SMB92

Folks, I've been informed from a reliable source that a new update to the CK to support some ESL format has broken the ability to flag ESP files as a master, therefore making any precoms patches will be useless as apparently you will end up with corrupted files. I am not sure if at this stage you can rename the extension to ESM to get around this. Idk anything else for that matter, but I will update if I find out anything more. This would be about the last ass-f'ing I'd be willing to take from Beth if this problem doesn't get resolved. I've already decided to drop all my cell-editing mod just to keep performance, losing the ability to patch would make me want to move on to other games.

@sopmac - Those listed were just submodes for the main system. Full systems list as follows. ;Systems Reference List ;IO = 0 Regional IO switch Int - For turning whole region off without losing settings ;RS = 1 Main Random Spawns ;WS = 2 Waterside Spawns ;WL = 3 Wildlife Spawns ;RR = 4 Infestation SPawns, named after Radroach ;MO = 5 Extra Monster Spawns ;SN = 6 Sniper Spawns ;SS = 7 Main Random Spawns, Near Settlements and Important Locations ;VS = 8 Main Random Spawns, Vertical Spawnpoints ;AM = 9 Ambushes ;SF = 10 Story Faction Spawns ;IS = 11 Interior Extra Spawns ;SP = 12 Enemy Stronghold Extra Patrols ;TM = 13 Terminator System ;SUBSYSTEM MODES - Main Random Spawns + Story Faction ;GH = 14 Ghoul Apocolypse Mode ;SY = 15 Synth Invasion Mode ;MR = 16 Minuteman Regime ;BR = 17 BoS Domination ;RA = 18 Railroad Governance ;MW = 19 Mutant Wars ;RT = 20 Raider Takeover @4cednovel - My mod uses a list for each actor type (in some cases there are 2 lists) that when a spawn occurs, it will pick actors from said list and spawn any variety of them. So for example Raiders: There are many ActorBase for Raider - LvlRaider, LvlRaiderMelee, LvlRaiderAuto etc etc. If Raiders get elected to spawn, as each actor is placed up to the max count, it picks one of these that I have defined in a list. This makes the system extremely dynamic. Cost me a lot of time in filling properties, but much worth it. I do not edit these actorbase, or levelled lists from vanilla. This allows you to use whatever mod, such as Raider Overhaul, conflict free. You may get a rocket wielding Raider or Gunner or etc, such is life ;) Level scaling works via the difficulty setting. You may also define Encounter Zones for whole regions or individual groups (even have different EZs for different groups in different regions!). The difficulty setting is same as vanilla, 0-4 (4 is None, they scale to your level, 0 is easy, 3 Very hard). Again you mix and match these settings, difficulty works based off the actorbase levelled list vs the Encounter Zone vs the players level. The level of control is unprecedented. It might seem tedious to setup, but would you rather have all these options available than not? ;)

Totally depends how real life things go. If everything keeps steady and I can do a few hours work on it each day after work, then should easily have a playable beta for at least one region by the end of the month. I got a fair bit done last night, if I can have nights like that everyday of the week I'll be moving through pretty fast. To do list stands -Few FillArray functions left to fill in -Presets need building (even if I get one preset going for playable beta) -Need to create better FullReset functions, for both Regions and Systems -Fill more properties (there's lots, no autofill with arrays lol) -Place spawn points (This is really easy, but imaginably long and boring) -Make menus for each system, rebuild debug menu and make new Regional control menu By far the longest of that list is making the presets, but menus are probably equal. Thing is I make one, I can template that to the other 12 systems for the most part. Oh and not sure if anybody followed this from Discord, but I introduced new "modes". When activated, the actor type in question has a 3-5 times higher chance of appearing (Ghouls being somewhat special and appearing more often at multiple systems' spawnpoints) GH = 14 Ghoul Apocolypse ModeSY = 15 Synth Invasion ModeMR = 16 Minuteman RegimeBR = 17 BoS DominationRA = 18 Railroad GovernanceMW = 19 Mutant WarsRT = 20 Raider Takeover Anyway as said, if everything goes well in real life, everything goes faster with mod. I will update here if any significant beta release happens

Bit of an update for anybody following the forum only. We ran some tests on a new AI package arrangement for NPCs to use, this seems to have been a success. So the main random spawns out in the Commonwealth will travel to a location in the respective region, sandbox for a while (think camp there in a sense) and move on to next location. Most NPCs you see you will probably kill on sight anyway, but I thought this was a nice quality add. Interior spawn system has also now had its final draft of how its going to be, so good news there too. Some tidy up remains, some functions on script need to be filled, presets need making and balancing and individual system menus have not been made, but work continues and hope to have an open beta still, at least of Region 1, by end of month. Follow the discord for more frequent updates if you like.

I mean don't have any "meshes" folder with loose meshes from other mods present in your Data directory if those other mods add new meshes to the area you are generating. Flora mods are the prime example. You will end up with big fluffy green trees (or whatever trees your flora mod has) baked into your precombineds, and they will ship with your mod regardless of whether they have that mod. I also believe physics maybe broken if this happens. Previs does not calculate 100% accurately, I suspect this might be what your seeing even in vanilla. There have been times where I have had to make modifications because previs has incorrectly calculated a window or other object and lead to occlusion bugs. In the case of those big fluffy trees, because they have physics usually and their branches "sway in the wind", previs only calculates for their static position as far as I can tell, because there are many occlusion bugs when those branches sway. So in short, a full blown flora mod with regenerated precalc is out of the question with the trees as they are (fake random branches that are really transparent squares with a mapped texture), unless some other work is done to optimise these trees or stop them from getting calculated at all.

It will work with anything. Unless said mod deletes the a specific actorbase record or in the case it removes it from the game, you would see them in my mod still. I am not aware of any mod that does this. Any changes to actorbase records are fine, so your mods like Raider Overhaul, Super Mutant Overhaul etc will be fine. I do nit see any reason why Horizon would be a problem, although I have not used it. My mod does not alter vanilla,just uses available resources to the best possible advantage.

Oh and Sopmac, no guarantee about uninstalling WOTC. Best practice, go indoors, save and wait for a little while, then remove. One save I had that had a CTD in an area because I removed WOTC midgame, repaired itself after some time.

Well I don't want to give time frames anymore, I have not been able to work on the mod for about a week now. Regarding less NPCs, well yes you could say that. I guess if you had all the systems turned on and had set a 100% spawn chance on all of them, and set all group sizes to maximum, you would have a very hard time getting from A to B quickly lol. I setup around 10 points in Concord for trial with moderate chance and group number, end up with around 70-80 npcs. On carnage mode, good luck with that :)

There is something like 600,000 spawn points in WOTC as it is, I might expect that Engager's generator placed some duplicates etc. His system is way too complex for the engine IMHO. Most ofthe crashes occur because by the time the script gets to activates/placing the spawned group, the character has moved well out of the area, and the spawns get placed in unnavmeshed, unloaded areas, bang CTD. New mod is entirely different system. Much less spawnpoints (hand placed), scripts done when walking into area so no unloaded spawns, extreme amounts of control over settings and overall much faster script (no long running codes, all fire and forget). My Discord beta testers have said the mod is fluent and fast even on weaker rigs, in comparison to WOTC and More Spawns Scripted. It just works ;)

Yeah management and organisation is what it comes down too :/. Still a huge PITA either way. After a while you get used to it. Another good practice is to centre over a cell that is a multiple of 3 when generating, regardless of where you are. This will ensure that all the adjacent cells (3x3 previs grids should I say) generate properly (it will pick up the cells outside the loaded area, I now suspect why the uExteriorCells settings is 36 is because of this, not 49 like I think I said earlier). Also just to mention for RedRocketTVs sake, do not have any meshes or textures folder present when generating, unless you intend to bake the meshes (should they present in the cell you are regening) or you want higher RAM usage having custom tex's loaded. On that note, let me leave you with something that will blow your mind. I generated CrimeTown.esp, 5 grids (cell 6, -3) in the middle of downtown. I did not have any significant textures loaded for this, but check out this RAM usage: This was after the gen. Before it was 43GB total between VRAM, RAM and my super large page file (32GB). Absolutely amazed. Even more amazed by temps of my hardware ROFL. Just upgraded to 1080ti.

There is a sort of way to do a regen and use multiple BA2s, but it can get a bit messy. For example, in one CK session I generate 7 grids for Concord, I save and pack files to BA2, and I name BA2 "MyPrecalc - Gen1.ba2". Then in another session I gen 11 grids in Cambridge but when i pack my ba2 I go "Gen2". The files it brings up for packing seem to only be those made in that session, a real b&@*$ if you want to just repack it there and then (you have to now do this manually with Archive2). Now if I wanna regen Sanctuary at 7 grids, I'm gonna touch my earlier Concord run. However I can pack a "Gen3" BA2 and this will take precedence. The esp will obviously be updated, from my tests this works. Messy and not recommended, but it is one way to skin the cat.

I didnt bother writing up an article on the precalc system after this thread surfaced, so much good info here and more all the time. Just to add to whats been said in the last few posts, which ever mod that contains the top level record for the cell that loads last will take precedence. A nice example is War of the Commonwealth, it makes reference to nearly all vanilla exterior cells therefore contains a copy of each cells vanilla data for everything. Loading it last will see it override all mods that make any changes to other cells, therefore cancelling out any new previs/precom generation etc. There are 2 caveats to this, one is that any mods that add new objects will be fine, their objects will load, but two is that any loose previs UVD files and loose precombined mesh files (not in BA2) will still load, as you would expect, which would then load to occlusion/old mesh bugs etc. As it has been said, if you have multiple mods touching an area, you need to generate for all the mods in question. Real PITA when dealing with a lot of combinations and making patches for each.

1. You could use both, they would be compatible, but I would only rrcommend one at a time. 2. That mod should be compatible, I believe it only touches the vanilla cell respawn rate. Both WOTC and my SOTC have their own timers.

All of the mentioned you can do, this is already implemented. However with the exception of your clothing request. I do not really touch levelled lists, or alter anything at all as to maintain maximum compatibility. For the foreseeable future this remains the scope of other mods to deal with.

Also just for reference, if you see an error saying something like previs/precoms are invalid and its reverting back to Fallout4.esm or removing your custom changes/generations, you can safely ignore them. They do nothing/change nothing in your custom esp/esm. I've done a few regens of the same file to test it, as well as open CK and simply save after the error and done a compare in xEdit, no difference.

I have designed a separate system you can turn on if you want spawnpoints close to settlements and some important locations to be allowed, but by default no spawns here. It maybe possible to walk into some settlements from a distance depending on some other settings you can set (for example you may allow groups to walk around for days on end or have them delete shortly after they spawn if they are no longer in loaded area)

Alright so after looking a bit better, I realised its better to mirror the temp array at the end after all edits made. Here is better start to code, the direction I'm going at present: EDIT - Bot methods seen in that code compile, will test tomorrow. Hopefully the commented out way will work fine

Just an update for anybody not following the discord server, mod is still coming along, in process of heavily optimizing some functions as far as length of code to try and expedite the process. Only a few things left to do before a full open a beta, unfortunately that includes actually placing the spawn points lol so that might take some time. However once that's done the distance between open beta and full release is very short.

Hi folks, So I'm looking at reducing the amount code involved in my functions, but my use of arrays is quite complex and it's getting a bit confusing so I'm hoping to get a second opinion/fresh eyes on what I'm trying to do. So what we have is a series of full property arrays of the struct type, (which I prefill of course). This contains information/variables for a type of actor who could possibly be getting spawned. Then we have a private property arrays of the struct type, which are filled at runtime with members of the full property arrays. So for example we have ActorTypeStruct[] Property RaiderG1Properties Auto and we have ActorTypeStruct[] ActorTypes_RS_R1 (Full and private). The members of the full property are information for this type of spawn for each region, so at index 0 the struct would be for Region 1 (we have 13 regions at present, 13 "divisions" of the Commonwealth). The members of the private property array are to be dynamically filled with ActorTypeStruct members from various arrays like RaiderG1Properties, (based on a setting bAllowed) Have a look at the following example code I wrote, this is what I am trying to optimize into a single or fewer functions: Alternative: Note there may be some mistakes there, but you should be able to see where I am going here. It is also very incomplete, let us say that there are 40 more full property arrays that I will need to go through. Any useful advice appreciated. Thx

Could be that there are actually multiple instances if the tree on different layers. I found some in Sanctuary along with some duplicate rocks etc. The other problem with previs and trees, particularly the fluffy leaved ones is the leaves are fake, they are really just a square mesh with mapped texture. This causes much occlusion bugs therefore making it infeasible to regenerate for flora at all. And of course real physical leaves and branches would absolutely destroy performance anyway

Well I am running a 980ti, without custom textures loaded this card does ok up to about 13 grids. However get as much RAM as possible, I setup a 16GB page file but I will be purchasing 32 or 64gb in near future to better deal with precalc generation. I would recommend 970 and above

Hi folks, Wondering if anybody here is experienced with editing the games swf menus, I just purchased Adobe CC hoping to find a way I can let my users edit setting numbers dynamically for my spawn mod. I'd like to able to let users enter their own numbers for things like chance setting etc. Anyway if anybody is familiar with these programs please let me know, I would be happy to share if you have know how. Thx.

An alpha test was/is floating around on the Discord server, however due to a massive limitation I ran into in the CK, I had to start rewriting the code to get around it. But in turn, I was able to use this to my advantage as it opened the doors to optimise a lot of things, due to the change in structure I could refactor a lot of things to work better and more efficiently, and more importantly, more randomly ;) I am hoping to have the open alpha/beta restored by start of August.

I'll explain a few things for you. The script itself is large and holds a lot of values. However it is designed to be fast despite its large size. Once the mod/script is initialized, all of its values and properties and functions will be loaded in RAM at all times. This makes all the setting and getting of variables fast. It does not have any long running functions however, so in itself does not cause the type of script lag most people talk about. Now the spawn code itself exists only on markers placed around the map. When you walk into an area any spawn marker present will fire its script. It will check if it is allowed to spawn, and then it will roll the dice. It will then spawn something based on what is allowed. It will place each actor 1 by 1, for om my tests it is very fast and you wont usually see them spawn. All of these settings I have allowed to be set in a menu. Almost everything. If you want to lower chance if a certain group inside a certain system at a certain area, you can, same if you want to increase that group difficulty or cap the numbers in their group or even set a dynamic group size chance, many many settings you can adjust if my default preset foes not suit your taste. Most lag will be caused by the NPC themselves. A mod like Raider Overhaul gives Raiders and Forged some very high quality armors, it may cause a slight lag to spawn a number of NPCs while using my mod. In short, I have designed this mod to run as best as possible within the limitations/nature of the engine and also to be very very safe for your save games. The one weakness is that spawn points are hand placed. This means, to some degree, spawns can be predictable. But this is the same across many many games, and even this game. The original WOTC tries to make it more dynamic by having many spawn points on the map and dynamically moving spawns to random point, but the problem is the engine is too unreliable and in a lot of cases the script is lagging too far behind, so spawns will spawn outside loaded area and cause instant CTD. My mod spawns as soon as marker is loaded, avoid this problem altogether :) Now you ask about compatibility with others mod, my mod will be compatible with everything :) Hope that answers your question.

I'm not sure if you can do it with the console in game, but try selecting a settler while in console, type EvaluatePackage and press enter, see if that makes him do soemthing. If it says it's invalid then don't worry about it.