nerdofprey

Hey, that is good to know, thanks. Further tips and tricks for custom followers are certainly welcome!

This only makes sense if you already have a basic understanding of quests, dialogue and scripts. To make a follower who's NOT on the vanilla framework, there are a few established methods out there, ranging from complex (creating a whole new system of follower factions) to simple (a follow player AI package toggled on/off by a quest stage). I just found a way that's simpler than the simplest one I'd seen before, and testing is going very smoothly. Step 1: Add this script fragment to a line of dialogue: akSpeaker.SetPlayerTeammate() Step 2: Put a "follow player" AI package at the top of their stack with a "GetPlayerTeammate" condition THAT'S IT. To dismiss, you just use a dialogue line with akSpeaker.SetPlayerTeammate(false), and then of course you'll need to add custom lines for stuff like opening inventory, waiting, doing favors, etc. as normal. But all that stuff works perfectly without any quest stages involved at any point. It mostly relies on teammate status anyway. The big advantage is that without setting quest stages, you won't trip up and call stages out of order when you give them actual quests or more complex conditional dialogue. Based on this clean, simple framework, you can make a follower as simple or as complex as you'd like. This all seems kind of obvious now, but I spent the past two days googling and looking at tutorials and repeatedly breaking my mod before I figured this out. This does NOT seem to be common knowledge, but it should be. This is far easier than the easiest method I've seen documented anywhere else, and it's completely foolproof. You can't break this like you can with quest stages.

I'm hoping to find a simple way to effectively transform one npc into another npc at one quest stage, and then transform them back at a later quest stage, all while following the player. Basic concept is somebody becomes cursed and it changes their appearance/personality, and they get stuck that way until the player helps them find a cure. At first I was looking at werewolf transformation scripts as a base, but that seems to work by changing the target's race, and I'm really hoping to change the actual base ID, to avoid the npc's normal behaviors from spilling over to the cursed form at all. Some googling also turned up a "transmogrify" spell that turns a person into a chicken and then back, and that works by disabling the ref and enabling a chicken in their place. That seems way closer to the mark, but it was a timed spell effect, and I don't want that. I want it to effectively be permanent, and then I'm assuming the exact same script with different properties could be used later on to reverse it.

After the rather unexpectedly huge success of my incredibly silly, incredibly NSFW mod The Erotic Adventures of Misty Skye, I've begun to consider updating it with brand new voice acting. Currently it is made of chopped-up vanilla dialogue, contorted to say all kinds of filthy things, and that is fun in its own way. But if I'm going to take this mod any further, add more quests and more depth to what's there, I'll probably need a real voice for the Skye sisters. (It would be a dual role.) Definitely not looking to re-voice any of the other characters, though. There are a lot of extremely talented women who have posted in this thread, but the real challenge would be to find a woman who's right for the role AND not completely put off by the content of the mod, which is... a little out there. For that reason, I'm not that comfortable reaching out directly to anyone. So this is just kind of an interest check. This project could be a ton of fun if you appreciate the style of the humor. This is at heart an over-the-top parody of "sexy follower" mods, but part of the joke here is that Misty really owns her sexuality and has fun twisting the player around her finger. My goal is for this character to have depth and soul and a strong sense of who she is, and never stop teasing and giving the player crap. And anybody actively voicing this character would definitely get to write, rewrite, improvise and have some creative control. This project isn't a pie-in-the-sky maybe-someday project, it's already a fully-formed, finished, polished, released mod, with a rather enthusiastic audience. Currently #1 in hot files, which I never expected. Really. It literally started as a prank... If the idea actually sounds cool to you, then play through it, get to know the character(s). Consider how you'd feel about voicing the ridiculous lines that are already in it, and whether you relate to the character enough to expand on that and make the character your own. If after all this the answer is actually yes, shoot me a message. (I don't regularly check the forums.) Still not 100% sure I want to re-voice the character at all, but with the right partner on board, I'd do it.

Certainly helpful info, thank you.

FYI I kinda set this aside for a while to work on other elements, but I have been testing with one NPC at a time; it would be kinda crazy to dole out an instant-kill item to a room full of people... I have been testing with clean saves as much as possible, but some weirdness has happened when I reload an in-progress save without actually making changes in between. I do have to make sure it doesn't break in-progress saves either... Anyway, this doesn't seem to have been the quickest question. Moving on... Here's another: Is there a good tutorial out there specifically for papyrus fragments? I've been working on dialogue choices that have fun in-game effects, with limited success, but days of googling have turned up very little when it comes to the nuts and bolts of how to code fragments. I keep being redirected to pages about building full-on scripts, and this info is not translating one-to-one when I'm dealing with fragments. What info I do find is always missing crucial context, because they assume a lot of foreknowledge which I do not have. Or it's WAY too specific about how to do ONE thing, without going into the logic behind that choice, or where they found that info...

I gave that a shot and had no luck... I have tried a lot of variations at this point, some that killed me on cell load and some that did nothing. My suspicion based on a lot of trial and error is that it doesn't like "Actor SelfActor" any more than "Armor SelfObject." I could try using a property for the actor as well, and I imagine that would mean adding more properties and ElseIf lines if I give this power to anybody else. Is there a way to not have it specify an actor at all? Or just say, anybody who's not the player? There should be no wrong door here; you should be toast if anybody or any thing equips this. It's funny, I've been looking at examples of scripts for a few days, and I've seen a hundred ways to make scripts fire when the player equips something, but NPC's get neglected. I might have to go back to the drawing board, maybe try to add this effect to an item enchantment instead of the item itself?

Got the properties assigned, but now the kill effect isn't working. NPC just stands there glowing and the world carries on. Sorry if this question isn't as quick as I thought...

Ah, OK, thank you. I will keep messing with it.

If I enter that code as-is without editing a single thing it compiles successfully, but I'm still very confused about how to specify the number of seconds to wait. Is "TimeToWaitInSeconds" placeholder text for this value, or is that a functional line and the number goes somewhere else? If I replace that with a number the script breaks, but "TimeToWaitInSeconds" is not something I've seen in a script before and google is giving me nothing. Sorry I'm such a super noob but it's best to assume this is the first time I've seen a computer. :laugh: I appreciate the help!

Yeah, those do not compile, it does not like that "self" thing. Unfortunately I get very quickly lost when it comes to setting up and using properties, so more detail on how that option works would be a big help. I will try reading up on it in the mean time; the rest of that info is very useful. For the sake of example scripts, the armor ID is HolyLight, and 1.5 seconds is a good pause. Also, if it helps, the script is on the base armor object, and the armor is placed in the NPC's inventory rather than the default outfit. I definitely don't want this thing firing off when it's in anyone's inventory, only when it's physically worn. I noticed a possibly related issue; the armor object was flagged as heavy type armor, a detail I'd overlooked. I had set the armor rating and the priority super low to help other items override it. Setting armor type to "none" seems like it might reduce instances of actors equipping it at the wrong time....

This seems like a great thread for this question. I have zero programming background but I'm trying to learn some scripting so I can make better mods. The good news is I'm starting to get a basic feel for it, and the script I made works as intended! The bad news is the script has fired a few times when it shouldn't have, which in this case is very bad. Here's the basic concept of what I'm trying to do: I'm making a follower with kind of a weird concept where their devastating level of holy power needs to be contained by a worn item. Mechanically an item has to stay equipped in a certain armor slot, and if it's removed there's a non-playable "holy light" item in their inventory which will instantly fill that slot. The new armor emits a bright light, and the player dies! Lesson learned, we hope. All this is working. I made an extremely simple script that kills the player if the npc equips the holy light item: Couldn't be simpler. Totally works! Here's the issue: Sometimes the player will randomly die on game load, cell load, or when moving unrelated items in or out of the follower's inventory. This doesn't happen constantly, but often enough to be a problem. I suspect that what's happening is that when the NPC's inventory refreshes, they equip the death item for an invisible fraction of a second before the game goes oops, no, this other worn item is better for that slot. But all it takes is that split second for the script to fire and kill the player. I'd like the script to be able to recognize when this item is actually equipped for real, like adding some sort of condition where it has to be worn for one second or longer. I've tried some stuff for the past couple days but nothing is fixing it. I'd love to see a script that would do this right. Bonus points if it also triggers a cool explosion effect, like the Dawnbreaker enchantment.

Normally if I've got a mod idea I try to do it myself, but this is so far outside my wheelhouse it's not even funny. I figured I'd float the idea for anybody else to consider... This is sort of a problem/solution thing, as I see it. Problem: Follower mods exist in a weird all-or-nothing state right now. On one hand you have the fully voice-acted followers with rich back-stories and unique personalities. On the other hand you've got the followers who are strictly designed to look cool - and often they do - but they're stuck with one of a handful of dull, overused vanilla-game voice sets. There thankfully exist some mods that expand on vanilla voice sets a little bit, but they're always restricted to lines that were recorded by Bethesda. There also seems to be a lot of talent out there just waiting for opportunities! Voice actors seem to be tapped for the huge complex mods, or not at all. Solution: Create some new basic voice sets! I'm talking bare-bones, vanilla-style voice sets, but with fresh new voices. Take something like the male or female "even-toned" voice set, copy and rename it, and just straight re-record those lines. That's it. Maybe rephrase some of them as you see fit, to put your own personality into it, but it doesn't have to be a huge writing effort, it's primarily an acting gig. Just one basic, generic voice set would be such a breath of fresh air for modders everywhere. One new voice could be the basis for an endless number of unique NPCs. Two or three, and the possibilities expand quickly. A dozen new voices, and the vanilla game is obsolete. Ideally this would be a collaborative effort. There can be one mod page with one big .esm file that can be updated occasionally, whenever somebody feels like adding on a new voice. It would probably just take one person who's got some good modding skills (better than I've got) to maintain the actual file. Any voice actor who's got some time to kill and a rough character idea could send in a new voice set. Got an accent you always wanted to try out? Just make it into a stock voice set, add it to the pile! There would be no reason to reject any of them, because somebody will get around to using it. If the download gets too huge there could be a volume 2, etc. It doesn't have to be just followers, either. Some actor could bang out some lines for a simple shopkeeper or a guard. This one mod could easily become the go-to master file for a thousand new mods, and an essential part of every player's load order, probably carried on into future games. I am by no means claiming this would be easy. I know good voice acting requires skill, time and equipment. Somebody would need to seriously know their way around the Creation Kit to pull it all together, to organize it for ease of use and make sure each voice set works properly when people assign them to new characters. I'm sure there are technical hurdles involved that I don't even know about, much less how to solve. What this WOULD be, if anyone pulls it off, is probably the greatest modders' resource of all time. It would change everything. I fully expect this to be ignored or otherwise poo-pooed by the community at large, but if somebody someday decides to take up the cause, it would really make the world a better place. Just puttin' it out there...

Don't mess with the transparency on your normal maps; it's definitely a Nifskope issue. Where you want to be trying stuff is not the glossiness or specular settings but the shader flags. Maybe you made model space normals but didn't tick the model space normals flag? It is definitely possible to add specular maps to control which parts of your mesh are shiny, but may not be necessary.

The thing that worries me about a monetized channel for modding a game is that it will become an exclusive channel for it, that the powers that be will forbid competitors from working for free, and that will drastically limit our choices. Part of what's great about game modding is that there are all these different places that host different stuff. Some of it is amazingly professional and polished, but then there are the weird corners where you find stuff that's silly, sexy, sarcastic, stupid... mods that would absolutely never pass muster if the game developers themselves have the final say, but they can still be quite clever and they make people happy. More often than not it's the more ridiculous side of modding that gets people talking and sharing videos, and that ends up inspiring more and more people to try their hand at modding. And innovation can show up in the weirdest places; look at everything that's been accomplished with HDT since it moved beyond the jiggling flesh phase. Without the ridiculous mods, the whole damn thing falls apart. The unauthorized channels NEED to stay open, because they're the primordial soup that gives rise to new life.

OK, I more or less figured this out. The solution is not perfect but it's enough. I'll say what it is, cause I hate when I'm searching for a solution and I find a thread like this that just says "edit, never mind, I figured it out" In the quest dealie, under Topic Info, there is an option to share response data from: and then you can pick from a long list of canned responses. Frustratingly, not every situation or common voice type is supported here, but I'd rather change certain characters' voice types than try to work around this in a more complicated way. There are some decent dialogue choices though, and it saves a lot of trouble dealing with loose files.

By the way, I have an idea of the "long way" to do this, which is probably the only way, but I figured I'd ask. Here's the process in a nutshell: - Make note of the NPC's voice set - Look up that voice set with Voice File Reference Tool - Find a good response and note the file name - Extract the file with BSA browser so the CK can find it - Set up a dialogue branch for the NPC where you ask your question, use the extracted sound file for their answer ...and repeat 17x I'm wondering if there's a better way to do it OR if there's something wrong with this approach to begin with...

Without spoiling the surprise too much: I have a pretty extensive mod in the works that overhauls an existing quest location, in mostly aesthetic ways. No changes to the actual quests. It's pretty much done, and I'm in the "finishing touches" phase right now. One of the things I did was to add a ton of new NPC's, pretty much just for flavor. Two of them are generic followers, and the rest are decoration. The twist is I don't want the players to know which is which. The idea is that you're looking for allies... You don't know who's on your side, so you go around trying to chat up these background characters, with mixed results. A couple of them are willing to help, most are not. This works fine as-is; the followers will follow you, the other NPC's just give generic "what do you want?" responses when activated, and go back to what they were doing. No actual conversation, but it gets the job done. I had this idea that it would be a lot cooler if you could actually ASK each NPC for help. You click on them, they go "huh?", and you say "can you help me out?" and 9 out of 10 tell you to f--- off. But you ask the followers the exact same question, and they turn into followers. I realize this involves creating a quest for the dialogue, which I have never done or really wanted to do. I'd be willing to try, but this incredibly simple yes or no question suddenly becomes really complicated when it's 17 different NPC's with different generic voice types. I'm wondering if there's some kind of shortcut to get each one to give a simple canned response. Sort of like you can ask any generic innkeeper for work and they'll give some variation of "check this out" and hand you a letter. Different NPC's with different voices give you different canned responses to the same question. How do I get different NPC's to tell me to f--- off in different ways? All the tutorials I can find seem to focus on custom dialogue and often pretty complex quest stage stuff. I don't want to make this more complicated than it has to be! Any suggestions?

I'm pretty surprised nobody has uploaded such a thing after all this time, because it really isn't that hard to do. Converting armors from vanilla to CBBE is a pretty trivial task with Outfit Studio, and I did my own conversions of pretty much everything from Immersive Armors ages ago. I'd just upload those files myself but for a couple of sticking points: I didn't adhere 100% to the standard CBBE body dimensions (more like somewhere between vanilla and cbbe for most things, sometimes I'd get more creative) and I would need to bother hothtrooper44 for permissions. I also selectively added TBBP support to a few of them, but not many, because they're mostly heavy-looking armors where it would look ridiculous. Maybe my meshes would be better than nothing for CBBE users. I will try shooting a message to hothtrooper44 and see if he wants to work something out.

Your concept of only one party member being dragonborn is interesting but it's by no means a small feature. The problem is that dragonborn isn't a quality that's built into the individual character but into the game interface. It's not a cosmetic detail or a checkbox you can untick, it's a complex assortment of interrelated systems. Disabling the dragonborn mechanics would be akin to disabling the level system or quest system; it's something that even if you could do it, and do it selectively so it changes when you switch characters, it would be like opening up a clock and yanking out a bunch of random gears. It would probably be so damaging to the game's systems that at best you'd be left with a buggy mess, probably corrupted saves and stuff. A pro-level games designer could pull it off but it's a mighty big job for a hobbyist. You might have decent luck with the concept if NOBODY in your party is dragonborn, by skipping the main quest entirely - though that has its own issues because a lot of other quests in the game are directly tied to your progress in the main quest. Anyway, if you never slay your first dragon, you never gain the ability to absorb dragon souls or unlock shouts, so you probably wouldn't have an issue with those powers carrying over to other party members. Again, that's wrapped up in so many other things... you would get no dragon encounters (and might still absorb their souls if you used a mod to add them back) and you would probably still learn shouts when you got near word walls, even if you can't unlock them. I know from extensively messing around with Alternate Actors that it's not perfect at keeping track of skills and abilities. If you possess the wrong NPC you might find all your skills reset to 15 when you switch back. I effectively ruined one of my save games by playing with that mod for a while... though to be fair, it was a good time. Consider this instead: Maybe you could have a party who are ALL dragonborn! Check out Familiar Faces. You can create multiple heroes by playing through the early game multiple times, then recruit them as followers in your main game and continue as a badass dragon-slaying squad. Or you could sort of juggle between various saved games, parking one character in one spot and then going to visit them (rescue them, duel them, whatever you want) in another game. Your quest progress would be bouncing all over the place when you hopped between games, but you could give different characters radically different priorities - have them join different guilds for instance - and simply avoid doing the same thing twice. You could have one character take over the Dark Brotherhood and then your other character who's leader of the Companions could track them down and form an uneasy partnership. This might all involve using your imagination to fill in some blanks... I haven't heard whether Alternate Actors plays well with it, but it might be worth a try. Swapping characters in real-time during a fight strikes me more as a job for a whole different game... That new Dragon Age game that's in the works will probably appeal to you.

I've been really curious what became of this project since I saw this thread before. I never saw it get uploaded. I was wondering if it would be compatible with "Provincial Courier Service," assuming it is still happening at all...

It looks like those objects have seen some use in custom house mods, and i think you might be right about Dawn of Riften using them. I'm more interested in adding them around farmhouses and other settlements out in the open world. I probably won't touch city interiors or other frequently-modded areas, just to avoid conflicts. I'm going to get to work on this today, and hopefully have an early version out really soon.

Hey, those are all right. Wouldn't have occurred to me to look there. So it's just a matter of integrating them into the world...

I realized just now when looking at some images of towns & villages that a certain fixture of everyday life was conspicuously missing: Clotheslines. Something could probably be cobbled together in the Creation Kit using existing ropes, posts and retextured banners (which have a nice flapping-in-the-breeze animation built in), but somebody with decent mesh editing skills might be able to make something more convincing. They could either be added to different cities/ towns / farmlands by hand or just uploaded as a modders' resource for people who make more complex edits to those places. Or both! If somebody wanted to get REALLY crazy with it, they could be built so you could steal clothes right off of them and equip them. That would be a whole lot of work to score the Dragonborn some farmers' clothes, though. And to be more accurate, it probably wouldn't be full outfits on there... more like various types of plain underclothes. Maybe bed sheets. Stuff like that. People in that climate want to layer up, and probably don't waste time washing their overcoats. Even with custom-built meshes, I'd lean toward doing the clothes as 2D objects (like the banners) just in the name of not murdering everybody's framerate. I feel like this would be a HUGE hit with all the immersion buffs. If nobody jumps on this, I might eventually try the cheesy cobble-something-together approach.

When you say he got "home" does this mean you're using Provincial Courier Service? I love that mod. Anyway, my point is, I think that mod makes some changes to the NPC. To be on the safe side, it would be good to make it as a plugin specifically for that mod, so they're not competing to overwrite the vanilla NPC. Changing an NPC's gear is one of the easiest mods you could possibly make, so versions with & without Provincial Courier Service could easily be uploaded side by side... even multiple versions with multiple outfits, with or without the mod. Edit: For the record, it would be just as easy to randomize his gear by pulling it from one of several leveled lists. That would mean stuff like Immersive Armors would automatically be compatible. But he might end up dressing weird, and I'm not sure how often it would refresh...