jamochawoke

The best way to make an NPC fall down that looks natural is to drain their fatigue. Give it an absurd amount (like 1000) and have it as an ability. When you need them to fall down add it to them, they'll crumple with havok. That way you won't get the bizarre paralysis green shader and the stiff fall down. It will look natural.

I also used to be able to play in offline mode until that patch. I can still play in offline mode but it will randomly throw up some BS saying I -HAVE- to connect for updates or it won't let me play. It's one of the most annoying things I've ever had to deal with playing a game, especially as I take my laptop into places where I can get electricity but no internet. So frustrating.

Well. I figured it out (this always happens right when I lose all hope and ask for help lmao :/ ). Vertex Colors. That mesh had vertex colors on them. Unfortunately when I saved it to show in Nifskope I saved over my original so I had to use a backed up file and redo the whole process anyways :/.

Ok, I'm going bonkers at this point. I have wasted all day yesterday and all last night and this morning trying to figure this out. I was making an animated door. I had the thing completed, textures and everything and was mildly pleased with the work. I felt it lacked something. So I went digging through my files and found a Bethesda vanilla .nif of an ayleid exterior door (ARDoor01.nif in exterior folder listed as ARDoor01b in the TESCS) and thought to myself "hey man this is gonna be exceptional if I could combine the fluting in the middle with my door. It would look pretty sweet!" So I go about chopping up my door mesh so I could add the one wall with the fluting on it. It had some pretty complex uv mapping on the door and several materials. I wanted to save the UV mapping so I wouldn't have to re-map everything (UV mapping is giving me severe headaches, especially working with Bethesda's weird meshes). Once I got everything together and the UV mapping all on the same image file I then deleted all the extraneous materials and made a new material with the image I wanted that it was mapped to. However, no matter what I do in Blender it saves it with 2 materials as one in the object. It's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen. When I go to export the door it shows up using the separate materials but in nifskope it only shows one material and texture for the object. But if I delete the texture in nifskope you can clearly see two materials showing up. I then tried deleting the material linked to the object in Blender and then exporting and re-importing. It worked! Except I've lost all that complicated UV mapping that Bethesda did (((( So I am now wondering if there is any way to delete that extra material that isn't showing up but is obviously showing up in Blender/Nifskope/Game without losing all the mapping?

Yeah you're right. Currently I have entries of him wandering Skyrim talking to the Dragon Priests to unravel their mysteries when he comes to continental Tamriel from Artaeum. He travels to Labyrinthian and awakens and speaks to Morokei who reveals to him the secret of the Draugr-Priest relationship and undead energies from the draconic curse and then chastises him with a litany of curses in the draconic tongue when he states he will try to unravel Hevnoraak's rituals. Upon travelling to Valthume where Hevnoraak is sealed he is unable to procure the key to the dragon seal and struggles with the ghost of Valdar but is able to subdue him and get clues of his ritual of blood which he feels is all he can get since Hevnoraak never accomplished lichdom. From there I will have him travel to Cyrodiil to dig up the ancient ayleid tablets concerning necromancy and the rituals the elven sorcerers used to become liches which I will have written as a pact with the Ideal Masters where they sacrificed a great many human slaves to achieve it. Having had contact with the Ideal Masters before he knows the price they would extract from him and instead chooses to consort with some of the Daedric Princes on their summoning days trying to gain more knowledge until Molag Bal gives him a clue to finding the Crimson Book of Skulls which gives him the clues he needs to begin his adventure into self-styled lichdom and passing the knowledge on to his acolytes.

You're right. Hopefully I can get an answer from Michael Kirkbride, although it seems like his last social media account (his Tumblr) he hasn't logged in on in months... I'm just really trying to write this ancient weathered journal that the player can flip through. It has random entries, spells (in the form of bizarre graphics I'm making in Photoshop), alchemical recipes, notes on raising the dead, musings to himself, et cetera. It's a big flavor item the player finds in his cave after defeating him.

This is a fantastic mod vaultguy! Still messing around playing with how the new sounds interact with everything but definitely impressive!

This is the problem I'm having. It's a poem about Mannimarco, but he and Galerion were second era. Ayleids were first era as well as mention of the Yokudan liches.

Yeah the ayleids are what confuse me the most. I can understand how the Dragon Priests were reanimated through a draconic curse like the draugr. Even though there's no mention of the curse (it's mostly just hearsay) in books... awaiting the time to re-serve their dragon lords, always in limbo. So that could make them not liches. Easily explainable. But then you have the other first era perps: the ayleid sorceror kings, who most certainly ARE liches (it even says it in the name)!!!?! But then again there was that one quest that mentioned the dragon priest needing his blood again to rise and that one ghost who is guarding his tomb so it doesn't happen, but eventually has you destroy him permanently. So maybe I could leave the dragon priests out of it, or have Mannimarco try to uncover the riddle of their undeath only to be met by a slew of gibberish in Dov language he can't understand. The Underking I can write off as being an extremely vengeful revenant form of undead like a mix of spectre and zombie who is animated by curse like the dragon priests. Basically I'm trying to write in some hazy clues on his immortality and lichdom in the journal and how he came to be that way. I've gone ahead and shot off a private message to Michael Kirkbride to see if he can answer some of it.... but I dunno if he'll ever get around to it.

Hello all! I am here once again to ask help with lore. I am currently writing a journal (well since it'd be so long the player just finds various entries for important events) for Mannimarco. The book that bears his name mentions him as the first lich to walk the earth after using dark magics, sacrifices, and Akaviri poisons and other various and sundry items to perform the ritual. However, Mannimarco is a contemporary of Vanus Galerion who founded the Mage's Guild... and they both left the Psijic Order in the Second Era. The Dragon Priests in Skyrim are pretty much exactly liches, although they seem to be animated by dragon magic (sort of, it's really unclear why they and the draugr are still around). The dragon cult was wiped out in the First Era. Then you have the Ayleid lich-kings and the lich sorcerors that haunt the Ayleid ruins. The Ayleid kingdoms were deposed and dispersed in the First Era as well. So that's one clear and one sort of almost not clear account of lichdom before Mannimarco. Then you have some references to some liches in Yokuda (I haven't tracked them down yet but heard about). The Redguards invaded Volunfell (now Hammerfell) in the First Era. So these stories also predate Mannimarco. What gives? I know that when you have lore as vast and complex and being written by different writers (don't even get me started on ESO lore, that's an absurd mess lol) you end up with inconsistencies... but I need some at least semi-solid answers here if I'm going to add an in-game journal that I want to be taken seriously. Believe me, I will be taking creative license, but I don't want to stray outside the lore so as to make it a bizarre juxtaposition. I want it to be seamless. *** I am thinking in one journal entry Mannimarco will have trekked to some of the Ayleid ruins. He attempts to talk to the Ayleid lich-king there after wrecking his servants with necromantic magic. The lich-king, angered at this trespass on his realm, refuses to tell him how they attained lichdom except that they bought it at great price to their souls (giving him ideas on how to go about it) they fight, and Mannimarco learns from this (somehow no details yet) how to summon and bind the Ayleid liches using necromantic conjuration. *** Another set of journal entries I am having confusion on is the entire mess with the Underking from Daggerfall. Apparently Mannimarco was in the Illiac Bay region during this 4th era game and waging a shadow war with the Underking (which is how he both became the Necromancer's Moon and also did not due to the Warp in the West) with both sides using armies of the undead against each other. Is the Underking a lich? Why why/not? His heart was taken to power the Numidium, but is he a lich or merely a vengeful revenant? In the Sancre Tor quest in Oblivion it is said he cursed Sancre Tor with his power of corruption. So...?

Hey Malonn, keep us updated on your progress. I'm extremely interested in stuff like this.

It's because of a few reasons. The first reason is because hollywood and the video gaming industry LOVE just enough TNA to get males' interest since we are highly visual creatures. A flash of something attractive will keep our attention longer. This brings me into the next... The most prominent and easily deduced reason is because most men, including myself, have perversion issues. Hell I've caught myself lusting after or being turned on by scantily clad video game characters before just as I have to pornography or that fit girl who's wearing yoga pants and a tight top. Some have it to the point where they think stripping a female character down to lingerie levels and having her run around the countryside in their "armor" is normal behavior. The misogyny and the cognitive dissonance inherent in this is kind of shocking to be honest. The relative value of how lonely or sexually frustrated a male is increases this reason 10 fold. Many, and I have witnessed this happening, would be socially embarassed by their peers, parents, sisters, et cetera if they were caught playing the game in this manner. Others simply eschew the shame in a form of rebellion, "f- the world I do what I want, you're the one with the problem!" Some just really enjoy the erotic tease aspect while they play. Which brings me to the next reason. Then you have the "free love, free art" crowd. They think they should be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want in their games including sex mods/skimpy armors/animations/etc for reasons as varied as humor, the aforementioned perversion issues, the feeling that being turned on by video game characters is perfectly normal because it's merely a chemical process and anything bad feeling about it is simply social norms trumping their own free will, or the desire to create erotic art (yes I realize the difference between art and porn but I'd hardly call most video game mods doing this art) using the video game as a medium. This is THEIR fantasy game after all! And this is also why you get bizarro completely non-functional stuff like this: Because yeah man, yeah! This brings us to the artists... There are some who have a character they wish to appear in a certain trope... such as the seductress, a daedra who takes on a sexualized form, a highly attractive woman who is comfortable with her sexuality in all forms, a prostitute or courtesan, a lover who shows a bit more of herself for her man, a huntress or woman living out in the wild that wears less clothing for practicality, a dancer who shows off her form, or sexy cults such as certain Temples of Dibella. I -get- this. It makes sense for the narrative. It reflects things in our culture while straying into the fantasy realm. In these mods not every woman is dressed to the nines as a hooker wearing makeup, noodle arms, and their model looking like a straight rip from DAZ Poser. They are using this as part of the greater story, to reflect these aspects of our humanity. I feel like this is legitimate and sometimes really good art. I also feel that this is rare. Speaking of rare brings me to my last reason. That of women, and occasionally some men, who like to play dress up and will download mods and clothing for their characters that they can explore all the possibilities with. Many of these women find the lingerie aspect pretty and something they would like to wear themselves under their normal clothes to feel sexy or for their partners. They enjoy dressing up their digital dolls they have connected with due to playing long hours in a sandbox game. They don't want their characters to be frumpy, and enjoy glamming up the entire place to increase their enjoyment of the game. They want things to be pretty as possible and dammit they are going to achieve it! There's a rarer subtype of women modders and mod users who fall into the just wanting the erotic titillation while playing the game aspect, and the even rarer perversion aspect (most women do not struggle with it as men do, but it's still there), and the most rare subgroup of both men and women that just want the full blown virtual sex experience. ------- Now I want to clarify that I also grew up in Europe seeing all the nude art and went to art school and before that wanted to study medicine but chose art instead. I am very well versed with the nude human body (of all types, some of which you guys wouldn't want to imagine lol!). I'm comfortable with it whereas many people around me would not be. I can enjoy the artistic aspects of well placed nudity or even the erotic aspects as art. But there's an extremely fine line between erotic art and porn, which is meant to serve the baser desires, predilections, and perversions of people. There's still good stuff to be sure. I love the human body and love to see it in art, nude and fully clothed. However, it really makes me cringe to see a lot of the stuff out there. I can't tell you as a modder and designer how many times I've gotten permission to use someone's work and I download the collections of models to find the most absurd clothing pieces with boob windows cut out for no real reason, chain armor (hell every armor, and clothing!) going up women's cracks, nip slips, breasts half out or pasties on as "armor", thongs, bustierres, teddies, g-strings, thin 6" and higher high heels, butts hanging out of skirts, panty shots, fully modeled and textured vaginas complete with animated bones so they can be penetrated realistically (this is even present in one of the most widely dispersed mods, the universal skeleton and HG EyeCandy female body)! It's just all getting to be a bit much, don't you think?

It's kind of cool to watch my NPC's use the staircase now .

I found out that placing the nodes a little bit above the z-axis coordinate for the collision plane of the stairs made the NPC interact with them more, thanks for the idea! Turns out I had another bug happen that turns out to be a major blessing in disguise though! Oblivion NPC's ARE stupid. But it seems that they ignore z-axis coordinates for a lot of things (hence why things can hit you while you are in the air). So as soon as my NPC walked underneath the door at the top he'd instantly port up. At this point a compromise with the NPC walking halfway up the stairs and porting himself the rest of the way doesn't seem so bad. And when he needs to come down the stairs he uses them flawlessly.

Well I ended up sucking it up and going back into Blender to expand the apse and expand the width of the steps and the distance of the railing from the central column by 25%, creating a much wider walkway. Now the NPC's won't even use the staircase, just simply milling about sad-faced as they try to get to the upper rooms :/... I tried it using the player character, and it's about twice as easy to walk up now 0_o?

Think any of those solutions I posited up in the first post would work? As I stated before he'll go up the first 5-6 steps, and will even fight from there. Afterwards he just goes back down and circles around and around the staircase's base. I tried multiple different setups with gridpathing with no success, always the same reaction from the NPC. Again, I as the player can get up the stairs without issue (I'll only get stuck if I try to force the player character through the rails, which you shouldn't be doing anyways and it doesn't last, so I deem it acceptable risk, and I've tightened up the collision mesh a lot too to get it to work better). I'm pretty much up for trying anything except redoing the entire staircase/building. I need that building in that spot, that's the only space it would give me on the exterior and the interior matches the exterior. I designed the staircase to go up through the building to save space inside the building (which is what people use spiral staircases for anyways). And it looks boss as hell . I'd be "ok" with redoing the design of the staircase itself, but only as a last resort.

Here's what it looks like (trying hard to avoid spoilers) and yes I made the mesh in Blender and dropped it as a static in TESCS.

I don't really understand your meaning. Are you saying you combined the stairs' collision with the house's internal collision? I don't see how that would help any in my case since the NPC's are simply having trouble using the collision of the stairs in the first place. Also the shape isn't just curving, it's a true spiral going straight up.

Woops Oblivion. It's the only game I'm working on right now but I should've put that in the thread title.

So I had this vision for a building in my mod that has a spiral staircase. I created one a normal person could use and scaled it to fit the tallest of the playable race NPC's in the game, and made a smooth ramp plane going up it like the other staircases in the game use. It ended up being kind of a steep uphill degree but I as the player was able to get up and down the stairs in the game fairly easily. There's a bit of collision nonsene that goes on because the spiral forces the player to change directions every so often to get up with a handrail, but it isn't any harder to get up than say a steep-ish hill in the game. The real problem is NPC's. I have an NPC that is supposed to greet you on the main floor, then head up to his quarters up the stairs at night to do some activities and should be able to chase the player if they are caught stealing or something. There's also a private guard in the building who is supposed to patrol between the two floors. But the NPC's get stuck on the stairs. He'll climb the first few then get down and run around them, climb the first few stairs again then repeat as he tries to reach the door portal at the top. I know there is a solution that I've seen in Glenvar Castle mod that has their spiral staircase going in a huge circumference with tiny little stairs. Only problem is, there's no way I could even fit a staircase like that in my building (and it's a building surrounded by buildings and is embedded in a wall in the Imperial City so I can't simply make it larger on the exterior either). Plus, the staircase I had in mind and had created is an elegant wooden thing with brass handle. It looks absolutely terrible when stretched out. I tried stretching it out anyways and reducing the degree angle of the steps... but that created z-axis problems (ie: the player or npc's can't even fit their head in) and the only way to solve that, again, is to make the staircase freaking huge like in Glenvar Castle. So now I'm trying to brainstorm solutions. I can animate fairly well, so that's not out of the question: 1) I could put an xmarkerheading static down at the beginning of the stairs and instead of having the NPC's travel to the upstairs I can have them "Use Item At" there and give them an animation item that will play an animation of them walking up the stairs and then one at the top where they will walk down the stairs. --------> I foresee this having the problem of if the player decides to fight them or steal from them, all they have to do is go up the stairs and the NPC's will get stuck as usual there. 2) I'm not sure if this would even work but I could put a series of doors teleporting up the stairs (doors without collision so the player can't see them or access them), the NPC's should be able to use them though, right? --------> I foresee some really weird animations happening from this though. especially since NPC's tend to reduce their alpha for a second as they pass through doors, no? 3) I could change the shape of the stairs, and instead of a pure spiral have it be a series of standard steps and ledges going around the central column. A kind of wrap-around that mimics a spiral but keeps straight planes. -------> May not fit into the apse I have the staircase going up. -------> May look strange and definitely won't fit with my original idea... but I could force it to work I suppose. -------> This would make some of the steps pretty small width-wise I am definitely open to suggestions!!!!

Thanks! I'll try it on my next one. I notice that the tutorial is written for Skyrim, backwards compatible with Oblivion?

Well after about a dozen tries to get the thing to work I realized that this was seriously eating into my development time. So I just went ahead and separated each piece of the mesh and corresponding collision meshes and exported them that way. I had to take quite a bit of time to get everything to align properly in the CS, but at least it is working now... what a pain! FYI: the one .nif file I had where it had multiple ninodes and different collision meshes attached to it worked in-game, but it kept randomly joining meshes and separating others, and I had no clue at all how to get it to stop doing that... so I'd end up with a wood piece that sounded like metal, or a stone piece that sounded like wood randomly. I am glad I went ahead and did it the hard way, at least I know everything works.