Please don't get upset, Toccatta. I have not said that I would casually abandon the methodology because of vague concerns.

The concern I expressed is not in regard to other mods' uses of curses -- that is a relatively low-impact and patchable area of concern. What I was expressing is a concern about whether, in long-term usage in one game, the frequent usage of 0-magnitude Remove Curse would eventually break its viability for the mod's own purposes. It is probably not the case, and even if it was, it would be worthwhile to find if there was any way we could accommodate or fix the issue. But it is responsible to cover potential alternate situations. I am relatively inexperienced here, but I have repeatedly read that the game engine and its scripting engine have strange, illogical quirks here and there. So I asked the question.

As one can probably tell from everything I have written and done, I am quite committed to integration, compatibility, and, yes, standards, wherever possible and reasonable without constricting viable and worthwhile choice. And I am very much in favor of doing this in an open, community-based way. I hope you will not get upset and withdraw your support if I express a concern about a potential pitfall we might want to address. And if it did turn out to be truly an unavoidable problem, with no patch from Hrnchamd coming soon on it, would you not also be concerned about it from the standpoint of MC?

I respect you and your work, and very much appreciate your collaboration. I would be very dismayed if we lost that. (EDIT: Thought I should add the following line:) Trust me, the last thing I want to do is to drive the mods apart or spoil the viability of yours, which you clearly put a lot of thoughtful, conscientious and unselfish work into. Please, if we can, let's try to proceed without tempers flaring; we're all on the same side.

I've never used MC, but that doesn't mean I don't respect efforts that have been done to make mods NoM compatible. I can think of several mods with little effort that have been created or patched to be NoM compatible, and if NoM is going to be changed patches should be made for them by those doing the changing.

In most cases I believe however that patches that were created to make mods play nice with NoM generally didn't involve much more than using NoM food or cooking items that were in the script for NoM to use.

Patching the patches would probably not be so much complex as tedious, but I think we are going to end up considering many patches in any case.

The fact is that with the many major projected changes so far in this thread as to means of cooking and foods, there are going to be a lot of mods that will require patches regardless of whether RC is used or not.

I don't know about baby sitting modders, but there is this to consider. The non-use of Remove Curse by Bethesda is a singular anomaly that could actually be used in many ways, I kind of doubt that any one mod should be able to claim it's use as their sole property.

I've already altered my mod to use abilities instead of curses and scripted add/remove spell bring it about. It'll make things harder and more dangerous for the player unless I create a global in much the same way that I did for the foodpotionscript and I haven't decided exactly how I will handle that....

I don't care much for the idea of every modder in the world who uses curse effects adding two or three global scripts to their mods...

As to breaking mods, It seems to me that having food items that remove curses cheaply and instantly is a more profound effect than a remove curse spell doing away with hunger temporarily.

Anyway, whatever is decided is fine with me, I'll help if I can.

Now, answering on substantive, as opposed to procedural, issues:


Re: Remove Curse Threshold


Hmm... so that would imply for our general knowledge a threshold value of between 20 and 60. Good to know.


Ah, this was an area I was a little fuzzy on -- how multiple quaffings of the same potion effect are handled in one inventory session -- whether they accumulate or not. Also good to know.


[1] I apologize if it made it appear as if I was minimizing what you had done or ignoring a part of it.

[2] Nope. It\'s not. It\'s a big and important thing. As I said before, I was just concerned whether this new twist had the potential to sink all our RC-engined boats, whether we stayed in one together or not. But if, on the off-chance, we discovered that the game engine has a previously-undiscovered latent problem that renders it unviable, I would be the first to volunteer, if you\'d be willing to accept it, in providing gruntwork to revise MC, if you wished to do so.

But no, there is no need to assume a cavalier attitude or some level or hostility.


Plus, unless I am mistaken, it would be rather easy to replace the use of Remove Curse in those mods with a scripted methodology. Ironically, it seems that the most avoidable and easily-replaced use of the Remove Curse effect is... to remove curses. On the other hand, it provides something Bethesda denied us in the CS -- a \"new\" magic effect.


Me too.



Hmm... okay. Sounds like something worthwhile to do.


To be clear, a community project must rely on community effort and contribution. This is something that, of course, we might do with this mod or that mod as we go along, but it might be a bit far to ask that the original team make all patches. We\'re not making a demand on people here. We\'re contributing our part.

This is where we can rely on each other to cover the gaps. Either way, if our plans go as they should (in particular the ESMization of NoM data), this should be greatly eased. And given that it is not too difficult to begin with, it\'s good fodder for distributed effort.

However, I very much support the idea of including a collection of patches ESPs (or ESP patches) along with NoM, with more included as we go along (to avoid the necessity of a new PES download entry for each one, unless the author so desires).


I hear you on this, but I have to come down with Melian on this one. Given its spottiness for other uses, the ease of other routes for obvious uses (removing curses), and the difficulty of other solutions for something widely-used and that is a pervasive game element in those games in which it is used, this seems like a proper usage of such a resource.


[1] Probably much of it could be avoided by the use of remote setting of variables. I just cleaned about 10 globals out of Reign of Fire that way.

[2] Hmm... not sure I agree. The more pervasive effect is the one that is likely to have a greater effect on gameplay. Curses are not used, and are easily used in other ways where such is desired.

[3] But help will be much appreciated.

RE: Tisanes .. (from my perspective) do not remove or (overly) tamper with the tisanes .. at least not the 4 basic ones (gotten after the first quest gotten from the witch) ...

as for a possibly 'improvement' make it so that it matters whether your using a red clay tisane pot or a silver tisane pot ... (perhaps something like the red clay one only gives half(ish) the boon it does now .. and the silver gives the same as now (or slightly more if it doesn't unbalance things) .. and the silver one should probably be made more expensive to acquire)

Actually, from a "realism" perspective... The silver pot shouldn't make better tisanes. Best would be a ceramic pot, or possibly heat-tolerant glass. Silver will react and clay will absorb, so either will interfere with quality and purity. Unless you think of tisanes as English/European-style tea with flavouring, in which case I guess silver might be better... I'm just nitpicking here, I don't use tisanes myself. :shrug:

I use tisanes sometimes... avoiding sleep or regenerating magicka is good. Anyway, I think the essence is that the one that makes the better tisane, whatever it's composition, should be more expensive and/or harder to acquire, don't you think?

That would, of course, depend on how you define "realism". Even in the real world, silver has special significance in literature and legend (think silver sickles and silver bullets). Since Nirn is a magicka rich world, it makes sense that tisanes (which I'm presuming have a certain mystical quality) might benefit from silver more so than from ceramic. Of course, if tisanes aren't intended to be even remotely arcane, then the symbolic nature of silver wouldn't be much benefit.

Good point - I was thinking of modern herbalism when I wrote that. Please disregard.

While we're wish-listing though... Personally I'd like to differentiate between diseased, blighted and normal meats (and other ingredients, for that matter). Probably more trouble than it's worth of course - I just figured I'd mention it.

Diseased and Blighted Versions of Meat

(Excuse my titling of responses -- it makes me easier for me to update the OP later as we adjust our aims.)


I've thought about this a bit, and was curious about others' opinions on it. By default, my thought has been to incorporate them into the base ESM, either by adoption from another mod's implementation or NoM's own (again, I always favor adoption and inter-mod linkages strongly), though they would not figure into cooking and eating.

But then I had a couple of other thoughts on them.

Diseased and blighted meats are good for completeness, but what are they good for in actual gameplay? If I recall correctly, I had accumulated quite a few, but when alchemy time came, I sort of looked through them and found them pretty worthless (like corprusmeat). If, when it comes down to it, we're adding items for flavor that have no use, is it worthwhile to add them, and might they sort of function as disappointing Red Herring Meat for players?

If it's really worthless stuff, why would the player take it, instead of just leaving it along with the corkbulb leaves and grahl toenails? The irrelevant parts that are not taken? Is there some valid use or relevance I'm missing? Would it be worthwhile for potion-throwing mods? A repeatable quest mod in which you must bring 100 diseased meats to Crazy Telvanni Mage X or something)?

For blighted meat, I was actually curious about its relationship to corprusmeat. I mean, I know corprus is a specific and stronger manifestation, but the lore descriptions of blighted meat and corprusmeat seem very similar. It could also be that it's 3:34 a.m. and I'm bleary-eyed, but, if they are similar enough, might we group them into a treatment similar to corprusmeat? I.e., generic Blightmeat, or Blighted Meat? What is the difference between blightmeat and corprusmeat?

I have no strong feelings about it either way, but it sort of struck me as I looked at my 80-some diseased this and that meat, and realized, hey, this stuff is just taking up space.


EDIT: Oh, and on tea -- I'm not sure about tisanes, but don't they say that cast-iron pots are the best for tea quality?

Um, I don't know, I hadn't really thought that far. It's just that I'd rather not eat diseased crabs or blighted rats.

IIRC, Srikandi's alchemy mod made corprusmeat quite useful (cure blight I think?) - it's been a while since I used that mod though, I might be wrong about that. I don't really remember what's said in dialogue about that, if anything, though I think the dialogue does give the general impression that blighted creatures are less useful to a hunter as well as being more dangerous.

I agree that we should try not to get too much into this as it really doesn't have much to do with NoM. But, I had just taken a look at the Graphic Herbalism scripts when I wrote that post. I suppose my wording was wrong, but when I said 'assume' they assume what items you would get. Ex. From a bittergreen plant they assume you would get..bittergreen and nothing else.

So a mod that added things like seeds and more retrievable plant parts would not work with Graphic Herbalism simply because the contents are ignored and it just places in inventory what your supposed to get from the plant. If the mod checked the contents of the plant first though, and give you what is actually inside it would work just fine though.

Just an idea I was kicking around. I'm also a fan of herbalism skill and seeds. ^^"

OT:

RE:Wells, Shops, Inns, Traders

I never had any issues with the wells. They seemed to fit in fine in /most/ places. The shops and stores on the other hand. I also think it might be better handled through traders, taverns, and other merchants already present in-game. I guess that means I might actually have a reason to buy something from a tavern barkeep.

I had absolutely no problems with the inns. Well, I did not like the changes made to Seyda Neen much. It turned Arille's tradehouse into a huge FPS hit for me. ^^" Had to stare at the ground whenever I went into there. The extension to the upstairs I always felt was much unneeded.

Just kind of throwing this out there as a humorous (but possibly relevant) comment: When I first started playing Morrowind, I refused to even collect the meat from diseased creatures because I was afraid it might actually infect me somehow or spread to my "healthy" meats and cause them to go bad. Actually, there IS a chance of getting infected when you open the inventory of a diseased/blighted creature or NPC. But the idea of infected meat actually contaminating non-infected meat never seemed to make it into the game.

Just one of those little misunderstandings about a game that one can look back on and laugh later... but the idea (while obviously wrong) wasn't entirely a bad one.

Oh.. another point about the bartenders and tavern keepers. Many of them don't sell reagents, so as long as food was a reagent, it wasn't practical to have them selling food. Changing them to allow them to sell reagents meant altering existing NPCs which creates a large potential for incompatibility - a situation that was resolved by adding new merchants to sell food. However... now that food is going to be potions, and considering that virtually all bartenders and tavern keepers sell alcohol (which means they sell potions, and thus food as well) eliminates the need for dedicated food merchants. The main reason for having them at all doesn't apply any more, and (in my opinion) the service they're offering really would be better handled by the existing NPCs. Especially since adding inventory items doesn't technically require altering the NPCs like changing their AI settings would have.

When I first started playing, I thought exactly the same thing about diseased meat...

Speaking of innkeepeers inventory, one thing that always bothered me in NoM was that I'd go to some place like Eight Plates... it's a big tavern that sells food and rents a bed, but their inventory was tiny.

Buy a beer, and that's it for beer until respawn, and half a dozen food items and you're out of luck for anything to eat, so after a couple of days you have to eat elsewhere.

I don't know if there is a reason the original NoM guys didn't give them infinite inventories, but I'd like to either see that implemented or a much larger inventory.

The problem with large is that the innkeeper ends up unable to move due to encumbrance. The idea of having stock barrels nearby that are outside the walls (and so out of the way and can't be stolen from ) works pretty well...

By the way, I have a script set up for kegs that you might be interested in. In NoM you could fill bottles or drink from kegs without paying or crime penalty, and that's not very realistic. I have using a keg tied to a particular mug which you can buy from the innkeeper. and then fill it yourself at the keg. I don't have it entirely worked out as to how long it will be before the mug disappears and you have to buy a new one, or whether it's going to be a one-time use item.

Blighted/Diseased Meats


Ah, that's right. I had forgotten about that change in SA. So that is a possible use of diseased/blighted meats -- simply for disease/blight curing potions. Also, Creatures X's implementation gives some of them useful properties (in particular, blighted Kagouti can be used with regular Kagouti meat to produce Fortify Fatigue/Reflect/Detect Enchantment potions with no other ingreds; both blighted and diseased Hound Meat offer the Reflect effect, though if used together they Damage Fatigue; diseased crabmeat offers Lightning Shield; diseased and blighted alit meats both Detect Animal/Sound/Damage Fatigue/Weakness to Common Disease.)

But I wonder if two extra variants of each type of meat makes, essentially, for an explosion in the availability of ingredients for this or that. For the examples given, we now have three new, commonly-gained ingredients that grant Reflect. If that is combined with leveled list changes that increase the output of meats (something we've discussed but not concluded on), we're talking some serious impact on Alchemy balance.

Now, we can adjust alchemical properties as we integrate them to better balance together, but it still seems, to me, to create the quandary: either make most of these new ingredients of little to no alchemical value, thereby begging the quest of why the character would take them, or give them alchemical value, which presents us with a whole bunch of new ingredients that will offer useful alchemical effects, including becoming a nice little potion factory by themselves if they have useful duplications.

What does everyone think? I can see three general scenarios:

1) Every meat having a blighted and diseased variant. Advantage: Variety, easy availability of reagents for X alchemical effects or offensive potion reagents. Disadvantage: Too easy availability -- very likely will cheapen the affects attached. Plus, this makes for a fair bit more inventory bloat with items that each weigh 1 or 2 weight units (I'm seriously thinking about increasing the weight of all average meats to 2 -- around a 1/2 lb or 1/4 kg -- but that may run afoul of game enjoyment, and is probably not a good idea), and adds alchemical properties that one can argue are really either quite available elsewhere, or can be better made so through other ingredients added.

2) Adding generic "Diseased Meat" and "Blightmeat" items. Advantage: Avoids inventory bloat. Adds a bit of variety (though not as much as (1), for obvious reasons). Allows for easy of availability of one of the reagents for whatever effects we attach (resist disease, for example), but much more easily manageable from the perspective of balance. Disadvantage: Again, a lot more heavy items for players to pick up thinking they'll be useful. Alchemical properties may be better added in other ways.

3) Not adding them: Advantage: Simplest, and avoids all inventory bloat with items that are either useless or offer unnecessary profusion of effects. Disadvantage: Avoids adding variety where we could. If cure/resist potions (or offensive potions for those mods) are in short supply, this could alleviate that (though I'm not thinking this is the case). Would mean excluding items that some mods do add (the aforementioned, Creatures, for example, as well as some from TR). In this case, we would simply leave it to those mods to add the ingredients, but they are so commonly-used that, if it is found that those ingredients are imbalancing in combination with NoM, we may want to seek some sort of reconciliation.

Personally, I'm in favor of (2) or (3). Having played with (1), it's just too much, in my opinion.


That seems to be the most intuitive way to think about it. Should you be butchering clearly diseased animals, or burning the carcasses? When I did my Creature Loot Mod, I decided to compromise by seriously reducing the meat yield of diseased creatures, and increasing the yield for blighted ones (the latter of which was probably not the best way to go about it, in retrospect).


Quick Digression: Herbalism Mods


Yeah, it'd definitely need to be merged into the scripting, rather than added to plant inventories. Definitely a worthy task, though. I'm definitely thinking Adv. Herbalism is in need of an update, and that it, plus Graphic Herbalism, expanded to cover TR ingredients, would be a fine thing indeed. Again, for another project, of course (in case anyone was thinking I meant in NoM -- no, that would definitely be serious mission-creep).


Wells, Shops, Inns, Traders



[1]Yeah, wells seem fine to me too, though we can fine tune any places they don't quite fit in. I'll count your comment as another expression of sentiment in favor of toning down the food stores/merchants (in line with what Toccatta says below).

[2] And on Arrille's tradehouse... um, yeah. That seems to be one of the busiest inns around. I'd like to tone down NoM's part in that for sure.

[3] Very good to know. I hadn't known about that history behind it. Yes, moving the food-as-potions methodology does seem to mean we can get rid of tavern/inn ingredient merchants and just let the tavern/innkeepers sell food potions, leaving ingredients to others. I like this idea a lot.


Agreed. That doesn't make a lot of sense, and needs to be rationalized a bit. The hidden chest method is how I had been thinking about it as well.


Interesting. I hadn't really thought about this at any length, but it does seem like something of a windfall to be able to walk anywhere and fill up bottles of wine (though there is no shortage of alcohols in the game, so I never actually did it). The only twist I can see this causing is that this would require the removal of standard casks from inns, and the emplacement of tavern variants (we wouldn't want to make this affect all kegs and casks, after all).

It does seem logical to me, though it also seems like a bit of complexity that might not be practically used. Other thoughts?

Perhaps another method, though less in line with complete immersion and realism, would be to set a simple script on the kegs and such that simply requires payment for the alcohol obtained. Sure, you didn't talk to an NPC or anything, but you can pretend you did if needed for immersion (they came over, got your coin, and let you fill a mug/bottle/jug/whatever). This could allow for two versions with two simple scripts. Make one item that shows in stores/taverns that will cost money, and one that can show in other places where they happen to pop up that the player could obtain for free from upon finding it.

EDIT: Oh, and I am a fan of the meat method of adding general Diseased and Blighted meats to the mix, but not one for every variant of meat.

setting up kegs as "vending machines" ... That sounds like a pretty good idea, and easy to implement.

If we're talking about updating and revamping NoM, NoM already placed scripted kegs in various places all over the island, so it's not like we'd be removing standard kegs, just changing the script on NoMs existing ones. Those Nom kegs are a cheat, by the way. I played with NoM for about three days before I realized that empty bottles are everywhere, and i could buy or steal a 1 gold bottle, fill it and sell it for 5 to 7 gold, depending on my mercantile skill.

From then on, I could equip my new character easily...

Speaking of vending machines, why not simply create a "refill token" that bartenders sell? I did a little testing, and it's quite simple to create a potion using pretty much any mesh. Retexture a gold coin mesh, assign it to a potion named something like "Wine Refill Token" and anyone that sells alchemy can also sell refill tokens. Since they're assigned no actual magical effect, they look and handle exactly like any other coin except that it has a visible weight.

Then you just go to the scripted keg-stand and activate it. Filling a bottle requires an empty bottle AND a wine token. Anyone wanting to steal wine can still do so, but it requires pickpocketing the bartender or stealing refill tokens from some secure container. And then, the in-game theft system handles it all. No more exploitation of the script... but at the same time, it doesn't absolutely prevent the player from stealing wine if that's the type of character he or she is role-playing. Also, it allows a bartender to use refill-tokens as gifts or rewards for tasks completed. And because refill tokens would be very light (or even weightless if desired), even a person that can't physically carry a large quantity of wine would be able to purchase enough at one time to justify getting a quantity discount.

It also means that bandits, etc could carry refill tokens as loot, and players could purchase tokens where the price is more favorable and use them where it isn't, giving them an incentive to role-play preparing for a trip rather than wasting gold needlessly.

You shouldn't need to script the kegs/barrels to avoid theft - just give them ownership, if they're activators (and IIRC they already are) then activating them will be a crime if you're seen. And if you want the refill token thing, use the global var/rank for ownership. Or am I missing something here??

Hmm.. I just tried giving ownership of an activator to someone standing right beside it, and he couldn't care less that I activated it. Are you sure about the ownership/activators thing, or is there something else special I need to do? I was really under the impression that the only time ownership made any difference is if you were picking up an object, removing something from a container, or picking a locked container or door.

[edit] oops.. or sleeping in an owned bed.

I think that's a great idea, and adds the potential for a lot of little quests for modders who want to make NoM compatible mods and need a little filler.

As to the ownership thing, it might work, but you may discover that you need a guard standing nearby....

The activator I assigned ownership is an anvil at the base of Wolverine tower, where there's a merchant standing right next to it, and three imperial guards within line of sight. When I tested it, the merchant was on one side of me, and a guard was on the other. Nobody seemed to care.

I've noticed that sometimes the ownership/crime is a bit buggy. Every now and then If my thieving character takes something ina crowded room, I'll hear everyone around me yelling about it, but nobody does anything and my crime level doesn't go up.

I think the tokens idea gets around that quite nicely.

Oh, OK... When I did it it was by accident (I just selected the cell and assigned ownership to everything) and all the NPCs in the cell reported my "crime" and attacked me when I activated an activator. Also noticed that MPP removes ownership of signs for the same reason. So I assumed it would be as reliable as any other crime detection in MW. :shrug:

Edit: Did you guys test with a new game? Ownership is saved in cell data in saves.

That may be the case then, I really need to put together a save game for testing purposes, I guess.... I've got a quick chargen, but I always seem to just run through it and do whatever needs testing, and quit without saving. Since i run without autosave... I set it up that way to avoid mod contamination during testing.

That really doesn't alter the basic concept though... having tokens and setting ownership would work, just a little more effort.

Initially, no. However, when you pointed out that it might be significant, I started a brand new character. My test results were exactly the same. I even walked to the opposite side of the anvil so I could watch and make sure the guard was looking right at me when I activated it.