More Oblivion Observations

Still working with the CS.

My initial attempt at a standalone was a fairly resounding failure. I won't go into heavy detail about what all I was doing, but suffice to say that despite engine similarities, Oblivion and Fallout 3 are very different games where NPC behavior and interactions are concerned.

Doing my best to adapt and overcome, and am making headway.

I'm continually amused, however, by the constant contradictions I run across.

As I observed before, my primary issue has been in accessing the companion's inventory via dialog.

Reading around forums and dissecting other people's work had led me to believe that it was fairly involved - that the container need be moved to the cell you currently occupy, and some other considerations made.

Deciding to look elsewhere from CM, I opened up the esp from Montana's Sexy Companion II - which is hands-down one of if not the best companion ever made for Oblivion.

Montana's solution for the inventory was a simple call on the dialog: "pgchestcasual.activate player, 1"

The rest is handled within the OnActivate block of the chest's object script. This runs counter to what I had been able to divine from various readings. Ostensibly, after all, a container won't activate if it isn't in the same cell as the player. No activate == OnActivate block never fires.

That said, in near four years of use, Astrianna's inventory has never once failed to open for me.

It also turns out that amongst its many other companion flaws, Oblivion doesn't transport party members automatically when you fast travel. Different companions and systems handle this different ways, but all of them have had to add in extra functions to keep the companion(s) in question with you.

I'll confess I had always wondered a bit, but after doing it in reverse, I now understand why so many Oblivion modders had a hell of a time transitioning to FO3.

You NV modders seem to have lucked out.