» Sat Nov 02, 2013 2:50 pm During the discussions on the TES forums, I picked up a couple ideas, and had some of my own, on things that could be done to make Animated Morrowind a better mod. So I worked on making those ideas a reality. This teaser is a proof of concept of those ideas. Implemented the following things:
1. A quieter eating and drinking NPC. Used Audacity to change the volume of the sounds, and then NifSkope to edit the nif and associated kf file so those sounds would be able to be in game. Thanks Arcimaestro Antares for telling me how!
2. A script that can be attached to miscellaneous items/ingredients that lets those things appear and disappear when a specific NPC appears and disappears. I attached it to a piece of hound meat in Balmora Council Club.
3. A script that can be attached to containers that enables and disables another item/static based on the contents of the container. It also makes the container itself appear and disappear when a specific NPC appears and disappears.
4. A simpler script that makes a container itself appear and disappear when a specific NPC appears and disappears as well as make the container appear and disappear based on its contents.
5. A couple new meshes for those containers. These new meshes came about for a couple reasons. The main reason for them was to be able to have a complete set of dinnerware placed and only need one script to control it versus making unique ID plates & forks & spoons & knives in the CS for each NPC and then rewriting a script to control all those new items. I judged it simpler in the long run, and better for performance, to have a combined mesh and then modify one script. There are currently 2 dinnerware sets, one fixed bowl mesh for the beggar's gold, and one new gold mesh for the static that displays with the bowl if the bowl has gold present. One new gold mesh for a container that looks like gold scattered at a beggar's feet. All of these meshes use stock Morrowind textures and so WILL be affected by texture replacers. All of the meshes have had a touch bit of optimization done to them in Blender (mostly duplicate vertices removed from the original Morrowind trishapes).
To see these ideas in action, go to the following places:
Balmora Council Club to see the new Dunmer NPC with quieter sounds, his special dinnerware set, his special piece of hound meat that also appears and disappears, the beggar NPC that I also put there to demonstrate his new bowl and gold at his feet. The NPCs and their items will be present (maybe...randomness factor involved, 70% chance) from the hours of 9 AM to 8 PM
Gnisis Madach Tradehouse to see the Orc NPC with his own dinnerware set, placed where I think one would look best if the one in Balmora Council Club is replaced with a Dunmer. I ended up placing him at the bar because if he is placed at a table, one of his feet would clip into the floor. The chairs for the tables are shorter than the barstools *frowns*. He and his dinnerware will be present (maybe...randomness factor involved, 70% chance) from the hours of 8 PM to 4 AM. Remember, the NPC's appear and disappear on cell change, so you have to exit and re-enter the building they are in to trigger them to change state!!!
Special Note: All of the new containers in this mod are INTENTIONALLY NOT SET WITH ANY OWNERSHIP so you can play with them and have no adverse results. I also set them as Organic (sorry no free storage here), and to Respawn (sooner or later the beggar would get more gold, the eaters would get more meat to eat if this was real life). I will note that it is possible to restock them sooner if the scripts on them were added to, but this way it happens eventually with a bit less overhead. If you want to play with them and see the special meshes pop back sooner, open the console, type the following:
For the beggar bowl: a1s_Beggar_Bowl->AddItem "gold_001" 1
For the gold at the beggar's feet: a1s_Beggar_Gold5->AddItem "gold_001" 1
For the Dunmer's dinnerware: a1s_Eater2_Dinnerware->AddItem "ingred_hound_meat_01" 1
For the Orc's dinnerware: a1s_Eater1_Dinnerware->AddItem "ingred_hound_meat_01" 1
I freely donate the parts I made myself to the Morrowind Community as a resource to use as they like (and really hope they do so!!!), all I ask is credit for my own work. For other parts, see Abot (eater and beggar scripts) and Arcimaestro Antares (NPC meshes, NPC Items, Sounds, original concepts).
Free to use:
Meshes: a1s_Beggar_Bowl.nif, a1s_Beggar_Gold5.nif, a1s_Bowl_Gold4.nif, a1s_E1_Dinnerware.nif, a1s_E2_Dinnerware.nif
Scripts: a1s_Eater_Dinnerware_S, a1s_Eater2_Dinnerware_S, a1s_Eater2_Meat_S, a1s_Bowl_Gold4_S, a1s_Beggar_Gold5_S
Sounds: a1s_EatSound2.wav, a1s_DrinkSound2.wav
There will be no further development on this at this time, as I cannot see the sense in starting a Fourth branch (yes, there are currently 3 other branches that I am aware of) of Animated Morrowind, especially when Abot is doing such fine work on his Animated Morrowind Merged.
This plugin has been verified clean with Tes3cmd.
http://download.fliggerty.com/download--926
