Can you help me with NPC merchant?

[monster0mash]

I posted earlier about finding merchants up at night so decided to look into doing it myself.

 

So far I've checked some tutorials but reach an impasse when trying to figure out how to add Services or how services relates to gear being sold.

Here is what I want to do:

1)Have 1 or 2 merchants that sell gear and offer services in each city, hanging outside like a hotel or even in market place street --meaning they don't have to wander more than a few feet.

2)They are only out from 12am to 5 am.

3)Their lists should level like other merchants.

 

Ok I have managed to attached a Wander AI package to test one NPC.

I removed the autocalc feature but enabled Offer Services in AI.

I have him scheduled at midnight nearby one of the doors to Market in IC.

But he doesn't show up. Have saved to .esp and checked that.

Anyone know why he won't show up?

Edited August 12, 2011 by monster0mash

[David Brasher]

The most effective approach might be to put a script on the vendor that enables and disables him according to the time of day. You could put a condition in the script that would make it so he would not vanish or appear when you were close, because that would look fake.

 

AI packages are difficult to work with and often do not behave as expected. Like actors have trouble moving between worldspaces, teleport instead of walking places, and are sometimes not loaded in memory when you think they are and are therefore not executing their AI packages until you draw near, at which point they may be behind schedule and doing the wrong thing. You will want to be sure that your actors have low level processing, but that still often won't be enough to do the job. It would be safest to keep your vendor in one cell and not have him travel out of it.

[monster0mash]

The most effective approach might be to put a script on the vendor that enables and disables him according to the time of day. You could put a condition in the script that would make it so he would not vanish or appear when you were close, because that would look fake.

 

AI packages are difficult to work with and often do not behave as expected. Like actors have trouble moving between worldspaces, teleport instead of walking places, and are sometimes not loaded in memory when you think they are and are therefore not executing their AI packages until you draw near, at which point they may be behind schedule and doing the wrong thing. You will want to be sure that your actors have low level processing, but that still often won't be enough to do the job. It would be safest to keep your vendor in one cell and not have him travel out of it.

 

Thanks for the reply.

I've spent a lot of time on this so decided to put

one guy in The Feed Bag, Duration 24 hours, just to test and he still doesn't show up.

I've tried waiting 24 hours as was suggested in several sites.

So its funny, I thought I could eventually get him to sell something, now I can't even get him in the game.

I'd assume I wouldn't have to manually drop him in, so I've overlooked something among all the wiki stuff I've been reading.

[David Brasher]

I'd assume I wouldn't have to manually drop him in

 

To place a merchant in the Feedbag, you will need to go into that cell and manually drop one copy on your merchant NPC into the building interior shown in the render window, and save your mod.

 

You will want to not be in the Feedbag when you activate the new version of the mod, because then odd things may happen and you may have to wait to see your edits.

 

It is generally best to place NPCs in the world near the spots where their AI packages tell them to be.

 

Make sure that you have removed any unnecessary AI packages from NPCs you copied and edited. Like if you copied and edited an NPC from Skingrad, but failed to remove all the Skingrad AI packages, your vender could be hanging out in Skingrad instead of the Imperial City where you want him.

 

Make sure that your mod actually saves.

 

Make sure that you activate your mod in your mod manager.

[monster0mash]

I'd assume I wouldn't have to manually drop him in

 

To place a merchant in the Feedbag, you will need to go into that cell and manually drop one copy on your merchant NPC into the building interior shown in the render window, and save your mod.

 

You will want to not be in the Feedbag when you activate the new version of the mod, because then odd things may happen and you may have to wait to see your edits.

 

It is generally best to place NPCs in the world near the spots where their AI packages tell them to be.

 

Make sure that you have removed any unnecessary AI packages from NPCs you copied and edited. Like if you copied and edited an NPC from Skingrad, but failed to remove all the Skingrad AI packages, your vender could be hanging out in Skingrad instead of the Imperial City where you want him.

 

Make sure that your mod actually saves.

 

Make sure that you activate your mod in your mod manager.

 

I didn't realize I had to drop him in and like to avoid the render window because I always mess stuff up.

So now he did show up although he is 100% chameleon and has no audio but hey, that's a start.