Jump to content

Question about NPCs and enemy detection


trashgarbage666

Recommended Posts

Hey guys! I've been working on a stealth / enemy AI improvement mod for a while now, and I've hit a small hiccup. At least, I hope it's small. I was able to recreate it multiple times in a new game without any mods enabled, so I think it's safe to say it's an issue with the base game.

 

Here's a breakdown of what's happening:

• I'm outside the Prospector's Saloon with Easy Pete. Nobody knows I'm there but him.

• I attack Pete with a melee weapon, killing him. It takes a few hits, so he turns hostile before death.

• Now that Pete's dead, there are no NPCs that know I'm there.

• I walk over to the house next to Chet's general store.

The NPC raking his yard doesn't know I'm there, but is hostile to me regardless. If he detects me, he attacks on sight.

 

My goal is to have NPCs only become hostile to the player if they witness the player committing crimes. Obviously, the settler raking his yard had no way of knowing I killed Pete. My guess is that attacking Pete caused him to send an assault alarm to any friendly NPCs within a large radius, whether they witnessed the crime or not. Another reason I think it's an assault alarm is because sometimes the NPC becomes friendly again if I put my weapon away, even when I'm still undetected.

 

After a bit of googling, I found a game setting called iCrimeAlarmRecDistance

https://geck.bethsoft.com/index.php?title=ICrimeAlarmRecDistance

 

It's set to 10,000 by default, and its description reads "This sets the distance from which a crime victim's cries for help can be heard."

 

It sounded like this was the setting responsible for my issue, but lowering it didn't have any visible effect. I even set it to 0, and still didn't see a change. I checked if it was on the Unused Game Settings list at the GECK Wiki, but didn't find it there. Maybe it's not a definitive list, but it's been helpful to me in the past. Either way, I don't have any other leads, and I was hoping someone here might have some suggestions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting problem. AFAIK, if your victim survives your initial attack, then their faction knows about your crime against them. Only an "instant kill" sneak attack goes unreported. In my experience playing such an "instant kill" oriented sniper, this appears to be hard-coded, but I have no evidence other than anecdotal to confirm that. Your experiment suggests the iCrimeAlarmRecDistance value is not used alone in FNV. Looking at "Settings", I see some that may be related such as:

* fCrimeAlarmRespMult
* fDetectionCommentTimer
* fDetectionSneakLightMod
but these and the majority of the similar settings are undocumented, which likely means they have never been investigated and thus may not have been added to the Unused Game Settings list in the first place.

 

You might try inquiring if anyone on the TTW or Project Brazil teams have discovered anything new about them. Otherwise, you get to explore new territory. The Community GECK Wiki would like to hear about the results.

 

-Dubious-

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just to see what would happen, I made a small ref-walking quest script that ran IgnoreCrime on all NPCs within a 4 cell radius. Killing Pete in secret still made the townspeople turn on me. Just to be sure the script was working, I ran GetIgnoreCrime on a few of them, and sure enough, they were in fact ignoring crime. Maybe the people of Goodsprings share a psychic bond, and could sense Pete's freshly spilled blood screaming out to them from beyond the loam.

 

Either way, I'll do as you suggest and ask around on the other major GECK forums. If I find anything, I'll be sure to post it here!

 

If you think someone from Project Brazil wouldn't mind me shaking them down for information, then I'd be glad to get in touch with them. I'm not sure where to ask, though!

Edited by punchbattle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ya it would seem a psychic bond. But I would say It is a combonation of ...

 

The "VMS16QuestScript"

The "GoodspringsSettlerScript"

Which sets Sunny Smiles to start combat with player.

 

And What factions Sunny Smiles is in , with other npc's set to help friends and allies ... Seems there ya go.

Even though I didn't follow the engine logic all the way through on that .

 

So a way to fix that ... my first guess would be the "GoodspringsSettlerScript"

But of course there could be more to it cuz I didn't dig that deep ^shrug^

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...