User talk:Ashileedo

It really is a good idea. If everyone uses this wiki to share their hard-earned knowledge about the Construction Set, it will become a valuable community resource.--Mozz 22:11, 26 March 2006 (EST)

Documentation Requests

[[User:DoppelganDoppelganger 20:29, 3 April 2006 (EDT): The reason for my experimentation with ModActorValue and erronous conclusion was a lack of documentation. I had tried posting a couple of threads on the TES CS forum, but they quickly get buried with no response. With this in mind, there is no outlet (that I know of) to get even the kernel of the truth, and I resorted to simply being more accusational to draw fire. Can there be some sort of way to address this ad hoc means of obtaining information?

I also wrote here because I requested in the ModActorValue about how I could access the various script/magic modifiers.

I understand your frustration but please ask for your patience. The community is still learning about the Construction Set and the game, and we ourselves have other commitments internally that will take priority over this wiki. Which is why we made it a wiki - so that it could grow along with the modding community. I only ask that we keep the information posted on the site as factual and unbiased as possible. We will try to provide as much information as quickly as we can, but it will never be as fast as you or the fans will like, and I apologize for that. I will say that keeping your tone and attitude accusational to "draw fire" is not the best way to ask developers to put in extra time to answer questions. --Ashileedo]] 23:45, 3 April 2006 (EDT)

Just a heads up, you might want to post something prominent on the front page explaining that you are adding as much data as you can as time permits. That should help head off the flame fest. A lot of us developed things for morrowind and we got virtually no support, a lot of people still have the mindset that "the game developers don't care about us, they already have our money." It's little things, like telling us what's going on, that let the community know you're engaged. --Halo112358 02:02, 4 April 2006 (EDT)

Just wondering why there is no script method to expose generic references. I would like to be able to increment through the actor or object references in my local area, and I know a lot of people would also like that ability, it would allow all kinds of new options for modding. I was just wondering why this wasn't made available to modders as it seems so necessary for non-quest mods. --Tegid 10:52, 4 April 2006 (EDT)

There were discussions about this but we never had a need for it. What specific functionality are you trying to do? We may already have a model you can use as reference. --Ashileedo 13:27, 4 April 2006 (EDT)

A lot of people (myself included) would like to be able to determine which actors are in the area when we are IsInCombat so that we can make determinations about the people we are fighting. Also of interest would be a way to determine the weapon we are holding currently. Another mod I've seen is the Auto Harvesting mod, which currently has to add a script to all the plants so that they auto activate when the player is within a distance of 500 from them. If we could cycle through the Refs around us, instead of every plant running a script, a ring or spell could check for nearby plants and harvest them. I can see why it wouldn't be useful when you are generally setting up actions in regards to the player since you exposed the player ref. An NPC or Creature can tell their distance to me, if they are in combat with me, all kinds of things. I as a player cannot do any of those things. So if I want to, for instance, tell what range I was at when my arrow hit an enemy, I have to enchant the arrow. If I do that, the enchantment is run on the Actor I hit, and since HE knows how to refer to me (player) I can do what I need, but I have to add that enchantment to every arrow in the game. --Tegid 16:27, 4 April 2006 (EDT)

Another example: currently, there's no way to loop through an actor's inventory that I can tell, which is too bad: for instance, if I want a spell that unequips somebody's armor, I currently have to do something like:

AddItem SomeShirt, 1

EquipItem SomeShirt

UnequipItem SomeShirt

RemoveItem SomeShirt, 1

Problem is, I don't know if or what I just unequipped by replacing it with the shirt, so I can't easily re-equip the item (I hacked this by creating a dummy package with the unequip armor set to true, which, when it ends, usually causes them to reequip the armor. This solution is inconsistant at best. It also means they walk around naked, when it would be cooler to replace the armor with whatever clothing they have in their inventory, which would mean I'd need to iterate through their clothing. --lbeefus

I also want to loop through all actors/enemies in a cell. I want to make something that shows up if I'm in a LOS with an enemy, rather than the enemy has a LOS with me (kinda like sneaking). I've explained it in more detail [here]. --decswxaqz

--Kkuhlmann 07:38, 5 April 2006 (EDT): There's no looping of any kind in the scripting system. It would have required a complete paradigm shift that wasn't necessary (we didn't need any of the functionality you're talking about to build the game). If you're ever wondering why the script system doesn't do something, the short answer is always "Because we didn't need it to do that." We had many demands on our time just to get the game out; we didn't have time to add features (and test them, which is not insignificant) which we were not planning on using.

Tegid 08:50, 5 April 2006 (EDT): Even if we had a fixed set of "Reference Registers" that we had to check explicitly it would be really helpful. As I said in my previous note, I can completely see why you didn't need it, since you were doing everything in relation to the player for whom you made an external reference available. At the least it would be useful to have some number of registers that contained for instance the Actors currently in combat with you. Oh, and it appears you can construct a rudimentary looping mechanism with ScriptEffectUpdate.