Paatru Race - Progress Thread

[AndalayBay]

I can understand why you don't want the clothes mix, but I don't understand why you are worried about it happening.

Are the Paatru playable? If not, I don't think you need to worry about all this.

You are going to be placing a bunch of these guys in the game. You will define the inventory of each one, adding only Paatru appropriate clothes. Why are you worried about them picking up anything else?

If the player picks up Paatru clothing, then they live with the consequences. All you can do is tell them that it is not compatible with the regular skeleton. You could add a script to every single piece of Paatru clothing so that it falls off the PC when he tries to equip it - that is very simple. That's what happens if you try to equip the Amulet of Kings. But I'm not sure it's necessary.

NPC's don't equip clothing or armour unless scripted to.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Yes, I'd have thought that was the case too. You may be over-complicating matters in your quest to perfect the functioning on the race.

Originally posted by Koniption
Yes, I can set up the sload for you in the CS.
Can it wait until after I've sent the Paatru to you?

The Paatru is so close to being done, it isn't even funny. I even have made a male Paatru bodice of sorts, with over-arm strap (primitive-like look). When I put that bodice in the Paatru's inventory, he equipped ok, and it shows up ingame ok.

Certainly, no problem. As for the other remarks......banana time! :banana:

[AndalayBay]

Oh, and one more thing I just remembered: you can prevent the player from equipping the Paatru clothing by simply not checking off the Playable flag when you define the clothing item.

So I don't think you need any scripts for this.

[Koniption]

Originally posted by AndalayBay
Oh, and one more thing I just remembered: you can prevent the player from equipping the Paatru clothing by simply not checking off the Playable flag when you define the clothing item.

So I don't think you need any scripts for this.

Doh!

I wish I had known that before. You're right, about the "playable" flag.

I have to relent in this case, and not push the need for a script. I know I don't know all the game mechanics, anyway.

The Paatru is scripted to not be a "playable' race, until after the player exits the intro sewer. This makes it so the Paatru cannot be chosen as a player race, yet can still speak and be spoken to normally, in game, by the player, once they've exited the intro sewer for the first time.

Koniption

PS - will try to send the Paatru stuff tomorrow. I need to rest, now.

[AndalayBay]

Let me clarify custom races and whether they are playable or not.

When you create a custom race, you can choose whether it will be playable by the player or not. You can choose to create a custom race to make something unique, like you have done here. You can also choose to create a custom race so that you don't have to worry about the default dialogue. We have a character called the Watcher in tDBC. Well the Watcher was brilliantly voiced by Ibsen's Ghost. But that voice is unique, to say the least. So I created a custom race for him. He looks exactly like an Altmer and has the stats of an Altmer. But I don't have to worry about him switching to the Altmer voice when chatting about mud crabs. In fact, he won't chat about mud crabs at all. He only has the dialogue that we provide for him.

Now in our case, we don't want the WatcherRace, as I called it, to be playable by the player. That's what is meant by a playable race. Simply that it is an option for the player when they choose their race during character creation. It has no impact on interacting with the NPC's created with that race during the game. There is no scripting required to make those NPC's function.

There are a couple of significant impacts when using custom races. Number one is quest creation. If you look at the vanilla quests, you'll notice that one of the quest conditions is:
GetIsPlayableRace == 1.00

Well if you are using custom races and you will be interacting with NPC's from that race in a quest, you can not define that condition! They'll just look at you with a goofy expression on their faces. Basically the quest doesn't apply to them. You only need to omit that condition on the specific quests in which they are involved.

The second impact is that they will not have any default dialogue - at all. If you click on them you will get "I HAVE NO GREETING". So in order for them to work properly, I suggest you give them at least a basic greeting. You will have problems adding topics to them during quest building if they don't have a basic greeting, so it's easier to just give them a basic greeting from the start. If you want them to chat to other NPC's, or each other, you will have to supply a lot more than that.

However other than those issues, you don't need to do anything special for NPC's of custom races to work. If you want them to wear certain clothes, you just add those items to their inventories. You can add clothing and armour. You can instruct them to wear one or the other by using flags in their AI packages, or by explicitly ordering them to equip items via script.

One last caution: if you create a merchant with a custom race and you want to restrict the clothing they can wear, make sure you give the merchant a vendor chest or they will attempt to equip any armour you sell to them that is better quality than what they're wearing already. That's why Enilroth in Anvil wears the armour you sell to him - he was never given his own vendor chest. That will be fixed in the next version of the UOP, apparently.

[Koniption]

@ Andalaybay :

Ok, I think I took into account your info above. I have sent the Paatru files to Ibsen just now. Thanks!

Koniption

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Thanks AB. That sounded really useful. KP, do you think it would be useful to pin AB's comments to a sticky thread for future reference? I'm not sure which thread but I figured it could be of critical importance towards saving unnecessary scripting.

@ Koniption - Awesome! Making my way to my PMs now...

[Koniption]

Originally posted by Ibsen's Ghost
Thanks AB. That sounded really useful. KP, do you think it would be useful to pin AB's comments to a sticky thread for future reference? I'm not sure which thread but I figured it could be of critical importance towards saving unnecessary scripting.

@ Koniption - Awesome! Making my way to my PMs now...

Yes, I'd pin up her comments to both the "Quests" and the "Models & Textures" subforums.

Koniption

EDIT: Done! Added pinned threads to "Quests" and "Models & Textures" subforums...

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Excellent! Thank you, Koniption (and AB)! :goodjob:

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Ladies and gentlemen, we have Paatru!

Although not totally complete and lacking some essential animations, the model itself is done and wanders around as any normal NPC should do. I have tried out our test dummy, Glurp, and he waddles around Kulu-Hees quite merrily...

Once the files are merged and the archive is updated, new NPC claims can be made for the remaining NPCs within Glok-Chuba and Kulu-Hees. Oh, and I took some footage for the trailer...