Working on a Plugin, but utterly lost. Help please?

[Daguy]

Well, I was half way through typing up a 'suggestion' when i decided there is no time like the present to have a go myself.

 

So, i've started my own plugin. To start with i'm going to change a minor annoyance and add some options.

 

Upon approaching the Riften Gate for the first time, that auto-pass speech test has always annoyed me. I even set my speechcraft to '1' and still passed. Given that people are directed to that gate, his buddy never comments, and he is a GUARD, I don't see why a persuade option is even offered. I've deleted it, and given other options. A male gets the typical 'if you can't pay, go away'. A female is asked to do do something with those lips other than speak. And if you have completed Dragon Rising you will have the option to offer a demonstration of the Thu'um that will trigger the guards default dialog following a successful intimidate check.

 

My problem comes in with scripting. I don't understand it at all, and its boggling my mind trying to leap right into it all. I can alter dialog and quests and such, as thats not too different to previous creation kits, but even the wiki (http://git.loverslab.com/sexlab/wikis/home) isn't getting through my thick skull.

 

I'm not sure whether to ask if someone can possibly simplify it even more, or to simply ask if they could make a 'dummy' file with Sexlab scripting already in place? that way, in theory, I could execute my various ideas without having to learn the ins and outs of Papyrus. Or i could be making an assumption that won't pan out.

 

Either way, I have no clue what i'm actually doing here, but i'd like to be able to continue.

 

Here is what i've done so far. Its messy, and I don't mind if I end up having to start over. aSexlabCriminalDemands.esp. If i can get this working, i'd like to go on and change it so muggers try and rape, and skooma dealers offer discounts/freebies for 'favors'. But that relies on how well this goes. What little i've done so far is all in the quest 'DialogueRiftenGateguards'.

 

[Daguy]

No one willing/able to assist? I only need a hand getting started. =/

[Ashal]

If your planning on being mostly dialog based, script fragments are simple and quick usually as at it's most basic you just need to do a a StartSex() call. I'd suggest looking through SexLab Romance plugin in the creationkit, taking particular note of it's various script fragments on custom dialog.

 

But looking at other mods that do similar things is always a great first step; this advice holds true as much for Papyrus as it does any programming/scripting language out there. I didn't know Papyrus scripting at all until I started making SexLab, and I started first by tearing apart SexiS to see how it works and reading various creationkit wiki pages (http://www.creationkit.com/Category:Papyrus) as I went to better understand and get ideas of how to do it differently myself for SexLab.

 

Without knowing where exactly you're lost in understanding the scripting though, there really isn't any more specific advice on the matter I can give short of writing a whole Papyrus 101 lesson plan. If you have a question about why something you're trying isn't working, or why something IS working in another mod and you don't understand why, you're free to private message me with such questions, I answer every private message I get from people asking mod creation related questions. I just need more specific questions to go off of than "I don't understand scripting".

[Daguy]

Thats fair enough. Thanks for the response, I'll read deeply and see if I have to come back with any more specific questions.

 

I think my issue is mostly frustration at the differences between the previous CS's of the previous games and this one. i don't even quite get what Papyrus is, even after lookign through the kit and other Sexlab mods. Int eh old sets you would open up a new script, and it would be a textbox you entered stuff into. Things seem to work differently in Skyrim.

 

I'll just have to look up a lot of tutorials and spend a few afternoons reading them.

[Ashal]

I'm not super familiar with the workings of the scripting on previous CS's, all I ever did with Oblivion is open existing scripts and dialog to translate the Lovers with PK  stuff I did, never got into the actual scripting itself.

 

Apart from the obvious change of syntax, the main differences I know of are that it has to be compiled into pex files before the CS will use the script, and the concept of directly attaching forms to a scripts property variable from the CS is new as well I believe. There's still conventional editing it in a text box, that's where the majority of the scripting gets done after all. Anything you edit in a script text box in the CS should be available to open directly in data/scripts/sources. I prefer to work directly from that folder using an editor like Sublime Text 2 to edit and compile the scripts, rather than dealing with directly the CS; except when I have to. That requires some additional setup though. But if you're going to be script heavy, it's pretty much a must for the sake of syntax highlighting and other such IDE benefits, stuff you don't get editing scripts directly from the CS.

 

http://www.creationkit.com/Differences_from_Previous_Scripting should help though if you were familiar with Fallout or Oblivions scripting. Aswell as going through the wiki's more general scripting guides, starting with http://www.creationkit.com/Papyrus_Introduction

 

Again, always open to helping with scripting problems via pm or threads; if you can be specific what you're looking for. More than a few times I've gone as far as to write entire functional proof of concept scripts when asked for suggestions on how to accomplish a certain task. So don't hesitate to ask when lost on something in particular or need some suggestions.

[Daguy]

Thank you, Ashal, i'll give those a reas when my schedule eases up.