Rideable Creature Oddity [Solved]

[DrakeTheDragon]

Anybody any idea what could be going on here or what I could be missing?

 

You know I made a creature version of my dragons quite a while ago, and while I was at it I also made it rideable following a guide from the Oblivion Mount Project. It was working splendidly for a very long time.

 

Now recently I set upon expanding on my shape shifting again. I could already switch between full human shape into half-dragon only-lowerbody, half-dragon only-upperbody, half-dragon upper and lowerbody and full anthro-dragon shape back and forth by the press of 1 of 5 buttons. And I wanted to expand it about a 6th button to shift into 4-legged creature dragon shape, through the very well-known means of simply spawning a rideable creature, turning invisible and mounting the creature.

 

Initially all was working well. I simply re-used the existing rideable creature dragon in its original folder "meshes/creatures/DrakeDragon".

But soon it became evident neither the camera position nor movement, being centered onto an invisible rider, were appropriate for "being" the creature yourself any longer. So I set out to modify something about some special riding nodes' positions inside the skeleton NIF and, as always necessary apparently, also had to copy the changes into the KFs.

 

That was the point at which I decided to put the shape shifting creature dragon into a separate folder from the rideable creature dragon and simply copied the whole folder 1:1 into "meshes/creatures/DrakeDragonForm" and edited the creature's skeleton in the CS to point to the new one.

 

However, and here's the confusing catch, soon after I did that the dragon ceased to be mountable. I could still see the horseshoe icon when looking at it, and when clicking to mount it the animation actually "starts", but it immediately aborts and never succeeds in mounting accordingly.

 

I experimented around some more, and it just got more and more nonsensical/inexplainable. No matter what name I give the new folder and change the skeleton in the CS respectively, as long as it isn't like the old "DrakeDragon", the creature is no longer mountable. Even if I do away with the copy and "rename" the original (pointing the skeleton in the CS to the renamed original folder), it no longer works. And if I rename the original into something else and rename the copy into the original (pointing the CS to the renamed copy), *bang* it's suddenly mountable again.

It's as if the "name" DrakeDragon is somehow still "baked" into the creature records at some other place, and as soon as I change the skeleton to another, but "identical", folder, or even the renamed original, it no longer works as a mountable creature.

 

Does anybody have any idea, what, in the Nine's name, I could be missing here? I want to work on a separate copy for the shape shifting approach, "not" the same as I'm going to use for the rideable version. (The positions and animations for the shape shifting version will be tweaked so it looks like I "am" the dragon, while the animations for the rideable version will be tweaked so me "riding" on it looks better, more elegant and organic overall, than it does right now. But this won't work, if I can't switch to another, not even an "identical", folder first.)

[DrakeTheDragon]

Ah, never mind, that was totally my own fault. :pinch:

 

Turned out I completely forgot, when I re-created the creature record in the shape shifting plugin, to also re-create the "Idle Animations"!

 

For a rideable creature there's also new idle animations for mount and dismount. These are "folder-bound", which was the reason why they no longer worked, once the folder-"name" changed.

The original plugin still contained the idle animations for the original path "creatures/DrakeDragon", that's why this folder, even though there were no animations for it inside the shape shifting plugin, still worked regardless.

 

Now that I recreated the idle animations inside the shape shifting plugin for the new folder "creatures/DrakeDragonForm" also, suddenly the creature became mountable again... Who would'a thought? :facepalm:

 

Well, let's just file this under "even veterans make beginner mistakes still sometimes" and move on, will we? :sweat:

 

But maybe it'll be of use to know to someone else in future.

[Striker879]

The most valuable things I have are my mistakes Drake. In my book you are (as usual) a very generous person.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Geez. Me letting folks know I solved my problem and don't need help anymore, before anybody wastes their time, and then just shortly explaining what the error was and how I solved it, is seen as very generous of me? I just felt it's the right thing to do. :ermm:

 

But I can't be the only one doing so. Many I met were that way in the past. Where else would I have all this knowledge from in the first place? :huh:

(Sure, I'm a self-taught person most of the time, but even those, by definition, need lectures and observations, and "who" else would I have observed or read lectures from, if it weren't for others on here giving to me?)

[Striker879]

OK ... make that an honourable, generous person.

 

I always try to make certain to attribute the source of of any information I have to pass along, sometimes in the form of links to the source, or in cases of things I've learned from you with a note about my DrakesTips text file.

 

On a side note, when I first read about your problem I was bothered by my own inability to offer anything to help, and relieved when you reported that the solution was found.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Aw, man.

 

Oh, but I definitely need to get around to record a video next play. This night I was play-testing my latest creature dragon shape shift additions, and I can safely say I've had the most fun since a very long time!

He may be without wings currently, as they all of a sudden out of the blue started glitching without me touching them for months, but the last feature additions made "being" the creature really lots more fun.

 

I made it so all dangerous controls are disabled while I'm in creature shape (riding him), but then added script checks to re-introduce those actions, which normally are also impossible to do at all from on horse.

When I press activate while riding him, I can actually activate whatever I'm pointing at (provided I'm close enough), won't dismount, can push levers, open doors, talk to people (1st person view from his perspective looks funny in conversations but certainly not bad), loot corpses/chests, what have you.

I made him slash out when I click the attack button, although currently it's only in testing stage and insta-kills the target instead of applying a rather complex calculated amount of damage in certain special ways. But if the one manipulation of the target (killing it) works, then do all others, too, and I only need to script'em.

And once I'm done implementing it, I'll also be able to spit fire, either in projectiles exploding on impact or classically in jets/clouds/whatever it's called. Currently he only goes into pose and "pretends" to spit fire when I press the cast button. The casting itself was not yet done.

 

Still, dashing around all over Elsweyr this night, getting attacked at every corner and sending them flying with a single slash of his talons, and not encountering a single situation where I would've had to switch back into human form to achieve what I want, definitely was the most fun I've had in ages.

 

Sure, the Mountain Lion animations are crap still compared to what could be, I tried fixing them some, but only ended up with corrupted results (screen blacking out during motions, sometimes never coming back, camera losing position and dropping down to the ground during a step, these kinda nasty things). However, with the right animations, this could all look leagues better still. I first would have to fix/finish the model though. Else it makes no sense.

 

Ah, if just I could show you something from last night to share the fun with you. :pinch:

[Striker879]

LOL ... what happens to me in situations like that is I can never "recreate the magic" to show somebody. Ducks, once lined up will do their best to resist lining up again.

 

Is the funny part of 1st person dialogues that you are zooming in too much or looking at their face level where you should be looking down?

 

I use a tweaked value for fDlgFocus in Oblivion.ini (mine is set to 5.9500) to control the amount of zoom when enter the dialogue screen. Not sure if there would be a way to manipulate that via scripts or not. Seems to me that the vanilla behaviour for 1st person dialogue when you are on horseback (like if a highwayman gives you the "Your money or your life" spiel) is that you are looking down at him and he is looking up at you. I don't know if you can initiate dialogue from on horseback without being forced ... I'm always in such a hurry to get somewhere.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Well, in my case the rider's head is "inside" the creature's, or as close as I can make it, as either Oblivion Reloaded or Enhanced Camera seems to be interfering with camera positions when on horseback. But under ideal conditions it just looks like you're inside the head, even looking down the snout some. It's completely bogus when in 3rd person, due to the aforementioned interferers, but it's still not looking too unpleasant all in all, just unusual, especially when everybody's staring down at the dragon's head, which he's holding way lower than where humanoids' heads usually are. But as dialog's switching view into 1st person anyway, it really doesn't look bad.

 

I had to undo some value fine-tuning in OR's settings though, introduced by other mods/guides. Who ever thought off-centering camera to the right while in dialog was a good idea, definitely hasn't experienced NPCs constantly turning their blind side towards you like they did to me. "Hey, I'm talking to you. Where are you looking at? I'm over here!" Luckily undoing these weird settings hasn't fixed "only" the normal view. The dragon's view coincidentally also looks whole worlds better than it did before.

[Striker879]

Ah, I think I'm getting the idea you are trying to create ... simulating that you are being ridden. If I'm correct are you trying to have the NPC conversation with you the dragon or the rider?

[DrakeTheDragon]

As this is for shape shifting "into" the dragon and I'm just using the well known concept of turning the player invisible and mounting the creature for this, ideally there won't be any "rider" in that sense at all, just the dragon, which is you. And that's also how it looks like right now, which is why I'm so happy with it all. :wink: