Basic NPC Creation Tutorial

Overview

This tutorial will cover the basics of creating a new NPC combatant and placing it in a dungeon. The following subjects will be covered.

• Creating a new NPC
• Editing NPC Stats
• Editing NPC Appearance
• Editing NPC Inventory & Spells
• Basic AI & Package Editing

This tutorial will not delve into dialogue or quest creation. Let's begin.

Creating a new NPC

For this tutorial, let's create a special boss NPC for Creepy Cave tutorial dungeon. As such, load up the cell CreepyCave02 we created and delete "LL1BanditBossLvl100".

If you didn't complete the tutorial; don't worry, the dungeon from the tutorial just happens to have a boss chamber we're re-using.

It's often useful to use existing NPC's as templates when creating new ones. For this example, let's look in our Object Window under NPCs and select "BanditBossFemale1". Double click the entry to open her properties tab.

Important: Before doing anything, change her ID to something unique. This way we avoid accidentally saving our changes to the existing NPC. When you hit 'OK' after changing the ID, you'll be prompted to either rename the existing object or create a new one.

The NPC properties window

Editing NPC Stats

Let's briefly review the basic properties on the far left of this window.

• ID Editor ID for this NPC. Must be unique. Let's use CreepyCaveBoss
• Name NPC name as it will appear in-game. We can leave this alone.
• Script Scripts can be attached to NPC's here. Leave it blank for this one.
• Class BanditBoss is a special class. To view the details of pre-made classes, navigate to Character>Class... in your toolbar
• Summonable Leave blank!
• Offset/PC Level Offset Checking this box will cause the NPC's stats to adjust to the player's level. Offset determines how much above or below the player's level the NPC will be. In this case, our NPC will be one level higher than the player. That's fine for now; it can be tweaked later.
• Calc Min/Max These check boxes determine minimum and maximum levels for the NPC. This is useful for creating semi-leveled content. For instance; we could create a dungeon which levels to players between levels 10-15 using these boxes. In this case we'll leave the default settings at 1 and 0, meaning the NPC will level to any player.
• Race Straightforward - choose a race from the drop-down menu. Choose any race you like, but I'm opting for a Dark Elf.
• Female Even more straightforward. We'll keep this boss female in the name of equal-opportunity slaughter.
• Combat Style Combat styles influence NPC choices during a fight. For what we want this NPC to do, the default style will be just fine.
• Death Item Used for special loot items that we don't want to show up until after an NPC is dead. This is useful for items we don't want pick-pocketed and biological items (i.e. it's not feasible to remove an NPC's heart until said NPC has otherwise ceased to live)
• Essential Used for special NPC's and usually controlled via script. Essential NPC's cannot be killed and are only knocked unconscious.
• Respawn This NPC will respawn when the cell reloads if you check this - since this is an unnamed boss, we want to allow respawns.

You may notice that the values in the "Stats" tab are locked. (except for personality) This is because we have "PC Level Offset" checked.

The "Factions" tab is also important. We'll leave the "BanditFaction" in here, but if we needed to add any, we could do so from Character>Factions... in the toolbar.

Editing NPC Appearance

Basic Facial Editing

Click the "Face" tab. This tab gives us some basic controls in the form of age, complexion, and hair sliders. Additionally we can change hair style, color, generate random facial features, and change eye color.

The "Lock" radio buttons allow you to manually set sliders and then use the "'generate" button to randomize all other features of the face.

A note on hair color: Very brightly colored hair can be tempting, but it generally does not fit well with the fantasy setting of Oblivion and breaks the player suspension of disbelief. Resist the temptation! Try this technique for creating new hair colors:

• Press Select Color
• Choose a bright color you like
• On the right, notice a vertical bar with a sliding arrow.
• Slide the arrow to almost-black
• press OK to preview results

Usually it's enough to randomly generate a unique face and move on, especially for combatants like this boss NPC. For more delicate tuning, however, we can select the "Face Advanced" tab.

This tab opens a myriad of options and is even more robust than the in-game facial editing features. We'll go over the basics here, but you'll learn the most by experimenting with the options available on your own.

• Slider This slider will be used to edit the features you select.
• Control Type Geometry mode will allow you to change the actual shape of the NPC facial structure, while texture will allow you to change the appearance of skin, facial hair, and cosmetics. For this NPC I lowered her brows, making her look a bit meaner than the random face I had generated.
• Symmetry Type Usually you'll want to work in Symmetry mode. However; Asymmetry mode (only available for geometry control) is very useful for creating interesting imperfections in character faces. For instance, I've changed the Mouth - corners transverse shift on this NPC to -8.93, giving her the appearance of a smirk. Just remember that it's best to be subtle.