude, this is only my most sincere advice so you can get insightful feedback, if you want some interaction with the people here on the forums then give them something to interact with, otherwise this becomes a show room, and that doesn't tend to favor unreleased mods. It may generate some expectation but this can't be sustained eternaly without a release. Oh man excuse me for this long post, I hope I've made it clear. My best wishes to you and your mod.

I saw these pics but I don't know how to do new visuals, so all I can use are vanilla ones. That's what I was asking, if you like the fade-in-white effect, or you'd add a harmless fireblast, a light effect, or make the moment he casts the spell it looks brighty like a restoration or alterarion spell and then when the regeneration starts make it look like being summoned (like that purple and black gas that appears for a while), etc, etc, etc... if someone could provide me a sound from the serie I could add it too if it's nice, otherwise I'll add one from the game. Try to detail a little bit the visual aspect and I'll do my best.

hey ranokoa I get what you mean but maybe you could do it more simple, just put a lot of fog and some good sound for the water. What you say can be done, simply making the ship faces north and moving the rocks in a loop, north to south. And that isn't done with animations, you'd have to change the position of those rocks by script, every frame. The major problem I see is if the player falls to the water, he'll still besides the ship, and rocks will come like floating and carried by the river, wich might look weird.

Well, finaly I've made it, and it works :) I'm attaching the file here on this post. Tell me how do you see it, if you'd like to add some other visuals or sounds, etc. For example the visuals for the moment he first cast the spell, I didn't know how it should look like. To try it simply place the .esp into the Data folder, enable the mod, kill someone in the city and let the guards attack you. Cast the Regeneration Power and if you reach 20% of health or less then the show begins. After that you choose a new race/look and recover your health.

Yeah sorry mate I've been more busy than what I expected with my mod, I'm on it right now.

Yep, there is a mod, Vows and Covenants lets you obtain beneffits from following the path of a god, but some are quite extreme.

A NEW VERSION OF Chargeable Spells IS AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD! Get it HERE. A month and a week after the first release, at time to celebrate the 500 downloads, an almost final version of Chargeable Spells mod is here, and it comes full of hot new stuff. I say it's almost final because it needs some wide public testing to confirm that the issues it presents are only those already known and reported. And here is when you come into the scene, so a big :thanks: to those of you who take a moment to give some feedback to improve this mod. Here's the changelog for this new version: - Added: spells available to purchase, even from NPC from mods. - Added: spells list auto-updater feature (you get the chargeable version of the spells you have). - Added: a whole new penalties system with rewards. - Added: so many missing chargeable spells (absorb/drain/damage/fortify attributes and stats). - Added: a few default sounds. - Added: an .ini file with a few customizable options. - Changed: chargeable spells now can be cast at novice level (this feature may be disabled). - Changed: lasting spells with magnitude last for double of time. - Changed: visuals now correspond to the spell you're charging. - Changed: casting failure sounds correspond to the element or school of the spell you're charging. - Fixed: being staggered, knocked or silenced renders the PC unable to charge. - Fixed: increased AoE for the alt. mode has now a cap and it's related to the percentage of magicka spent and not directly to the amount magicka as an absolute value. - Fixed: fatigue loss now ranges in a smaller interval, being it now smaller than it was for novices, and bigger than it was for highly skilled mages. Check it out and let me know how it works for you and what do you think about it. Now it works ok for me and I'm really enjoying playing it but there's so many people with very different setups so there will be things I cound't foresee, so do not hesitate posting all your issues with this mod, as well as your thoughts and suggestions, that's always welcome. grmblf

Hey forger sry mate I didn't see your post, good luck with your new home! Also it's good to hear this one is compatible with other mods, by now I think I'm having as many compatibility as incompatibility reports :P As for this mod, I have to test more in-depth two details I've added and I'm releasing the first pre-final and non-beta version :P expect it for this weekend. It tweaks calculations a bit and also it adds a few new features, nothing completely different but highly improved.