"Goma" Pose Mod for Oblivion

One of the things most of us who do companions also like to do is show them off; but screenshots of NPCs just standing around tend to get boring, so we use posemods for setting up all sorts of lovely and oft intricately choreographed shots.

For Oblivion, there are quite a few mods that have such things - some tame, others... less so.

In my trawling of teh webzorz this evening, I came across a link to one I wasn't familiar with for Oblivion, by the name of "Goma Pose".

"This is a compilation of all the pose mods based on CTAddPose that I have created since a few years ago; consisted of 16 esp files, a whopping total of 815 poses are available."

This, I think will take some time to go through... and many (most?) players will likely never make it to the finish line in a mod this size.

Still, it should offer up quite a few possibilities for those of us who still play the old, archaic game.

Fair warning: I haven't actually tested this mod yet. I've downloaded, but not had a chance to fire 'er up. With 30 endorsements and no thumbs-downs, I figure it can't be too broken, though.

I'm sure I'll have some screenshots to show off once I do get a chance to test it.

What Have They Done to You?

Okay, I don't want to knock Herculine's inaugural post from the most recent spot; but I have to ask this:

Why do you people hate your companions?

This isn't a rant-y post - I'm genuinely curious.

Since I first added the auto-heal/player heal/ask the player to heal code to RR a year plus ago, I've had a steady stream of people complain; and the later NCCS code, though not as advanced, is no exception.

People don't like that companions heal themselves. They don't like that they ask the player to heal them. They don't like that the companions heal fully and automatically when you sleep/wait. They want companions kill-able.

Really: what in the holy fuck have my companions done to engender such hatred? Did they rape your parents? Burn down your orphanage? Have they been kicking puppies while I wasn't looking?

I mean, okay; I know Maeva is into that sort of thing... but most of the companions are good boys and girls and just want to protect your hide and carry your junk.

If you want disposable henchmen, wouldn't something like Enclave Commander be more appropriate? Faceless minions, et al?

Now, call me crazy; but I'm not keen on non-essential companions. I don't like a character I put thirty or forty hours' work into getting her rather nice posterior ventilated because the game engine decided to bug on me.

Is it unrealistic? Sure, but we're talking about a game that takes place two hundred years in the future; after a nuclear war; full of mutants and zombies; in a world where the 1950's - McCarthyism and all - never ended. I think we've long since passed the point of getting to argue for high realism...

WTF? I'm just not getting it...

I apologize if this goes against the new anti-bitching theme, but it's mod-bitching so I figure it's okay.

I was going to post this to the comments section of the NCCS mod itself on the Nexus, but I'm still unsure whether or not this will contain profanity yet I feel the need to say this somewhere in public, so thank you Nos for the invitation to post in the blog.

Anyway...

Is it just me, or do most of the recent comments and even endorsements on the NCCS file entry contain the phrase: "Is there an easy way I can change 'x'?" or some variation of it?

Why is it people just don't seem to be getting what this mod is about? I have no doubt in my mind that Nos is quite capable of creating companions with individual personalities and immersive dialog that would put most other companion mods to shame... but that is not the purpose of this mod. As Nos and I both have attempted to explain on numerous occasions, NCCS is intended to be a plug-'n'-play companion system that can allow players who aren't even too G.E.C.K.-savvy to easily create their own set of companions to drop straight into the game and use without months of trial-and-error script, dialog and quest development.

Personally I think that with NCCS Nos has accomplished that goal quite well. And I don't say that just because it has my name on it too; as I've said before and am not ashamed to reiterate, I didn't contribute squat to the actual companion scripting. I know Nos still has some ideas up his sleeve on how he could further improve the system, but even as it stands now the companion system that he has created puts similar attempts by others to shame.

So I'm just not understanding this sudden trend of folks wanting to come out of the woodwork with all these opinions on what's wrong with NCCS and what needs to be changed about it... especially since a quick check of user profiles will reveal that most of them probably don't even know how to open a plug-in with the editor. The companions don't refer to your avatar by name? They're not supposed to. The companions don't have dialog detailing their backgrounds that will take hours to read? They're not supposed to. The companions don't come with an expansion-pack's worth of extra quests and locations to explore? THEY'RE NOT FUCKING SUPPOSED TO!


What the fuck, people?

As far as I can tell, NCCS does everything it states it's intended to do, and does it quite well. The AI performs efficiently and effectively while the vanilla companion AI is chasing its own tail in circles. Sure, those vanilla companions come with their quaint little quests and all, but apart from that limited diversion they're practically useless when compared to companions running the NCCS script.

There's currently a commercial on the tube for one of the new phones (or networks or something) where one of the actors says: "Hey, sometimes you just have to pay more to be slower. Well, it makes sense if you don't think about it." I'm really starting to think that this is the mentality of a lot of the players who are making these comments on how NCCS needs to be "improved". Otherwise I just can't fathom why anyone would want to take a companion system that's streamlined and efficient and weigh it down with a bunch of crap that's in no way contributing to its purpose. To me that would be like taking one of the popular muscle cars and hitching a camper to the back; that's not at all what it was intended for and it will look damned funny.

So I'd just like to make this sincere request: please read some of the NCCS documentation before you download it so you can have an idea whether or not this is the companion system of your dreams, or in the very least read that documentation and understand the goals of the mod and its creator before you decide to come back and flood the comment thread with all your opinions on how broken it is and how it can be fixed even though you really don't know shit about modding and thus have no clue what it takes to create something like this. If you can do better, please feel free to do so and then come back to show us your fine work.

Thank you.

(We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programming. The views expressed in this blog post are the views of Herculine and do not necessarily reflect the overall views of NosCo and are in no way funded by NosCo or any of its subsidiaries.)

Blog Changes

Recently, I offered Herculine posting-ability here on the Nos' Mods blog; for talking about her own Gamebryo mods, or even gaming junk in general. She declined, and noted that this was my blog and not hers.

This made me think. While I nominally intended this blog to be about my various modding efforts, and video games/gaming on a wider whole; I've nonetheless let it devolve into a personal blog, where I yammer about whatever.

Even if there's not going to be another poster around here, I still feel this is something I need to change. Keep modding stuff here, and personal crap and whining on my other blog; which had sat unposted-to since November.

Along those lines, I've started posting to my other blog; putting up four posts in the last couple days. From here on out, I intend to keep posting here limited more strictly to games and mods, or their related topics; and keep my boring personal stuff on the other one. Consequently, there will likely be a substantial drop in the number of posts made here; but when they are made, you'll have to wade through less whiny garbage to get to the mod details I know you all come here for.

The other one will be where my idle bitching, gun-related prattle, and general nonsense go.

Nos' Adventures will still appear here, of course; as it's tied directly to my modding and video games. Well, when I finally get around to finishing the next installment, anyway.

So... yeah. That is all.

Status Updates

Apologies for delays on replying to comments and PMs over the weekend; I forgot I'm not superhuman and ended up wrenching some back muscles on Sunday. This of course resulted in no sleep; which of course results in my not wanting to go near the Nexus.

On the up side, in an attempt to keep my back aligned and... you know, not in constant white-hot pain... I reset my chair so that the seat leans back about 30 degrees and locked it in place. Very nice. I think I'll leave it this way; and it did fulfill its intended purpose of keeping everything lined up and relaxed. So, if you pull something in your back and can't figure out how to sit in a computer chair without pain... well, it's worth a try.

Yesterday I got jumped by a wild redhead seeking to alleviate the pain in my back for me... three times. Does help one sleep, I'll say that much.

Anyway. Feeling mostly alive again today, and I've dealt with the latest drama in my PM box.

NCCS updates will probably be delayed for awhile; while my existing saves do still work, I want to get the ability to start new characters back before diving back into modding the game. New characters are an essential testing component for big mods, after all.

I'll confess, I completely welched on my work on the Tower on Sunday. Ended up going out of town; and by the time I got home my back was already complaining. So I skipped. Apologies on that; I'll get around to it eventually.

Fallout 3... don't expect to see my new companions "system" up for download anytime soon. This was more a proof of concept thing to me; to see how I could make one work with no extra baggage. It's not done, anyway. Since I typed the companion scripts out freehand, I ended up getting the timing wrong on a couple of events; which need further tweaking before I'd be willing to call them good.

There seems to be a belief cropping up that I'm going to delete the RR Companions Vault outright. I'm not. I'm not enough of a dick to throw that many players and other modders under the bus.

I bitch... because I'm a perfectionist, and I know I could do it better. It chafes that I can't make it better without destroying so much. It's kind of like scratching the paint on a new car. After a week, you don't even go onto that side of the car anymore, because every time you see the scratch, you hate yourself for doing something so careless and stupid.

I've read tell (since you can't hear over the internet...) that Nexus admins can change the 'uploaded by' entry of a file. I've broached the subject of having RR changed to my name with ttomwv; we'll see what he thinks. Contrary to some beliefs, it's not as much about trying to take credit for everything... as much as I know ttomwv is working hard at work these days, and I feel bad about bothering him with this stuff every time a re-use question comes up. I'm sure it wouldn't revert previously granted permissions, though.

Though yes, I'd be lying if I said it didn't grate more than slightly that I've missed more than a year's worth of AP from downloads on that file entry. What? I'm not a saint, here.

After further consideration, I am thinking I may take one of Herculine's ideas. When I mentioned the NosCo edition of the RR master, she had suggested instead a plugin. Well, that wouldn't do much for the vault, itself... but a more streamlined, NosCo edition of the companion system itself may not be a bad idea. Strip out some superfluous features, clean up the scripts (seriously, they have like a hundred commented out lines that I was too lazy to remove, as it stands), maybe add a couple new companions. Add in the teleporting across cells component of the companion management system, certainly.

On that note: if you're dedicated enough to read my insane rambling this far, I'd like your opinion on something.

Over on the NCCS file entry's page, a player recently brought forward a "clone" mod; wanting to be able to use NCCS to take control of it. Well, both my partner and I had to reply that that isn't possible...

...but then I got to thinking: why isn't it possible? I mean, NCCS is self-contained. It handles all the factions and packages and tokens through dialog. The scripting is set up to handle any NPC, regardless of origin or RefID. The only reason the "Join Me" option doesn't appear for all NPCs in the game is because I've told it not to; and to only show up for members of the NCCSFaction. Strip out that requirement, and it should make every NPC in the game that you can speak to recruitable.

So... how would everyone feel about an EZ-esque plugin for NCCS and RR? Something to allow them to apply to all NPCs in the game?

Naturally, this would cause an amazing amount of trouble with quest-essential NPCs and merchants; but that doesn't seem to slow CSR or EZ down any.

It would be a plugin, naturally; so that people who didn't want such problems didn't have to deal with the wider application of the dialog. The worst the end user would have to do is worry about class and combat style - and wouldja lookit that! Both mods already have the ability to change those on the fly...

I dunno. Just an idea. Probably not practical, but who knows.

It Deepens

Turns out several of the PM notifications I got were actually comments to my Nexus profile.

Comments like this one:

"why are lying to your friends, theres noting to gain by that, You don't want help ok cool, No problem, drag your friends down with you, thats stupid Dude. "

This is no longer a case of possibly mistaken impressions. ccmechanic2, you have just pushed my asshole button. Enjoy the ride.

"Help?"

Okay, boys and girls; gather 'round and listen up.

I know I bitch a lot about the way RR turned out - with the porting and the total loss of control on my part.

I know also that some of you would dearly like to help; whether it be to support a mod you love, or help a modder you for some reason like despite how much of a dick he usually is - or even as part of some harebrained scheme to get famous yourself.

Here's the kicker though: if you're going to offer to help, be specific. Tell me exactly what you want to do.

I'm not going to name names, but I got a Nexus PM last night after I hit the rack from someone who wants to help.

Trouble is, they are not specific in any way. There's a mention of "the files already being complete", and it "making my dreams come true".

Creepy, I know.

"I've read your blog, I deeply understand your needs, they have been addresed By me." (spelling and punctuation intentionally left unfixed)

Very creepy.

Anyway.

The author of said PM notes that it pertains to the RR Companions Vault; and that permission will be required from me, "Ridgerunner" (I assume here they mean ttomwv), Fry1969, and Herculine.

ttomwv and I, I can understand. We're the stated authors of RR. Fry and Herculine I don't get. Both have done very nice mods; but neither is connected directly to the base mod.

Does this mean modification and reupload of their separate works will also be occurring?

Further, there's the mention that I should "read the link" and reply with my thoughts and permission if I'm willing to grant it.

There is no link and/or non-hot URL in the PM.

So, I had no choice but to reply:

I may be missing something; but I don't see any link here to go read.

Beyond that, you don't say what exactly you're planning to do, nor how it would be an improvement over what is now available.

My apologies; but I must categorically deny any reuse permission of my work until and unless you can tell me specifically what I'd be agreeing to. I've been burned by a lack of specificity in the past, and I try never to make the same mistake twice.

I want this in public record, as well as saving the relevant PM:

I specifically and categorically deny reuse permission of any and all of my works in this instance until further notice; to include but not be limited to the RR Companions Vault for Fallout 3, my RR Companions Vault companions pack, the alternate guards addon, my companions creation tutorial, as well as NCCS for Fallout: New Vegas.

If you want to try to help, that's fine. But please, for the love of all that's unholy; tell me what you want to do, and why it will be a help; else you're going to get a big, fat NO. I'm not blindly agreeing to anything, anymore.

I'd also suggest if the other authors mentioned above get the same PM, that you should say no as well until we find out exactly what's going on, and how our works are to be modified.