Custom Framing!

So, I showed off in the earlier screenshot dump some new picture/painting frames I'd been working on; but welched on actually releasing them to mess with normalmaps.

Normally (heh, get it? puns) when I do that sort of thing, you never hear about it again. I'm kind of unreliable, I know.

This time, I really have been working on it; and am nearly done. Only one frame remains in the unsure pile.

Here's what I've got so far:






You can see the black marble frame here. I set it up to look solid, but have just a bit of sheen; as cut and polished marble tends to. Depending on lighting, it's a little too shiny sometimes; so it may need to be dulled it in the future, but for the lighting in the Estate, I like it fine.








This is the rosewood frame, which is the "unsure" culprit.

I like the bit of shine; varnished or oiled wood tends to have it. Very nice. The problem is that second screenshot. When viewed from an angle, you can clearly see raised woodgrain; which you will not find in a finely finished, hand-oiled piece of wood.

The problem is I can't decide whether to leave the wood grain (which looks neat in its own right); or knock the normal down to make it appear smooth and all.




This is the silver portrait frame. Both portrait frames (silver and gold) use the same normal. As you can see, it's got a bit of sheen; but not so much that it looks mirror-polished. Also I successfully got rid of that damned engraving reflection on the name plate.






This one is the white marble, which I think turned out the best. Not only does it match the walls of the Ultralux tileset, but you can see where under the right lighting the normals show up as gaps and indents where the pieces of marble are fitted together. I like the way that looks, I have to say.


As for the release: I'm leaning towards a mediafire upload or something similar; so anyone can grab it and use it.

However. Unfortunately, due to the nature of this sort of thing, this one won't be a complete plug 'n play setup. Creating these paintings and pictures -- even with templates and normals supplied -- is going to require basic-to-moderate knowledge of image-editing software (either GIMP or PS), a .dds exporting plugin or third-party utility for conversion, and basic knowledge of Nifscope to create new copies of the meshes with the proper texture path(s) set. It's really not that hard... but an alarming percentage of the "mod community" these days seems incapable of anything more complex than clicking a single button -- which you ain't gonna get when editing textures.

I'm still open at this point to comments on the frames, and suggestions on what might look better. Also open to other styles if there's one you'd really like to see -- provided you can point me to a tile-friendly sample of the material or pattern that I can import into GIMP as a fill pattern.

...As Chinese Algebra?

As I've mentioned before, since the /V/-/VG/ split at the chan of less than five but more than three, I've taken to reading the TES generals threads.

...Probably too much, but I've got that kind of time on my hands lately.

The other day, I saw someone bitching about how it was very hard -- effectively impossible -- to make a "demon" follower in Skyrim who didn't look like a whore.

Really? Sorry, I have to dissent and disagree:








Oh, don't get me wrong: I'm not going to say it's no effort. Any decent companion takes a lot of effort. Designing, refining, testing -- and that's if you don't go the personal equipment route. Once you start creating equipment just for them, you get to get into mesh and texture editing, and the effort multiplies.

But "hard"? No, not really.

I had a mess of tips typed out; but I'm sure it'll just draw some criticism or trolling, so fuck it. I'm sure you can figure it out on your own if you're interested.

Note To Self:

When upgrading old companions to new specs, check to make sure you didn't leave any Stealthboys in their inventory before testing for improved combat performance.





The increase in combat performance, by the by, was considerable. Goddamn I'm good. It's amazing how far they've come since that first draft; utilizing only existing RR resources, written completely by someone else.

NCCS v0.8, The Slow March Forward

NCCS has taken a major step forward this morning; further eclipsing its would-be "competition".

Firstly, the Nellis artillery issue has been fixed -- and without touching a single base game reference or script. How I did it would be boring technical minutiae, so I'll spare you all; except to say that in-party companions now exist in a perpetual state of being considered the player's teammate -- save when you talk to them, or during combat if you have XP sharing off. This teammate change will also allow some compatibility with follower-centric perks; but this is mostly untested so I don't know offhand which work without further scripting. The new "teammate" condition has been tested and verified to not affect companions' ability to enter the Lucky 38, or keep their weapons on entering other casinos.

Second, during the companionscript overhaul, I re-wrote the case-spawning code. It is now driven by form lists rather than specific item names. This will allow for plugin-patching of the weapon lists, to allow it to work with mod-added weapons without changing individual scripts or forcing your custom companion to require a weapon mod. It will also allow similar patches to include the DLC weapons in the case-spawning code -- though obviously new ammunition types will require modifying the scripts.

Third... companions will now repair their own weapons. Yeah, you read that right. Companions' weapons will no longer reach 0% condition, break, and be dropped only for you to have to go look for where they dropped the damned thing. NVSE is not required for this feature. Companions' repair ability is linked to their repair skill; and companions who are not using the new repairer class will only be able to maintain their weapons at about 60%. Once a Repairer companion's repair skill tops out, they'll be able to maintain nearer 100%, with their weapons never dropping below 70%. I think this strikes a good balance; since it'll keep their weapons from breaking, but not negate the need for the player to perform periodic repairs if they want companions to do maximum damage.

Fourth: this is mostly a back-end issue and not something you players will ever see, but I managed to shave 65 lines off the companionscripts in the course of the rewrite. This is important because the scripts were getting up near the character limit; and by cutting so many lines off I've preserved the ability to continue expanding the scripts for a moderate part of the future.

Lastly, not a new mod development so much as a testing result: I know a couple players and myself have run into an issue where the companions hesitate before engaging an enemy; reloading their weapon one or more times before entering combat. I got some more testing in, and this seems to be directly related to non-standard ammunition types. When I removed the special ammo from the companions, and added default ammo, the issue went away. It doesn't seem to be a sure-fire issue or fix; but that does seem to be the most common way to fix it. I can't even begin to surmise what's causing it (but I have the nagging suspicion it's an engine issue) so I doubt there'll be an NCCS-specific fix in the foreseeable future.

And of course, here's the new alpha; for those three of you who give half a fuck.

Wait, I've got it this time...

I decided to try to fix the issue with the NCCS companions getting shelled at Nellis even when the player has done made friendly like.

Nailed it on the first try, and without touching a single base game object or script. Damn, I'm good sometimes.

However, the game continues to perplex me in ways no other game ever has. It's just so... badly made.

After the test at Nellis, we were walking back out across the bomb range, when the companions crashed. Nose dive into the fucking pavement from thirty thousand feet crash.

Now, I'd chalk this up to some unreported error in my new companion script... except that Veronica was in my party at the time, and she crashed too.

Wouldn't follow, couldn't be talked to... they just stood there.

To the apparent credit of my scripting skills, two of my three NCCS companions recovered on their own after a couple minutes, and began functioning properly again. The third and Veronica never did.

I haven't seen this sort of NPC behavior in a couple patches now. I guess Obsidian really isn't capable of taking a step forward without two back.

Tried waiting, tried fast travel, tried combat; nothing snapped the two statues out of it. Finally, I just closed the game in disgust. Without saving.

I remember in one of the first versions of NCCS, back before FNV had been patched at all, I used to run into similar issues. When it happened, it would infect any subsequent saves; requiring a clean save to fix. Of course, one can not clean save Veronica... so I'm not sure what the fix would be there; short of breaking out the feathered headdress and going looking for a virgin to sacrifice to the Old Ones from beyond the stars.

My game is up over 75 hours now, so all bets are probably off on this sort of thing... but it's still immensely frustrating -- not being able to cleanly separate what's a mod issue that I need to fix, and what's just shitty coding on the part of the slack bastards who got paid to turn out this half-finished game. Fuck, I've played Alpha builds less unstable than this...

About all I can do is fire the game up again, and see if the issue manifests again. If it does, I get to try the new game approach.

Y'know, one of these days I'm going to go apply for an EOD job. At least then there'd be something to look forward to in life.

NCCS v0.8, Upcoming, Part II

I've said it before, I'll say it again: there are entirely too many items in FNV. Got the last of the updates made to the v0.8 alpha this morning -- I did all the scripting the other day, but hadn't copied the new companion scripts to entries #2 - #20.

Got it fired up, my game didn't implode, and Carrie still drew/holstered/followed.

Exited out to make a few revisions to the sorting scripts, since in testing the sorters (which worked) I noticed a few more items that didn't sort -- various Gecko, Nightstalker, and Radscorpion eggs. That has been rectified.

I based where the eggs sort to on what they're good for -- if anything. Gecko, Fire gecko, Golden Gecko, and Radscorpion eggs go into the general container. Nightstalker eggs go into the survival container, as they're used in crafting... 'Mushroom Cloud'. They others weren't listed as being used in any recipes, so they sorted into general swag for later selling purposes.

That aside, v0.8 looks promising. As I said, the centerpiece of this update -- the sorters -- all work. That's the big one. The case spawning script still needs testing, as does the campfire -- I verified that the campfire wouldn't be set up indoors and Carrie made the correct snarky comeback, but I didn't try it outside to see if the thing will successfully appear and vanish as it's supposed to.

I'm also trying to decide whether an ammo sorter would be worth writing. Now, this one gets a little tricky: even with NVSE, there's no way to determine what ammo types you want to keep, except by checking what weapons are in your inventory -- you'd have to store any weapons you weren't going to use first, and then the script would leave behind only the ammo calibers for the weapons you're carrying. It's straightforward enough to actually implement; the issue is whether it's worth the trouble. There's no way I know to make this one mod-added weapon friendly, and likewise it won't sort mod-added ammo.

Since ammo only has weight in hardcore, I'm not sure it's worth adding to NCCS. Most people don't seem to play in hardcore, and no matter how you slice it, an ammo sorter will not work ideally for everyone -- or probably anyone.

May add a limited version for myself to my personal plugin; because there are some ammo types -- flamer fuel, missiles and such -- that I simply never use. Making them sort as part of the reloading sorter would save me some time in stowing stuff, since I virtually always have more ammo and swag than the lightweight merchants in NV can handle.

Anyway.

Assuming the universe doesn't decide to fuck me on this update, v0.8 should be ready to send to my partner for an internal alpha later today. Once she's played with it a bit and seconded my "doesn't destroy the game" results, I'll get a changelog typed up and the update made to the Nexus.


Edit: nothing ever goes simply in a conversion.

Carrie has been through three combats, to the tune of ninety odd seconds; and has spawned 371 casings.

Clearly, something did not get copied correctly...

Edit, again:

Well, I can tell I've been up since one in the morning.

Could not figure out why the casings were spawning in such huge numbers. Finally, in frustration I compared the blocks of code side-by-side between my personal companions (who "recover casings" correctly) and NCCS.

Since it was such a small block of code and in the middle of the script, I just rewrote the timer code instead of copying it from the other plugin.

In the version that works, every frame it sets Timer to ( Timer + GetSecondsPassed ) -- that is to say, it advances by one per second of real time that the timer is running.

In the malfunctioning block, I wrote it to advance based on ( Timer + 1 ) -- so in effect it was going up by one every frame, instead of every second; times twenty odd frames a second... and we have our inexplicable massive number of casings.

Gods, I feel stupid days like today. We'll just fix that code up...

The Slow March to Beta

Internal alpha on the sorters continues; and is nearing completion. I've gotten just about all the holes filled for item sorting, and the new method of using quest scripts entirely (rather than dialogue result scripts) has yet to fail in tests.

I wanted the companion reloading sorter to let me know when it ran; but since you can't see item add/remove notifications on containers other than the player, I had to approach it somewhat differently. I decided to have it display a simple message once the sorting code had all run, just before it reset the variable to zero to stop the script:




I had originally only intended this for the companion sorter, since there was no other way to get a notification as to when and if the code had actually fired correctly.

As I played on, though, I came to know better the full range of items available in FNV. The full Survival sorter takes more than ninety seconds to display all the item removal notifications; and the General sorter isn't far behind.

After about the third time of sitting and waiting on them to finish the stack of notes, I decided it was high time to do something similar to the above. I added the "silent" flag to every removeitem command on the player, and substituted instead a simple message to note that the items had finished sorting. No issues with it failing to run correctly thus far, so I think I'm going to keep the cleaner interface. It won't tell you which items are sorted anymore, but I think that's a small price to pay to not have to sit through five minutes of notifications.

I also discovered a bit of a flaw in the whole idea. Being able to sort and store at a dialogue command's whim means you pick up a lot more. A lot more. We came out of South Vegas, the sign factory, and Vault 3 with more than sixteen hundred pounds of swag.

Now, back in Oblivion, there was a well known bug that made items temporarily disappear when you got too many in one container. FO3/NV have not had a resurgence in that bug thankfully; but by the time we hit a merchant to start offloading loot, when I emptied the holding containers into my personal inventory there were so many items it goddamned near crashed the game. I didn't stop to count, but it had to be well over a thousand items -- not counting ammunition.

I may have to implement some sort of weight and/or item count limit on the containers. We'll wait and see, but I'm betting if I can get it to almost crash, someone else is going to try and cart around half the game at once and cause a save game corruption or something...

I've logged quite a few more hours through yesterday afternoon, last night, and this morning; and so far the code all works quite well. I'm still tweaking a bit here and there, trying to make sure I didn't miss any more common items. Unfortunately, I'm not heavily experienced with the Survival crafting thing, so it's entirely possible I missed a few recipe components. Nonetheless, I think it's about ready to begin the migration into NCCS v0.8.

While I was playing, I also got... not quite bored; but feeling that the game was lacking something. Some personality for my girls. So I set about adding some. Players of the RR Companions Vault are probably not unfamiliar with my brand of witty dialogue, already... but this being a personal plugin I decided not to censor myself in any way.

Maeva got the General container and sorting code:








Natasha handles Reloading:





And also weighs in on ammunition when I ask for a particular set of components to reload:






And Mystery-chan lets me know what she thinks of the quality of New Vegas (New Vegan?) food when asked to stow the food/drinks/survival components:




Now, obviously this stuff won't be making it verbatim into NCCS, but I think I'm going to add in some snarky comments here and there for sorting/retrieval. I also think I'm going to add an "All" command that runs all four sorters in one chain; for those times when you're feeling extra lazy.

I should be careful though, I'm going to fuck around and the companions will unionize. Do they have Pinkertons in New Vegas? I should check into that.

Better? Sort of?

Logged ninety odd minutes on FNV today; tested the sorting scripts and got in some general play.

Updated drivers seem to have helped. When I started the PC up this morning, my desktop was still like it was supposed to be. Inside FNV, "stutter" is reduced considerably, though FPS on the whole haven't improved much. Visually indistinguishable from the old drivers, as far as teh prettehs go. I stopped when it crashed on me. Oddly enough, not a wanderin' the wastes crash, but it crashed on opening a container; which is behavior I've seen plenty of times before in the engine. Not sure what causes it, but it existed in Oblivion and FO3 both.

The sorters themselves continue to be a bit of a work in progress.

They technically work, but the fact is: you give me thirteen hundred lines of text to proof in Wordpad -- 90% of each line being identical to the ones above and below; and it all tends to blur together. Especially after three straight hours of writing the shit. I'm going to make mistakes.

Thus far, the tally of fuckups has been minor:

The reloading sorter somehow escaped having the lines for moving large and small rifle primers copied when I split the scripts into categories; the general sorter was missing some items, and is still missing a few -- since it was originally written as I was glancing down the miscellaneous section of the item tree in the GECK and trying to remember which items were commonly encountered; the dialogue topic for the survival sorter has the wrong prompt (I copied it from the reloading sorter topic, and apparently forgot to change the player's line).

When and if the mess makes it into NCCS (blessedly, all I'll need to do for the scripts is dump them into Wordpad and run a "replace all" on the container name from my special companions plugin to one in the NCCS plugin), stuff will likely need adjustment, as well. At the moment, the items are sorted based on what I do with them. For example, Glass Pitchers and Surgical Tubing go into the survival container because they're used in the recipe for creating purified water. Turpentine goes into the survival container as well, because it's used to tan hides.

If you make Nuka Grenades but don't tan hides, the turpentine sorting will likely irritate you.

Unfortunately, because of the number of potential uses for an item, I'm not sure there is any "right" way to sort them across the board; short of a container for each specific item (not happening). I'm likely going to end up telling several people to learn to mod their damned selves if they don't like the way the script runs.

Other issues I can do little about. There's still the script delay before the quest scripted sorters run. As I feared, the more complex the script, the longer the delay seems to be on average. The Reloading sorter at 170 odd lines runs in just a couple seconds. The first stage of the survival sorter runs up near six hundred lines, though; and takes upwards of five seconds to fire on average. As well, because the survival item list was so blasted long that the script had to be split, there's the delay between the first script finishing, and the second starting.

Another issue is that to make sure the player knows the items are moving, I didn't use the silent flag on the RemoveItem commands, so you get the "4 Beer(s) Removed" or whatever it says exactly. Since each message stays in the corner of your screen for a couple seconds, if you have a full suite of junk in your inventory, it can... take awhile for them all to clear. I had at least one each of probably 75% of the items in the script, and it took something like thirty seconds for them all to clear. It's annoying, but unfortunately it's an all-or-nothing proposition. Since the player isn't guaranteed to have one specific item in their inventory to sort, I have to have multiple ones running non-silent; and if I just do one item in ten or what-have-you, I know people will think that all items aren't being sorted.

Lastly, I did write the survival sorter to not dump everything into the container. It keeps some items for you (again, based on how I play): a few pieces of food, five bottles of purified water, five Sunset Sarsaparilla bottles, ten stimpaks, two super stims, two steadies, a doctor's bag, a hydra, five each Rad-X and Radaway, a mentats, and a med-x. The rest gets filtered into the container, for safe keeping (yes, chems are weightless, but Bethsoft devs love to fuck the player over by stealing all your equipment -- this way, all but your "working stash" will be safely untouchable by DLCs or mods, and retrievable from any companion; yes, I'm an evil bastard who hates being railroaded). As I said, the numbers will probably be off for most people... but that's the sort of thing we can fix in subsequent versions.

On the up side, reverting the plugin to the old (non-NVSE enabled) version did fix the girls' combat behavior; so it must have been something in the NVSE commands that the game didn't like. Although whether it was the GECK itself, NVSE, or the NVSE plugin of the GECK powerup... I have no idea. That will have to be an investigation for another time.

It's a shame though; while NVSE wouldn't have helped at all with the sorter scripts, I was hoping to be able to make the casing-spawner code work with mod-added weapons, as well. One pain in my ass at a time though, I suppose. The sorters are far and away more important to my own game; and since I'm who I'm modding for... you guys get stuck with it, I guess.

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.

NCCS - v0.7, Upcoming, Part II

Well, true to my word, I decided to rework the companion scripts somethin' fierce.

I modified the included combat styles quite a bit; in an attempt to produce more realistic combat behavior for the companions. Note: I said realistic, not effective.

Companions will now flee incoming grenades and such; are more likely to take cover; have a large radius in which they'll engage in combat; and have had the "wait" timers and the time between shots lengthened considerably.

As well, I've split the combat styles up into three groups: low, medium, and high; for both general ranged and sniper styles. As you progress up the tree, performance improves -- companions become more likely to dodge effectively, spend less time deciding what to do once they've found cover, and require less time to reacquire aim between semi-automatic shots.

The new combat styles' implementation is controlled by the companion script, based on the companion's skill level. As this is based on skill and not overall level, giving companions items that boost the guns skill should be able to push them high enough to advance to the next tier, if their normal skill is close enough.

I remember Tarrant unhappily reported once, a couple years ago, that his combat style changing idea hadn't worked; that the NPCs kept defaulting back to their original.

Though I never uploaded any of it, I did learn how to circumvent this behavior of the engine some time ago. I made use of this technique tonight. A fairly simple bit of scripting, the code takes a look at the companion's class when they enter combat, and applies the correct style. It's reset every time they enter combat, so you should be able to change classes as much as you like, without it ever having issues.

I should also note, before anyone asks: there is no "class type" variable to read in the engine. So, if you've jumped in and created your own class for your companion, the new code will be worthless to you. It only works on the three included.

I've gotten in some more testing, and thus far v1.3 does appear to have improved follower performance, at least somewhat. I've been running Artemis with teleporting off, and performance is acceptable; if not excellent. Had a few delays moving between cells, getting stuck on bad navmeshing; the usual. Nothing heavy duty.

I've decided to shelve the cosplay aspect of the mod for the time being. Aside from the scripting that's turned out to be way more complicated than I was expecting (we're talking about several hundred lines, here), I'm also thinking that it will start a deluge of bitching that companions are randomly starting fights for no reason; you brokeded mai gaem, and so forth.

For now, I think I'll stick to adding features that are more useful and less niche.

I still need to make a couple of small code revisions. Once those are done, it'll just be a matter of re-copying the forty-seven other companion scripts, and I'll be ready to upload the next version for people to bitch about not having a wheel or working with sex mods that break half the game.

A New Direction?

Well, it's been almost a week since my last post. New Vegas still doesn't work. At this point, I'm down to uninstalling it, reinstalling it, patching it, and praying to whoever's listening that this "update" doesn't b0rk the esm again.

Not in the mood to do such things the last few days, I've been working on an FO3 project I've wanted to do for quite some time.

I'm going to be straight with you all: I don't like the RR Companions Vault. It's full of errors that can't be fixed, the cell is less than optimally designed, and I bloated the companion system with useless "features" trying to make it popular (I've since learned there's no point - my work will never be popular).

I'd had it in my head to do a "NosCo" version of the mod. Uploaded to a new file entry, with permission to copy/translate/modify specifically and categorically denied.

The esm would maintain the same name for compatibility with existing companions and savegames; but would feature things like a redesigned Vault 1 cell, broken up into three or so smaller cells; a streamlined companion system boasting several of the new things I've learned to do in the course of NCCS; NPCs that were actually useful instead of just being useless fluff; some form of ownership quest; and the entry location moved to somewhere that doesn't suck (with the tunnels of course being redesigned to reflect the difference in directions and location). Compatibility with Refurbished and the existing third party ownership quest would be zero.

I mentioned this idea to Herculine, who is one of my primary modding sounding boards these days. She returned a concern that I would be forcing people to "choose". Effectively, get the latest updated version but use it my way, or use the old version and keep refurb. Point.

Still, there's little I can do otherwise. Worrying about Refurb has kept the vault locked into its current crash-happy iteration. I literally cannot do any more optimizing to the cell as it now sits. Room bounds, occlusion planes, cutting down on visual effects; it's all done already. This is the "optimized" version. I won't update the companion system as it now sits; since Nexus admins have already stated that "porting" permission can't be revoked - which renders anything I do to file #3644 fair game for copying by unnamed entities.

The point, nonetheless, remains. Forcing people to choose would cause problems. Refurb aside; two distinct versions of the master open up a frightening possibility for support issues.

So, what can I do? I'm not even keen on playing with RR anymore. I want it out of my game; to be able to work on my companions with a better system. This is not an issue in NV - since my personal companions run on a standalone system, completely independent of NCCS.

My FO3 companions don't. I created them before I knew how to write a system from scratch; when I was still trying to work within the bounds of others' defined "systems".

The other morning, I rectified that thorn in my paw.

Say hello:





I'm sure you recognize these three. They've featured in a great many of my screenshots over the last two years. What bears reintroducing them?



This is my original special companions plugin for FO3. Notice the five masters.

This is where the girls live now:



No more dependence on RR; on my RR companions pack, or even on 20thCW. Completely standalone. They now need only the relevant meshes and textures in the data directory.

Unfortunately, FO3Edit proved to be as much of a pain in the ass as it always is; and refused to "clean" the master list in the plugin's header. I ended up having to copy the NPCs and combat styles to a new plugin; and rewrite everything else around them from scratch. This means they have to learn all over again, just like a couple years back. On the up side, the latest iteration of my combat styles are enough that they're pretty dangerous from the start.

I also took the opportunity (since I had to write a new one and all) to work over the companion script, and get rid of about two hundred lines of useless garbage. The scripts now sit at a svelte 180 lines. I added a few goodies about not attacking the player; recreated part of the companion management system from NCCS - while teleporting at the end of combat and such isn't necessary in FO3, I nonetheless added a script hook that will forcibly keep them with me across cell changes. I was amused to realize my latest companion management system is so robust that I don't need the Pip-boy plugins anymore. The script completely fucks over any dev-mandated attempt to remove the companions from my party.

Kept it to the basics, mainly. Follow, stay, set home, go home, put on/remove pip-boy, turn on/off pip-boy light, inventory. Just 'cause I was in that kind of mood, I added a "Strip for me." command, too. (Though you won't likely be seeing that one in one of my public releases anytime soon...)

The companion script also keeps all the old favorites: sitting when you do, drawing/holstering, healing themselves and you with stims, sneaking, healing fully on player sleep.

No class changing or aggression changing or stat checking. The NPCs have to be set up beforehand with the personality and skills you want. Follow package is set up for maximum reliability, and will allow NPCs to offer services at any time; be it following, sandboxing, or sitting. No sneak menu, either.

I can safely say, this is the first real "Nos" companion system I've ever done. There are no concessions here to what's popular or considered must-have by the community at large. It's nice.

I also used some new techniques I've learned for NPC creation, itself. The added master for 20thCW isn't needed; as I set them up with leveled lists that will spawn a random outfit, primary and secondary weapons, chems, and caps. Starting equipment will thus be different every game - and the girls will acquire new goodies on their own if I leave them someplace until the cell resets.

I did make another advancement, as well. I've mentioned before, and oft considered "companion perks" - though not in the way that Bethsoft implemented them. I wanted perks based on the number of companions in your party. Things like better perception - you know, one of the main reasons people work in groups to begin with. I toyed with some scripting a bit, and did this:



As long as at least two of the three companions are in my party, I get +2 Perception. The corresponding NV perk would probably carry the 'detect invisible enemies' thing from ED-E's perk, as well. Get down to one companion in-party, and the perk goes away. Learning how to pull this off has opened up considerable new possibilities. It'll be more complex to institute for NCCS, since there I don't get the luxury of using explicit references. Still, I'll only need to work up a block of code that updates a 'companionsinparty' variable; and the scripting will otherwise operate near identically.

The real question, is where do I go from here. Fact is, I've been using Vault 1 as a base for so long that I don't have any other house mods. Do I keep using it, and just be content to have my own companions on a better system? Or should I perhaps revive The Tower? I stopped working on it due to custom texture issues; but it would certainly be simple enough to replace all the custom room pieces with their default equivalent...

NCCS - v0.6 Fixed

The issue with NCCS' companion scripts appears to have been resolved. The issue turned out to be that the newly-patched game engine handles the 'OnLoad' event differently than previous versions.

Since it wasn't registering the NPCs are having been re-loaded, the script wasn't updating correctly for newly-hired companions; and thus not correctly setting the variable that tracks whether the companion is merely "hired" or actually in your party. Since the in-the-party variable is what's checked to handle sneaking, weapon drawing, and similar functions, they weren't running.

I've changed when the variable is set in the new script version. It will now be re-set every frame, which should result in near-instantaneous updates to the companion's behavior.

I had been hoping to hold off on upload 0.6 until the new companion backpacks had a weight limit instituted, but I think this issue warrants a more immediate resolution. I still need to update the other nineteen companion scripts, and v0.6 should be going up to the Nexus later today.

I'd like to thank SuperSledgeNY for getting tired of waiting on me and taking it upon himself to track down exactly which function was causing the issue, and then letting me know about it so's I could go about fixing it. Thanks of course also go out to my ever-stalwart partner in crime, Herculine; for her tireless testing of attempted fixes (since I never did get the problem to manifest in my game).

Insert Sigh Here.

So, my boredom this desolate morn of the total variety; and me having watched about all the To Aru Kagaku no Railgun I can stand for one week, I decided to fire up New Vegas, and see about unfucking my flagship mod.

I started by testing, as I usually do.

I checked Carrie for sneaking and weapon drawing/holstering - to verify that her companion script was indeed still functioning.



Well... shit. Apparently it isn't broken here, and we need deeper testing...

I grabbed Maeva and [CENSORED]; passed out some stimpaks and verified that everyone had ammo, and we made for Sloan to head into Quarry Junction. I figured if anywhere will result in frenetic, companion-assistance-required combat, it will be Deathclaw land.



Weapon drawing/sneaking; check.



Combat? That's a check.



Following over rough terrain and teleporting, check.

Jumping off a fucking cliff to stay behind their beloved master?



Check.

Now, see, this is why I loathe Bethsoft. It isn't the money-grubbing or the density of their staff surpassing depleted uranium. It's the randomness of their work. We have it confirmed by my partner Herculine that 0.5 doesn't work right with the new patch. Conversely, another player has reported that 0.5 works fine for him even on the new patch.

The 0.6 version of NCCS that I'm running is identical to 0.5, save for the new inventory containers. There were no revisions to the companion scripts made.

So why in the holy hell does it still work for me; but not for others. Further, why have I not had five hundred reports of 0.5 not working? Granted, there's a comment up from me that it's being worked on; but that's never slowed you people down before.

It could be some sort of GECK-setting in the plugin that's invisible to us, but is somehow causing problems for 0.5, but was reset in the course of developing 0.6. In that vein, as soon as I finish this post, I'm going to package up 0.6, mail it to Herculine, and see if I can impose on her to remove that variable from the issue.

On the other hand, it could easily be that Mercury is in retrograde or something. Did some of you miss your monthly sacrifice to Ganesha? He is the favored God of hackers for a reason you know - being known as the Remover of Obstacles and whatnot.

And lastly, here's me and Maeva surveying the quarry to make sure everything was sufficiently dead before we moved away from the high ground:



Yeah, I know - it doesn't have anything to do with testing, but I thought it made for a cool screenshot. I had several seconds previous killed both Deathclaw Alphas with one round each. You've gotta love 50BMG-AP. DT? What DT?

Edit, later:

Herculine has confirmed that 0.6 does not work for her.

Which is baffling. I've been playing the game off and on all morning, and aside from two times that the game locked, I haven't been encountering any significant issues. Fact is, the companions' combat behavior seems to be improved somewhat over previous versions. They cleaned up Vault 11 pretty good. Granted, that could be just the latest set of revisions to their combat styles kicking in, since I didn't test them heavily before.

As we all know, if I can't reproduce the problem to see its effects myself, I have a hell of a time fixing it.

Provided the save-game cleaning doesn't fix it, about the best I'm going to be able to do is go through and comment out the new code in a companion script or two, and have her try that.

Thankfully, my personal companion system is written with me in mind. As such, I don't have to cede to the desires of anyone else. It thus does not have the sneak menu or any of that useless crap; and is so immune to the new patch, regardless.

NCCS - Beta 0.6, Upcoming

As I've noted before, we're running out of stuff to add that's actually useful and not gimmicky.

You can thank Herculine for this one. Awhile back, she requested a new feature: the ability to have companions carry stuff, but not be able to actually equip it.

Other systems have used FOSE or the like in a convoluted manner to flag certain items as unequippable or such. I took an easier route of setting up a secondary container. An "invisible backpack", if you will.

In the future, I may approach Bunsaki for permission to use the Blackwolf backpacks for the mod. These are the ones used by Jessi and Kelsey. They're also the ones I use in my personal (non-uploaded) mods. These would ideally be equippable on command, like the collars, pip-boys, and such already in the equipment menu.

I haven't decided yet whether or not it's worth the trouble.

Either way; less rambling, more showy-telly.



There are now two inventory options under the equipment dialog menu. 'Personal' and 'Backpack'. Personal inventory is stuff the companion can use; things that are "on them". Items put in that container can be equipped, ammunition and weapons will be used, stims will be used, et cetera. The backpack is the storage container. Items in it are not directly accessible by the companion. They can't use armor/clothing, won't be able to equip weapons or use ammunition; won't use any chems that are in this container.



You can see here, Carrie's normal inventory. Notice the equipped dots next to some items.

Now observe the backpack contents:



Despite everything being equippable, nothing has been. This allows safe storage for important items; weapons you don't want knocked out of hands or ammunition used up. Outfits that don't fit in with the style you want the companion to have.

At present, on removing the companion from the party (through stay, go home, fire, or dead companion) the contents of the backpack are automatically dumped directly into the player's inventory. It's a bit counter-intuitive; most people would expect the items to go into the NPC inventory directly. Unfortunately, depending on what's in their "personal" inventory; this can very easily go over their carry capacity. This can cause problems here and there; risking even item loss, according to what I've read.

Since I didn't want the items to be unavailable until you hire on another companion to fill that slot; and since moving is still possible even for an overloaded player, going direct-to-you seemed to be the best option.

At present, the containers do not have a weight limit, nor a physical location you can reach to manually retrieve items. I'm considering changing tactics, to institute a weight limit, but I haven't been able to decide what manner. Should it be a straight limit (the aforementioned Blackwolf packs come in versions that allow extra carry capacity of 25 to 70 pounds, depending on which you equip); or a percentage of the companion's overall capacity; or even a match to their capacity - in effect doubling the amount they can carry?

The realism crowd is sure to bitch no matter how I do it; so I'm leaning towards a simple matching of capacity. Something to keep the container from being used as a bag of holding for thousands of items at a time.

If you've got an opinion on the carry weight restrictions, feel free to weigh in here.

NCCS - Beta 0.5 Progress

As I said over on the NCCS file entry, I've got the sit package that you've all been yammering about done.

Interestingly enough, it only took me a half hour to get working once I set my mind to it... which is a testament to the sheer sloth I normally wallow in.

I actually had the stuff done Thursday, but ended up having to go on a safari across two blasted states looking for a holster for a CZ P01. By the time I got home, I was in no mood to test FONV features.

Everyone, say hello to Carrie; who is graciously demonstrating the new package at the temporary NosCo HQ in the Lucky 38:



As in FO3, they may sit; may stand; but will drink a nuka or eat either way.

I'm thinking the issues before may have something to do with the conditions. I simplified them considerably, and it works now... so whatever.




I also added a new sniper combat style, and added the sniper option to the quick menu. I also checked, and the combat style/class resetting from the quick menu is reflected correctly in the behavior menu; so no matter how you set their class, the proper options will still be displayed.

Also: have added close to a dozen new greetings. Some for unhired only, some for hired only, some that will only show for good/evil companions, and a couple that will display for anyone, at any hire status. Greetings are random, and any applicable greeting may be displayed when you speak to your companion. None are voiced; don't even ask.

Made a couple of edits to the NCCSTemplate companions; setting their disposition base to 100; to help prevent hostility issues.

Bit more to do, a couple more things I want to work on before release. Shouldn't be too terribly much longer.

NCCS - Beta 0.3 Upcoming

So, after one of those lovely panic attacks about 0100 local, I gave up on sleeping tonight; and decided to work on the master a bit.

Dragon Age is beginning to grate on my nerves.

Decided I should tackle the warping dead, since some of you for reasons I will never fathom insist on killing your companions.

Seems I mis-projected the size of the edit required. It ended up being eighty new lines of code; and not fifty. Not a huge deal. Once I set my mind to it, it ended up being a ten minute job - twenty if you count testing.

Killed off three companions, changed cells five times. No dead bodies followed me. The damned thing actually worked on the first try.

I know - I'm amazed, too.

It was good, too; since my first efforts this morning didn't go so well. I had it in my head to add some... new features to my personal companions. Specifically, stripper dancing on command. The NVGECK continues to be a piece of shit, though. Markers wouldn't move, items wouldn't add on script command, idles don't play correctly on command. It's a mess through and through.

Although I did manage to get them to break into dance whenever the follow package was active but we weren't moving:




I, uh... won't be releasing that one into NCCS, however. Issues of considerable silliness aside, it doesn't work quite right. The dancing animation doesn't stop playing when you start moving again; so they follow you while the animation keeps playing. Kind of creepy, really; and I figured people would bitch left, right, and center about the strange idles so it got tabled.

Anyway.

Before releasing 0.3, I think I'm also going to tackle that greeting issue, to stop the deluge of PMs I'm getting (averaging two a day now) from people who skim the guide instead of reading it, and miss that bit about only using voices one through four because the others don't have a motherfucking greeting.

I also added a message that lets you know when one of your companions has died. Unfortunately it can't let you know by name, but a quick head count should narrow down which one bought the farm.

Beyond that... I think we're nearing a 1.0 non-beta, stable release. Everything appears to be working fine if one takes the time to RTFM, so with the system death-friendly, and greetings for the voice types that don't have one in the base game, that should be about the extent of useful without getting cluttered.

I had a couple of other ideas, but really I don't know how badly I want to embark on a quest to add anything that's that much trouble; just to be further accused of breaking games and writing bad guides.

NCCS - Leashes

I know, one would think I'd have the new code fully integrated into the master, and perhaps a new beta release - what with me extolling the virtues of the new stuff and all the other day.

Trouble is, the way I had originally set it up, I didn't like the way companions "popped in" when you crossed a cell barrier in the open wasteland. They tended to end up in front of you a lot.

So, I rewrote the code, and added a check on the player's Z axis heading; along with some code that moved them around based on which quadrant of the compass you're facing. Seems to work correctly; though I only set up the heading check for exterior cells. In an interior, the companion will only pop in one time - since the cell barriers are doors in an interior and all.

Thus far, I've had the code running from game start, up to Sloan, back down to Primm, across Primm Pass, north through Novac, Freeside, and into the Strip and the Lucky 38.

Picked up my Suite in the Lucky 38 at level three. No crappy Novac motel room for us this time!

Before I do any releasing, I still want to try out the casinos. I'm hoping that this new code will completely preclude the need to monkey with existing game scripts.

I'm also learning more about the engine, still. I've worked up a new theory on why the quest script seems to "freeze", but I won't bore you guys with it.

The 'return to' code works correctly for both Lucky 38, and Novac motel room, as well. The option to send the companion back to those will only appear if the room in question has been obtained. Those are the only two explicitly stated player houses that I'm aware of in the base game. If anyone knows of others, let me know about them and I can probably get the option added.

NCCS - Impending Wow

Some days, I do something so cool even I have to sit back and just go "Goddamn, how did I come up with that?"

This morning is another of those.

I have... just conceived and implemented a system that will allow all NCCS companions to stick with the player no matter how moved or by what.

It works on teleports... it even provides for instant following through load doors - no more having to wait an in-game hour for the engine to get off its dead ass and move NPCs through.

Best part?

I did it in such a way that not one single NPC has to be called via explicit reference.

I've only tested it for about twenty minutes now; but it seems to work every cell change.

The one possible downside is that it works a bit too well, sometimes. When traversing the open wasteland, your companions will occasionally be teleported to join you; since despite the openness, the wastes are actually broken up into "cells" just like interiors, and when you cross a cell border into the next, the script triggers and moves them up to join you.

The flip side is that it's not distance dependent - only strictly by cells; so it won't randomly trigger the way the old teleport code in RR did.

I'm not going to go into detail about how I did it. It would bore and/or confuse most of my readers (hey, I know perfectly well my thought processes border on requiring the readying of a padded room...); and that aside, I know perfectly well that my "competition" has been looting ideas from my blog as well as my previous work, and I'm not in the mood to hand out any more freebies.

I've also implemented code that will once a day add a handful of leveled lists to an NPC's inventory - to simulate them looting stuff as you travel. This one isn't tested yet; I haven't been in the new game long enough for it to fire; but the GECK took the code without complaint, so if it doesn't work it should only be a matter of me getting my timing calls correct to make it work. Once I do get this one working, I'll create another custom leveled list to simplify the code, but for the moment I'm testing with default game lists.

This morning I also learned how to apply perks to companions. I haven't implemented this one yet, since I wanted to get the new companion management code tested before I added another feature to potentially screw up; but it's next on my testing list.

I've also got some ideas for new group perks - that will be added or removed from the player depending on how many companions you have in tow.

This NCCS whim of mine could... end up being pretty cool. A slightly more arrogant me would be proclaiming that when all is in place, all other systems will be woefully eclipsed by the greatness. Real me, though? Is a fatalist, who's had one too many sure things blow up in his face to declare victory just yet.

Lastly, I think I may have taken some of my coding a bit too far. When I started the new game, I forgot and left my special companions plugin active. This is what I woke up to:



The three of them were in the house and trying to initiate dialog to join me before the doc even finished his introductions.



S'nice to have such loyal hench-cuties, though. I knocked them down to leveled lists for starting equipment, so as a party we'd have someplace to go; a need to scavenge better armor and weapons.

NCCS - Companion Guide Highlights

Rather than make you all read the guide, I figured I'd share some of the in-game images.

Alas, much as I wanted there to be; there is no blooper reel. There were no wardrobe malfunctions, and Deb told me to go to hell when I suggested we engineer one.

Actors.

I did two companions this time instead of three. I didn't have another companion plugin on hand to use to copy from, so we just did original, and copy of an in-game NPC.



You can see them both here. Deb on the left is original, on the right is a template-copy of Sunny Smiles; the least unattractive NPC I could think of from the base game. And of course, close-ups:





And an action shot:



(Observant fans will notice the tail sticking suspiciously out of that suit of power armor...)

Basically I just pissed off a giant radscorpion with my pistol and let the party go to town. They're surprisingly hard to get action screenshots of. Doubly so when there are five of them. Notice ED-E is being completely useless, as usual. I swear, that thing is only useful for the Enhanced Sensors perk.

Then, I went on to the advanced section... and things got more interesting...








This is normally the point where I'd cackle maniacally, and go on about how great I am at creating hottie companions... but truth be told I wasn't really trying. I was just idly working on them as I typed; choosing random hair styles... and that happened.

Apparently, I have worked up quite the bit of natural, unconscious talent.

You can't really tell it, but the stealth armor is a custom mesh; I replaced the standard one with as a part of the tutorial - for all you people too lazy to look up item guides of your own and keep bugging me about it. Didn't turn out half bad, all in all; even if I did have to delete the helmet.

Oh, how I wish I could just make companions, instead of having to write my own fucking system every time. It would leave me free time to create so many cute NPCs. But nooooo. Nobody else can do it right, so I have to keep my head stuck in the scripting editor most of the time...

More NV Strangeness

Annoyed as I am with the 'community' in general this morning, I decided to play with my personal companions some. I added Natasha to the plugin - fortunately, her hair works perfectly in NV.

Got plugin set up and quest written and et cetera et cetera.

Happened to be testing; and she got stuck in some rocks - clipping into them and unable to get out. Normally, I'd open the console and toggle clipping on her, but I decide what the hell, I'll try out the plugin's recall function. Probably a waste of time, since it never worked in testing on my pre-made NCCS companions.

This time? Worked without a hitch. Exact same code, save for the references. Why did it work this time and not before?

I have no idea. None whatsoever.

This only reinforces the theory I've had though, that at certain times, the engine hangs. Scripts hit a certain line and won't process anymore. In the case of my NCCS pip-boy plugins, it was the line that governed reset code.

Apparently it doesn't hang in my special companions plugin.

I swear, Levi's and Crowley's magickal theories made more sense than this damned game.

On another hand, I think I'm going to have to try talking Maeva into a new hair style. I'm not seeing "adjusted" versions of Ren's work popping up on the Nexus; and Gods know I don't have the Blender skill to do it myself.

Don't want to cut her to short hair, though. I'm thinking maybe one of those Growlf hairs. With the braids. Maybe that twin-braid one, with the tails hanging down on her chest. Go for that Alpine look.