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About this mod
Adds a power that will identify any npc target from a distance.
When possible, it will give you its race, gender and name.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
Things it does:
This mod adds a power named "Scouting" that will let you identify any npc from a distance.
This power should be available to you as soon as you load your game after installing this mod or after having your hands untied.
When used while targeting an npc, it will return information such as : "She is a female Redguard, I believe her name is Salma".
If for any reason it fails to identify a target, in theory it should return: "I'm not exactly sure what that is."
It is much easier to target an npc in first person than in third person, if you experience any difficulties I suggest you try in first person.
You can also remove this mod safely without any harm, as it modifies nothing. Upon loading a game that previously had this mod installed, you will receive a warning that some objects are no longer present but will not cause any crash.
In any event, backing up your savefiles without overwriting is always a good measure.
It is compatible with all DLCs and may require SKSE.
(As of now, it has not been tested without dlcs and has not been tested without SKSE)
(If anyone does test it without SKSE, it would be important that you test it against many city guards, as I use "StringUtil.Find" at that moment)
Things it does not:
While this mod allows you to identify targets from much further than without, it still has a limit and will not work if the target is too far away and will not return any information if so.
It does not return any extra information beside the race, the gender and the name of the npc.
Known Bugs:
On a side note:
I tried to make it as RP-friendly as possible by returning semi-random coherent sentences, not using special effects and making an invisible projectile.
This is to simulate spotting, as if your character is simply focusing at a target.
I also used the names "Altmer, Dunmer and Bosmer" instead of "High Elf, Dark Elf and Wood Elf".
I personally would prefer the later but for RP purposes I figured the first is the most suited.
Keep it simple:
After copying the files and folders in your Skyrim data folder, load a game or start a new one and wait until your hands are untied. You should see a notification in the top left corner that says: "Scouting was added". In any case, look in your magic spells, preferably in the "All" tab and you should see the "Scouting" power. Click it and to use it, press the same button you would shout with. Don't forget to aim at an npc and in first person if you're having troubles.
Technicalities/Rambling:
While this mod is simple, the workload behind it was astronomical. Before I continue, I have to assure you that this mod does not affect performances. None of the scripts are active, they're all reactive, meaning that they will not be fired until you press the button and only during that second, that the performance will take a hit. You're welcome to test it yourself and sending me your results. I would be most interested in save files size and loading times.
Now that i've made that point across, this mod pushes the limits imposed by the Creation Kit. First of all, every named and unnamed npcs in the game (6300+) has been referenced in those scripts. Because of a variable count limit, these references are spread across 7 scripts. I'm saying 7 scripts because that's the maximum number of scripts you can have on a single object and still have them working. I've packed most of them to their ultimate limit, breaking the limit of maximum characters allowed in a script. As I did not want to make any mistakes, I populated my own list of actors. Most of this mod was made by my bots, even at a constant inhuman speed, it still took more than 8 hours of constant gathering of actor data just to populate that list.
I then made a simple c# program to parse that list into 7 different lists, based on the limit of variables per script.
With those lists, my bots coded more than 95% of script 1 to 6. I personally coded most of script 7 as it is mostly non-repetitive and is the core of the processing.
While this processing is required to formulate a decent sentence, much of it is to fix Bethy's faults on the fly (I did not change any data, only the way my scripts interprets it). For example, Bethy thought it was a good idea to fill out the race data of a dragon with "Fox", same with guards. So if it wasn't processed, it would say "I spotted a Fox, his name is Whiterun guard" but processed it says "I spotted a Whiterun guard". Same with certain words, if you fill up a string with the exact word "critter" it will always show up as "Critter". I fixed that by adding a space after the words so that Bethy doesn't put her dirty fingers all over my scripts.
There may be errors, but I suspect most of them are grammatical and about capitalization.
Since every actors are referenced, it is quite easy to manually fix any errors found for any actor.
For example, if you were to see "An horse", you could send me all you know about that npc (location, name, race, id)
and I would find the spot where the error is and manually correct it for that single actor.
Unfortunately, capitalization errors are unlikely to be fixed, as you now know, there are more than 6300 actors (6361 to be exact) and all named actors were coded in by my bots. Fixing those capitalized words would be a long journey, that's simply how the data was entered by Bethesda in the Creation Kit so my bots retrieved it that way. Coding a bot or a program to fix those issues would be very problematic, as some of them are names, titles or creatures, they cannot be all systematically put into non-capitalized letters without causing just as much harm.
On a last note, it is very probable that if you use the skill against a sabre cat, a bear, a deer or most wild animals. It will return it's own unique sentence such as : "I spotted a predator, it mainly lives in snowy mountains". That is because the way those animals are populated, it is impossible to accurately identify them. It might be a bear, 'might be a sabre cat, all I know is that it is either a prey or a predator!
Hopefully this covers everything.
This mod adds a power named "Scouting" that will let you identify any npc from a distance.
This power should be available to you as soon as you load your game after installing this mod or after having your hands untied.
When used while targeting an npc, it will return information such as : "She is a female Redguard, I believe her name is Salma".
If for any reason it fails to identify a target, in theory it should return: "I'm not exactly sure what that is."
It is much easier to target an npc in first person than in third person, if you experience any difficulties I suggest you try in first person.
You can also remove this mod safely without any harm, as it modifies nothing. Upon loading a game that previously had this mod installed, you will receive a warning that some objects are no longer present but will not cause any crash.
In any event, backing up your savefiles without overwriting is always a good measure.
It is compatible with all DLCs and may require SKSE.
(As of now, it has not been tested without dlcs and has not been tested without SKSE)
(If anyone does test it without SKSE, it would be important that you test it against many city guards, as I use "StringUtil.Find" at that moment)
Things it does not:
While this mod allows you to identify targets from much further than without, it still has a limit and will not work if the target is too far away and will not return any information if so.
It does not return any extra information beside the race, the gender and the name of the npc.
Known Bugs:
- When used on a dead body/object, they start moving in perpetual motion. (Fixed in 1.1 patch) (Problem: Impact force too high)
- When used in close range while sneaking, the target is alerted of my presence. (Fixed in 1.1 patch) (Problem: Sound level too high)
- When used against a mod-added npc, returns something similar to "I see a..." (Fixed in 1.1 patch) (Problem: Missing codes)
- When used against a living bird, it kills it. (Should be fixed in 1.1 patch, untested) (Problem: Impact force too high)
On a side note:
I tried to make it as RP-friendly as possible by returning semi-random coherent sentences, not using special effects and making an invisible projectile.
This is to simulate spotting, as if your character is simply focusing at a target.
I also used the names "Altmer, Dunmer and Bosmer" instead of "High Elf, Dark Elf and Wood Elf".
I personally would prefer the later but for RP purposes I figured the first is the most suited.
Keep it simple:
After copying the files and folders in your Skyrim data folder, load a game or start a new one and wait until your hands are untied. You should see a notification in the top left corner that says: "Scouting was added". In any case, look in your magic spells, preferably in the "All" tab and you should see the "Scouting" power. Click it and to use it, press the same button you would shout with. Don't forget to aim at an npc and in first person if you're having troubles.
Technicalities/Rambling:
While this mod is simple, the workload behind it was astronomical. Before I continue, I have to assure you that this mod does not affect performances. None of the scripts are active, they're all reactive, meaning that they will not be fired until you press the button and only during that second, that the performance will take a hit. You're welcome to test it yourself and sending me your results. I would be most interested in save files size and loading times.
Now that i've made that point across, this mod pushes the limits imposed by the Creation Kit. First of all, every named and unnamed npcs in the game (6300+) has been referenced in those scripts. Because of a variable count limit, these references are spread across 7 scripts. I'm saying 7 scripts because that's the maximum number of scripts you can have on a single object and still have them working. I've packed most of them to their ultimate limit, breaking the limit of maximum characters allowed in a script. As I did not want to make any mistakes, I populated my own list of actors. Most of this mod was made by my bots, even at a constant inhuman speed, it still took more than 8 hours of constant gathering of actor data just to populate that list.
I then made a simple c# program to parse that list into 7 different lists, based on the limit of variables per script.
With those lists, my bots coded more than 95% of script 1 to 6. I personally coded most of script 7 as it is mostly non-repetitive and is the core of the processing.
While this processing is required to formulate a decent sentence, much of it is to fix Bethy's faults on the fly (I did not change any data, only the way my scripts interprets it). For example, Bethy thought it was a good idea to fill out the race data of a dragon with "Fox", same with guards. So if it wasn't processed, it would say "I spotted a Fox, his name is Whiterun guard" but processed it says "I spotted a Whiterun guard". Same with certain words, if you fill up a string with the exact word "critter" it will always show up as "Critter". I fixed that by adding a space after the words so that Bethy doesn't put her dirty fingers all over my scripts.
There may be errors, but I suspect most of them are grammatical and about capitalization.
Since every actors are referenced, it is quite easy to manually fix any errors found for any actor.
For example, if you were to see "An horse", you could send me all you know about that npc (location, name, race, id)
and I would find the spot where the error is and manually correct it for that single actor.
Unfortunately, capitalization errors are unlikely to be fixed, as you now know, there are more than 6300 actors (6361 to be exact) and all named actors were coded in by my bots. Fixing those capitalized words would be a long journey, that's simply how the data was entered by Bethesda in the Creation Kit so my bots retrieved it that way. Coding a bot or a program to fix those issues would be very problematic, as some of them are names, titles or creatures, they cannot be all systematically put into non-capitalized letters without causing just as much harm.
On a last note, it is very probable that if you use the skill against a sabre cat, a bear, a deer or most wild animals. It will return it's own unique sentence such as : "I spotted a predator, it mainly lives in snowy mountains". That is because the way those animals are populated, it is impossible to accurately identify them. It might be a bear, 'might be a sabre cat, all I know is that it is either a prey or a predator!
Hopefully this covers everything.