I have limited my modding to buildings and their occupants, links with places and with some in-game npc's. No clever stuff with textures etc., but using basic body, head and clothing mods.

I have a couple of minor problems on which I seek help.

1. To do with inserting text/commands (?) into scripting and dialogues to bring in and place an npc, at a given point in the script or dialogue, and in a given location - not in the same room as the speaker. I remember this as a fairly simple piece of scripting in other games.

I have tried with the "placeat.." and "position.." commands without finding the required effect. Nearest I got was when the person I spoke to disappeared and was found outside where I hoped the new npc would be. In another attempt an npc appeared at the right spot and kept duplicating till things got a bit crowded!

2. Is it possible to remove the dependency of a mod on certain .esm's to allow it to be imported into a copy of Morrowind/TES that does not have (nor wish to have) these esm's installed?

The mod in question is a building with door links to outside and a certain number of npc's. The building and its connections are quite complicated. The .esm's I wish to remove are better bodies and heads as I find the ESP's in the other TES copy are quite adequate and as far as I am concerned the dependency on more than the 3 basic esm's is a liability. I thought that if I removed all the npc's to leave only the building elements this might remove the better heads and bodies.esm dependency - but no chance.

?

[assume you have some knowledge of dialogue and quest writing and how journals work]

1. Easiest thing i can think of for this is to make the NPC, place it whereever you want it to appear. Now put together a simple script like this:

Begin Script_Nameif ( GetJournalIndex "Journal_ID" == 10 )	EnableendifEndif

Attach this script to the npc and when the journal hits 10 (or whatever number you need) they will enable (appear). But now we have to make them disappear first. Normally for static items i would include the disabling feature in the same script, but i find this doesnt always work for NPC's so i usually have a "Master Script" for every mod i make that runs as a Global script, runs once, and manages all one-off things like disabling people for later enabling, etc. In huge mods (like POA, which im working on, this Master Script can be absolutely vital since i have to manage the dis/enabled states of many, many NPC's and creatures.)

In this case the script is very very simple.

Begin Master_Script_Name;Normally here i include a journal check which stops this script from ever running more than once. The journal check is usally the first quest in my mod, and simply checks to see if its started (>10)."NPC_ID"->disableStopScript "Master_Script_Name"End

Of course this is only useful for new NPC's that you make. I wouldnt suggest enabling/disabling existing NPC's so that the mod doesnt screw up people's games and/or other mods. When this script is saved, go to the Global SCripts list and add it in there.

2. Not 100% sure on this one. Not guna pretend i know everything so somebody else can help with that I suspect, however, that dependacies on BB would be very easy to remove, just load it up without it and save the new copy. Unless the mod uses armor/bodyparts/meshes that are somehow unique to BB, nothing should go wrong (but i have no actual knowledge of the components of BB so i may well be wrong).


Edit: oh and i assume you know the many ways you can make the journal progress through stages. This could be through scripting or simply through dialogue (using the Journal Journal_ID 10 command in the dialogue conditions box thing at the bottom.).

Hope this helps

A simple way is using Mash, click your mod, uncheck undesired masters on the right File panel, save.

Many thanks to both of you.

Abot - I have been avoiding Mash!!! I couldn't cope with it! Seems I will have to try a little harder with the tutorial!