Untakeable armor/weapons/etc

[Armistice11]

I'm not going to go into detail about why. It is just that I need some armor and weapons that I place on a display table to be unpickupable. Somehthing like that mask of vivec in the morrowind. You click spacebar on it, but nothing happens. I can't have a player going around and stealing everything. Is it something to do with disabling them or something. Thansks

[Sypron]

Just so you know, NPC's (other characters) wont pick up any items that you own. So protecting against thieves is kind of pointless.

[Povuholo]

You can add a script to the item:

 

scn TheScriptName

 

begin onactivate

return

end

Now nothing will happen when the player tries to activate the item. But the player will still be able to drag the item around. So it might be better to create an activator using the item's mesh/texture instead.

[Vagrant0]

You can add a script to the item:

 

scn TheScriptName

begin onactivate
return
end

Since it wasn't mentioned... This means means that you need to make duplicates of whatever you want to place on that table, then attach that script to those duplicates. Attaching this script to the standard versions will affect ALL instances of tha item in the world, and can create problems. Additionally, placing these scripts on these items may make them unsellable, or atleast broken when they are sold. You could use scripts to add the real item to the player when the fake one is added to the player's inventory, but that requires additional scripting, and may require multiple scripts.

 

Depending on what you're trying to do, you may be better off doing as Povuholo suggests and making an activator, or even a static that uses the same mesh as what you're wanting on display. You may have to extract the meshes from the BSA archives (using BSA commander or similar) and place them in your data folder if you don't have the meshes already.

[Armistice11]

The thing is, there is a large forum, and all the people are displaying what they have found to the council. I can't have the player taking everything and then the people talking about their finds when their table is empty. Morrowing had a goodflag for objects to stop them from bein picked up. I guess the only thing to do in Oblivion is to change them into statics.

[Abramul]

You could also use the Arena version, at least for shields and weapons. Not sure if there's an Arena version for armor. If there's an item you need that doesn't already have a copy for Arena use, it's simple enough to attach the script.

 

If you need them to be non-draggable, you can make a copy of the script that uses SetRigidBodyMass to immobilize the object.

[Armistice11]

Alright, what I think I'm going to do is make them statics. I don't want the player doing anything with them. I may even put them under a display case with a key needed.

 

Now, I have a growing concern. I have been trying to delay this part for quite some time while making my mod, but now it is inevitable. I'm not going to ask you exactly what to do, because I can forsee the script being about 10 pages in notepad. I just need to know if a script is actually what I need, and if it is even possible to do this. Here goes...

 

There is a large auditorium...part of a large organization which is the secret force which protects the world from the unknown constant daedra invasions that often happen but are unheard of, thanks to the organization. So there is a particularly large daedra invasion this time, involiving a great number of daedra and a refined method of attack. Anyways, there are multiple platforms in this auditorium, and each has two NPCs who have studied a seperate part of the daedra invasion, and the new methods they will use. Some have collected armor, some weapons, some have even captured a dremora and put it in a cage. The leader of the organization, the White Hand, stands in a large platform in the middle. Now Ive done all this already. Now for this part of the quest, I need a large conversation between all the NPC's in the room. I need debates and yelling and stuff like that. I need arguments between NPC's and stuff, and most importantly, I need the player to be frozen much like the fight between akatosh and dagon. I want him to be able to just look around. I can probably magnify all the voices somehow in the room so the NPC's will be audible no matter what they are saying. I can do all the voice acting, but I don't know how to go about this. Can I use the conversation generator. Can I use scripts. Is this even possible. Is this stupid!

 

If you could just tell me where to start, it would be grealy appreciated. I am very confident that my visions of this mod can be reached. By the way, according to my goals for the mod, this is the easy part!

[Vagrant0]

If you could just tell me where to start, it would be grealy appreciated. I am very confident that my visions of this mod can be reached. By the way, according to my goals for the mod, this is the easy part!

It's possible, a bit complicated even if you are good with scripting, but if you're willing to put forth the effort I don't see any serious problems.

 

The key is figuring out a way to control all the dialogues you would need. dialogues are controlled by conditions, those conditions need to be setup with some specific order. You use scripting on the individual NPCs or from the quest script to call out which conversation topic will be used, the conditions determine what within that topic will be said. When that dialogue is finished, it calls the next dialogue (result script). If the same NPC needs to speak twice, you'll need to add conditions which can be changed from the quest script to narrow down that specific dialogue within that topic, or call from a different topic.

 

You might want to look at some of the quests which have bits of dialogue strung together to get some idea how to set this us. MQ4 seems to be pretty straight forward. It isn't all done in one script, but instead is done between a few scripts and the conversation tab so that it runs together like a chain.

[Sypron]

When faced with big problems like this, I always like to try and take the problem out of the equation. Why not have ALL the dialouge as one audio file. Make the script simply freeze you (like at the fight of akatosh) and play the audio. The NPC's themselves wont actually say anything, but you wont know the difference. The only problems with this method are: You won't get "surrond" sound and the NPC's mouths won't move, but you wouldn't even notice that. Also, if the audio is played like this then it will sound like they're all right next to you.

[Vagrant0]

It's not a problem so much as a complication. The key is figuring out how to string everything together, once you have that down, the rest is simple. You have a script? You know what NPCs are supposed to say what, when? Then half the work is already done.

 

You really can't just do a single long conversation like this as a single dialogue, the text would just be too long to be displayed right. Also, it's not nearly as fun if everything seems like it's coming from one spot. You want the player to feel like they're in the thick of things, only makes it right if the sound is coming from different locations.