[LE] start game enabled quests

[greyday01]

The Bethesda quest tutorial as well as others have Start Game Enabled checked. AFKmods says that that doesn't work and can cause save game corruption. I really want to use it so I can add an item to the player when the game loads. A trigger box in Helgen would only work for the vanilla start. Does this really cause game problems? Is there some other way to add an item to the player the first time the game is started with your mod running?

[DMan1629]

I don't know what you read and where, but you don't have to worry - it's not gonna break anything. If you're only using it to add an item/perk/spell etc. you can do it without a SEQ file as well - I'm doing it and it works perfectly without any errors or problems.
I would recommend checking out this: Staff of Shalidor's esp file and the script it runs on startup - it's exactly what you need.
I would also recommend downloading that mod while you're at it - it's awesome! :D
P.S: I would also recommend checking out HaemProjects' other works.

Good luck!

Edited April 28, 2018 by DMan1629

[FrankFamily]

I'm not aware of any issue regarding start game enabled quests. What came up googling was this: https://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/4056-skyrim-your-first-quest/, is that it?. My best guess is that is about the SEQ file you have to generate if you have dialogue or scenes in a start game enabled quest. Without a SEQ file those things will be broken (other things in the quest will work fine) so perhaps that's what he's talking about. Perhaps the tutorial was right about the time the whole SEQ file thing was introduced, iirc that came with an update and people didn't know at first you had to generate the thing and how but I wasn't doing quests at the time so take it with a grain of salt.

Edited April 28, 2018 by FrankFamily

[cdcooley]

There are only two things to know about the start game enabled quests. First, dialogue associated with them won't work correctly unless you have generated a .SEQ file or the game has been saved and reloaded. Second, the quest will attempt to start while you are still on the main start menu which means the OnInit event will run for any scripts on that quest before everything is set up correctly. (The OnInit event will also be run when it should when you're loading a new game, but if you have functions in the OnInit event that need to run in game time mode you could end up with two version of OnInit running at the same time with different views of the state of the game. Appropriate use of RegisterForSingleUpdateGameTime can overcome the OnInit event problems.)

 

If your quest has dialogue you need to generate the matching SEQ file. If you're doing anything complicated in the OnInit event you should move the real action to OnUpdate and call RegisterForSingleUpdateGameTime from OnInit. Simple things like adding an item to the player are fine to put directly in OnInit though.

[greyday01]

Oh good. I was having a hard time thinking of an alternative way to get the quest started. Thanks everybody.