Announcing the imminent arrival of...

SMS - Stuff Management System (aka Sort My Stuff!)

[edit: just to be absolutely clear - this mod will require FOSE]

[Edit 2: 21/jan/10 - new version of FOSE is out, which will allow me to do this properly, so you can ignore all the discussion of not being able to handle armour, weapons etc. They're not a problem anymore. See http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?s=&showtopic=1056171&view=findpost&p=15555127for the updated details]


This mod allows you to sort most - but not all - of your inventory items into different containers in a few simple clicks. Also included are user-definable 'loadouts' to make it easier to get kitted out for a road-trip.

Those of you who know my Oblivion mod The Art of Speedy Depositing will have an idea of what to expect here... this is a simplified version of that mod, working within the current limitations of FO3 scripting and FOSE.

It can be used in any location you want: Megaton house; Tenpenny apartment; any house mod; any other location you are using as a house; or even just to help you when you are out in the field, raiding a dungeon or whatever.


It consists of the SMS Helper G'Nome™ and a suite of tokens relating to the various types of objects.

For example, there are tokens for Ammo, Mines, Food, among others.
Pop the tokens in whatever containers you want these items to be transferred to, then activate the G'Nome and tell it to "Sort My Stuff"...
It will scan all containers in the current cell, looking for SMS Tokens. It will then pop all your ammo in the container with the Ammo token, food will go in the container with the food token, mines will go in the container with the mine token, and so on. You can put more than one token in a container and it will take items matching any of the tokens.


There is one HUGE limitation at the moment - it won't work with weapons, armour or clothing. This is because there are currently no functions for inventory scanning, so I can't just run through your inventory moving items like I do in Speedy Depositing. Instead, I use formlists for each set of items, and scan through those lists instead, checking to see if you have any of each item in turn.
So it can check if you have, for example, any scrap metal and if so how many - then it simply removes that number of scrap metals from you and adds that number of scrap metals to the container with the SMS: Misc token.
It does NOT move YOUR specific scrap metals from your inventory to the container.

What this means is that if I included weapons, armour or clothing, the container would end up with brand new, undamaged versions of those items rather than the rubbish low-health ones you had in inventory, and that would be a mega-cheat. So weapons, armour and clothing will have to wait until at least FOSE version 2, and perhaps longer. Mines and grenades are ok, as they don't have a 'condition'. A frag mine is a frag mine is a frag mine. So there are tokens for these.

However, I am currently using a preliminary version of SMS myself, and it makes life much easier, even with this limitation. I come home from a scavenging/raiding session, click the G'Nome and 80% of my stuff is auto-sorted as I'd like. I still have to deal with the rest manually, but it's a lot less hassle than dealing with everything manually.


Anyway, it's still in the early stages of development, but already useful. I expect to have a release version within a couple of weeks at most.


I intend adding these features in the full version 1.0 release:

1) Tokens for schematic components:
Check what schematics the player has, then give tokens for the components. For example: if you have the Nuka Grenade schematic, you'd get a new token "SMS: Nuka". This would grab Nuka Cola Quantums, Tin Cans, Turpentine and Abraxo. Having this token would also REMOVE these items from their base lists, so Abraxo would no longer be included in the SMS: Misc list. Schematic tokens trump base tokens, if you see what I mean.
But if you don't have the Nuka Grenade schematic, then Nuka Cola Quantums are food; Abraxo, tincans and turpentine are just Misc items.
Hope that makes sense...

2) Loadout definitions:
There will be loadout definitions you can set up, which will allow you to grab standard items from whatever nearby containers they are in. So you could define "SMS Loadout 1" as:
10 Stimpacks, 3 frag grenades, 150 .556 rounds, 3 Psychos and a Stealth Boy. Then you click the G'Nome, select Loadout 1, and it will grab those items for you if they are in nearby containers.
Still working on the best way to do this, but conceptually it's not too tricky.

3) User-defined sort lists:
I want to include these, so you could define any set of individual items as a distinct set of items for SMS purposes.
So if you wanted to sort all Energy-type stuff together, you could set up "SMS: UserList 1" as Energy cells, Microfusion cells, pulse grenades and mines.
Then put the SMS: UserList 1 token in a container, and it will now grab any of these items, overriding the base tokens for SMS: Ammo, SMS: Grenades and SMS: Mines, which would otherwise grab those items into their containers.

4) Add to base list:
This would allow you to add items to the generic SMS lists. So if for example you have Point Lookout, you could add Punga Fruit to the SMS: Food list.
Punga Fruit would then be sorted with the other food items.
OR you could decide it's more useful to think of Punga fruit as a chem, and add it to that base list instead so it'll go into the same container as the Med-Xs and so on.



Here's where you come in...

I'd like your input on whether you'd like more fine-grained tokens.
For example, should I split Ammo into various sub-groups like pistol ammo, rifle ammo, energy ammo, Boom ammo...?

I'm planning two basic Misc items lists - low value/high value, based on the value/weight ratio.
What value would be your threshold for that? 5 caps per pound, 10/pound, 20/pound?
Or would you prefer a different split on the misc items? If so, please suggest how you would like them divided...

In general, I'd like suggestions for what item-lists you'd like to see in the mod.


The big decision:
I'm debating allowing weapons, armour, clothing, despite the problem mentioned above.
It would be a vile cheat for a low level char, but maybe not too bad for a god-of-the-wasteland with 100 repair, since you'd be likely to repair everything up to 100 (or near 100) as you go along anyway. It'd be up to you to use it fairly. I don't really want to do this, but I'm open to persuasion.
Discuss.


And finally, I'd like a few beta-testers to play around with it during the development, so I can hopefully catch bugs, add extra features, determine the most useful lists etc, before I release it properly.
If you want to try it out, PM me and I'll send you the latest beta versions as I go along.

Over to you for comments, suggestions, abuse etc.



[edit: typos, format, etc]

Hmmm... I'm not exactly being trampled in a stampede of responses... :unsure:

I'm curious - is no one in the least bit interested, or is it a case of "Meh - WIPz - come back when ya have a Relz..."?

I like it! This is one of those little things that makes a huge difference, like lugnuts!

I would be most interested in using a mod that does this. I see the dilemma on weapons, armor and clothes and will seriously consider thinking about a possible solution. Couple of questions:

If you place a token in a container belonging to an NPC, will you get the karma hit for recalling your items?
If you reverse pick-pocket a merchant and give them all your tokens, could you then take all their stuff with your gnome every time they restock?
If you place all your tokens into a container within an exterior cell, say the locker outside of Rivet City, could you off load your gear from a distance, provided you're in the same cell?
What happens to your gear if you try to use the gnome in a cell with out any tokens?

I'm just thinking like a cheater and looking for exploits, not really trying to harass you. Harassment will come later.

wolfhound, there is interest, and I pointed some people to your Art of Speedy mod when they asked about the possibility. The forums have just been subdued

I can't wait for this. Sorting is such a pain in the ass. The way you've implemented it sounds ideal. LOVE the concept of loadout tokens.

Sounds good. I can't let anything lie around, I have to pick up every item I stumble upon, so I use VTEDs. Yeah, it's like cheating, but who cares. Just saves me a lot of fast travelling from one location to the trader and back. But my safe now has like 5-10 screen pages, and that's with darnUI. So autosorting would be awesome .

Anyway, I like your system and also would volunteer to try it out. I use CALIBR and FOOK atm, but as it checks for item type, I suppose it'll work for any mod-added items?

As for having tokens just for item type or more refined (subtypes) I guess it depends on personal preference. One might want to only sort by item type, another may want to have seperate containers for SGs + ammo, BGs + ammo, EWs + ammo, another may want to sort by Sidearm, Rifle, etc. There are countless possibilities.

Depending on how much work it would be, it probably wouldn't hurt to include as many options as possible and if the number of tokens gets too great, make a token for tokens, so they don't clutter your inventory. Or two different .esps - basic and refined or something like that.

Thanks for the responses, y'all - now I know there's interest, I'll go full-steam ahead to get this out asap.

@SteveDog: Excellent questions, most of which never dawned on me. That's why I need input, to keep me on the straight and narrow!




@PintoCat:
Ta, I was wondering if people just thought this was unnecessary in FO3, with less of a collector feel to the game than Oblivion has. Or perhaps people reckoned that the inability to handle armour, clothing and weapons was a deal-breaker.

@Bneezy
Thanks, I'll probably release a deposit-only version first as it's the easiest bit to do, and I reckon it's useful enough on its own to warrant a release asap.



Hi Satu - you're getting at the core issue of the mod here, and the method it uses.
Because there are currently no functions for scanning through the items in a container or the player's inventory, I'm having to use a serious kludge and look at things from the other side.
So I have a lorry-load of formlists defined in the mod for the various items in vanilla FO3. There ARE functions for scanning through formlists, which is what allows me to do any of this.

Let's take Alcoholic drinks as a simple example: Beer, Wine, Scotch, Whiskey, Vodka.
The deposit-scan checks nearby containers, finds that container x has the token for Alcoholic drinks.
It knows that token is linked to the Alcoholic Drinks formlist, so it starts scanning through all items in that list...
How many Beers does the player have? If > 0, then remove that many beers from the player, add that many beers to container X.
On to the next item in the list... how many Wines does the player have? If > 0 then... do the above for wine...
And so on until it hits the end of the list of alcoholic drinks.


So, what if you have Point Lookout, with its new Alcoholic Drink Moonshine?
I can't just add Moonshine to the AlcDrinks list in the Geck, because that would make the mod dependent on having PL. Not a good idea.
Or what if you are using Mod X, which adds Bacardi Breezers?
This is where this method hits a problem, and I'm thinking through a few approaches, and will probably end up using a combination of these methods.

The core mod would be an ESM, which would allow for Compatibility patches for the DLCs.

So there would be an optional whSMS-PL.esp, which you'd activate if you have PL. It would add Moonshine to the Alcoholic Drinks list, and you're sorted.
Moonshine is now recognised as alcohol and SMS knows what to do with it.
The patch could just run a quest once to add items from the DLC to the SMS lists, and you'd be able to deactivate it once SMS knows what Moonshine is, since the AlcDrinks list is part of the core ESM, not the patch.

But what about the Bacardi Breezer from Mod X?
Well, Modder X could produce a compatibility patch for their stuff, doing the same as my PL compatibility patch - add their Bacardi Breezer item to the AlcDrinks list.
But I'm not particularly in favour of this, as it could lead to serious problems, and it would involve you having to install loads of patches. Very messy for all concerned.

My first thought for items added by mods was to have a special container that you'd drop items in, then tell the G'Nome to add all those items to whatever list was appropriate... but that falls down at the first hurdle - there are no functions for scanning the container, which is the whole reason for using this method in the first place. :brokencomputer:

My latest thinking on this is that you'd drop the unknown (by SMS) item on the ground, and tell the G'Nome to scan the area looking for unknown items. There ARE functions for scanning the current cell, so this would be able to find 'Bacardi Breezer' and check the SMS lists...
"Oh", sez the G'Nome, "What's this? It's an alcoholic drink and it's not on my list of alcoholic drinks. Oy! You with the head - do you want me to add 'Bacardi Breezer' to the list of Alcoholic Drinks?"
You'd answer Yes, and that's that - Bacardi Breezer is now registered with SMS as an alcoholic drink.
Edit: or maybe don't bother asking - I could identify the item-type and automatically pop it in the appropriate list. Needs more thought...


Some other points:
You wouldn't need to carry any tokens around with you - just ask the G'Nome for tokens, and it scans the cell, containers and your inventory for tokens, giving you any you don't currently have. There's no point having two AlcDrinks tokens in the same cell, you'd just confuse the mod if two nearby containers had the same token. What would happen is it would deposit stuff in the first container it found with the relevant token, and the other container's token would have no effect. When you're done configuring the containers, tell the G'Nome to take back all unused tokens from your inventory.

I intend having a hierarchy of tokens and lists, and the deposits would work with this hierarchy. First priority would be userlists, then low-level lists, then high-level lists.
Take Scrap Metal: It's on the high-level MiscItems list so will get sorted with other misc items by default. Then you discover that Walter will pay top dollar for scrap metal, and you set up UserList 1 for special items, and add scrap metal to that list.
Out on a dungeon-dive, you'd probably pop the MiscItems token in a handy grab-all container. Then when you deposit, the scrap metal would be included and dropped in that container with other misc items.
But back home, you'd probably have a container for UserList 1 items. Run the deposit, and the userlist takes precedence - the scrap metal is popped in that container, and not in the one with the generic MiscItems token.

Low-level and high-level lists: Take Food - there's a high-level food list which has all food items in it, and there are low-level lists for meat, prewar food, fruit, other.
If you wanted meat in it's own container X, you'd put the Meat token in that container, and the AllFood token in container Y.
Run the deposit - the low level list of meat takes precedence, and all meat goes in container X. Then it does the high-level lists, and all other food items go in container Y.
But if you didn't want to split food this way, just use the AllFood token, and the deposit to the AllFood container will include meat, because there's no Meat token in any of the containers to take priority.

Hopefully this makes some sort of sense.

A long distance Item drop, with distance increasing perks, would be very nice indeed. As long as it wasn't too over powered, but as your only checking within a single cell it shouldn't be. While it is down right painful to walk back to my Megaton apartment while over encumberd by an actual ton, it would be very cheaty to be able to off load extra weight from anywhere in the wasteland, unless there was some special SMS perk attainable only at high levels and dependant on 2-3 other perks.



That was what I was hoping for. It would drop and shoot the gnome if it deleted my inventory and then realized it had no place to recreate it.


I currently use the back pack mod and I carry 2 of them everywhere. When I get to a dungeon area I drop one at the entrance and off load as much as I can bear to part with into it, and then make a trip or to back to off load all that I've found. (This is actually the main reason for the afore mentioned long walk back to megaton)
This mod sound like it would complement this method quite nicely.

That's a really nice idea - I hadn't considered using perks for this. It strikes me as the perfect way to balance things out - the player would have to forego some other perk in order to to get the SMS distance bonus. So it would give the option of depositing from a greater distance, but at a price. Great idea - I'll look into it and see how it might work. At first glance, it would be easy to get the deposit to scan an extra cell in every direction - the FOSE functions for scanning cells have an option for cell-depth, so it would be straight-forward to bump up the cell depth if you have the perk. Thanks for the suggestion - keep it up!


Another thing that occurs to me - and remember, I'm making this up as I go along, so I reserve the right to change my mind on a whim:
Because the tokens are items that you drop into containers, there's the annoyance of doing a 'Take all' on a container and unintentionally removing the tokens and losing the configuration for that container.
So I plan on implementing an option to 'lock' container configurations in a cell when you're happy with them. This would hide the SMS tokens in the containers for the current cell. Deposits would work as normal, but you couldn't take the tokens out of the containers and change the configuration unless you 'unlocked' the current cell.

And I've been thinking through the loadout possibilties. I think I'll have to include a 'loadout' token that you'd have to drop in a container so that it would be scanned when you ask for a loadout. Otherwise you could define a loadout, then use it as a cheat to scan nearby containers and grab stuff from containers when out on a dungeon-dive, without even going near the containers.
What I mean is this: suppose you define a loadout as being 999 .44 magnum ammo. If a loadout-request simply scanned all containers in a cell, then when you're out and about you could simply grab any .44 ammo from any nearby container by runnning the loadout. You could get around the fact that there are umpteen Supermutant Overlords between you and the containers. With a loadout token, you'd have to physically go to the container to drop the 'include me in loadouts' token in it, eliminating this cheat possibility. Obviously, at home you'd pop a 'loadout' token in all your containers. See what I mean?

This is what I thought you were doing when I first read your post, and what prompted my "reverse pick-pocket a merchant" question.

I've been thinking about your issue with weapons/armor/clothes. The issue first and foremost is that you're spawning new items rather than moving the spcecific item from the PCs inventory. Now I am a big fan of random chance/luck/serendipity/ka/fate so my initial thought was to have random levels of repair on the list. For example: I have a Combat Shotgun that has a weapon health of 48% that I have Mr. G'Nome ferry off to my weapons cache in the refridgerator. (I keep weapons in the fridge so that the ammo stays fresh) Well that little guy couldnt help but tinker along the way and when I got to get that shotgun back it could be at 100%, it could be completley broken at 0%, more often it would be somewhere in between. This in actually not that great an idea, some one could cheat and keep activating the G'nome until they get fully repaired items. Though thats not really an inspiring way to play, and they would have to explain to thier friends why they just spent 3 hours "spamming thier G'Nome". It would also take a lot of tedious grunt work to setup the random health item list for each individual item, then someone would ask to add FOOK items to that list and someone else (it would be me) wanting it to work with WMK modded weapons. And that would become a full time job trying to keep up with others peoples mods as they get updated.

If I should come up with something actually useful I'll let you know. But maybe this might help you look at the issue from a differnt angle.

Hi Folks

Sorry for the slow progress on this - I've been too busy irl to put much time into it.
However, I'm taking a few weeks off work for xmas, so I'll have plenty of time to work on it over then next few weeks. You can expect a first release sometime over the xmas/new year period.
I'll try to get it ready as an xmas pressie for ya, but don't hold me to that.

Hey Wolfhound,

You need to understand that real life is not where your loyalties lie, you need to dedicate yourself to a bunch a faceless unknown people on a message board! Because everyone hates it when someone promises a great mod and then dissappears for months on end! (of course I would never do that)

Hopefully you're picking up the sarcasm there, I'm laying it on pretty thick.


Glad to see you back, I look forward to trying this out.

You're all a bunch of faceless people? Why did no one tell me? Faceless!? :yuck:

*yells*
"Mum! These people have no faces! They're all ghouls! All of them, I tells ya!" :ahhh:

I have an idea about that condition stuff for Weapons, Armor, and clothing.

A Gnome you could drop, activate to turn into a container (you're using FOSE anyway, might as well), put all your unsorted stuff in it, and have the Scan Gnome Scan the Container Gnome.

I don't know if it'll detect condition of a item in a container though. So my plan would work only if it did.

Ya see, that there is the problem, and the whole reason for the weapons/armour thingy... there ain't no functions for scanning the contents of a container. :brokencomputer: :read: :banghead:

Crap I thought it was just the PC's inventory. My bad.

Tee hee! I keep doing that myself - I think of a great way to... damn it, that requires scanning a container... Grrr :brokencomputer:

Very interested in this project!

Just wanted to see what's going on with the development since it's a brand new year.

For the adding things to alcohol. Maybe you could just put a token it it named, brand for alcohol or something. Then that whould add everything in the container to alcohol.

Hi all

There's good news and bad news...

The bad news is that I won't be going ahead with this as stated above. :shocking:

The good news is that I'll be going ahead with this in a much better way. :rock:

The saintly guys from FOSE have just released their latest beta version, and it contains the functions I've been really waiting for, but didn't expect to see anytime soon. These are the functions for scanning the inventory of a container, the player and npcs. The absence of these is what was causing the problems we've been discussing, and it's why I was using such a clunky method to nearly achieve what I wanted.

Now I don't have to jump through inefficient hoops anymore, and I'll be able to handle armour, clothing, weapons and items introduced by mods or the DLCs etc no problem.

So it's kinda two steps back, five steps forward... Back to the drawing board to redesign, but it'll be way better than I thought I could do at this stage.

I might even be able to import chunks of my code from the Oblivion version of this mod and speed up development.

Anyhoo - watch this space, I can go ahead and do this properly now that I have the tools I need. :foodndrink:

SWEET!!!

I'll be looking for it!!

Great man. I look forward to it.

This sounds cool. Makes me regret I burned out on OB before your mod came out.

If I have any suggestion, is that such a mod stands or falls on its UI and its robustness/idiotproofness.

In that context, being able to hide the tokens sounds great, assuming you can make it work reliably - which is something I've stopped assuming when dealing with gamesas games.

Helpful, I know. I'm available for consultations, reasonable prices

Yeah, exactly right, Soor - the ui is vital. The new way of doing messages in FO3 (compared to OB) will make the whole menu structure far easier to do.
And hiding the tokens is no problem, I'll just have two sets of tokens - one playable the other unplayable. Swapping between these in all nearby containers will do the locking/unlocking.