Is good for me whatever you decide to do Neoptolemus.

Perhaps take a look at http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1348329-rel-morrowind-rebirth-16/ too just to avoid unnecessary issues with the landscape.

Ok before you read my post i want to clarify one thing that after reading it some of you might think i am trolling or trying to revoke the argument which has been settled down but believe me guys this is none of my intentions,what i only want is that things like that should not happen anymore hence i am only trying to correct things which lead to the argument so that they do not happen again,so it is my humble request to anyone please do not start any argument over what i have posted.

First let me tell that i am not supporting anyone and i have no grudge against you ChopSlashThrust i know you are new here and things that happened hence are not entirely your fault,i just want to explain things to you so that it doesnt happens again:



The first post you made is indeed very beautiful and i really liked the idea and how you stated it as a suggestion but things really started going out when you made this post:



What you said you should have avoided and i think it is this very post which triggered http://www.gamesas.com/user/392238-enderandrew/`s reaction,believe me one should avoid comparing two hard worked upon mods the way you did as you have read in many posts that people work very hard upon their mods and i know you didnt mean to say anything like MCA svcks, but the way you said it can really hurt a modder and i can bet even Antares wouldnt had liked it,i know it might be hard to understand but you will realise once you create your own mods,what i mean is you could really have told what you meant as: "Antares` Undead Arise mod has some really nice creatures and features in it and if you can incorporate them in your mod it would be really amazing".Believe me people do take such things rudely thankfully http://www.gamesas.com/user/7388-neoptolemus/ and Anatres are really cool minded guys.Also pls understand i am not trying to blame you what i mean to say is you are a bit new to here and i hope you take care of such things in future as a mod user and a forum member.

My apologies if what i said sounded a bit harsh to you and also to everyone here if you come to think i am trolling.

And i hope the 15 minutes i gave to write this post helps avoiding such conflicts in future and thanks for reading.

Oh, a couple of things I've found as addons for MCA in the past, or I modded myself for personal use:

- A compatibility patch with Vampire Embrace. What it does is simply stopping the script of MCA NPCs when they enter follow mode. This avoids them disappearing when you tell them to follow you out of the current cell.
Can actually be very useful with mods that give you the ability to command NPCs (Dracandro's Voice, NPCs Functionality, Antares BigMod, etc.).
Of course it doesn't prevent the 72 hours bug, but it's still useful to command NPCs from MCA for short amounts of time.

- MCA Names mods:
I've done one of these myself, using a work-around to avoid NPCs with identical names as much as possibile. I simply created more NPCs "clones" of the same kind, with different names, and added them to the levelled lists.
That is, instead of having a single "Dunmer Commoner", I created a dozen of them with different names. You can still run into two NPCs with the same name, but it's rarer. Also, I didn't name NPCs like guards, bandits and the like.
I wonder if there could be a way to script the NPCs to avoid "doubles". Like, once this NPC is spawned, don't spawn it again before a certain time limit has expired.

- NPCs in houses:
The more recent versions of MCA add non-hostile thieves into houses at night.
While it may be cool, I add to remove one of this spawns from Hlaalo Manor in Balmora, since I was using a mod that allows you to buy it and live in it. It was kind of annoying to have those thieves spawn into my house, despite the guards (from another mod) that I stationed into and around it!

- Animations:
I think the animations from Animated Morrowind are a great tool for modders, especially with a mod like MCA that adds more NPCs.
Could you add more of them into MCA? I think they are a wonderful addition to the feel of the game, and with the scripts from MCA you can have different looking NPCs spawning randomly, instead of seeing always the same NPCs in the same place.
Also, since we now have minstrels playing their instruments in taverns, maybe adding someone dancing to their music would be cool.


On a final note: thank you for this mod, Neo!
Really, it has been on my HD since I discovered it years ago. It gives an enormous boost to the atmosphere of the game and it's no doubt one of the reasons of its longevity for me. Also, I really appreciate the quantity and quality of work you have devoted to it over the years.

Personally I've enjoyed MCA through many versions, and will likely do so for the foreseeable future. like the notion of being able to configure some things, like bandit atacks, because I kinda like it wild and wooley with creatures and groups that can make me run especially at low levels.

I've truly enjoyed the undead in the mod, because they were the first.to really impress me. I'd like to try Antares mod, but I doubt that will happen unless some compatibility is reached. MCA has too much content to lose over one facet of play.

I also really used to like the "wild vampires" and I miss them... I'd love to see a comeback there, though I realize there are issues with the game's vampirism scenario.

[ Neoptolemus: Yep, I will definitely try to make the NPCs more balanced. Although your experience in the Dunmer fort is exactly what I was trying to achieve - I freakin' love running into huge mobs of enemies and having to hack my way through. I love the desperation and despair. But I realise now that not everybody does! So the bandit spawns will be scalable, and removable if you don't want them at all. ]

Excellent, scalable would be FAR better than On/Off. The quality of the additions is just too good not to have them in the game, it's strictly a matter of balance and fit with the existing content that I find awkward.

I don't mind being in over my head (there's no satisfaction if there's no challenge), but when you don't even get time to take a second shot before you're surrounded and cut down from every direction, there's not a lot of point to it, in my opinion. Essentially, that just renders parts of the game "unplayable" at anything short of ridiculous levels (I don't play past around Level 25-30). I don't know whether the NPCs just have insane Speed attributes (90-100), or whether they're guzzling potions to make them move like that, but running isn't an option when you're not even half as fast, and fighting is tough when they take more than half your health in a single hit, and you deal 5% of their health in return. I suppose it has something to do with that "difficult range" between L5 and 10 you mentioned. I'm looking forward to being able to adjust the difficulty of the seperate elements. Thanks for your continued development on this impressive work of art.

@neop

Ok maybe i came off a bit rude during that 2nd statement. But how about the option where i said that maybe you could merge the 2 mods together, and then add your creatures to the mod? So we get all your creatures, including Antares new ones with the animations. That way we get the best from both mods?

edit: that way at least its compatible between the 2 mods and i wouldn't have to chose which one i wanted to use.

Neoptolemus: Will you be adding names(this is in regards to my post) or will you just be giving all the NPCs generic labels? If you are not going to give them names, I can whip up another names file that people can use.(heres the link to the current names file: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=8657 )

As for my opinion on the undead, I would always want to use the best ones around. If someones work eclipsed mine, I would probably use both. I would leave in(some of) what I had done simply because I worked on it and I would use the better stuff because its better.

In regards to the backwards compatability, I have to ask the purpose of this? If its because you have a game going than I would say you are getting along fine without a version that isnt even out yet. If an update to something comes out and I cant use because it would mess up my game, I either get over it or start a new game.

I have just had an interesting idea, why not have modules for this? I know that sort of thing would be more work though(not to mention more .esp's which I am running out of room for), but its only an idea.

The add-ons tend to break with each new MCA release, which is expected. However, the creators of those add-ons aren't necessarily active in the Morrowind modding scene anymore. Would you be willing to update some of them as you release version 7?

Looking forward to seeing what 7.0 shapes up to be. Good luck!


The Clothiers of Vvardenfell addon in particular was a rather nice addition. It'd be great to see that one maintained.

I actually gasped out loud when I saw a topic title "Morrowind Comes Alive 7.0"! I am so glad and thankful that Neoptolemus is still working on this mod. It's a mod I always use in my gameplay. Thank you very much for continuing to work on this, Neoptolemus.

Well, it probably might be solved by do-once'd *injecting* of those items to existing leveled lists for vanilla NPCs with AddToLevItem. Though I haven't experimented with it and don't know whether it can have some undesirable side effects.

I '+1' this request.

Well, I just figured that I also have a quest that MCA spawns can break or at least make it go "huh???". I guess the problem is much more common than a single mod for which those spawns can be removed optionally, so a generalized solution might be due.

How about this: a small MCA_Disable.esp resource patch (not dependent on MCA.esm, though) contains an activator item that sets a variable MCA_DisableHere to 1. The MCA.esm contains that variable too, and every MCA NPC script is modified to check that variable to determine whether the NPC should be removed straight at startup. If the other modder wants to use a certain cell for his own purposes and doesn't want MCA spawns in there, he merges the patch's contents with his own mod and drops that item somewhere in the cell.

Scripts for the item should would something like this:

Sure, happy to. I'll ping you something over the weekend.


Good, I don't feel so thick now! I'd probably never use it anyway, I just tend to follow the "if the functionality is there I need to make it work" mentality.

It's about time I try this mod, just afraid of the kind of lag it might put on my game.

Shouldn't be much at all if any...

NPCs in a cell can cause lag, especially if there's a large number or if the cell already has a large number of other references (e.g. Balmora). Whether or not this mod will cause lag is dependent on a number of factors: the speed and type of CPU, the number of mods loaded, etc. Modern computers should have little to no problems if they can play other games like Skyrim without issue, but older computers may slow down under the load.

Won't resolve the issue: many NPCs from vanilla don't have levelled items in their inventory.

Don't know if you could make a script that adds levelled items to every NPC in vanilla and then stops itself. It would be quite a pain in the a** to write down a script with every NPC name in it, anyway... (on second though, if it's doable, I'd volunteer for that).

Hmm, I'm not sure that adding levelled items in game has the same effect it does in CS. As for writing the script adding *real* items... well, it could be possible by exporting the NPC list into a text file, importing it into MS Access, cross-referencing with the exported "hints" file to make the table sortable by NPC's location as well as by other fields (it's quite doable, I actually have one made for my own purposes). Then get a list of NPCs to be processed based on some selected criteria, and then process it with a VBA script to get a workable CS source code. The randomness, of course, would be limited by Access script, once the result is pasted into CS, it's fixed. The real difficulty would be to *determine* those criteria by which NPCs should be getting items.

You know, I saw the title and immediately read it as "Necessities of Morrowind". ^^" Because I had pretty much given up on seeing new versions of MCA. Much to my surprise, after reading the first post for a bit I realized the poster was "Neopt" and went 'omgomgomgomg!!" I knew it was a good reason to keep Morrowind on my HDD instead of deleting it to make room for the Diablo III beta. xP

I really like that idea about a script that searches for a 'mca_DisableHere' item in a cell. That also sounds like something that would work in a 'convenient housing' situation as well if anyone felt like making an add-on. Like a writ of ownership.

The only issue I ever had with the bandits (in-town and not) was that there was never a surprise element to it. There was always 3 here on my first visit. Always one on this path at this intersection. Etc.

@Raym
I actually experimented with this a lot on my own way back when. It is..sort of possible. I never got far since what I actually wanted it to do was for them to change their clothes once a day. You can't add a leveled list to an npc via script, but you can use a script to place a specific clothing item based on a randomly generated number (which could be handled by a second script to keep script length low). There is also the problem of needing to remove extra clothing from the npcs as vanilla clothing can cause problems with mod added clothes. I'm also not sure if the 42 hour bug affects npc inventories. Would their inventories be reset to their defaults after 42 hours of them not being in the same cell?

I'm very much excited to hear about MCA7. ^^ Glad to have you back Neopt.

Well I have to say I think MCA is one of the greatest mods ever! I pretty much like anything that adds more to the game, and this mod adds so much. And since you are asking for some input, my vote would be for more of everything. I want even more spawn points, more NPCs, even bigger groups of people, etc.

And I love your undead btw. Just thought I'd throw that out there.