A way to prevent companions from taking off?

[Maigrets]

Well what are good partner mods to use besides CM? And exactly what mod prevents them from turning on you from friendly fire? :(

 

 

I can't recommend any companions besides creatures as I don't use any, so what I'm saying below applies to creatures and some of it possibly to NPC companions, but I don't know for sure. For creature companions I use my mods and for reasons of my own they are hosted on Planet Elder Scrolls and TES Alliance under the same user name.

 

However, if you want companions with menus to tell them what to do, you won't find them with my companions. They do well enough with their AI packages and script and no menus for what I personally need. They will sneak when you do and are activated to Follow and Wait. Their AI takes care of the rest.

 

As far as friendly fire it's tied in with their aggression and confidence. You would need restrict their aggression to 10 or less to avoid this, but that won't work on it's own as they will tolerate a certain number of hits then attack you. Also, if their aggression is too low they may fail to fight and I've found 10 to be the magic number.

 

You also need to make sure their Personality is less than 20 and preferably 10 otherwise you also get the non fighting issue which is a real pain if you're using FCOM or any other overhaul with bigger and badder enemies.

 

As I said in my post above yours, you need to make them Player Owned and/or add a line to the companions script to tell them to ignore friendly fire to make it work properly.

 

Edited for spelling despite the spell checker... :ermm:

Edited February 19, 2011 by Maigrets

[Ferryt]

I haven't had much better success with creature companions than I have with NPC companions, so I don't use them anymore, either. What I've experienced is that they (meaning in the general, collective sense, and not necessarily singling out any given mod), tend to wander off and get lost, have trouble negotiating doors, sometimes get trapped inside interior cells, attack you when you accidentally hit them, pick fights with other creatures and NPCs you don't want to fight, follow too closely (the run ... wait ... run ... wait ... oh-look-I'm-way-too-far-behind-so-I'll-warp-AHEAD-of-you-now situation) and generally just are a total nuisance. Yes, I've had my butt saved by creature companions on numerous situations, but they've also gotten me into serious trouble on other occasions.

 

I used to really like the "Rabies Dire Wolf" mod (or something like that -- I might have the name slightly screwed up). Good old Rabies (I renamed him "Lobo", by the way -- "Rabies" is just a stupid name) exhibited ALL those bad behaviors, and was especially good at getting lost. I remember one time I left him at the IC Waterfront (the "stay here" command) and he wandered off onto the pirate ship. I was really busy at the time so I figured I'd go back and get him. Less that one minute later he was ... gone. As in nowhere to be found. He had totally disappeared from the game, in fact, and not even the console could get him back. That wasn't the only time that happened, and I found myself having to constantly deactivate the mod and then start it up again, with a clean save in order to get him back, which necessitated a trip to Anvil every time.

 

My favorite mount, before I can get Shadowmere, anyway, is Slof's Black Unicorn. I happen to like unicorns, but the big reason is that she puts him right across the water from the sewer exit, so that I can just go over and claim him and then use him to help me fight the two bandits outside Vilverin (and the conjurer that sometimes shows up), before I go in and raid Vilverin. The last time I did it I was in a melee with one of the bandits and the unicorn jumped in front of me just as I was committed to a strike. I hit him and he immediately turned on me and killed me (I was already pretty far down in Health). That's when I quit using that mod.

 

Even Shadowmere exhibits some really vexing behavior, like wandering back to Fort Farragut whenever she gets knocked out, which means you have to stand watch over her until she recovers or you'll find yourself having to trudge all across Cyrodiil, again, to retrieve her.

 

At one time I had started on a rewrite of the AI for all three of those (Rabies, the Black Unicorn, and Shadowmere), but gave up because I got lost in the code. The basic concept of companions is a good one. I just have yet to find a companion mod that doesn't have them doing unexpected, and sometimes quest-breaking, things. I'm sure it could be solved with a complex enough AI and I could easily write pseudocode for a companion that would exhibit pretty realistic behavior. I just don't have the knowledge with Oblivion's scripting language to implement it or even know if some of the things that would need to be done are possible. What I do know is that to make it really work, a companion's AI has be totally divorced from the decisions that the game, itself, makes for creatures and NPCs based upon such stats as Personality, Aggression, and Confidence because the game simply doesn't do a good job with AI. That means the behavior of a companion pretty much has to be completely scripted with the ability to override what the game, itself, thinks they should be doing at any given point.

[Maigrets]

I haven't had much better success with creature companions than I have with NPC companions, so I don't use them anymore, either. What I've experienced is that they (meaning in the general, collective sense, and not necessarily singling out any given mod), tend to wander off and get lost, have trouble negotiating doors, sometimes get trapped inside interior cells, attack you when you accidentally hit them, pick fights with other creatures and NPCs you don't want to fight, follow too closely (the run ... wait ... run ... wait ... oh-look-I'm-way-too-far-behind-so-I'll-warp-AHEAD-of-you-now situation) and generally just are a total nuisance. Yes, I've had my butt saved by creature companions on numerous situations, but they've also gotten me into serious trouble on other occasions.

 

All of those things are easy to fix. :yes:

 

For proper fast travel they must have an intelligence of at least 30. There are some scripted quest related world spaces they won't zone through as is the case with all companions. Easily fixed with a summon spell. The higher intelligence will also allow them to open normal doors and gates though, which I don't find to be a problem, unless you are sneaking somewhere....then you add a sneak function to the creature script as I have and there's that issue gone.

 

I've already explained the friendly fire issue and how to avoid it.

 

I make a lot of creature companions, released and for my own use so I've researched as much as possible to avoid these problems. I'm not an expert in anything by any means, but my companions all work without all those irritations. The only irritation I would have is if they had menus, so I don't use them. They annoy me more than anything else as I find it ruins my immersion when I have to open a menu every time I give a command. With NPC type companions it would need to be menu driven I guess since supposedly they should be smarter than animals, :ermm: which is one reason, among others, why I don't use them.

 

I used to really like the "Rabies Dire Wolf" mod (or something like that -- I might have the name slightly screwed up). Good old Rabies (I renamed him "Lobo", by the way -- "Rabies" is just a stupid name) exhibited ALL those bad behaviors, and was especially good at getting lost. I remember one time I left him at the IC Waterfront (the "stay here" command) and he wandered off onto the pirate ship. I was really busy at the time so I figured I'd go back and get him. Less that one minute later he was ... gone. As in nowhere to be found. He had totally disappeared from the game, in fact, and not even the console could get him back. That wasn't the only time that happened, and I found myself having to constantly deactivate the mod and then start it up again, with a clean save in order to get him back, which necessitated a trip to Anvil every time.

 

 

To stop them disappearing from the game they should be marked as Quest objects in their Stats form even if they have no actual quest, but you need to wait before ticking that until you've placed them in the world so the CS doesn't freak out. This stops the game from "forgetting" them on cell re-load. Remove the check from Low Level processing and this also helps with the game remembering they exist.

 

My companions have a wander range of 1200, sometimes less, which means they can walk around freely and look like natural creatures and they will use all of the default game idles assigned to them instead of standing around like statues. If, for some reason you forget where you left the companion, or it seems to have wandered off after a long period of time where they may follow a pathing grid, you can summon them. I could give them a simple quest with a green marker to keep track of them, but with the spell it's unnecessary really.

 

I know it sounds like I'm self promoting my mods and that's not my intention here. The point I'm making is all the problems you mention are easily fixed and would work even better if the game's basic AI was better. :)

 

I imagine Bethesda didn't foresee the scope of companion use and the various types of companion mods. Or if they did it wasn't a priority because their own followers are pretty useless and die on the first encounter. I suppose that's why they re-spawn.

 

In reality the AI of all the game NPC's is pretty stupid. How many times have you seen a bandit run off a cliff when he/she goes alert trying to get at you. Walking into walls, getting stuck on tables or other statics...all those things don't help when it applies to the vanilla characters. Some of that is bad pathing, some is due to the AI.

[Ferryt]

All good, Maigrets. I figured some of this out on my own, or through researching the problems with what little information is available on creating companion mods, but I'll keep all that in mind when/if I attempt to create a creature companion for my current character (likely if I can work around all these issues).

 

Unlike you, I hate using "spells" to summon a companion. It shouldn't be necessary. IRL, if I'm out walking my dog he never strays from my side unless I give him permission and when I do and he gets too far away from me he automatically knows to come back on his own. He is quite capable of (and trained to) scent track me if I'm out of sight and is smart enough to be able to distinguish between friends and foes. I expect no less from scripted creature companions in the game. Given, my dog has completed training up to and including everything needed for UDT and guard certification. I'd sort of like to be able to duplicate this degree of control over a creature companion in-game. That would require a menu-driven command system, which you don't like. To me that's no different than having to give my real-life dog hand signals or talking in-game to an NPC through the use of the dialog menu system.

[MarkInMKUK]

Maybe a hotkey menu - as if you had different whistles to talk to your creature companion. I'm thinking sheepdog trials here. With 8 or so commands, you could get a dog or whatever to do most "trained dog" things. If you prefer, some of those could be animated as hand signals - though a "summon from a distance" would still need to be audible I think. Edited February 19, 2011 by MarkInMKUK

[Ferryt]

The problem with hotkeys is that so many mods use them that you wind up getting conflicts, and not all mods allow you to configure their hotkeys. Now, something like this would be better than menus, even for NPC companions if, say, touching one specific hotkey temporarily turns your keyboard into a completely different hotkey system. I could then, for instance, just touch the slash key, and the next key I touched would be a hotkey for the companion mod, even if already defined as a hotkey for a different mod. I don't even know if that's possible, though.

[Maigrets]

All good, Maigrets. I figured some of this out on my own, or through researching the problems with what little information is available on creating companion mods, but I'll keep all that in mind when/if I attempt to create a creature companion for my current character (likely if I can work around all these issues).

 

Unlike you, I hate using "spells" to summon a companion. It shouldn't be necessary. IRL, if I'm out walking my dog he never strays from my side unless I give him permission and when I do and he gets too far away from me he automatically knows to come back on his own. He is quite capable of (and trained to) scent track me if I'm out of sight and is smart enough to be able to distinguish between friends and foes. I expect no less from scripted creature companions in the game. Given, my dog has completed training up to and including everything needed for UDT and guard certification. I'd sort of like to be able to duplicate this degree of control over a creature companion in-game. That would require a menu-driven command system, which you don't like. To me that's no different than having to give my real-life dog hand signals or talking in-game to an NPC through the use of the dialog menu system.

 

This paragraph made me laugh. You must be kidding. We're talking about a game that's not even programmed to have simple companions work properly let alone that kind of complexity. :laugh: How can you even expect a fraction of what your real dog can do, as you've described, with the basic game AI being so faulty to start with. The degree of control you are talking about would be very hard to achieve without the help of OBSE, especially for hotkeys as you'd know. Maybe Skyrim will have better functions for companions and it's editor will be better equipped to do it.

 

I've had real dogs all my life and I know how to handle them as well. Unfortunately, that doesn't work so well in Oblivion or any game that I know of.

 

There are menu scripting tutorials on the CS Wiki which are very good. No-one said you don't have to use them if you want a more complex system. There are a few non CM creature companion mods on Tesnexus that already have functions like a whistle as well as menus, or at least there used to be. Perhaps you should check out their scripts and functions.

 

EDIT: You could check out The Druid mod mentioned earlier in this thread or an even better option is The Complete Ranger which has companions with different control systems. If I remember correctly though they both also use spells and perhaps menus. It's been awhile since I used either one.

 

I know what works and how to do it pretty successfully for my own purposes, and besides the menus part, it makes no difference to me if you take my advice or not regarding the other issues you previously mentioned. If you can make a more realistic companion, overcome the foibles of the Oblivion engine, and make the command system work without being too complicated, I wish you lots of luck. :thumbsup:

Edited February 19, 2011 by Maigrets

[Astymma]

Wait... people use companions for something other than a house decoration? *boggle* hehe

 

I dress em up all nice and stick them in one of my many houses/castles/shacks/whatevers...well...except Vilja, she behaves pretty much exactly as I'd want her to when given appropriate orders via dialogue.

 

Seriously though, the default follower aggressiveness behavior is to attack anything that targets you or, in the case of a critter without any ranged attack, detects you. That is why so many followers tear off after a critter without warning. This can be alleviated in the case of CM Partners by talking to them and reducing their aggressiveness by choosing something like "only attack when I'm attacked" or "only attack when you're attacked" (can't remember offhand which option wording CM uses). When I do bring followers with me, they are ranged archer types and I have never had them go tearing off after a critter. The few followers I've brought with me who use melee weapons I've kept on a short leash by restricting their aggressiveness via dialogue controls (for example with CM Partners) or via alterations of the aggressiveness via the console.

Edited February 20, 2011 by Astymma

[lonewolfkai]

Well what are good partner mods to use besides CM? And exactly what mod prevents them from turning on you from friendly fire? :(

 

 

I can't recommend any companions besides creatures as I don't use any, so what I'm saying below applies to creatures and some of it possibly to NPC companions, but I don't know for sure. For creature companions I use my mods and for reasons of my own they are hosted on Planet Elder Scrolls and TES Alliance under the same user name.

 

However, if you want companions with menus to tell them what to do, you won't find them with my companions. They do well enough with their AI packages and script and no menus for what I personally need. They will sneak when you do and are activated to Follow and Wait. Their AI takes care of the rest.

 

As far as friendly fire it's tied in with their aggression and confidence. You would need restrict their aggression to 10 or less to avoid this, but that won't work on it's own as they will tolerate a certain number of hits then attack you. Also, if their aggression is too low they may fail to fight and I've found 10 to be the magic number.

 

You also need to make sure their Personality is less than 20 and preferably 10 otherwise you also get the non fighting issue which is a real pain if you're using FCOM or any other overhaul with bigger and badder enemies.

 

As I said in my post above yours, you need to make them Player Owned and/or add a line to the companions script to tell them to ignore friendly fire to make it work properly.

 

Edited for spelling despite the spell checker... :ermm:

Some really great info here Maigrets! Thank you. I will definately check this out. It maybe that I had the aggression and personality set too high for the pet. :thumbsup:

 

Don't worry about the notes about editting. I have to edit nearly all my posts! :laugh:

Edited February 22, 2011 by lonewolf_kai

[Ferryt]

Maigrets, the scripting language, especially supplemented with OBSE and its plugins, is a full, general purpose programming language that, to my knowledge, demonstrates Turing completeness. Except for the fact that it has only very primitive graphic output support you could, conceivably, write a full-featured word processor program with it. In other words, if it can be programmed, you should be able to do it with Oblivion scripting, with the exception, perhaps, of various object-oriented features which are supported by high-end compilers, but even those could probably be implemented in a round-about way.

 

It should be possible, then, to write a sophisticated AI for companions. The only real limitations are the size of individual scripts and the fact (at least I think it's a fact) that you pretty much have to control NPCs and creatures through quest-driven scripts -- at least I don't know how to do it using ONLY scripts with no quest attached. I'm still struggling with trying to figure out how to give all NPCs in the game a new dialog topic, so I'm at a very early stage in learning that part of the CS, but I'm finding it a very clunky way to control actors.