Selling "A la Morrowind"

[TheThirdRace]

Hi everyone,

 

I guess if you played more than 5 hours with Oblivion, you came across the selling screen with a merchant. A lot of people has experience painfull hours selling their stuff and finally turned themselves toward the modding community to solve their problem.

 

I really don't know why, but a lot of people seem to think the "How many" prompt has to be disabled or altered (for quantity sake). I'm not saying these are not good ideas, but I think this is not the best way to overcome this problem.

 

The fact that I have found no mod that does what I'm about to explain is ... well I really can't understand it.

 

Well, with all the hotkey mods why there isn't any mod that just bypass the "How many" prompt while pressing keys? I mean, when I press the CTRL (control key) and then click on a stack of item in my inventory, I want to sell 1 item. When I press CTRL+Shift, I want to sell the whole lot. When I don't press any of those combination, let the game continue its course normally.

 

You see, it's intuitive, it like any selection in Windows. By the wide use of this operating system, it should have been obvious to do it that way.

 

I don't know if it's impossible or if it's just that even though I tried, I couldn't find the right mod.

 

I am almost sure it's possible to implement that kind of mod. The "Expanded Hotkeys and Spell Delete" mod can detect if you press Shift or Alt for the hotkey's combination so I guess it's possible to detect those keys and maybe the Control key as well. Then, there is a million of mods that disable or add a new quantity condifition to the "How many" prompt. So I guess it's possible to bypass the prompt. And finally, if all thoses mods can bypass the "How many" prompt and sell 1 item, they might be able to sell more than 1 item after all or they could just employ a script that loop the item stack you clicked and sell 1 item at the time. Like I have 12 arrows, I press CTRL+Shift and click on them. The script loop 12 times (number of arrows) and sell 1 arrow at the time.

 

It seems possible, I just lack the talent to implement it, but I guess someone talented can acheive it. So I guess I'll leave it to talented modders to save us once again from a not so well implemented feature of Bethesda.

 

Thanks,

 

TheThirdRace

[Vagrant0]

Basically, it's impossible. Not even with OBSE. More than enough people have looked at the issue already, it simply cannot be changed since the shop menus are hard coded. The "ask quantity at" type mods just change a game setting which that system looks for. Selling cannot be scripted with, end of story. There is simply no way short of editing the base code for the game to remove all the extra prompts, or do anything like what Morrowind had. This has been an issue since the game came out, and the only ones who could possibly change it (Bethsoft) have decided not to. Check back in 20 years or so to see if the game has gone open source, might be able to do something about it then.

[TheThirdRace]

Hi,

 

Thanks for the clear and fast answer. I guess I will have to live with it.

 

But just to be sure all the ways has been examined, I would like to suggest altenative methods to acheive it.

 

Is there a way to detect when you are in the selling screen?

If yes, is there a way to detect which merchant is interacting with the playe?

If yes, is there a way to detect the price an item would sell itself?

If yes, is there a way to add dynamicly an item to a merchant inventory?

If all those answers were yes, it might be possible to just do the whole process by script without using the selling screen.

 

Maybe a new action or dialog could be added to all merchants that would show the player's inventory and simulate a complete new selling screen. I know it would require tremendous work, but is it possible?

 

As I said, I will live with it since it seems I have no choice.

 

Just for curiosity, could anybody post a link to a document that discuss this problem and the solutions that were discarded. It would show us all the attempts made to solve the problem and maybe some genius could find a new way out of it.

 

Thanks again,

 

TheThirdRace

[Vagrant0]

Is there a way to detect when you are in the selling screen?

If yes, is there a way to detect which merchant is interacting with the playe?

If yes, is there a way to detect the price an item would sell itself?

If yes, is there a way to add dynamicly an item to a merchant inventory?

If all those answers were yes, it might be possible to just do the whole process by script without using the selling screen.

Yes, but requires a very limited block type.

 

Yes, but is rather complicated, and requires a different block type. Also has poor performance, and cannot be done after the selling screen has started.

 

Yes, with OBSE, but I believe the item has to be known first. But for our purposes...would require figuring out all the math involved to compensate with mercantile (wouldn't be able to adjust for haggle), and would require a script to be placed on every single item. As there would be no way to determine what the player wanted to sell, all that would be totally meaningless.

 

Yes, but only when that item is known, and only within a script where the item becomes known and the ending actor becomes known. Scripts don't like telling references to eachother too much, and as you'd need scripts running in 3-5 different places to control any of it, you will have problems popping up everywhere.

 

It isn't possible with scripting. You cannot bypass that menu to sell, you cannot change how that menu works. With scripting, any unknown reference requires ways to make that reference known, if that reference cannot be known, it cannot be used in scripting. You simply cannot detect what a player is trying to sell before he actually sells it (which would still go through the whole notification thing). Not much has been tried because this fundimental fact stops anything and everything. Even if you could find some way of scripting around it, the complications of that script, and trying to make it work would be well beyond the abilities of anyone in the community (and there are alot of skilled people around here).

 

Simply put, not possible now, not likely in the future. Even if it was, the effort required to make it work wouldn't be worth the result, and the effects of all the scripting would probably make the game unplayable if you had any mods installed due to conflicts (never mind being unable to sell custom items this way).

[TheThirdRace]

Hi,

 

Thanks again for the clear and fast answer.

 

If it's not possible to alter the selling sequence, is it possible to speed it up? I mean, an hotkey for the Ok button and one for the cancel one?

 

At least, that would be better than nothing. I could click an item and press the key to sell an item. That would be faster than using the mouse.

 

I already found mods that does almost that. The only thing is that you had to move the focus with the arrow keys to the ok button, which is slowing the whole process. In fact, it become easier to just use the mouse.

 

Anyway, if you know any mod that could help me the simple "click and press" process, that would be greatly appreciated. I'll let the forum know if I find a mod to satisfy my needs before you can answer me.

 

Thanks

 

TheThirdRace