22 replies to this topic

[ub3rman123]

File Name: Ub3rman123's Portable Tower
File Submitter: ub3rman123
File Submitted: 26 Oct 2010
File Updated: 27 Oct 2010
File Category: Co-Op Beta Testing

Based off the original scripting for Treleth's Portable Tent mod, this is a unique player home. It can be picked up and carried about with you and placed anywhere, inside a cave, on top of a house, or in the middle of a lake of lava. Provided you can access the ladder to the interior of it, you'll always have a safe respite from the harsh world outside.

The exterior can be used in a myriad of ways, such as setting it sideways to make a ramp, blocking off hallways to stop enemies following you, or just annoying NPC's for fun by trapping them inside.
The interior has its own features, such as a static alchemy set, a small garden, many non-respawning storage containers, a health recharging and armor repairing station, and spellmaking and enchanting altars.

Instructions: You will find the tower inside of a special cell. Use CoC WSMyriasStudy3 and find the tower item inside of the cell. Simply pick it up (Getting out of the cell is your problem at the moment). To bring the tower to full size, drop it and activate it. To shrink the tower back into an item, crouch and activate it (This can be done when it's a dropped item as well to pick it back up). To enter the tower, navigate to the ladder on the lower section of it and activate it, and use the trapdoor inside to leave it. Remember, the tower will remember where you were when you entered it, so it will place you back there when you leave.

Credits:
Treleth, for the scripting in his Portable Tent mod I based this off of.
Phitt, for his Mad Mage's Tower, which I modified the interior model for the tower.
Academian Nwahs, for the scripting on the static alchemy sets
Stroti, for the alchemy set models
Necrospawn, for Slayers Sword Pack
Oriphier, for the Real Umbra model

Video (The interior wasn't complete when this was made)


Click here to download this file

[John]

i have downloaded and will install and test tonight/ tomorrow night.

[YX33A]

Hey, this looks like fun!
DL'ing, prepare for testin's.

[YX33A]

Got my first report ready. The tower is very nice on the inside. Only one missing texture that I could find, and it was on a shadowed broadsword. Missing resource(according to Ref Scope) has the path WSC\CLI.dds.

[ub3rman123]

Should be fixed. I accidentally left the texture in a satellite folder.

Any problems with the scripting? I'm still having qualms about how to deal with the player losing the item. Some problems may occur if I let the player have a spell to summon a new item if they lost it.

[Khettienna]

Downloaded, testing now!

[Ysne58]

I do not have any saves that have visited the lovely Shivering Isles at the moment. If this is still in testing by the time I do get someone there I will download and test.

[Khettienna]

I'm not done testing yet, but here's my initial notes before I forget:

-Had no trouble at all with basic use of the tower
-Tower inventory item has no icon
-Trap door to leave the tower is named "Ladder"
-There is a tiny ridge in the mesh that doesn't need to be there, screenshot attached - I only saw it on the first floor
-Clutter doesn't explode when shelves/tables are nudged
-Healing altar works, but you might consider adding a spell effect. Adding the line "PME REFA" will play a restoration effect on the player on use, or you can choose any of the effects from the list on the CS Wiki. You can also add a line "playsound xxxxx", replace xxxxx with a sound from the list in the CS.
-Repair altar doesn't really work - it opens the menu, but your hammers are taken away before you can actually repair anything. Also, if you give the player 100 hammers, and they use 3, and then you take away 100 hammers, you are potentially taking away hammers that they already have. What I think you mean to do is make it viable for the player to repair here without hammers. Here's a script I like to use for such occasions:

Spoiler

ScriptName YourScriptNameGoesHereshort varCurrentHammers	;number of hammers player started withshort DoOnce					;used to set stagesshort Choice					;stores which choice the player made when asked if he wants to repairshort DayOfLastUse			;stores when the player last used the anvilshort DoOnce2					;see last if segmentBegin OnActivate	If ( GetDayOfWeek == DayOfLastUse )		MessageBox "You have already used the anvil today! You may do it again tomorrow."		;kills anvil if player has already used it today		;delete this if segment if you want the anvil available any time		;then change next segment to if instead of elseif	ElseIf ( DoOnce == 0 )		MessageBox "Do you want to repair your items? You may only do this once per day.", "Yes", "No"		Set DoOnce to 1		;gives player choice to use or not	EndIfEndBegin GameMode	If ( DoOnce == 1 )		Set Choice to GetButtonPressed			If ( Choice == 0 )			;meaning if they say yes they want to repair				Set varCurrentHammers to ( Player.GetItemCount RepairHammer )				;stores how many hammers the player started with as varCurrentHammers for use later								Message " "				Message " "				;the above two lines prevent the player from seeing additem/removeitem spam				Player.RemoveItem RepairHammer varCurrentHammers				Player.AddItem RepairHammer 99				Player.EquipItem RepairHammer 								Set DoOnce to 2			ElseIf ( Choice == 1 )			;meaning if they say no, they don't want to repair				Set DoOnce to 0				;so it works if they come back to it later			Else								Return				;variable Choice will be set to -1 if they haven't made a choice yet, this keeps the menu up & waiting for a choice to be made				EndIf	EndIf	If ( DoOnce == 2 ) && ( MenuMode == 0 )	;this is necessary to make sure the added hammers aren't traded for the original hammers before the player is finished		Message " "		Message " "		Player.RemoveItem RepairHammer 99		;can't have a negative value, so will simply remove all hammers since 99 were added		Player.AddItem RepairHammer varCurrentHammers		;gives the player back the hammers they originally had as stored by varCurrentHammers		Set DayOfLastUse to GetDayOfWeek		;so the anvil remembers when it was last used		Set DoOnce to 0		;so they can use the anvil more than once ever	EndIf	If ( DoOnce2 == 0 )		;days are numbered 0-6 - prevents first visit on 0 day and being told you've used it today		;delete this if segment if not restricting use to once per day		Set DayofLastUse to 10		Set DoOnce2 to 1	EndifEnd

I have a few variations of this script, one that temporarily gives the player max armor skill to repair items to 125% durability, and another that also recharges the player's items. This version one has a "once per day" use limitation, but I've commented it heavily so you can see what to edit to remove that if you wish.

I don't think you are using any OBSE stuff in your mod, at least not that I noticed, but if you decide to go that route at anytime, you should definitely make use of the AddItemNS, EquipItemNS, and RemoveItemNS functions to get rid of all that message spam. There are ways around this without OBSE, too, so if there's no other reason for you to use OBSE, you might want to look at those for your repair & alchemy stations.

More:

-Alchemy station works fine, though you might consider changing the MessageBox to simply a Message so it's not just another thing to click off.
-The tower will appear crooked if the tower item was placed crooked; if this is not intended, consider removing the X & Y angles from the script, and just leave the Z angle.

That's all I can think of right this minute. I'm going to test more to check how companions fare in the tower and also to see how the tower handles cell resets and the like.

Edit: whoops, forgot to attach screenshot, here!

Edited by Khettienna, 27 October 2010 - 10:28 PM.

[Khettienna]

More:

-You can make your "doors" more like real doors by adding "playsound xxxxx" lines to the OnActivate blocks in their scripts
-The "leaning tower" effect is actually kinda cool, to be honest
-You haven't got any pathgrids in the tower, so followers/companions don't know how to navigate in there
-Companions will have a better time in there if you mark seating as "persistent", that's the only way they will use it
-And some companions won't cozy up in there at all unless you set the cell owner to be the Player

You mentioned not knowing how to prevent the player from losing the item. I think the way to go there would be to place an activator instead of the item on the table at Sheogorath's shrine. The activator can check to be sure the player doesn't already have a tower item, and give the player one. If you are concerned about the player having multiples, this bit of script attached to the tower item will make sure the player can only carry one at a time:

short Count



Begin OnAdd



	If Player.GetItemCount YourItemIDGoesHere > 1

		Set Count to ( Player.GetItemCount YourItemIDGoesHere - 1 )

		Player.RemoveItem YourItemIDGoesHere Count

	EndIf



End

You'll want to apply some kind of anti-message-spam to that, as well.

Okay, off to test for cell reset business.

[ub3rman123]

At first I did experiment with forcing the tower's Z angle to stay constant, but I found it was more entertaining to let the player set it down sideways for a bridge.

I'll take a look at altering the scripts on the altars. Is there any drawback to using ResetHealth rather than a spell aside from visuals?

Also: I found that for some reason the tower interior won't import into Blender, the objects show up blank in it.

Meanwhile I'll take a poke at items lacking icons. I forgot to do that for the better part of the mod this house is in, too.

Edit: Okay, I'm uploading a version with almost everything fixed. Except for the ridge in the model. It won't import to Blender. I also got a bit lazy and instead of doing the fixes on two .esps (One for the main mod, one for the tower), I just included the main .esp. You'll find the new .esp is called SunderedKeep.esp, and you'll have to use CoC WSMyriasStudy3 to access it. Sorry for that inconvenience.

[Khettienna]

At first I did experiment with forcing the tower's Z angle to stay constant, but I found it was more entertaining to let the player set it down sideways for a bridge.

After playing with it some more, I can only agree.

There's no drawback to ResetHealth that I can think of. In fact, for your purposes, I think you made the right choice because it's no more or less than exactly what you were going for. Can't get more efficient than that!

Pulling down the new version!

[John]

Alright heres my report:
I headed out from Rimmen to the shrine of Sheogorath and was able to pick up the tower. I had no inventory icon for it. I dropped and picked it up again and the tower showed up. I went in side and explored, didnt see anything odd. The only thing i noticed was the shadowed broadsword(the claymore on the top floor) had no texture or inventory icon. May have been no normal map, as it wasnt completely bright pink. i went back outside and appeared where the ladder the was. i crouched and picked up the tower without any problem. Collision worked find on the towers ground model, i dropped it and it rolled down the hill near Sheggys shrine

[Khettienna]

Alright, spend some more time with it, including fiddling with cell resets and things of that nature. Two more nits, and I'm satisfied!

-My bad: do "player.PME REFA" instead, to have the effect be on the player (since it's the player getting healed). This is, of course, if that's how you'd prefer it.
-The footstep sound on the inside of the tower is like metal grating. Probably accurate in the practical sense, but definitely unpleasant. You might wanna set it in the nif to be a different kind of material, like stone (I forget how to do this, but you seem like you're on top of the modeling end of things).

Tested all your changes, too. Path grids look great, and companion had no trouble getting around or using the furniture, or making herself at home.

If you need more testing, you'll probably want to re-pack your upload again, 'cause you forgot the ..SunderedKeep\ATTower folder in this one. I still had the old one though, so I just mushed that back in for testing over here.

[ub3rman123]

I know how to change the sound of footsteps, but the tower interior still won't show up in Blender. Kind of odd, actually.

I'll use the PME on both the item and the player.

[Khettienna]

If all else fails, you could line the floors with invisible rugs that you've set up to sound like stone or something? Not ideal, obviously, but not bad for a last-resort, I think.

[ub3rman123]

I did that on the bottom floor, as the collision there was acting funny. If that method worked well enough, that'd do.

I'm working on remaking the interior in Blender for an older file before I made it a .nif. It shouldn't lose too much progress. I'll just have to retexture it and then I can tweak the collision properties.

[John]

i had to do a reinstall today so i was unable to test. Tomorrow when i have time and everything is back in order i will begin testing again

[John]

I installed the new update, but it seems you forgot to pack the ATTower folder, so it didnt show in game for me. Luckily i had the old version still so i installed that than reinstalled the update and tested again. Basically the same things as khettienna mentioned

[ub3rman123]

Well, thanks for the input. I've fixed the problems found so far, including the grating sound the floors make. I just had to load an old file from the construction of the interior. I also readded in the textures I left out. Once more, thanks you for the input. THe mod's about ready to be released

[Khettienna]

Yay, congratulations!