Merchant Modder Resource?

[blackhand8657]

is there a mod available that has a merchant thats ready to drop in-game that i can use for my mod? i have a personal gun shop mod that i've been using, adding to and changing for almost 2 years now, but the one thing i've had trouble with is creating a merchant. for some damn reason, with all the tutorials, i can never get em to work and i've just been using the gunrunner vendortron the whole time. anyway, if there is a modder resource merchant, like a .esm that i can add to my .esp, that'd be awesome. nothing fancy, just a merchant with the dialogue ready to go.

 

thank you

[Jokerine]

Have you tried this tutorial? Because it's as easy as it gets.

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/images/91716/?

[blackhand8657]

ok, thanks. i'll give it a shot

[madmongo]

That's not a bad tutorial, and you should end up with a working vendor at the end of it, but the tutorial is missing a couple of important things.

 

You don't need to copy an existing merchant. You can create an NPC completely from scratch if you want. I usually do.

 

Your vendor NPC has to have a class that allows them to sell items. Since this is completely missing from that tutorial, I'm guessing that maybe the author didn't understand this and that's why they are only copying existing working merchants. The important part is that your NPC's class has to have at least some of the options under auto calc buys/sells checked. If you look at the class form, you'll see that it has check boxes for weapons, armor, alcohol, food, chems, books, and misc. Whichever ones of these are checked, your vendor can sell. If you put items in your vendor's chest and the are of a type that isn't checked, they won't show up in the game. There are a few different vendor classes you can choose from in the GECK, and if you want you can always make your own custom class that has everything checked. Then your vendor can sell anything.

 

Your vendor should have some sort of AI package. For example, they might have a sandbox package that lets them walk around a bit from where they are placed in the editor. Whatever package they have, make sure that "offer services" is checked in the flags section of the package.

 

And of course your vendor needs a dialog quest so that you can talk to them and get them to open up their store. The script command to get them to open up the store is just SHOWBARTERMENU.

 

Place your container somewhere near the NPC. Make sure that the container is locked, otherwise local sandboxing NPCs will try to loot it. Also, make sure that you have persistent reference checked, and that you have given it a reference ID.

 

When you place your NPC, double click on the NPC to bring up their properties, and on the Merchant Container tab, either select your merchant container in the reference window or select it using the drop-down menus. If you forgot to make your container a persistent reference, you won't be able to select it here.

 

Off the top of my head, I think that's it.

 

It sounds like a lot, but it's actually not too hard.

[Jokerine]

Have you actually tried the tutorial, madmongo? The merchant does get an AI package and is completely functional if you follow it correctly. Nothing is missing. I have used it to put merchants in several of my mods and they all work perfectly :dry:

[madmongo]

No, I didn't try the tutorial as I usually make my own merchants.

 

And don't get me wrong. If you use that tutorial, from the looks of things it should give you a working merchant at the end of it. And since you claim to have done exactly that and it did work, I'll take your word on it. :)

 

And to be fair, I did say that it should give you a working vendor in my first post above.

 

Reading back over my post, I guess i wasn't very clear, since I tried to describe the steps necessary to create a merchant, which that tutorial does a better job of mostly anyway.

 

Here's what's wrong about the tutorial.

 

The tutorial has you copying an existing merchant, and says not to change the voice type, and also says "but do not remove anything or the merchant will break." While copying an existing merchant certainly works, if you really want to know how to make a merchant and what works and what doesn't, this part of the tutorial is missing an important piece.

 

You can use a custom voice type if you want. I do that all the time. it works just fine.

 

The thing that matters, that is not mentioned in the tutorial, is that the NPC's class needs to have the check boxes enabled for the various item types or they won't be able to sell those items, and the auto calc services box (whatever it's called - I'm not at my game computer at the moment) needs to be checked in the AI tab as well. If you are copying an existing merchant, these will already be in place. Just make sure that you are copying a merchant that already sells the same types of goods that you want your NPC to sell. If the check box for that type of item isn't checked in their class, the item won't show up in game even though you put it in their vendor item.

 

There are several vendor classes in the GECK already that you can choose from. You can also make your own class if you want them to sell specific types of items in combinations that aren't covered by the existing classes.

 

So you can actually change quite a few things that the tutorial says you can't change, and your merchant will still work, as long as you change them correctly.

 

And you can completely make the NPC from scratch, which the tutorial doesn't tell you how to do.

 

They give their NPC an AI package, but the tutorial doesn't mention that the package needs to have the offer services flag checked, which I believe is necessary.

 

But like I said, it will give you a working merchant. The tutorial isn't missing anything that will prevent you from making a working merchant, but it is missing information about how the class interacts with the NPC with respect to merchants.