They should also be helpful for house modders not afraid of a little scripting or looking for particular effects. Still, I hope these are appreciated by the AN users as well.

I'll keep looking for a means to get the engine to speed up processing on these things, amongst other things. The delay in starting up is not great, but seems quite random.

Vac

The reason the Systems do not start right up is because of Editor Markers -> Its a known engine bug (apperantly only by me as this exact guestion comes up at least 1-2 times a year) -> the only fix's are to either remove the editor markers or you can animate the Systems being on instead of relaying on Looping.

You can test if this is the problem very easily by just unticking Editor Markers Present within the BSX Flags -> which will make the Mesh visible in-game.

Ahh! Unfortunately I tend to fall out the community 1-2 times a year, so I've not seen that one before. Thanks for that!

I'll see about setting them up animated, I guess. Ugh. Extra work.

Vac

Interesting. But without editor markers, how is someone supposed to place them accurately?

Extra but simple and quick. I could add some NiControllerManager that does nothing to your nif and fixes that delay, of course if you want me to do that.

You have two options:
1) place not animated nifs with markers and live with particles delays
or
2) add NiControllerManager (with "dummy" animation) which fixes those delays to those nifs with particles and markers.

In the interests of speed ('cos if I tried to set it up it could take a while), I've asked trollf to do the modification he suggested on one of the VaPER nifs. Once I check it does as Saidenstorm said, I'll then integrate it into the other VASE nifs as necessary. As the weather nifs were displaying the worst lag, I'll probably update them straight away and release a v1.1. The falling leaf nifs also showed a delay sometimes, but not as badly, so I may wait until I get some more tree types covered before I release that update? Is there anyone using that for a mod that they're intending to release very soon? The replacement should be a simple drag and drop replacement of the resources and the actual behaviour of the systems shouldn't change any (as in you won't need to make any changes in the CS). I suppose I'll do the same with the blood drip and bubble stream resources as well just to cover my bases at some point (probably when someone makes a request for alternate/tweaked nifs).

This also explains why I never saw any delays on my VASE creatures as all of the new systems I added to creatures like the Vafurlogi I also had to animate.

Vac

Arthmoor just released Open Cities Reborn 0.8 update which uses the falling leaves on a few trees. Just thought I'd point that out. Otherwise I don't think anyone else has released a mod including them yet. Probably no need to rush since only two trees in Tamriel have them currently.

OCR change log below.

Oh, sweet! I didn't know that! Maybe I should also put a note in the readme saying I'd like to know when people release mods using them as I am quite curious. That's hardly an urgent thing though and I'm not going to be in any way upset by not knowing.

So... Have you been to Chorrol yet? How do they look?

Vac

Well, I'll be trying it out ASAP, darn tootin'.

TIme to switch (back) (again) to Open Cities Reborn, it seems...

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35652

This appears to fix the problem with the systems taking time to start up after the cell loads. At least, I am now no longer able to replicate the delay. Thanks to Saidenstorm for detailing the cause and to trollf for giving me a solution so quickly.

This fix will be replicated across all the other nifs I've made thus far to prevent any future trouble, but as the problem was not so obvious on the other nifs, I'm not going to rush through that just now and the fix will be included in all relevant future releases.

Vac

Yes, I'm using a couple of the leaf boxes. They look great, and getting updated copies that spawn faster will be good, but there's no huge rush on those. OCR is still in beta so it'll likely get at least a couple of interim updates before Cheydinhal sees any real progress toward getting done. Unless I'm just too good for my own good and there's nothing to fix

There's no reason the updated versions wouldn't be a simple case of a drag-and-drop replacement of the resources, with nothing needing changed in the CS. On the other hand, I really should do those other trees sometime soon. There's more autumnal trees in the CS, I just picked the six species with the biggest leaves first. Actually, right now I'm working on ALS and I should really be looking at stuff regarding nested systems. And stuff to do with Cobl and II. I have seriously too much to do/make.

Vac

Would it be within your power to make a particle effect that resembles paper(s) being blown up, around, and all over the place by wind?

Sure. That shouldn't be too tough.
The only, but very serious, issueright now is that I have a lot of stuff to make and I'm too busy right now to do any of it. Hopefully I'll get something done again soon. I was working on expanding the falling leaves boxes to all the CS's trees and shrubs. There's rather a lot and finding/making leaf textures for them all is very, very time consuming. I'm no texturer!

Vac

Thanks Vac, I'm just glad to know its possible.

I guess I'll make a request on behalf of the Hammerfell project for such a particle effect. I wouldn't worry about getting to it anytime soon, though. The quest and setting in which such an effect might be used is still in the very early stages of development.

Consider it on my extensive list. I'm not going to worry about it too much. If I worried about this stuff too much I would find doing it to be too stressful to be enjoyable in the time I do have to spare on it.

Vac

A quick status update:

I've finished re-making all the existing falling leaf boxes to use the system described by SaidenStorm whereby the particles start spawning immediately the effect mesh is loaded. So far it seems to be working perfectly.

I have also finished making textures for nearly all the trees and shrubs available in the vanilla game.
The following trees have been excluded:

• trees and shrubs from Mania, Dementia and Paradise because the existing textures are appalingly low resolution and I lack the skills to make my own from absolute scratch in those wierd and wonderful colours;
  
• the Forsythia shrub because it's just flowers, no leaves;
  
• the Yew tree because the needles are tiny and having grown up with plenty of time spent around Yew trees, you just don't notice these needles falling unless you're deliberately pulling them off yourself, or one lands in your eye;
  
• the "snow" versions of trees, I'd assume that the snow falls off the leaf when the leaf falls and so a regular "brown leaf" version should suffice;
  
• the burnt tree because it has no leaves;
  
• the painted trees, though I'm considering changing my mind on this.

I think those are all the ones I am missing. I hope to create the effect boxes themselves in double-quick time and then get on/back to other stuff.

Vac

Edit: Oh, I am also adding in some further reduced options for modders as well after chatting with Phitt. Basically the rates will change as follows

• Old Heavy -> New XHeavy
  
• Old Medium -> New Heavy
  
• Old Light -> New Medium
  
• New Light
  
• New XLight

Apologies for the triple post.

At this stage I have well over 100 effect boxes for the new falling leaves release and it's growing fairly fast. As there are simply so *many* items, it's becoming a little difficult to keep track of everything and ensure the quality remains high and error-free.

Are there any modders out there that would be willing to try out the pre-release resources and give quality feedback? The file paths shouldn't change between these versions and the final release, so effort made adding them as entries to your esp/esm and placing them in situ should not be lost.

Vac

Oh, I would LOVE to help you test these, Vacuity.

That's one modder. Anyone else? There's rather a lot of effect boxes and I don't really expect any single person to be using more than one of each kind (and probably not even that), so I'd be happy if there was anyone else willing to test for me.

Vac

How thorough of a test do you need? I'd be up for a basic run though.

I doubt I'd have time to test all of them but I can certainly give what few I have used a good run through to see how they're doing. That's if Chorrol doesn't kill me first. So... many.... windows....

That's three testers and Hanaisse has already been very helpful. I'm not sure whether I *need* extra testers at this stage, but as this essentially allows you to get hold of the resources early in exchange for a few PMs of feedback, and I am making a *lot* of boxes, other modders are still welcome to offer to help me check them all over.

Actually, I'm very happy that people are interested.

Vac

I just wanted to make a note of the http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36561 that uses your leaves, for completeness sake since I didn't see it mentioned in the thread. I've yet to try it out but it looks pretty good. Also this thread and your work in general needs more love because I think with all of the awesome aesthetic work that's been done for Oblivion, these kinds of animated effects have been sorely missing from the game, and with the aforementioned mod and Arthmoor's work implementing the weather boxes into All Natural the game is now just that much more aesthetically immersive!

While I'm at it, a suggestion: crumbling rock particles for the ceilings of ruins. I'll add more as I think of them if you're taking suggestions.

Thanks for the compliments.Not a bad idea at all. I'll stick it on the rather long list. I'm horribly busy at work right now, but hopefully should have free time over Chinese New Year to get some serious progress made on a few things, including VaPER.

Here's hoping!

Vac