Monday, September 26, 2011

NCCS v0.8, Upcoming, Part III

So, Herculine's probably going to be annoyed with me; 'cause she's going to be getting another alpha to test later today/tonight.

I hadn't intended to, but I nonetheless ended up working some more on v0.8 this afternoon.

I finally got around to adding working details to the repairer class and faction -- that some people have noticed, but reported not changing anything as a bug (protip: that's because it didn't do anything -- it was a placeholder for future features). That should now be a drop-in option for companions.

As well, there's a 'reloader' faction that allows the player to access portable reloading equipment.

And, I'm about 25% of the way into the medic class/faction. I've got the healing dialogue done, but still have to do addiction, crippled limbs, and radiation.

As noted before, the Operator class and combat style have also been added; using the combat style I designed and refined for Maeva in my personal companions plugin.

Still no plans to make use of the NCR and Legion placeholders; mainly because I just know someone will try to make one (or more) of each and have them fight, then complain it doesn't work right. I'm thinking at this point I'm just going to pull those placeholders altogether; until and unless I can figure out some way to keep them workable as companions, but still prone to leaving/turning on you/whatever if you alienate their faction sufficiently.

Also made some more changes to the back-end; cleaning up code that was now redundant with the backpacks removed and so forth.

Once that's all done, I'll probably rework a few of the companions in my premade pack to get them using the new features.

Lastly: I hate cleaning carpets. Yeah, I know it has nothing to do with modding; but it's what I spent the morning doing, and I just wanted to drop that in there.

41 comments:

  1. It's okay Boss; I haven't had much time to turn the game on yet today so it's all probably for the best.

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  2. I think it'll be worth the wait. The medic option is shaping up pretty nicely. I'm just about done (finishing up the crippled limbs dialogue now and it'll be finished and ready to test).

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  3. Note to self: medical services work much better if you remember to tell the script it's supposed to restore the player's condition.

    Gods, I have got to stop trying to work when I'm dead tired...

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  4. Lack of proper rest does tend to allow you to make a mess of things and be completely unaware of it until later...(speaking from experience).

    With that said, I like the idea of these other "classes" for the companions. I would think it would make them much more versatile, and allow you to build yourself a well rounded out team, without having to specifically make specialist characters. Medics always seem to come in handy for some reason...

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  5. The original idea (which was explained many moons ago and then promptly ignored because I'm a flighty as fuck modder) was to allow building a complete "party" -- the player and two or three companions, that all work together and have skills laid out to handle any situation without the player having to generalize to pick up slack.

    Unfortunately, 99.95% of players just want a pair of tits to mule loot and shoot shit; so I haven't really bothered exploring the idea much.

    Well, publicly. I've been working on it for my own uses in my personal plugin for awhile now. Skill buff perks based on how many people are in your party (pooling skills) are quite nice. As are per-companion magic effects (allows adding DR/DT, skill buffs, et cetera to a specific companion).

    My latest one was an increase in detection range and reduction in weapon spread by having a companion act as a spotter for the player. Not fully tested yet... but it seems to be working.

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  6. 'Tis true, most people seem to only want a pretty meat shield for a companion. Again, I prefer mine to have some personality as well as some skills. Group based enhancements are just a big bonus, and with the way you are describing them, make quite a lot of sense.

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  7. Testing has begun! (again...)

    Still sticking with an almost vanilla install of the game (i.e. NCCS and DLCs) I've started a fresh game, picked up Ted and we've headed out into the desert. Though I picked a random direction and totally ignored the MQ, still we somehow managed to make it to the NCR Mojave Outpost rather quickly and with only a few fights. Turns out Ted is pretty good with a machete vs. scorpions when I forget to give him ammo.

    So far no problems to report (or at least none that have anything to do with NCCS and aren't totally the fault of Bethesda or Obsidian). Had an issue with a scorpion that was somehow "beneath" the pavement and only his tail could be seen occasionally sticking up, but still somehow Ted managed to kill it so it's all good.

    Menus and option seem to be functioning as desired, and Ted gladly gives me all his XP. After I've randomly run around some more, I'm going to try to make it to the Strip and Camp Macarena. Think I'll even drop in the Shojos; having their recall items will be handy for testing with the companion teleporting disabled.

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  8. Progress report:

    Wow... I'd forgotten just how much the devs railroaded us in this game. Contrary to what you may have read in the comments threads for NCCS and its dependents, having an NCCS companion with you does not make you an invincible army.

    I've picked up Bernie in Nipton (figured I might as well test for Neil while I'm at it) and was heading to Novac to pick up Brooke when I realized I can't remember how to get to Novac and furthermore that the devs have put Deathclaws, Cazadores and giant Radscorpions just about everywhere I'm trying to walk.

    That aside, I've still found no flaws with this version of NCCS. Tested the home marker and it seems to be working swell. Items placed in the "general" container stay there no matter which companions you have or how many times you switch your party members. Haven't messed with the sorters too much yet, but I intend to once I've collected more junk.

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  9. "I've picked up Bernie in Nipton (figured I might as well test for Neil while I'm at it) and was heading to Novac to pick up Brooke when I realized I can't remember how to get to Novac and furthermore that the devs have put Deathclaws, Cazadores and giant Radscorpions just about everywhere I'm trying to walk."

    The way they set it up, until you've made a trip to Gun Runners to get the good shit (and can afford it), you pretty much have to stick to the highway or die.

    As I have opined many times, it is the railroadingest game I've ever played. Ham-handed DMing at its finest.

    There are a couple safe-ish paths through the backcountry between Nipton and Novac; but I'm not sure I could draw you a map. Getting through it required exploiting almost impassable terrain more than once.

    Which brings me to another point: they also added collision markers to forcibly keep you from going over the mountains in several spots; to get from Nipton to Novac, or West Vegas to... whatever the mutieland in the crater is called. Spots where the terrain is passable enough that the engine will let you walk it; but then at the top there's just an invisible barrier. Same for trying to get into the Quarry from Goodsprings over those rocks to get a high vantage position to snipe the deathclaws instead of having to come in through the gauntlet.

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  10. Don't even get me started on the damned collision barriers; one of the finest examples of poor, lazy world design I've ever seen (or not seen, considering that they're invisible).

    I finally found the road to Novac and picked up Brooke. She's got a recall item in this game (this is actually the first time I've used Neil's girls in FNV) so it might be the perfect opportunity to head to the strip, disable the companion teleporting (which I still can't fathom the complaints regarding) and test that it actually does get disabled.

    I've also collected a variety of casings and such now, so it might be time to test some of the functions regarding that stuff as well. In the meantime, I suppose I should at least get some body replacers installed...

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  11. The teleporting option should work fine -- it's not a new one for this version; since v0.7 has been uploaded since what, May? I'd figure if I screwed up there we would have heard about it by now.

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  12. May?

    Wow, it's been longer than I thought since I've played...

    Also likely proof that I was not as thorough in my previous tests as I should have been. It's my intention to be more accurate this time around...

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  13. v0.7 Master Archive uploaded: 22:07, 11 May 2011

    When you said you didn't even have a body replacer installed I got the feeling you hadn't actually played much; doubly so when you thought the teleporting-switcher-offer was a new feature.

    ...Also: only 5600 unique downloads in four and a half months?

    Ye Gods; why do I bother...

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  14. you know why so few downloads? insufficient dental floss and postage stamps! ;P

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  15. The fresh install was less a result of apathy for the game and more a result of trying out that RFCW mod. I should have known it's a game-borker when I saw that the comments thread is up to 4733 posts; a third of those posts are from people praising what a wonderful piece of work it is and the other two-thirds are from people who've had their games ruined by it or can't even figure out how to get it installed and working. But I digress and apologize; this isn't the place for rants about that.

    As for the lack of skimpy attire in NCCS, I think Nos was very wise in that regard. Look at the troubles my poor RR Scouts have because of such things; they're on again, off again, on again, off again...

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  16. Still sounds like good ole fun overall xD. I just started getting my feet wet into attempting to learn blender.. egads this is going to be a while.

    But I hope to learn resizing well enough to do additional styles for various bodies. As well as ease the need for Lings plus improve on it with newer styles. Learn to make some new NPC's for selling and with options for more then 1 area. Heck maybe after seeing some of the clothes avail at VGU have a seperate D/L with options on stuff from there also.
    But I am still a ways, just learned by loading in a random body replacement femalebody.nif that the additional parts were the meat caps. Hopefully over the next week with time permitting I'll have the gist of resizing and can get to work on that.

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  17. I prefer to stick to my theory that the download numbers are so low because the universe hates me.

    Though I'm sure the fact that I'm a colossal asshole isn't helping matters any.

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  18. Case in point of the universe hating me:

    The NV port of RR Companions Vault -- which still does not work and has been completely abandoned by its "author" -- has 16k unique downloads.

    Were NCCS purely Herculine and no Nos; or practically anyone else for that matter, it would be the next CM and probably have won file of the month at least once, having been live for ten months now.

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  19. Ouch thats kinda rough. Now from what I am understanding so far. NCCS is something like RR Companions but taking a step forward as far as the diversity of the companions themselves?

    On a different subject I am learning a few basics I am gonna mess with in blender. But it seems their video tutorials are on a more recent version then the one needed for use with nif scripts etc.. I might be lucky enough to start on a resize attempt by the weekend. But also time to start volunteer time at a local haunted House scaring people, mwahahahaha. It's a blast scaring people.

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  20. Right. I'll just stop talking now.

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  21. If I hadn't known ahead of time that you did not have anything to do with the NV version of RR Vault, I would have downloaded it. And that would have been because of the work you had done on it Nos. Since I had been following what you and Herculine were doing with NCCS, I decided to go with that instead. I expected it to be a good, solid system, with "customer support" that I could count on, updates and not having the author abandon the project without any notice.

    So far, I haven't been disappointed. Apparently, I am one of the few people that have downloaded it that isn't disappointed. I honestly don't understand how people's minds work, and most likely don't want to.

    Since I have had no issues with Requiem For the Capital Wasteland, unlike Herculine, I will be converting a number of FO3 companions over to NV using NCCS. I am only doing so because I have noticed a slight incompatibility with running RR Companions in RFCW: they don't recognize NV items. Whenever I talk to any of Nos's advanced companions, they all mention that my character is naked, despite my wearing full armour... A somewhat amusing glitch, but it has prevented me from hiring Maeva, and that just can be allowed to continue.

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  22. "I am only doing so because I have noticed a slight incompatibility with running RR Companions in RFCW: they don't recognize NV items. Whenever I talk to any of Nos's advanced companions, they all mention that my character is naked, despite my wearing full armour..."

    There's no script function in the base game to see if you have equipped clothing or armor, so that dialogue is predicated on your current DR rating -- in FO3, all clothing has a DR of at least 1; even the Sexy Sleepwear and such.

    FONV doesn't use DR at all; they switched to DT, and most light clothing doesn't have a DT rating at all, so sadly my quick and dirty "naked check" won't work in NV. It might be possible to use NVSE to set up an alternate check through a monitoring quest... but I've never tried it so I'm not sure.

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  23. Ah, thanks for that bit of enlightenment Nos :) I don't know how much of the scripting I will try to port over to NCCS, and originally I wasn't going to, but I think trying to save as much of the personalities you gave those characters would be a good learning experience in working with scripts.

    I am mostly doing the port so I will have most of my FO3 companions available to me in the NV RFCW environment for doing work on The Phoenix Imperative. I plan to set the environment up for an "alternate reality" story line (possibly called "Darkly Though the Looking Glass") that plays a big part after the current series "Rude Awakenings" is completed.

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  24. Other than those "special" greetings, the stuff should carry over fine, I think. Haven't tried it; but I don't remember using any other stuff like that.

    Also:

    "an "alternate reality" story line (possibly called "Darkly Though the Looking Glass") "

    I see you're a Star Trek fan.

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  25. Yes sir! Have been for most of my 40+ years :) I am not exactly certain what I had written down previously in regards to the exact title mentioned above, it might have been "Through the Looking Glass Darkly", but at the moment it is irrelevant. The idea of doing a "mirror universe" (to borrow more from Star Trek) in The Phoenix Imperative originated with the 187Gurlz companion/quest mod by Wogz187. A couple of the later missions involve a rift between realities. One of the characters from the other side mentions to the player that things in her reality are much more hellish than the player's. I thought it would be an interesting concept for me to try and portray, and Wogz187 was kind enough to allow me to borrow as much of his concepts from the mod as I wanted :)

    It is amazing how many modders will allow you use of their assets or ideas if you just ask politely. People like Wogz187, Herculine and yourself. The three of you alone have been integral in allowing me to create the story the way I have so far. Once again, I thank you for that!

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  26. Oh, you don't have to pitch the idea of alternate realities to me. In addition to being a long-time student of the occult, I also carry a not insubstantial interest in theoretical quantum physics, alternate dimensions (Michio Kaku's Hyperspace: a scientific odyssey through parallel universes, time warps, and the 10th dimension is a particular favorite), and the quantum multiverse theory in general. I find it immensely fascinating, tracking how much of "modern, 'proven' science is beginning to line up with the old, laughed-at occult theories.

    And...

    ...Oh, right. Modding blog. Not physics blog. Nevermind. I'll stop boring everyone now.

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  27. You are not boring me, Nos. It is a subject that I will happily discuss, even though my knowledge of the subject is superficial at best, it is something that does interest me :)

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  28. Progress Report:

    I've made it to the Strip with Brooke & Bernie, my character is level 3 and I still haven't done a single quest beyond the tutorial. (Victor will only identify himself as the Securitron mk I and I wonder what else might be different.) NCCS overall still seems to be functioning properly, but I think it's time to throw in the Shojos just to make sure that each copy of the script is working as well. If I find any bugs you'll be the first to know.

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  29. "Lonesome Road is intended for experienced Couriers (Level 25 or higher). You cannot take companions with you on the road ahead (nor bring any you find out with you). You can carry whatever equipment and gear you have with you without restriction, however."

    Ha! Those foolish devs! They cannot stop NCCS companions with recall devices!

    Actually, I had two companions with me when I passed through their little door; one followed me without issue and the other needed to be recalled. So I guess you could say there's a 50/50 chance...

    (And aren't "equipment" and "gear" like the same thing?)

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  30. "(And aren't "equipment" and "gear" like the same thing?)"

    Even I'm not enough of a grammar Nazi to get that deep into semantics...

    What I am curious about though is why recall devices would be necessary. The Companion Management System is usually fairly bulletpro- er, devproof.

    Or do you still have teleporting turned off?

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  31. Teleporting was still active. One made it through and one didn't. But I should note that I only went through there once; I can reload the save and do it a few times if you'd like. That's what us testers is for.

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  32. Nah, that's okay. Sometimes it takes a bit for the script to fire; depending on how screwed up the engine was at the time you did the cell transition.

    I haven't touched any of the DLCs yet anyway. Should probably get around to it.

    ...Gonna need some better companions though if I'm going to actually use NCCS. Where'd I leave that copy of the cosmetic resource that I converted to NV...?

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  33. I discovered the modded companion loophole in FO3 on my first play through of Operation: Anchorage. One of my companions followed me into the simulation, and I used recall items to bring in three more. I found the same loophole on my first play of Mothership Zeta as well. I escape from the cell I am in, and notice a figure in a neighbouring cell. I open it up and am greeted by a very naked Amy Wong O.O I have used the loop hole to make sure things go my way in the DLCs ever since. I would think you probably could use the "move to player" console command to bring in the vanilla companions, as long as you know their RefID ahead of time. I could be wrong though...

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  34. This oughta bake yer noodle...

    To be thorough, I reloaded the save I made just before entering The Divide (i.e. Lonesome Road) and took the same two companions in to see if both would make it to the other side. To make a long story short, I did this over half a dozen times, and each time only one of them made it through. The kicker: the same one made it through while the same one was "left behind" EVERY TIME.

    Now, I know you're going to ask:

    The companions were Fumi Yoto and Sumi Yoto.

    Sumi always made it through while Fumi did not.

    Sumi is using "NCCSCompanionScript05".

    Fumi is using "NCCSCompanionScript06".

    I don't know if there's anything at all to any of this, but it just seemed like too much of a coincidence not to report.

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  35. That is obviously intended more for Nos than anyone else, but I have to say WTF? It seems odd to me that something in the companion script would be preventing the character from following the player, but I don't really know Jack about scripts yet. That said, since that seems to be the only real difference between the characters, I would think that the script requires further scrutiny.

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  36. @Druuler:

    I was thinking further scrutiny as well, but there's also a chance that it's just some random convergence of the engine or the DLC that has nothing to do with the scripts. What I'm sure of though is that Nos will be able to tell far more quickly than if I sit all day staring at a wall of script. Besides, we all know how much he loves scripting for this engine...

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  37. Oh, my yes, absolutely...

    Do you think we can get anymore sarcasm into those statements?

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  38. Interesting.

    However, the scripts are identical. No, really -- after it threw you for a loop once before, I started enforcing strict controls on the scripts. They're identical down to the indents and line count. The only difference is the name.

    And teleporting isn't controlled from there anyway in general; just the block that fires at the end of combat.

    There's no reason why the script shouldn't be moving them both. I've seen it pull companions into cells that don't even have navmeshing.

    That said, DLC has been put on hold; as my reloading sorter crashed again, this time without NCCS' interference. I've got to try to figure out what the hell's going on there before I actually release this shit to the gaggle of unrealistic, poorly spoken malcontents who claim to be a community.

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  39. I had a suspicion that the teleporting thing had nothing to do with the script, but I just wanted to hear it from the definitive source. Ya gotta admit, for a random convergence of engine and DLC juju, it's really odd that it would do it to the same character every time. It's really no wonder you get so many complaints; no matter how precise your work is, the game remains a buggy piece of half-assed programming.

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  40. "no matter how precise your work is, the game remains a buggy piece of half-assed programming."

    That, my dear, is like saying the sun is bright, or it gets a bit chilly in Siberia in January...

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  41. Well, I ran my testing suite.

    Quest functions. Dialogue functions. It's the script itself that's b0rking somehow.

    Tried using reset code, but the script itself refuses to run. It's like it's getting corrupted in the savegame or something. Don't know of anything I can do to fix that.

    No idea what I'm going to do.

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