I stumble on that mod the other day. It sounds really ambitious, Is it as good as it sounds? Thank you.

Many people use it.
Be aware that it can sometimes make quests a bit more frustrating, if the NPC you need is not where they should be at that time.

I almost always use it - and yes it is as good as it sounds

Thank you for the answers! If the quests givers leave their places of origin, do they eventually comeback?

In short - yes. The mod gives each NPC in most towns a daily cycle, so they can be in up to four different places depending on the time of day. So, you will find them in the same place at the same time each day. Also, there's a reasonable amount of logic and roleplay - for example you will find the pubs much busier in the evening hours, and the streets quiet in the dead of night. LCV for me is an essential upgrade to the atmosphere of the game.

My one irritation with the mod is that when a NPC changes schedule it just 'teleports' them to their new location, and I find when that happens right in front of me it's quite immersion breaking. If I ever have the time I would love to put in a GetLOS check on a 10 second loop, so that they only move around when you can't actually see them.

What does it matter if NPCs are doing stuff when you're not there or not? Does it create performance lag? I'm trying to do something like that with Pelagiad Expanded, except get the NPcs to actually walk to their destinations instead of just teleporting everywhere.

That's a really good mod ! I have a question though : how do you take an npc "off schedule" ? I'd like to use it with mods like Vampire Embrace and mods that let them follow you as companions but I don't know how to do it

This mod is a must-use for me, I'd love a community effort to expand it on uncovered areas.

The only thing I changed is reducing the "dim lights" magic effect amount, and making the town bells off by default.

A note: like every mod making important changes to the game, better test it first with a dedicated savegane/Morrowind installation. Also, in case you don't like it, following the correct uninstall procedure detailed in the readme is important.
You need a little TESCS work: from LCV.html:
If you mean NPC walking around (playing animations) while player is not there (= player more than 7168 units away from NPC), this is not possible, AI/animations only work inside AI range = limited distance from player, else they "freeze"
If you mean NPCs walking around (playing animations) while player is there, that probably would cause some lag (MCA-like), in my experience NPCs animation/AI is the most FPS taxing thing in the game (excluding very badly written scripts of course, but those are rare), testing may be needed.

I think the issue is more one of visual impact. When a character simply vanishes while you're looking, it's quite jarring from an immersion standpoint. On the other hand, having them change locations "off camera" preserves the feeling that they are simply going from place to place, without the added difficulties associated with them physically traveling there.

Precisely! :yes:
My idea was that you check get LOS:

	if ( ""->GetLOS, Player == 0 )		;Do the teleport, remove the inventory item/spell from below if present	else		;Add an inventory item or spell that will tell the scripts this NPC is 'delayed'	endif

Then run that GetLOS check in a loop every 10 seconds on the delayed NPCs, IE the ones carrying the inventory flag, until all the NPCs have been moved or it's time for a another schedule change. I don't think it would add too much lag on modern PCs, it's just the NPCs are scripted one-by-one so adding that feature in would be a major amount of work.

Edit: for better clarity.
Another Edit: Hmmm, maybe ( Player->GetLOS, "" == 0 ) would be better.

I should add that like abot I have also altered the dimmed lights setting (blind spell) to much lower. I'm also using TLM (with tweaked light attenuation) and lowered the night eye benefit to the torches for a more realistic effect. I've tied these two together so that a good quality torch from TLM exactly cancels out the dimmed lights from LCV, but of course with a massive sneak reduction.

I made a personal mod that did that. I'll see if I can find it. I just don't remember if I actually separated it from the mod itself.

That would be really great ! I've read the "Taking an Npc Off schedule" part on the readme but I don't know how to use the TESCS to do it . Maybe a step by step guide would be helpful :bowdown: :bowdown:

I am not entirely sure, but if you don't need a automatic way to put certain NPCs from a certain mod out of scheduling, you don't need modding, you just need to give the NPC the proper item (already defined in NPC LCV Schedules 03.esp) using the in-game console.
For instance, to keep Fargoth out of scheduling, I should
- open the game console
- click Fargoth
- type in game console
additem SC_offSchedule 1

From next schedule change (7 - 12 - 19) Fargoth should be out of schedule.

To put him back in schedule, do the reverse
- open the game console
- click Fargoth
- type in game console
removeitemitem SC_offSchedule 1

The ? Knock Knock ? module of http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=6175 does this, I think. I can’t tell for sure if it covers all the areas LCV left out, though.

I'm considering installing Living Cities of Vvardenfell, because I like the concept. It should have been implemented in vanilla Morrowind in the first place. But I remember reading elsewhere on the forums that the mod has performance and stability issues. Also, I’m worried about the potential conflicts with my 250+ load list.

Yeah, that one can be problematic. I've had NPCs disappear while I'm fighting them, bodies move to another part of the room right as they die. There is a problem with some scripting auto attack from one of the mods (Maybe LGNPC or MCA? not sure, whichever sets npcs to attack eachother in training rooms, neither were in the room but instead they attacked eachother in another room and fought until death rather than stopping).

I just wish it could have been designed with LGNPC in mind. Sometimes the schedules clash with with their personalities in LGNPC.

Thanks kind sir ! I'll try that

I run LCV with a HUGE load list (like, unmerged, somewhere 'round 475 mods) and have only ever had 3 or 4 issues with it:

the door lock schedules render almost all of the Blades Trainers inaccessible in any reasonable fashion;
the addition to Arille's Tradehouse may be problematic depending on how heavily you modify Seyda Neen;
I recall having to console in the dialogue topic for fixing NPCs with the jitters and to toggle the town bell sound.

It's also almost impossible to cleanly remove from an existing game, so if you don't like it, you might be stuck with it.

LCV can also make a LOT of minor and LGNPC-added quests either very difficult or a little weird (i.e., you will get dialogue that indicates the NPC thinks they are somewhere other than where you've encountered them).

The additem through console thingy to remove an NPC from the schedule does work perfectly well; I've taken scheduled vanilla NPCs "off the clock" and used them as companions for extended periods of time without any problems, and just as easily sent them back to whence they came.

You mean the part in the AI Wander Package that says "Distance"? http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/9717/87291417.jpg
If I have that set to 0, then the NPC will be frozen? How is it measured? I mean what is 4 feet in the game? What units of measurement are they using for measuring NPC distance?

Yeah 0 means they do not move.

After measuring a Hlaalu corridor to a few NPC's in the CS and I'd estimate 1 meter to be around 75 units (1 foot ~ 23 units).

Stop looking at me like that. :rolleyes:

Not frozen, he will play various animation idles. But if you want the NPC to move, you have to set a distance in units, yes, and do not use idles 100% of the time
Game units are ... how lengths are usually measured in game, similar to pixels for images. Also TESCS uses them to measure lengths.

a NPC is about 128 game units
a cell is 8192x8192 units
details from MSFD dedicated paragraph (it is useful for a modder to slowly assimilate MSFD)
To optimize rendering, the engine processes AI, and animations in 7192 units max. radius centered on the player.
It does not matter if you give an AI command using scripting or the NPC AI form, this is the working limit. You can force it higher using MW FPS optimizer, but you will have animation errors, so MGE correctly caps it at 7192 like the game engine does.
Note that you can use a AI command with a 10000 radius unit, or give a AITravel command to cell 50,50, the AI will (slowly) calculate the route, but the creature/npc movement/animation will always freeze in the middle of the trip when player is more than 7192 units away.
I don't know if freezed AI packages when player is away can survive the 72 hours standard garbage collection, I have only used long-range distance AI packages with creatures deleted as soon as player was distant, but I suspect there may be problems because mods with caravaner NPCs are very tricky to make.

Only thing with doing that is it breaks immersion and you have to do it for every NPC. I just automated it. However, I preferred my companions returning to their schedules if they weren't following me. So I have it set to put them back on their schedule too I think.

Wow thanks guys. Yeah, I really should read into that MSFD. But scripting is such an entirely new language. I should start tackling the Dialogue Tutorial first, as that is what I'll be using a lot. Boy, we got kinda side-tracked from the OP.

So then what does the Duration(in hours) and Time Of Day (??:00) parts mean? Because the Duration one is always defaulted to 5 and the Time defaulted to 0. What baring do those have on the game?

Well in theory, duration should define how long the AI package is active before it becomes disabled (in hours), and time should translate to the hour of the day when the duration is reset. I do not know whether these work correctly or not, because their usefulness is very limited. I think you're much better off doing that sort of things from a script, because that way you can check if one package is completed before starting another, introduce plan B's, etc. If you set both time and duration to 0, these settings will be omitted.

In addition to what Adul mentioned, Duration and Time of Day allow you to give an actor specific AI packages for certain times - you can even have the same AI package multiple times but each with differing values, e.g. multiple Wander packages for specific times with differing idles and wander ranges.


[edit] :ninja:

@ theskymoves



Thank you for the input. :thumbsup:
See, it’s the kind of inconvenience you listed which makes me think twice before installing LCV. The issues with LGNPC especially are a deal breaker for me.
For immersion’s sake, I try and make all what is humanly possible to setup my game so that I don’t have to use the console ingame.