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Starting a New Mod to Place Actors In-Game


David Brasher

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People keep making mod requests for mods that would allow them to place actors in-game. This would be most useful for people who don't want to stop and use the CS to do it or don't know how to use the CS.

 

People usually ask for NPCs to populate their houses or towns. Like they might want guards, a blacksmith or merchant, or a maid. Some people want random civilians to place on city streets to make them seem more realistic and lively. But I can think of all sorts of interesting friendly or hostile NPCs and beasts that could be placed. (You could place a large group of actors that hates the actors in another group you place and have a battle!)

 

If you were to use my mod, what kinds of actors would be most useful to you and would you use most frequently?

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I'm actually in the process of doing this right now for Vanilla Drops. I can't tell you what other people would want but I can tell you what I'm doing and hopefully it gives you some ideas!

 

I've found that actors that travel from town to town and stay at the inns along the roads and each town are nice scenery... even if they don't do or say much... I have a few of these in the works (sometimes it's hard to get them to use the inns for some reason though...),

 

I'm purposefully creating several new adventurer type NPCs to explore dungeons the player can help or hinder; and rarely be a companion to you, for a while. Those are fun to make (just make a copy of the adventurer's scripting/ai and mess around with it until you find something you like) and there's plenty of voice packs out there for generic conversation and action (fun animation idles are great for this too to give them some personality). It's actually one of the main draws for my mod I think because it helps the player feel less like he's the only person out there.

 

I have a roving band of bandits and a roving band of outlaw orcs from Orsinium that I'm basing off of the Uruk Hai mod (with permission to use the scripts).

 

I have some NPCs from the MTCE Expanded mod travelling every now and then.

 

I also have changed some of the knights from Knights of the Thorn to patrol and slay baddies once they "find their bravery" after the Oblivion gate in Cheydinhal and I've added 2 knights to Knights of the White Stallion for the same purpose.

 

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I thought about doing some dungeon actors vs dungeon actors battles but... I can never get them to act right in the AI or scripting and for some reason I get CPU freezes (I'm obviously not doing it right because I have seen them done right before in mods without freezes) so I abandoned that.

 

One thing I probably won't get to but would love to see is a legion versus Oblivion battle at some of the gates. This happens a few times (the one hidden quest at that fort is the one I'd like to see more of) but most of the time it is just one lone legionnaire getting slaughtered after his horse dies :(.

 

 

 

Hopefully those gave you some ideas bud! Keep up with the awesome work!

 

Ooooh maybe a peasant revolt!!?!?! Angry peasants attacking a lord! That'd be hilarious! Pitchforks and torches for all!

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The way this mod is set up is that you go to the place where you want to place an actor or group of actors and then cast the spell. The spell has a script effect and takes you into a series of menu boxes that you use to select what actors you want to place. So if you were wanting to place guards outside each of the doors of your house, you would go to each door and cast the spell and select a different guard from the list. Casting the spell and placing an actor or group of actors you have already placed will resurrect and place that same actor or group of actors again. (Which would move them from the last location you placed them, so if you want a second actor or group of actors, you need to select a different option from the list. You can also cast the spell to remove particular actors you have already placed.

 

So this mod is different from what you describe because it adds no content at all until the gamer decides to utilize it to place some content precisely where he or she wants.

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