This will be the 3rd time I have had to completely redo all of my casino dealers and gamblers. For some stupid reason the gamblers just decide to disappear for no apparent reason and it's driving me crazy (and pissing me off, too.)

I have 9 dealers setup on sandbox packages to go to their assigned table and deal for 8 hours. Then they simply sandbox around in the casino and restuarant until their work shift comes back up. Very simple, and they work fine.

I have the gamblers set to do basically the same thing except they have a travel package instead of sandbox and are linked to the blackjack stool they are supposed to sit at. The travel package is to the linked ref where they gamble for 8 hours and sandbox around the rest of the time with the dealers. They work fine too, but...

Twice now I have had all of them set up and working properly, and both times at a certain point if I make any changes to my plugin the damn gamblers just disappear! It's really frustrating to work 2 or 3 hours creating all these NPC's and packages, make sure they work properly and all of the sudden they just stop appearing in the game. It can be as simple as changing the radius from 500 to 1000 on a package they are not even using and they just go poof!

When you say they "disappear" do you mean that the records are removed from the esp and no longer show up in geck/fnvedit? Or do you mean that when you are in game, and you walk to these places, you can no longer find them? I have seen problems with NPCs that have no active package due to every package having a condition, and all the conditions fail. In this case sometimes they walk off to some distant point on the map, as if they had some default travel package to location 0,0 or something.

Where do your NPCs originate from? Do you have them placed in the casino or in a holding cell somewhere and do you have their packages set to editor or current location? I'm working on a companion mod, and if I am not careful about using clean saves for testing changes, she can "disappear" back to the first location where she enters the Mojave in the mod. I have placed her in a holding cell and move her somewhere at the beginning of the quest for the player and that package has her location as the marker I've put in the Wasteland and she goes there when she "disappears" on me.


Edit: It's not about clean saves. She goes back to her beginning spot if I change certain things in the mod that affect her; but not everything.

Yes, I mean they completely disappear from the cell in the game. They are still there in GECK but not in game. For example here's how it happened last night:

I had all 9 dealers and all 9 gamblers set up and their packages properly working. I noticed that one area I set them to sandbox in was set with too small of a radius and they all sort of clogged in one little area. So I exited out of the game, pulled up that package and changed the radius to 1000. I saved, relaunched the game to check their behavior, and they were no where to be found. As I said, it just don't understand it. All I did was change a friggin wander radius.

They originate from right beside the table they are linked to in the casino. They don't go to any other cells, just specific areas in that one casino cell. I have them set up with a linked reference to the stool they are supposed to play blackjack at. Their package is a travel package to the linked ref of the stool, and set to stay there 8 hours. Then they just hang out and sandbox. The sandbox package is set to anytime.

Have you tried PRID and a Moveto to see where they are?

No, that's one thing I didn't try yet.

I know it's a stupid question, but how do I figure out what reference ID I need to use? I was just so damn pissed off last night I just needed to unplug and shut everything down, lol.

Thanks!

In geck, hover the mouse over the name of an object or ref, and the formid will pop up in hover help. In game, use ~ to get a console, then left click on the object and its formid and name will show in white text at the top of the screen.

That's going to be a challenge as they're no where to be found, lol. Thanks, and I'll see what I can come up with when I get home. I swear, this stuff is going to make an alcoholic out of me yet. :banghead: :brokencomputer:

In the GECK, edit the NPC reference and you'll see the ref id for the NPC you've placed. Then go into the Fallout Mod Manager and see your mod index. So say your ref id is 010d289 in the GECK, and the mod index in FOMM is 05, then you use ingame:

prid 050d289

Then player.moveto

See where he's ended up.

Is it a new cell? If so, have you tried setting the master bit in your plugin just to see if it's a navmesh bug rearing it's ugly head?

Thank's for all the help everybody. I'll tell you, this is a great community!

Anyway, I did the player.moveto from outside in Primm, and it just teleported me back inside my casino where my NPC was supposed to be at, but wasn't. :shrug:

So, I decided I just couldn't waste anymore time and effort on this issue so I decided to go with a much, much simpler plan (but just as effective). I took another member's advice and cut my dealer staff from 9 to 6 and they now pull 12 hour work shifts, and sandbox the rest of the time.

Then I got creative (dangerous thing that is!) and decided to make some "static" gamblers that all they do is sit and gamble with no sandbox package. That was easy enough, lol. So now I basically have 10 random gamblers that will always be at their tables, but the cool thing is that I used the varStreetGambler as an actor base, so now every time you enter the casino you get different looking people so it sort of simulates a lot of change in activity.

So then I just added a few gamblers who just sandbox around the whole place, gamble some, drink and smoke some and so on. It really adds a lot of "simulated" life to the place, and it actually really does feel like it's a busy and bustling casino!

So I guess there's more than one way to skin a cat, and I think I finally have a final NPC package I can live with, even if it's no where near as complex as what I was trying to do earlier. Sometimes simpler can be better I suppose, lol. '

Thanks again for the help!