khulse

You know, I think the most annoying thing about papyrus is that the really stupidly simple stuff seems to be the hardest things to figure out. I want to start a quest when an unmodified non-specific vanilla instance of an item is picked up. A bee (critterbeeingredient) to start the quest, to bee specific. Then I want to set the next stage when the character picks up a glowing mushroom. When the player picks up a giant lichen, it moves to the next stage- and so on. Then, the player will craft something and use it. That ends the quest. The problem I'm running into is that I can't figure out how to do this without either specifying a specific instance of an object or having the player talking to an actor (which this quest is not supposed to involve in any way). I think I can start the quest with an sm event node. I know how to set things up so that the quest progresses when the character acquires an alias. So I need to know how to either: 1) assign a base item to an alias without it being a specific base item (ANY glowing mushroom, not the Extra Special Dark Green Glowing Mushroom growing in the left nostril of the king of the falmers). or 2) assign the player to an alias with scrips that will progress the game when a specified non-specific item is picked up or 3) just assign an [if Game.GetPlayer()picksup(anyoldglowingfungusfromanywhere)/ setstage insertmyquesthere 9000/ endif] several times to the quest script itself. Anyone know how to do this? Thanks in advance.

I'VE DONE IT! BUAHAHAHAHAH! Look out Tamriel! The weirdness my imagination has concocted will soon afflict you! Well, not soon, maybe. Now I need to put together the spells, creatures, items, recipes, form lists, armors, weapons, special effects, textures, nifs, and large cups of coffee the rest of the mod will need- but I already know how to do all that. Yes, it is rewarding. An insane-masochistic-artist sort of rewarding, but having something you've made come together after all that work and frustration is a satisfaction like no other! Thanks again for the help.

Ahh, now that is very useful to know. Thank you very much! Thanks to another tutorial, I think I know how to force a player into a set of actions via a quest. I think I have most of what I need to start experimenting with a little more success then the last time-and the one before that, and before that, and... Why I do this to myself I can't imagine, but I think at least some of the people here can relate :laugh: . I'm willing to do the coding, if that's what it'll take. This papyrus stuff confuses my poor unlogical brain- I've mostly dealt with xml, and I'm not sure if that counts as real scripting. I'll just have to do what I did then. Off to find some food, some sleep, then some good tutorials on using papyrus. Or for any moder's resources that I can use freely and bend to my will. That might be a better route to go. Again, thanks for the help, and if you (or anyone) can think of anything that will get me past this problem easily and get me back to the parts of modding I enjoy, please let me know. There needs to be some kind of interactive animation for this, and I think the vampire one fits well, but I'm not all that picky.

Ok, code it is. Oh well. Actualy, I intend to use the animation for when the target is sleeping. In the CK that seems to be called by That's where I run face first into my ignorance, and what I'm having trouble figuring out. I have the code, I just don't know what to do with it. Can I just drop that into an activator perk? Do I need to set up a quest? I know how to filter targets in the spell and perk system, but do I have to define that in the code? There's so many bit's and pieces floating around to all of Bethesda's stuff that I can't make heads or tales of what is doing which. And everything I find online is either doesn't apply or assumes someone is already a professional programmer and doesn't need to know how to use the code, just what needs to be in it. That, or they don't know how to use the creation kit at all and aren't ready for this sort of thing yet. My problem is that I know how to do just about everything in the creation kit- except the code. When it comes to that, I'm lost. I can quote lines from books 20 years after I read them, sculpt a work of art, discuss complex philosophical questions, and come up with entire worlds in my head in a matter of minuets- but for some reason I just can't wrap my head around code. :blush: Thank you for the help. I've got a few ideas I'm going to try.

I'm kind of thinking along those lines at this point. I did manage to find what looks like a good tutorial that sort of backs this up, but I haven't had a chance to watch it yet. 'Tagging' is actually very easy- there's a way to use just about anything as a tag, up to and including what spell effects they have on them! I'm sorry. I didn't intend that to be taken all that seriously :sad: I did look through the tutorials for FNIS; they don't seem get into much detail on what I need. I also know how to use nifscope, Blender (I'm poor), have FNIS and a few animation mods already. I mentioned them because I am familiar with them- they just don't have what I'm looking for. My mention of them was mostly intended to convey in a humorous fashion that I was already familiar with these things and hadn't found what I was looking for. I just didn't want to have to tell people what I had already tried. I'm fairly certain jobvandam was joking. My 'severely mocking' him (or her) was playing along with the joke- a real 'severe mocking' would look a lot different. I really do apologize if any of that offended you. By the way, I'm not comfortable with coding because I suck at it. I'll do it if that's the only way, but it would probably take a week just to manage this one simple thing. PS: This is what a severe(ish) mocking would look like, just for illustration: /sarcasm "Yeah, I mentioned all those things because I didn't know what they were. Thank you ever so much for pointing me in the wrong direction. Here's yer sign" :devil: (Edited because my initial reaction was... caustic. I had a rough night at work. Sorry to anyone that read it before I changed it.)

:laugh: I hereby severely mock you. Seriously, though, can't anyone point me to a good tutorial or something. I can't be the only one that's asked this question!

In either the magic effects or the enchant, I'd try putting in a condition like "haskeyword vampire == 1. The question would be whether to set it to 'target' or 'subject'. Harkon's sword is set to 'target'.

I can't seem to figure this out, and I can't seem to find an answer. Which is odd- it's never been that hard in any other modding I've done! So, on to the problem. I'm making a mod, and in this mod I want the PC to play a certain vanilla animation (vampire feeding) on a target (tagged but non-specific npc) either on interaction or on command (such as by casting a spell, activating an item, ect.). I need to set up my own trigger for this because I don't want the other effects of vampire feeding involved (should not be a crime and should not have anything to do with being a vampire, to be exact). I'd rather not have to deal with code unless that's the only way, and would prefer not to deal with the (in my experience) clunky and bug prone dialogue or quest systems unless the only alternative is coding. As near as I can tell pulling apart other, similar things in the creation kit the only way to do what I want is all three- just to play a simple animation... a bit frustrating, to say the least. I already know how to do almost everything else I want to do, just not this. Is there an easier way to get the PC to preform an animation? If so, how? If not, what is the least bug prone, least breakable, most efficient way to set it up? Any help would be deeply appreciated. WARNING (given based on sad experience): I want to TRIGGER an animation ALREADY in the game. I am not trying to make, import, alter, or implement a custom animation. Any attempt to recommend 3d rendering programs, nifscope, FNIS, animation mods, and so on will be severely mocked.

Never mind, I figured it out. Seriously, some of you could have at least looked at the topic... Anyway, in case someone else has a similar problem and manages to find this thread: Shine, gloss, and so forth seem to be influenced by several settings of the nif as well as the textures. If you have all the normal maps and enviromaps (has an _m in the name, such as 'Helm_m.dds) set properly and attached to your nif and it doesn't have to amount of reflection you want, find an item in the game that has a similar level of glossiness to your item. and open up it's nif. Check the BSLightingShaderProperty block details and compare them. VERY IMPORTANT: I changed so many settings that I'm not sure which ones need to be changed. The last one I changed that got me the results I wanted was the seventh line of the BSLightingShaderProperty detail list, labeled 'flags'. Finding the right setting for this is rather difficult. Some settings remove any gloss effect, some settings add it, and others mean that the item doesn't show in game. The catch is that settings from other nifs that aren't the same kind of item are usually the ones that make it dissapear. I finally found a setting that worked right by checking the settings on on another shield, which presumably means the flags are specific to item types.

So, I'm trying to mod the dragon-bone armor, to make it a little more fitting for my paladanish good guy (well, gal, but whatever). I thought making the armor shiny and giving it a sort of opalescent color overlay would look neat, and it does. Just one little problem. The rest of the armor looks nice and polished without any real trouble, but the shield stays stubbornly matte no matter what I do to it. I used enviromap textures to get the gleam on the others, but the shield nif doesn't have one. I added it, along with assorted other textures the other armors have using both nifscope and the creation kit. No good. I've jiggered around with the normal map- still no good. In short, I've tried almost everything I can think of, and the @&^% shield still has the same dull finish! I've got to be missing something. Anybody have any suggestions, before I pull whats left of my hair out? Maybe I should go take a up nice, relaxing, low stress hobby like stunt driving without a seat belt or wrestling anacondas.

Nobody has any suggestions? Any, an update: My teeth came back for a while, then disappeared again :wallbash: I still don't know why.

For some reason, the teeth on orcs keep disappearing. This also affects custom races that use the orc teeth/head meshes. They work fine until I save and reload the game. At that point, the poor orcs are toothless, and the teeth don't come back. I have already tried: loading the save with no mods active changing mod load orders around getting the orc teeth out of the BSA and linking the race settings to them in the CS And a few other things that slip my mind. I have checked all the meshes, textures, egms, and so forth. They all seem to be in working order. Anybody have any idea what's going on?

Thank you, that answers most of my questions. I can't beleive I didn't think of un-checking the playable option. How would I add an item to all npcs of a particular race? For example, how would I add an item to every khajiit npc in the game other than adding it in the construction set?

It looks like the uv of the body mesh in the armor nif isn't set up right, or you have to body meshes with different textures trying to coexist. Check your uv in nifscope to make sure it's set to the right location on the right texture (the one for the body underneath). If that isn't it, make sure the armor is properly set to the torso slot. It might also be a .egt problem, in which case I can't help you :unsure:

I'm trying to figure out how to make items that can't be unequipped (or looted by the player) for a mod I'm making. The items are supposed to be equipped to both players and npcs. It has to do with "modifying" the race meshes of several races, so a script that will add the item to the inventory of both the pc and every npc of a particular race and force equip it would be a bonus. I'm trying to avoid requirements for the mod, so I would prefer it if the script didn't require OBSE, but if that's the only way to do it so be it... I've never done scripting before, so I'm totally lost. How do I go about doing that? I got a script from another mod that does something similar, but looking at it I don't think its unlootable and it only applies to the player, and I can't find any information on how to apply it to npcs. The other problem is that it's a quest script, and from what I've read it sounds like I would need to have it constantly active to affect npcs, which causes problems (I think- like I said, I'm new to this). Any suggestions you experienced scripters can give me? Thanks in advance!