Adding NPCs to game

[alexdc13]

Hey, so this is my first time trying to mod, I'm trying to add dremora and castle guards to one area to start a war. So I started with the dremora, I don't recall altering anything besides their destination and level, but when i drag them onto the map, save, load the file and start oblivion, about 90% of the time they don't show up. I've spent about 4 hours trying to set this up, and i don't know what I'm doing wrong, so what should i do to solve this problem?

 

Thanks

[Striker879]

There could be other reasons, but one common one is there aren't any path nodes close to them, so the first thing they do is travel to the nearest node (which in some areas like wilderness could be quite a distance away). In the CS on the toolbar buttons on the top look for the one with little orange squares and yellow lines. Once you have the cell you're going to drop them into open in the render window click the toolbar button to toggle on 'show pathgrids'. See if there are any orange (or blue) boxes near to where you drop them. If not use this CS Wiki article to get up to speed on getting some pathgrid to the area.

[alexdc13]

Thanks for the response, but would that change whether the NPC spawns or not? Because I've tried placing the dremora right in front of me and when i load it in game, he does't appear. Anyway, I found that they tend not to show up when i change the level, I'm only level 2, so I'll bring up my level and then try it again.

[Striker879]

Yes, if they're leveled creatures you won't see them until you are the right level. I also don't place NPCs in the same cell as my save, although I can't really say for certain if it makes a difference (just a vague impression of something I read somewhere, likely a CS Wiki tutorial).

[alexdc13]

So cheated and used commands to level up, and now they appear, woot, woot, and thanks for the path nodes, it helped a lot in getting them to go the right way.

[Awevalan]

With any new NPC you try to add you can opt to wipeout their AI. It isn't the best solution but it can serve as a base so that you can establish that they appear where you put them initially in the CS. This would technically be considered an advanced solution only because writing up AI packages or adding them for NPCs isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world but in practice this would allow you to start with the baseline of "my new NPC appears. now I want him to start wandering." or something along those lines.

 

Good luck.

[kingtitan]

Yes, if they're leveled creatures you won't see them until you are the right level. I also don't place NPCs in the same cell as my save, although I can't really say for certain if it makes a difference (just a vague impression of something I read somewhere, likely a CS Wiki tutorial).

 

Just to add to the "wealth" of information in this thread, it *shouldn't* make a difference. There are a couple factors that decide if the NPC will actually be close to the editor's location (AI, pathnodes, normal npc vs leveled lists). For instance, if I created a normal NPC (not one on a leveled list) without any AI and dropped him/her at least decently close to a node, the NPC has a 99.9% chance of being there. However, when you start changing those variables, NPC's could be in a very different location or not even yet existant

Edited March 14, 2012 by kingtitan

[Striker879]

If you are interested in seeing how something as simple as adding an NPC to the game can go astray have a look at my post #61 on Emma's Maple Cottage mod comments thread (that post gives you the other relevant posts to read for the whole story). If adding an NPC to the game can give someone like Emma and her team trouble we shouldn't feel 'singled out' if on occasion we have similar problems.

[kingtitan]

If you are interested in seeing how something as simple as adding an NPC to the game can go astray have a look at my post #61 on Emma's Maple Cottage mod comments thread (that post gives you the other relevant posts to read for the whole story). If adding an NPC to the game can give someone like Emma and her team trouble we shouldn't feel 'singled out' if on occasion we have similar problems.

 

To echo striker (or Sir Links-a-Lot http://forums.nexusmods.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/thumbsup.gif), I wanted to add this link for you to look at too. It has to do with a very large discussion Striker and I had about the trickiness of NPC AI and successfully implementing it in game in a manner that you desire.