AI Mod Request. Less Enthusiastic Law Enforcement

[FireFlickerFlak]

I don't know if this is true everywhere, but where I live, if a criminal runs he's unlucky if he gets chased by more than one authority for a petty crime. Bystanders might take notice for a moment, but usually they grow bored in a few minutes and go on with their lives.

 

In Oblivion, if I say "No, I don't want to pay for accidentally stealing brandy from the counter between me and the vendor," the guard tries to kill me! Not only that, some smiling old lady suddenly summons daedric armor and starts shooting fireballs at me, a mob of pitchfork wielding shopkeepers comes rushing around the corner and the local beggar starts punching me in the back...

 

Well I don't know if this is part of a mod already, if it is let me know. But I'm requesting some sort of AI tweak mod that makes it so the commoners of Cyrodiil aren't so enthusiastic about law enforcement.

[Genzel]

Sounds like a good idea!

 

While this would probably cause other conflictions, you could lower all of the city dweller's confidence in their AI. This would mean just about everyone would run away from combat. Maybe a script which upon being spotted for a crime sets NPC's confidence lower until the crime is resolved?

Just my useless opinions thrown out there.

[FireFlickerFlak]

Maybe a script which upon being spotted for a crime sets NPC's confidence lower until the crime is resolved?

 

Hmm, that would be better than the way it's currently set up. I'd actually prefer for them to ignore me rather than run from me as long as I'm not getting in their way. More like a calm effect without the pulsing green radiation visuals. I guess a simple version of the mod would be to send out a spell like:

 

Demoralize = Guardlvl in 10 feet and a Calm = Guardlvl in 200 ft

 

Demoralize would be for just a few seconds so the person hopefully wouldn't go sprinting out of the city and pee his pants. The calm would probably have to last longer to prevent stuttering attempts to enter and leave combat before and after each attack. There would have to be absolutely no visual effects for the spell for it to seem at all convincing and the spell might still cause a lot of unwanted side effects. I'd really prefer for it to be part of the AI instead of this kinda fragile system.

 

If we are fighting in a room I guess I'd want them to leave or cheer for one side of the battle or something, maybe the few combat ready citizens would join in, but when outside and less threatened by the fight because they arent trapped in the same room, they would be more likely to just ignore the fight... hmm.. I guess the variables (interior, exterior, proximity, confidence, responsibility, relationships, etc.) makes the mod harder than I thought it would be. But there are already so many AI variables in the original game that it seems a shame to not put them to use here. A bunch of mods have already configured combat and animal AI so they behave realistically, why not do the same thing for the common citizenry? I guess I could try to make it myself, but I'd really prefer that a more experienced modder took on the challenge for a mod like this.

[monkybuttface]

Hmmmm.... In a lot of places its straight countryside, and in the country your liable to have every redneck you meet ready to shoot you in the face if you wrong them. We dont have that New York Personality going on, and I doubt those more rural people do either, also Tamriel is in a time where hangings were public entertainment

I could see the Imperial City population being a little "i dont care" but most other places would be a little different.

Of course, even here most people would just watch if they thought the cops had it, so maybe make dependent on wether the guards seem to be winning? give them a rally effect when they are losing? Hmm, just had thought about guard captains giving leadership bonus..... hmmmmmmm

 

also, Bravil looks like the kind of place where people would jump in AGAINST the guards.

[Genzel]

The spell script effect could have it set to check the guard level and demoralize + calm those who are around that level, and this would prevent the static-leveled commoners to stay back, while the level-with-player adventurers would attack as normal. You could also do a responsibility check to decide which side a bystander would be likely to help. >30 responsibility characters are people like fences, beggars, and people who live on the waterfront. I also believe OBSE can do a check to see whether the player is indoors or outdoors to determine which effects are applied. If you have the custom effect (it might be called mehrunes dagon custom effect or something like that) as #1 in the list of spell effects, then no shader would show, but this might also mean you would have to damage all the bystanders.

I really suck at scripting so all I can give are ideas and moral support. Overall this looks very plausible.

[FireFlickerFlak]

@ Monkybuttface

 

Heh, yeah, good points. It would be cool to have citizenry act different locationally like Bravil citizens helping against the guards. I also like the idea of having responses to different types of guards. As for that redneck, shoot you in the face part, that makes me think of something else. What if the citizens approach you first in dialogue. Ex. "Give that back or I will call the guard." in Anvil, while in Bravil "Ok, I saw that, hand it over or you get a knife in the back." Maybe nobody even calls the guard in Bravil, they just send the gangs they are associated with after you. That being said, I'd like it to be based on the individual not on the location so things aren't so predictable. There would just be more people in the "notTrustingGaurds" faction in Bravil. If you ran into a fight with royalty in Bravil, they'd still run for a guard. Kudos.

 

@ Genzel

 

Thanks for the scripting tips. I am already working on a magic overhaul mod and hardly have time for that, but if I finish the base of the overhaul and still nobody is interested in working on this, I'll try getting the project rolling at least. Unlike a magic overhaul, this is the kinda project that really need to be done perfectly because there isn't much to replace it with if it doesn't work out and the possibility for lots of incompatibilities is, I think, high. If I get some free time I might check out OBSE and see what functions could be used towards the mod. Maybe if we get a model together it could be easier to attract a potential scripter. That invisible effect could definitely come in handy. Kudos.

 

One more thing, Does anyone know if there is a faction situation or something that might cause an actor to ignore combat within their proximity other than calm? I can't think of any right now, but it would be nice if this could be down with a script that does not use spells if possible.

[Genzel]

I really need to learn scripting, so I might try to see what I could do in the CS, but no promises. It would be difficult to set faction to calm people because they could either fight you or help you if set too friendly. What might be cool is too have either the people more or less likely to fight depending on whether the guard is winning. A hp check on the guard would tell who is winning and a confidence and responsibility check which would cause the upstanding (high responsibility) but weak (low confidence) to run, the upstanding and strong (high confidence) to fight you, the shady (low responsibility) and weak to run, and the shady and strong to fight the guard.

As for compatibility, it would be good to have it not conflict with Reneer's guard overhaul which does some similiar things which only pertain to guards, not citizens.

[FireFlickerFlak]

@Genzel: Even if you just want to try and get some script written up as a learning project I'm sure that could help, but no pressure :whistling:

 

Hmm, isn't there another AI calc, aggression? If a NPC had really low aggression but really high confidence it might make them indifferent? Just a thought in case the "calm" effect doesn't work for some reason.

 

I agree about making it work with Reneer's overhaul, I'm thinking we should assume the player has this and then make sure it works with the default game afterwards just so the two mods work really well together. It's hard to imagine that anyone interested in this sort of mod would not have reneer's guards active.

 

So I guess as the base of the mod we will need this table as the possible NPC reactions to a guard fighting:

 

1: Indifferent

2: Watch

3: Back Away

4: Flee (hopefully rare)

5: Defend Guard

6: Attack Guard

7: (add more results?)

 

The variables to calculate this might include:

 

1: Responsibility

2: Confidence

3: Aggression

4: Faction

5: Interior/Exterior

6: Region

7: Guard HP

8: Guard Level

9: Distance From Guard

10: (add more variables?)

 

 

I'm not sure what the capabilities of the faction element of the game are, but it seems that there are no neutral relationships, only aggressive and friendly? I guess calm may be the only way then unless that aggression thing works out. We would still need the faction element so that the script would never apply to any guards. If we did use different factions it might make the mod more capable of expanded functionality like having different reactions to observing criminal behavior or having different regional behavior come as a result of population concentrations rather than specifically stating that people in this area behave this way uniformly. For example, if we use factions, then we could have a person naturally from the imperial city behave as if he is from his native city even if he is visiting Bravil, while possibly allowing him to still take into consideration that he is less confident in Bravil.

 

The reason I did not put any variables specifically about the person the guard is attacking is because I'd like the effect to be similar when a npc is attacked. Other questions are:

How often would this script fire?

What would trigger it?

What would happen if two guards fought each other? (Rare, but I've seen it.)

Should we modify AI values of NPCs each time the script fires? Only once when the NPC loads? Keep them as they are and build around them?

[Genzel]

Sounds great! To trigger the event you would most likely be using one of the two OnAlarm blocks. Compatibility is pretty critical to most players, so if possible we should try to build around the vanilla NPC variables that are already set.

[FireFlickerFlak]

KK, good idea, I guess if the environment is not what we want in a city we could always add a few new NPCs with the AI that we think is appropriate for that region. I found some other modders who are working on AI mods, I'm going to contact them and see if they hopefully will help out a little. As for my magic overhaul, I just found a new overhaul called ROM that is awesome and would not be compatible with what I had planned, so I'm dumping that project for now and passing some suggestions along to underworld (ROM modder) in hopes that some of the ideas will be implemented in the future. So all my limited attention and even more limited scripting knowledge is now focused on this, for what it's worth.