Claim: Ebb14 - Sparrow's Shack (Claimed, Finished)

[SACarrow]

to see relatives for a few days. I might try to check in, but it would be dial-up from West Virginia; you Yanks in the audience know what I mean. For everyone else, just picture your favorite hinterland: the Mezzogiorno, the Outback, wherever.

Also I blew up my old ESP through being too aggressive (w/o backup) with TES4Gecko, so I'm starting over. Not too bad though; I hadn't done that much.

TheImperialDragon: I'm going with a 3-seg setup now with a short chimney on the right seg. Also, could you throw an awning up on the exterior?

Tanks,
Steve

[TheImperialDragon]

Originally posted by SACarrow
to see relatives for a few days. I might try to check in, but it would be dial-up from West Virginia; you Yanks in the audience know what I mean. For everyone else, just picture your favorite hinterland: the Mezzogiorno, the Outback, wherever.

Also I blew up my old ESP through being too aggressive (w/o backup) with TES4Gecko, so I'm starting over. Not too bad though; I hadn't done that much.

You could use the one you posted here.

Originally posted by SACarrow
TheImperialDragon: I'm going with a 3-seg setup now with a short chimney on the right seg. Also, could you throw an awning up on the exterior?

Tanks,
Steve

Sure thing. :goodjob: Where exactly in relation to the village do you want the shack?

[SACarrow]

Originally posted by TheImperialDragon

Sure thing. :goodjob: Where exactly in relation to the village do you want the shack?

I was thinking a little south of Ebbedin, across the eastern bridge. Kinda sorta where it was in TES3, though it needn't be as far south.

Also, you need to think about where the lighthouse should go.

Thanks,
Steve

[SACarrow]

The private ST ESM V2.02 is basically hosed as far as the shack components go. The ST Modders can check out my thread on that topic in The Forge. What I'm thinking of doing is rigging an ESM of my own for the time being by deleting the existing shack stuff and merging my two component-only ESPs. That should look like the official ESM once the shack hosiery is fixed.

Steve

[sandor]

I'll post an updated esm in the Source later this evening.

[SACarrow]

Sandor: Thanks, 2.03 did the trick.

Here is Sparrow's Shack, with full clutter (~120K), but no NPC, pathgrid, dialogue or AI yet. What I would like would be for anyone with the time and inclination to evaluate this interior and tell me what you think. If the feedback is good, everything else will be just overlaid on this interior as it stands. I'm going to start work on those things now, but clutter feedback would be appreciated.

I cleaned the ESP of the usual ST-contaminant cells, but I did not touch the dialogue tree, 'cause when I did, I couldn't get to my cell. BTW, "COC ebb14" from the console should get you there.

Here are some of my thoughts about the NPC:
- She's a vegetarian Bosmer originally from VW, where her eccentricity that she liked animals more than plants made her unpopular. Then she was caught doing something blasphemous [tapping a Graht Oak?], sentenced to death, but spirited across the border by her family to Elsweyr.
- She misses the land of VW, but not her people. She has a fondness for the Khajiit because of that "saving her @$$" thing. She'll be more negative to a Bosmer, but pretty neutral to all other peoples.
- She is a vegetarian, but most definitely not a pacifist. She is distrustful and secretive until you prove yourself and always carries a dagger and has others hidden about, just in case. CS question: Is there a way to pre-poison a dagger?
- After Elsweyr, she wandered around all of the eastern provinces before settling down just outside of The Trashbin of Tamriel. Her relations with the townspeople are wary and distant. Her feud with Darvala continues to this day, though it might be nice if one of the townspeople did actually like her.
- She's not quite as poor as her dwelling would suggest, but most of her spare gold goes to alchemy-related stuff. This explains the fairly nice equipment on her work table, and the very nice mostly-levelled loot in a location I tried to make very difficult to find. Please rate that as to difficulty level and whether it's too unbalancing.
- One note: her fondness for animals would ideally (through scripting) affect whether she would even buy and use those items, but that fondness does not extend to the denizens of Oblivion; she'd gladly help to field-dress those critters.
-I really do not see her as a mage, though she might know some basic defensive spells. If attacked, I'd see her reaction as being to immediately drink the attribute-enhancing potions that she always carries and then starting to apply with vigor the rusty but poisoned dagger she also always carries. I did mention secretive and paranoid, right? It wouldn't bother me if she were strong enough to take out a low-level (<5) character who decides to beat up on a seemingly defenseless middle-aged Bosmer.

Immediate plans are to create Sparrow, set up some dialogue to tell her story using several topics and not one big expository lump. Then I'll set up a pathgrid and AI to incorporate a routine that includes:
- sleep,
- eating,
- cooking (stool in front of the fire),
- reading & writing,
- potion mixing.
In this version, I don't think I'll even allow for outside stuff. Once hooked to the Ebbedin exterior, I'd like to include a little gardening, gathering and the occasional shopping trip to town.

As for quests, I don't see much potential in this version, but once connected to the world, I have several thoughts including:
- Some ingredient-gathering FedEx quests that could be used to force the PC to travel around ST and possibly beyond with inter-mod ESPs,
- The ongoing Darvala feud,
- Maybe some stuff that relates to VW, either in our mod or maybe someday leading the PC to VW itself...
- At some point when I have more experience, it might be nice to have her barter with the PC or make special potions as part of other quests.
- Any other suggestions are welcome.

Time for bed; let me know what you think,
Steve

[TheImperialDragon]

Thanks. I'll look it over.

[Razorwing]

SACarrow: When you say cleaning out the dialogue caused you to be unable to coc to your cell, how did you mean? Did the coc command not kick in, or did the game crash, or something else? I've never had that happen to me so I don't know what could have caused it. Unless you accidentally deleted the cell too without realizing it.

When I load up your esp I get an error message that says:
Missing object (010C1F5F) for reference (020024D4)
...actually it turned out I get about a dozen similar warnings.
[indent][/indent]Could that be related to the changed file structure you mentioned over on The Forge?

Could you download the latest asset update and then hit the F button on the rugs again? I fixed the annoying graphical glitch with the Dunmer rugs, but I had to move the models slightly upwards on the Z plane. It's hardly noticeable and it shouldn't cause any problems but the player will probably experience a larger 'hop' as he walks up on the rugs than he would have if they were repositioned. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Other than that I have no remarks, it's looks like a solid interior

[TheImperialDragon]

Regarding the interior itself:

- Bleed the cloth sacks more into the floor (see screenshot)
- The lantern above the door is floating (see screenshot)
- There's a floating bucket behind the fire pit.
- The carpet in front of the door is floating
- Same goes for StFurnDunRug09 underneath the chair

I'm using ESM 2.03.

I don't have much idea of what's going on with that dialogue problem. If it can't be fixed, it would be fastest to start over.

What happens if you try to create a completely new ESP (dependant on ST), save, and remove the dialogue instances?
Which ESM are you using?

[SACarrow]

Razorwing: I did that ESP with ST ESM 2.03 and the corresponding assets; nothing else (except the OB ESM) in the CS.

What I did to the ESP using TES4Gecko was to toggle ignore on the entire Dialogue tree and then save the ESP. When I did that additional step, the COC resulted in my PC floating in space like 2001: A Space Odyssey.

What I will do is take that ESP and fix the floaters using the latest ESM and asset set. Then I will post two ESPs: with and w/o dialogue. I've done some additional NPC stuff, so I'll save that ESP and transfer the info later onto a base ESP that is agreed to be working.

Later,
Steve