LE [Utility] How hard would it be to create this utility?

[thesniperdevil]

Hey guys- I am a fairly novice modder and was thinking of a utlity that might be useful but I wanted to ask the more experienced people if it was possible first.

 

Essentially a utility quest that would make a target NPC start walking to the players location when value A and value B become true (value B explained in a second). Then if either value are false, the NPC returns to location X.

 

Value A would change to positive/ negative to reflect the modders' needs and defined outside the utility- e.g. value A is true when player has a specific item in their inventory.

 

Value B would be part of the utility to ensure the target NPC only walks to the players location at appropriate times (aka not when the player is in a dungeon, specific locations stealthing or during certain quests).

 

The utility would be of more valuable if it could be scalable- e.g. the quest could hold multiple NPC's who could head towards the player on different conditions.

 

Other ideas:

use of alias to define speed the target NPC would walk/run at.

would this conflict with AI for the NPC, aka combat reaction etc?

How to avoid situations where poor npc is staggering across countryside on bleed-out or stuck in some random geometry?

 

So- is it possible and how invasive would it be- compatibility is key, right?

[MichikoUnknownFox]

You're gonna need quests and packages. It won't be invasive at all because it'll all be contained just in that mod. The package is to move to the player based on the conditions you define. There's a lot of conditions on there actually, so you can do exactly what you want.

 

 

 

How to avoid situations where poor npc is staggering across countryside on bleed-out or stuck in some random geometry?

This won't happen anyway. Stuff doesn't get loaded and processing doesn't start on their AI until you're in the area (depending on your uGrids setting; which is why bigger than the default of 5 can be unstable and is not recommended). If you get within range of where the NPC should show up, then it'll start moving to you following navmeshes, unless you have it set up so that it'll show up like a random encounter or that it can follow you around. If you put a timer on their movement package then they'll attempt to pop in through a sensible door where you are if necessary when the time is right.

 

E.g., if you are in The Sleeping Giant Inn and their package is to try to go to you at 7 PM, they may randomly pop into the door any minute until the end of that package, if there is an end. Waiting or sleeping will cause them to show up randomly inside the same area as well.