[Unofficial A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones Discussion Thread]

I went out and bought the first book, and I have to say the first few chapters follow closely with the first episode. So far its excellent and all the extra details really add extra depth to whats in the show.

It seems silly to do movie adaptations when television series capture a book so much better. I bet Harry Potter would have made one great series as the school year format would fit so well into a TV season.

This is going to be a tough week with this book and Ocarina of Time competing for my attention...

[Unofficial A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones Discussion Thread]

I had never read them til I saw the first episode. That made me have to go out and find them and once I started reading, I couldn't put them down.

I watched the whole first season, but now really regret not reading the book/s first. Do you think its too late or will I still be able to enjoy the novels?

I was very impressed with the soundtrack. As soon as I can get my hands on it, it is going into my Oblivion music folder.

[General Critique of Sword]

Update- No Normal Maps Yet

So, I decided to give it a Dwemer theme, as that seemed to be most fitting for the style. Overall I am very pleased with the texture. It is hard however to compare with the Beth Dwarven weapons in game as they seem to rely heavily on the normal maps. Looking at the plain texture, I think I have got it fairly close.

I have done some tests trying to mimic the Beth Dwarven normal maps and I am finding that it is very hard to reproduce the same effect. If anyone has experience I would love to here your advice.

Changes:

+ more unified textures

+ boxier guard

+ thicker grip, textured as metal

+ more support on grip

- no change to the spike model, I am concerned though that they look a little pinecone-esque

[General Critique of Sword]

Great feedback!

I completely agree that this isn't a sword. It was a remnant from the file name that I seem to have carried over.

Points:

+ Grip needs resized/reinforced

+ Rework spikes

- the guard is supposed to function as a hammer, so I feel the size is right

Other then that, the concept is good but could use some fleshing out, particularly the textures.

I feel I need to do this, but I am having a hard time doing it

I like that it is fairly simple in design, but I will add some more detail. When you say that the textures need to be fleshed out what do you mean? I have inspected the textures for other weapons and mine seem similar, but I do feel some extra touch is missing. Might you be able to describe specifically what mine lack?

[General Critique of Sword]

If you wouldn't mind, I would like some criticism of this sword I am working on. It is nearing completion and I just want to know how I did. I think it looks "okay" but I am not sure of my eye. Anything you could tell me would be great. I want to improve more and I would like to have some target in mind.

Specifications I set for sword:

Maintain a vanilla styling

Create a unique and interesting sword

[[Solved] Light Plays Poorly On Model]

Is your weapon double-sided (In and outside)? It could be that the faces are aligned to the interior on some parts. I had problems with that the first time I made a weapon.

in edit mode with selected faces:

CTRL + N recalculates normals outside

or

W 0 (press W then zero) flips them

Awesome! Thank you, that fixed the problem! Thanks to everyone for the help!

I also noticed that you can flip normals in Nifskope

[[Solved] Light Plays Poorly On Model]

Is your weapon double-sided (In and outside)? It could be that the faces are aligned to the interior on some parts. I had problems with that the first time I made a weapon.

I think that might be it... can you explain what you did to fix it?

[[Solved] Light Plays Poorly On Model]

I found a niSpecularProperty, but everything appeared identical across the different objects. I looked at some Beth swords and they didn't even have that property so I tried deleting it, but nothing seemingly changed. I found an emissive color and a specular color and I set those to white then black, no change. I checked for vertex colors and that was set to false. I never found a niEmmissiveProperty though, so that might be an issue.

I hope the pictures demonstrate this, but when I am in game when everything is supposed to be illuminated (i.e. the sun hits the sword directly) the crossguard is shaded. When everything is supposed to be shaded (i.e. the sun is hitting the backside) the crossguard is illuminated. The backside of the object follows the same pattern but reversed. So, when the crossguard is shaded and everything else is illuminated if you look at the backside the crossguard is illuminated and everything else is shaded. The shading and illumination isn't inherently wrong. It just happens at the wrong places at the wrong times.

[[Solved] Light Plays Poorly On Model]

http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/3955/screenshot7on.jpg

Ya, it must be the model. I checked the settings I had in Blender to see if that part of the sword had anything different and I didn't notice anything. I tried rotating the object 180* and still no luck.

[[Solved] Light Plays Poorly On Model]

Normal maps dictate most of how light plays on a model. Add them and you should see a change for the better

i added a normal map, but it did not fix the strange illumination problem. I will post another picture in a moment.

~EDIT~

Pic: http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/8604/illum.jpg

Quick and messy normal map, but still shows funky illumination

[[Solved] Light Plays Poorly On Model]

Do you have normal maps for your textures?

No, I haven't added them yet.

[[Solved] Light Plays Poorly On Model]

I have created a sword in blender that was originally comprised of separate objects that I then merged together. Things were going well until I textured and checked it out in game. The light seems to be rendered for each object separately and it looks very awkward. What can I do to fix this or prevent it from happening again?

Picture: http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/5599/barbedsworderror.jpg

[Changing the status of objects.]

Hi Folks, I hope I am in the right place to ask this question.

Could someone please tell me how to change the status of an object that is place in an interior to "non-stolen" 'cos all the stuff I place indoors has the little red hand. I know it is probably a silly question but I am really new at modding....

Peace

Fille

Well the interior cell you are placing the object is probably owned by somebody else. If you want to make all the objects in that cell owned by no one, you can right click on the editor entry in Cell View and press edit, under the Interior Data tab is a combo box that you can select the owner of the entire cell in. Now you probably don't want to change that, because it effects all the items in the cell, and if an NPC owns the stuff there then he will have a lot of trouble.

Alternatively you can add specific ownership by double clicking on the particular object in the render window. From there click the ownership tab and you can define the ownership on a per item basis. Now remember a containers ownership means that everything IN the container belongs to the owner.

Now who do you pick as owner? Well if you want the player to own the item set it to Player. Selecting "NONE" for an individual object will cause it to inherit its cells ownership. Selecting NONE for a cell will mean all objects are available to you and any NPC.

I think this covers what you are asking.

@Others, if I misstated anything tell me.

[Dynamically Adding An Item To A Vendor]

I found the problem! It was rather stupid actually. See Gideon Wine is a custom item that I created, and for testing purposes I set it at a 0 price. Items with a 0 price are not sold by vendors so that was the issue. Now according to TheNiceOne over at TES Forums you still must add the item to the merchants inventory. The credit for the bit on adding to the inventory goes to Ghastley (also from TES Forums), who told me before TheNiceOne, but because I did not have the item at a nonzero price, it did not work.

Here is the link and TheNiceOne's post:

http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1192808-dynamically-adding-an-item-to-a-vendor/page__gopid__17723571#entry17723571

Then you're doing something else wrong. My Real Sleep Extended mod dynamically add Bedrolls and Kaffe (Coffee drinks) to merchants the moment you activate a merchant. I add those directly to the merchant, not to his chest - and it works exactly as expected, the merchant has the amount I add for sale.

Are you sure the item you add are of a type that merchant will trade, and that the item has a non-zero price? If either is wrong, the item will not be visible for sale.

[Dynamically Adding An Item To A Vendor]

Hmm, try creating a new container unique to each merchant.

I am trying not to change any vanilla content so I did not follow this specific suggestion. However I did the next best thing.

HermsFoodStorageRef was set up with a merchant, Hermatha, who has 24/7 service offering of all items (clothes, spells, food, et cetera). After the item is added it is visible in the HermsFoodStorageRef container. Hermatha's sell list does not update though. Hermatha does not have "ownership", but this container is her assigned merchant container. Hermatha sells everything in container assigned to her through merchant container options, except the wine when it is added.

______________________________

@Trollf

some other things worth of checking...

You can easily check whether item has been added to that chest by opening it. If the item is there and the merchant doesn't sell it still, then:

Is that container has an ownership assigned to that merchant? As vendors don't sell objects from containers which are other than their own.

Is this merchants sells such category the item belongs to? You can check this in merchant's AI settings windows.

I did another test after reading your bit on container ownership (not merchant container assignment). It does not effect a merchants ability to sell items from a container, neither in a positive nor negative way. As for the other things you mentioned I double checked, and none of those options are set incorrectly.

_______________________________

As a player in game, I tried leaving an item in the container. Hermatha did not then sell said item. I think this conclusively proves that the sell list isn't updating. I tried zoning in an out and waiting to see if that would reset the sell list. No effect.

[Dynamically Adding An Item To A Vendor]

Okay, so interesting update. I added this line:

HermsFoodStorageRef.additem HermGideonWine 1

Which is a persistent ref to a container accessible to the player and NOT a merchant container, and the items show up!

I am guessing that the problem stems from the merchant sell list not updating when an item is added. So is there a way to refresh the list? I looked through the functions on the wiki and I didn't see anything that seemed to do this...

[Dynamically Adding An Item To A Vendor]

Yes, fresh start every time, I don't have any other mods loaded and I have SStartingCell=BravilSouth01 in my ini for a convenient location on load. Could not be dirty saves.

[Dynamically Adding An Item To A Vendor]

Ok, good.

I just looked at some existing additem scripts, and none of them have a comma before the count, so try removing that.

Sadly, no luck.

[Dynamically Adding An Item To A Vendor]

This is a quest script attached to my quest named HermathaDialogQuest. The first if-endif statement of the script runs fine.

I have placed the Wine item in the game world and the quest updates as orchestrated in the second part of the script. The only thing not working is adding to the merchant containers.

**EDIT**

I should note, although I do not think it matters, that the wine object is not considered a quest item

[Dynamically Adding An Item To A Vendor]

Ok, I'm a little confused.

The code you posted in the first post does not include persistent ref ID's when you additem to the container. So if you've corrected that, perhaps repost what you have?

As for testing, are you sure you're at the right quest stage?

Lonely Suitor Lodge

Merchant: Brogrum GroGalash

has container ownership of ...

> Pers.RefID: LonelySuitorBogrumChest

>> Base Object: ChestVendorClothesLowerTwo

>>Count: 1

__________________________________________

Silver Home on the Water

Merchant: Gilgondorin

has container ownership of ...

> Pers.RefID: SilverhomeGilgondorinChest

>> Base Object: ChestVendorPublicanFood01

>> Base Object Count: 21

___________________________________________

I hope this clears up the confusion

[Dynamically Adding An Item To A Vendor]

Any merchant container should be a persistent ref, ie; in your example, the chest (when you double click on it) should be showing as LonelySuitorBogrumChestRef, or something.

Okay well thats what I am doing. The persistent reference (like you said, when you double click on it, not the editor ID) is what I have written in the code. And if I use this persistent reference, it is as if I opened the chest in game and put an item in it? That item would not then be available through all the instances of the chest, correct?

Well this is the problem. When I add an item through the persistent reference it does not show in the merchant buy menu.

[Dynamically Adding An Item To A Vendor]

I would think the chest needs to be referred to by it's persistent ref ID.

You might also want to consider creating a new chest unique to the first vendor or all the vendors that have access to that chest will gain access to that item.

Hmm when you say Ref ID do you mean Editor ID? Because in the code as it is, I am referring to the containers by their ref ID. Am I misunderstanding these terms?

[Dynamically Adding An Item To A Vendor]

I have an item that is necessary for a particular quest that I want to add to two vendors' boxes when the player is at a certain stage and then remove the item when the player is at another stage. One of the vendors has a vendor box that is used by multiple vendors, the other vendor's box is unique to him. I "figured" that if I used the item ref and not the ID that it would only use one of the boxes. I am guessing this isn't true? because the script won't work.

Any advice would be great. If my script is awful go ahead and tell me.

Script:

scn HermathaDialogQuestSCRIPT


float fQuestDelayTime

short addeditems

short gotwine


begin gamemode

if Player.GetInCell BravilSewerHouse == 1 && GetStageDone HermathaDialogQuest 10 != 1

	set fQuestDelayTime to 0.01

	if GetTalkedToPCParam HermathaRef == 1

		SetStage HermathaDialogQuest 10

		set fQuestDelayTime to 0

	endif

endif


if getStage HermathaDialogQuest == 11 && addeditems == 0 

	LonelySuitorBogrumChest.additem HermGideonWine, 1

	SilverhomeGilgondorinChest.additem HermGideonWine, 1

	MessageBox "Items added" //for playtesting

	set addeditems to 1

endif


if player.GetItemCount HermGideonWine == 1 && gotwine == 0

	LonelySuitorBogrumChest.removeitem HermGideonWine, 1

	SilverhomeGilgondorinChest.removeitem HermGideonWine, 1

	SetStage HermathaDialogQuest 12

	MessageBox "Items removed" //for playtesting

	set gotwine to 1

endif


end

[Best Strategy For Full Custom Dialogue?]

Okay thanks!

[Best Strategy For Full Custom Dialogue?]

I have been working on a mod that uses a lot of custom dialogue. I am at the point now where I need to prevent generic dialogue from breaking the illusion of my NPCs. I have read up on keeping that from happening, but I have found multiple strategies and I would like to get suggestions for the best option.

> Custom Race that is not "playable"

I suppose this would be easy, but a quest condition that limits it only to the custom race would be necessary?

> Custom Faction and add an exception to every generic dialog quest excluding that faction

This seems really awful. I would be editing vanilla content instead of adding new content.

> Add in my own topics with higher priority for every generic dialog that I want to remove

I read that this causes errors and such

all of these strategies I found here: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Talk:Removing_default_dialog_tutorial

Anyway, I want to do this right, what are your thoughts?