Fantastic!!!!!

Looks great.
You might want to add some small Path Grids where they meet, so they fight on the road instead of getting up on the rocks/bushes.
Although sometimes they just don't follow those things when they're mad anyways.

they are pathgridded... but npcs ignore these things when they are fighting

That really turned out awesome, Starfire!

My only concern is what happens when the leader of the surviving group is killed, but the others are spared (at least one of them). It's a minor thing really, but I thought I'd point it out. One could reason that they would stay there and wait for reinforcements or something.

What happens if you leave the cell or general area? Will they get deleted and respawned?

i have to tell you your modd is totally awesome amd so is your watching for errors good work

That is simply terrific Starfire! :clap:

The spacing for the AIfollow looks good too.

Thats what I am working on today, I need to find away of getting one of the remaining npcs to follow the other if the leader dies. I also am going to add a script that because I can't use leveled lists for this randomly enables the lead npc at a certain time in the morning and then deletes all the npcs at certain point in the night. Then the only remaining problem is getting the leader npc to spawn again even tho he already might have been killed before.... Perhaps an activator could be placed on the path that has the script for randomly spawning the lead npc at a certain time in the morning rather than as I first mentioned above the spawn script being on the lead npc itself (which obv wouldn't get run if hes dead or deleted) If an activator won't work I could have another npc that gets enabled, spawns the lead npc and then diasbles itself untill it is needed to spawn the lead npc again.

edit: wait I just released that an activator won't work because there always has to be an example of the lead npc somewhere in the game.... hmmm

edit: wait again surely I can just click the respawn checkbox when I make the lead npc's ( just like guards respawn currently )





cheers I am looking forward to getting these scripts nailed down so I can have some fun creating lots of different patrols and trying out the great ideas people have given me for npc vs npc combat.

Those were amazing! Well done, Starfire! It does, however, raise some questions.

• I can imagine myself coming across this and stopping to watch. I wonder what will happen when the fight is over... or even during the fight, if one of the groups spot me. I assume they'll react to me as they would regularly? friendly or hostile depending on my faction/reputation, etc.?
  
• I can't help but think that the mage in that second group of videos did more damage to his comrades than to the enemy, and of course that sealed his own fate as a result. Any way to fix that, or is that typical AI behavior?
  
• Do these fights take place in my absence? Will I come across the random remains of a fight? This would be very interesting I think, but... it leads to my next question.
  
• What happens to all the loot? This could end up being a very easy way to grab some gear. One could almost just follow these guys around waiting for a fight, then reaping the rewards. Is there anyway for the victors to clean up the mess? One would think they'd at least bury their own dead comrades, but maybe even take the gear of their enemies. I just don't know how I could resist the temptation to grab all this swag!

Keep up the awesome work!

That's something I've been wondering too. It could potentially be a bit unbalancing to come across a couple of dead, well armed NPCs, laden down with weapons & armour.

Would it be possible to automatically transfer items above a certain value from a dead NPC to the NPC who killed them? Does the game even register who did the killing (or dealt the final blow) when an NPC dies?

Anyway, really amazing how you're progressing with this..... :foodndrink: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66JBgT4WIA especially was interesting to watch, I actually felt the Mage was kinda panicking, throwing spells which ended up zapping her own side, and then desperately trying to cast again as the Ordinator's rushed toward her.... actually, I felt kinda sorry for her at the end..... :blink:

Some very good points you bring up there.

The mage can be given spells that do no area damage.. this would make it impossible for them to damage anyone other than their target.

At the moment the npcs are scripted only to attack each other if they detect the npc is within a distance of 3000... however that can easily be removed so that they fight whether you are there or not.

As for loot unbalanceing... I could add abit to the script that removes all their armor on their death... adding it to the other winning npc's could be impossible however. I could then add a note to the dead bodies inventory explaining that....

The dead bodies were slain and looted by "insert victors patrol name" and were left as an example to other "insert loseing patrols faction" that this is "insert victors faction" land and tresspassers will meet with the same fate.

That way it wouldn't be unbalancing and would give the impression of the victors looting the dead.

Lastly if you join in the fight... it pretty much boils down to who ever you hit, their patrol will then try to kill you before they resume patrolling. Also normal faction standings will apply.

Why not add some kinda script to the corpse so they can't take armor off the guards while they're down.It could probably come up with a warning message box saying something like "Maybe I should leave this before the other patrols come by.They might think I was involved."

Edit:Crap starfire beated me to it <_<

AWESOME!

So, in short. When I see my (in my current game) my Telvanni underlings patrolling, and getting attacked I can actually help them out =) How does this effect bounty if anything? I mean it should in a way but it would not make sense to be asked for the bounty by every guard you meet after being in a fight with both sides.

Is there a way to globally change disposition for a certain type of guards/faction? I think disposition is connected to bounty so that would mean those guards would have a higher bounty. The other guards should even ignore your bounty for helping them... hmm

Not sure if this is still a problem (based on your second edit) but couldn't you place the NPCs into a interior cell. It doesn't have to be connected to anything and they'd be in the game world... IIRC, PirateLord's done something similar in Creatures.

Oh, and looking excellent :thumbsup:

Cheers. I have had the npcs that follow the leaders placed into a interior cell for a while now.... my biggest problem atm is that all the scripts work great untill the second time around when the Hlaalu leader respawns and spawns the two patrol npcs next to him... they spawn fine but they won't follow him for some reason. I am sure I have to add some stuff to the followers script but I have no idea what. Heres the followers script atm...

Begin GuardFollownewif ( GetWeaponDrawn == 1 ) returnendifif ( GetCurrentAIPackage != 3 )AIFollow, SF_patrol_HL_AA, 0, 0, 0, 0 endifend

:shrug:

Sorry for yet another double post. Ignore that last post, thanks to some more helpfullness on the construction set board I have got the scripts working and I can get the patrols to respawn all day long Earlier quite a few of you suggested concerns about the npc vs npc battles making the game unbalanced due to the losers armor being left behind for people to scavange. Well I have now scripted it so that the npcs armor is removed on thier death and a note is added explaining that the winning side claimed it as loot... the note needs more thought seeing as not all the dead npcs may be from the loseing side but I will figure it out. Nyhow heres two videos that demonstrate the new scripting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APWs3mpYs6c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55XyrxuvK5o

Oh and atm the script for removing the dead patrols armor is based off a distance check looking for the enemy patrol as the npc dies. So if you spot a patrol on its own and kill it yourself then you can access the armor np.. I may change this however because the truely evil among you might just kill both sides and it would be odd not to get any armor from that... so I might base it off whether the npc has detected you have hit it or not, we shall see.



I still have to think about how I implement this.... because there are lots of options available.

Wow...That's all I can say on what has been achieved and what will be implemented later...thgis has, by far, surpassed MCA imo...I'm glad I chose to check this mod out when I first saw it...I can't believe what is being accomplished these days...

Keep up the amazing work...

~Edit~ This is not the place I should have posted about game issues...sorry for the clutter...

NPC vs. NPC battles are really cool, but I'm not so sure about the removal of their armor on death. It just looks weird IMO*, but then the alternatives (not being able to loot them or, for that matter, being able to loot them = unbalancing) are not so good either so I have no better idea. Personally, I would probably leave the armor and leave it up the player how to deal with it. If the player have so high encumbrance via high Strength or Feather so he/she can loot much of everything it probably doesn't matter much as the player is filthy rich by then anyway. And for a lower levelled player it would mean a lot of work to do it, alternatively he/she will get some stuff rather easily which wouldn't be too unbalancing IMO.

Anyway, I love the intrafighting in MMM/OOO for Oblivion so I'm excited to see it being partly implemented in Morrowind.

EDIT: *Also, I think it's a bit "immersion breaking" with items that just disappear from the gameworld.

Amazing work once again! You're on a roll. I thought it worked very well. Although I thought it funny they got looted in mid fight. But it works. I did want to ask, when you chose "Dispose of Corpse" the you got all the loot, but the corpse stayed. Is that another mod?

Also, are you planning on adding these patrols and other changes as patches? or as part of the core Mod? Overall, I like the idea of the addons/patches allowing folks to pick and choose. Some folks will like to keep things simple. That was part of MCA's problem ultimately... it was all or nothing and they had added too many hings a lot of folks didn't want.

Anyway. Fantastic work!

Perhaps there is another solution... how about I leave the armor on the dead npc's, but then have a distance check that detects if the winning npcs are still nearby if when you activate the corpse and if they are nearby the npcs will attack you... so you can have the armor but you will have to fight for it.

Actually thinking about it, I think carefull balanceing of how I place npcs and script the fights is the best solution. For example in the test video I have Hlaalu guards facing ofF against Ordinators outside Balmora... I just used it as an example but if it was left in the real game it would be unbalancing as the player would have a chance to get some indoril/bonemould stuff freely in a "starting zone". But consider that in the actual release version I don't think it would make sense from a lore perspective to have these two factions fighting. My plan is to have the Hlaalu patrol spawn and patrol fairly regualrly... say you have a 40% chance of seeing them. Then near the crossroads I plan to have a stationary group of wild bandits hiding in ambush that are set to attack when the guards patrol past... these will have like a 20% chance to spawn and then only if they detect the patrol is in the cell. So what we are left with is that the guard patrol will be seen fairly often but the attacking group will spawn quite rarely making the fight pretty rare to see and thus the chance of getting loot pretty rare. Also the bandits won't be much of a match for the guards being a lower level and with worse gear so it is very unlikely they will win the fight. This again will mean that the loot you will find near balmora will most likely just be some common clothes, iron weapons and perhaps some light armor. I think that by thinking cleverly about game balance when designing the encounters I can preserve game balance without breaking immersion and stretching game logic.



The bodies staying is part of the scripting. I can't use leveled lists to spawn my npcs for this so I have to script the respawn of the npcs when the player leaves the cell and is out of sight. If I allowed the corpses to be disposed of it would crash the game Its works out nicely tho because the game then clears the bodies when the patrols respawn. Also I have decided that this will be an addon and not added to the core file. I think stuff like this veers away from the starting brief for my mod and some people may not want scripted patrols and bouts of npc vs npc combat. Once I have routed out any issues with the current core file and cleaned up its scripts abit I will rerelease it as a masterfile I think.

Very good ideas. I also think balancing will be the key to this. Or rather, it would almost make the most sense if both happen, both that bodies does get looted by guards, perhaps even by others wandering the wilderness, aside from you.

I can see third parties taking advantage in seemingly knowing and spying to get their hands on loot as well.

And then there will be the occasional group that does not bother with the loot and just leaves it behind.

Good luck with future work =)

you could use MWSE and make the winning team burn the opponent's bodies

That sounds a really good approach. I think if you sometimes see a guard patrol, sometimes encounter some bandits (or Sixth House, rogue Telvanni, or whomever), sometimes see no-one at all but occasionally see both groups, and therefore some sort of confrontation, that would feel really natural & make things feel unpredictable.

The more random things are/ seem the better, in other words. (Except maybe in the above example the guards might sight & then attack the bandits .. as opposed to the other way round ... since low level bandits wouldn't be v. likely to attack well armed House Guards. Ambushes against Imperial or House patrols might come from Sixth House, Cammona Tong or other militant Dunmer, or by unofficial militia from opposing Houses, maybe?)

Also, you could maybe have several bandit spawn points (in the previous example), but each with a very low chance of spawning ... say 5% each, or something ... so the overall chance of seeing bandits somewhere along a particular route would be about the same, except you'd never know exactly where, but maybe that's overcomplicating things!? :wacko:

Not really over complicating it. atm I am trying to script it that the attacks only happen every 5 days so I could simply get the different attack groups to spawn on different days of the month.... as for who attacks who, that is a simple case of editing a distance check so it is all very doable.

My recommendation is to have the bodies teleport away after death. If you can make an NPC cast a teleporting type affect...I am pretty sure you can attack the same recall script onto the dead bodies right after death. In the readme just explain it that the one that killed them cast a spell on the corpse to "Clean up after themselves" or something?

Or you could have an NPC called Cleaning Crew that would teleport in right after the battle and "Look" like he's casting the spell...then attach the script to him so it ends up getting rid of the bodies...that might take some fancy scripting but I doubt it's impossible?