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Skunkworks!


DocClox

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blog-0699307001378207258.pngI've been trying to test the prison overhaul in Whiterun. There are all sorts of problems with that. Actors spend way too long walking to be useful in a debug loop; too many other things are going on which slows the scripts I want to test, and frankly typing "coc whiterundragonsreachbasement" each time is a real pain.

 

So I set up a skunkworks, or test cell if you prefer. I've got a simple imperial dungeon. It has a room for prison, another for the jail cell (complete with door) and then I have another room to represent whiterun with pillories at one end, and a gate at the other actors leaving the stage.

 

I also have a warehouse room for girls to put into the system, and another one for off duty jailors. Taking to the guard in the jail lets me add girls into the system, or remove them.

 

So, this should speed up basic debugging.

 

I can also test the linkref setup I was using in Whiterun. Basically we have one static that's forced into an alias. All the rest are link-reffed to that static with a keyword. From that I can populate all the aliases on the fly. Which also means I can start the various hold quests on the fly when the player first enters the location. So less to do at the start of a new game and no worry about seq files and other complications.

 

So far it seems to be working quite well.

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Quite a good setup I guess, the part as to the "blue screen" room (pillory) is interesting, will be looking forward seeing how it is ingame !

Good news overall (that the development is going alright on your end).

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Quite a good setup I guess, the part as to the "blue screen" room (pillory) is interesting, will be looking forward seeing how it is ingame !

 

Good news overall (that the development is going alright on your end).

 

Yeah. It's not fast, but it is steady. And hopefully sustainable :)

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Interesting quest alias setup.

 

I'll experiment it at some point and see what the differences are compared to XPO (location reference alias).

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Interesting quest alias setup.

 

I'll experiment it at some point and see what the differences are compared to XPO (location reference alias).

 

I must admit I didn't fully understand what you were doing with the location ref types when I started reworking it to handle multiple concurrent quests. The approach you use in XPO does seem to be the one preferred by Bethesda, so there's a good chance it's more efficient. Quite possibly easier to manage than setting up all those ref links.

 

The other reasons for doing it that way was so I could use the linked-to static as central data store by attaching a script to it, and so I could find references that weren't in the same hold/location as everything else. But the need for both of those seems to have disappeared as the design evolved. So there's quite possibly a good case for reverting to loc ref types.

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