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Custom NPC Companion continually crosses arms as wait/conversation ani


TheTuna

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Hey all,

In the custom companion mod I'm working on, the companion continually crosses his arms as his default "standing around" and player conversation animation. It looks really bad because he'll go from running immediately into whipping his arms up into an awkward resting position. Can I change an animation or something to get him to stop doing this and just use a "hands at side" pose instead?

 

Here's a pic of the pose I mean (it's especially bad when he does this because his arms clip through the combat armor model):

http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb230/SwampLord450/ScreenShot12.jpg

Edited by TheTuna
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I don't believe I did, but I'm by no means an experienced modder, so I'll take a look; where in the packages do animations go?

 

Edit: I just looked at the "Idles" section of all of his packages and didn't see an animation there.

Edited by TheTuna
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There's a half dozen or so animations that have arms crossed. If you go to the console, click on the NPC, then type ShowAnim, it should show you the name of the file being played. Might give a clue as to where it's coming from.
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Hmmm, I'll try that.

 

After further testing ingame I found that he doesn't do it initially, but will start doing it after conversation with the player; it begins during the conversation but doesn't stop once I exit it. However, talking to him again will snap him out of it.

 

Weird. I'll poke around the animation files and see what I can find.

 

EDIT: Here's the animation that's happening, it's a dialogue arm crossing animation playing even after he exist dialogue. I'm poking around the animation files to see if I can figure something out. I've checked both the Begin/End/Change and Idle sections of my packages and I don't see this animation selected specifically anywhere, should I be looking elsewhere?

 

 

http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb230/SwampLord450/ScreenShot13.jpg

 

Another question; when I enter the inside of the Wrangler for the first time, he has his laser rifle equipped on his back. However, when the player approaches and he turns to face the player, the weapon disappears. It's still in his inventory, as he'll pull it out if attacked and it can be made to reappear with weapon commands on the companion wheel, but it still hides itself when the player gets close enough initially.

Edited by TheTuna
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Is the arms crossed anim in one of his dialogue lines?

 

He is unequipping his weapon when he turns around. That can happen as part of a package. There is a flag you can check to have weapons unequipped and he could be going into another package when you enter and he turns around; that sounds like potential trigger time/package change time to me. You might look for that in his packages as well.

 

:) llama

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I'll run through my responses and check to see if I inadvertently set an animation for one of them.

 

For reference, I just took this screenie of him acting normally and there doesn't appear to be any "special idle" message (or the crossed arms) so that seems to be the problem in some manner. I loaded my save from the day of release (level 2 character) and tried talking to him; he did the animation again, but exited properly upon hiring. However, when I told him to wait or follow via dialogue, he'd begin to play that animation. It'd cut out once I exited dialogue, but still looked really awkward as he raised/lowered his arms. Is it possible to just delete this animation from him entirely or something?

 

Here's a screenshot of him behaving normally for reference:

http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb230/SwampLord450/ScreenShot14.jpg

 

I poked through packages and saw those flags you were talking about, but the "weapons unequipped" flag wasn't checked anywhere that I could see. I'll try messing around with the flags and see if that fixes it. I also just ran another test and this time the weapon was unequipped when I entered the bar. Do I need to add a package or change the weapon specifics? Right now, the packages I have are just a Wrangler idle and the three companion follow short/long/wait packages.

 

EDIT: After more testing I think it might be disappearing based on time after loading the Wrangler interior and not on player distance, as it's disappeared on entry now. Checking "weapon drawn" in the sandbox package didn't do anything either.

 

Do you think at least the first one could be a bug on the game engine's end? I'm pretty sure I'm not triggering that animation in either my packages or dialogue.

Edited by TheTuna
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If you do a search for that idle in the Geck, you find it is under the ArmsCrossedLoop. So drilling into this you see that if the last idle played was DialogArmsCrossedListenA or DialogArmsCrossedTalkA, then when the NPC is talking or no longer talking, it will loop forever.

 

The only thing I can think of is it's set as a dialog idle in GOODBYE, or the armscrossedtalk or listen is in one of his dialogs and all the rest are set to 'none'.

 

Also, if you have an emotion set in a dialog, the idle manager will pick one for you if you set it to 'none'.

 

I don't know if 'mood' in the NPC AI data tab has anything to do with it, or if that is just for the face.

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Ohhh, if I set an emotion I have to set an animation? That would explain it, as I've got a bunch of lines with emotions but didn't give them an animation. That's probably what's causing it (they still show up as "none" emotion-wise in the editor); I guess they're getting randomly assigned the arms crossing and it doesn't stop for some reason.

I'll make sure I assign an animation to each of my emotion lines, that'll probably fix it! Thanks! :) I'll report back here if it doesn't work, but I know for a fact I have emotions without assigned animations.

 

Any ideas on what the heck is making my weapon disappear? :P

Edited by TheTuna
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I'd love to hear back if doing something with the emotion has anything to do with your crossed arms problem. I've never experienced anything like that and I always untick the anim box regardless of whether or not I use emotion because I hate the random hand waving animations assigned by the GECK I will only assign an idle occasionally and when I want to really emphasize a particular comment. My understanding of how it works, up until now, has been that the animations added are the basic hand wavings. I've never seen the crossed arms anim ever accidentally pop up, although I use it a lot on purpose with one of my NPCs for emphasis so I would certainly have noticed if it showed up incorrectly.

 

:) llama

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