http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1056156&hl= if it hasn't been pruned.



Name: Harkness Follower
Version: 1.22
Date: 12-2009
Last Update: May 19, 2011
Category: Companions
Author: MystykStar
Release Thread - You're looking at it.

★ ★

Changelog
========
- v1.22 19-05-11:
These edits were made a while ago by DRG6252 so I haven't changed anything recently.

Added in some new dialogue lines and topics, but please be aware that these most likely haven't been assigned any voice files/scripting yet, so may not work, or if they do, will be silent.
Fixed up the dialogue tree and edited my wording which was a bit boring.
Added in the option to assign any house/location as a "home base" for Harkness to fire to.
Also fixed the 'weapon wristwatch bug.'

- 05-10-10:
Now upon successfully recruiting him the A3-21 Teleport Module will be added to your inventory and remove itself when he's fired.
Added in an extra Greeting condition based on disposition. Not new dialogue, just re-using one of his original lines.

Previous version changes detailed in the Readme.
- v1.2a - Bug Fix
- v1.2
- v1.1
- v1.0 - Release

Description
===========
When I originally completed The Replicated Man quest I got both rewards - the Perk and the gun. Usually when the quest finishes that way you find that wherever you left Harkness (to confront or kill Zimmer) is where he stays forever after, in the one spot never continuing with his normal routine. It was as if he was waiting to be collected or reset.
For me it was the Stairwell. After tripping over him for the umpteenth time I thought it'd be better if he had something else to do.
So, I set about learning how to create my own follower.

**NOTE: You must complete The Replicated Man quest with one of the good endings, resulting in him staying on the ship.
If Zimmer resets him and takes him away he'll be removed from the game permanently and there's no way to recruit him after that.
The mod was made with the quest glitch in mind. (Although after some reading I think it's not a glitch but intentional). Take the gun and the perk, kill Zimmer before he leaves the Science Lab then Harkness stands where you last left him forever. You can tell if he has glitched, his gun won't be on his back.

Also, I recommend not recruiting him until the quest is complete. After the quest, in a way he owes you for keeping his secret and has a bit better understanding of what you're like, who you are, so would be more willing to 'abandon ship' to leave with you.

But, if you can't be bothered doing the quest you can recruit him at any time. In a future update that won't be possible without completing the quest beforehand.

To recruit him you can't be Evil or Very Evil. His original alignment is Good, so you need to be around that. Please see the Known Issues section below for issues regarding Neutral Karma.
If you fail to recruit him you need to come back tomorrow and try again.

Nothing has been changed in regards to his skills, inventory, things like that. Upon recruitment he has been given a health boost to be more inline with Charon. He is an android, after all. Stronger and more resilient than a human. During testing he was going down far too easily and quickly against creatures a fresh-out-of-the-vault unarmed Player could handle.
When you meet him he is Level 8, his health is 105. When you level up so does he, his health goes up by 5 each time. Unfortunately when you're a higher level he is still fairly weak and not much better than the dog in terms of back-up, and best left at home.
So, when you successfully recruit him he is given a one-time, once-off health boost of 150. The Player will always be higher up the food chain, but this time he/she has reliable back-up if things get out of control.

**If using FWE it may be a good idea to raise his health by another 100 points through the console. I thought of adding in an FWE-friendly esp, but it's just as easy to do it yourself. Simply open the console, click on him until his name appears at the top of the screen, then type modav health 100. Hit Enter and close the console.

As a follower he's set up pretty much like the vanilla followers with similar commands: Wait here, hang out at current location, Inventory Share, Follow Distance, Combat Style and Fire. He fires to his original Home Marker in Rivet City's Bridge Tower.

His follow distance is shorter than the vanilla followers (200), so you can have one of them with him and they won't bunch up or fight for the #1 position behind you.
In version 1.1 he only auto-fired at one particular place - when the player is captured in Vault 87. From version 1.2 onwards he is instead captured along with the Player. He happily follows to Point Lookout and The Pitt without the need for other mods to bypass it.
Although if he doesn't show up immediately fast-travelling within that world brings him straight to you. That's a 'game thing' rather than a 'mod thing.'
As I rarely have him waiting more than a couple of hours I'm not sure if he does auto-fire after 3 days. I would hope so as it's in his scripting, but scripts can conflict so who knows.
You can leave him in your Megaton or Tenpenny house for weeks on end and he'll not auto-fire just like the vanilla followers.

He's voiced. Unfortunately due to his limited lines in the game there may be some repetitiveness. Not as much as there used to be, however. I've tried to add some variety. Over time I'll add in more dialogue as well as other interactions and conversations.
Many of the security-related lines he spoke have been conditioned to only be said when he's within the walls of Rivet City. Hollering for Security during combat in Point Lookout, for example, is a little silly

As mentioned previously, from Version 1.2 when you are captured while trying to escape Vault 87 Harkness is also captured and held in a nearby holding cell. I haven't tested what happens if you forget him and meet up with Fawkes at the end, but I'd advise not to forget to rescue him in case he doesn't auto-fire after 3 days.
The previous versions (1.0 & 1.1) have been removed and are no longer being used/edited/added to.


Location:
========
That depends on where you left him when you finished the quest
But usually he can be found in the Marketplace (between midday and 6pm), the Bridge Tower, the Flight Deck, Weatherly Hotel or somewhere in between depending on the time of day.


Recommendations:
===============
I highly recommend Geonox's Better Male Face mod for the head mesh, and Sergey Lord's Younger Male Face for the face texture.
Both produce a vast improvement over the original male faces, IMO, and if you want your version of Harkness to look the same as in my images that's what you'll need.

Also recommended is Remote Control Companions Plus. It enables more options for all followers, both modded and vanilla, some of which I couldn't figure out how to do for my own. Plus if you're not in a social mood you can just bypass the dialogue window to trade with him using that mod. Yes, it's lazy to some extent but it's a shortcut


Known Issues or Bugs:
====================
If your character is exactly Neutral he will treat you as if you're Evil and give the appropriate response. I've tried numerous ways to fix this (so Neutral is as good as Good) and none of them worked. The GECK doesn't have a global setting for Neutral by itself.
To check what Karma score you are, go into third person open the console, click on your character and type getav karma - if it's exactly zero or below he won't accept. If it's higher than zero he will.
If you're using DarnUI there's the option to constantly show your Karma onscreen, which is handy.

The mod has been tested a fair bit by various people, but if anything has been overlooked, if you find a glaring error or have problems please let me know (and give as much information as possible) so I can fix it. Or try to. Negative rating without commenting is immature, helps no one and just makes the rater look like a twit.


Future Plans:
============
- Still want to have the quest only activate when MS08 has completed, as well as add in different recruitment dialogue. A speech check, rather than karma-based. I know where to put it and how to do it. Having it in this spot will make it mandatory to finish MS08 with a good ending. If done any other way you just won't have the dialogue option and he'll be gone for good.
- I'd still like to expand on his combat dialogue. Include more variety, if possible.
Update: Thanks to DRG6525 for offloading hundreds of lines of edited dialogue from two of his companion mods (Jason and Ryan). That will certainly be possible
- Add in more conversational dialogue, as well as more general interactions than just standard follower options.
- Minimise the one word replies and replace them with a little bit more "personality."


Contact:
=======
You can find me on the gamesas forums as 'MystykStar'
Hall Of Torque as 'MystykStar'
Here as 'Star-Mystyk'


Credits:
=======
Thanks to...
DRG6525 for his editing plus donating a huge amount of voice files from two of his companion mods. Some of which has been used in v1.22 and more will in future versions.
Miaximus for his scripting expertise for version 1.2
Suntiger for additional thorough testing.
ghouslrpeople2 for testing earlier versions.
Pistolero for his Follower Autumn mod that I referred to during creation.
Bethesda for creating Fallout 3 and providing us with a Construction Set.
Timeslip for Fallout Mod Manager and its included TESSnip.
ElminsterAU for FO3 Edit
LHammonds for the Readme Generator this file was based on.


Tools Used:
==========
FO3 Edit
TESSnip (FO3 Edition)
G.E.C.K
Construction Set
Audacity


Permissions:
===========
You must contact me and obtain my permission before altering, patching, re-using or re-packaging any part of this mod.
You may convert it to another language, but you must keep the original English readme file intact and point to this download page.

★ ★

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10379

B)

Thanks!
He's a very good addition to the companions, and fits perfectly for Squirrel.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/images/10379-1-1260892077.jpg

Suntiger: Where exactly is the dialogue issue? While he's waiting, hanging out or fired? In mine when he's doing any of the three I've either, "Alright, let's go," or "Let's get going."
I was sure I'd covered that as things like that annoy me - having to find a simple response in a round-about way.
A similar thing annoys me about the original followers After saying, "Let's Go," instead of exiting it makes you choose another option - "I have to go now." :huh: So, with this one I made it exit straight after saying, "Let's Go."

Anyway, I'll ask someone like ghouls to see what it says with hers, as I've edited mine recently, but I think all I did was rearrange the order of the topics when he's not following. I think that's all I did. I'm not sure, so I'll see what she says

Nah, actually it's fine when he's waiting or hanging out for me. It's when he's following me that it happens.

It goes a little something like this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/suntiger745/Fallout32009-12-2715-53-53-57.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/suntiger745/Fallout32009-12-2715-53-57-66.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/suntiger745/Fallout32009-12-2715-54-02-45.jpg
I went through tactics, choosing 'that's enough about tactics' and then http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v256/suntiger745/Fallout32009-12-2715-54-32-67.jpg
Exit through 'I have to go now', and everything's fine.

Hardly a major issue for me but if you want me to test around a bit I'm willing to help out.

Oh okay, strange. Looks like I didn't include a "Nevermind."

Also, the other two testers mentioned about all those quest and Rivet City-related topics. I don't know if I should remove them, or even how. I don't know if anything would bugger up, especially for anyone who has the mod active before his quest is completed.

If you notice anything else let me know and I'll fix everything all at once.

Edit: The screen after saying, 'enough about tactics,' shouldn't have "Oh hey," at the top. :facepalm:

*Loads up the GECK*

Ok...where to start...

First things first. You need to work with the quest and dialogues that control Harkness....and then repeat it with the ones that control Zimmer (for solving without blowing Harkness' cover)

Find the entries for talking to him after killing Zimmer...AND the ones for having given zimmer the android part.

Now, you need to find the quest variable(s) related to having splattered Zimmers brains AND the ones for having given him the chip.

Under the various 'goodbye' topics, you need to set up an end result script something like: if .disable . You might also want to include a Removeme.

NOW, in the quest itself, OR in a NEW quest that runs in GAMEMODE, and is STARTED when the player BEGINS the whole questline (to cut down on cycles wasted during the rest of the game)...

You need to 'trap' the DISABLE event on Harkness. You do this by defining a quest variable and set it to ONE up above in Harknesses 'result script' on his goodbye topics...

When Harkness is disabled, and that variable gets set to 1, you want the new quest to say 'AHA! Time to spawn in the companion!'.

Now we are going to DUPLICATE Harkness in every detail in the GECK, by the simple expedient of renaming him HarknessCompanion and saying YES to create new object.

When we drop him in the gameworld, we mark him initially disabled.

Now it gets tricky with some backtracking and forward jumping. I wish I could explain this better, but, well, If I tried, I'd end up making your mod over for ya

In either the original quest script, or your new quest script, at the same exact time you DISABLE/REMOVE the original harkness...JUST BEFORE issuing the 'disable' command, you need to do a .moveto on an XMARKERHEADING that you stuck somewhere in the game.

Lets call this markers ref HARKNESSCOMPANIONSPAWNREF.

Now, when the new quest spawns in the COMPANION version of Harkness, you can issue a MOVETO on it...and move it to HARKNESSCOMPANIONSPAWNREF.

Follow that so far?

That means that, the second the player says goodbye to harkness...he will, at MOST, appear to 'blink' for a second...as the old harkness is disabled...and the new harkness COMPANION magically appears in front of him, and facing him

If you want to get technical, you will have to find a way to 'trap' Harknesses actual position and facing (heading) and plug that into the .moveto for the xmarkerheading. WillieSea and Cipsis would be good ones to ask about that. That way you can force the xmarker heading to spawn not only ON harkness...but pointing in the same direction as he was.


This allows you to summon the companion wherever Harkness happens to be at the time the player finalizes the quest speech with him.

--------------

On to Zimmer.

Basically you will repeat the same details as above on Zimmer, but its simpler because the player is nowhere NEAR Harkness at the time!

Harkness has a 'base post' of standing next to Flak and Shrapnels, so in Zimmers 'goodbyes', all you do in the result script is disable the original Harkness, and then spawn the Companion Harkness on the spot, and facing, used for that 'base post'. If you want to get fancy, you can even drop him immediately into wander/idle mode via end result scripts/other scripts.

-----------

Now the cool stuff:

SINCE Harkness is actually two separate NPCs at this point, and since the player will NEVER have the need to deal with ANY of Harkness' old conversation topics...the COMPANION version of Harkness, attached to your NEW quest, can, through the quest, have his own unique companion dialogue.

I will try to remember to peek in on this topic later and see if you need some clarifications, but honestly I know what needs to be done, but I'm bad at explaining it, so Willie or Cipsis would be your better bets for emergency housecalls

Good luck! I'm looking forward to this...Harkness is a darn near ideal companion!

That sounds like re-creating him from scratch. If this'd been brought up in the WIP thread I maybe could've done that - creating a duplicate of him, like Pistolero does. But, I'm not going to bother now. It's too late.

Removing his old topics is only what I'm looking to do, if it's possible. Not re-creating the entire mod.

Unfortunately I do not believe there IS a way to suppress his topics without using my method....

unless...

If you are willing to use the variables already being used in game, you can just add result scripts to each of those topics telling it to only show the topic if variable equals whatever.

Just utilize the variables already in the questline.

That will 'suppress' them without having to redo the whole thing.

Another, less used approach would be to try marking them as 'say once'...I haven't tried it, and I dunno what effect it might have mid-quest, but it's worth a shot.

All non-follower-related topics have now been conditioned to not show if he is hired. That was the easy part.

The annoying part I can't figure out is where the dialogue is going to after I select, "Enough about tactics." There are no topics to choose from, none of the boxes in the right-hand side have any topics in them, nor have any boxes been checked (Goodbye, Info Refusal, Random, etc) . Looking at the vanilla followers and that's the same. Looking at the mod I'd been using as a guide and that's the same. Yet mine isn't working like that and I can't figure it out :huh:

Suntiger mentioned having to exit dialogue through the Trade window, I've created a 'bail out' dialogue topic so that should fix that. Btw, Suntiger, ignore that esp I sent as it's still not fixed.

Just did some more fiddling, so will go see if that did anything.
If I can't figure it out maybe I'll just have to leave it.

Edit: Finally! It works how I want it to. After selecting, "Enough about tactics," we get the options of, 'Trade, Wait, Hang Out, Let's Go (newly added exit topic). No "Oh hey..." in sight. Yay!

I'll upload the new esp for testing.

No worries, I'm at work for the next ten hours anyway.

I'll check up on things this evening, about 12 hours from now or so.

Hopefully in that time we won't find any other oddities. I'll wait a while, see what ghouls reports before adding it on the Nexus page.

Sweet! DLed this mod.

I don't know if you need to make any tweaks... I made a test character who had the mod enabled from the outset.
Everything worked fine through the Replicated Man quest and I had no trouble recruiting him afterwards.
The little dialogue quirk remains but it's a very minor thing as it doesn't break anything.

I'll send a full report via PM.

A bit of an update on what I've been doing lately. This has also been posted on the FO3Nexus page.

I've been doing some more dialogue, mostly combat-related. Now that I'm more used to how Audacity works, and what I can do with it, I should be able to give him some more things to say

So far I've three lines done. The good thing is I don't need to generate lip synch files for some as I can re-use the original ones. Although with some of the lines I have in mind I'll need to do that again.

I've also done other small adjustments such as removed the not-needed extra "Goodbye" response. He already has one of those so adding one into my 'quest' isn't necessary. I think Pistolero mentioned something about that. The 'goodbye' topic option, then, is "Thanks for the help." Sometimes it doesn't make much sense but I guess you could be thanking him for co-operating and letting you fiddle with his inventory

I've been trying to get rid of the topic "Oh hey..." that keeps popping up once a day. It's only meant to show if he has never been hired. I don't know how to get rid of it permanently after he's been hired. Removing the checkmark next to Top Level removes it entirely and if you haven't hired him yet there's no way to do so. So, I've just left it alone for now.
I've also included an "Exit." Sometimes, by accident I'll select him during combat or while trying to open something he's standing on and have to do a 'pretend trade' to exit again. So, this time there's also a dialogue option of "Nevermind."

Can anyone tell me whether Rivet City-related topics are presented to you once you finish trading with him or changing his combat style? (Before you say, "I have to go now.") If they *are* showing in the version I released then my other edit is that I have prevented them from showing altogether.
I just set conditions so they only show if he's not hired at the moment. They will show up if he has been fired, though, seeing as he fires back to Rivet City.

I'm mostly just doing more dialogue at the moment. Suntiger was pretty thorough in his/her testings and (I'll check my last PM's) I think I've now covered anything that needed fixing.

I'll get some more dialogue done before I update the file here. I'd rather not update in dribs 'n drabs, but do as much as I can in one hit. As a player/downloader myself I find it irritating downloading an update every second day or so, so I wouldn't do it to others

I'll get my current version sent for testing first, then if it's all good I'll upload the new version

Suggestions for more interactions and conversations are always welcome. If I can figure it out, or it sounds good/is doable I may include it

I was going to wait until I had all the combat dialogue done, but who knows when that'll be.
So, I've updated the file today. The "new" version includes 6 lines of combat dialogue. I've updated the first post to include a 'changelog' of what I've done.

It's not compulsory to update, but feedback and opinions on the new dialogue would be helpful I'm not really sure on one of them. Suggestions for things for him to say are welcome as well. As I'm re-using several people's lines, done by the same voice actor, then chopping it up in Audacity it's possible that any suggestion made could be doable.

Edit:
I forgot to mention in the included readme about the other edits I'd done, all of which are mentioned in my earlier post here.

Besides adding a bit of combat dialogue I've adjusted some topics in the dialogue window, removed the duplicated Goodbye response as well as the initial recruitment line that wouldn't go away. It's now gone and only shows if he has never been hired.

When you exit any windows such as inventory, tactics and other settings the Rivet City topics no longer show if he is in your party. Finally got that figured out.

I think that's it. That's all I can remember, anyway

Sweet!!! I'm gonna DL it tonight when I get home. I have the original file but have not hired him yet as I have been unable to complete the Replicated Man quest yet. You should remember why........nerfed my character so bad he stopped leveling. But that has since been fixed.

Just uploading the file now, but we have an update

A big thanks, again, to Miaximus for figuring out how to do what I wanted to do, and doing it perfectly :goodjob:

See the first post in this thread (at the top) for the changelog and what was added in.

I guess I should remove some images that are no longer relevant. I'll get some new ones up as well.

B)

Isn't it possible to disable the option to recruit him until the quest is finished? Or am I misreading this?

At the moment you can, technically, recruit him at any stage of that quest and before. The initial intro line is always there until he's recruited.
I could have my quest start after the Replicated Man is finished, but I haven't got around to poking around the quests to do that. I've mostly been working on dialogue. IMO that's a minor thing. Not really worth updating over.
From an immersion view why would he want to follow you? Who are you, anyway? :shrug: When the quest is done and over with he's had some interaction with you at least.

Plus unlike ordinary, straight-forward quests there isn't one stage that says, "It's completed." There are about two. One stage is MS08100FIN and the other is MS08200; I think it depends on how you complete the quest, how you get to the end, which of the various choices you make. MS08100FIN handles some of them and MS08200 others. Where to have my follower quest start from is what I haven't taken much time to read into and work out.
Like scripting, it gives me a headache so I go and do some dialogue, instead.

It was alot of fun working on Harkness Follower, I learned about manipulating animations and got to work with script packages alot more.

I also learned that avoiding commonly-modded objects (like MQ08CaptureScript) is a Very good thing!

Cheers,

Miax

Update! Just a bug fix.

Just uploaded an esp that fixes a problem in version 1.2 that prevented anyone in Rivet City, as well as Three Dog, from properly greeting the player.
With the RC residents it wasn't especially game-breaking, but with Three Dog it could have been, seeing as his initial force-greet on the player just wasn't happening.

Thanks to Miaximus it's all good - just overwrite the old esp with the one listed under Updates on the Nexus file download page.

Edit: Due to another problem I've hidden the file for the moment. The problem seems to only be if he hasn't been recruited (while trying to recruit him there's just no option to do so), so existing saves where he is already hired should be fine.

New update esp (for version 1.2) has been uploaded. Hopefully it works now. If not, let me know.

I thought I added this in at some stage, obviously not as I don't see it. I've updated the Description to include why it's important to complete The Replicated Man quest with a good ending, and why he can't be recruited if you let Zimmer reset him.

I already got a negative rating by some [self-censored] and no comment explaining why their standards are so high if they have never released a mod, so they could hardly be an expert in that.

Anyway. Not happy over that.

Just a readme update, I guess this is.

Meanwhile, 3 months later...:unsure:

I'm still fiddling around with this, so have just slightly updated it. I also re-wrote the OP. The most current update is at the top of the changelog.
Basically I added in a re-used line of conditional Greeting dialogue and a little teleport module. I wasn't going to have one originally (I absolutely detested auto-warping in Oblivion), but sometimes he wanders off and gets stuck. So, I guess it's thanks to DRG6525 for originally suggesting I add one in

As always, any problems let me know so I can fix them straight away.

B)

...And a further 7 months later I'm surprised this thread is still here. But that's good, saves me writing up a new one.

I've come back to FO3 for a little while so thought I'd upload the version I'd been using for a while. Not sure how long I'll be staying around for, so in case I disappear again everyone who uses this will have the most current version.

The OP has been edited to include the changes for this version, and to condense the post a bit as all details are included in the readme anyway.

:cool: