Stirk NPCs [Infragris]

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Infragris
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Post by Infragris »

I'll see what I can do, though testing performance out in Stirk is difficult enough as it is. I just assumed 14 fishes appearing in he same location is going to be problems, or at least look strange.

Opinions on the other stuff? I've already replaced some windows with Saint_Jiub's new Kynareth-themed ones, which looks very nice. I could also put one of the new frescos in.

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Post by worsas »

I absolutely agree about the chapel. It's a good idea to steer it away from looking straight-christian on the outside. I have no objections on your plans for the two buildings you mention.

I think I'm going to give those seafloor cells a test myself, too, to see how it is in comparison to stirk on my hardware. its not that representative, but if there is really a significant performance impact, even on this stationary pc, we ought to do something about it for sure.

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Post by worsas »

I tested it yesterday evening but was too tired to post the result.
On my setting here, the fps-numbers were roughly as follows:

Within Stirk town: ~30 fps
At the harbor: ~20 fps (used to be worse, I remember)
On the backside of Stirk: ~40fps
On the seafloor cells between Stirk and Vabriasel: ~40fps

Not sure what could be done to further improve the performance at the harbor. Maybe it would be possible to tweak the seagulls script to improve performance. I would be really sorry to see more seagulls go, as they are very nice for flavour. And you already reduced the amount of fish, I see.

Regarding the fish schools, if you want to deal with them, maybe split up the current fish groups into two so that the player will more likely encounter them? They are still extremely difficult to come across.

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Infragris
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Post by Infragris »

Actually, I noticed strong drops in fps in the center of town, especially close to the waterfalls and pools. Perhaps the sound marker script is causing this? I also noticed that the Stirk walls have stencil properties, which shouldn't be necessary.

I started removing fish spawns some because I thought at first it was some kind of duplication bug. We could minimize the "chance none" in the leveled lists, so that you're virtually certain to see a fish on a certain place.

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Post by worsas »

I made quick ingame test just now and for some reason, I have no clue why, the fps-numbers were completely different. Pretty much circulating around 15 fps for the whole town of Stirk and no difference at the harbor. I must have been totally brainwashed yesterday evening or something.

I'm fine with whatever modification to the fish amounts you want to make, as long as there will remain fish schools of 3-4 fish, at least. Manually spreading out the fish schools might be a good idea in some places. And while I'm at it, we need to go over all instances of the Aloe Vera and fix placement/rotation and probably diversify them so that you will see the two other variants aswell. Also, one needs to check upon the flora in houses that doesn't always fit into place anymore, in particular within the manor of Victus Pilious.

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Infragris
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Post by Infragris »

FPS so far from 0,0 is just fundamentally unreliable I guess. I'll keep the fish at a minimum of 3-4. I really like the idea of a fish school, but with this engine...

I've already started on the Aloe Vera. I really love the new models and textures, by the way.

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Post by Infragris »

Related to this Aloe Vera thing, I'd like to bring up some of the flora issues up again. spineinside's work on the flora gives us some new options that I'd like to implement. Here's a list of the current dominant plant-life, with my opinions:
  • Aloe Vera: implement variations and edit placement.
  • Arrowroot: as noted by worsas, this is supposed to be a Valenwood plant. Also not a big fan of the model, tbh. I'd like to replace this with static bushes and some of the reworked flowers.
  • Bloodlily: texture is too neon red/orange. I think this would blend in better if it was closer to a dark red/brown, like dried blood.
  • Ginseng: another plant that isn't supposed to be here. This could be replaced with the Domica Redwort or Columbine plant, they are more or less the same in size.
  • Goldenrod: this model should definitely be reworked.
  • Water Hyacinth: implement variations and edit placement.
  • Sacred Lotus: low quality alpha edges, bright colors don't really work in the setting, and used in both salt- and sweetwater (which bothers me way more than it probably should). The alpha planes on the lily pads that are used alongside it also clash/flicker with water statics in interiors and in the Stirk lakes. Should be reworked. Incidentally, I quite like the idea of a saltwater lotus/lilypad plant, but it should clearly indicate that it is intended for brackish water (rougher, less green)
  • Spike Rice
  • St. Jahn's Wort
  • Tiger Lily: these should probably be reworked, or otherwise replaced.
  • Trinity Fruit: could maybe use an asymmetrical variant? The symmetry gives it a copy/paste feel when used in bulk.
  • Cattails: static, should be a priority for reworking. Quality is much less than the surrounding flora.
Additionally, there are a lot of single plants in interiors that are still some ways below our standards for meshes. With permission, I would like to go over them and reduce the variation in plantlife in favor of the dominant plants above + a couple of chosen chamber-plants (Foxglove, Redwort, Columbine, Lily of the Valley, Lady's Mantle). It makes a lot more sense for climate and setting to have four or five plants show up ten times each in interiors, than to have twenty plants show up exactly once each.

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Post by worsas »

To be honest, I don't really see the need of reworking for many of the plants you mention that much. The cattails look fine to me for example. The Tiger Lilly and the golden Rod could be improved yet, I agree. But other than that the worst offenders have been dealt with by now. Plants that, in my opinion, are really still in need of work, are alkanet, chokeberry, carrot and the poisonlilly and generally the mushrooms. But none of all those seem like showstoppers to me. And yes, the alpha issues of the Sacred Lotus. But the lightness of the flower seems fine to me and it looks completely fine for a flower otherwise.

However, if you are up to change the container plant composition in the stirk region to replace ginseng and Arrowroot, I'm with you on that. And if you want to diversify the Trinity fruit, be my guest. And removing fresh water plants from the ocean has got green light from me, surely.

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Infragris
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Post by Infragris »

Further updates of the plant meshes can probably be done retroactively, especially if the area footprint remains the same (as it would with simple retextures). But the tiger lily and especially the goldenrod are still a major problem. The other plants are a lower priority to me, since we can just avoid using them for the time being (I've already replaced instances of the alkanet flower, for example).

I find the cattails distracting because there's some obvious clipping going on with the grass planes, and because it feel quite different than the surrounding flora in quality. I'll pull it in blender, see if I can improve it somehow.

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Post by Infragris »

How would this do for the cattails?

EDIT: experimental cattails in attachment. How do you think these look compared to the original?
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cattail example.jpg

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worsas
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Post by worsas »

They blend in better with the other flora, yes. I'm a bit of a naysayer lately, because we've been stuck in old areas for too long. The same thing over at SHOTN. I keep asking everyone to get their current areas wrapped up and move onto new things. I hope noone minds that too much.

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Post by Infragris »

Yeah, I understand that, and I think you're right that we've been stuck in the old areas too long. But if we put things like this off, we would have to come back to them time and time again.

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Post by Infragris »

Update: implemented proposed changes to flora. The only things left to do on that field are the planters in Pilious Manor and updated models for the Goldenrod and Tiger Lily plants. The "Cyrodiil Lore" topic should also be a bit more informative when talking to savants. Temple of Kynareth is on its way.
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Stirk v3.749.ESP
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Saint_Jiub
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Post by Saint_Jiub »

Hm, I'm not sure the Colovian hat works too well with that particular robe..... are we still using those Imperial Cult robes?

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Post by worsas »

Probably needless to say, but the new temple design looks great.

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Infragris
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Post by Infragris »

Oh yeah, I completely forgot about those cult robes. I think I might be able to get two of them in working order.

Sound was placeholder.


Been tweaking the leveled creature lists:
  • Stirk Exterior: rats (+diseased version), donkeys (passive), wolves (+diseased version), small goblins.
  • Ayleid Ruins: Scamps, flame atronachs, frost Atronachs, dremora, dremora lord, storm atronachs, welkynd spirits.
  • Natural Caves: rats (+diseased version), wolves (+diseased version), bears
  • Colovian Tombs: ghosts, weak skeletons, archer skeletons, mummies, nordic skeleton, ghost guardian
Most of these creatures are placeholders, to be used until we have more appropriate creatures (luckily very easy to insert in lvld lists at a later date). The lower levels (1-3) could use a lot more variety.

Some creatures (skeletons mostly, but also Daedra) have leveled items on them that include Morrowind-specific weapons and loot. It might be a good policy to create PC_specific versions of most (if not all) vanilla creatures, to avoid both item issues and compatibility problems.

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Post by Infragris »

Update. Lots of behind-the-scenes work on dialogue.
  • Major revisions and fixes to dialogue filtering in Greeting 7. This was a serious mess, stopped publican dialogue from appearing. Everything should now be working correctly.
  • Pathgrids around the harbor are fixed and expanded.
  • Changed Cyrodiil Lore dialogue from savants to avoid repetitions.
  • Added rowboat "door" between harbor and lighthouse.
Left to do:
  • Finish AI and alarm setting for NPCs: 50%
  • Make all merchants functional: 50%. Some of the new rings and items have already been added to shops.
  • Finish leveled creatures and add them to dungeons: 75%
  • Temple redesign: 90%
  • Revise and double-check dialogue filtering for inconsistencies.
  • Spell-check and dialogue revisions.
  • Add new ship interiors
  • Update Goldenrod plant
  • Update Tiger Lily plant
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Stirk v3.753.ESP
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Post by worsas »

How are we going about the quests? I think it might make sense to get back to them as soon as the main stirk file is finished, so we have a robust base. I'm currently hesitant to test them with the continuously changing stirk file.

I'm happy to see we are so far along with it all. Having a complete Stirk will really be an accomplishment.

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Post by Infragris »

I have a basic draft of the Stirk main questline in the works. It will probably require some changes to the main file's content, so hopefully I can just hand over a finished file by then.

The existing quests will likely have to be edited somewhat to make everything work well together. It probably wasn't the best idea to start the sidequests before we had a solid main quest idea, but whatever. Specifically, I'm thinking of offloading some of the existing misc quests to less important NPCs instead of the three main questline figures: for example, the gold amulet quest could involve Estarria or the harbormaster instead of Victus Pilious, or the Helvor Legacy quest could be given by Astoria Helvor instead of Vilina. Pilious, Hassell and Vilina each have side-quests in the main questline, and it could get confusing if they also offered minor quests on the side (not to mention that the main quest will probably end with one or more of them being pretty angry at the player).

Once I'm done with Stirk I'm going to focus on a generic dialogue plugin (class-based dialogue topics about lore, geography, culture) and go over the groundwork for some factions and background lore.

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Post by Infragris »

Update:
  • AI settings finished
  • Merchants finished
  • Lvld lists finished
  • Temple of Kynareth finished (interiors people plz take a look at this)
All these things still need to be thoroughly tested. Things to pay attention to are dialogue inconsistencies, merchants with too little/too much stock in comparison to the vanilla game, creatures in dungeons depending on level. Also, everything else.
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worsas
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Post by worsas »

from an older version of the stirk file
6/23/2016 (23:48) Stirk v3.744.ESP 6/22/2016 (09:45) 1 PC_Flora_Tigerlily_01 Stirk Isle Region (-136,-49) -1113718 -394717 2675 "a floating flower"

current errors
7/11/2016 (12:46) Stirk v3.755.ESP 7/11/2016 (11:02) 1 PC_Str_SyloriMenaneus00000000 Stirk, Old Seawater Tavern 1061 510 2 "publican sells books, clothing, weapon, misc items, etc"
7/11/2016 (12:47) Stirk v3.755.ESP 7/11/2016 (11:02) 1 PC_In_Str_Door_S Stirk, Old Seawater Tavern 1024 -64 256 "door bleeds with the closet when opened"
7/11/2016 (12:48) Stirk v3.755.ESP 7/11/2016 (11:02) 1 PC_In_Str_Door_S Stirk, Old Seawater Tavern 512 -64 0 "door bleeds with the table when opened"
7/11/2016 (12:48) Stirk v3.755.ESP 7/11/2016 (11:02) 1 PC_Str_SyloriMenaneus00000000 Stirk, Old Seawater Tavern 1061 510 2 "no beds offered. intentional?"
7/11/2016 (12:54) Stirk v3.755.ESP 7/11/2016 (11:02) 1 PC_Flora_Trinity_01 Stirk, Lighthouse 303 663 -162 "maybe switch this trinity plant for a different plant. the atmospheric dictative quest requires you to get 2 trinity fruits for the lighthouse keeper and currently you can already pick it from here"
7/11/2016 (13:14) Stirk v3.755.ESP 7/11/2016 (11:02) 1 PC_Str_Aistillin00000000 Stirk, Safe Harbor Inn 583 458 2 "publican sells books, clothing, weapon, misc items, etc."
7/11/2016 (13:17) Stirk v3.755.ESP 7/11/2016 (11:02) 1 PC_bk_legalbasics Stirk, Town Hall 3911 4873 16100 "none of the items in this interior are owned"
7/11/2016 (15:31) Stirk v3.755.ESP 7/11/2016 (11:02) 1 PC_Str_Josantha Maxim00000000 Stirk, Maxim: Smithy & Repairs 513 573 2 "sells ingredients, clothing, misc items. etc. shouldnt she only sell weapons, repair items and armor?"


- guards dont try to put you into prison if you have a bounty on your head and speak to them. if you steal something and you are seen by a guard he runs after you with the weapon but doesnt initialize dialogue to put you into prison, only keeps standing infront of you instead.
- all npcs offer the services topic, even the noLore - ones, but clicking the topic gives a response saying "XXX", except for npcs that have a unique response for this topic
- many npcs offer to speak about latest rumours in their greeting but refuse to do gossip as soon as you click it. Not a big issue, but happens really often.
- Maybe we should exchange some of the Oblivion books and vanilla books with our new texts. There are really many samples of Eslaf Erol or the Brief History of the Empire around the island. We could add some more samples of the Line of Emperors or the Colovian myth texts maybe.

- wormusoel -> there are too many welkynds lying around. Should be addressed when the dungeon gets its overhaul
- too many coins in barrow urns (data issue)
- tiny detail: imperial cult priest summons a bonewalker in combat.

The amount of creatures I have encountered so far seemed alright to me.

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Infragris
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Post by Infragris »

The Old Seawater is just a bar, and deliberately does not offer beds. Two inns is more than enough for a town this size.

The guards need their own version of the greetings 0 crime dialogue, filtered for the PC_guard class.

Service dialogue is still pretty messed up. Basically, a lot of the dialogue entries lost their proper sorting order due to being placed first in the response lists, which apparently does not play well with merging and intensively editing mods. Luckily, this can be fixed by exporting the dialogue and manually editing background data.

Other problems should be easy fixes.

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worsas
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Post by worsas »

There is a glass sword lying around openly somewhere around the ayleid ruin.

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Infragris
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Post by Infragris »

Not anymore, there isn't.

About the books: I'm coming across a lot of copies of the "Guide to ..." series. I seriously dislike these books, as their style and content (descriptions of the cities as they appeared in Oblivion) don't fit in with the project. Any objections if I replace these?

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worsas
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Post by worsas »

I have nothing to object about removing them. I have always been suspicious of those volumes myself.

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Infragris
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Post by Infragris »

- tiny detail: imperial cult priest summons a bonewalker in combat.
This is going to be a problem, I suppose. NPCs versed in magic get a number of spells assigned automatically (not sure of the specific mechanics), which means that there could be all kinds of dunmerish undead and other effects floating around. These can be manually removed, but it's a pain in the ass. I wonder if it's possible to somehow remove them by script, through PC_Nolore maybe.

Indicentally, how are we going to handle Almsivi Intervention?

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Post by roerich »

Indicentally, how are we going to handle Almsivi Intervention?
Remove scrolls from all levelled lists and any reference to it in P:C. I'm not sure there's a way to block it, but if the player wants to "break immersion" like that then I'm not sure we should go out of our way to fix it.
"I don't know if you are kidding but I 100% support a Big Mouth Billy Bass in PC"
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worsas
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Post by worsas »

the usual npc-scripts could manually remove these spells on npcs. It's an easy edit.

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Infragris
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Post by Infragris »

That would probably be the best. We could take advantage of this and also filter spells with specific Dunmer names so that they don't show up with spell merchants. Then, we could replace them with Cyrodiil-flavored versions.

Proposed spells to be blocked:
Almalexia's Grace
Almsivi Intervention
Cure Blight Disease
Ondusi's Open Door
Ordeal of St. Olms
Rest of St. Merris
Rilm's Cure
Rilm's Gift
Seryn's Blessing
Seryn's Gift
Shield of the Armiger
Sotha's Grace
Sotha's Mirror
Summon Ancestral Ghost
Summon Bonelord
Summon Bonewalker
Summon Greater Bonewalker
Ulms's Juicedaw's Feather
Veloth's Benison
Veloth's Grace
Vivec's Feast
Vivec's Kiss
Vivec's Mercy
Vivec's Tears
Vivec's Touch
I wish I could find some documentation about how/why the game assigns these spells the NPCs, though.

From what I can tell, having auto-calculate marked in a spell can cause it to show up in merchant lists and on NPCs. I've edited this in the Stirk file for a couple of PC spells, like the Welkynd Spirt abilities.

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Infragris
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Post by Infragris »

WIP tiger lily:
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tiger_lily.jpg

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