How to get an NPC to ride a horse?

[MrSly]

I'm working on a mod that has a shop and an owner. The owner has to go from his shop in Bruma to Jensine's in the IC. I have the packages functioning that allow him to do this, running there and back. No problem thus far.

 

However, I'm trying to now have him ride a horse to the IC and back to Bruma. All I did was copy a horse (HorsePaint), changed the ID and name, changed the look a little, removed the HorseGoHome package, and placed next to the shop in Bruma. I then set a REF for the horse, and set the ownership to the NPC's faction (a unique faction I use for all the NPC's in the shop) so everyone in the shop can ride the horse on their days (each has a reason to go to another city on a weekly basis).

 

The shop owner is the first NPC I'm trying to make ride this horse. I changed his first "find" package to "Use Horse" and dropped the "Always Run" flag. He just walks past the horse and walks all the way from Bruma to the IC. I can't figure out what to do to make him get on the horse. :wallbash: Couldn't find anything about having an NPC ride a horse (other than as a companion) in the CS Wiki, or on any of the topics here. Except for this information on Flags in the CS Wiki:

 

Use Horse: NPCs will use their horse if the distance they are travelling is greater than or equal to the game setting fMinDistanceUseHorse. If the horse doesn't evaluate to a proper reference, or if the distance is less than this, then the NPC will simply walk.

 

So aparently the horse doesn't evaluate to a proper reference. What else do I have to do to fix this? What do I have to do to make my NPC get on his horse and ride to the IC, and then back later?

 

Any pointers would be GREATLY appreciated!!

[Vagrant0]

I thought the wiki had a solution or tutorial for this. Anyway, what you need to do is first, have the horse outside in the stable, NPCs can't ride a horse through doors (gates). Make sure that this horse was copied from the plain horses, and not the ones the player gets. Select the placed horse, and change the ownership of the horse to the NPC. Setup a package on the horse which is a "travel to" "current location".

 

Setup 3 packages for the NPC. Have 1 package telling the NPC to travel to the stables, 1 hour duration, must reach location. Have a second package beginning the hour the first one ends, telling the NPC to travel to the stables in IC, set duration 2 hours, must complete, always run, use horse, defensive combat, ignore fallout. Have a third package that starts 1 hour after the second one begins to travel to the shop, must reach location, use horse, defensive combat, ignore fallout, duration as whatever time is left.

 

The reason for having the first two packages only an hour long is to reduce the amount of time that the NPC is standing around in the stables at the IC, The third package begins before they reach the location, so the third package is put on hold until the location is reached. The final package has the full duration so that if there is an interruption along the way, the NPC will still try to reach the final location. Do the reverse, 1 hour package from shop to IC stables, 1 hour package from IC to Bruma, and the remaining time from Bruma stables back to the shop to send them home.

 

Make sure that the NPC has the box "no low level processing" un-checked or else they won't do anything unless you are watching them.

 

Keep in mind that for the most part, this will be asthetic. There may be times that the NPC still does not reach the location, or times when they do not use the horse. I believe the main reason why what you were doing wasn't working is because you had your horse inside the city, but it could have also been an ownership or packaging issue.

[myrmaad]

I thought the wiki had a solution or tutorial for this. Anyway, what you need to do is first, have the horse outside in the stable, NPCs can't ride a horse through doors (gates). Make sure that this horse was copied from the plain horses, and not the ones the player gets. Select the placed horse, and change the ownership of the horse to the NPC. Setup a package on the horse which is a "travel to" "current location".

 

Setup 3 packages for the NPC. Have 1 package telling the NPC to travel to the stables, 1 hour duration, must reach location. Have a second package beginning the hour the first one ends, telling the NPC to travel to the stables in IC, set duration 2 hours, must complete, always run, use horse, defensive combat, ignore fallout. Have a third package that starts 1 hour after the second one begins to travel to the shop, must reach location, use horse, defensive combat, ignore fallout, duration as whatever time is left.

 

The reason for having the first two packages only an hour long is to reduce the amount of time that the NPC is standing around in the stables at the IC, The third package begins before they reach the location, so the third package is put on hold until the location is reached. The final package has the full duration so that if there is an interruption along the way, the NPC will still try to reach the final location. Do the reverse, 1 hour package from shop to IC stables, 1 hour package from IC to Bruma, and the remaining time from Bruma stables back to the shop to send them home.

 

Make sure that the NPC has the box "no low level processing" un-checked or else they won't do anything unless you are watching them.

 

Keep in mind that for the most part, this will be asthetic. There may be times that the NPC still does not reach the location, or times when they do not use the horse. I believe the main reason why what you were doing wasn't working is because you had your horse inside the city, but it could have also been an ownership or packaging issue.

 

Thanks for this Vagrant. It answers a question I had on the mod "Anoriel's Crossroad Manor" which adds a horse to the house. However, through some investigation I figured out that this horse was copied from the Cheydenhall Black horses for sale. *Easily deduced by the fact that after I changed the name of the house-horse using the console to "Poe", I began running into other horses named Poe that were not player-owned. My investigation revealed that the "red-hand" Poes went "home" to the Cheydenhal stable.

 

I added to my list of "Oblivion things to do" to look at the mod in the Console to see what I could see. Without this crucial knowledge I doubt I would have seen a whole lot more than I already figured out.

 

The other information will surely come in handy as well.

[MrSly]

Yes, thank you Vagrant. I will try what you said and let you know if I can get it to work.

 

BTW, I did fail to mention that the shop was outside the Bruma gate, right next to the stables. But I'll try and see if putting the horse INSIDE the stable, and adding the other packages helps.

 

As always, I can't believe how much time I spend trying to figure out all this stuff, when asking a question nets the answer so much quicker! Just when I think I have a handle on something...

[Vagrant0]

As always, I can't believe how much time I spend trying to figure out all this stuff, when asking a question nets the answer so much quicker! Just when I think I have a handle on something...

That's not always the case... In trying to find out your own answers, you often tend to learn alot more than what someone may tell you, and my answer may not actually solve very much in the long run. Although I have a good handle on most things, I am often prone to some mistakes, or may not remember as much about them as I think I do.

 

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index...es%2C_and_you...

Although not directly relevent to your issue, does talk about some of the settings needed to make an NPC use a horse. You could also look at some of the other packages, like that guy in skingrad to get a few more ideas.

[thebigba]

As always, I can't believe how much time I spend trying to figure out all this stuff, when asking a question nets the answer so much quicker! Just when I think I have a handle on something...

That's not always the case... In trying to find out your own answers, you often tend to learn alot more than what someone may tell you, and my answer may not actually solve very much in the long run. Although I have a good handle on most things, I am often prone to some mistakes, or may not remember as much about them as I think I do.

 

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index...es%2C_and_you...

Although not directly relevent to your issue, does talk about some of the settings needed to make an NPC use a horse. You could also look at some of the other packages, like that guy in skingrad to get a few more ideas.

 

What I normally do is about the same, I use horses for my companions and I had the commands to thier dialogue then when I select them they run the packages to mount the horse and then another to follow on the horse.

 

For regular npc's What you explained will work just fine :-)

[MrSly]

It worked great. I needed to make a bunch of trials to get it working just right, but at least he now rides his horse to the IC!

 

The problem I was having seems to be in several places, but mostly that I was trying to use a FIND package instead of a TRAVEL package to ride the horse. Once I changed it to TRAVEL, that seemed to fix most of the problems.

 

Thank you very much!

 

BTW, I changed the horse to be owned by his faction again, and it still works. So now anyone in the shop can ride the horse.

 

I looked at Honmund and his horse, they seem to have a MUCH simpler package, just one, to accomplish the same goal. AND he has one package to ride his horse to find a mage in the Bruma Mages Guild. I tried to copy the functionality of his packages, but they didn't work. The shop owner just walked to the IC. Mine MAY be a bit more work, but I got mine to work, and that's the important part.

 

Since this helped me so much with my NPC, maybe something like this should be in the wiki...