Mysterious Mr. Bear

Get well soon, Mage- and good luck with your research project!! It's admirable you are working away even through these conditions, and evidence that it isn't going to hold you down. Heck, most people couldn't do a research project at the best of times!

How do, Airtight!

Modding enthusiasm indeed!! Sounds like a hefty project you have planned. My very first post on the Bethesda Forums site was me announcing to the community I was going to create a mod called "Oblivion 2". It would seamlessly link together all the big mods for Oblivion in one big story and include various "fun" mods by fitting them into the lore, I would organise voice talent to voice them all and handpick graphical mods to get the feel right, then assemble a massive soundtrack from all the best community submissions. I would then put it on multiple installation disks to be mass produced and distributed for free, in custom DVD cases with their own, re-written manuals for all the new content. I planned to do this despite only opening the CK once, and running Oblivion on low settings with emulated hardware... on a six year old... macbook. I'd like to say I was joking, but this genuinely was how I introduced myself to the mod community The forum at large reached through the computer screen, lifted me from my comfy safe chair, and carried me away to be burned at the stake in the greatest flame thread known to man. Three of my modding heroes (including Hex, the awesome guy behind Unnecessary Violence) who's mods I loved and wanted to include personally (and rightfully) tore me a new one. Bearing in mind that these guys were like mythical beings of greatness to me, it felt like the gods themselves had at last stepped down from heaven, only to smite with the thunderous rage of zeus before returning to their lofty palace in the clouds. To cut a long rambling story short, I took my burned, shrivelled self here, a place of comparable peace and sanctuary, to learn the ways of the modder in the same way a down-on-his-luck stockbroker might shave head his head and travel to the mountains to start his new life as a buddhist monk. I did as you are doing now- set about learning what I would need to know with my end goal in mind. Along the way I found myself distracted by new ideas though, and ended up working on and finishing a multitude of projects, the last of which was second place for file of the month! (losing, of course, to a big boobie mod). I never really let go of Oblivion 2 in my mind along the way until Skyrim came out, by which point I had realised everybody makes their own Oblivion 2 anyway when they mod their games, and I was simply forcing my own preferences on others. What I'm trying to say is this: Hanassie is definitely right when she warns about over facing yourself. You have made a thread asking enough questions to keep the modding equivilant of The Justice League busy for a few days, and the thread is called "Newbie Questions"! It's clear you have a lot of experience with modelling and texturing and would probably find it easy to adapt those skills to work with the creation kit in no time, and your idea is nowhere near as far fetched as mine was, but your planning to do the sort of thing that 7 paid professionals might do for a job in your spare time. My advice however, is definitely not to abandon the project, or even put it aside 'for now". Throw yourself at it, make lists of every skill you will need to learn, divide it into manageable sections, and don't be put off if you fail a thousand times if you have succeeded even once. Be as uncompromising as you like, but allow yourself to be distracted. If you are working on talking animals, and figure it out, and make a cool talking rabbit companion, why not turn that into something stand-alone? If you were working on one thing, and you start experimenting and it kind of turns into another thing, thats fine; see where it goes and release it, because it's all experience. It will feel great getting something done, which is MUCH needed when your sat working on the same thing for months at a time with no relief; I've been working on the same mod for a year now, and it feels awful just looking at the thing because i've not had the reward of releasing something and finishing it and being proud of it in so long. Don't be disappointed in yourself if you find your mind wandering or you need to take a break; it's not settling for less, it's being open minded! Whatever the case though, don't ever lose the "modding enthusiasm" that makes you charge headfirst into things you have no idea about. As soon as you realise you have a comfort zone, smash it to bits and run as fast as you can! Sometimes, the only way to get anywhere in modding is running off the edge of a cliff wondering if you can fly or not, even if it means learning to do so from the rocks below. Or in my case, arrogantly stumbling off a cliff and flapping for 3 years until everyone had stopped throwing pitchforks at me As for practical advice with your problems, I know you came here for quick advice, but I would warn you away from trying to find fast solutions. (Sorry, If someone said that to me when I was looking for help I know I'd want to eat their face.) Instead, look for help finding your own solution. For example, I know there are several tutorials on how to get talking animals working that tell you exactly what buttons to press and what boxes to tick. However, as soon as you want to do something NOT covered by the tutorial, you have no knowledge to fall back on. (this happened to me many, many times ) Start by looking at the animal companions that use the dialogue system that are already in the game- like that talking dog from the deadric quest. See what boxes are ticked and what scripts are used, then search them in the creation kit wiki. Thats not to say that asking for help is bad, and I'm not at all being snidey; this place is here so everyone can help eachother and share their experience, and I'm always asking for help here when I'm stuck on something! I just found that the more I poked around for myself and investigated, the less questions I had to ask, and the faster I solved things in the future. Anyway, enough rambling about things. Good luck with your project, and I hope you have as much fun as I did learning the ropes! I hope I haven't said anything to discourage you, that wasn't my intention. You certainly came to the right place- I tell everyone that listens that the alliance is the best place to learn, not only from the enclave, but just from talking to all the great modders here! Mysterious Mr. Bear :D PS: A tip for a new user of the CK: The CK is not your friend. Don't trust that thing with a dime. The CK isn't your noble steed, the CK is a starved, rabid mountain lion you are trying to ride to glory. If you aren't constantly asserting your dominance to this thing like an emotionally insecure high school jock, it will turn your beautiful creation into an inside out, back to front, upside down husk of a Friendship Is Magic conversion mod. Seriously, if something isn't working, consider ANYTHING to be the culprit, even if it seems impossible. Your NPC hasn't arrived at the destination: is it the package? Is it the pathgrid? Is a door accidently locked? Is he scripted? Do you have another mod overwiting your changes? Do you need to try with a clean save? (some changes, especially with activators, don't take place until you start a new game). To misquote Sherlock Holmes: When every possibility is exhausted, consider the impossible.

Just to let you know and for anyone who's got this problem and is searching for a fix, preferred pathing is now working perfectly! Thanks very much Darkrider!

The issue is still there, but preferred pathing certainly helps cover over it a fair bit, they seem to be at least aware there is a difference between the floor and the walls now! Hopefully with some clever goldenising of my pathgrid I can smooth out the issue even more... thanks darkrider, don't know how I didn't think of this earlier!!

Ah, sorry, I should have been more specific: I'm using the latest version, but I mentioned the 1.6 patch in particular because it was the one that fixed the Navmesh bug (which was my first, desperate thought) I'll try that now DarkRider... it's strange though, they are walking where there isn't a path at all!

Hi, I try not to post too many questions here and work them out myself, but I am just... my mind is blown by this one. Everyone was just stood around my outside location like a lemon unable to move, so I figured I must have messed up the Navmesh. I re-generated it, but then of course everyone was just bumping into walls and getting themselves stuck. So I spent some time tweaking it, made sure they cell boundries linked, made sure I cut around obstacles, kept it fairly simple... ... and nobody cared. They just bump into stuff, walk into mountains and get themselves stuck anyway. I even tested it in the creation kit to see if it could draw a line from one side to the other, tested specific problems the NPC's were having this way, and it all worked fine. Then in game... they just don't care! It's brutal! Even WITH the auto generated navmesh, there was NOTHING that could cause an NPC to walk into the side of this mountain. But that didn't stop them: I tell them to walk to the top of it via the clearly designated path, and they just bump into the side of it. This has been going on for a month!! Why have the gods forsaken me?? It's like working with toddlers!!! Has anyone had this before? Could anyone think why it is? I have nothing but the official add-ons and my own mod installed. I have the 1.6 update too, of course. A million thanks to anyone who can solve this, I'm close to giving up on this mod completely now and I've been working on it since the CK came out! Bear

WillieSea is (of course) absolutly right- I don't know why I didn't remember this, considering he taught me the same thing when I was doing all this kind of stuff The way this system would work would is much simpler. Lets say you still want the two upgrade system from my post. You create an Xmarker object (it's a type of static that can't be seen in game) and name it Upgrade1, and set it to "initially disabled". You then create Upgrade2 in the same way. You then select every object you want to enable for the first upgrade one by one, and like willie said, go to the enable parent tab and link it to the x marker "upgrade1". (if this concept confuses you, which it did me, it is covered in the reference wiki page I posted earlier). Then, your script just needs to say "upgrade1.enable()". This will enable the xmarker you created- which will in turn tell every object that you have linked to it to enable. Think of it like this- when you set the xmarker as the enable parent to all of your objects, the objects become the children. Then, instead of having to tell every object individual to enable itself, you just tell the parent- and it tells the children for you. Again, sorry if I am over explaining, I just remember being very confused by this concept at first... And your right, yeah! You can get rid of rubble by just reversing the procedure.

Welcome to the alliance man! Most useful website I ever found, some truly great modders sharing what they know. Hope you get what your looking for here and have fun!

Hi! That's actually much easier to do than it might seem, and you are on exactly the right line of thought. 1) Create the fully furnished faction as you said, then select each piece of furniture you want to be "turned off" at the start. You will see an option for "initially disabled"; tick this box. As it sounds, this makes the furniture invisible and untouchable to the player and A.I, as if it wasn't there. (we will be re-enabling it later) 2) You will need to give every single piece of furniture that you want to have "turned on" a unique reference name. This is so later, when you create a script to enable the furniture, you will be able to point the script directly to the objects you want enabled/disabled. This can be done from selecting the furniture, and in the box that appears, entering the reference name you want it to have in the "Reference Editor ID" input box. It is wise to use naming conventions here- for example, if you want to have the furniture purchasable in two seperate upgrades, name them "upgrade1a", "upgrade1b" etc, then "upgrade2a", "upgrade2b". Using conventions like this saves A loooooooot of hassle, trust me 3)Now you will need to create your script to enable the objects. You can do this through dialogue- there is an option to execute a script when a certain piece of dialogue is said by a character. This will essentially be: upgrade1a.enable() upgrade1b.enable() getplayer().removeitem (gold, 1500) (note, I wrote that from memory and havent scripted in a while so it might look a bit different!) You can find tutorials for step 3 on this website or around the web, looking at the wiki pages for dialogue and object scripts would probably help to. When you get up to making the script I can give you a few more pointers (I'm just presuming you've not scripted before, sorry if I'm teaching granny to suck eggs ) That's basicly it! Obviously that is a very simplified set of instructions and if you've not done this sort of thing before, you may need to look things up or find tutorials. It may turn out there are extra steps you need to take, maybe to make the A.I. recognise the furniture or ensure the furniture doesn't redisable itself, but you will have to discover those through testing...such is the nature of modding! Hope that helped, and happy modding (I'm sure there is someone around here far better than me at explaining these things, if I was useless ) Useful wiki links: http://www.creationkit.com/Reference http://www.creationkit.com/Disabled http://www.creationkit.com/Dialogue_Views_Tab http://www.creationkit.com/Bethesda_Tutorial_Dialogue Mysterious Mr. Bear :D

Oh my goodness. Through an entire day of trial and error, litterally the whole day, I have solved this problem. The solution was as inexplicable as the problem itself, and I am currently very confused, but very very happy. I simply changed the "hasspell" condition on the packages from a "run on subject" to a "run on package data", and then created a single reference in the package that pointed to the package user. So it STILL basicly pointed to the subject, just via package data. And now, it works across cells. I challenge anyone on the face of the earth to tell me why In the meantime, I am going to have some pie, because I haven't actually took a break from this problem long enough to eat.

Hi, sorry for the late reply, my internet has been down for quite some time! I'm really stuck on this one. I have implemented my own solution to the problem, which is this: My actor, Watchman01, has a list of 15 packages. Each package has a condition for the subject to have a certain spell. This means no package is active at all unless the subject has one of the 15 spells. I then added papyrus fragments to 15 dialogue options, each adding one of the 15 spells to the specific instance of watchman01 (of which there could be as many as 40-50). This means I could control the packages of specific instances of the same baseactor through dialogue! However, I have a very, very unusual problem. If the target of the package is in the same cell as the actor, he will happily stop what he is doing, walk to the new location, and begin sandboxing. I can move him around the worldspace with ease. However, if the target of the package is on the other side of a cell boundry, he will simply stand in place, refusing to move. eventually he goes back to his default editor location package. This is a major, major problem, since the centre of my camp happens to be on the centre of a cell devide. I have checked and refinalised the navmeshes but still this problem persists. Now here is the strangest thing: If I remove the hasspell condition from one of the packages, all of the watchmen01 instances cross cell boundries with no issue to reach the target!! Litterally, when I add a hasspell condition to the packages, they become incapable of crossing cell boundries. What the devil could be causing this??? (the spells are all set as abilities and have no magic effects if that makes a difference) I hope I have explained this well enough, and that someone finds it and offers some help... SO stuck on this tiny tiny thing. Very frustrating... Mysterious Mr. Bear