Deck16

Making a Unique-Voiced Follower in Skyrim - Part 6

Tue, 29 May 2012 16:26:00 +0800

I Have Some Things to Trade With You

In part 5 of this guide we got your follower to follow you, but they were unable to do anything else that a follower can normally do, like trade and wait… and even leave.

Let’s fix that!

To see all parts of this guide that have currently been written, click here.

Read on for part 6 of the guide.

DialogueFollower, Player Dialogue Tab

In part 5, we messed about with the quest called DialogueFavorGeneric. We talked about DialogueFollower but didn’t actually touch it. That’s about to change.

Open the quest DialogueFollower. (Under Character > Quest > Generic.)
Notice how the Quest Data tab has no Quest Dialogue Conditions? That’s good, we don’t have to mess about with it like we did for DialogueFavorGeneric.
Click on the Player Dialogue tab. This should look familiar from part 5.
Under Branches, you should see a list of items. Click on some to see it populate the Topics pane. Notice how a few of the Branches have multiple Topics. We’re going to have to go through pretty much all of these.
For now, click on the DialogueFollowerDismiss branch and the DialogueFollowerDismissTopic topic.
Again, notice the Topic Text. In this case it is “It’s time for us to part ways.” So all these topic infos underneath are showing what various followers say in reply to being told to “part ways”.
Pick one that has a specific Speaker NPC rather than Is Voice Type. Don’t pick a housecarl, they have extra stuff we don’t need. Go for someone like Jzargo or Onmund.
Right-click the topic info you chose and click Copy.
You can ignore any error messages that might appear.
Find the copy you made, it should have an asterisk in front of it.
Open the copy with a double-click.
Change the GetIsID condition so it points to your actor.
You do not need to worry about editing the GetInFaction condition, as you did in part 5, because it’s simply not necessary.
Edit the Response Text, supplying audio and correcting subtitles.
You’re done. Click OK to exit the Topic Info window, and if desired click OK to close the quest window. You may get some errors when closing the quest window… I don’t think they matter.

You just added voice for the “It’s time for us to part ways” conversation option, which will enable that functionality for your follower. Save your mod and go ahead and try it.

Now we need to repeat the above steps for other follower functionality. We need to repeat the steps a number of times. In steps 5 and 6 we’ll be dealing with a different topic each iteration. (You’ll need to look through the various Branches to find these Topics.) The topics are listed below, along with a description of when they are spoken:

DialogueFollowerContinueFavorState
This speech never seems to be triggered. As far as I can tell it is useless. You don’t need to bother with this topic.
DialogueFollowerDoingFavorBlockingTopic
You’re giving the follower a custom order, but then you’ve clicked on them. They have a confused reaction, not knowing what to do with themselves.
DialogueFollowerEndFavorState
This speech never seems to be triggered. As far as I can tell it is useless. You don’t need to bother with this topic.
DialogueFollowerFavorStateTopic
You’ve asked the follower “I need you to do something.” Note that the speech they say here they won’t be said if you simply hold the use key on them.
DialogueFollowerFollowTopic
The follower is waiting, either because you told them to “wait here” or you gave them a custom order involving standing somewhere. You’re asking the follower to stop waiting and resume following. Note that this is totally different to the speech where you recruit the follower for the first time, or after they’ve been dismissed.
DialogueFollowerTradeTopic
“I need to trade some things with you.”
DialogueFollowerWaitTopic
You’ve told the follower to “wait here,” the implication being that you’ll be back for them. This is different to the speech where you dismiss them.
FreeformSkyHavenTemple
Anything starting with “FreeformSkyHavenTemple” you should leave, as it’s actually speech for the NPC Delphine.

After you’ve done all these changes, save your mod, and try out your follower. They should now have all of their functionality restored!

DialogueFollower, Favors Tab

You may have noticed your follower is still missing speech for being given custom orders. They will still do the orders (at least the ones that are physically possible and not morally objectionable) but do so in silence. Let’s rectify that.

You are going to follow the same set of instructions as above, multiple times, except making these changes:

In step 3, you should click the Favors tab instead of the Player Dialogue tab.
Step 4 will be a bit different. The Favors tab has no Branches, only Topics.
In step 5 you should work on one of the five Topics. More information about the Topics in this tab are shown below.
Step 6 is fairly pointless as the Topic Texts for things in the Favors tab are always blank.

And here are the topics you’ll be editing, and when they’re spoken:

Show
Spoken by your follower when you give them a custom order. If you do this by holding the use key, it’s all they’ll say. If you do this via the “I need you to do something” conversation option, they’ll say it after what they say in DialogueFollowerFavorStateTopic.
Agree
You told the follower to do something and they’ve agreed to do it. They say this as they start doing whatever it is you told them.
Refuse
You’ve told the follower to do something physically impossible, such as sit on a chair occupied by another character, or take an object that is out of reach. Sometimes they’ll refuse straight away, sometime they’ll attempt to follow your order and refuse after finding it impossible.
ExitFavorState
You exit custom order state, such as by pushing TAB on the PC. Most followers make a remark along the lines of “is that all?”
MoralRefusal
In part 1, under the section “Behaviour”, we set your follower’s morality. Depending on how you set this, your follower will object to orders to attack innocents or steal property.

Save, and try your follower again. They should now be fully functional and voiced when it comes to follower actions!

Advanced DialogueFavorGeneric and DialogueFollower

That’s it for the quests DialogueFavorGeneric (see part 5) and DialogueFollower. We won’t be coming back to them in the rest of this guide. (Well, not unless I’ve forgotten something.)

But before we leave them alone, do you remember what we talked about in part 4, under the section Advanced Hello? We discovered how we can apply randomness and special conditions (such as only saying certain things if the player is wearing a hat) to speech.

There’s no reason you can’t apply the lessons learnt from that section to the speech in these quests. For example, you could have random lines for your follower’s acceptance to trade with you, so they don’t sound so monotonous. Or you might have your follower sound scared if you tell them to “wait here” while in a dungeon. Or maybe they could say something sexist when asked to follow a female player character.

(Don’t forget you can re-order the Topic Infos with the left and right arrow keys, should you need to make a random block.)

It mostly depends on your imagination and what audio you have access to. You might get some ideas as this guide proceeds. You can always come back to these quests and add more speech.

I would just suggest you tread lightly. If you make a mistake in these quests you can destroy not just your follower’s functionality, but the functionality of all Skyrim followers. Consider making a backup of your mod.

What’s Next?

Your follower’s speech capabilities are certainly filling out. Still, there’s a lot more we can do. In the next part of the guide, we look at things your follower can say in combat.

Click here to see all parts of this guide series that have currently been written.

My Hat, it is Trivalent

Tue, 29 May 2012 01:18:00 +0800

This is just too funny not to chronicle.

So, I was reading Pharyngula. There was a little article poking fun at a website promoting psychic bull-crap. Mildly amusing. But I noticed there were hundreds of comments. My penchant for vox pop roused, I clicked through to look.

Now, the comments seemed to have reset themselves or some-such so I was coming in part-way. But it was obvious that someone called erodinbladewin was claiming to have telekinesis or similar and the regulars were poking fun at him.

That’s more amusing but still not what I want to share. Read on…

So erodinbladewin says:

My evidence of my abilities will come if someone with a real lab will be nice enough >.>

And a fellow named Louis responds:

Eronbladewin,

I work in a real lab, what do you need doing?

Louis

This “nice guy” approach seemed to appeal to erodinbladewin, who had up until now been in a slanging match with the regulars. Below I recount the conversation they had, with my interjections in indented italics. (I have edited the posts somewhat to improve flow, but go ahead and click on the links if you want the full gore.)

Eronbladewin: Louis, people have been looking for documented proof of supernatural abilities for as far back as recorded history shows. If we can get along as people, im willing to give a shot at making that documented evidence. I have given evidence of these abilities to others, but im not the best with them, so it only works off and on. It may be possible to isolate these “on” times, and get consistent evidence that can be put together and presented.

Louis: Well I’m a scientist, you’re going to need to give me details. We’d need to agree a precise experimental protocol and not deviate one inch from it, what positive and negative results would look like, how to blind against experimenter bias, that sort of thing. Reckon you can do all that?

Eronbladewin: I need a lab which has a machine that can stabilize electromagnetic fields. If you need evidence of the existence of an electromagnetic field around the human body, i will put myself up for study for that, as well.

Louis: That’s not very helpful, I really am going to need something a little more concrete than that. Give me a précis of what this experiment would be testing and what it would, roughly, look like, please.

Eronbladewin: Basically stabilizing the field around my body and using a process known as energy manipulation, or EM for short, to attempt “telekinesis.”

Louis: Okay, still a good bit rougher than I’d hope. Can you elaborate a bit more, please?

After all, since the human body can generate and maintain a moderate static electric charge under the right conditions, I’d say the fact that there exists an electromagnetic field around the human body. The human body, being composed of “standard” baryonic matter that interacts with the electromagnetic force, so I’m not sure what you are proposing is really very revolutionary.

As for a machine that can “stabilise an electromagnetic field”, well again, I’m going to need a lot more precision. The NMR machine in my lab uses very strong magnets and certainly has a stable field and indeed is affected by external electromagnetic fields, is that about the sort of thing you need? If so, precisely what do you need to do with it, and what sort of interaction do you propose? Also, what is the output of this experiment going to look like? How will we know if this field of yours is stable or otherwise?

Erodinbladewin: Well, louis, you have more information about the “aura” than i do. I would need the machine to be able to stabilize the field and move it closer to my body. In my ownpractice, i have found i a have much more success when my field is closer to my body than when it is farther away. The closer the better.

In my experience, my field has been at its best when i feel slightly dizzy, but not enough it effects my vision. I really dont have much to go by, because ive used the EM method, not the aid of a machine.

The experiment is just to see if i move an object with the energy in my body. Do you have a room which you can control the environment inside it, up to and including the air pressure?

I love what Louis is doing here. Attracting flies with honey and all that. Better yet, he starts introducing scientific jargon to expose the ignorance of the supposed telekinetic.

Erodinbladewin:I have had a video that demonstrates telekinetic ability, but i was not able to rule out factors such as air movement from the movements of my body, a random occurence of pressure change, or the paper towel falling off the roll on its own, then being pushed by the aforementioned air movement. I did two experiments with paper towels. One just was just a spur of the moment attempt, the second was an attempt to replicate it, in which the towel slowly moved down roll, instead of the quick snap of movement i got the first time.

Louis: Okay, that’s really a partial repeat of what you’ve already said, not incredibly helpful I’m afraid.

So we “stabilise your electromagnetic field”, details not given, standards not described, somehow, then we watch in awe as you move a pencil across a room? Or would a pencil not work, does it have to be a better conductor?

Would you, for example, need any form of amplification of your electromagnetic field? Perhaps in the form of some suitable clothing, so the stabilised field was channelled appropriately? If so, and your mind, your brain, is the epicentre of this phenomenon would this take the form of some kind of cranial apparel? In the lab we could experiment with a variety of materials for this, all non toxic and environmentally sourced of course. We have a good stock of a thin layer of a trivalent, group thirteen, third period, metallic element coated with a tight layer of its corresponding stable covalently bound dimetallic trioxide that we could start with. The bonus is this material would not interfere with the NMR machine to any appreciable degree. So that’s one source of experimental error ruled out.

Now we know for sure Louis is teasing. Did you get it? Look at a periodic table. Go to row 3 (“third period”), column 13 (“group thirteen”). What’s that? Aluminium. Trivalent is another clue, as is the mention of a “tight layer” of aluminium oxide. (It seems I remember a lot from high school chemistry.)

If you’re still confused about the reference to a hat made of thin layers of aluminium, he’s talking about a tin foil hat.

Don’t feel too bad if you missed the reference(s). Not many commenters chimed in with knowing-winks of comments. Some did, and there was a brief conversation about how it’s funny a tin foil hat is actually not tin.

Consciousness Razor: I don’t know…. Maybe this is old hat, but I figured they always used a group fourteen, period five metal in these situations.

Louis: That’s actually a common misunderstanding. As per your previous suggestion, I thought cranial apparel an appropriate control measure for these experiments. However, a largely tetravalent, group fourteen, period five, metallic element is usually not the major component element of commonly found laboratory or household thin films and layers.

We could try said element, after all it is sufficiently malleable to be made to form such thin layers, but the cost, toxicity and ease of availability makes it a less favourable candidate, despite its etymological advantages. I do have access to period five and six, group 11 metals in thin layer form, admittedly it might be noticeable if I use a suitable amount to form a useful piece of cranial apparel.

Anyway, Louis and erodinbladewin continue to talk about how to set up the experiment. The topic comes to what would be a good item to move telekinetically.

Louis: I have a suggestion, in fact it would be something that would be very useful in my lab. I can provide a small, completely environmentally controlled glass flask. Sealed to basically any degree you can reasonably desire. In the flask I can place a small magnetic object coated with teflon to minimise any conductive or frictional forces. I can then place a transparent barrier in front of that flask so that no physical interference can occur.

You could then don the suggested amplificatory cranial apparel comprised of a thin layer of a trivalent, group thirteen, third period, metallic element coated with a tight layer of its corresponding stable covalently bound dimetallic trioxide to help stabilise your electromagnetic field. You could even stand next to the NMR machine if you like, that will certainly be strong enough to overwhelm any minor fluctuations in your electromagnetic field, and try to move the small teflon coated magnetic object in the flask.

Just a quick question, you don’t have a pacemaker or any metallic implants do you? They would not be safe in the presence of the NMR machine, due to the strong electromagnetic field.

If the initial experiment was successful we could do follow up experiments with fluids of different viscosities, perhaps even solutions of various materials under various different conditions and you could see if you could keep the teflon coated magnetic object moving in a circular motion in the flask for extended periods of time, pre-agreed by us of course.

What do you think?

I believe Louis is making reference to a magnetic stirrer. He is basically saying that eronbladewin could be a handy piece of lab apparatus if his powers are real. Of course eronbladewin has no idea.

Erodinbladewin: That sounds like a plan, Louis.

Louis: However we might run into cervical discombobulation due to an excessive matter quotient, or mass factor. After all, the cerebral impaction/compaction process I have in mind will be in the kilonewton range and delivered with a number three, eight kilogram, wooden handled, rubber headed impulse momentum transference device (for electronic purposes obviously).

I believe that with the correct folding, and possibly descending to a number two rubber, two kilogram impulse momentum transference device (in accordance with Newton’s laws, naturally), and perhaps some structural reinforcement with material taken from Ochroma pyramidale, we can dampen the concurrent electromagnetic field destabilisation. Even in the circumstances of my colleagues coming in and disturbing us.

In other words, hitting eronbladewin with a rubber mallet and/or balsa wood. (I think?)

Louis: Now, where are you? I am in the UK, quite close to London, so ease of access via Heathrow/Gatwick if you are abroad is simple.

I can sort the paper work, and confidentiality agreement which you’d need to sign, to grant you access to my laboratory. However, and I am sorry to say this, the initial experiment will require some moderate set up costs. Nothing severe, on the order of a few hundred UK pounds. And a bottle of champagne for celebrating our demonstration, if successful…and commiserating if not of course.

That said, if you can do as you say, then the subsequent experiments would be something I can pay you for. After all, my company, colleagues and I would cheerfully pay good money for something that could move a small teflon coated magnet in a glass flask under controlled conditions. We’ve done so in the past!

Erodinbladewin: Well,i live in a small town in florida named wewahitchka. Ill have to ask my boss for an advance on a couple checks. I cant guarantee this will be something i can get done within the next month. it more likely be between 1-3 months. The managers at the store i work at make 9.50 USD an hour, i make 7.90 USD an hour, so im sure you can see why a sales associate would have to scrape his coin jar for this. 26 hour weeks, by the way.

I look forward to this with great anticipation.

Louis: Oh don’t ask for an advance, that’s not needed. Really, for a discovery this profound, we can wait until it’s appropriate. I totally understand the difficulty of gathering substantial sums of cash for outside interests. And on small wages, that’s extra tough.

In fact, just to show you I’m not self interested, your local university would have the facilities for this. In fact, I know a guy called Harry Kroto at the Florida State University in Tallahassee who could easily grant you access to the facilities needed to do this. I’ve met him several times, he’s an absolutely charming bloke. Even better, unlike me, he’s a very famous scientist and has a Nobel prize, so who better to help you with your experiments?

It’s a whole lot cheaper and easier to get to Tallahassee than London I bet!

If you google his name you’ll find his contact details. Tell him I sent you and to call me. He knows my number.

Erodinbladewin: I will contact himas soon as i can. Thank you for your help. I appreciate your civil manner in this conversation.

Louis: Oh no worries. Glad to be of service.

Be sure to print out/copy the post I made at #114 (and perhaps also my #116 and #117). All the basic technical details are there. Professor Kroto should be able to help you with the actual implementation of the plan very well. Or at least direct you to a departmental colleague who would be interested. As you can imagine, as a Nobel Laureate, Professor Kroto is very busy.

Sadly the only other Nobel Laureate I have had (far more) extensive personal interaction with is in the UK, and this isn’t a field I think Fred would be interested in.

Erodinbladewin: No problem. Thanks for the referral, i will be sure to put out conversation into notepad and save it.

Erodinbladewin doesn’t speak again. Commenters, including Louis, wonder whether Erondinbladewin was for real or just the most brilliant Poe ever. We can only hope he’s for real and some poor Professor in Florida will soon get a very bizarre email…

Making a Unique-Voiced Follower in Skyrim - Part 5

Wed, 23 May 2012 13:50:00 +0800

Getting the Follower to Follow Again

In part 3 of this guide we broke your follower’s ability to function as a follower. As promised, we’re going to start repairing that functionality.

To see all parts of this guide that have currently been written, click here.

Read on for part 5 of the guide.

Which Quest is Best?

When we taught your NPC to say hello in part 3, we created a new quest. As has been mentioned before, the majority of your follower’s dialogue will be created in that quest.

But not all of it. Follower-related functionality goes in a pair of existing quests that controls follower functionality for all follower characters in Skyrim. While it might be possible to write our own quest from scratch, all the scripting that would be required means it is easier just to “piggy-back” on these existing quests.

So how do we do that? The step-by-step instructions are below, but to summarise, we duplicate certain bits of follower functionality of unique followers like Cicero, Jzargo and Mjoll and tweak the copies so they refer to your follower instead.

Before we get started, let’s meet the quests we’ll be tweaking and what bits of follower functionality they contain. You can find both in the Object Window under Character > Quest > Generic.

DialogueFavorGeneric

“Follow me. I need your help.”

DialogueFollower

“It’s time for us to part ways.”
“I need you to do something.” and related dialogues
“Follow me.”
“I need to trade some things with you.”
“Wait here.”

DialogueFavorGeneric

Let’s start with DialogueFavorGeneric because it is the simpler of the two, and it contains the most important follower command — the ability for the follower to join you in the first place!

Open the quest DialogueFavorGeneric. (Under Character > Quest > Generic.)
Click the Quest Data tab.
Look in the Quest Dialogue Conditions. See how there’s an entry for GetIsVoiceType? That condition is saying that only NPCs with voice types in that list (DefaultNPCVoiceType) are allowed to use entries in this quest. Your follower’s unique voice is not in that list, so we need to modify these conditions somewhat.
Right-click inside the Quest Dialogue Conditions pane and select New.
Create a condition as per the following:
Condition Function: GetIsID
Parameter Button: <the ID of your follower>
OR: checked
everything else: leave as default
Click OK when you’re done.
Order is very important. Re-order the entries (using the « and » buttons under the pane) so you end up with this:

(In case you can’t see the image, it goes in this order IsCommandedActor, GetIsID, GetIsVoiceType, GetInFaction.)
Putting the GetIsID with the OR field checked means that this quest is now suitable for NPCs with the DefaultNPCVoice type OR NPCs whose ID matches your NPC’s ID.
Click the Player Dialogue tab.
Under the Branches section, find the entry that reads DialogueFavorGenericFollowBranch. Click it.
Notice that there’s only one item in the Topics section. It is already selected so we don’t need to click it. But bear in mind some Branches have multiple Topics.
On the right we have a whole lot of topic infos. These represent how the various followers respond to the request to follow them. Notice how most are identified by Is Voice Type rather than Speaker NPC.
Notice on the top the Topic Text. It should say “Follow me. I need your help.” This tells you what these topic infos are in reply to and it is often more meaningful than the Branch or Topic names.
Let’s get cracking. We want to duplicate one of the topic infos so we can make it for our follower. But which one? It’s usually best to choose one that specifies a Speaker NPC rather than Is Voice Type. In this particular case Mjoll is the only candidate. Find her text where she says “I’m right behind you.” Right-click it and select Copy.
You might get an error. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean anything too harmful. Click OK to get out of the error.
You should now see two instances of “I’m right behind you.” We want to edit the copy. Look for the one marked by an asterisk (*) and double-click it to open it.
This is the topic info screen, which you’ve seen before. Notice how it has some information in the Script Name pane and a whole heap of Conditions. It’s handy that we just duplicated Mjoll’s dialogue otherwise we’d have to do all this from scratch.
In the Conditions tab, look for the condition where GetIsID is Mjoll. Double click that condition to open it. Click the button marked with Actor: ‘Mjoll’ and edit it so it points to your NPC instead. Click OK to save changes to the condition.
One of the conditions is GetInFaction CurrentFollowerFaction. We need to edit this, too. Double-click it to open it. Change Run On to Reference, then push Select. In Cell, select the location of your follower (probably SolitudeWinkingSkeever). Then, in Ref, select your follower’s ID. Click OK and then OK again.
(Astute readers may be wondering what the point of all that was. We were testing against your follower before and after the edit, just in different ways. Well, truth be told, I’ve got no idea why we have to do that, but if we don’t, we’ll have trouble adding custom audio in step 20. What is weirder is that my old NPC didn’t need this change done. So, are we looking at some bizarre bug that’s been introduced recently? Maybe — I’ve seen at least one other reported incidence of exactly this problem. But at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter — the condition is doing the exact same thing before and after the edit, so what we’ve done isn’t dangerous or dodgy.)
Obviously we don’t want our NPC to say the same thing as Mjoll! Look in the Response Text pane. Open the entry there by double-clicking it.
Up comes the Edit Response window. You’ve used this before, so hopefully it is starting to look familiar. If you need a refresher, go to part 3 of the guide.
Edit the Response Text pane with the correct subtitles, and supply audio as you did in part 3 of the guide. Tweak the Emotion Type too, if need be.
Click OK when you’re done to close the Edit Response window.
Click OK to close the Topic Info window.
Click OK to close the quest window.

Save your changes and go try them in-game. Now, you should be able to ask your follower to follow you (make sure you don’t have an existing follower at the time). You should also be able to give them custom orders by holding the use key (default ‘E’) on them, though they will be totally silent in doing so. At this stage you cannot trade with them, ask them to wait, or even ask them to leave!

Now, there’s only one other thing to change in DialogueFavorGeneric — the follower’s refusal to join if you already have a follower.

This is very similar to the steps above, so I’m not going to repeat it. I’m just going to list things you need to do differently to the list above.
You can ignore steps 2 through 6, because you’ve done that already and don’t need to do it again.
In step 12, we are going to copy Mjoll’s dialogue again, but not the “I’m right behind you”. This time we’re going to copy the “You already appear to have someone with you”.
In step 14, edit the copy of the “You already appear to have someone with you”.
Yes, you have to do step 17 again.

Again, save your changes and try them in-game. This time, try asking your follower to join you while one of Skyrim’s default followers is following you. They should refuse!

By the way, there’s no reason you can’t apply the lessons you learnt about randomness and time-limited speech from part 4 of the guide. Just be a little careful… because you are working amongst topic info for other characters it can get messy. As we learnt in part 1, mess in the Creation Kit can be bad. You might want to backup your mod file first (look for an esp file in Steam\steamapps\common\skyrim\Data).

What’s Next?

In the next part of the guide we’ll tackle the DialogueFollower quest, after which full follower functionality (trading, waiting etc) will return.

Click here to see all parts of this guide series that have currently been written.

Making a Unique-Voiced Follower in Skyrim - Part 4

Tue, 22 May 2012 20:10:35 +0800

Advanced Hello

In part 3 of the guide we taught your NPC to say hello, but broke their follower functionality in doing so. I know a lot of you will be keen to start rebuilding that follower functionality, this time with your unique voice… but I’m afraid that will have to wait!

What I want to concentrate on in this part of the guide are things that we skimmed over quickly in part 3. Consider this guide as a imparting a bit of “advanced knowledge” to help you use the Creation Kit.

To see all parts of this guide that have currently been written, click here.

Read on for part 4 of the guide.

Multiple Quest Files

In part 3, we created a new Quest to teach your NPC to say hello.

Almost every piece of dialogue your NPC will say will be put in that quest. If you’re planning on loads and loads of dialogue that quest will get messy. You can spread dialogue across multiple quests. For example, I might have one quest just for dialogue related to saying hello and goodbye, and call it “D16AnneEnpiseeGreetings”. I might have another quest deal with combat speech and call it “D16AnneEnpiseeCombat”.

Here’s how you can create extra quests:

Find the quest you created in part 3 in the section entitled Hello, Hello.
Right-click the quest and select Duplicate.
Notice a new quest with a “COPY” name appears. This quest is a copy of the old quest except it doesn’t contain any of the original’s topics. Perfect, this is exactly what we need!
Rename the old and new quests to better reflect your organisational scheme.

You can do this at any time — so don’t worry too much about perfecting your organisation before you start.

This guide is going to assume you don’t split your dialogue into multiple quests. If you are going to use multiple quests, whenever told to add items to the quest you created in part 3 substitute in one of your duplicated quests.

Advanced Hello

In part 3 you taught your NPC to say “hello”. If you’ve visited your NPC you might notice that they sound a bit repetitious. How can we reduce the monotony of this?

Open the quest that contains the hello dialogue (see part 3 if you need a reminder of how to find it). Go to the Misc tab and click on the Hello topic. On the right, you should see the topic info you created earlier.

(Don’t feel obliged to follow this part of the guide — it’s probably not worth sourcing audio for all these additional hellos if you aren’t going to use them. But do at least read along so you have an idea of what’s going on.)

Let’s add some more topic infos so we have three in total. You should have something like this:

If you tried to use this, you’d probably find your character keeps saying the first option but not the other two. That’s because the game is simply looking for the first “correct” item of dialogue and is happy to use that.

Go back into each of them and check Random. In addition, check Random End for the last item. Now you’d have something like this:

(In Flags, the R simply represents Random, and the E represents Random End.)

Now instead of just settling on the first topic info, the game sees the Random tag and knows it should randomly pick a topic info from that block of topic infos marked random.

Oh, and to clarify: Random End is used to signify the last random entry in a block of random entries. In most cases, like this one here, you don’t need to specify Random End and things will work without it. But it is good habit to form so you do use it when it is important.

Test your follower with this and they should randomly say one of the three lines each time you greet them. Great, some variety!

There’s more you can do, though.

Near the checkbox for Random you probably have noticed Hours until reset and Say Once. These can also be used to spice up your character.

Mark a topic info with one of these and the NPC is limited in time as to how often they can say it. Hours until reset means they can’t repeat that topic info for that many in-game hours. (Note: the highest value you should use is 24 — set something higher and the game will just reduce it to 24.) Say Once means they can say the topic info once and can never, ever repeat it.

So let’s give our NPC a touch of Lydia and add a new Topic Info:

“I am sworn to say hello.” What a sarcastic and annoying line. Imagine if she said it frequently? That’s why I have set its Hours until reset to 24 (hence the O entry in the flags.) So now, the follower will include “I am sworn to say hello” as one of her random Hello phrases, but after she says it, she can’t say it again for 24 in-game hours — she will use the other phrases available instead. Much better!

Finally, let’s add a new hello dialogue where the character remarks on the player’s hat. A silly thing to say it certainly is, but it demonstrates the power and flexibility you have over when dialogue gets said.

Let’s create a new topic info just as before. Except this time, let’s move it to the top (highlight it and use the left and right arrow keys to move it). Remove the random tag and don’t impose any Hours until reset limits on it.

But at the moment the follower doesn’t know if the player is even wearing a hat. Let’s change that. Open the topic info. Create some new conditions by right-clicking inside the Conditions area.

Let’s go through this window:

Condition Function is what we’re testing for. If you click on this you can see there are a lot of things we can test for! Pick WornHasKeyword — that tests if any item worn by a character matches a certain keyword.
Parameters. The button here is important. It is the parameters of the condition. So, we want to know if the character is wearing a hat (rather than, say, shoes), we select ClothingHead.
Comparison and Value. Most true/false type tests return 0 if the result is false and 1 if the result is true. We only want this dialogue to be said if a hat (ClothingHead) is being worn. So we want the result to equal 1. (Or 1.0000, same thing.)
Run On. Who are we checking has a hat? Not our follower, so we don’t select Subject. Target means “who the NPC is talking to”, and this would work since NPCs only say hello to the player. But I’ve decided to be even more explicit and select the player character directly. (Use the Select button, and in the dialogue that appears, select any cell, wait, then select PlayerRef from Ref.)
Other controls on this pane are useful, but let’s not go into detail about them yet.

So with that condition in place, now that topic info will only be said if the player is wearing a hat. A hat being, in this case, anything worn on the head that doesn’t provide armour bonuses — so a helmet won’t do. Also, because we moved the topic info to the top, our follower should always comment on the hat if we’re wearing one. If we’re not, she will continue on to the random selection of hellos.

(More advanced readers might want to adjust our topic info so it considers helmets as well as hats. You’ll need to create another condition under the first, use the OR checkbox, and the keyword you’re looking for is ArmorHelmet.)

I should mention, just to be clear. There’s no reason why you couldn’t have this hat-hello topic as part of the random mix. Say you jumped back in and checked Random, to give you this:

Now the follower simply has “I like your hat” as one of her random hello topics. If you’re wearing a hat, there’s a chance she’ll remark on your hat instead of one of the plainer hellos. If you’re not wearing a hat there is no chance she will remark on your hat. Hopefully this shows you how the order and flags of topic infos can make a pretty big difference in how the NPC says them.

That’s just a taster of the kind of control you have over what your follower says. In a later part of the guide we’ll examine some of the more useful tests you can perform. That said, adventurous readers may find that they can expand upon this hat example with some experimentation.

Batch File Temporary File Copy

In part 3 we talked about how you can “trick” the Creation Kit into using your sound files by copying them to its temporary working location.

You can automate this process, though it’s probably only worth it if your follower is going to have a lot of dialogue. Only confident Windows users should attempt these steps. This is not required to be able to follow the rest of the guide, so feel free to skip it as you like.

Open Notepad or other text editor.

Paste the following text into your editor:

@ECHO OFF
DEL "C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\skyrim\Data\Sound\Voice\TEMP.LIP"
DEL "C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\skyrim\Data\Sound\Voice\TEMP.WAV"
COPY %1 "C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\skyrim\Data\Sound\Voice\TEMP.WAV"

Adjust the directories in the text you pasted so it matches the Skyrim folder on your PC.
Save the text file. Make sure you give it the extension .bat for a batch file.
Find one of the WAV recordings you have for your follower in part 2 of the guide. It doesn’t matter what one.
Right-click it and select Open with > Choose default program.
Click Browse.
Select the batch file you created in step 4.
Uncheck Always use the selected program to open this kind of file.
Ensuring your batch file option from step 8 is still highlighted, click OK.
Now you can copy any WAV file to the Creation Kit’s temp area simply by right-clicking a WAV file and selecting Open With > [Your Batch File]. Just try not to do it when the Creation Kit is busy using the temp file or you’ll get an error.

(This tutorial covers how to remove the batch file from the Open With list should you ever reach a point where you’re no longer playing around with the Creation Kit.)

While we’re on the subject of sounds, here’s another time-saver. In part 3 the instructions mentioned pressing Record to make a short dummy file to replace. While that’s helpful the first time you use the Creation Kit to show you what file to replace, it strictly isn’t necessary. You can skip that step from here on in.

What’s Next?

In the next part of the guide we’re going to start making your follower able to follow again!

Click here to see all parts of this guide series that have currently been written.

Making a Unique-Voiced Follower in Skyrim - Part 3

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:07:00 +0800

Hello, Hello, Oh Hello

In part 2 of the guide, we collected some audio clips for your follower. Hopefully you managed to find one for “hello” as that is the first phrase we’re going to teach your follower.

A whole part of the guide dedicated to just one phrase? Well, yes. We’re going to take it slow because there’s a lot to it. The pace will pick up once you are familiar with the basics.

To see all parts of this guide that have currently been written, click here.

Read on for part 3 of the guide.

Before You Begin

A warning before we start. This is going to break your NPC’s follower functionality totally. Don’t worry, it’ll slowly come back piece-by-piece as we go through the parts of this guide. But if you’re enjoying taking your follower out and about then delay following these instructions.

Making and Using a Voice Type

Load your follower up in the Creation Kit. (If you’ve forgotten, look for the section titled Saving and Loading your Mod in part 1 of the guide.) Make sure your mod is set to be the Active File!

Let’s create a VoiceType for your follower:

In the Object Window, find VoiceType. It’s under Character.
Right-click amongst the list of voice type and click New.
Give your voice type an ID. Do you remember the ID Naming Conventions we talked about in part 1 of the guide? I’d suggest giving your voice an ID of “PrefixGenderUniqueFollowerFullNameVoice”. So, my ID is going to be “D16FemaleUniqueAnneEnpiseeVoice”.
Select the correct Gender.
Leave Allow Default Dialogue unchecked.
Click OK.

Now, let’s get your follower to use that voice type:

Find your character in the Object Window under Actors > Actor and open it.
Under the Traits tab is an entry called Voice Type. Change that to match the voice type you created a few moments ago.
Click OK.
You may as well save your mod at this point (from the menu, click File > Save).

That’s the easy part done.

Hello, Hello

We’ve made a voice type but it is meaningless without any sounds associated with it!

Let’s get to work teaching your character to say hello. We do this by making a Quest. Yes, the terminology seems a bit odd that just saying hello would require a quest, but such is the Creation Kit.

First, let’s get the quest created:

In the Object Window, find Quest under Character.
In the list of quests that appears, right-click and select New. The Quest window appears.
I hate to sound pedantic, but it is important so I will say it: when going through the Quest window leave things as default unless instructed otherwise.
First, let’s give it an ID. I would suggest “PrefixActorFullNameDialogue”, so for my NPC this would be “D16AnneEnpiseeDialogue”.
The Object Window Filter lets us put the quest in a it’s own “folder”. Enter “PrefixActorFullName\”, including the backslash at the end. So I would use “D16AnneEnpisee\”.
Let’s demonstrate what this does. Push OK. Save the mod (from the menu, File > Save).
Close the Creation kit. Re-open, loading your mod as you did earlier. Yes, I know this is a pain, I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t have to do this more than once.
Expand the Quest section in the Object Window (under Character).
You should notice a sub-branch of Quest sporting the name you used in step 4. Along with prefixes, this is a nice way to keep organised. (It may seem pointless with just one quest, but as we add others over time, it becomes more useful.) Click it and notice how brain-dead easy it is you find your quest now.

Next, we want to make sure that this quest applies only to your follower:

Re-open the quest you created.
In the Quest Data tab, there’s a section called Quest Dialogue Conditions. As our quest is now, every NPC in Skyrim is liable to try saying dialogue from this quest. We want to narrow it down to just your follower.
Right click inside the Quest Dialogue Conditions window and click New.
You will be presented with the Condition Item window.
The Condition Function is GetIsID. That should be there by default.
Click on the INVALID button. Select your NPC and click OK.
Leave other fields as default. Click OK.
So, what is this doing? It is telling Skyrim that the only NPCs that need to worry about performing dialogue from this Quest are ones whose ID matches your follower’s ID. In other words, only your follower. The other 99.9% of NPCs can breathe easy, knowing they won’t have to learn new lines.

Now, let’s teach the actor how to say Hello:

You should still be in the Quest window. Click the Misc tab.
This is a pretty daunting screen. Don’t worry, we’ll just do what we’re here for. Look for the Topics pane. Right-click inside this pane and select New Topic.
You should be presented with a list. Look at all the things your follower can talk about, and this is just the Misc tab! Select Hello and click OK.
You will be presented with a New Topic ID window. This is one of the rare cases where the ID doesn’t matter much. Indeed, I saw most vanilla Skyrim IDs for Topics were left as default! So, I’d suggest you do the same — delete the suggested name, leaving it blank, and click OK.
You should now see a (Hello) in the Topics list. Single-click it to highlight it.
Now the large pane on the right, the one that doesn’t really seem to have a name, is showing you dialogue relating to the Hello topic. Of course, there won’t be any, we haven’t made any yet!
Right-click inside this large, nameless pane and click New.
The New Response window should appear. Now, it’s a bit confusing for newcomers that this window comes up. I think they did it that way so it was faster for people familiar with the Creation Kit. (Think of all the dialogue they had to do for Skyrim, every little bit of speed helps right?) Let’s ignore this window for now and click OK.
Now we see the Topic Info window. Conceptually, it makes more sense that we should start here. There’s lots of info here, let’s not worry about the advanced stuff and just do what we need.
Right click inside the Response Text list and click New.
This looks familiar, right? It’s that New Response window we closed earlier. Now you know the “proper” way of getting to it, let’s fill out the details.
The Response Text field is where you type the dialogue of what the character is saying. But more than that, it’s the subtitles shown when he says it. Have some pride and don’t make spelling or grammatical mistakes!
Enter what your character says in their audio clip for hello.
When leaving the Response Text field, a spell-checker is run. If you’ve made no spelling mistakes it won’t bother you, you won’t even notice it. If you’ve made a mistake (or what it thinks is a mistake) it will appear. You can correct your spelling or ignore the spell checker’s advice as you see fit.
The Script Notes and Edits fields are just extra info for the people recording the voice actors. It has no impact in the game itself. Leave it blank, take some notes for yourself, whatever.
The Idle Animations allow you to make the follower, and the person the follower is talking to (usually the player) do an animation while the speech is said. Let’s not alter the default values.
The Emotion Type controls what facial expression the actor has while saying this bit of audio, and the Emotion Value represents the strength of that emotion out of 100. When used well, it can make your NPC seem more lifelike.
Notice how buttons like Record, Preview and Save are greyed out? To continue, we need to close and re-open this window. I don’t know why this is. So, click OK. Then double-click the entry in the Response Text list.
Now we can actually input the sound.
In part 2 of the guide, I mentioned how the Creation Kit has a recording feature, but how most modders wouldn’t be able to use it due to lack of a professional studio or professional equipment. I also said that if you were the exception to this rule, or if you didn’t care if your follower sounded low-quality, that I would show you how to use the recording feature when the time arose. Now is that time. This subset of instructions are for you:
a) Get your microphone and everything ready. Use the Configure button to help.
b) Push Record.
c) Say your actor’s line (i.e. “Hello”).
d) Hit Preview to hear it back. Go back to step b if you don’t like how it sounds.
e) Click Save.
If you can’t or don’t want to record your own dialogue as mentioned in Step 19, and would rather import the audio clips you made in part 2 of the guide, follow these instructions to “trick” the Creation Kit into using your audio.
a) Push Record, let it run for a fraction of a second. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a microphone or not.
b) Open Windows Explorer. Find your Skyrim folder. It’s usually under your Steam folder: Steam\steamapps\common\skyrim
c) From your Skyrim folder, continue onwards to Data\Sound\Voice
d) You should see a file called Temp.wav. This is the recording you just made. It’s probably full of silence. Delete the file, and remember the folder it was in as we need to go back.
e) Find the clip for “hello” you made in part 2 of this guide.
f) Copy that file into the folder from step d. Rename it to Temp.wav.
g) Go back to the Creation Kit. Hit Preview. You should hear the audio clip.
h) Click Save.
You’ve done it! You can double-check if it worked by double-clicking the entry in the list at the bottom underneath Voice Type (there should only be one item there). That’s not a mere preview of the recording — that’s what the mod has tucked away as the speech it will use.
Click OK.
You should now be back at the Topic Info window. Click OK.
At the Quest window, click OK.
Save your mod (File > Save from the menu).

You’ve done it! Let’s test your mod. But first:

Testing Changes to Your Mod

In part 1 I explained how you can test your mod and your follower. Most of what I said in part 1 still holds. But there’s one additional caveat you should follow now that you’re editing your mod, rather than using it for the first time:

Always test your follower from a save game where you’ve never met your follower. Ensure this save game is not saved in the same location as the follower appears in.

For example, I have a save game outside The Winking Skeever I can use for this very purpose, on a character who has never met the follower.

I’m going to be honest with you here. I don’t know if it really matters. Maybe I’m just being superstitious. But consider this: what if you change your follower from having an iron sword to a steel sword? If you saved the game after the follow has “appeared” for the first time, what sword will he have? Will he have the steel sword as the mod suggest? Will he have the iron sword as the save game suggests? Or might he have both?

How might this work for more subtle things like dialogue? Combat AI? Levelling up?

That’s why I feel it’s a good idea to always test with an “untainted” follower by using a save game where she’s never appeared.

If you’ve got no save games that meet this criteria, you can always start again. By using console commands (especially note the command “coc”) you can teleport close to your follower and/or level yourself up, saving yourself a lot of travel and questing time.

So, test your mod! Walk up to your character. They should say “hello” to you! And if you talk to them, they’ll say it again. Congratulations, you’ve made a uniquely voiced NPC!

What’s Next?

You probably saw that we skimmed over a lot of options in those quest and dialogue windows. In part 4 of the guide, we’re going to look at them in more detail, learn some more advanced techniques and time-savers, and along the way give your follower a few more things to say.

Click here to see all parts of this guide series that have currently been written.

Making a Unique-Voiced Follower in Skyrim - Part 2

Thu, 10 May 2012 22:57:00 +0800

Getting Sound Clips

In part 1 of this guide, we covered making a follower without a unique voice. In this part, we’re going to start the process of giving that follower a unique voice.

This part of the guide doesn’t actually have anything to do with Skyrim or the Creation Kit — we’re going to get some sound clips for the follower’s voice. In a subsequent part of the guide we’ll actually integrate the sound clips into your mod with the Creation Kit.

To see all parts of this guide that have currently been written, click here.

Read on for part 2 of the guide.

Before You Begin

There are lots of ways you could potentially get sound clips. I’m going to tell you the way I know to do it.

If you have a better way of getting sound clips, by all means do it. Just remember, the Creation Kit is picky with what it takes. I don’t know all possible combinations of formats it takes, but here’s what I used:

PCM Wave
Mono (i.e. 1 channel)
Sample rate 44,100 Hz
Bits per sample: 16

Also, the Creation Kit has an inbuilt recording feature, but I would imagine that for the majority of modders this feature is not suitable because most of us don’t have recording-quality equipment attached to our PC. If you do have such equipment, or if you don’t care if your follower sounds like she was recorded on a cheap microphone with suburban background noises, you can skip this part of the guide entirely. We’ll cover the recording feature in a later part of the guide.

Still with me? Okay, only one more thing before we get started. You don’t need to get all your sounds clips sorted out before we start putting them in the mod. You can come back and take more if you forgot something or wanted to change something.

Introducing Audacity

Audacity is an audio editing program. I used it to get all my clips. It’s fairly simple to use, and best of all it’s free.

You can download Audacity from here. Bear in mind I used version 2.0.0 — if you download a later version hopefully things haven’t changed too much.

Where to Source Sounds?

Audacity can open a variety of formats, you can learn more here. However, if you just work with Wave and MP3 files you should be safe.

Where can you get Wave and MP3 files? Really, that’s your job. I’ve no idea what voice you plan to use. But here are some ideas:

Record it yourself (hopefully in a studio environment for quality reasons).
Podcasts are usually MP3s.
Use CD ripping software to get it off an audio CD.
Use software to get it off a video DVD. (Here’s one example.)
Use software to get it off a video file, such as AVI. (You’re on your own with this, a Google search reveals loads but I’ve not used any of them.)
Get it from a YouTube video by using one of those YouTube-to-MP3 sites, such as this one.

Extracting the Sounds

You want to bear one thing in mind before hunting for clips. The Creation Kit doesn’t support long clips. You cannot enter subtitles over 150 characters (characters — not words) for a single clip. Even if you don’t care about subtitles (and you should) long clips, in my experience, cause the lip syncing to break. A rough guide is to pick clips less than a few sentences, and less than about 20 seconds.

(It is possible to string together several clips if you want your follower to say something long. But this isn’t possible for all types of dialogue. If you’re just starting out I suggest you get shorter clips for now. Come back for the longer stuff later, once you’re more familiar with adding dialogue in the Creation Kit.)

Right, let’s get some clips!

Consider backing up the Wave or MP3 file, in case something goes wrong.
Launch Audacity.
Click File > Open from the menu. Select your file.
You might get a message about working from a copy (safer), or reading directly from the file (faster). That choice is yours to make. It shouldn’t affect these instructions.
The first thing you should do is select Tracks > Stereo Track to Mono from the menu. That way all the audio you export is guaranteed to be mono. If this option is greyed out, then great, it’s already mono.
Down in the bottom left, look for Project Rate (Hz). Change this to 44100.
Look at the waveform (the blue wiggly line thing). Click on it, then hold CTRL and roll the mouse-wheel to zoom in and out. This is very useful to know, especially if you’re working with a long imported file.
Find a clip you want to save. Zoom right out and click inside the waveform to move quickly through the audio. Push Play to listen from where you clicked.

In this picture I’m zoomed right out. Notice the scale up the top — I’m looking at over 30 minutes of audio in one go. I can click within this audio to move about quickly. My current position is just over 25 minutes in.
Once you’ve found the clip, zoom in and highlight it. It’s as simple as a left-click drag. While you’ve got audio highlighted, pressing Play will play just the highlighted section. You can tweak the edges of the highlighted region by dragging them with left-click.

Notice the scale along the top in this picture. The highlighted region is just over a second long. This is a good scale to work at to pick out phrases and sentences.
When the highlighted region represents what you want to save as a clip, hit the Stop button. Then, select File > Export Selection. Choose a file name. Make sure Save as type says WAV (Microsoft) signed 16 bit PCM.
You may be shown an Edit Metadata dialogue. It doesn’t matter what you do here. I would suggest you hit Clear just to keep things clean. Hit OK when you’re done.
Well done! You saved an audio clip! Go find it and play it if you want to verify that it worked.
Repeat steps 8 to 12 for each other clip you want to extract from this file.
Click File > Close when you’re done. Don’t save changes.

Now, Audacity is a powerful editing tool. You can do a lot more than just find chunks of audio and extract them. If you know how to use these features then great, by all means go ahead, but it’s beyond the scope of this guide. You can look here for turorials, however.

What’s Next?

In the next part of the guide, we’re going to start making your follower talk in their unique voice. We’re going to start with “hello”. So, see if you can find some audio for this (it doesn’t have to literally be “hello” — any sort of greeting is fine).

Click here to see all parts of this guide series that have currently been written.

Making a Unique-Voiced Follower in Skyrim - Part 1

Tue, 08 May 2012 17:50:00 +0800

Those Who Can, Do; Those Who Can’t, Teach

You’ve probably heard that idiom before. I was well into work for a uniquely voiced NPC from Skyrim when a legal take-down notice stopped it dead. You can read more about that here.

Since I can’t do anymore now I teach. I don’t want my knowledge to go to waste. This guide will show you, step-by-step, how to make a uniquely-voiced follower.

To see all parts of this guide that have currently been written, click here.

Read on for Part 1 of the guide.

What’s Involved

First, a little terminology. A follower is a character in Skyrim who travels with you, helps you in combat, and can help carry your stuff. A uniquely-voiced follower doesn’t use one of the standard voice sets that comes with the game — he or she speaks with sound clips you provide. This really gives your follower a distinct personality.

For this guide, you will need:

A copy of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on PC.
The Creation Kit (available free to Skyrim PC owners).
Sounds for your follower’s unique voice. (This guide will show a few ways you might get these.)

Installing Everything

Do you have Skyrim installed? If not, do it now. I’ll wait.

Next, do you have the Creation Kit installed? It’s free for owners of Skyrim. Here’s how to install it:

Start Steam.
Open your Game Library.
There is a drop-down near the top that defaults to All Games. Change this to Tools.
Find Creation Kit in the list. Double-click it.
Follow the instructions.
Once the Creation Kit is installed, repeat steps 1 through 4 to launch it.

We may need to install more stuff later, but this is all we need for this part of the guide.

Part 1 of the Guide — Making a Follower

In this first part of the guide we are simply going to make a follower, one without a unique voice. This part is actually fairly easy. It’s adding the voice that’ll take up most of your time.

Launch the Creation Kit

Now, before we can do anything we need to tell the Creation Kit what “base” to work off. We want to select just the base game files, without any custom mods.

In the menu, click File then Data.
A window appears. It should contain several items. You should at least see Skyrim.esm and Update.esm. Ensure both of these items are marked — they are official game content.
Should you mark other items, if other items exist for you? In general, no, you shouldn’t. The exception to this rule is if you’re certain an item contains something your follower needs. Maybe you have a “Cool Swords” mod and you want your follower to wield one of these swords. Or maybe it’s the future and some official Skyrim expansions have come out, and you want your follower to exist in the newly created land-mass of the expansion. Interested readers can learn more about data files here.
In this guide I’m going to assume you’ve used only the two items mentioned in step 2.
Click OK.
Wait.
If an error comes up, don’t be alarmed. It’s normal. Click Yes to all.
Wait some more.
Eventually, the Object Window will be populated with items. That’s when you know the Creation Kit is ready.

General Creation Kit Advice

The Creation Kit is a powerful tool. Treat it like a game of Jenga, only touch what you need to. Certain things, once created or modified, cannot be easily undone. If you put your sticky fingers all over something you didn’t need to, you might cause unnecessary conflict with a mod that actually wanted to tweak that thing.

To give you a taste of what I mean, look at how much of a chore an accidental delete can be:

Accidentally deleting an object from the database and then saving your .esp file before you realize what happened can be a tricky problem to fix. One solution is to load your .esp file but do not set it as active. Then duplicate all your cells and objects. Finally, save your work and you will be prompted to create a new .esp file. You should end up with a .esp file that has all the work you duplicated but does not contain any deletions.

But don’t get too concerned! I made a lot of mess the first time I made a mod. So I deleted it and started again. Because I was more experienced with the Creation Kit things were much faster the second time round, and a lot less messy too.

Create An Actor

Now…

Can you see the Object Window? If not, go to the menu and click View then Object Window.
Expand the Actors branch.
Click on Actor. The names of many actors should appear on the right.
Right-click somewhere on that list of actors that appeared. Click New.
The Actor dialogue should appear. The next set of steps are done in this dialogue.
Try not to mess with things in the Actor dialogue unless you’re instructed to. I purposely don’t mention things that should be left as default.
(Yeah, I know that sounds harsh, but if you mess about with too much you could break your actor. By all means experiment feel free to experiment and muck about, but perhaps wait until you’ve got a basic follower working first?)

ID Naming Conventions

Let’s talk about IDs for a moment. Two things can’t share the same ID. Now, doesn’t just mean you can’t use the ID of something that already exists in Skyrim — it also means you can’t use an ID from mods that potentially might get used with your mod.

How can you possibly know what IDs other mods might be using? Well, you can’t. But you can take a measure to protect yourself by prefixing every ID you create with something unique to your mod. In this guide, I’m going to prefix everything with “D16” because that’s the name of this website. I’m sure you can come up with something similar.

Not only is this a good way to guard against ID conflicts, but it’s a good way to keep organised. The Object Window has a Filter field — plug your special prefix in here and you can quickly find objects created by you.

So, let’s give your follower a ID and a name:

In the top-left of the Actor dialogue, enter your actor’s ID. In my case, this is going to be “D16AnneEnpiseeActor”.
Fill in the Name field. This should be their full name, such as “M’aiq the Liar”, “Alfhild Battle-Born” or “General Tullius”. (If your NPC just has a single name, like “Esbern”, then that’s all you need.)
Fill in the Short Name field. This a shortened version of the NPC’s name, such as “M’aiq”, “Alfhild” or “Tullius”. If the name you entered in Step 2 is short enough, just leave this field blank.

Appearances

Let’s set how your follower looks:

Down the bottom of the Actor dialogue are two checkboxes under Preview: Full and Head. Check it. It won’t show you anything at first, that’s normal. But as you progress through the following steps it should start to show your character.
Feel free to swap between Full and Head as you’re going through the below steps. Also, note that sometimes if you make a change it won’t show up automatically — you can uncheck and recheck the Full or Head checkbox to fix this. If that stops working, click OK to save your Actor then re-open it.
Try increasing the size of the Actor dialogue to get a better view.
You can click inside the preview window to control the camera. Instructions for how to do this are here.
In the Traits tab, choose a Race for your character. Choose a playable race (ArgonianRace, BretonRace, DarkElfRace, HighElfRace, ImperialRace, KhajiitRace, NordRace, OrcRace or WoodElfRace).
While it’s probably possible that other races will work (some easier than others) that’s beyond the scope of this guide.
Check Female if that’s appropriate for your NPC.
Tweak Height and Weight if you like. Don’t go too extreme — I won’t take the blame if your giant or microscopic NPC behaves strangely!
Eventually we’ll give your follower a unique voice, but for now we need something temporary. For Voice Type, choose one of the following: MaleNord, FemaleEvenToned, MaleOrc, FemaleOrc, MaleArgonian or MaleKhajiit. Others may not have dialogue for follower functions and hence these functions will not be available in-game.
Let’s give your follower some clothes. Click the Inventory tab.
The Default Outfit is what your follower wears. Bear in mind that they’ll only wear stuff you give them if it is better than this default outfit. For this reason I suggest you choose something that is just clothing.
Be aware that some outfits are randomised — re-check Preview Full a few times for each outfit you’re looking at to test for this.
I’m going to give Anne ArmorHideSimpleOutfit.
Look at the Character Gen Parts tab and the Character Gen Morphs tab. Lots of things in these tabs that alter your follower’s appearance. I won’t discuss everything in detail, it’s safe to experiment with the controls on these tabs, and you can see how it looks with the Preview Full and Head checkboxes.
More details about the Character Gen Parts tab can be seen here.
Be aware of the so-called dark face bug. In short, it’s a bug where newly created NPCs have mismatched skin tones between their body and head. It’s fairly mild but noticable. You can see this bug in in-game screenshots of my follower, such as the screenshot at the bottom of this page. Fixing this bug is not discussed in this guide, but now that you’re aware of it you can search for more information. (Thanks to Aenara Gamer for alerting me to this!)

Behaviour

Let’s set how your follower acts and fights:

You’re making a one-of-a-kind NPC, not something generic like a bandit or a soldier. So, on the left of the Actor dialogue, check Unique.
In the same place, check either Essential or Protected. In either case your follower will collapse on all fours when badly injured — the difference beting Essential characters can never die in this state, but Protected characters can killed but only by the player.
(If you can’t see Essential and/or Protected, try clicking OK to save your character and re-open it.)
Click on the Stats tab.
Check the box PC Level Mult so the follower levels up with the player.
The Level Mult controls how the follower’s level scales with the player. Competent followers, such as Jenassa the mercenary, have this set to 1.00. Hence, she is the same level as the player. Sven the civilian bard has a lower value of 0.75, which would make him (for example) level 7 when the player is level 10.
Calc Min and Calc Max override the Level Mult, and ensure the follower can’t go outside these level boundaries. Followers in Skyrim have a max and min levels that reflects their competency — Sven the civilian bard goes from 6 to 20, Jenassa the mercenary goes from 10 to 40. However, you might prefer to set the maximum to 81 (the highest level the player can get to) so the follower never becomes obsolete.
Change the Class to match the follower’s skill set. You can see the values change in the Skills table. Temporarily change the Calc Min value to see how the follower’s skills will be at that level.
Some people recommend increasing the Speed value to something higher, like 125, so the follower keeps up better. However, most default Skyrim followers use the default value of 100. Set the value as you please, within reason.
Click the AI Data tab.
Set Aggression to Aggressive. An Unaggressive follower that won’t engage enemies isn’t much use. Don’t choose Very Aggressive or Frenzied unless you want the follower to attack neutral and/or friendly targets!
Consider setting Confidence to Foolhardy to prevent your follower from running away. You can set it to a lower value, but a follower who runs away might be frustrating to work with.
Assistance should be set to Helps Friends and Allies.
Morality determines what crimes your follower will put up with. The values are fairly self-explanatory. Don’t worry — it’s never a crime to murder bandits, wildlife and enemy soldiers!
Combat Style. It’s important to choose something other than NONE. What to choose exactly? You might want to start with csHumanBoss1H, csHumanBoss2H, csHumanMagic or csHumanMissile. Later on, you can experiment with other values, or look to see what value some of your favourite followers in Skyrim have.
Click on the Inventory tab.
You can add items by right-clicking on the inventory pane and selecting New.
Consider giving your follower some weapons, ranged and/or melee. The player can always take these items away through trade if desired.
(Followers have strange behaviours with bows. Read more here.)
You can give your follower armour above and beyond their outfit (which you should’ve already given them from instructions further above). They won’t wear it when not serving as a follower. When you recruit them, they will treat it identically to armour you traded to them (though you may need to “remind” them to equip it by giving them something else they can equip, or by entering/exiting a building or dungeon).
Followers also know how to use torches and some types of potion (especially healing potions).
Click on the SpellList tab.
Add Spells and Perks as you see fit. It might be best to leave both empty for starters. Later on, you can experiment with other values, or look to see what value some of your favourite followers in Skyrim have.

Follower Stuff

Getting close! We now need to make some changes that will make this person available as a follower.

Click on the Factions tab.
Right-click in the Factions and Ranks area and click New to add two entries: CurrentFollowerFaction and PotentialFollowerFaction.
Click CurrentFollowerFaction and push F2 to edit it the value. Change it to -1. Leave PotentialFollowerFaction as zero.

That’s all you have to do in the Actor dialogue. Click OK.

We do need to do one more thing though:

In the Object Window, find and click the Relationship entry (under Character).
Right-click in the list of relationships and select New.
For an ID, enter “PrefixFollowerPlayerRelationship”. For example, my ID will be “D16AnneEnpiseePlayer”.
In the Parent NPC, select the follower you created.
In the Child NPC, select Player.
Set Relationship Level to Ally.
Leave other value as default.
Click OK.

Putting the Follower into Skyrim

The follower NPC is now fully defined. You just need to put him in the world somewhere.

Look for the Cell View window. If you can’t see it, select View > Cell View Window from the menu.
Let’s put your follower in the Winking Skeever Inn in Solitude. Scroll down the list for SolitudeWinkingSkeever. Double-click it.
Wait.
If any errors appear, click Yes to all.
You should now see the Winking Skeever being displayed in a window inside the Creation Kit. We’ll call this the Render Window. Be careful when dealing with this… you want to avoid accidentally dragging NPC and other objects about.
Click in the title bar of the Render Window (i.e. where it says [Free camera, perspective] to bring it into focus.
Move your mouse pointer to inside the Render Window and scroll the mouse wheel to zoom out. Move your mouse pointer to inside the Render Window, hold down the middle mouse button and move the mouse to pan about.
Look for a good spot on the floor to place your follower. Don’t worry, you don’t have to pick a perfect spot — your follower won’t stand there like a statue, they’ll wander around the inn.
Now return to the Object Window.
Click Actor (under Actors) and find your follower.
Drag your actor from the Object Window to the Render Window.
If any errors appear, click Yes to all.
Fine-tune the placement of your actor. Click and drag with left mouse button to move them around the room. Do the same while holding the Z key on your keyboard to lower them to the floor.
If you move your follower somewhere bad, or you accidentally move another object, you can undo your action by selecting Edit > Undo from the menu.

Saving and Loading Your Mod

You’ve made all the changes you need. Now it’s time to save your mod.

In the menu, click File > Save.
You will be prompted to pick a file name. Call it what you want but don’t change the folder (should be Skyrim\Data) and keep the *.esp extension. Hit Save when you’ve picked a name.

Done! We can test it now! But before we do, let’s learn how to load it again.

Close the Creation Kit.
Re-open the Creation Kit.
From the menu, click File > Data.
Ensure Skyrim.esm and Update.esm are checked (as well as any others you need, as we discussed up in the section called Launch the Creation Kit).
You mod should also be in the list. Click it and push Set as Active File.
While you’re here, you can take the time to edit the Created By and Summary fields. Or leave it blank. It’s optional.
Click OK.
Wait.
If any errors appear, click Yes to all.
Wait some more.
Since we set your mod as the Active File, any changes we make are automatically added to your mod. That means that, when you save, you don’t have to pick a filename again. Try it. Click File > Save. Done, it’s saved. Remember to do this often as you work on your NPC — the Creation Kit does like to crash now and again!

Testing Your Follower

Let’s see your follower in-game!

Start Skyrim.
On the splash screen that appears, click Data Files.
Ensure your mod is ticked and press OK.
Click Play.
Load a game, start a new game, whatever. Just travel to Solitude and enter the Winking Skeever. (It’s probably best not to load a game that you saved inside the Winking Skeever. I suspect — but am not certain — that might cause your follower not to appear.)
Your follower should be there. You should be able to talk to them and have them follow you. They should function as a follower in all ways — helping you in combat, following you, waiting temporarily, trading (and using) your equipment, following your orders (“I need you to do something”). When told to “part ways”, they should return to the Winking Skeever.
One minor thing to watch out for. Before they become your follower, they should be able to move around the Winking Skeever freely to sit, eat and dance. If they seem “stuck” try moving them elsewhere as per the instructions Putting the Follower into Skyrim, above.

What’s Next?

In the next part of this guide, we will start giving your follower a custom voice.

Click here to see all parts of this guide series that have currently been written.

Good, Bad, Ugly: Evil Genius

Mon, 07 May 2012 15:36:00 +0800

Some years ago, I bought Evil Genius from Steam during a holiday sale for $2. A few days ago I finally got around to playing it. I was hooked: 19 hours later I finished it (no, not all in one sitting, but about as close as one can get without eschewing other obligations).

“And I thought Christmas only comes once a year!”

Certainly the most impactful $2 I’ve ever spent.

Metacritic gives Evil Genius a 75.

After the jump, my thoughts on the game.

The publisher’s summary of the game:

You’re a malevolent mastermind bent on achieving global domination through the construction of the ultimate doomsday device. Build a secret base, gain notoriety by completing daring missions, repel the forces of justice in real-time combat, and develop evil super-weapons to complete your nefarious master plan.

Now that’s what I call hot-bunking!

The Good

Stylish
Like Austin Powers and No-one Lives Forever, Evil Genius is both homage and satire of the 60’s. From the synchronised-swimming frogmen in the menu screen to the hideous wallpaper in your lair’s staff room, it’s totally pervasive and really well done. I really enjoyed looking at the character outfits in the game. Despite being low-poly, they’re always a joy to look at.
Agent AI
A big part of Evil Genius involves dealing with government agents sent to scope out your island. These snoopers will search for incriminating items and, depending on their type, do various things like photographing them, stealing them, or blowing them up. These agents have a fairly compelling and realistic AI, however, and this makes them fun to exploit.
Agents don’t wander randomly — they know where they’ve been and they’re attracted to things like secured doors. I adopted two tactics early-game to keep agents out. Firstly, a “fake base” that was basically a labyrinth of tunnels and secured doors wasted the time of any agent that entered. Secondly, the front of my real base was full of harmless things, like the barracks, the staff room, the mess hall. Generally I would target agents entering this part of my base for “psychological weakening”, where diplomat and spin-doctor minions will confuse the target. Confused agents forget where they’ve been (and hence are more likely to revisit “safe” areas) and they lose attention so they’re liable to walk right past incriminating stuff without seeing it.
This realistic but confusable AI is a treat not found in many games.

This is how we do “Psychological Weakening” in the Navy! I’m going to polish your… shoes!
Emergent Behaviour
Some of the stuff that can happen with all these agents and minions wandering around can lead to humourous unexpected results.
Near the end of the game I was having a lot of trouble with government “super-agents”. In the cells was John Steele (a James Bond parody) and the Russian equivalent Katarina Frostonova. Who managed to break out first I don’t know, but because agents love to meddle it wasn’t long before they were both out.
But because of a previous mission I had undertaken to weaken relations between the various governments, these two started fighting. This made it much easier than usual to deal with the break-out.

That’s just my favourite story. Did I tell you the one about the time a monkey set off a series of traps at an opportune time?
Security
Have a minion man a security desk and he can watch for anyone you’ve tagged as a threat through multiple security cameras. If he spots someone, an alert is sounded over loudspeakers. It’s fun to set up. If you do it right it can work wonders. When I started to grasp this my bases had soldier-type minion training rooms only near the base entrance, with loudspeakers fitted inside. When an enemy wandered into the view of the cameras near the entrance the swarm of soldiers worked a treat.
Traps
Traps are fun. You can wire them up in clever ways.
They’re not all lethal, too. A lot of them serve to confuse or weaken enemy agents. If you can manage it, it attracts less attention for an agent to return home thoroughly confused and exhausted than to return injured (or not return at all).
Informative In-Game Help
It’s not perfect but it explains the vast bulk of things. That’s no easy feat for a complicated game like this.
Rock Solid
This would go assumed for most games, but it bears mentioning as Evil Genius got itself a reputation for instability. In all my play-time not once did it crash. I could almost say there were no bugs, but there was one — the way I layed out some power reactors apparently triggered an agent “tunneling” response which is only supposed to happen if you build a room but then demolish all access points.
If you fancy playing, do yourself a favour and look here.

Nice to see Perth get a mention. I always suspected the Bell Tower was a sky-ward pointing mega-laser!

The Bad

Constant Vigilance
You can never relax for a moment in Evil Genius. Agents are always prowling your base and the moment you stop watching will be the time one will find his way in and blow everything up. On the “World Operations” screen you’re supposed to send scheming minions into hiding the moment an enemy agent appears (though I was too lazy and would just let them die).
It seems to me that the game was designed this way on purpose. It’s not too awful a game mechanic, it just grates on your nerves when you wish you could concentrate on one thing in peace.
Soldiers
Get the world governments angry enough at you and they’ll start sending soldiers. Soldiers are bad news because unlike most other agents they are destructive and violent.
Generally speaking that’s not too bad. You deserve a scary enemy for attracting such attention. But soldiers can go beyond the call of duty in meting out punishment.
Firstly, if you get them often enough (and late game I certainly was) they will systematically destroy any fake-base infrastructure you have, blowing up doors and destroying trap sensors. After replacing my traps for the fourth time I started to be less of a devious trap-loving Genius and more of a boring sentry-gun-loving Genius.
Worse, soldiers often kill indiscriminately, shooting even non-violent minions like scientists and diplomats. “Keep away your minions,” you say. Not so easy. The only way to zone off areas from minions is with doors. Soldiers destroy doors rather than pick the lock, opening up trap zones that previously were only entered by snooping agents. If there are any bodies decaying in these traps then minions will rush in to collect them. Also, technicians and fire-fighting valets will stream to the site to repair items the soldiers are damaging. They all get gunned down.

Similar carnage can happen when minions are assigned to perform a heist on the world map. The minions run to the heli-pad (which is outdoors and not something you can relocate). If soldiers happen to be along the path your stream of minions can get gunned down. More minions will be sent to the helipad to compensate for the losses. You can see how this can snowball. If you’re unlucky you can lose entire variants of top-tier minions this way.
And all so easily preventable, too! The game already includes various “alert modes”: Red Alert, Yellow Alert. If only there was a “stay indoors” alert so much carnage could be avoided.
Frustration
Some frustrating elements in the game are appropraite. Red Ivan, the Arnie-soundalike henchman, likes to use his rocket launcher regardless of collateral damage (reference intended). It’s annoying and amusing in equal parts. But you soon learn to lock poor Ivan away, and to only use him under strict supervision in situations where his rocket launcher is great.

How can I stay mad with you, Ivan, with lines like “Kill the girly-men!” and “Feel the heat — Red Heat!”

Other frustrating elements are less endearing. Yes, I get it that the super-agent based on James Bond often escapes from his cell. After the tenth time he’s done it and set bombs off in the cell block I’m not finding it quite as amusing.

“No, Mr Bond, I expect you to fall unconscious from the laser, then depending on how busy the minions are, wake up on the lab floor or in a easily escapable cell at which point you will start dropping explosive charges and make a real mess of the place. HA HA HA!”

The Ugly

Slow Pace
Evil Genius is a slow game. If it wasn’t for the need for Constant Vigilance (see Bad section) you’d be literally doing nothing.
Early in the game, when you have basic minions and only a limited selection of room types, the game can really drag. Basic minions are terrible at stealing money so your cash flow is severely limited.
Even when cash isn’t a problem your options open up only very slowly. Early on a lot of things open up only as you gain Infamy points. There are a parts of the early game that feel like a grind, performing heist after heist to inch slowly up the Infamy scale.
Stick with it — if you can bear it — and the game will open up and get better.
(To anyone embarking on a play-through may I suggest this tip. Early on you will be told to capture a maid who is wandering your island. Doing so triggers the game to start using agents properly. So leave her alone. Instead, build loads and loads of lockers to increase your minion count, ideally up to 100. Send minions out to steal money. Because agents don’t exist yet you can leave the game unattended — the stealing agents won’t get caught and your base should be safe. Get loads of money, maybe a few million. Then, capture the maid. Having this much money and this many minions should make the slow start of the game more tolerable.)
Repeating, Dull Music
This is real shame. Really excellent, jazzy, upbeat music plays in the menu screens. But the game itself features a single low-key track that serves to make a slow game seem slower.

Island tourists and goverment agents from various countries congregate in my decoy base.

Conclusion

Rated Good (on the Amazing, Good, Ordinary, Marginal, Critical scale).
A worthwhile game if you’ve got the patience to battle through the slow start. Tell Red Ivan I said hi!

See all Good, Bad, Ugly reviews by clicking here.

10 Things I Hate About Skyrim: #8 Well-Lit Dungeons

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:24:19 +0800

Let me reiterate: I love Skyrim and all the Elder Scrolls games I’ve played. I think they’re great games. Indeed, it is because they are so great that any perceived problem stands out to me.

What’s #8 on my list? Well-lit dungeons. Read on to find out why…

High Dynamic Range Rendering

Like many games, Skyrim uses HDR rendering. In a way this mimics how the human eye adapts to different light levels. So, when you are in a bright sunny field the screen isn’t washed-out white, and likewise a dark cave isn’t totally black.

Skyrim’s HDR is a little optimistic, I think. Go out on a moonless night in Skyrim. While the scene is fairly dark you probably won’t have too much trouble seeing where you’re going. Now, imagine doing the same in real life. You’d be practically blind.

It’s a nifty effect, but would you really be able to make out the mushrooms on the left with the outside sunlight glaring in your face?

Still, it a bit harsh to complain about the exact levels of HDR. Screens differ, background lighting differs. What’s too dark for someone playing in their sun-lit lounge room is plenty bright for someone playing in a darkened bedroom.

Eternal Candles

Every dungeon in Skyrim is lit.

For a while, you can reason this away. Dwemer ruins are illuminated by magic sources that never expire. Bandits and necromancers must be obsessive about lighting their lairs, even the parts they don’t frequently reside in. Glowing mushrooms are a thing. Draugr are restless, and seemingly spend their waking hours changing out candles and cleaning up wax.

I pity the poor cave creature that has to climb up to relight these torches.

After a while, though, it starts to seem implausible that there is not one significant stretch of darkness in all of Skyrim.

Even if I am kind enough to say that it is plausible, I still feel it is a poor choice.

Desire for Darkness

Darkness was probably removed because it was thought to be too difficult or annoying for the player to have to deal with illumination. In some cases, it might even impact on their combat style — one hand must be free to hold a torch. These points have some validity.

So what do I think is so great about darkness?

It’s Atmospheric

Well, firstly, it’s so damned appropriate. Places underground are dark. Dark places are scary. Dark dungeons are atmospheric. It’s Dungeons 101. Skyrim’s got the creepy fantasy vibe going so well in other aspects to miss out on dark dungeons is a shame, like a war movie without swearing, or a horror movie without the gore.

Imagine exploring a crypt, torch held aloft. You round a corner and see a vast chamber, far too huge for your torch to illuminate. In the far reaches of the blackness appear the blue lights of draugr eyes…

Stop Nerfing Torch-using Khajit Illusionist/Thieves!

Secondly, light and dark seem to have been designed into the game. Making it so nothing’s dark is a big middle finger to anyone who chose a Khajit for night-eye. It also makes illumination spells and items pointless.

Despite hot-keying a torch specifically for illumination I’ve only actually used it twice. Once to look in a dark corner. And once to start a fire for a quest.

And I’ve not mentioned sneaking. Light does affect sneaking but not as you’d expect. It seems the NPCs don’t have the advantage of HDR, and live with eyes calibrated to sunlight. You can’t sneak in front of someone in the sunlight, not even at a fair distance, but you can get real close under candlelight. It’s weird situation that makes sense in a twisted way: stealth lets you hide in the darkest of shadows, it’s just that in Skyrim such shadows are not very dark.

How I’d Fix It

Simple. Get rid of the illumination everywhere. Make some dungeons dark. I would even be happy if dark dungeons were infrequent, so long as they existed. It would be a pain to look for loot in such dungeons without a torch or other assistance.

Oh, and now that actual darkness exists, give NPCs at least some chance to see stealthers in dim light.

That’s a good start, but dark dungeons would probably still be navigable thanks to the HDR. I’d like to go a step further and tweak the HDR so an unlit dungeon is pitch black.

If I start to get greedy I’d like other mechanics. It’d be nifty to be able to easily drop your torch and have it remain lit so you could fight in the dark with both hands. (Actually, I like that sort of thing as it offers tactical depth. Do I keep hold of the torch and hamper my combat abilities or do I drop it and risk darkness if I stray too far during combat?)

Delphine carelessly ruins one of the rarest things in all Skyrim — an unlit sconce!

Being able to douse and light candles and other world-placed light sources would be good. A dark dungeon could be gradually lit up as it is explored, if old sconces were present. Or a inhabited lair could be progressively darkened by an assassin looking to ambush his enemies.

(Yeah, I know I put up a picture post for this already, but I...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 03:01:43 +0800

(Yeah, I know I put up a picture post for this already, but I thought I’d make a video too.)

The mod titled “An Idiot in Skyrim” is no longer in development after Karl Pilkington’s managment company emailed me and “requested” I take it down.

Read all about it at the mod’s main page.

It’s official. The mod titled “An Idiot in...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 01:08:00 +0800

It’s official. The mod titled “An Idiot in Skyrim” is no longer in development after Karl Pilkington’s managment company emailed me and “requested” I take it down.

Read all about it at the mod’s main page.

An Idiot in Skyrim is now available for installation! However,...

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 23:34:00 +0800

An Idiot in Skyrim is now available for installation!

However, at this time it is a preliminary build. Here’s some things worth noting:

Core functionality is complete save for a few small exceptions. Karl should be fully functional as a follower and be voiced for very nearly all follower activities.
I’ve only gone through a fraction of the radio, television and podcast material where I can get Karl audio from. At the moment Karl has 388 lines of custom dialogue. This is going to grow slowly but surely over time.
Yes, I’m aware that the skin on Karl’s head doesn’t match the skin on his body.
At this point in time Karl is a little on the talkative side. I will probably reduce his tendency to talk in future releases.

Installation instructions can be found on the mod’s main page.

"E=mc² is a meaningless, almost nonsensical, statement that purports to relate all matter to light...."

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 21:40:32 +0800

“

E=mc² is a meaningless, almost nonsensical, statement that purports to relate all matter to light. In fact, no theory has successfully unified the laws governing mass (i.e., gravity) with the laws governing light (i.e., electromagnetism), and numerous attempts to derive E=mc² in general from first principles have failed. Political pressure, however, has since made it impossible for anyone pursuing an academic career in science to even question the validity of this nonsensical equation. Simply put, E=mc² is liberal claptrap.

Biblical Scientific Foreknowledge predicts that a unified theory of all the laws of physics is impossible, because light and matter were created at different times, in different ways, as described in the Book of Genesis.

”

- From Conservapedia’s article on E=mc². (I will not link to them, they don’t deserve the kudos with search engines.) Accurate at the time of writing.

You may think this is so stupid as to be a Poe. But no, Andy Schafly has form.

Actually, Andy and I have something in common. I’m not really sure how or why the speed of light has anything to do with the relationship between mass and energy. (Perhaps this is something understood in physics, I don’t know, I don’t care to look right now or I’ll get trapped.) But the difference is I’m not arrogant enough to presume my understanding or lack thereof has any impact on the way the universe works.

The equation could be E = (combined weight of all KJV Bibles) x (top speed of the Pope mobile)² for all I care. If it was validated experimentally as much as E=mc² has been then it would be true. Really freaking weird, but true.

But no, it’s so more sensible to blame one’s misunderstandings on liberal conspiracies. I bet Obama is behind this, right?

(Via FSTDT.)

Will there be a chance that you can make the Karl/Skyrim Mod available for Xbox 360?

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:41:00 +0800

The short answer is no. It’s out of my hands. The mod would theoretically work on a 360 (or a PS3) but there’s no way to install mods on a console. You can read more about that here, here and here.

The longer answer is maybe, if you’re willing to jump through hoops. I saw something mentioned here. But I’ve no idea how difficult it would be to do, or even if it works at all, so if you pursue it you’re on your own.

(Don’t forget it’s better to watch in HD.) Another...

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:46:10 +0800

(Don’t forget it’s better to watch in HD.)

Another development video for the mod An Idiot in Skyrim.

As the video shows, I’ve added the ability for the player to ask Karl for his thoughts. This turned out to be a great way to use a lot of funny Karl quotes which didn’t quite fit in anywhere else.

Karl will give, on average, two or three thoughts before he gets tired and just answers that he doesn’t know. Wait a few hours and he’ll be refreshed. I decided to do things this way because I wanted to eliminate the temptation to just ask Karl for his thoughts over and over when first meeting him. This way, you’ll need to turn to him every now and again as you quest — I feel that’s more appropriate.

At the time of writing I have 160 voice clips lined up for Karl’s thoughts. Of those, I have only implemeted about 60. Obviously both of these numbers will increase as I go looking for clips and continue working on the mod.

If you’re worried that I’ve changed Karl from talking randomly to only talking when asked… It is true that some quotes have been moved from simply being said randomly to having to be asked for. But there are still hundreds of clips earmarked to be used as random outbursts.

What's Wrong with your Favourite Movie?

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 23:09:22 +0800

Here’s a fun game to play. It won’t take you more than five minutes, I promise. (Well, unless you play it again and again.)

Think of a movie you enjoyed from the past few years. Or maybe a video game (one that’s fairly popular). Or maybe a fiction book (it’ll probably need to be a best-seller).

Then go and search for the title here. Read the review. Laugh and/or cry.

After the jump, some of my favourite results…

So, finally, here’s the truth: I didn’t like this movie. It was a frustrating, disturbing, deeply saddening experience.

And it was funny. Which makes it, in some ways, that much worse.

Comedy is, at its core, the process of deconstructing things to the point of absurdity. Everything we honor, treasure and love can, if picked apart, be made to sound ludicrous.
— review for Invention of Lying

It’s rare that Christians allow themselves that close to the edge.

But I wasn’t prepared for the religious broadside Paul serves up—and I wonder if it, in so doing, miscalculates its audience.

“I’d want to take some of my friends,” I heard someone say on the way out the door, “but did you see how blasphemous it was? I don’t think they’d like it.”

Remember, more than 80% of Americans believe in God. … lots of Christians groove on Dr. Who, tune into The Big Bang Theory and study maps of Middle Earth in their spare time.

— review for Paul

Did you hear that? Christians are big into geeky pursuits!

Since Hitman is based on a best-selling video game series, fanboys will flock to the theater to see if the movie’s genetically enhanced murderer is just as cool, undaunted and cold-bloodedly calculating as he is in the game. And if that’s all they’re seeking, then they’ll probably feel that they’ve gotten their money’s worth. As sad as that may be.

Compared to the game—and that’s a very low bar indeed—the movie leaves out most of what makes this twisted story even moderately interesting.

— review for Hitman (the movie)

Apparently those geeky pursuits don’t extend to video games, which are just for “sad fanboys”?

(Click here to watch in HD.) This video demonstrates the current...

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 13:31:35 +0800

(Click here to watch in HD.)

This video demonstrates the current state of mod An Idiot in Skyrim, which inserts Karl Pilkington as a follower in Skyrim.

To see all development updates for this mod, click here.

Inspired by this video, I’m making a Karl Pilkington mod...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:23:22 +0800

Inspired by this video, I’m making a Karl Pilkington mod for Skyrim. Karl will be a potential follower fully voiced by clips from radio, podcasts and television. He’ll have a whole bevy of random thoughts that he’ll say as you travel Skyrim with him.

Progress is going well. It shouldn’t be long before I have a version available to download.

More information at http://deck16.net/pilkington

Good, Bad, Ugly: Death to Spies

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:51:00 +0800

Although I was a late-comer to the Hitman series, I’ve loved what I’ve played of it so far. Death to Spies (also known as SMERSH) came up dirt cheap in a Steam sale, I’ve heard it’s similar, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

Metacritic gives it a 69.

After the jump, my thoughts on the game.

The Good

Commando and Spy
Sometimes you’re the civilised spy in formal wear with little more than a lockpick and a revolver. Sometimes you’re a camouflage-clad commando, bristling with guns and explosives. The variety is nice.
Fun Puzzles
When Death to Spies is at its best, it plays like a nifty puzzle. It’s fun to prowl around the level dressed as one of the enemy, plotting how you’re going to complete your mission.
Decent Graphics
Death to Spies’ graphics may not be particularly impressive, but they’re functional, and they’re not ugly. What more can you ask for from an old game?

The Bad

The Cone Game
The map overlay shows hostiles’ fields-of-vision as cones. It’s actually easier to sneak about watching the map overlay than the game proper. That seems a shame.
Difficult and Dull
Death to Spies is difficult, and not in a compelling way.
Guards are everywhere, and it’s never possible to kill or distract the important ones without raising the alarm.
It’s reasonable to fail a mission because a sentry stumbled in on you picking a lock or moving a corpse. It’s just plain annoying to fail because out of the three sentries you had to slip by, one turned to look at you. You’re either going to ride the quick-load/quick-save feature or quit in frustration.
Inflexible
Get disguise, pick off guards silently, slip through remaining guards to complete objective. Repeat. Deviate from this formula and the game just makes life hard for you.
Why give you weapons like land-mines and booby-traps if using them will just get the alarm raised and cause more guards to be summoned?

The Ugly

Why is the Colonel hiding behind that crate?
Though it tries, Death to Spies does a terrible job of recognising when you’re acting suspiciously while in disguise. It’s so broken you’ll find sprinting in front of sentries and cowering behind scenery attracts less attention than walking slowly and casually. It’s immersion-breaking.
Bugs
Path-finding breaks regularly. This can be a mixed blessing with enemies (depending where they get stuck) but it nearly derailed a mission where I had to rescue a prisoner. It turned out to be easier to carry his chloroformed body to the exit area than get him to follow.
There’s also a strange camera bug that misaligns forward movement from where the camera is facing. The severity of this bug changes from mildly irritating skew to running-everywhere-sideways inconvenient.
Don’t expect any of these to be fixed. I’d wager the game is too old to get a patch.

Conclusion

Rated Ordinary (on the Amazing, Good, Ordinary, Marginal, Critical scale).
Disclaimer: I only got to level 7 out of 10. I couldn’t stand to play any more.
It’s like someone took the fantasy of being a spy and took all the fun out of it, making it feel more like a chore. Play Hitman: Blood Money instead.

See all Good, Bad, Ugly reviews by clicking here.

Procedural planet generation like this is nothing new, but that...

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 13:47:00 +0800

Procedural planet generation like this is nothing new, but that it’s been done in XNA is impressive! And just look at that water…

This kind of thing should make for some great games in the near future!