Hi all,

I've published a needs mod and am trying to improve its compatibility. For water sources in this mod, I made an activator with the vanilla nord well mesh and manually deleted and replaced each static well with the activator in the CS. The results are fine, but I can't help but wonder if it would be possible to dynamically replace each well using scripting at runtime, which would be a much more elegant solution for new lands mods like Tamriel Rebuilt and make the mod more compatible with town and settlement mods that move assets around in general. However, I have no idea how to implement this idea or even if it's entirely possible.
A few old forum threads I found...

http://creationkitten.tumblr.com/post/96604189758/statics-and-activators

http://www.gamesas.com/repairing-the-cogs-morrowind-t3063-175.html

http://www.mwmythicmods.com/Archives/CS/Comprehensive%20Animation%20for%20Morrowind%20-%20The%20How-To%20Thread.htm

http://www.fliggerty.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4636

...seem to suggest that it's possible to reference and manipulate statics using scripts on other objects, possibly using MWSE, which is already required for my mod. However, I can't seem to find any information on how to declare or interact with objects in scripts that aren't directly attached to them.
Ideally, I would need to detect the wells in a loaded cell, get their XYZ coordinates and rotations, either disable/delete or offset them underneath the landscape, then place a scripted activator well in the original position.
I suspect this isn't possible via global script, but I was wondering if it would be possible to attach a local script to an item like a bucket that the player would carry around and manipulate the wells through a local script attached to such an object.
Does anyone know if this is possible, how to script it if so, or of any other mods that do something similar I could look to for a reference?

Thanks much!

You should be able to scan/detect references in cell using XNextRef and the like. You could try xRefType to filter statics, xStringMatch (now working in latest MWSE updates by Merzasphor) to filter wells.

a global script should be fine as long as you add timers to avoid executing slow functions (e.g. some cell/inventory scanning, AI/3d functions...) each frame

The easiest not in game approach (a simple tab-delimited list) is probably to add a http://abitoftaste.altervista.org/morrowind/index.php?option=content&Itemid=10&task=viewpost&id=84&-Necessities-of-Morrowind-compatibility-with-landmass-mods-the-easy-waylike those available for NOM to swap static references ids in a mod with activators, or (more difficult) make a tes3cmd modify batch

[EDIT]typos, link

Thanks for the quick reply Abot, also someone on the mod comments mentioned you had helped them with tweaking and bugfixing one of my mod's scripts a while back, so thanks for that too. I'll try to implement it with the functions you mentioned, awesome that you can call references directly by strings now.

So I hit a wall pretty quickly when I started testing it. A couple of walls rather. I started by making the script and attaching it to the common bucket item in the game, and am trying to make it so that upon activating the button the script finds the coordinates of the nearest loaded well, deletes it, and replaces it with a new one. Here is the code as I have it so far...

First of all you can use MWSE functions only in ifx statements. And you don't need any commas.
This should work:

begin BN_WellReplaceScriptshort WellCheckshort WellReplacelong NordWelllong TRWelllong templong StaticReffloat WellPosXfloat WellPosYfloat WellPosZfloat WellAngleif ( OnActivate == 1 )   if ( GetPCSneaking == 1 )      Activate      set WellCheck to 0   else      MessageBox "Scanning For Wells"      set WellCheck to 1   endifendififx ( WellCheck )ifx ( StaticRef )  setx StaticRef to xNextRef StaticRefelse  setx StaticRef to xFirstStaticendififx ( StaticRef )  xSetRef StaticRef  setx temp to xRefID  setx temp to xStringCompare temp "ex_nord_well_01"  ifx ( temp )  else   MessageBox "Well Located"   xSetRef StaticRef   set WellPosX to GetPos X   xSetRef StaticRef   set WellPosY to GetPos Y   xSetRef StaticRef   set WellPosZ to GetPos Z   xSetRef StaticRef   set WellAngle to GetAngle Z   StaticRef->Disable   StaticRef->SetDelete 1   PlaceItem "BN_Nord_Well_01" WellPosX WellPosY WellPosZ WellAngle  endifelse  messagebox "scanning done"  set WellCheck to 0endifendifend BN_WellReplaceScript

Thanks qqqbbb, I tried that script as written and with a few changes for testing, but the consistent problem is coming up that the xNextStatic command seems to be returning references to activators; I tried running the script in several interior and exterior cells, and when I set it to disable every reference it finds it deletes persistent activators such as doors, with the statics remaining untouched. I've tried this with both the Merzasphor MWSE alpha and the old 0.9.4 version included with MGE, but they have the same effect; does anyone know if this function works for actual statics?

Yeah, xFirstStatic does not return only static objects. And xFirstItem does not return only items. If one of them does not return ID you need , try the other one.

FirstStatic doesn't return statics at all. That would be too intuitive.

Do something like this instead:

begin BN_WellReplaceScriptlong reflong tempfloat xPosfloat yPosfloat zPosfloat zRotif ( OnActivate == 0 )    returnelseif ( GetPCSneaking )    Activate    returnendifMessageBox "Scanning..."setx ref to xFirstItemwhilex ( ref )    setx temp to ref->xRefType    set temp to ( temp - 1413567571 )    ifx ( temp ); invalid type    else; is static type        setx temp to ref->xRefID        setx temp to xStringCompare temp "ex_nord_well_01"        ifx ( temp ); invalid id        else; id is "ex_nord_well_01"            xSetRef ref            set xPos to GetPos X            xSetRef ref            set yPos to GetPos Y            xSetRef ref            set zPos to GetPos Z            xSetRef ref            set zRot to GetAngle Z            ref->Disable            ref->SetDelete 1            PlaceItem "BN_Nord_Well_01" xPos yPos zPos zRot            MessageBox "Found & Replaced!"            return        endif    endif    setx ref to xNextRef refendwhileend

In the real world you'll probably want to stagger that scan over multiple frames, this should get you started though.