[Teleportation to the target]

So, did you ever figure out how to get the spell to recognize pesky things like walls yet? I'd be interested in seeing the results if you have. You'd think that it would be easy enough, given that spells have that check-box "ignore LOS" or whatever it's called.

Is the problem that the spell abruptly ends before it runs the ScriptEffectFinish block whenever it hits a non-actor? In that case, I bet HeyYou is on the right track; to my mind, you'd want to have a marker reference follow the spell as it heads away from the caster with a script attached that moves the caster to its location as soon as the marker stops moving.

I dunno; maybe somebody more knowledgeable could tell us a better solution, but I bet that this would at least work. In fact, if you don't mind, I'm going to go ahead and write it for myself

[Leveling scripts?]

Steady there, emrepus. I'm sure no slight was intended. I know it can be frustrating at times when you first get started, having just started myself.

One thing that you might want to consider doing is looking up the various leveling mods that already exist. See if you can unravel how they did things. Oblivion seems to have quite a few idiosyncrasies, but if you take things one step at a time, you should be able to get it in no time.

From the comments posted above, I think that the "ridiculous number" that they're talking about here is a ridiculously high number. The idea being that the amount of experience neccessary to advance to the next level would be so huge that the player cannot reach it on their own.

[Class #2 - Whats up with If, ElseIf, Else and EndIf]

Alright. That's too bad. With Java (and I assume most modern languages), you can test parts of your code without testing all of it. Many IDE's will let you "step into" your code, too, for debugging but a harness is more powerful because it lets you catch programming mistakes that the compiler misses--like putting logical or instead of and, like I did.

I realize that that would probably be hard to implement in a game environment so I didn't think it would, but I thought there was no harm in asking.

[Class #2 - Whats up with If, ElseIf, Else and EndIf]

Hi. I've got a question: is it possible to write a testing harness so that you don't have to run Oblivion to test something?

[Class #1 - The Basics of Oblivion Scripts]

I tried putting the script on the activator, just like I showed in the screenshot. The mod loaded for sure, because the house is part of the mod.

The only thing I can think of is that I'd botched my installation of OBSE v. 20 somehow. I think I'm using 18 even though the pieces for v 20 are on the same level as Oblivion. It's kind of a stretch, but that's all I can think of.

Unless there's a mistake in syntax? Does capitalization matter?

Why do you suggest writing the script in WordPad first?

UPDATE: I tried the script in a completely new mod and it worked fine. Dunno what's going on, but it's probably a good idea to start afresh, anyway.

[Class #1 - The Basics of Oblivion Scripts]

Well, shoot. I tried to attach this to an already existing (custom) container, but it didn't work. Is it because it's a container and already has a messagebox, or is it because it was already placed into the world before I attached the script?

Edit: Ack! Now I can't add anything new; it shows up in the CS, but not in-game. I've tried adding a bunch of different items (bedroll, waterfall, activators, and containers) with and without my script attached. I've tried loading my oldest save. I've tried shutting down the CS and turning it back on. Yet, nothing seems to help. What's going on? Here's a screenshot of what my script looks like.

[CS Basics: Final Exam]

Thanks, DarkRider, for all the help and for your abounding patience. I didn't want to push my luck with doing the release option. That and I was getting a little antsy to start some of the other classes. Thanks again for all that you do.

[General Script Questions #2]

Ooh, I didn't even think of having them wack the staff--I was thinking of it like a container. Alright, so does that help us retrieve the effect? That sounds like it would make a cleaner transition somehow, though I can't guess how.

Wait, I guess I could control the magnitude of the spell by just saying that it's limited by the staff's power (and value). IIrc, it should be easy to just look up the Nth spell effect.

[Teleportation to the target]

I should probably add that I didn't actually test the above, since you'd want to translate them anyway. Also, I'm a beginner in Java, too, so take it with a grain of salt. Stuff proceeded by a double slash "//" are comments. Semi-colons ";" mark the end of a line of code.

[Teleportation to the target]

I don't see what the issue is. I don't know how the Oblivion scripting works, but Taylor expansions should be extremely accurate, as long as the angle is between 0 and 360 degrees (and if you know that you're going to go over, just keep subtracting 360 from your angle until it does fit).

For the cos x, you should use the same script, except you'd change the line, "set SinResult to X - X2*X/6 + X5/120 - X7/5040 + X9/362880 - X9*X2/39916800 + X9*X4/6227020800 - X8*X7/1.307674368e12" with

set cosResult to -x2 / 2 + x4 / (4*3*2) - (x2*x4) / (6*5*4*3*2) + (x4*x4) / (8*7*6*5*4*3*2) - (x2*x4*x4) / (10*9*8*7*6*5*4*3*2) + (x4*x4*x4) / (12*11*10*9*8*7*6*5*4*3*2)

if that's not accurate enough, keep repeating the pattern. If you can create subroutines, you can easily adapt it as needed. Again, I don't know how Oblivion works, but in Java:

float power (int degree, int base)  //Degree is a parameter based on what power you're looking for.  Eg. x^2 is degree 2.  Base is what you're multiplying, eg. in the phrase 2^x, 2 is the base

{

     int xn = base * base;

     for ( int i = 2; i > degree; i++) //This is a loop which starts at 2 and will increment by one until it hits degree

     {

          xn = base*xn;

     }

     return xn;  //after the loop finishes, the service "power" will return xn ("x^n")

}

// you would need to specify which objects can use this.  For example, if you have a class named Math, you would call "power" using Math.power(aDegree, aBase);  Of course, Java already supports this...


float factorial (int numberToFactor)  //numberToFactor is the number to be factored

{

     int nFactorial = 1;

     if ( nFactorial == 0 || nFactorial == 1)  //0! is defined as equal to 1.  1! is 1 and is added here for convenience

     {

          return nFactorial;

     }

     else if nFactorial < 0;  //Factorials are only defined for integers greater than or equal to 0.  0 and 1 included above

          System.out.println ( "I can't let you do that, Dave" );

          return nFactorial;  //This will give you your number back so you don't break anything.  You could set it as an error or return 0 or something else.

          //Yes, the way I've set it up so far, you could combine the first and second conditions.  I've left it like this so you can adjust it as needed.  Plus, I like the quote 

     else

     {

          for ( int i = 2; i <= numberToFactor; i++) //This loop will increment from 2 to numberToFactor

          {

               nFactorial *= i;  // *= is equivalent to nFactorial = nFactorial * i;

          }

          return nFactorial;

     }

     end if

}[/code]


Then, you could just define your functions to give you cos and sin:

[code]float cos(int aPower, int yourBase, int yourAngle) //These should be predefined or defined when called { int cumulativeCosX = 0; for (i = 0; i < aPower; i++) //Loop increments from 0 to aPower - 1 { int termCosX = this.power(2*i, -1)*this.power(i, yourBase) / this.factor(i); cumulativeCosX += termCosX; } return cumulativeCosX; } float sin(int aPower, int yourBase, int yourAngle) //These should be predefined or defined when called { int cumulativeSinX = 0; for (i = 0; i < aPower; i++) //Loop increments from 0 to aPower - 1 { int termSinX = this.power(2*i+1, -1)*this.power(i, yourBase) / this.factor(i); cumulativeSinX += termSinX; } return cumulativeSinX; }

This gives you four widely used math functions. Unfortunately, from the little I've learned about Oblivion scripts, I don't know if it's possible to use these code snippets

[CS Basics: Final Exam]

Haha, I finished! I've got lots of screenshots because it's a large chapter. Hopefully, I've got everything you need to see:

First of all, the pathgrids. I found out that pushing W shows you the wire model view. I found it a lot easier to work with in seeing the pathnodes. If you'd like me to upload more conventional views, just let me know:

Outside the house proper, a more zoomed-out version, The garden, Inside the farmhouse, and finally, the basement.

As you might have noticed from the pathgrids, I've got the garden and the docks:

My docks

flower garden

Hmm, I seem to have forgotten the screenshot for the inside of the house. I'll have that up in just a second. For now, here are the rest:

the basement

The approach to the house and

and my cleaned-up mod using tes4edit again.

Edit: Here are my two pics of the interior. You might see one or two things lying on the floor; those are intentional, though they were supposed to be more hidden.

One, two.

[General Script Questions #2]

Hey, Mysterious Mr. Bear. Isn't that package already used in Vanilla? The mages in the Arcane University and various others already shoot magic at targets; have you tried looking at how they did it?

Anyway, I have a question about whether something is possible or not. I thought it'd be kinda neat to add these staves that you stick in the ground, pour poison into, and then have the staves explode, spewing the poison as an area effect bomb. I've nowhere near the expertise to actually build the things at the moment. I'd just like to know if it's possible. I'm pretty sure that most of it is, but how can I get the staff to recognize the poison's effects?

As a work around, I suppose I could use individual items so I can control what effects go into it ("spirits of napalm" will do fire damage, or whatever), but it'd be even cooler if I could get them to recognize any poison.

[CS Basics: Lesson #4]

Alright, that RL thing fell through, so I've had plenty of time to work on this. Here are my screenshots: My basement, its corresponding pathing, and the outdoors garden.

[CS Basics: Lesson #4]

Alright, thank you for clarifying that. I'll hop to it.

Well, when I'm able; depending on how something in RL shake-out, it might be a week or two (probably not, but just in case, I wanted to touch base with you). Please don't think it's because of this disagreement or anything.

[CS Basics: Lesson #4]

Alright. I'm not sure I understand the reasoning, but I'm certainly willing to have another go at it. I guess I'll save the garden for the final or something, if that's alright?

Did you say you're only giving me partial credit for the basement because I'm missing parts or because it's underwater? I'm not really happy with the basement, anyway; those twisting passages and bumping my character's head against the lights don't seem so fun anymore.

[CS Basics: Lesson #4]

Alright, I'm ready to turn in chapter four stuff. For convenience, I'm gonna put the basement pics here, too.

*For mod clean-up, I went with tes4edit because I wasn't sure whether I could get permission to put Java on this computer--it's not mine and the owner's hard to get ahold of.

Anyway, it seems like it works basically the same way. Here's the SS of the auto portion and this is the manual part, all cleaned up. If you'll notice, I had originally intended to follow a different tutorial, creepycave. I had to quit at pretty much the first step, though, as it was so tedious (if whoever wrote that tutorial is reading this, I'm sorry. Please forgive me for being blunt)

*I might have overdone the pathing in the basement. I wanted to let the NPC's have a choice of where to go if they get blocked. Too much?

*Pathing for the garden

*Finally, some random shots done in game: a piece of the garden, and the dining room table for the basement

[CS Basics: General Questions]

Good, that means that I should be done then. Thanks, Rider of Darkness! And I'm glad that you're ok with fielding all of my naive and silly questions.

[CS Basics: General Questions]

Cool. Sorry for bothering you for something so trivial. I could've sworn I tried that. Btw, I edited my last post while you were apparently writing your latest.

I've got another question, too, if you don't mind (well, I'll have it either way, I suppose ). Am I right that you should only put pathnodes on the water's surface where possible, or do NPCs understand drowning, and I need to make the network 3D? I tried to use the automatic pathgrid generator for the current cell, but the CS crashed. That's what I get for not doing the work myself, I guess

[CS Basics: General Questions]

If you delete a texture with a very low percentage to open a new slot, odds are good you wont see any visible changes. The point is just to free up a slot so you can add something new. If the textures you want have the highest percentage they should be taking precedence. What is the issue you are trying to solve?

I had that straight line of textures (I assume they delimit the quad boundaries?) that you talked about. I thought that it was because I had too many textures, so I started deleting them one by one, starting at the one with the lowest %% use, except for the texture that I was using as a path. Just now, I tried deleting them until there was only one or two textures left in each quad, but it still didn't make the problem disappear. In fact, I ended up with a green square of land.

EDIT: Huh, that's weird. I reloaded the CS and was able to spray on the new textures, no problem for one of my straight lines. Does that mean that just deleting textures is not enough to blend boundaries together? The other straight line turned out to be mostly fixable by raising the terrain.

Well, so long as I've got your attention, I'd like to ask another question: On the CS wiki, they mention that it's a good idea to copy a terrain, rather than just choosing one from the list on the landscape editor box. Is there a trick to doing that, or do they just mean looking it up on the info box, and choosing the same one on the landscape editor box?

[CS Basics: General Questions]

Oops, the curse of the invisible sticky strikes again. Sorry for creating those new topics when I could just as easily have posted here.

There are limits on the number of textures a cell can hold, the exact number is 9. With your edit radius over the spot you wish to texture, tap the i key for more INFO on the textures in that cell. A window will open with four panes.

Anyway, I ran into the texture overflow issue that you mentioned in the quoted post. I was wondering if there's a way to see what gets deleted when you delete one of the textures. The reason I ask is that I have the textures pretty well segregated such that each of them is a fairly high percent. I'm afraid that if I start deleting I won't catch all the changes. I had already started to delete them, but it didn't seem to fix the issue. I'm nervous about deleting anything over 30% or so. Especially since those textures are the ones that I'm trying to add!

[Indoor Garden]

Sounds like somebody is getting carried beyond the scope of this assignment

Yeah, I didn't realize what I was getting into I thought that there'd be a simple, easy solution. Besides just covering everything up in knee-deep water, of course

So, thank you all for your kind suggestions. I'll keep them in mind when I get experienced enough to actually implement them or if somebody wants to give me a step-by-step guide. Until then, I'm sticking with the wonderful tutorial that DarkRider has graciously provided.

I tried Lady Nerever's solution, but I got lost and bewildered by the sea of purple that stretched as far as the eye could see. I tried to raise the land with the landscape editor, but got nothing. I tried the next option down the list (height-map editor?), but I'm pretty sure that it was written by aliens I tried for a second or two, anyway. I ended up with some pretty concentric circles by holding down the mouse button after clicking one of the buttons on top (which don't have the helpful labels that the other parts of the CS have). That was fun, but not quite what I had in mind. Back to Ol' Trusty, the landscape editor. I tried to raise a mountain out of the purple mists, but I crashed the CS and ended the garden world in the blink of an eye. So I don't think that I'm ready for this level of responsibility yet. I'll try again when I'm a little older

Beana's solution sounds promising, though. That sounds like that "turn shield items into static shields" post. Should I try that, or be happy with what I have?

[Indoor Garden]

Thanks for the responses.

Nifscope and custom whatevers are probably beyond my ken at this point, unfortunately (did I mention that this was part of the CS Basics class?). Flowerpots sound tacky for what I've got, though it's a good idea to keep in mind for later. I think I'll just leave my current solution of adding a couple feet of water to cover the ground with. It's supposed to be a water garden, but if the water level is lower, it should work better for me as it will keep characters from being able to swim to the bottom.

Is there an easy way to darken the water? I would like to have a murky, muddy sort of water for the rice plants and such.

It's too bad about the purple meshes. I think that they would've been a nice touch to Oblivion. Along with ducks. Ducks and reeds would've been really awesome. Heck, any kind of bird would've been a welcome addition. Ah well.

The limit is over 900? Um, ok, I don't think I'll be hitting that any time soon

Is there a way to move this thing to the outside? Like, not actually in Tamriel, but still behave like the outdoors? I checked the box for it to behave like the outdoors...

[Indoor Garden]

I would like to create an indoor garden. I put all the pieces that I would like (plants, trees, other wildlife, etc) inside, but I can't figure out a couple of things:

*I can open up the landscape editor, but I can't get the circle to appear. Can I create soil indoors?

*I would like to open up the ceiling for a "skylight" type of effect. I suppose if I can make soil, then I can just delete the middle sections of my design, but are there any other options to fit with the Ayleid Ruins playset otherwise?

*Certain plants show up as purple, like the cattails. These are purple and semi-translucent in-game and in the CS. What's going on?

*I know that you shouldn't put too many things in the same cell so that people with slower computers don't get annoyed with your mod. Is there any kind of rule of thumb about how much stuff is too much?

[CS Basics: Lesson #3]

Alright, thanks for the explanations. I thought I was supposed to give high priority for crossing the bridge or something. Also, you said that the connections are sparse, but that the nodes are alright?

Edit: Is it alright if you have the connections between nodes go into the hillside as long as the nodes are on the ground? Maybe it would be better to have the nodes hanging in the air a little bit?

Also, I couldn't for the life of me find the rope fence guards that you'd mentioned (except for the ones that that bridge comes with). It is a static, right?

[CS Basics: Lesson #3]

Fair enough, and thanks for the responses.

Not sure which option you mean...

If you go to preferences-->Misc, there's an option for "Skip Initial Cell Load On Editor Start."

The F key is one of the most frequent crashers of the CS.

I'm sure that this is my inexperience speaking again, but I've never had an issue with this, even when there isn't anything for the object reference to land on. Does this bug just randomly show up from time to time, or is there a reason behind the madness?

As for this being a basic class, I'll bow to your experience there. I can definitely see your point about not going off on different tangents.

You have learned a great deal in your study, that's good.

I have, thanks to you

As for the pathgrid, that's in the next lesson, but ok, here you go. That was one of the things from the next chapter that I'd started doing before realizing that it was chapter four. I've circled stuff in the pic, but I don't honestly remember from which chapter they belong.