Arachnophobia

[bleeb]

great, and no worries on the promises, would be neat to see if you could afford to do it. also, can non-follower npcs be stored there too maybe?

[Ashra XIII]

I'm very excited to hear that this might become a Death Alternative plug-in!!!!! (<- See all those exclamations? Very excite)

 

BralorMarr has done some 'captured by' scenarios for Vampires and Falmer that seem kinda dynamic in where they put the player, so maybe the same could happen for spiders? As in, you get captured wherever you happened to have been fighting the spiders, and there are effects which keep you from getting away (in this case, probably webs) rather than a single tough-to-escape den.

[Kazyn]

That's the idea, Ashra, yes. I was actually waiting (VERY patiently) for BralorMarr to release that plugin so that I could see how he did it. I also didn't want to create duplicate scenarios, either. There's a lot I've yet to figure out mind you, but I'm glad it's finally here.

[nutluck]

That's the idea, Ashra, yes. I was actually waiting (VERY patiently) for BralorMarr to release that plugin so that I could see how he did it. I also didn't want to create duplicate scenarios, either. There's a lot I've yet to figure out mind you, but I'm glad it's finally here.

 

Have you tried talking to him about it? I know he sent Shinji72 that plugin in advance to for testing. I get the impression that if you contacted him, he would likely be more than happy to answer questions and possible help you out with making a DA plugin.

[Kazyn]

I've already played with his plugins as well as made a few of my own experimental ones to get a feel for the system. What I'm struggling with right now is getting the mod to move to the nearest "spider lair" based on the player's current location. I already asked the question on his support topic as well as studied how he set up his aliases and such within the applicable quest(s). I got a response and it looks as though I'm going to have to do do some further experimentation with what he told me. The good thing about this is that I'm not taking as big a shot in the dark as I used to be.

[nutluck]

Ah ok, cool. Well I hope it isn't to hard to figure out. Best of luck.

[Kazyn]

I think what's giving the most trouble is the fact that in Skyrim, there are no "spiderLair" keywords or locations to be referenced in a quest. I'm going to try and put some in myself and see what happens.

[Ashra XIII]

That was where I ran into a wall trying to explain how you could transport the player like BralorMarr does with Falmer and Vampire lairs... I didn't think there were actually designations for caves and such that were dedicated to spiders... normally spiders are just there among other denizens, in their own section of a cave but not really dominating the entirety of it. I imagine that makes it a bit tougher to figure out how to get the player to the lair once she is defeated and captured.

[Kazyn]

I've created my own location reference types and hand-placed them into a single vanilla cell with a section with spiders. I've also done the same with the cave that exists within Arachnaphobia. What I'm working on now is how to get the quest to decide where to put the player based on their current location. If I can get it to work, the next test will be to hand-place more appropriate markers around Skyrim. Here's hoping!

[nutluck]

Very cool, looking forward to hopefully testing it for you.

[Kazyn]

Alright, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I coc'd myself to Eastmarch (the hold Windhelm is in, which just so happens to have Crovangr cave in it) and it moved my character to Crovangr Broodlair. So! I've got the old cave in Whiterun that I made and Crovangr Broodlair working. Now to try and remember where other places that have spiders are. XD

 

 

[BralorMarr]

I look forward to see how this progresses with DA. You certainly have your work cut out for you and this all look very possible. As for the absence of designated spiderlair in the vanilla game, you are right. What I would do to insure almost universal compatibility is to simply add marker in the various lairs and location with spiders (this is unlikely to interfere with anything since their are very few mods that modify dungeon interior apart from lighting) and modification of maps (like adding a marker or object) combine with other mods. Then I would build a formlist of these marker, and select one at random or by proximity when the quest start. My reasoning is as follow: the advantage of using the vanilla keyword and picking location at random based on it is that it is expansive i.e. I don't need to know what other mod the user has, if they add such location, they'll be selected randomly like any other. However, since you introduce a new keyword, it wouldn't be expansive i.e. only your known location can ever be selected. But changing the location record (adding the keyword on the location) wouldn't be compatible with other mod that modify that location record. That's why I think that given your circumstance, the best course of action might be to make a explicit list of all relevant marker instead of adding a keyword. I could be wrong though, I haven't tried that so far.

[Kazyn]

I look forward to see how this progresses with DA. You certainly have your work cut out for you and this all look very possible. As for the absence of designated spiderlair in the vanilla game, you are right. What I would do to insure almost universal compatibility is to simply add marker in the various lairs and location with spiders (this is unlikely to interfere with anything since their are very few mods that modify dungeon interior apart from lighting) and modification of maps (like adding a marker or object) combine with other mods. Then I would build a formlist of these marker, and select one at random or by proximity when the quest start. My reasoning is as follow: the advantage of using the vanilla keyword and picking location at random based on it is that it is expansive i.e. I don't need to know what other mod the user has, if they add such location, they'll be selected randomly like any other. However, since you introduce a new keyword, it wouldn't be expansive i.e. only your known location can ever be selected. But changing the location record (adding the keyword on the location) wouldn't be compatible with other mod that modify that location record. That's why I think that given your circumstance, the best course of action might be to make a explicit list of all relevant marker instead of adding a keyword. I could be wrong though, I haven't tried that so far.

 

Ohey, didn't know you were actually on here! Good to hear from you.

 

I actually have already added a handful of markers into some (not all) locations that could pass for spider lairs. These lairs are also being made sure that they're accessible throughout any point in the game (as opposed to having advanced so far in some quest). More "sets" of markers will be added. Right now I'm just testing a few locations.

 

As for adding keywords, since I've already added them (I might be lazy right now lol) I'll go ahead and try it. I'll admit, I had some concern about other mods that modified the location record, as you pointed out, but there's also the possibility that it will simply be added on to other records. I could also be wrong, of course. If I do find that it conflicts with other mods, I'll be sure to take note of it. I currently don't have any mods that modify the location records, though. I'll have to make a test plugin and arbitrarily add a random keyword to one of my modified locations.

 

If there is, indeed, a conflict, then I'll try your suggestion at using a formlist. I might actually be able to omit the location keyword entirely, and just have the quest alias conditions determine the location with the appropriate markers labeled with their appropriate LocRefTypes.

 

As soon as I have results, I'll post them here.

[nutluck]

Nice looks like things are working fairly well.

 

Also I wasn't aware Bralor posted here either.

[Kazyn]

Alright. Results are as follows:

 

First: I used a test plugin to add an additional test keyword to the location records that I modified with Arachnophobia. I coc'd to these cells, ran around, explored, interacted with objects and didn't seem to run into any problems. The applicable quest aliases still seemed to remain intact as well. It wasn't a thorough test, mind anyone, so I can't discount the odd possibility that there still could be some kind of conflict between mods that alter location records - but again, there doesn't seem to be any problems at this time.

 

Second: DA wants to fire arachnophobia when defeated by the applicable enemy (in this case, any enemy that is in the spider faction, like....... spiders!). I set up a debug message to be displayed temporarily to indicate that the quest conditions were indeed being satisfied.... yet it then decides to run the default DA quest (with the occasional visit from a random adventurer/brigand). How weird.

 

Third: Another problem with the DA plugin is probably my own fault in that the animations begin to fight with each other should the "defeating blow" (the blow that causes blackout) also be an entangling attack. This is bound to be a bumpy ride.

[Kazyn]

Okay, here's an update. Sorry it took so long. The old version is still up in the likely event I forgot something though I'm sure it's very broken with the newest ZAP making things invisible. It'll be taken down after a week or two.

 

Here's what's new in version 0.10:

• - Added a few vanilla locations to serve as potential spider lairs for entangled victims to be dragged off to, should they fail to escape from their captor. There are only a total of four for now. More to come as testing continues.
• - Both of the spider bite attacks and the spit attack now first apply a slowing magic effect on the target. Movement speed is reduced by 50%, lasting for 10 seconds. If the target is hit by another bite/spit attack before the magic effect wears off, the target will become entangled and must escape.
• - Changed struggle animations to the lying down, face up animation. This is to display an appropriate animation when taken to a lair that wouldn't be practical for the victim to be hanging upside down in. More development on this later.
• - The spooling animation has been removed.
• - Fixed (hopefully) the invisible mesh problem occurring with the update to ZAP v0553.
• - Removed extra, unnecessary animation calls that could potentially cause the game to hang indefinitely.
• - Fixed some minor issues in the MCM.

Let me reiterate that the Death Alternative plugin is not implemented yet! Some additional work is required to get it working properly. See my post prior to this one.

 

No doubt there are some issues and I certainly haven't fixed EVERY bug. We are still very much in beta here.

 

Enjoy, and as always, constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.

[BralorMarr]

My guess with your condition being satisfied and the default quest starting is that the QuestStart() callback doesn't have the right return type or you didn't define it and the quest on which the trigger is running isn't actually started. It should return a boolean which is whether or not the quest was started. If you return nothing it is false by default and DA select the default quest as a sort of failsafe.

 

The animation will probably be tricky. My guess is the best course of action would be to re-apply them after waking up. There might be a way I could create a method to temporarily disable DA's animation system (actually, change the animation from whatever to None/External to let custom animation play during the whole sequence). That might be even better.

[essedess]

.....It never occurred to me that I should swing my sword at the web..... *facepalm*

[Kazyn]

My guess with your condition being satisfied and the default quest starting is that the QuestStart() callback doesn't have the right return type or you didn't define it and the quest on which the trigger is running isn't actually started. It should return a boolean which is whether or not the quest was started. If you return nothing it is false by default and DA select the default quest as a sort of failsafe.

 

The animation will probably be tricky. My guess is the best course of action would be to re-apply them after waking up. There might be a way I could create a method to temporarily disable DA's animation system (actually, change the animation from whatever to None/External to let custom animation play during the whole sequence). That might be even better.

 

See that's what I don't get. I'm clearly telling it to return a boolean. This has worked in numerous other DA plugins that I've written for myself, to include a bandit plugin I've been tossing around (among many others, including draugr, hagraven, wispmother, etc). The code was written after your bandit scenario, actually. I did the same exact code here for Arachnophobia, except I swapped "BanditFaction" for "SpiderFaction."

 

Code is as follows if you're interested:

 

 

Scriptname kzy_Arachnophobia extends daymoyl_QuestTemplate

Faction Property SpiderFaction Auto ;Before anyone asks, yes, this property is defined in the script properties.

bool Function QuestCondition(location aklocation, Actor akAggressor, Actor akFollower)
	if(akAggressor && akAggressor.IsInFaction(SpiderFaction))
                debug.trace("Starting spider quest.") ;The script is definitely getting this far.
		return IsStopped() ;I've also straight up tried "return true" here, as well, but it really likes the default quest.
	else
		return false
	endif
endFunction

 

 

[nutluck]

Very nice on the new update and hopefully things with DA get worked out for you.

 

Also you mentioned writing your own plugins for DA? Any chance you might be willing to share those at some point?

[Terra848]

Hi i just installed the new updates and i having a problem, when i am in the lair the web seems to be out of sync with my characters movment and the web seems to be in front of  her instead of wrapped around her. same thing happens when i first get entangled by the spider 014-06-21_00001.jpg]

[Kazyn]

Very nice on the new update and hopefully things with DA get worked out for you.

 

Also you mentioned writing your own plugins for DA? Any chance you might be willing to share those at some point?

I haven't shared any of my other DA plugins (which I've been running around with for a while, now) because of two reasons: The first was because I was waiting on DA - Captured, but that's been released now and is no longer a reason. The second reason is mostly because my plugins haven't been developed beyond a very basic (and placeholder) escape scenario. It was more a test to see if I could get them to fire correctly. It seems BralorMarr is now working on a Thalmor escape scenario. My next DA focus after this one will be with bandits. They specifically haul their victim off to a new location under Mistwatch (that I've already created). I haven't done much else as far as the actual escape quest goes.

 

Screenshots:

 

 

Kitchen area for slaves to cook for their master(s).

 

Lowest floor - Cage for misbehaving prisoners. Individual cells for the least privileged.

 

Closer shot of the interior of an individual cell.

 

Interior shot of the main slave pen.

 

Exterior shot of the main slave pen.

 

 

 

Pretty bland and basic-looking, right? Well that's the point!

 

Hi i just installed the new updates and i having a problem, when i am in the lair the web seems to be out of sync with my characters movment and the web seems to be in front of  her instead of wrapped around her. same thing happens when i first get entangled by the spider 22014-06-21_00003.jpg2014-06-21_00004.jpg

Well you've indirectly identified a problem. I wrote a random typo in the script telling the wrong animation to play when being dragged off to caves, however, I can't say I can reproduce the problem you're having in those screenshots. It appears as though something may be conflicting with your animations, because your character is in a different "bound" animation. You'll need to provide more specific details about your situation before I can help you. I just tested my side of things and the animations are playing like they're supposed to be.

 

 

PS: I'm aware of the victim just lying still in the cave. That's because I simply typed in the wrong animation to play. (Typo >_<)

PPS: Okay it's fixed with v 0.10.1

[nutluck]

Ah ok, no worries. Consider this a encouragement post that when you are ready to do more plugins, I am eager to see what you come up with. But no rush or pressure, I was mostly curious cause you posted you had done others.

[Terra848]

i think it might be another mod i have installed but also for some reason the Arachnohpbia expansion isnt showing up on my MCM menu, could that also might be why its doing that? i also def have the newest version of the ZAZ animation pack. can you also please send me a few screenshots of what it is supposed to look like?

[Kazyn]

No real screenshots necessary. Characters are just supposed to be contained within the shape of the web mesh. You can refer to Shinji72's old video on the description for what it's supposed to look like (minus the struggle option dialogues).