"It seems ALWAYS peaceful in the Shivering Isles"

[Stealth21]

After the main SI quests are passed, the player can be involved into the realm protection. The appropriate topic appears in the dialog with Haskill.

But I never had a chance to experience that. Haskill was always saying to me: "It seems all is peaceful in the Shivering Isles, my lord. Will wonders never sees?"

The conditions why he is saying exactly that are next:

GetRandomPercent >= 50 OR

(SEHaskillREF.)GetInCell SENSCastleSheogorath == 0

So, it appears that with the 1/2 chance he will be saying something different in the sheogorath castle location. But he is doing not. Maybe I am playing the bugged Oblivion version? Do someone experienced those battles quests? Can they be replayed or each of them can be played only once? How often Haskill is giving them?

Edited May 21, 2021 by Stealth21

[Striker879]

My own experience with that is the game's 'random' chance doesn't appear to be a very good approximation of random.

 

I like the Intruders at the Gates of Madness option. What I have found is that unless I exit the game and restart and then load my save from just before entering the palace 'random' isn't random. I believe the issue stems from how computers generate random numbers ... if all of the memory contents remain the same between generating random numbers the same random number will be generated each time. I think there are ways to force an actual new random number generation from same memory content states, but my guess is those methods aren't 'efficient' in terms of number of compute cycles used to generate each random number (and also guess that Bethesda wasn't so much concerned about generating an actual random number as conserving computing power for other stuff).

 

Even using my method it is surprising how long/many tries it takes to get the Intruders topic. I even go so far as to exit let's say the House of Dementia to the palace grounds before then entering the palace (as opposed to just going directly from House of Dementia to the palace) after I've been frustated by a bunch of unsuccessful attempts.

 

And then you'll have times when the only option that comes up is Intruders ... Mr Murphy does rule after all.

[Stealth21]

Wow... that is such a deep reply, you know...
Saying about Bethesda idea concerning those quest appearences through random value.
So, you are saying that if to make a save near the door which leads to the SENSCastleSheogorath interior and load it till Haskill will got that 'RandomPercent" < 50, he will eventually say about the intruders.

Yes, I agree with that you wanted to explain and got the concept of that 'everone' random value. First case where I met that was in HMM4 game. But as I said, he never said anything differing except that "all is peaceful". So, as my opinion, even if that chance is well thought, it is too rare.

Straightly thinking, there is an alternative way - to replace that condition for another which will be comparing some global value which will be set with the GetRandomPercent from his answer where "all is peaceful". That's the way out of this situation of course, but this will be not much better than the re-loadings in unsuccessful cases... because they ARE the re-loadings in unsuccessful cases but will lead to the result much faster. So this also ruin the spirit of that concept. And I can not imagine how it could be other way.

 

Maybe you (or someone else) have a think how it could be instead?

[Striker879]

From long long ago when I still had the dream of learning how to program in C++ I remember there are ways to improve the computer's chance of rendering a random number that is random, so I guess in theory it would be possible to implement something using OBSE that replaces the vanilla game random number generation with something more robust.

 

That said, I also know one other thing ... doing something like that is light years beyond my capability. I spent a couple of years and mucho dollars learning that I'm not really smart enough to do much more than "Hello world" level stuff.

 

I've used similar save/exit/reload strategies for other randomly generated events (sigil stones is where I first started using the tactic to get ones that I found useful but there are many applications). For the sigil stones situation I now use a mod that takes random chance right out of the equation.

[Pellape]

The game random algorithm is not so good so the OBSE team added a complete different one and I am not sure it can be used in topics though. It is called RAND and is built on the Mersenne Twister algorithm and that one works for sure. I use it when we refill my wine rack.