Scripting Success!

Got the package work done this morning, and at least passably tested, and it mostly works.

Some screwy behavior, yet.

I've found that not all the girls are willing to sit in any given room. It's almost random; like it's up to their choice. Like some of the other oddities in their behavior I've caused, I think it adds a bit of personality and realism to the girls, so I'm not too upset over it.

Some interesting things I noticed:

Depending on which seat you take - even in as little as ten feet of difference - the companions may well change their mind about sitting.

A lot of it depends on the individual companion. For instance:

Engel will take a seat at the bar at the Muddy Rudder, but not in Moriarty's. Sitting on the couch in front of the Megaton common house, she may sit down next to me, or may opt to lean up against the wall next to the door and look stoic. She also sat down next to me in front of the pool in Vault 1.







Melody is quite fond of sitting next to me on the couch overlooking the pool in Vault 1, but won't sit down in the player's bedroom.






Maeva wouldn't sit in the Muddy Rudder or Gary's Galley, but if I sit on the aforementioned couch overlooking the pool, she goes all the way through the lounge, and back three bedrooms before sitting down. Apparently she likes that room. She was also willing to sit in the Brass lantern and Rivet City's common room.






Interesting thing regarding the Brass Lantern: Maeva would sit, but Engel apparently hates the place, as she'd walk out and wait for us outside.

Ellie and Melody both took seats at a table in the Vault 1 cafeteria when I sat down at the bar.



You can see here Melody stole the only other chair in Red's Clinic, Big Town.




As always, there are a few more pictures in the Picasa folder that I didn't link. You may want to dig around a bit.

Scripting again...

So, I had reminded people in my Companions Mod's comments section that endorsements are a great way to motivate me to get off my dead ass and work on the new features.

I come back from my little break, to find an endorsement and a reminder to get off my dead ass and work on the new features.

Never let it be said that the squeaky wheel does not get the oil!

Got the GECK open now, working on a small-ish feature that will make the companions sit when the player does, provided there is an empty chair nearby.

Had toyed with it before, but scrapped the modifications after they didn't want to work right. Never figured out whether it was my scripting call or the package that wasn't working.

Wrote it in again just now, and tested... scripting call works fine, but package needs work.

How do I know this?

I forgot to add a check to make sure the companion is in the player's party.

Sat down, nothing.

Stood up, and it added the followplayer package to all ten companions, nine of whom were just chillin' in the Vault, and not in my party. They all became followers.

So, I know the script works, at least. Now just to figure out how to package it to make them sit the hell down.

Update:

Tested again with an "eat" package instead of a "use item at" package. Works!

...Slight problem? I appear to have set too high a radius, as the companion went almost fifty yards away before finding a seat she liked, despite the fact that there was one open right next to me.

Gotta try lowering the radius, I think...

Burnout

As in, I'm suffering from it.

Files ready for upload, but not uploaded.

Fighting down the urge to nuke it all and pull a vanishing act.

I'll probably get around to uploading, eventually.

Prep Work

Spent a decent portion of the morning trying to get the new versions of my companions mod ready for upload.

No, I didn't mistype; there are now three versions of it.

One is the normal version that's been up for download a couple months now. One is the same, but with the new bodies, and rebalanced faces.

I had to change the faces, as kicking over to the custom races reset the default facial features underlying the changes I had made, and they didn't look good anymore.

Third version is the new bodies, but with the improved AI I've been working on.

Second two versions are fine. I had some master file issues to work out, but that's minor detail work, and went by easily enough.

Now I'm left with the original version... where the faces don't look right. I've been playing with the new AV variant of the mod for close to three weeks, and in that time have tweaked faces over and over, getting them just right. Going back, looking at the old ones showed just how far I took it.

Trouble is, the GECK's facegen is less than stellar.

It loves giving women five o'clock shadows, and has a nasty habit of putting the weirdest blue, patchy textures on faces that aren't bronze-tanned.

Naturally, I like my wemmenz pale and purdy, so this is all kinds of pain in my ass.

Still, I soldier on. I've just about got it all unfucked now, and just have to take some updated screenshots.

Update Complete

Well, there you go.

Posts on most of my mods thus far, with appropriate easy links added to the sidebar for your browsing convenience.

Now, I'm going to go do something that does not involve staring at an LCD.

6x Custom .44 Magnum Revolver

This one is actually unreleased.

I decided one day that I wanted to add a bit more utility to the .44 Magnum revolver, since I was packing it in lieu of a sniper rifle.

Nothing too outrageous, though. No God-Mods.

I did some digging through other weapon entries in the GECK, and selected one that looked about six power - the practical upper limit on a handgun. I copied the "field of view" value - since the GECK doesn't use anything so straightforward as a power setting for scoped weapons - and inserted it into a new weapon that was cloned from the standard scoped revolver.

A little testing, and viola, it was done.





I decided to make it a full custom job, ala a S&W PC piece. Upped the accuracy a bit, made it immune to jamming, and upped the value accordingly. Didn't touch damage - after all, it's still the same ammo. Set it for sale at Flak & Shrapnel's:




No technical problems that I'm aware of, I just never got around to uploading it. I didn't find a similar entry in the Nexus database, but I wasn't sure how well it would go over, and eventually forgot about it doing other mods. I still leave it running, and will probably upload it someday.

Hell, if you want it uploaded, comment. Even one request will probably get it uploaded in short order.


Edit: 12-26-09: This weapon has been integrated into the RR Companions Vault, and can be bought from Chloe. Didn't see the need to release it as a standalone.

RR Companions Vault Bedroom Redecorated

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8457


One of the later mods I've done, this one is a simpler and less overreaching redecoration of the Player's bedroom in Vault 1.

I used RR Refurbished for awhile, but not only was it a strain on my aforementioned low end CPU, it was also... not me. I'm not really a fireplace and hunting lodge kinda guy.

Besides which, Refurbished got too into changing everything for my taste.

So, if Refurbished was the mod equivalent of tearing your home back to the 2x4's and starting anew, I wanted my mod to be the equivalent of what you do when you move into an apartment: you throw down a few rugs, arrange the furniture, unscrew a few of the fifty-seven overhead lights so you don't have to wear sunglasses indoors, and call it livable.

Vault 1 Redecorated Image Folder

As you can see, most of what I did was minor. I moved lockers and tables, freeing up floor space; added an alternate set of lighting, replaced the bed with something less sterile, and left guns laying all over the damned place. I hung up a couple swords and some armor, three combat knives... pretty similar to how my actual bedroom is decorated, actually.

If I could have found a Heavy Metal calendar and some camouflage netting in Fallout 3, they'd be hanging up too, believe me.

I also put in a dinner service for two, which seems a bit pointless at the moment, but will possibly eventually be used in my main companions mod... maybe. I confirm nor deny nothing!

I will say that some of the denizens of Vault 1 seem to like sitting at the little dinner table, and my girls keep stealing my damned bed.

Also added new lights to the pool. I figure, hey, if ttomwv is going to go to the trouble to script the women to get naked when swimming in the pool, the least I can do is add some flood lights so we can really appreciate the view... right?

Yeah, I'm a perv. Like we didn't know it already.

Haven't decided whether the project is finished or not. While I don't want to make it a huge re-envisioning... I think there are a few things that could still stand to be better.