Question for Users

[zippy57]

I am currently working on developing a new plugin, and will have some questions I need to ask the general user base. I'll ask them here, but I only have one right now, and it's this:

 

How many players' karma values accurately reflect their in-game decisions and tendencies?

 

For example, my character right now, who normally hovers between Neutral and Good, is sitting at Very Evil due to looting items marked as owned from the house of an NPC who attacked her.

 

The current concept for my plugin relies on slightly different story paths for PCs on different ends of the karma scale, but if the PC's karma doesn't match their actual tendencies a lot of it won't make sense. My alternate method would be to check how the player completed vanilla quests so far, but that might be just as bad as it doesn't give me the motivations behind those actions. A third option is to just flat-out ask the player (in context somehow) what their karma value should be... But I'm finding it hard to find a way that would work at the moment.

 

Input is welcome.

[Guest user29]

overall I'd say mine do but that's because I actually try and keep it that way. For instance I use

http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/34994 Because it's just stupid after I wipe out a bunch of bad guys, I can't take their stuff because the game thinks they still own it.

[moreuse]

It seems to me that the karma system, though better than it was in FO3, is still somewhat skewed. Given that, asking a player what they think their karma SHOULD be is probably the most accurate way to reflect the player's actual style. Would your character's Mother be proud of what they are doing? How about those around the character? Some quests give a person a choice of doing it for more mercenary reasons. You might try asking about some quests that the player WILL have done and asking the player "Why did you do that, was it for money or altruistic reasons?" The more evil players should not be a problem to pick out I would imagine.

[KainsChylde]

Karma in both fallouts is worthless. A prime example is the Repconn test site. Why is anything the ghouls left behind still tagged as theres for you to "steal"? Anything they left behind should be free game, but my karma took a nosedive after cleaning the place out once they went on their "Great Journey".

[annika]

To make decisions on Karma value doesn't sound like a good idea. The third option would most likely be the best one as it would give players a chance to tell what kind of characters they're really playing.

[monolith]

If karma would reflect the intentions of the player instead of his actions it would be useful. But the way it works now i think its not a good idea to use it. It's ok for the knight in shining armor and the textbook villain, others get karmachanges that make no sense. I would use some kind of dialogue check at the start of the quest. Without details its hard to make some suggestions but perhaps a chance for the player to steal something of value, help someone, lie about something and then adding a corresponing token that determines the unfolding of the story.

[afa]

To be honest karma hardly means anything since it can always shift from one end to the other for seemingly anytime for any reason.

 

From a player perspective the path of least resistance or whichever path that has the "best/most reward" will be the path that a player will most likely choose.

[Guest Loogie]

My karma rarely accurately reflects my character, because stealing items from dead enemies and killing fiends makes it zip around too much.

[Evilrunner]

I use a plugin to stop the whole stealing karma issue. (I have no idea what Obsidian were thinking there) but I never really pay much attention to karma overall. Usually end up with high karma overall though from quests and murdering fiends.

[deathparade]

Same goes for me i love silently killing off anyone i can find!

 

And the stupid karma really? oow you steal from the most hated group out there BAD KARMA ooeeh like they are going to miss... ow wait no they're all dead!

[Kodiak]

Yea the karma fix is pretty much an essential part of my mod line up. Its back-asswards for a potentially villianous chracter to have overwhelming good karma just becuase he likes to shoot raiders int he face...typically in self defense.

 

Now if you want to try something that will really put some weight on the Karma values, attach acts of sexual devientcy to karama and like the luct mechanic, have that karma affect sexual cravings.

 

I.E. if the character prefers raping a target verse consencual sex, taht will earn bad karma (which I think has been done somewhere already) but as lust grows, the urge to rape again kicks in and like withdrawls, you may suffer penalties if you dont scratch the itch.

[zippy57]

So here's something about this mod: It's not so much a Sexout mod as it is a mod with Sexout stuff thrown in. In fact, I will probably have the main mod as an .esm and then have the Sexout additions as a separate plugin. This was a concept created long before I even found this site. I abandoned it when I decided I didn't want to deal with the Nexus.

 

So the karma question has been answered. Now I have some technical questions...

 

Do timers stop when the PipBoy is brought up? If yes, is there a way to make them keep going anyway? If you can't do that, is there a way to pause a sound when the PipBoy is brought up and resume it later?

I have a sequence I'd like to have timed to some background music. It's not necessary, but it's a neat touch I'd like to have.

 

Has anybody noticed performance issues on cells with large amounts of lights?

Anyone who has dug into SexoutStore might have noticed I don't use ambient lighting. I like being able to have brightly lit areas and pitch black areas in the same cell. The reason I ask is that unlike SexoutStore, I'm linking every light to a visible light source, and this mod will have multiple huge cells, which means large numbers of lights.

 

Is there a way to check the PC's name against a string?

I have an NPC/companion planned and I don't want them to have the same name as the player. I'd check for the NPC via a ref variable, so I don't think the scripting would be all that more complex, I'd just swap the NPCs before the player sees them. Unless there's a way to change the display name of an NPC that I somehow missed?

[Evilrunner]

Large numbers of overlapping lights I think is a major performance issue, at least it was in Oblivion. Probably will be in fallout.

 

There's a global variable for the player name: &playername or something like that. It's used in the Willow mod when she asks your name.

 

Won't setname NPCRef change the NPCs name?

[KainsChylde]

I dunno about performance issues, but its a known bug in Electro-City that overlapping lights cause weird shadow issues on the ground. As for timers and the pipboy, Imp's More Complex Needs has a feature that keeps time progressing in sleep, wait, trade, gambling, and pip menus at a 1:1 timescale. So its possible, but no clue how hard it would be. As for the name thing Evilrunner is right. New Vegas Bounties also uses the &playername thing to put your characters name into notes and stuff. Dunno about the NPC part though.

[RDKateran]

If you're talking about the bug where sections of ground are dark despite light hitting them, that's not an issue with Electro-City and overlapping lights--that's a bug in the game engine that typically happens with weather mods that add darker nights. I've experienced it plenty of times long before I ever bothered to see what Electro-City even was.

[prideslayer]

Do timers stop when the PipBoy is brought up? If yes' date=' is there a way to make them keep going anyway? If you can't do that, is there a way to pause a sound when the PipBoy is brought up and resume it later?[/b']

I have a sequence I'd like to have timed to some background music. It's not necessary, but it's a neat touch I'd like to have.

 

MenuMode blocks in a quest script run (only) when a menu is open -- the pipboy is a menu. GameMode blocks (in anything) run (only) when a menu is not open.

 

Has anybody noticed performance issues on cells with large amounts of lights?

Anyone who has dug into SexoutStore might have noticed I don't use ambient lighting. I like being able to have brightly lit areas and pitch black areas in the same cell. The reason I ask is that unlike SexoutStore, I'm linking every light to a visible light source, and this mod will have multiple huge cells, which means large numbers of lights.

 

It can have an impact. It's usually best to glow some of the lights so they look like they are on when you look at them, but to have only one actual lightsource in the area. The lights themselves aren't what causes the performance hit, it's the complexity of the shadows that so many lights cause.

 

In the GECK if you select "# of lights" in the debug section of the shaders tab (in preferences), the level will get color coded according to its lighting complexity. The redder the color, the worse the likely performance in that area.

 

Is there a way to check the PC's name against a string?

I have an NPC/companion planned and I don't want them to have the same name as the player. I'd check for the NPC via a ref variable, so I don't think the scripting would be all that more complex, I'd just swap the NPCs before the player sees them. Unless there's a way to change the display name of an NPC that I somehow missed?

 

I don't think there is, but I could add a function like that fairly easily to the NVSE Extender. Drop me a PM so I don't forget.

 

You can also change the name of an NPC via the SetActorFullName call. This affects every npc using that base reference, and having never experimented with it, I don't know how literally to take that statement. Just setting a global ref var to one or the other static actors as you're doing seems like the wiser course, just make sure the other actor is disabled, invisible, dead, whatever.

[zippy57]

In the GECK if you select "# of lights" in the debug section of the shaders tab (in preferences)' date=' the level will get color coded according to its lighting complexity. The redder the color, the worse the likely performance in that area.[/quote']When I check that box everything turns black (it appears to be disabling everything but ambient lighting, which I don't have). "Apply" changes nothing and "Reload Shaders" crashes the GECK.

 

I was actually expecting to be blinded by the sudden red color filling my screen...

[Mashi]

The karma system in NV is an improvement over FO3, but not anywhere near as good as FO/FO2. So I just ignore it, and run with it in my head. I use a karma-fix system as well. It doesn't fit very well with chaotic good or chaotic neutral playstyles.

[prideslayer]

zippy all I can say is... "goddamn geck, again." I don't know why it would show up all black; last time I was level editing I was only using local lighting as well and I thought I remembered that screen working correctly. Bleh.