Important Site Docs
Donate to the Guild
Giskard's Blog
Skyrim is a buggy game to mod
/ 2
- Details
- Category: Giskard's Blog
- Last Updated on Wednesday, 03 April 2013 12:59
- Written by Giskard
- Hits: 309
Did you know that for every minute I spend making feature you see in my mods, I spend 8 minutes working around bugs in Skyrim. It is true, I spent over 2 months testing features in House Redoran but only a week actually making things that made it in to the mod.
The amount of work needed to get that weeks worth of reliable code was horrendous. I had rewrite the entire mods quests 3 times, the last time to give up on the repeatable quests and convert them to one shot quests because of problems with the moveto and resurrection commands.
Not minor issues either, these made NPCs float around like angels, very strange.
Then we have the resurrection spell that if used on an NPC the combat quests used would cause the isdead command not to recognize the NPC as dead when killed and there for break the quest entirely.
So it is important you do not have companions that use that spell on those combat quests nor use it your self. It is a problem I cannot work around so we must all live with it.
When I was making Telvanni hall I had similar problems with other commands, mostly dialog control, eg it was not under control using the default system. So I used the quest vars to show or hide dialog instead of the official system and got it working 100% of the time.
That beats the official dialog system that barely functions most of the time and broke randomly. My workaround never beats, it always works. But requires more effort to set up.
Experimenting can be fun, but it quickly gets old when you spend months working on the same feature trying to get a command to work when it either does not work at all, or causes massive problems with it does work.
Skyrim and everything in it uses a scripting language called papyrus to work, everything you see has a papyrus script attached to it, and papyrus is only half functional at best, most commands in it either do not work or are buggy. For a game that runs from a script, that is fatal.
Which is why Skyrim has so many problems.
Skyrim may be a bigger world but compared to older TES games there is less of everything in it, including resources modders can use.
For example there is only 2 complete dungeon tile sets. The Dwemer one and the Drauge one. The rest are 1 piece sets that have ZERO variety in them.
Recently I had a user on steam moaning my Wizards of Winterhold mod was not lore friendly because I used the Dwemer tile set, the guy did not know there was only 2 full time sets modders can use in Skyrim and none of these DLCs have added anything new that can be considered a complete set yet.
So we are not going to see any more full dungeon tile sets for Skyrim from Bethesda. All mods are doing to have to make do with those 2 full sets because all others are limited in scope.
Since Skyrims release I have been fighting Skyrim game bugs, Skyrim editor bugs, Bugs introduced in patches that break mods, the Navmesh bug and a whole host of other things.
Mean while some very bad advice concerning using BOSS and unofficial patches has been affecting players who now believe all mods cause their games serious problems so they do not try any new ones.
The people that tend to be the idiots that think forcing incompatible mods to work is never going to come back and bite them on the ass seem to be mostly Nexus users who consider them selves experts on mod usage. Even as they are posting their problems on a forum, they fail to accept they did it to them selves and tell others to do the same stupid thing too.
So what chance does a modder have of making a good mod that works when everything from Bethesda to the players them selves seem intent on destroying their games and breaking all mods for it.
All the effort to get that 1 minute of functional mod out of 8 minutes of buggy crap is wasted.
House Redoran: House of the Unclean
/ 1
- Details
- Category: Giskard's Blog
- Last Updated on Saturday, 30 March 2013 16:16
- Written by Giskard
- Hits: 300
As well as adding a new repeatable quest to the House Redoran for the Redoran Guards, work as started on a feature I call "House of the Unclean".
Its kind of a Monty Python "Bring out your dead" sort of place. Rathering to the scene with John Cleese not the comedy aspect.
The Plague Quest line would have split between the old and new temple and that would have caused a duplication of work, so I have combined the planned plot line in to a single House of the unclean, with a single priest that will offer all the quests and ask all the questions.
Which should make things simpler.
Later I may have him patrolling the streets shouting "Bring out your dead" :)
House Redoran Next Version
/ 1
- Details
- Category: Giskard's Blog
- Last Updated on Monday, 25 March 2013 23:02
- Written by Giskard
- Hits: 213
Whilst I am not hearing anything about the current release, version 1 of my mods is always the most basic version from a players point of view. They are usually the version with the most hidden features later releases need in place.
Looking at the BSA for House Redoran reveals the Creation kit may not have auto packed the House Redoran voice files, but it bloody well did pack the Wizards of Winterhold voice files... dam it... editor bugs again.
I'll have to remove the WOW folder to pack the mod next time.....
I spend so much time working around editor issues its unbelievable....
Anyway...the mystery of the huge bsa has been solved, thats a weight of my mind. Lots of room for other features now.
Starting with 10 unique criminals to hunt down and collect the reward on. I have given them their own leveled lists too so I can make custom enchanted weapons and add them to the weapons list so you randomly get them as loot. I'll look in to making a few sets of enchanted armour too. Stuff you cannot get else where.
Will make a nice reward for killing these criminals I thing.
The Criminals include deserters from the Civil war in Skyrim, Necromancers, Blades that have gone Rogue, Shadow scales and more. So there are is some variety here. I may use a leveled list to spawn them randomly around Solstheim.
The current weapon lists contains default enchanted stuff but I'll make some cool stuff to mix in to the NPCs later.
I am still thinking about the temple plot line, I have a lot of ideas for it but making them play out in an interesting way is the tricky part. So I may focus on Redoran Guard jobs for version 2 instead whilst I mull this over.
I noticed there are now some other Raven Rock mods out there now too. They look pretty cool, but are the usual eye candy affair to be honest. But it shows me it is time to up my game in Raven Rock if I want people to use the mod.
I like competition, it encourages me to do better.
So I'll have a look at improving Raven Rock in other "eye candy" ways too for the next release. I will not be destroying the Raven Rock feel though. I want to keep that feeling, perhaps enhance it.
Watch this space!
House Redoran V1 Release in sight
/ 1
- Details
- Category: Giskard's Blog
- Last Updated on Tuesday, 19 March 2013 13:41
- Written by Giskard
- Hits: 476
I am done goofing around wondering if I should add a little more to version 1 of the House Redoran mod for Skyrims Dragonborn DLC and have decided to finish off the existing features and create a stable base for future quests for the mod.
Version 1 will be the CORE of the mod and once released will be set in stone.
Tests have revealed that editing quests later after release no longer works out too well unless I delete the dialog and make a new version of it. The reason is the FORMID has to change for the game to register a quest or dialog in it as updated in many cases. Whilst some updates work, scripts, conditions and other things do not always get updated unless the formid changes.
Which makes things tricky for quest makers such as my self.
Skyrims modding system is NOT GOOD in the bug fixing department, it often needs you to start a new game to benefit from the fixes. Restarting a mod may also help but I have yet to test that.
Because of that I am going to finish off the existing features, get the redoran guard quests and temple quests to trigger from a var that counts how any quests the player has done and them I will be using the counter to decide what quests should appear to the player and when.
This means I can just keep adding quests to the core mod after version 1 is released and I will know the quests will appear as the player finishes plague quests or patrol quests. Thus establishing a kind of control system for any mini campaigns I write.
The Redoran Guard battles are now one shot quests so I will be expanding them a little before release, adding more baddies to fight so the fighters are more fun. That should make them very rewarding to play.
Once that and the voice work I have posted today is done, TEG House Redoran will be released.
Version 2 is likely to focus on new and old temple quest lines.
House Redoran VA Work
/ 1
- Details
- Category: Giskard's Blog
- Last Updated on Monday, 18 March 2013 18:04
- Written by Giskard
- Hits: 256
I have now processed the lines for the Plague & Potion Questions for the Redoran Guard mod, unfortunately I missed out a line for the male plague victims and would ask those male voice actors who sent me the lines previously, please record the new line and send it back to me.
The voice actors who previously sent me the plague lines are
DOW
mangopie
NDCowdy (who currently has the part)
Bethlen
Euther
metaljoemac
The details for the missing line are posted in THIS THREAD.
Also posted today are the Storeman lines for the Redoran Guard, these lines are for Male Voice Actors and if you can either do a John Hurt voice or an old morrowind dunmer voice that would be great.
The thread for this quest is posted in THIS THREAD.
In addition to this, lines for the New Temple Priest will be posted in a few days time along with some other misc lines for the other quests that still need final voice work.
Thanks for the help so far everybody.
I am trying to finish off the existing quests right now, getting them ready for release and organized. In light of the workarounds I had to do to get around Skyrim bugs, they will be changed slightly to play out as a kind of mini campaign in some cases.
Just an update
/ 2
- Details
- Category: Giskard's Blog
- Last Updated on Saturday, 16 March 2013 12:22
- Written by Giskard
- Hits: 270
Despite my time without a computer this week, things have not been quiet. I have had a funeral, some birthdays and other family events, had my own new computer to build and of course the moment I get busy everybody else needs help too.
But moving on from that, I now have a new computer and I am just seeing what it can do as you would expect. I am almost fully reinstalled as far as software I use a lot is concerned, just stuff like Nifskope and FOMM to go.
My own birthday is fast approaching on 4th April, so I had some birthday money to spend on games. Money I thought I had lost due to the computer upgrade.
In the end I got the following games.
Simcity (I am a city game fan, had to see this one too)
Masters of the World (A political simulator on Gamersgate)
Some Sims stuff
ArmA 3 Alpha.
I have some screenshots for this which are almost photo realistic... a real PC game.
Just remember these screenshots are Alpha footage, the devs are still busy gluing leaves to those trees :)
Btw ArmA 2 was the game one news reporter used to film a battle on his computer and pass it off as the real thing a few years ago. It hit all the news channels at the time due to the quality of the game footage.
I am back with a new computer
/ 2
- Details
- Category: Giskard's Blog
- Last Updated on Thursday, 14 March 2013 22:24
- Written by Giskard
- Hits: 217
Hello everybody, I am back with a brand new computer after my last computer that had lasted over 6 years suddenly died on me.
A new computer means changes around here, first I have now installed Gimp and intend to switch over from the old Photoshop 6 of mine to Gimp if I can. Second is the move from Firefox to Opera. In recent years Firefox has been changing for the worst, starting with some horrible IE style UI changes which I just hated. It also started to crash a lot.
So bye bye Firefox, hello Opera.
The Sims will be installed from Origin this time so the Sims map editor will work, that means I'll have a mess around with that soon.
16 Gigs of ram on a 3.4 Quad core monster means some of the issues that plagued me due to my old 4 gig of ram system should vanish now. Video work should also be much faster too so watch out for that.
Due to the age of my old computer, this upgrade proved to be more expensive than the last. But for those who are interested in knowing what I got in the end, and want links to the parts. I posted them on the forum HERE.
So far I have not played any games or done anything on this new computer other than install Windows 7 (I do not want Windows 8) but I can tell you the MSI motherboard and Graphics card seem to be very high quality, very well made and easy to install. Mind you with my experience most boards are easy to install so that may not say much.
I have made sure the thread above was updated to contain the parts I eventually chose. Speaking as an old fan of Abit before i went bust, and an old fan of Asus before they started making shit, and a so so fanof Gigabyte before they... well stayed so so "nothing special here". I have been looking for a good brand of motherboard and after I fitted an MSI board to my friends computer last year and noticed how well built that motherboard was, I decided to take a chance on them my self.
MSI motherboard bios's are feature complete but automated, so even a noobie could set up a bios by simply entering the bios and then saving it without changing anything else. My friends board had a similar feature.
I was surprised to find my USB mouse and keyboard working from boot, I guess my time on a 6 year old computer means i missed that little improvement over older machines and came late to that party. Still good to see.
More Articles...
Login Form
Forum and Website Logins
Please be aware that the forum and the main website are 2 completely different logins.
Skyrim Menu
Fallout New Vegas Menu
Fallout 3 Menu
Oblivion Menu
Game Guides
Misc Menu
Who is online
We have 166 guests and one member online
Recommended Websites
Where to find us online
TEG Link Logo
|  |
