Playing ground decals on demand?

[Fredas]

Bit of a longshot as I know the game is old, but I got very few places to ask.

 

I need a way to force the game to "play" decals.  Like the decals you get when you attack an NPC.  Blood hits the ground.  Either suggestions on how to (successfully) go about it, or pointers to a mod that already does it (Enhanced Blood doesn't do this), or something.  Real decals, mind.  Not fake ones simulated using other effects.  Skyrim has functions that do exactly this, and even though they were finicky, I really wish I had the same thing for New Vegas.

 

[Guest]

Here's the first suggestion that comes in my mind.

 

Create a fake explosion (there's a null nif avaiable, to do these). Then change its Impact Data Set to point to a new custom one that you created before. This Impact Data Set will contain a new Impact Data, which will point to a new decal Texture Set.

Then:

   SomeRef.PlaceAtMe MyExplosion

Should create the decal in SomeRef's position.

[Fredas]

3 hours ago, A.J. said:

Here's the first suggestion that comes in my mind.

 

Create a fake explosion (there's a null nif avaiable, to do these). Then change its Impact Data Set to point to a new custom one that you created before. This Impact Data Set will contain a new Impact Data, which will point to a new decal Texture Set.

Then:

   SomeRef.PlaceAtMe MyExplosion

Should create the decal in SomeRef's position.

 

Tried it.  Or so I thought.  Everything I tried along these lines, it's like the game just ignored me.

 

I'll give it another stab, though.  Either it will suddenly work, or I'll be able to provide a concrete example of it not working.

 

Edit: I think the fundamental problem was that placed explosions like this simply lever produced decals.  At all.  There's a nice explosion one can test with -- LimbExplosion.  Place it.  It has BloodSpoutRedDataSet already set as its image space, so... should be blood, right?  Nope.

 

Edit2: Just to be sure, I modified the impact data set so that it was told to use BloodSpoutRedData for every surface.  This made absolutely no difference.

[Guest]

I have geck opened, I'm gonna try it

[Guest]

I renamed an existing explosion (40mm) to my own.

I renamed your blood data set to my own and added all the surfaces

I've put that data set in my own explosion

I've made a script that it places at me every time I press "I"

 

In game, when I press "I", I see a small ending part of the blood spilling on my feet, which means the decal is lower, under the ground.

If I jump and press "I", the decal will appear on the ground.

 

In short, I believe it works, it just seems a problem with the coordinates of Z in the case of PlaceAtMe, so this should be adjusted based by what you want to achieve.

[Fredas]

9 hours ago, A.J. said:

In short, I believe it works, it just seems a problem with the coordinates of Z in the case of PlaceAtMe, so this should be adjusted based by what you want to achieve.

 

Turns out if I do exactly this, and then carefully place it basically all over the place, I can very occasionally get one corner of some bit of furniture to spawn a decal.  This is with an explosion that seemingly covers basically an entire room.

 

What am I supposed to make of this limited functionality?  Is there some setting that can be changed to make it work better?  If I spawn in an actor and then attack him, blood goes everywhere, simple as that.  But obviously only if the actor is interacted with in that manner: A direct, physical hit by a weapon.  Meanwhile, the explosion will occasionally oblige me with some token blood.  Things like carpets and walls seem to be immune to it, even though they happily take decals from actors getting attacked.

 

I'm more flabbergasted than ever that NVSE doesn't have a duplicate of Skyrim's PlayImpactEffect.

 

Edit: So after more experimentation I think I've sorted out what can and can't be done with this.  It's possible to get a single decal to appear reliably in a spot of one's choosing.  However, on the majority of surfaces, particularly including carpets, it simply will not work, despite the fact that combat decals work like a charm.  This was what I was afraid of, and really the main reason why I was hoping somebody had some surefire trick to make these things play ball.

[Guest]

If some function does'nt exist, sometimes it could be because noone has never asked for it. Did you try to ask JIP on his thread about it?

 

As alternative, it's about finding workarounds. Things are never easy, sometimes it depends by your own experience and ability to think out the box, it's not always so straight problem > solution.

 

Considering I still don't know what are you doing, here's a second though: if they come out from a hit, what about faking a hit from some fake invisible weapon with FireWeapon or a similar function

[Fredas]

2 hours ago, A.J. said:

Considering I still don't know what are you doing, here's a second though: if they come out from a hit, what about faking a hit from some fake invisible weapon with FireWeapon or a similar function

Yep, had the same thought.  Falls to pieces when I remember that while it ought to be possible to invent an invisible actor, causing something to hit said actor, invisibly, seems to be too tall an order.  Besides which, since it's not really even blood that I'm trying to use as a decal, what's already essentially impossible only multiplies.

 

I beg the JIP guys all the time for new features.  I think they're done developing it.  JohnnyGuitarNVSE has active and willing developers but they're a small team, generally flooded with requests, and this item is almost certainly the result of an engine bug, similar to how (secondary) blood won't appear on NPCs under any circumstance, and one which has about the same likelihood of getting an honest to goodness fix as the latter problem had in the decade since the game's release, let alone from two coders working in their spare time.

 

But yeah, I'll probably ask anyway.

[Guest]

Can't add more, not knowing anything on what you're trying to achieve.