Argonian Hearthfires, because I might do it again. Options

[ghastley]

Darkwater Den is a great home, but it's too complete. My character Hot-Lips doesn't want to be reminded that she hasn't collected any of the Dragon masks, or claws, or paragons, or...

So she found the ruin at the bottom of the Eastern end of Lake Ilinata, and after clearing a bit of rubble, opened the door beneath it. There was a small ruin that just needed a bit more rubble moved out, and would be quite inhabitable.

I'll be stealing ideas from Arthmoor's Volkihar Castle cleanup, and using rubble piles as activators to clear rooms, except that I'll take it a bit further with the way they block the room, and there will be Hearthfire workbenches in the resulting empty rooms. You'll make the furniture in the same way, but you won't build the house, you'll just dig it out.

So far I have:
Underwater entrance to suit an Argonian.
Nice damp ambience, with roots and moss in the main living areas - greenish lighting.
Kitchen and Armory/Forge are clear of roots and moss and have regular yellow candlelight / orange forge glow.

Rooms are:

• Partially flooded passage with stairs up to entrance hall
• Entrance hall/dining room which connects to
  • Armory/forge
  • Kitchen
  • Bedroom (large enough for parents and kids)
• Bedroom connects to
  • Enchanting lab
  • Alchemy lab (with secret door to shore exit)
• Secret passage to shore exit.

The exit on shore is undecided - I'd like to use a large hollow tree to hide it.

I've connected to rubble and clutter in front of the underwater door to a parent marker which will all be disabled by the quest that gets you the ownership. I want to do something similar to the Orc one, where you do a number of "favor" quests for Argonians to deserve the home, as well as doing all the building, but I'm not sure there are enough of those. Rescuing Derkeethus, of course, but what else?

I haven't yet Nav-meshed the interior, or placed the log for the shore entrance. I still need to add a lot more clutter, including the bookshelves, weapon racks etc. that take so long to connect up. And I can't show you any screenshots until I get the new server built.

It turns out that there are only six available quests that will count. Three in Riften (not including From-Deepest-Fathoms!) and three in Windhelm docks. They include some theft, but no murders. I'm thinking only two needed this time, instead of the five for the Orc Stronghold, where a lot more were available, especially mining.

This post has been edited by ghastley: May 31 2015, 02:03 AM

[ghastley]

I have a number of bugs still to work out, but the recipes, Misc Item tokens, and the scripts and linkages are all in place. My test characters have cleared the rubble, and built all the furnishings. The bookshelves and mannequins work, but the weapon racks don't. And I have a few lights that flick on and off depending on which way you're facing. I haven't put in room-bounds and portals yet, which may fix that issue.

I still need to build the quest that puts it all in sequence, and enables the site and its map marker, but that's all stuff I know how to do. I can start the quest from a kicker that triggers off the player leaving either of the two dungeons for the rescue and lexicon quests, and if the quests are both completed, send the courier.

One little thing I need to fiddle with is the rubble clearing. You find some useful materials in the rubble (taken from a leveled list) such as iron ore, empty bottles you can smelt into glass, and quarried stone. I just have a simple list that makes each item equally likely at present, but I should probably bias it to getting reusable stone more than anything else. Any ideas what to add as rare finds? The script, which is a simplified version of the mining one, has parameters for how many hits it takes to get something out, and how many times to cycle before the rubble is cleared. I'll fiddle with those settings a bit, when I adjust the list for the found items.

Also, there's the usual starter chest with some materials in it, but since you're not building a "small house" at the beginning, I need to decide on what's helpful, bearing in mind the loot from the rubble.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Jul 27 2015, 01:48 PM

[mALX]

I have a number of bugs still to work out, but the recipes, Misc Item tokens, and the scripts and linkages are all in place. My test characters have cleared the rubble, and built all the furnishings. The bookshelves and mannequins work, but the weapon racks don't. And I have a few lights that flick on and off depending on which way you're facing. I haven't put in room-bounds and portals yet, which may fix that issue.

I still need to build the quest that puts it all in sequence, and enables the site and its map marker, but that's all stuff I know how to do. I can start the quest from a kicker that triggers off the player leaving either of the two dungeons for the rescue and lexicon quests, and if the quests are both completed, send the courier.

One little thing I need to fiddle with is the rubble clearing. You find some useful materials in the rubble (taken from a leveled list) such as iron ore, empty bottles you can smelt into glass, and quarried stone. I just have a simple list that makes each item equally likely at present, but I should probably bias it to getting reusable stone more than anything else. Any ideas what to add as rare finds? The script, which is a simplified version of the mining one, has parameters for how many hits it takes to get something out, and how many times to cycle before the rubble is cleared. I'll fiddle with those settings a bit, when I adjust the list for the found items.

Also, there's the usual starter chest with some materials in it, but since you're not building a "small house" at the beginning, I need to decide on what's helpful, bearing in mind the loot from the rubble.

I love the idea that the rubble produces usable productive materials! Wonder what is causing the issue with the weapon racks?

We've now reached the "but how can something so simple not work?" stage.

I still have the problem of the two sets of weapon racks not working. They're identical to the ones that work in the Orc version, as far as I can tell.

There's a simple trigger zone at the entrance to advance the quest, so you complete the "find the place" stage and move on to the "clear the rubble" stage. It doesn't do anything.

And just about every detail is baked into the save, so I have to start a new test character each time I try to fix anything. This is getting tedious.

On the positive side, the courier works, and delivers the right letter to tell the player about the ruin. I discovered that the courier depends on the player changing location to get its starting event, so standing in one place and waiting will make him take forever!

Some thoughts:
The player needs a pickaxe to clear the rubble. Should I leave one in the rubble near the entrance, in case the player doesn't bother carrying one?
The secret door is currently made constructable when you've made the beds, on the grounds that you need an escape route once you made provision for a family. Should anything else be required?
My current smelter recipe for glass requires 6 empty bottles for one unit. Should that be less? There are only three items that need glass - Alchemy Lab, Enchanter, and a single display case.

I vote to place a pickaxe in the area, just for convenience sake.

Maybe make a key from the iron for the secret door?

As long as you have placed enough supplies to actually complete the project, I don't think the number required should be lessened.

That's just my 2 cents, lol.






This post has been edited by mALX: Jul 29 2015, 09:08 PM

[ghastley]

I love the idea that the rubble produces usable productive materials! Wonder what is causing the issue with the weapon racks?

...

I vote to place a pickaxe in the area, just for convenience sake.

Maybe make a key from the iron for the secret door?

As long as you have placed enough supplies to actually complete the project, I don't think the number required should be lessened.

That's just my 2 cents, lol.

Freshly made weapon racks in vanilla Hearthfires don't work until you leave the cell and re-enter. I suspect there's an aspect of the buggy OnCellLoad code that doesn't work here.

Pickaxe will be supplied. I can put it under the pile of rubble that normally hides the outside door, and is disabled when you get the letter. That way it won't get picked up too early.

I don't mean the secret door recipe, I mean the pre-requisites. The secret door only appears in the list of things to build after you made the beds, but I'm wondering if anything else should be built first.

I've actually tried to make the found items insufficient, so that you do need to gather things elsewhere. You'll need to mine ores, and buy straw. Empty wine bottles are a common clutter item in many dungeons, so they're easy to find. The potential issue is the weight of empties required, and that's not too bad at 18. However, you need a matching set of six to make glass, and there are three or four varieties of empty wine bottles. All types can be used, but if you have five of each, you can't do anything!

I'll be supplying a leather strip in the starter chest, so you can bootstrap the tanning rack to make more. Similarly, there will be enough iron ingots to make a smelter, so you only need iron ore once you make that. I'll take out the rest of the clay, as you can mine that close by, and you don't need much (just the oven and planters use it, I think) as there are no walls to make here.

[mALX]

I love the idea that the rubble produces usable productive materials! Wonder what is causing the issue with the weapon racks?

...

I vote to place a pickaxe in the area, just for convenience sake.

Maybe make a key from the iron for the secret door?

As long as you have placed enough supplies to actually complete the project, I don't think the number required should be lessened.

That's just my 2 cents, lol.

Freshly made weapon racks in vanilla Hearthfires don't work until you leave the cell and re-enter. I suspect there's an aspect of the buggy OnCellLoad code that doesn't work here.

Pickaxe will be supplied. I can put it under the pile of rubble that normally hides the outside door, and is disabled when you get the letter. That way it won't get picked up too early.

I don't mean the secret door recipe, I mean the pre-requisites. The secret door only appears in the list of things to build after you made the beds, but I'm wondering if anything else should be built first.

I've actually tried to make the found items insufficient, so that you do need to gather things elsewhere. You'll need to mine ores, and buy straw. Empty wine bottles are a common clutter item in many dungeons, so they're easy to find. The potential issue is the weight of empties required, and that's not too bad at 18. However, you need a matching set of six to make glass, and there are three or four varieties of empty wine bottles. All types can be used, but if you have five of each, you can't do anything!

I'll be supplying a leather strip in the starter chest, so you can bootstrap the tanning rack to make more. Similarly, there will be enough iron ingots to make a smelter, so you only need iron ore once you make that. I'll take out the rest of the clay, as you can mine that close by, and you don't need much (just the oven and planters use it, I think) as there are no walls to make here.

Is that "On cell load" error why people were doing double load areas between the main door of the house and the house interior? I heard about people doing that so the game would load the interior without errors (or some reason like that - can't remember exactly why).

They were making an interior room that was totally empty except marker headings and the player would load into one side of the room and land at that marker heading; then be automatically moved to the next door directly across from the one they just entered into; and then automatically loaded into the real interior of the house - I've got the whole thing laid out somewhere in my notes, but never used it because I didn't know enough about how it worked or why.