May I speak to an experienced scripter?

[Aetherderius]

I've had a mod planned for almost a year now, but I'm not the best modder yet, and all the computer language confuses me.

The mod premise is simple.

 

When you kill a named NPC with the Soul Tear shout from Dawnguard, a copy of the NPC is created in the Soul Cairn (complete with purple visuals), and is a possible follower.

 

But I'm under the impression that this mod would be kinda script-heavy, and as I said before, computer language hurts.

So I'm hoping to talk to someone who can either tell me how to do this or would be willing to team up with me for this mod.

 

Please get back to me? Cheers.

[matortheeternal]

To get this to work for all named NPCs from all mods/otherwise would require some heavy lifting, certainly not the sort of thing you want to do with papyrus alone. I'd recommend a TES5Edit script.

 

You can break this into steps:

 

1. Find a way to take an existing *normal* NPC and give them the purply-ghosty visuals. This should just be a magic effect (e.g. the one applied by Philter of the Phantom).

2. Copy the entire NPC, and drop the copy into Sovngarde tied into a quest for appearance being their body in "Skyrim" being dead. You should be able to find some kind of quest in the game that makes an NPC appear in an area, use one of those as a template for how to approach this.

3. Find an existing mod that allows you to make any NPC a follower (this exists), and apply its principles to the ghosts.

4. Have me, or someone else (maybe yourself) automate this entire process in TES5Edit, so you don't have to do it manually for a crapton of NPCs, and can just run a script to generate a modfile for all your ghostly follower needs.

Edited May 23, 2014 by matortheeternal

[fantasy19]

If the intention of the shout mod only duplicates a single follower, then the papyrus-only way isn't that bad if you only need a literal follower. The script won't be long.

Computer language hurts but i can help if you need.

Cheers! :laugh:

[DrNewcenstein]

Doesn't Soul Tear already perform a Reanimate function? While this doesn't exactly translate to a "Follow Me, Activate that item, I need to trade some things with you" Follower, it should serve as a starting point script-wise, no? Instead of it calling the Reanimate script, have it call an "anyone can be a follower" script?

 

And what's the purpose of having them appear in the Soul Cairn? If their undead corpse is following you and you go look at their ghost in the SC, would this cause a time-space issue akin to going back in time and seeing your past self?

 

Or are you planning to summon them ala Arniel Gane's Shade?

[Aetherderius]

Looks like I'll have to get TES5Edit.

The intention is to completely overhaul the shout, so that it rips their soul from their body, not re-animating it, and giving you a ghostly essential (because they're simply an echo of their former selves) follower.

 

I thought 'Wouldn't it be cool to have a purple ghost Ulfric fight for me after I kill him.'

[DrNewcenstein]

Right, so start with the script that governs Soul Tear and see where it points - the chain of events has to eventually call a Reanimate function, which is a separate script. If instead it called a different function - and thereby a different script - then you'd obviously get those scripted results instead.

[lofgren]

Soul Tear doesn't use a script to reanimate. It uses a magic effect. I'm not sure what you mean by "the script that governs Soul Tear."

 

I am not an expert on followers but as I understand it they are governed by three things:

 

A quest with an alias pointing to the current follower (DialogueFollower)

A faction containing all potential followers (PotentialFollowerFaction, PlayerFollowerFaction)

A voice type list (VoicesFollowerAll)

 

My first attempt at this mod would look like this:

 

Add a script to the Soul Tear effect that

1. Checks to make sure the NPC has a compatible voice type.

2. Creates a NEW actor that is identical to the original. This will ensure that the ghost does not accidentally trigger any quests, etc. that should have been rendered inert when that NPC was killed.

3. Adds the ghost effect to the new NPC.

4. Adds that new actor to the player follower faction.

5. Moves the new actor to a predetermined location in the Soul Cairn.

 

Note that this method could cause serious save game bloat if you walk around killing everything in sight with Soul Tear. This seems unlikely to me personally but it's a matter of play style. One thing you might do is cycle the NPC ghosts so that you don't have dozens of dead Skyrim residents wandering the Soul Cairn. You could make it so the player can only make the last five NPCs killed by Soul Tear into followers. That would reduce the risk of bloat and also allow you to create five quest aliases to put the new NPCs into. Aliases are useful for managing factions, keywords, etc. (For example you obviously want to add the Undead keyword.)

Edited May 23, 2014 by lofgren