========= Useful Houses 2.0 ============

Author: Ole B?e, a.k.a. TheNiceOne
Date: Nov 24, 2010

OBSE 19b (or newer) required.
MenuQue 6 (or newer) required!

Dowload: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=32365


========= DESCRIPTION

Makes houses more useful, by adding penalties to repair and alchemy when not in owned houses, and bonuses when in owned houses.

Useful Houses changes the effectiveness of repair and alchemy, depending on where you are. All features that can be tweaked individually in the ini file. Note that the penalties never applies when being in a house owned by the player.

* Changed durability of repair hammers: (Default 0.8 / 1.8) This means that each hammer's breakdown chance is only 80% of normal when in owned house, but 1.8 times this when not being in an owned house. So if a hammer normally lasts for 10 swings, it will last for 10/0.8 = 12.5 swings in an owned house, but only 10/0.8/1.8 = 6.9 swings when not.

* Reduced max repair percentage: (Default 5-15) This means that when repairing equipment, you cannot repair them up to full health unless being in an owned house. By default, the penalty goes from 15% (when your Armorer skill is 20 or lower), to 5% (when your Armorer skill is 100).

* Repair of enchanted items before becoming journeyman: (Default 5-15) This is a bonus that only applies when being in owned houses (or friendly faction houses). It means that you can repair enchanted items even if not yet a journeyman in Armorer, although not up to 100%. The reduction goes from 15% (when your Armorer skill is 20 or lower), to 5% (when your Armorer skill is 50). So at skill 20, you will be able to repair enchanted items up to 85% health.

* Alchemy effectiveness penalty: (Default 10-70) This means that potions brewed when not being in an owned house, will have their effects and value reduced by 10% when your alchemy skill is 20 or lower, and effects/value reduced by 70% when your alchemy skill is 100. So an experienced alchemist is more in need of a good house to brew his advanced potions, but also normally has much easier access to safe houses.

* Alchemy effectiveness bonus when sitting down: (Default 10) This means that potions brewed when sitting down inside, will have their effects and value increased by 10%. This is cumulative with the alchemy effectiveness penalty, if sitting down in a non-owned house.


There are two settings controlling the effect of being in a house owned by a friendly faction (guilds, etc.):
* Repair of enchanted items before becoming journeyman: (Default enabled). This controls whether you can repair enchanted weapons in friendly faction houses in addition to owned houses.

* Friendly faction penalty : (Default 0.5). This controls how the penalties for being in non-owned cells apply when being in a faction-owned house. If you set it to 0, friendly faction houses have no penalties, and is treated as a fully owned house. Set it to 0.5 and you get half the penalties. Set it to 1, and you get full penalties.


Useful Houses generally improves repair, by making it deterministic how long a hammer lasts, and by adding a Repair All button. If hammer breakdown chance is 20%, instead of randomly have 20% chance of breaking for each swing, a hammer will last exactly 5 swings. The average number of hammers needed is the same, but the randomness is removed.

A "Repair All" button is available whenever you have enough hammers to repair all equipment up to repair health limit. Click it, and all items will be repaired up to their current repair health limit. This will cost you the same number of hammers, and giving you the same Armorer skill experience as if you had clicked numerous times to repair the items normally.

In the repair menu, the hammer durability will be displayed as (ex:) "Dur 5.6", where the number is the amount of repair hammer swings each hammer last. If having Darnified UI or DarkUI'd Darn, you will also see the repair health limit of normal and enchanted weapons.


========= INSTALLATION

Note that not only OBSE, but also the OBSE plugin MenuQue (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=32200) is required.

The mod is OMOD-ready and BAIN friendly, so installing with OBMM or BAIN is recommended.
For manuall install, install "Useful Houses.esp", and the "Ini" and "Menus" folders to your Oblivion\data folder.


========= COMPATIBILITY

This mod should be fully compatible with all other mods. Some mods may add houses for the player without setting the ownership accordingly. If so, the added house cells must be added to the "Useful Houses - Locations.ini" found in your "data\ini" folder. This can be used to add vanilla cells too, like an inn, if you want to be able to repair/use alchemy at full effect there. Houses claimed by "Claim That Interior" will be correctly treated as owned by you, and is therefore the perfect mod companion.


========= CHANGELOG

2.0
* Rewrote repair feature to be much more accurate.
* Made hammer destruction deterministic instead of random.
* Added a general hammer breakdown modifier, allowing you to make all hammers last a little longer/shorter - or never break!
* Added "Repair All" button.
* Added repair info text to repair menu.
* Made alchemy penalty propotional to Alchemy skill, so being at home is more important when creating the really effective potions.
* Added support for the Battlehorm Dwemer Forge. Using it is treated as being in an owned house when doing repairs (in addition to the skill increase using it gives you).
* Added a "Useful Houses - Locations.ini" file, where (vanilla or mod-added) cells that should be treated as player-owned can be added.

1.1
* Useful Houses now differs between fully owned houses and houses owned by friendly factions, with settings to control the difference.
* You can now use keybord when repairing items.
* The text of the popup message when you attempt to repair something you cannot, is controlled from the ini file, so change it there for different languages (or if you just want another text).

Quite intriguing. An interesting use of kyoma's new plugin :hubbahubba:

Added it for my next play through. Thanks!

Edit: Might want to include the http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=32365

Well now that is interesting! So you really did have some ideas for MenuQue... awesome!

This is a very cool idea... any plans for expansion?

Nice one, thanks!

The Nice One does it again. You have a real knack for coming with some truly unique mods. Though I really have to wonder about the sitting down part. Why should that make difference and can it be disabled in the game?

Thanks, added now



I actually started this mod about a year ago, but stopped since it wasn't possible to address specific xml elements in the repair list, in situations where you had two or more damaged items of same type. Then I lost the mod last time I reformatted my game PC, but was inspired by MenuQue to redo it.

Will definitely try to get it work with keyboard too, and will make different penalties for when you really own the cell (player houses) or your faction owns it (Guilds, etc.).

I would also like to add buyable smith resources (anvil, etc.) to add to the houses so that the best repairs would be done by activating it, but that is out of my league for now.


Well, it just thought it was a good way to simulate that you really prepared your alchemy, and a neat way to give a bonus, for those who prefer bonuses instead of penalties.

Of course. You can tweak/disable all of it. For the sitting down part, you have

; Set increased effect bonus for sitting down inside ,when using alchemy; The bonus applies even if you don't own the cell (but then together with alchemyPenalty)set tnoUH.alchemyBonus to 10

Set it to 0, and sitting down will not matter at all.

Ha! I knew it! Almost posted something to that effect, but I figured you'd get around to it. Besides being consistently awesome, your mods are also consistently configurable to the nth degree. Can't tell you how much that is appreciated!

Thanks

You can actually use Useful Houses to disable all effects except repair of enchanted items for non-Journeymen, and set the reduction to 0 - thus having a mod that simply lets you repair enchanted equipment before becoming journeyman, as long as you're in an owned cell. This is actually one of the few (only) things where I would like it easier than default. It have always bugged me that enchanted items was next to useless until you became journeyman in armorer.

I remember this idea in a brainstorming topic some time ago. How nice to see it brought into actual existence!

gothemasticator

Useful Houses mod and Duke Patrick's hypothermia mod will make staying in the house really worth it.

Plus with the Japanese cooking mod, everything will be complete.

Out of your league... Pull the other one :hehe:

Hmm, using Jroush Alchemy Overhaul (that is Alchemy Advanced - me and names...) guess that bypasses this?
Really like the repair thing - remember me venting some ideas about an Repair Overhaul (ok, I'll stopp with the overhaul thingy now....).

What happens when you have skills over 100? Using Elys uncapper.

:ahhh:

I have never used Alchemy Advanced, but from looking at its readme I would think they are compatible, or at least that they could easily become compatible. Useful Houses does its alchemy tricks by changing two settings, and those two settings are read and used by Alchemy Advanced. The question is if those are read after Useful Houses changes them or not. But if they are read by Alchemy Advanced first, it seems like it would be relatively easy to trick Alchemy Advanced into redoing its initialization.


Not much, or rather, Useful Houses doesn't change anything about that.

The features of this mod, are well suited/workable with that other mod ? http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=27951 ?

Is this a download or what, because the only link I found on the mirror tab "http://www.gamesas.com/redirect.php?site=http://theelderscrolls.info/?go=dlfile&fi leid=397 " and it goes to a german language mod forum. :huh:


@The Nice One - Thanks, well done and I will use it for my next character. :celebration:

Yes, I would believe any interior claimed by that mod will be recognized as owned by Usable Houses.

WOW...I wish I had thought of this! I never use my house ever, because I have a secret hidden storage container in the IC market place.

This is a great mod idea, but can you make sitting give bonus for ALL the fix and make activities? Even with armor repair you would be surprised how much of it (in RL) is done sitting down! Weaving damaged chain and pulling and replacing damaged rivets is a tedious job!

In my old Fatigue and Encumbrance mod I made a mini sitting game for sitting (sit to "quick rest" but take a chance of falling asleep) because I wanted to make sitting useful.

You you do not plan to do this then do you mind if I do this? "Make a sitting is Useful" mod?
It would have my quick rest mini game (to add a fatigue bonus to the player for a short time) , and give bonuses for all kinds of things.

I prefer a lean and mean load order, but yet again I cannot resist this one bit of icing (your mod).
Your percentage of mod presence in my load order is starting to get irritating!

So this works with mod added houses too?

I don't really have any plans for that, but I'll support you making it

Thanks. I look forward to your new hypothermia mod, btw. Together, those two mods will really make you feel lost in the wilderness - especially coupled with Map Marker Overhaul's feature of removing the player marker from the world map, and not centering it on the player


As long as the houses have set the player to the owner of the interior cells, then yes - and I would assume that was one of the basics of mod added player houses.

Version 1.1 is now available

From the changelog:

* Useful Houses now differs between fully owned houses and houses owned by friendly factions, with settings to control the difference.
It does this by adding two settings for faction-owned houses. One controls whether you can repair enchanted items there, and the other how much of the penalties for not being in an owned house that is applied. By default you can repair enchanted items, and get half the penalties of other non-owned cells.

* You can now use keybord when repairing items.
Works as normal now

* The text of the popup message when you attempt to repair something you cannot, is controlled from the ini file, so change it there for different languages (or if you just want another text).
So you can change the text for non-english versions, or if you just want another text:

SetStringGameSettingEX "sNoRepairMagic@You cannot repair this item now!"

Just edit the text after the "@".

The only interior my character owns is Hoarfrost and he could not fix anything there.

In fact he could not fix enchanted or unenchanted there.

He is not high enough level to fix enchanted, but after installing this he does not seem to be able to fix unenchanted either.

I will have him buy a vanilla house and test there.

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

So went to Bruma and plopped down 40,000 (not going to keep that save) for the house there. The character was able to repair normal items in there but not enchanted.

To be clear - when he tries to repair he hears the hammer banging and they even break but no repairing is going on at all while in the field or at Hoarfrost.

In the Bruma house he can repair normal items only.

In both instances he is given the notice that he needs to be journeyman of Armorer to repair enchanted. His skill level is only 31.

Yes, it does indeed work. Oboy oboy oboy (mickey mouse voice)

How'd you manage to solve not being able to use GetActiveMenuSelection?

I would like to know if this 'Useful Houses' mod is fully compatible with the below listed house mods. :talk:

http://lovkullen.net/Emma/oblivionbyemma.htm (particularly her cottage mods)
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22846
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=28382
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2556, http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29834


Perhaps you can also tell me if there some companion mods, which is not compatible with your mod (scripting & repair features etc) and of course if there is any mod at all.

Psymon: Can you enable debug in UH's ini file? It will tell what happens, whether the place is considered owned or not, and how much the mod will allow you to repair items to.

leonardo2: I don't know, you just have to test. Personally, I would consider player house mods to be slightly broken if they don't set the ownership to the player, but it is of course possible. But if the mod have given the player ownership, then it works as intended.



Due to the excellent new functions provided by MenuQue

I use iterate over all items in the repair list, use mqGetMenuChildStringValue to get their current repair status (user5). If user5 is too high I use mqSetMenuChildFloatValue to set user0, which is the trait that controls whether items can be repaired or not (set by the engine if the item is enchanted and you're not journeyman).


And I use mqGetMenuChildFloatValue to see if the item is in focus (the 'mousover' trait is 1), which works for both mouse and keyboard navigation. If in focus, I try to adjust the repair settings to reduce the effectiveness if the next repair attempt would bring the status above the limit set by this mod. This is unfortunately not exact, as I only have the repair %, and the same % can be quite a lot different health points, so it may end up with repairing it 1 % over or 1% below intended sometimes. This will be improved with OBSE 19's ref walking where I can check the exact health points of damaged equipment (I think).

But this trick cannot be used by EE in the barter menu, since there's no way to go from one xml item to the exact price, and EE's real value feature needs to be exact.

Looks like Hoarfrost Castle isn't player owned at any point. It's a public location.

Not being able to repair unenchanted stuff seems like a bug though.