I always have to fight the urge to rewrite everything when I pick up a project. It's almost a compulsion, when you know there's a better way to to what you're doing. I usually lose

But in this case, since the original scripts were written so long ago (before arrays, strings, inventory refs, user functions ...), I should think a rewrite is pretty necessary.

Exactly. We're not talking about a new doodad or whatever, we're talking about major improvements in the core backbone of the system.

:D

Dammit man - I was about to do just that

We're gonna get banned one of these days...

Oh hey. Timely.

I've been poking at ARES a bit in the last two days. Mostly, I'm stumped on NifSE's BSA issues (though I remain in communication with MentalElf), so I needed something else to do when the construction crew down the block severed our Internet, TV, and phone cables (yes, we were thrilled).

Mostly I've been working on the internals of the OBSE plugin DLL, nothing exciting. I decided to redo this bit, since the version I had is mostly being replaced by OBME, and the version I had... wasn't very good. Yeah. So that's exciting, I suppose.

For organization, here's my thoughts: a DLL/ESM pair will form the ARES backbone, and I'll be developing my own ESP to go with it, implementing the affixes I've designed. I'm still somewhat unsure about which details will be in which files; for performance and ease-of-coding reasons, I'd like as much as possible to be in the DLL, but for modularity and ease-of-modification reasons, I'd like as much as possible to be in the ESP and/or ESM (the ESM has the nice feature of providing default functionality that can more-or-less easily be overwritten by a dependent ESP - authors will have to be very careful about doing that, though). For example, the ESM will, by default, point the DLL to the VendorSoulGem leveled list for determining when enchantments of a given soul-value should be found (again, this will be the level that your enemies need to have in order to have these items - this is not scaled to the player but to those who actually have the items - though such details may easily be handled by the ESP), but one could write a "patch" that points it to a different leveled list - perhaps the one used by Nehrim, or by FCOM, or whatever (indeed, this leveled list is going to be ARES's only dependency that might need changing from system to system - otherwise you should be able to drop ARES into any modded game, and have ARES adapt to match what's in the game).

sounds like an interesting system. i always liked the prefix/suffix system from diablo. i think it will fit very well within oblivion, and add some much needed variety to magical items

Instead of pointing ARES.dll to a specific leveled list via the ESM, perhaps you could hard-code a unique and reserved leveled list -- let's say, "ARESLeveledList" -- in the same way as DefaultPlayerSpell and suchlike. Do similar with anything else that's 100% essential for operation, eliminating the need for an ESM. Like JRoush's various offerings, ARES would then do nothing by default, requiring a mod to activate it by giving values to its reserved objects/GMSTs/etc. Of course you could still release content in ESM format for easy third-party overrides, you're just not stuck with it (and neither is anyone else).

Standard disclaimer: I may have completely misinterpreted your description and spouted a paragraph of gibberish.

My suggestion - though I doubt you need it - would be to put the mechanics in the dll and the content in the esm/esp. In other words, write the basic template of an affix and all of the hooks needed to implement it in C++, and then populate the mod file with a table of the affixes.

I've been working on a way to add new form types to the game. If you're interested, I might work with you to create a new 'Affix' or 'Affix Line' form type with it's own internal table and a dialog in the CS - essentially the same setup as Magic Effects, Races, Birthsigns, etc. This may not fit your needs, or your personal style, but it can't hurt to offer

Well, yes, ARES (dll/esm pair, or dll if I eliminate the esm) would do nothing; that was intended. The point of the leveled list, though, is that it's something that modders can and (presumably) have manipulated - I'm assuming (for the moment) that OOO, for example, changes VendorSoulGem to rebalance when the gems are available - and the goal here is that in most cases, VendorSoulGem will be (hopefully) balanced to match an individual game. I'm basically using VendorSoulGem as a glorified GMST for determining the appropriate level ranges at which to place enchantments of a given strength.

If I use a new form, then it must be changed to match a given game every time. Using a pre-existing form allows me to capitalize on the fact that it may have already been used. That's the goal, anyway.


That would be... interesting. I could definitely see that being cool. Hrm, I might have to manually populate the ESP the first time, which will svck, but it would provide a great interface for this. Yeah, I'm definitely interested.

I'm only passingly familiar with leveled lists (placing items in the game world? Filthy!) but can't you use ARES.es[m|p] to provide an ARESLeveledList which contains a single item that's always returned: VendorSoulGem? Best of both worlds, it would seem.

Of course, I'm mainly playing devil's advocate at this point. One way or another, I'm sure it'll work fine!

That's certainly possible but I'm not sure I see the point in doing so. What I'd planned on was a global ref

Can't have global Refs. Well then, I suppose that's probably what I'll do!

Nice. Chalk me up as another "interested party"

Fiore is probably watching to make sure I do this.

:yes:

Well, I more-or-less have a script-based interface for the backbone. I was kind of hoping to hear more from JRoush before proceeding, because the rest is about interfacing between Oblivion scripts and the DLL, and that's going to depend a lot on how JRoush's idea works.

How soon are you planning to move on this? I was under the impression that this was still on the back burner for you, so I haven't really been working too hard on it.

Well, NifSE's kind of stalled, so this came to the fore-front. I mean, no rush, but yes, I'd definitely be interested in what I can do.

OK, what from my end can I do? I mean, I suppose the first thing to do would be to make my classes derive from TESForm, which means I should probably be using COEF, right?

This is what COEF was designed for, but you don't necessarily have to use it. You will have to derive from TESForm, though.

The hangup here is that only one plugin can make the necessary hooks. This could mean a separate plugin (e.g. "AddFormTypes.dll"), but I thought it would be easier to just bundle the code with each plugin that wants to use it, and have hooks set by the first one to load. I haven't written this part of the code yet, so that brings the whole things to a standstill.

I'll be traveling for the holidays for the next two weeks, and I'm not sure how that will affect my progress. If you can you wait until the second week of January, I'll have a working prototype you can copy from. I'm going to be using this system myself for AddActorValues and OBME.

*scurries off to work*

Heh, well, I'll play with COEF in the time being, making things derive from TESForm and such. The project's been going for three years, another two weeks is not going to kill anyone, I think. In the meantime, I'll take a long, hard look at the old scripts - the oldest part of the mod, and the most daunting.

Honestly, from my perspective. This all sounds very taxing.

Very, very, taxing.

Yeah, it is a bit.

I have so far... download COEF. That's about it...

Urgh.... :dead:

Done yet? (it was a joke)

Oh no, we're one post from the thread limit! I sure hope DragoonWraith posts an update right away so the thread doesn't get locked before we have a link to the new one! Eh? Eh?

Sure, you can find it http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1154410-wipz-automatic-random-enchantment-system-ares/. Minor updates to the first post; nothing those who have followed the thread haven't seen.