The daedric bats in Creatures and TR don't seem to interact well with the world. Some are awfully hard to hit with ranged attacks, it's as if their vulnerable spot is either small or not placed at their center where it should be. And when I do kill them, they often fall through the floor. The ones in caves in TR are worse, they are most often clipped into the walls.

Is there an easy way to fix them? Maybe I'll just delete them from my game.

Sounds like bounding box is missing, too small or dislocated. Check in NifSkope!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

I do not know the procedure for checking that in nifskope! Can you point me to some instructions?

Your problem lies with the bounding box in the nif.

You can edit it in Nifskope, open the nif and open up all the file branches until you find bounding box and right click on it or simply right click on the red box on the 3D image of the creature, the menu will open, go to 'bounds', click on 'edit' and then change the x,y,z radius to your desire and save it. You will need to make the exact same changes to the x.nif too.

ninja'd twice whilst writing this!

I am not a mesh/animation expert, so maybe there is another easy way. If you look at the animation in NIFSkope (remember to tick Render/Show Hidden), you see how the bounding box, though perfect for the flying/idle animation, is too high for the final death position. The only simple compromise I've found is editing the bounding box (you edit it with the dedicated right click/Bounds/Edit option) to be taller/lower so to be a little easier to see when creature is dead, still it will probably be a little too high.

[EDIT]well, too slow

Just go to RENDER->Havok, that will turn on the red wireframe, which is the bounding box. Render->Hidden will just turn on normal collisiom objects.


TheDaywalker :rock:

Heh, well apparently I had an old version of nifskope, and I needed the latest to see what you guys are talking about.

But I still have no idea what the bounding box *should* look like. I'm not even sure I understand what I'm looking at in the animation window, and how the animation sequence distinguishes which part is the death part.

Ok, I've just taken a look and in the bounds->edit menu, set the z translation to 100, the radius x to 100, radius y to 90 and radius z to 100.

The area of the bounding box is the area which determines where you will hit the creature, not the actual mesh area. These setting should make the bat an easier target. Make a backup and try them out, you will see the difference when you enter these figures.

Thanks, that was clear. I see the red box change, but in the game I don't notice any big difference. They may be a little easier to hit, but they still fall through the floor when they die. I'll have to do some more experimentation.