#1 - Yes, please.
#2 - Love this idea. Would this apply to the first time they cast the spell? I really am loving this feature so far. Right now the moment I enter a cave with liches or vampires (sometimes other baddies as well), I can hear casting sounds going off like crazy, so a bit of a delay might be nice.

It's probably best to apply the delay to each time they attempt to cast the spell, because there is no guarantee that they will cast it (random chance), but if it is checking every frame, it's pretty much going to get cast.

So if I was to merge it into the main SDR core, not only would there be a rotation in terms if when an NPC updates itself, there would be an additional timer that would spread out when they do a "cast spell" check, so if they end up not casting the spell at that moment, instead of (most likely) casting it on the next frame, it might be several seconds before they check again. I'm thinking a default interval of five seconds is fair.

Update:
So far the new version I'm working on seems to be working very well, or at least it did for awhile. Folks weren't constantly casting Night Eye or Detect Life spells all the time. That is until I came across a Skeleton Hero who went into some weird infinite loop or something. I'm thinking there is some issue with them being able to cast anything in the first place, perhaps some animation restriction. It has to do with the undead and twilight vision. Still sorting it out.

I've never voted for anything on nexus before (didn't even realize there was a vote button...) but voting for this mod is a given now that I see how to. This mod is on my Must-Install list permanently because of what it does and how well it does it. Thank you very much for devoting so much time to making this mod -- I, for one, appreciate it!

I liked to see a merger of the NPC Behavior into the core (#4). I've got a large LO and esp space is precious.

Update: I *think* I've got it. I need to go to work, but when I get back, if there is anyone here who wants to beta test 4.5, let me know. It features the following:
- Removed the two SDR actor values from the menu that shows your adventuring stats
- Merged NPC Behavior into SDR Core.
- Added a delayer option for casting detection magic (night eye/detect life). The delayer starts when the NPC token is first added, and resets itself after each attempt to cast, or whenever the current night eye/detect life effects end. So you would get a delay of x seconds between when the detect life effect ends and the next attempt to cast.
- Regardless of detection level against the player (0-3), if the detector is in combat with the player, and the player is not in line of sight, they are clear to cast the detection spell (after the delay, if any).
- If the detection level against the player is > 0, the detector is clear to attempt to cast.
- Detectors will not attempt to cast if their disposition towards the player is greater than their aggression, if they have invisibility active, or are in the midst of casting another spell.
- Fixed an issue where selecting a specific NPC was not showing filtered debug data.
- Added frame counter to delay actors from doing anything for three frames when going from disabled to enabled. This will hopefully prevent a rare crash occurence when determining line of sight.

As an FYI, the following have NOT changed, but it will answer some questions, I'm sure:
- If a Detector was never assigned a power/spell in the first place, they will not attempt to cast.
- A cast attempt is determined by how much light is hitting the detector, the intelligence of the detector, and a random number between 1 and 100. If the random number is below the lighting chance + the intelligence, they will cast the spell.
- They have two chances to cast, if they have both a night eye and a detect life spell in their repertoire.
- Spells/powers are only semi-randomly assigned/determined once, when the NPC token is first added.

Play-testing notes:
With the new set up, performance was very good. With a level 19 character, I walked into a conjurer den, and although just about all of them were assigned a Greater Detect Life, they did not start to cast them all at once. This was with a five second delay in the .ini settings. You definitely had to be on your toes though, even with a five second delay.

What would be great is if I could get at least 3 volunteers to beta-test this out, and give me feedback on performance, and also what delay seemed to work best. Ideally, you might want to test out the scenario in something that everyone is familiar with, such as a cave of conjurers, or the Azura's star quest.

Let me know, and I'll get back to you later when I'm home from work.

saebel

=====================

Update: I'm having some weird problem in which whenever I try to save the latest Oblivion Perks and Patches, it removes SDR Core as a master and breaks itself. Can't release anything until I've sorted this out.

Update 2: Fixed the above. Seems to be working. Next up is Nehrim Perks and Patches.

I'm just about ready to release the next version. Anyone have any thoughts on the initialization messages printing to the console? I'm thinking about just streamlining them to saying the version number amd initialized, and get rid of all the "which attacks curve" is installed, or "sprinting activated", etc. In the beginning when the mod didn't do that much it made sense to me. But now it does SO much stuff, it seems superfluous.

On a side note, I just got a PM from someone who wants to translate SDR into Russian! I'm super excited.

Also the file of the month contest is going strong. Keep the votes coming!

The initialization message surely. Why not just make the others into debug messages controlled in the INI? By which I just mean a single debug or not switch controlling all of them.

-Dubious-

Do you mean some setting like: "dbgListActiveFeaturesOnInitialization", and if it is turned off, it will just give the version and initialized. If it is turned on, it will provide a list of "active" features/modules, something like: "SDR: Current Active Features include: Sprinting, NPCs Fade While Sneaking, Player Fades while Sneaking, NPCs Cast Detection Magic, SM Combat Hide for SDR, Dynamic Night Eye Shaders, etc. etc."

Something like that?

Yeah, mind-reader. Something like that.

-Dubious-

A reduced initialization message would be nice. I already have several other mods that do the same so every single time I load a game up, I get that. It's not bad with one or two mods, but it does get slightly annoying when you have more than that. Not really a big deal, but would be nice not to see so much.

New beta is available.

I'm fairly certain everything *should* work. Aside from hopefully resolving some really odd/rare crashing issues and other minor fixes, I think you will all mainly appreciate the merging of NPC Behavior into the Core, as well as the NPC Detection Magic delayer option, as well as a more streamlined and useful initialization message system. And for you Nehrim folks, I added the Journeyman Perk option of bypassing pressure plates and trip wires that was already available in the Oblivion version Perks and Patches.

I don't want to post it to the download sites just yet, so if you want to give it a whirl:
http://www.saebel.net/SDR/SDR_4_5_0_b1.zip

Note that you will have to uninstall the previous versions entirely. There are only a couple of new tweaks to the ini settings, but you will still have to use the new .ini files, so you will have to copy over your preferences from one to the other if you aren't going with the default.

A list of the changes can be found here: http://www.saebel.net/SDR/sdrVersionLog.php

The .ini User Guide included in the download has been updated with the new features, but I have not updated the guide on the website (and won't until I've officially released it)

The initialization message system is now made of three parts.
1. The basic initialization messages when the Core and Perks & Patches .esps are loaded get printed to the console. That cannot be turned off.
2. There is an initialization message that prints/streams live to the main window upon game save load. That can be turned off in the SDR Core.ini settings, but is on by default.
3. There is a verbose initialization message option that will print out a detailed list of all the active features and patches in the Core and Perks & Patches (if active). That can be toggled on/off in the SDR Core .ini settings. It is currently turned on in the beta so you can see how it runs, but I plan to have it turned off by default for the release.

Crossing fingers this will be the proverbial "it".

Edit: You should do a clean save of your current game after uninstalling the old version of SDR, just to be on the safe side, before installing the new version. Forgot to mention that.

P.S., for those trying out the beta (see previous post for link), the feature I could use the most feedback on is the delay timer for the NPC Detection Magic feature.

I sort of picked the 5 second default out of the hat, and although I have my own gut feeling of what I should change it to, I'd love some feedback from folks that have messed around with that setting. Try it on a scale of 1 to 8, just to see what it feels like when going into a den of conjurors or necromancers or vampires, especially if your character is at a higher level. The lower the number, the more often they will attempt to cast, the more challenging it will be to avoid being detected, and obviously the reverse will make it less challenging.

In my experiments, setting the delayer to anything above 8, and the feature might as well not be there. Setting the delayer to 0 defeats the purpose. Looking forward to the feedback.

I'm out of town until Monday, after which I hope to officially release this new version, so hopefully some of you will get a chance to try it out by then.

Edit: Was just messing around with the default delay, and 3.5 seems to be a better number than 5. So you may want to give that a shot when you beta test.

I am still on the previous version and had two odd experiences with some marauders. Normally they are easy to sneak around, but recently I ran into an Argonian archer who had a strangely high ability to detect me. I was invisible and carefully sneaking up from his backside, but he always turned around before I got within melee range unless I modded my sneak skill to 90+. I checked the numbers and sight, sound and his sneak skill was in normal territory, so he must have gotten some unjustified bonus.
Then in my next marauder dungeon I was again detected while invisible by a random marauder from about the same distance, but I didn't investigate further in this case.
But it seems like something is not right there sometimes.

I would need more data to pinpoint what is going on. If you could use the debugger to determine what the distance is between you and the detector, that might help. There is an automatic "collision" feature that is in that version which kicks off if the distance between you and the target is less than the shortest short range distance (default of 60, which is just under three feet). However, I don't know if the distance is calculated via center of mass to center of mass or closest edge to closest edge. If it is the latter, it's quite possible that the Argonian's tail is alerting the rest of him because you came within three feet of it.

Again, I'd need some more detailed data in order to do any investigations. Either that, or you can set the collision bonus to 0 and try it again and see what happens. If they don't turn around, that would pretty much confirm that is what is going on.

I have the collision bonus turned off so it can't be that. What other kind of information could I provide? I don't have a save of this situation anymore, so I can only wait if it happens again.

The only other thing I can think of is that invisibility has practically no effect against sound anymore, so that might have done it depending on what you were wearing, or if you drew a weapon once you were in range. That's happened to me before. I always make sure to draw my weapon while I am still far enough away that the odds of the detector hearing it are much slimmer.

Probably the most helpful thing would be a screenshot showing all the debug information at the moment you are detected. Just make sure to use the filter option, with debug npc to player set to 5, and filter turned on. In console mode, you would click on the desired detector character you want to show the debug for, and then "tdt" to turn on the streaming debug text. To have the debug settings "lose focus", in console mode, just click on anything that isn't an actor.

I decided to start up Oblivion again, so I downloaded the new beta and I'm looking through the ini file. I notice you removed a lot of the comments; are those in the manual now? I found them quite helpful and would be sad to see them gone entirely.

I also have a question regarding adding creatures/races to the vision list: are the terms in quotes keywords, or will SDR look for creatures with only that specific name? For example, if an entry says "wolf", will it apply to wolves only, or does it apply to dire wolves, arctic wolves, demonic wolves of doom, etc., as long as the word "wolf" is in the name?

I moved a lot of the extra details to the .pdf manual because folks were complaining that the .ini file was getting rather obnoxiously long. So I trimmed it down to the important stuff. If you need more elaboration, the .pdf guide is the place to go. Also, the entire table of contents of the .pdf guide is hyperlinked, and the order parallels that of the .ini file by topic, so it shouldn't take you long to look up what you need. At least, that was the idea. I haven't had any negative feedback on the .pdf yet.

With the creature name, that is the folder name where the creature's skeleton.nif is located. If I recall correctly, all dogs and wolves use the same folder. Mountain lions and cats both use the MountainLion folder.

Also, I don't know if you saw the link for the 4.5.0 beta. You should probably download that one. I'm going to be officially releasing 4.5.0 soon, and it only has a few minor tweaks and fixes compared to the beta.

Yeah, like I said, I figured you'd moved it all to the manual. Good to know - it's probably better off there. I just wanted to see it *somewhere*, instead of disappearing entirely.

Ahh, okay. Good to know.

Edit: Another question: What about stuff like MMM? Pahmers, for example, are in the mmm-lc/pahmer folder. If I want to add Pahmers to the Night vision group, do I add "pahmer" or "mmm-lc"? The mmm-lc folder contains a number of other creatures as well, so if it's the latter, I'd have to exclude pahmers (fine by me, really - they're bad enough as it is )

Yup, got it.

The script uses the "GetModelPath" function, and it is looking for everything between "Creatures\" and "\Skeleton.nif. I don't have MMM installed, but if they installed the meshes in a directory path like: "Creatures\mmm-lc\pahmers\Skeleton.nif", then I think in order for it to work, you would need to add this line (assuming you are giving them twilight vision):
set sdrIniQ.vVLCTwilight to sv_Construct "%z|mmm-lc\pahmers" sdrIniQ.vVLCTwilight

If they put it outside of the Creatures folder, which I suppose is possible, I'll have to come up with some other way of calculating it that can ignore all but the last folder. Let me know how they have it set up, and I'll see what I can do.

Edit: In the next as yet to be released version, I've fixed it so that all you need is the folder name in which the Skeleton.nif resides for the creature(s) that you want to assign. It still uses GetModelPath, but it doesn't matter what the rest of the path is, as it strips all of that out, and only grabs the last folder name.

Sweet! You rock.

When the final version is released, I'll post a list of races/creatures I've added for each vision type, and I encourage others to do so as well - we could have a resource for people who use those races/creatures to add them to their own ini files.

That's a great idea.

I can even set up a dedicated page on the main website that can breakdown all those lists by mod, so folks will be able to cut and paste them right in.

Actually I wouldn't mind having the list before the release, so I can have the page built ahead of time. And the release is going to be very very soon. Probably in the next day or two. It's already finished, I'm just play-testing and debugging, most of which has already been completed.

Sure thing. Here's what I've added so far:

Twilight

set sdrIniQ.vVLRPeriph to sv_Construct "%z|Sea Elf" sdrIniQ.vVLRPeriph (RBP)


Night

set sdrIniQ.vVLCNight to sv_Construct "%z|Bat" sdrIniQ.vVLCNight (MMM)
set sdrIniQ.vVLCNight to sv_Construct "%z|Werewolf" sdrIniQ.vVLCNight (MMM)
set sdrIniQ.vVLCNight to sv_Construct "%z|Pahmer" sdrIniQ.vVLCNight (OOO and MMM)

set sdrIniQ.vVLRNight to sv_Construct "%z|Tabaxi" sdrIniQ.vVLRNight (RBP; covers all the other Khajiit races)

I am still on the previous version and OOOs Spirit Warriors always detect me when they get close and have LOS on me, even when I am invisible and do not move. All detection values where at 0 except the sound but I think that always goes up after you have been detected, I don't know why. It felt like for whatever reason the short range light of sight bump applied to them despite my invisibility.

And I cannot get the detection values for sinlge actors anymore. I turned it on in the ini, clicked on an actor and turned debug text on, but nothing showed up. Anything I missed?

Honestly, I can't be sure, since I don't have that version in my dev testing, and there have been a lot of fixes since then. The only thing I can think of is that they were assigned and casted detect life spells, against which invisibility doesn't help. But I've never installed OOO, so I'm just guessing.

I am going to release the next version tonight. I did a lot of play testing this time around, checked every debugging feature, double checked every quest, script, token, etc. So it should be solid. Switch to that and let me know how it goes.