More on FNV Sorters

I mentioned about a week and a half back the rather dismal results my first attempt at item sorters for FNV turned in.

The trouble was, I was trying to run them via dialogue result scripts directly; and apparently the new and improved limit on those is shorter than it was in FO3, despite the GECK not kicking it back as being officially over-length.

I had an inkling of how to fix it, but wasn't sure the solution would work for NCCS; what with you people being a pack of twitchy spider monkeys on crank.

Nonetheless, I decided that one way or the other, I wanted working sorters for my own companions. So, since I had to fire up the game this morning anyway to test the new revolver texture, I also went through and rewrote the two reloading sorters (one for the player, and one that automatically collects all casings/spent power cells from companions) using a quest script -- since they have much larger processing capabilities.

I'm moderately pleased to note that it went off with only a minor hitch -- and that hitch being smaller than I was expecting.

The hitch, as it were, is that as I've mentioned before, quest scripts in FNV don't run every frame as they're supposed to. They run once every few seconds. The average delay on the main companion management quest's script is about five seconds, but I've seen it go as high as ten.

Naturally, I could not help but assume that loaded into NCCS, sorters on a ten second delay would cause no end of bitching in my general direction.

The game surprised me, and the sorting routine runs on about a two second delay. Not next-frame as I'd like... but not long enough that people will assume it isn't running.

Well, most people.

Since that works, I'm going to write in the general and survival sorters, too. I'm interested in seeing if increasing the amount of data it has to process also increases the lag time between script runs. A direct correlation would be too easy, but there's always the chance...

The reloading component retrieval scripts ("Hand me the components to reload 357 magnum.") run fine from the result scripts. I still haven't recovered all the weapon repair kit components I lost in the container incident, so I haven't been able to test it yet.

On another note, I added CaliberX to the game; and while the reloading menu is much more cluttered now, on the whole I like the extra ammo types. Being able to load 7.62 and 5.56mm match ammo is nice, as is being able to load normal shotgun shells (makes it much easier to keep companions in ammo, since NPCs can't use any ammo besides the default type).

Also: the NosCO 44mag SBH looks smashing. Alas, it was dusk game-time when I was testing, so no good screenshot opportunities presented themselves.