Question about "REDeadActorAttachNode" Story Manager Quest Node 0x390F8

[NeinGaming]

I have to prefix this with me having a extremely limited understanding of and window into quests, since CK crashes so much on me I'm restricted to xEdit, and I think some aspects of dialogues and quests are terrible/nigh impossible to do there.

But I discovered the 0x390F8 and poking around with that and expanding it was so easy. As in, removing the restrictions, letting more quests run in parallel, and stuff like copying the quest of raiders stripping a corpse and changing it to a hunter stripping a dead animal, then wandering off to a settlement instead of a raider dungeon. I'm still only experimenting, but the possibilities! Dead unlooted human corpses attract raiders, looted ones attract insects or dogs, dead insects attract ghouls, dead dogs attract hunters, dead hunters attract enraged hunters haha...

Now my actual question: I'm really curious about this "Event Data" thing here:

I know that if I just copy and paste it as is, it works fine for actors (haven't tried live ones yet, but I assume that will work, too).

But what is the event data, is the number 12626 a reference to a thing somewhere, or just some hardcoded magic constant? If the former, how can I find the thing it references? If the latter, are there other constants that refer to other parts of the RE scene? (or however it's called, I'm way out of my depths here)

I already know that this works with totally random corpses, seemingly not restricted to RE spots (but maybe triggered by them?). So that gives me hope I could maybe have it check containers or even random items that are in the world, too.

I haven't tried using a condition that would apply to stuff other than actors, and I will, but I also assuming poking around in the dark too much will lead to crashes and me asking here sooner or later anyway

[Qrsr]

  On 4/22/2025 at 11:18 PM, NeinGaming said:

12626 a reference to a thing somewhere, or just some hardcoded magic constant?

Expand  

Hardcoded, xEdit does it by default. Just create a new condition, choose "GetDead" and see what will happen ... CK does it aswell.

I like your approach. If you use the CK place some more RE across the game and use t he base game quests (RE) you can do what SKK did with his random encounter mod. Just with vanilla records without adding any more scripts ... you should look into the Gnat Swarm spawn script. You can replace it for example with a Ant Swarm spawn

[NeinGaming]

Oh yeah, I was wondering about that other attach thing, it didn't occur to me that this is for the tiny insects spawning over corpses that are dead for a while, awesome!

But actually, when I create a new condition, choose GetDead and set it to run on Event data, the parameter is -1 by default:

edit: but what would I use the additional RE spots for? I mean, those gnats spawn over corpses anywhere, and I've had stuff like this raider spawning near the last raider that got killed there being instakilled by my turrets whenever I approach red rocket, quite a bit from any RE spot! That's what excites me so, while I guess I shouldn't go overboard with the concurrent quests, this seems super dynamic. I don't know yet if it works in interiors, only just started playing with it.

Edited April 22 by NeinGaming

[NeinGaming]

I created a sibling to RECorpseSwarmCreatorNode and REDeadActorAttachNode without any conditions and a new quest that spawns NPC stalking random actors with an inventory value higher than X, and that indeed spawns them. Though I wonder if they'll despawn, too, or just stop spawning once the concurrent quest limit is reached.

I guess the next thing to try is to explore the tree, since everything I did so far had REAttachBranch [SMBN:000CA996] as parent, and there is all these other Story Manager Event Nodes with things attached to them. It's kind of silly to explore this in xEdit, I think I'll put some things that seem useful in a diagram to hopefully get a better picture how it all fits together, and what parameter "magic numbers" there are (and in which contexts they can be used, to then see what happens when I use them where they shouldn't be used ^^).

For example I discovered what makes companions react to murder, and there the parameter 12882 seems to refer to the killer.

edit: okay, there's a LOT to dig into before just doing random things in xEdit...

https://ck.uesp.net/wiki/Category:Story_Manager

I never really looked at this just assuming it would be totally complex and inaccessible, but now that I got a taste of it...

I still kinda assume I'll gunk up my game with too many spawned actors and things that force each other to be persistent etc. but I want to learn all the things.

edit2: I linked  a page about Skyrim I guess, but I couldn't find a FO4 one that includes all the things seen in this dropdown... like, does this mean we can "do stuff" when a global variable changes? Kinda sucks that the vanilla game uses a fraction of these things, I guess half of them aren't implemented (such as voice powers), maybe all of the unused ones. but man is this interesting..

 

 

Edited April 23 by NeinGaming

[NeinGaming]

  On 4/23/2025 at 11:31 AM, NeinGaming said:

Kinda sucks that the vanilla game uses a fraction of these things

 

Expand  

Yeah that's kind of the roadblock I'm facing now; I want to try doing something with the yet unused "Clear Location" tvent type, but I don't know what I would need to enter into the "Event" field for the quest I would be starting with it, since there is no example to learn from (I bet there is in some mods out there, surely someone played with this, but I don't play with any big quest mods so I can't check easily). Quests for Change Location events use "CLOC", so that can't be it.. and just trying without it seems wrong, because then if it doesn't work I don't know if it even *could* work without setting that field. Guessing it seems futile, because for example the shorthand used in the quest associated with the "Crime Gold Event" is "ADCR", huh ^^

[d4em]

The code for clear location events is CLRL but use at your own risk. It doesn't seem to have an event node attached

Edited April 23 by d4em

[d4em]

Working clear location event thing

test clear location event.zipFetching info...

Edited April 24 by d4em

[NeinGaming]

Wow nice thank you, will check it out when I'm at my machine

[NeinGaming]

Haha that's so great, and a mod in its own right IMO.

[Qrsr]

Do you guys have an idea how to make use of the Story Managers inherent abilities to make certain object Enable/Disable such as puddles or clouds if all of them are referenced to a global EnableDisable marker already?