pufthemajicdragon

Maybe the text in my book is somehow faulty? The text is: <Alias=Player>, Congratulations on your promotion. As our thanks for your assistance with the Eye of Magnus matter, we have delivered a gift to your new quarters at the College. Use it wisely. Copied from the inheritance letter and edited.

Obvious question - when you load up the CK, you can click "open" and select a mod and before clicking OK, click on "details" under the mod list: do this for the "Matching Set Perk Fix" and does it change anything other than that one condition? Have you checked the super obvious such as load order and mod conflicts? One thing you might do is go through the CK hassle of combining the two mods. I understand the CK doesn't make that easy, but if your mod is set as active and the only thing changed in Matching Set... is that one condition, it shouldn't be too hard or take too long. I might sometime later give a shot at changing this myself, since I'm seeing where it could go: ie 2 new levels of Matching Set perk that add additional bonuses for using light weapons/ammo or for wearing additional matching pieces (such as your cloak). Could be fun to add that functionality to mods I'm using.

Each time I test I load a clean save from before I even started working on this mod. :edit: I also exit to desktop and restart the game fresh each time. :/edit: When I test, I load the game and in the console I type "setstage MG08 200" which completes the college's quests. My quest hooks in as explained above. I just tested from an even earlier save, still have the same issue.

I'm using the vanilla courier, which doesn't require modifying it, it's designed to be used dynamically by any quest. I've tried to mirror how other quests and scripts interact with it as best as I can but I must be missing something. In wiKill03 the letter is created as a reference alias by the wiKill03 quest, which doesn't have a player alias, so the letter's alias field must be filled by something else - presumably the courier quest since it has the player alias. What gets me is the letter's reference is created in the world space before the quest or script ever interacts with wiCourier, and the only interaction with wiCourier is to call the addItemToContainer function with the letter's reference as a parameter. I can do that and the courier delivers the letter flawlessly (well he takes his time finding me, but that's his own fault). Steps to use a courier: Create the letter I've created the letter manually in the worldspace using placeatme (as wiKill04 does) which works flawlessly and I've created the letter via a reference alias as wiKill03 does, which I'm still troubleshooting (the function gets called, the courier chases me down and does all the dialog but there's no letter :edit: figured it out, didn't have the properties filled out properly). Add the letter to the courier's container Ala wiCourier.addItemToContainer - I've tried a couple of different call methods, all of which work successfully. I've tried using addItemToContainer with the base form as the parameter, but that didn't work, creating the reference beforehand and adding it did work. The rest is up to the courier: The addItemToContainer function calls the internal function incrementItemCount and from there I get lost because some other magic is monitoring that global variable which activates the wiCourier quest to chase down the player. I would assume that is the point where the wiCourier quest fills in the aliases, including the player alias on the letter. Perhaps all I need to do is add a player alias to my quest that generates the letter in the first place... :edit: Tried it, making a player alias in my quest; it didn't work. Let me summarize what I'm doing. I made a custom crafting station for crafting soul gems (similar to other existing mods, but more suited to my tastes). I'm trying to arrange it as a quest reward. The idea is that when you finish the Winterhold College quests, the Psijic Order gifts you with a special crafting station in the arch-mage's quarters. The notification of this gift is delivered by courier and reading the letter initiates the spawning of the station in the arch-mage's quarters. Technically, I have a quest that runs on game start and registers for updates every 5 minutes. Each update it tests the quest stage of MG08. When MG08 starts, the update on my quest changes to 30 seconds and when MG08 completes (stage 200) I create the letter, move it to the courier's container, stop my quest, and let the courier deliver the letter. A script on the letter using event OnRead uses PlaceAtMe to spawn the station in the quarters and place it in the correct location and orientation. All of this works wonderfully flawlessly, except the alias on the letter (apparently) never gets filled. It's such a minor detail but one that, to me, is so important! As a side note, I looked for ways, such as SM eventNodes, to initiate this chain of events so I wouldn't have a quest running in the background, but I couldn't find anything that would work well without modifying vanilla content, which I try to avoid at pain of death for compatibility's sake. My quest script: Scriptname aaaSoulGemSpawnQuestScript extends Quest ObjectReference Property MG04AncanoGreetMarker Auto Quest Property aaaSoulGemSpawnQuest Auto ;referencealias Property Alias_Letter Auto Quest Property MG08 Auto Book Property aaaSoulGemPsijicNote Auto Quest Property WICourier Auto Event OnInit() RegisterForUpdate(10) ;300 ;dropped to 10 for testing EndEvent Event OnUpdate() If MG08.GetStage() >= 10 && MG08.GetStage() < 200 RegisterForUpdate(10) ;30 ElseIf MG08.GetStage() > 50 ;if > 50 then we're at stage 200 and the quest is finished Quest __temp = self as Quest ; this code and the next few lines copied almost verbatim from wikill04 aaaSoulGemSpawnQuestScript kmyQuest = __temp as aaaSoulGemSpawnQuestScript ObjectReference tempItem = MG04AncanoGreetMarker.PlaceAtMe(aaaSoulGemPsijicNote) ; create the letter reference and tempItem variable and point tempItem to the letter ref (kmyquest.WICourier as WICourierScript).addItemToContainer(tempItem) ;add the letter to the courier so he will deliver it aaaSoulGemSpawnQuest.Stop() ;stop this quest EndIf EndEvent

So I copied a vanilla note so I could have a courier deliver a custom letter. I changed the formid, name, and text and saved - no other settings were touched. The courier delivers it flawlessly, but when I open the letter in game it's completely blank! It's a short letter, but I've tried turning pages anyway, no success. I've tried a couple of forum and web searches to no avail. If I don't get any news here I'll try recreating the letter from scratch and see where that gets me. :edit: I love playing during class! I tried creating a new note - same deal, I copied an existing vanilla note and edited the form id, name, and text, and same deal. It's blank when I open it in game. :edit2: Traced! My letter's text includes <alias=player> which alias isn't getting filled. Null alias and the game goes bonkers and gives me no text at all. So now to figure out why the alias isn't getting filled. I'm trying to track down where that alias gets filled in vanilla quests - ie wikill03 but so far I'm not having any luck. The "Player" alias is filled in the wiCourier quest and there is no "Player" alias in the wiKill03 quest. So I assume the alias gets filled when the note is added to the courier's container and becomes a part of that script. So perhaps I'm not adding my note correctly? More to follow as I trace down this path.

I've found a lot of vanilla skyrim meshes have collision that renders small (if I recall, around 1/3 size) in NifSkope, which often leaves it occluded by the TriShapes. Specifically the ground model for Elven Armor did this to me, and when I went to import a custom mesh into the game with "proper" collision in NifSkope, I had der uber large collision boundaries in game. I went into NifSkope and scaled my collision down until it fit in testing. I also enabled EVERYTHING in the Render menu. :edit: I just double checked and the size difference is closer to 10%. It's probably something funny in Nifskope not supporting Skyrim meshes yet, unless you got one of the hax0red testing nif.xml files, which I don't so I'm just guessing here. Way cool looking sword, by the way :) So much better than my feeble modeling skills.

Kaplah! Make a post when you make some progress, I want to see this when you're done!

You can export from Blender as an OBJ and import that into Nifskope. As long as you've created a UV layout for it, you should be good to add texture nodes in NifSkope. This will probably wind up being the route I have to take with mine. Officially, the NifTools has not updated the Blender scripts to support Skyrim, so it's a lot of hacking and whacking and fiddling to make it work. The OBJ export may turn out to be the easiest route at this point. As far as the process of moving from Blender, through NifSkope, to the game, there are a ton of Oblivion tutorials that can help you get to know the basics of the process. Check out the official Oblivion Construction Set Wiki for some of those: http://cs.elderscrolls.com The Official Skyrim Creation Kit Wiki isn't quite as fleshed out yet, with the tutorials and all, but it does have a lot of good information and it's all specific to Skyrim, which can help you fill in the blanks and differences: http://www.creationkit.com/ Your next step after modelling your pear is to make a collision mesh, which if you do in Blender, it requires a bit of specific settings for the NifScripts to export it as a havok collision: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php/Blender/Custom_Collision which you will then have to adapt for Skyrim. This is if you attempt to export it as a .nif directly. If you use the obj export route, just export the obj from Blender, then open a vanilla .nif in NifSkope and import the OBJ. There will be a lot of finessing to make it work right for Skyrim. I recommend testing your .nif using the creation kit's previewer before trying to import it into the CK for your mod. You will want to follow those export instructions to a T, especially as it concerns nifskope magic, in order to make it work. The importing may not apply, but the exporting is the same. And finally, I think the easiest way to make a pear would be to stretch out a vanilla apple ;) Might not look as good, though.

I hate to reply to your thread and not be able to help, but I have to tell you the concept is awesome! When I first started modding for Oblivion, the game had been out for 3 or 4 or 5 years already, and there was still paltry documentation and very few tutorials on anything. A lot of modders will find a way to make something work and publish their mod, but they never publish their methods. I wound up writing a few tutorials and wiki pages myself as I figured things out the hard way. So basically what I'm saying is, keep hacking at it, even if nobody on the forums has the answer :) You might be breaking new ground! As a side note, the best UI mod I've seen is SkyUI which makes a lot of changes to the inventory interface. Those guys might be who you want to talk to. http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/3863 When you finish this mod, I'll play it :D

Yes, I know the nifscripts don't officially support Blender. Meh. Help! So I export my mesh with Fallout settings, more or less, change the nif version, whipe out the exported properties, copy over the BSshader properties from a vanilla mesh, check UV sets, Normals, and vertex colors in the TriShapeData nodes, check all the bsx flags and everything else I can visually see different between my mesh and a vanilla mesh. I have closed NifSkope and reopened my nif several times during this process, which I have repeated from start to finish a few times, in order to make sure the settings stick. The nif is in my meshes\architecture\puff\ folder. When I open it up in the CK (double click to load the .nif previewer) I get an error: MASTERFILE: (BSStream Error) NiMaterialProperty: cannot find create function. in meshes\architecture\puff\house.nif. "Yes to all" will disable all Warnings for this context. Clicking anything crashes the CK to desktop. :edit: I lied, clicking "Yes to all" runs the ck but the mesh displayed is the giant exclamation point error mesh Bethesda uses. :/edit: If I copy over my TriShapes to a vanilla mesh, I get an invalid index error, or no error, with the same result: crash to desktop. This is the best tutorial I could find on modelling with Blender for Skyrim. I did not import a vanilla mesh, I built mine from scratch, and followed the export instructions. I've tried a few different changes in the export settings, including default FO3 settings and the settings given in the tutorial. My current export settings include: Export Geometry only Force DDS Extension Combine Materials Collision Options: Wood Hollow Use bhkListShape Default Type Use BSFadeNode Root I'm exporting from Blender 2.49b, Python 2.6.6, latest PyFFI, and latest Blender nifscripts (2.5.8? I think? They're a year old but it's the latest on their sourceforge page). Any ideas what I might be missing?

I know I keep double posting - I think it's appropriate when enough time has passed and/or a major change has occurred. In this case - SUCCESS! With the working quest I had last post, I discovered a flag I can check on the interactive smithing furniture for "child can use". Checking this flag on all of the smithing furniture works like a charm! I then added a script fragment to the WIKill05 quest that checks if the victim was Alvor and starts my quest. Works like a charm :) I dislike some of these changes since they can conflict with other mods. And I'm not sure yet that setting that flag won't let any sandboxing child nearby start smithing for fun. And it is REALLY amusing watching Dorthe inflate when she goes to work at the forge. But I've got a working base now, something to be excited about :) As far as inflating actors - I think that might be related to either the animation that is being called (via a script on the interactive object) or by the furniture object's furniture marker itself, either of which could set the scale on the actor. As it stands, it's good enough for me to use, but not quite up to par for release. :edit: I should add that her merchant shop works as well :) not sure at all what the deal was with my first attempt, but starting over was probably a good idea anyway.

OK so a few updates. I tried setting the quest to not start automatically and configured it on the kill actor event. I added it to the sm event node under kill actor event, under the node WIKillRunToCorpseSHARES, underneath and parallel to WIKill05, which appears to handle the "you killed my father" type dialogue. No change, the scripts all seem to still run on game load. So I started from scratch and simply created a quest that does not auto start, with an alias for Dorthe, and all of Alvor's appropriate factions and packages. No scripts, no conditions, no call to start the quest. I load the game and start the quest from the console and lo and behold! Dorthe heads straight to the forge and.... stands there. Not sure what the problem is, probably is an issue with her being a child. In any case, this at least is progress! I'll have to play around with custom packages that perhaps reference custom child animations. This is starting to get involved! :edit: I have not created custom packages or factions yet in this new from scratch mod, all vanilla from Alvor. And she still doesn't offer any merchant dialogue, which I'll also have to play with.

I haven't tried an automatic EVP, but I have done EVP from the console with no effect. I scripted a few lines to try and pick up and report which package she currently has and it sort of works: Debug.Notification("Dorthe Quest: Alias Updating") package curPack = dorthe.GetCurrentPackage() Debug.Notification(curPack) Outputs: [Package in the notification corner. Not totally useful, and of course the Package script doesn't appear to have a name property I can call from it (since it extends form, I ought to check that for a name property...). Out of all the possible packages she could run, I hate to script if/then statements for all of them. I do appreciate the suggestion on the story manager but that's so wildly different from OB that it's intimidating and confusing. To be honest, I don't even know what "story manager" refers to - I would assume it refers to a particular window in the editor, but it appears it only refers to a background process that is managed through several other doodads in the editor, none of which are very well documented on the wiki. But you do point me in a new direction that might get me what I want :) since looking through it briefly I did find the quests that manage the mourning dialogue (wiKill01-05). I think I can trace that and copy it for what I need to do. I'll report back after class when I've had some time to work on it. And from your other post, it looks like I might have to modify some idle anims to get this to a releasable state - at least if she inflates to grown up size when working at the forge.

So I head back to Riverwood after a long time away, and while I'm there - woe is me! a dragon! At the end of the battle, half the town had died, including Sven, Alvor, and Sigrid. It broke my heart :( But I had a plan! I would make a mod that would give Dorthe the inheritance of her father's smithy in the event of his death. Easy, right? Not so. So I got the AI packages together, copying Alvor's work packages, modifying the durations for a shorter workday (come on, she's a kid!), and also created a new faction for her to join with the appropriate vendor settings, copying Alvor's and giving it a new name. I wanted to put an onDeath script on Alvor, but to avoid any incompatibility with other mods, I decided with the quest route. I've got a quest with priority 0 that starts the game running at stage 0, registers for updates, and waits for Alvor to die. On update, I move to stage 5 (for debugging purposes, really) and on Alvor's death, I change some of Dorthe's AI values and move the quest stage up to 10. Here's where it gets sticky. I created a reference alias that grabs Dorthe (fill type "unique actor") with condition quest stage > 5. This seemed to be the only route I could go to add her AI packages without editing her base directly, and it also allows me to add factions and some other fun things - if I can figure it out. But it's not working. As best as I can tell, with debug text popping out my ears, the quest starts on load and properly waits for Alvor's death. I have an alias script that also apparently starts on load rather than waiting for the conditions. If I load my save where Alvor is dead, I get all the right debug text showing me that each script is going through all of its stages correctly and Dorthe just stands there doing nothing. I can also verify that the quest reaches the proper stages via the console. If I resurrect and then kill Alvor, or load an earlier save and kill him via console, she comes running and cries over papa and follows her default "get away from me" my dad is dead package (which I can not seem to find!). For the life of me I can't seem to get my packages or other changes to take any visible effect. I can only assume that the alias isn't getting assigned correctly or it's being overridden by another quest/package. I set priority of the quest to 0, but the wiki doesn't tell me whether higher or lower values increase or decrease priority. About the only thing I haven't tested that I can think of and I only just now thought of it as I was typing this... Any other ideas while I go and try a different priority value? :edit: Also, I can type "Help Dorthe 4" into the console and I get this output: ----Viewer strings not available---- ----Other Forms------------ FACT: (0E000D64) 'Dorthe Services' QUST: aaDortheBlacksmithQuest (0E0012C7) 'aaDortheBlacksmithQuest' NPC_: (00013477) 'Dorthe' This would indicate she is in the correct faction and attached to the quest and alias. The output is the same whether or not Alvor is dead or which save game I load. :edit2: Quest priority of 1000 doesn't seem to make a difference.

I've gone ahead and used Filefront. The mod in question can be found here: http://elderscrolls.filefront.com/file/Cry...Nanosuit;106679 If a Nexus site admin runs across this and tells me it's ok to host it here, I'll go ahead and do so. I much prefer Nexus to any other mod site :) Below is the e-mail from Crytek regarding distribution rights:

Nexus only charges for Premium Membership which is optional, you don't actually need that to download files. As long as all your permissions are in order you could host it here: http://elderscrolls.filefront.com/ Nexus' fees make it (at the very least) a gray area, and I've seen mods taken down before that hovered inside it. I hadn't thought of filefront and they didn't turn up when I did a quick web search for "oblivion mod downloads" and the like. I hate their annoying ads, but they might just work - after reading their TOS I think they will. Thanks :)

I've developed a mod that utilizes content from another game. I have permission from that game's intellectual property owner to distribute my mod for non-commercial purposes. The problem is, if I upload it to Nexus, legally speaking Nexus would be distributing it for commercial purposes and would be liable. In fact, any website that charges any kind of fees for membership or file downloads is out of the question. And I like TESNexus, so I don't want to put them in a corner like that. So I need a mirror. Does anybody know of some good sites that are completely free and non-commercial where I could host my file? Or does anybody have a crapload of extra bandwidth on their web server and want to host it for me? Thanks! :edit: P.S. If any mods come across this and want to change the "hose" in my topic description to "host", that'd be great. It's 1 am, need I say more? Done, Bben46, Moderator

Don't care for that kind of "fun". A fun house mod for me, and I don't mind buying it, is: Lots of secret stuff to find; a bit of lore additions with some healthy modern lore-breaking; surprises galore, and most importantly USEFUL ITEMS. A mage quarters is a must, I'd prefer that it be well hidden from general prying eyes, or sort of secretive. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE houses that use the Static Alchemy Mod and Coblized Ingredient Sorters. A quest that originates after you own the house is always welcome, perhaps a mystery to solve, but not an obvious one the moment you walk in the door. I prefer comfortable modern furniture to stiff wooden crap. I could give a rats ass about bathrooms but outdoor pools and outdoor showers would be a huge plus that not too many think about. Large roomy guest quarters are very helpful, I mean well-pathed guest quarters where your companions can roam freely without getting stuck and are able to roam to areas to sleep, areas to eat, and areas to relax with an outdoor feeling to them, probably the best way to handle that is to bring the outdoors inside the quest quarters area. NO LOADING DOORS. Just free movement from room to room in the guest quarters. Please, a great kitchen. Surprises like "working" ovens, "working" fireplaces, "working" lights, and "working" armories and such. How about a dimmer switch in the bedroom for ambience? What about a working stereo system where you can add a few favorite MP3s? Companions are ok, as long as they don't follow you around to private quarters. I had a Castle that had a male guard in the Master Bedroom Suite. Um NO. Got rid of him, but kept the castle. I would prefer to make and get my own companions anyway, I like extremely pretty people and most mod NPCs don't seem to live up to the standard I'd like. I have plenty of stuff to do in my game, even though I've completed probably 90% of all the quests, (I still have only been to SI twice though, so there's that whenever I feel like it). If I could make a house, these are the things I would put in it. Alas that will have to wait until I master meshing. Hee hee! I'm working on a house mod right now and that's all really great advice thanks for it :) I'll try to implement what I can. David, I'm stealing your dinnerware for my house :D hope you don't mind. I have a beta up on nexus and hope to have a release soon, and I'll be sure to give proper credit for the wonderful tablesettings :) beta linky: http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22374