An ESP of Placed NPCs.

[Lightwave]

Whilst planning the new layout of Vvardenfell from your makeshift tents on the plain of Ald'ruhn, you spot a loan figure descending from the Red Mountain. Dirty after weeks of sifting through the ruin of Kagrenac's folly and looking somewhat pre-occupied, he sets down the following tome, then trundles off back up the mountain:

NPCs for the 2x Vvardenfell Landmass

This is a prototype of all the NPCs from Morrowind.esm, converted for TES4 and placed in their correct scaled positions on the 2x scale Vvardenfell landscape. They're the same NPCs which were converted with TESPort some months ago, but they've been run through TES4Scale, a development utility to place NPCs and statics back in to a scaled heightmap.
I finally solved a problem that has vexed me for some months; the persistent NPC placement issue. In TES3, placed NPCs appear as sub-records for each CELL. I realized 2 nights ago that, whilst this is still true for some placed statics, for records such as NPCs, they all have to be stored in a 'fake' CELL at co-ordinates (0,0) at the beginning of the worldspace. This solves the 'NPC should be persistent, but is not' issue one gets in the CS with TESPort exports.

I'm calling this a prototype simply because I'd like to make a few slight adjustments first, hopefully within a day (or two, max). These modifications will be:

1. Rename the NPCs so they start with something like aa and so will be easier to find in the CS.

2. Improve one or two of the race-gender combination faces. It's not meant to be a celebrity show, but not every Breton lass has to look like an inbred farmer's daughter either.

3. Tighten the FormIDs; I've placed them in modindex 00, just below the Vvardenfell heightmap, but well above Oblivion.esm. I just want to make the range more efficient in case we want to steal more. Having them in modindex 00 will hugely ease the modding effort, because they won't keep changing as you change the load order of the ESP (however, your own mods may still change their own FormIDs merely because of the existence of another ESP).

I can remove any unwanted NPCs, such as the ones other team members have already re-created for their own towns. I just need a list of which ones are no longer needed.

Once I've finished the small adjustments, I'll also place frozen copies of the TESPort and TES4Scale program I used to generate it somewhere safe: Once more Morrowind-style armor/weapon meshes become available, it will be possible to substitute the Oblivion-equivalents currently used with the more authentic versions, if desired. Whatever changes anyone makes to these NPCs for their own towns (face, inventory etc) will not be affected if we do want to regenerate this later down the line, so it won't cause problems.

You can play around with this prototype version in game if you want anyway until the next version. There's no AI packages on them and their AI Fight is set to 5, which stops the guards going homicidal on the local population; everyone should be passive, though they will fight back if provoked.

Have fun,

Lightwave

[Dave_91]

This is great. :yes:

Do the NPC's come with ready made skills? If they do, are the skills not featured in Oblivion (Short Blade, Axe, Medium Armour etc.) replaced by something else?

A good ID tag for the NPC's would be Vv.

[Lightwave]

They're exactly the same as TESPort's conversion so:

1. Same Name, Race, Gender.
2. Same level and vital stats.
3. Same skills where applicable, but any skills that aren't in OB won't be on these NPCs either; there's nowhere for them to go.

4. Same class, where applicable, or the closest ones available in OB. For a few that had no close equivalent in OB, they're marked as Scout.

5. Same flee (confidence), hello etc. But the Fight is set to 5, or I found all guard class characters suddenly start on any non-guard NPCs, before sometimes proceeding to slaughter each other.

6. No Factions, they are so different to OB I'm not sure there's an advantage to me creating a lookup file for them, since you'll all be creating entirely new factions anyway.

If you're happy to hit Vv to jump down to the list of NPCs, so be it.

Cheers,

Lightwave

* edit * I was describing TEStroi's skill conversion when I first posted this. OB has less skills, so they're simply missing.

[Lightwave]

I've generated the 'final' ESP. You can download it from this link.

Each NPC's editor ID begins with Vv and are in a FormID range just below the heightmap (and impervious to load order problems).

I've made frozen copies of the two programs used to generate this NPC list, so it is possible to regenerate it much further down the line if desired; e.g. when Morrowind style Bonemold, Dwemer, Chitin and Ordinator armour meshes become available, they could be added to the correct NPCs automatically; at the moment every NPC has the nearest 'equivalents' I could find in Oblivion.

Ideally, this file (which is just 500Kb) should be made available somewhere more central, along with the heightmap and LOD files. Perhaps when the master file is created, these could all be put in one place?

Have fun,

Lightwave

[Dave_91]

Perhaps when the master file is created, these could all be put in one place?

Yes.

Thanks for posting this, my ISP subscription ran out last week, that's why I wasn't around to download the previous version, but it's back working now. :yes: