follower shared inventory

[hoylemd]

I had this idea a little while ago to abstract away the player / follower inventory divide.

 

I'm thinking that when the player has a follower, their inventory is expanded to include the follower's inventory so that the player doesn't have to go through the long dialog interface to access the follower's inventory.

 

More details:

the followers will still have their own inventory, so the player can give them equipment to use, but the follower will not have access to the player's inventory as usual.

the carry capacity for the player will be increased by <follower.max_capacity> - <follower.current_capacity>. This shouldn't be giving the player capacity they don't already have access to.

I know that carry weight affects things like stealth and speed. Ideally, I'd like this to virtually 'fill up' the follower first, so they player only starts to get affected when they're nearing capacity.

 

The use case will be something like this:

get follower

open follower inventory

give follower equipment for use

adventure as normal, with follower pack mule, without having to trade with them.

 

Ideally I'd like to make this, but I really don't know what I'm doing with this sort of modding in Skyrim, so I might need some help with where to start. Specifically, where can I find a good reference for the different classes / objects Skyrim exposes to scripting? I'm a programmer myself, so I figure that after a bit of direction-finding I can probably figure the rest out myself.

[FiftyTifty]

*Cough* Scroll half-way down the page.

 

I'd offer help, but I'm under a bout of insomnia, and my advice should be taken with a grain of salt, at best, when I'm like this.

[IsharaMeradin]

If you can figure out how to get the reference to the current follower (I'm stumped on that one). Then you can utilize the following to get access to their inventory at the press of a button...

http://www.creationkit.com/OpenInventory_-_Actor

http://www.creationkit.com/IsKeyPressed_-_Input

 

It would require SKSE.

[hoylemd]

*Cough* Scroll half-way down the page.

 

I'd offer help, but I'm under a bout of insomnia, and my advice should be taken with a grain of salt, at best, when I'm like this.

 

Oh! I hadn't seen that API yet. I'll have to give it a read. Thanks!

 

If you can figure out how to get the reference to the current follower (I'm stumped on that one). Then you can utilize the following to get access to their inventory at the press of a button...

http://www.creationkit.com/OpenInventory_-_Actor

http://www.creationkit.com/IsKeyPressed_-_Input

 

It would require SKSE.

 

Is referencing the current follower not a commonly done thing? If not, I could probably try to capture the "make follower" event and store who's following. It would just mean that after installation players would have to release and reaquire their followers. I don't want to access their inventory though, I want to check to see their capacity and modify the player's capacity accordingly. There's got to be a way to check that.

 

Thanks for the help to both of you. I'll try to get some done tomorrow. Hopefully it'll not be too hard!

 

edit: after a minute of that API, it looks like it's not hard to get max and current inventory capacities if i have a reference to an actor (GetActorValue("InventoryWeight"/"CarryWeight"). Now I just need to find a reference to the current follower or intercept the follow event.

 

edit2: well i've spent enough time reading the API for tonight. his post has sort of being my to-do list. I just need to find a way to check if an actor is a player follower, and if so, add a dialog option that shares the inventory, and that'll be version 0.1. Then I'll find a way to generalize it so that all followers have the ability (allowing for custom followers). Version 0.3 will try to capture the become follower event.

Edited January 8, 2013 by hoylemd

[IsharaMeradin]

Figuring out who the current follower is without editing the stock dialog quest is problematic. If you edit the stock dialog quest then you run the risk of incompatibility. This is why I said that I was stumped. If I were to do it, I'd want to do it without any major incompatibilities.

 

There is something referred to as a "cloak" by some. Its a magic effect that checks those around for specific data and when one fits the bill does whatever it is supposed to do. Perhaps using that technique would work in this case to catch the nearest follower or something. I'm just not sure on how it gets set up.

 

I'm not too sure about the carry weight thing myself. I think a majority of people would rather just access the follower's inventory via hotkey without going thru the actual dialog. Its too easy to accidentally dismiss them when all you want to do is swap their armor.

[hoylemd]

As long as the changes to the become follower event are purely additive, it should be fine, right? I'll look into the cloak idea too. That could work. Maybe even restrict it to work that your inventory is shared only when you're close by?

 

I don't want access to the follower's inventory. the whole point of this is to not have to talk to the follower at all. You get a follower, your inventory is bigger. The only time you talk to them is to give them new gear.

[DreamKingMods]

edit: after a minute of that API, it looks like it's not hard to get max and current inventory capacities if i have a reference to an actor (GetActorValue("InventoryWeight"/"CarryWeight").

 

Note that the InventoryWeight actor value isn't actually tracked for anyone other than the player--or at least, it wasn't in early versions of Skyrim. I don't know if they've since fixed it.