I think I figured out what the problem is. The AddActorValues plugin does not accept fractions. So the Lich which had a .5 transparency level rounded down to 0. I've run into this before and know how to fix it.

Edit: Yup. Fixed. It'll be in the next release.

Edit #2: And in other news, just tested out migck's offering for NPCs to detect Life and Activate Nighteye whenever they are spooked, and it seems to work pretty good! I have to dig into it a bit to see how best to apply it to the SDR line.

saebel

That sounds really interesting. But has me wondering: is there a counter to "detect life"? To my mind, a stealthy character should be trying to break contact if they think someone has been alerted to their presence. Detect Life makes that really difficult. So far nobody seems to have even created a "flash bang", "blinding egg", or simple "smoke bomb" for the purpose. But I wouldn't expect even that to work against DL.

-Dubious-

Well, that's why the character uses detect life right? Also there is a range limit, and in terms of the bonus the detector gets, LOS is a factor as is intelligence. If you think about it, detect life just has globby images that determine a life form, but for all the perceiver knows, it could be an ally. So it's not 100%, but folks like vampires have a pretty darn good chance if spotting you.

Hmm. Then shouldn't the fact someone is in a crouched "sneak" position reduce the "globby image" to something more resembling an animal, and thus be more likely to be ignored? Circumstances permitting, of course.

-Dubious-

I dunno, you could argue it in either direction. Depending on what kind of animal they think you are, they'll either ignore you, or check you out to find out. If they have line of sight, it won't matter because they'll probably figure out who/what you are. If there is a wall in the way, then in becomes harder, but that's already taken into account. Whether you are crouched or not, the pink globs are still there, meaning they could potentially detect and identify you with a skill check. But if you are sneaking, your skill offsets theirs. In essence, it's all there. But perhaps you have a different perspective on it. Take a look at the formula in TES Edit, and you'll see how it is put together. (Make sure it is the 4.2 beta though).

But as you said, LOS is still a factor, so you could still theoretically sneak up behind a vamp with a wooden stake eh?

Yes. I did some testing with the Azura's Star quest. It's really really difficult, but not impossible. Migck and I are still working out the kinks and discussing ideas in terms of performance and whether or not there is some way to not make it Oblivion.esmin dependent for Nehrim users as well as other reasons, such as having custom spells/abilities for the NPCs instead of relying on the game's (in case another mod tweaks them). Also trying to figure out how often getting "spooked" leads to action, that sort of thing.

Side note: I was having trouble with Kurtees alternate detect life and night eye shading, because of the required OBSE plug-in. I got a tip from AndalayBay that the issue was due to the shaders that came with the plug-in. I just took a quick moment this morning to confirm that this works. If you only install the .dll, and kurtee's mod, everything works the way it is supposed to.
(huzzah)

Ooooo. Thanks for that tip. Might be the source of my persistent CTDs before I even get to the main menu, despite removing various recent additions. I'll check my shaders.

-Dubious-

You will learn I'm always right. Glad you got it sorted.

Just to clarify: this is Detect life effect and Night-eye shader http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36407
0.54, 4 February 2012 shaders we are talking about? Is kuertee aware of the issue? (I didn't see anything about it on his thread listing his mods.) Has it been discussed in some other thread?

-Dubious-

Yes, that's the one. Best night-eye shader there is, in my not so humble opinion. Kuertee knows about part of the issue because he has this in his install instructions:


I found I had to take that one step further and delete all the shaders that came with Night-eye Shader Switcher, so that only the DLL was installed. I might have neglected to mention that to Kuertee - I can't remember. But I'm also not sure how wide-spread a problem it is.

Rats. That didn't fix my problem, so I'm back to rebuilding my LO mod by mod. Again. But thanks for the info. Every bit helps.

-Dubious-

Minor status update. Just figured out how to filter NPC detections of the player in debug mode to just one NPC, which is whatever NPC you clicked on last in console mode. Yipeee!

Nice! Well done.

It took some trial and lots of error. It's REALLY nice, especially when in heavily populated areas, or in a cave filled with nothing but "bandits".

The trick now is how to present the data in a reasonable and readable manner (especially since there is quite a bit of it).

If I had the skills, I'd hook the TDS console command and replace it with my own data, but this works pretty darn well. Maybe someday I'll play with that. I also thought about maybe using menu cue or something. But that's all low priority stuff.

Finally had a moment to check it out. That mod is WAY too complicated for me to decipher what's going on, and how to apply penalties. Sorry.

However, the next version of SDR has a slight modification to the detection formula that takes into account both the detector's health/fatigue levels (already in current version) as well as the target's (this is new), modified by distance between the two. So, if you are so tired/hungry that you are taking damage to health or fatigue, then you are more likely to be detected. This applies in general to any health / fatigue effects. The worse your health, the more you are in pain, the greater chance of crying out, gasping. Same with fatigue, as there would be a greater chance of stumbling or saying/doing something that gives you away. These penalties also apply to the detector, as when they are in pain or fatigued, it is more difficult to be observant. That's the theory anyway. So perhaps that will accomplish what you want. Anything more than that will require collaboration from the author of BPN.

I don't know how SDR takes into account hunger, thirst, sleep, etc. but it seems quite easy to support BPN by just reading the BPN.HUDhunger, BPN.HUDthirst, BPN.HUDsleep, BPN.HUDcaffeine and BPN.HUDalcohol variables (0 to 100). So, if BPN.HUDhunger == 100 you would be 100% hungry, so higher penalties or whatever.

SDR doesn't naturally take it into account, it pulls data from other mods based on their mathematical algorithms and thresholds. With the other two mods, the equations were fairly simple: after x number of hours without sleep/food/drink, you would start accruing penalties, which would increase each game hour until it topped out a certain limit.

Basic primary needs has a much more complicated system, so I can't really use that as a model. My goal is that regardless of which mod you use, the penalties should be about the same for however long you are deprived. I overlooked the HUD status bar outputs, because I was specifically looking for parallels to the other two mods I have patches for so that they would all be treated about the same.

Even with the HUD outputs, I would need a "translation" of what those numbers mean in terms of at which point do penalties kick in. Optionally, I could just make something up, but I don't really plan on playing the mod, so it's a lot of work for a bells and whistles request that I'll never use. The other two were easy because the mod author spelled out exactly what the math was, and provided all the info I needed to adapt to it. BPN is much more vague in its description of it's inner workings.

If someone wants to reverse engineer it and figure out how the penalties should apply, and make sure those penalties are in balance with the patches I have for the other two similar mods, I'll throw in the programming, but I don't have the time or inclination to do the research myself.

BPN defines how hungry, thirsty or sleepy you are based on steps of 20. So, BPN.HUDhunger == 20 would be considered ''slightly hungry''. In detail it would be:

0 - 19 not hungry at all
20 - 39 slightly hungry
40 - 59 somewhat hungry
60 - 79 hungry
80 - 99 very hungry
100 starving

Same for thirst and sleep. There would be no point in looking at the actual penalties as you could configure the mod to even completely disable penalties.

Thanks for this. It gave me enough to go on. Next version will have built in compatibility patch for BPN, with (tentatively) SDR .ini settings as follows:

; ==================================================================; >> Basic Primary Needs Compatibility <<; ==================================================================; http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=37088; Requires SDR Challenging Detection Package; Penalizes the player's effective Sneak Skill in the Skill contest; when trying to avoid being detected.  Basic primary needs covers; a variety of needs: hunger, thirst, sleep, drunkeness, caffeine; The first four provide penalties, and the last one provides a bonus.; Each category is rated on a scale of 0 to 100, but no adjustments; kick in until you reach a minimum of 20 in a given category.; The maximum adjustment/penalty kicks in at 100.  When all adjustments; are applied, a character's effective skill cannot drop below 0, but; as you can see, certain "needs" are more damaging to your skill.; All effects are cumulative.set sdrPPiniQ.vBPNapplyPatch to 1 ; SDR: 1, 0 disablesset sdrPPiniQ.vBPNmaxAdjHunger to -30 ; SDR: -30, 0 disablesset sdrPPiniQ.vBPNmaxAdjThirst to -20 ; SDR: -20, 0 disablesset sdrPPiniQ.vBPNmaxAdjSleep to -100 ; SDR: -100, 0 disablesset sdrPPiniQ.vBPNmaxAdjDrunk to -120 ; SDR: -120, 0 disablesset sdrPPiniQ.vBPNmaxAdjCaffeine to 40 ; SDR: 40, 0 disables

The compatibility patch has been applied to SDR Perks and Patches (Oblivion) as well as SDR Perks and Patches (Nehrim)
As with all my cross mod patches, the mod has to be installed, and the "apply patch" option must be enabled, otherwise it won't do anything.

Let me know if you have any questions about how this feature works, or if you think the .ini instructions could be revised for better clarity.

Just to add to this, I'm using the 4.2 beta and get (seemingly random) disappearing corpses. I've seen it occasionally on various NPC's, goblins, creatures, etc. There seems to be no pattern to it, but it usually happens in "clusters" of multiple vanishing corpses. Usually if I save and exit, the corpses are visible on reload. And it may or may or reoccur for hours of gameplay. Not too helpful, I know. So, hopefully this is the same bug and you've got it squished for the next version. The strange thing is it happens even if I use:

set sdrIniQ.vNoChamRefraction to 0

which I would expect then SDR not to touch alpha values or chameleon settings.

Keep up the good work. This is still a killer mod.

I hope it's the same issue. The next beta is "almost" ready. I have to decide if I want to spend some extra time working on the new AI stuff that mgck came up in regards to detect life and night eye. I could release a beta of what I have, without the AI esp. If playing the current beta is annoying, I can post it real quick later tonight. My schedule is pretty packed (work/taxes), so it may be another week or two before I can fully focus on the detect life/night eye mod.

I'm also considering asking permission from SM to adapt his SM Combat, Run and Hide (or some other similar mod) and fold it in to the AI behavior mod. Maybe not right away, but at some point down the line. Basically, I want to keep the number of esps down to three: 1 core, 1 perks and patches, and 1 AI behavior. With .ini options so folks can choose to activate/deactivate whatever features they want, but maximize efficiency. But if I'm going to add another .esp just for AI behavior, it'd be great to build in features that would me to drop one of the other out of the load order.

Sounds great. Speaking only for myself, I'm happy to wait until the next version is ready to go.

On a completely unrelated note (It's my thread, so I can do that right?):

I finally got around to registering for steam, only to find that someone else has taken "saebel". I can only hope that they do not abuse that moniker, because I've never heard of anyone else using it, and I'd hate for anything to come back to me for something this imposter has done.

I am TheSaebel on Steam, just so that there is no confusion, ever.