looking for a mod that let me make my own party ala neverwinter night

[ajevo28]

hi,im looking for a mod that let me make my own party ala neverwinter night 2, thanks in advance

[David Brasher]

Oblivion is pretty poor at companions. As the game was built, the player is not really supposed to have companions and not supposed to be able to interact with them much.

 

You might want to try CM Partners or Companion Share and Recruit. There are also a number of independent mods that include companions and do not use either of those mods to make them function.

 

Beware of the follower limits. When you get about eight companions following you around, you will start getting serious lag, in-game error messages, and companion bugs.

Edited December 10, 2011 by David Brasher

[GreatLucifer]

Beware of the follower limits. When you get about eight companions following you around, you will start getting serious lag, in-game error messages, and companion bugs.

 

Well, though those mods may not use it, there actually is a method to circumvent that. And rather simple at that....

 

Trick is, the package you'd normally give npc's / creatures you wish to have follow you, would be a follow-player-package. Instead of this, make it a wander-to-x-marker package. Than have a quest script (I just use one called 'gamemechanics' containing all these little sort of codesnippets, to keep the amount of processing scripts down) which moves the x-marker to the playerposition.

 

This way, they're technically not following the player. Appears that way, but they're not :psyduck:

Edited December 10, 2011 by GreatLucifer

[Balakirev]

Trick is, the package you'd normally give npc's / creatures you wish to have follow you, would be a follow-player-package. Instead of this, make it a wander-to-x-marker package. Than have a quest script (I just use one called 'gamemechanics' containing all these little sort of codesnippets, to keep the amount of processing scripts down) which moves the x-marker to the playerposition.

 

That's pretty ingenious. But what happens if you want your party to go, say, down this one small corridor, stop, then check out this short area to the left, stop, turn around and go back to the crossroads, and check out the larger straightahead until you come to the bend about 20 feet ahead? If I understand you correctly, you'd have to manually set a series of wander-to-x markers for each one of these actions, where follow allows the party to seamlessly go wherever you want to, all the time.

 

I guess this only points out how difficult the entire procedure currently is for a large party, and how needlessly so.

[David Brasher]

@ GreatLucifer

 

The lag from NPCs comes with having them present and loaded into the most active part of computer memory. (Persistent low level processed NPCs not in the same interior cell or 5x5 exterior block of cells are processed differently and cause a lot less lag.) So the NPCs cause lag because they are near, not because they are using follow packages. So the approach you use would not reduce lag, and would add an always active quest script which would increase processor load. You probably have it set to run more frequently than every 5 seconds, because if you left it at default, the NPC would often be hanging around the position you were at 5 seconds ago. (You can run a long way in 5 seconds.)

 

But your approach would eliminate the in-game error messages about having too many followers.

 

Some people just casually say, "If you want more than eight followers, just have followers follow other followers instead of you." Unfortunately it is not as simple as all that. You get CTDs when you do that if you are not careful. The game will crash when a follower attempts to use an AI package telling it to follow a dead follower. So crashes occur if people in your party die. So the AI packages have to be carefully set up with extra conditions to check whether of not the person to follow is dead before issuing the order to follow him or her. (And that would be pretty laggy if you had 16 followers.)

[nosisab]

Actually that's a structural problem, making TES games party driven is almost redoing the whole engine, it just was not designed to give you direct control of companions. Although not impossible the final result would be a poor game compared to Any originally party driven game.

 

Of course I too would love to get TES games near perfection in all areas but not to the point of having a final result that is not good at anything.

[GreatLucifer]

@ Balakirev

 

"...manually set a series of wander-to-x markers for each one of these actions..."

 

This method simply mimics the follow package without the max-set of (iirc)7. Actual commands would ofcourse require additional effort.

 

And indeed, the small-corridor-I-want-to-go-back-but-my-companion-is-blocking-me-problem would occur with this method. Makes sense really, as a normal follow package would have that problem too and all this does is mimic it :P

 

@David Brasher

 

The lag from NPCs comes with having them present and loaded into the most active part of computer memory. (Persistent low level processed NPCs not in the same interior cell or 5x5 exterior block of cells are processed differently and cause a lot less lag.) So the NPCs cause lag because they are near, not because they are using follow packages.

What...? First-off, how many people you can have around without lag is computer-dependant, so I will not discuss such things (as I did not do in the first place, nor has it anything to do with this). Secondly, there is an actual maximum defined that governs the maximum amount of AIs following a single target (7 iirc). This is to get around that.

 

So the approach you use would not reduce lag,

Never said it would. Does circumvent a restriction, though.

 

and would add an always active quest script which would increase processor load. You probably have it set to run more frequently than every 5 seconds, because if you left it at default, the NPC would often be hanging around the position you were at 5 seconds ago. (You can run a long way in 5 seconds.)

Indeed I do. As I said; "I just use one called 'gamemechanics' containing all these little sort of codesnippets, to keep the amount of processing scripts down", translated;

I only have one running questscript, set to 0.5, containing all these forms of gamemechanics, and therefore (overhere atleast) never noticable. About as 'eco-friendly' as it gets.

[nosisab]

I understand the OP wanted something like in party driven games where you can actually take command of the followers and directly decide their action (some allow even for changing the party leader to better cope with determined situations). If is just increasing the number of companions actively following with or without improved AIs, dialog and possibly quests, that was done before since Morrowind and I can't see a reason it will not be done in Skyrim (probably soon after the CK release).

[GreatLucifer]

Well, besides the max of 1 companion, I'm already quite content with the Skyrim companion-system. Rather well-made, if you ask me.

 

I don't actually know neverwinter night (let alone 2), so am unsure of what is actually being asked. But due to this;

 

Beware of the follower limits. When you get about eight companions following you around, you will start getting serious lag, in-game error messages, and companion bugs.

 

I was under the impression it might be a number-problem. As for actual commands and such, it can ofcourse be done, but would indeed not be as simple...

 

Ah well :psyduck:

[Naktis]

There are other companion mods too like:

Red Sonia - link and link.

Vilja - link.

Neeshka (Unfortunately not everyone's favorite Tiefling.) - link.

Viconia DeVir (Romance option available) - link.

Saerileth (Romance option available) - link.

Stoker Wolff (Romance option available) - link and link.

Lucien Lachance - link.

Mondstein - link.

And my favorite, Dairanath Avari (Romance option available) - link.