Modding question

[bhorton22]

I am working on a mod that will have a 'crystal ball' type display in a room. Basically, it will be a big swirling cloud and images will appear in the cloud.

 

Some of these images will be NPC's. With that in mind here is my question:

 

Should I create duplicate NPC's via the 'createfullactorcopy' and place he 'image' in the 'crystal ball' and then remove the actorcopy after I have finished 'deletefullactorcopy'. Or should I have already created a duplicate (in the esp) and never remove the duplicate from the game. The idea here is that the image can appear more than once (as many times as the player wants).

 

The reason I wondering is because each time the duplicte gets created a new reference will be created for the duplicate and eventually you could potentially run out of references (I am unsure if oblivion will reuse references). But, if I already have a duplicate created then (if I end up having a lot of images to display) I will use up quite a few references and some of these 'images' may never be displayed (so I have created duplicates and I never needed them - thus used references that I never use).

 

Any help or opinions would be greatly appreciated.

[Legotrash]

I'd go with the second option: Create the duplicates yourself in CS and use them when they're needed. "createfullactorcopy" can cause save bloating if I'm not mistaken.