For anyone frustrated with angry bats, killer bees and aggressive birds (though admittedly rare), and if you're using MWSE, i highly recommend using Merlord's "Less Aggressive Creatures" to calm them down. it actually works quite nicely. Just whitelist the mobs you want to make chill. Just look for them under the "ab_" prefix. No more rabies bites, angry guards, or anxiety-inducing battle music while shopping around town at night. Of course that means you won't be able to make bank off of all the random tufts of bat wings and bat fur, but if you're persistent, you can still bonk all the bats you want. Only this time it'll be on your terms!
Would you consider making this modular? I really dislike the bats, not only are they annoying and agressive, but also terribly animated, wich is not your fault at all, it would be near impossible to properly animate a bat's flight. Other than that, stupendous job on this one! If you could tell me how to modify my files to remove the bats, that would be great, thank you :^)
"the" and "all" are a false assumption. Only a few birds have aifollow/aiescort player AI packages. so the correct thing is: some birds may attack some hostiles
If you don't mind I have some questions. Your explanation might help, though I do not insist on replying.
1. Considering the reason why some people hate bees and bats this mod adds I decided to edit their behaviour in CS and changed their Fight AI to 0. I don't know if this is gonna work but I haven't had any problems with them yet. In fact, I didn't even find them. Any hint on where and when they usually spawn so I can test?
2. Regarding issue with birds flying into statics. I know you already explained why scripts work this way. Just wanted to specify - after they fly into obstacle how much time it takes for them to fly away? In my game they keep getting stuck even after a minute.
creatures behavior is scripted (ab01<creatureId>Script) so your changes to creature stats probably do not matter much. bees spawn at daytime, with 75 <= AI fight <= 82, so you have about 40% probability of them being aggressive, depending also on player distance bats spawn at nighttime, one kind (ab01bat01) with 71 <= AI fight <= 83, one kind (ab01bat02) with 81 <= AI fight <= 88 so the ones really aggressive are just ab01bat02, and you can almost avoid spawning them using the set ab01DayOnlyBirds to 1 console setting, or skip all night spawning with set ab01DayOnlyBirds to 2 console setting (as explained in the readme)
> keep getting stuck even after a minute. AI is slow. Depending how far the next random flight destination is, it may take 3-5 minutes to calculate the route, depending on your computer speed. In the meaning time bird often will try and slowly move up/backwards
So no more "Birds are just slowly gliding on the ground... "? That could be some progress. But last time I heard about it a multiplayer OpenMW server is able to manage all global variables correctly only by tweaking per-mod configuration, good luck with it.
Did you make a script, or are you suggesting that a script can/should be made? If you wrote a script to fix the described bugs, would you be willing to post it?
Hello. I have a strange bug when playing with your mod. Sometimes birds that are coming to protect me, techincally don't stop to follow. So caravaners and shipmasters think that I am travelling with a lot of companions, and the travel price becomes too great. Since I play with some economy changing mods, it seems rather annoying.
I am sure that the problem is exactly with flying creatures, because turning this plugin off removes the issue.
I am playing on standard engine, not OpenMW.
Generally I love your mod, it makes Vvardenfell living and beautiful. But I would be grateful if you fix it or write some console command to immediately disable the birds following.
sorry pal, I'm not going to edit the mod for such nitpicking. Instead you can open the game console and type player->additem gold_001 1000 and charge it on me
You should just accept the higher fees. After all, the shipmaster and whatnot have to pay to feed your pet birds and make room and cleanup after them. It's the least you can do.
Re: traveling prices. This mod has been engineered in about 2004, well before a Morrowind Code Patch option could provide required payment for traveling followers, so that was a non-issue. If you choose to enable an option in Morrowind Code Patch, you should at least be aware of it and realize you can disable the option before asking to change a 20 years old, highly optimized and hardly manageable vanilla Morrowind code (and I have no idea how to do it from standard scripting anyway). I doubt that more than a couple birds could be following player at the same time, anyway you could just disable/use less strict economy changes if you want more cheap travelling. Or use my scenic travel mods option so travelling is always cheap (for the same technical limits). Or just add 1000 gold using console (but then again why are you using strict economy mods?) Re: birds following In the years I have tweaked this and other mods several times, trying to answer (often contradictory) requests; I have made toggleable - spawning in interiors - spawning nocturnal creatures - no spawning where you place a special ring I could add another toggle to make birds never escort/follow player, but that's the only way I can implement fake factions to have a prey/predator behavior of creatures which is a major point both in this and water life mods, so bear with me if I don't want to do it. So before talking about "uncalled for aggression from the author though on literally every comment that has any sort of issue", maybe take the time of reading the whole threads about my mods histories and support given in all these years.
Tried out 1.18 with OpenMW 0.46. Here are some observation, I'm not really sure which of these may be due to OpenMW and which are due to mod limitations:
* Fireflies have white squares at the tail end (during the night), this is presumably a OpenMW issue. * Saw fireflies (3) + bats (2) at night in Ald-Rhun, these don't seem to fit the region. * Birds occasionally get somewhat stuck (stay in place and eventually back off) from things like daedric shrine walls and (modded) ship sails, that they fly into. * Saw a kwama forager picked a fight with a firefly. * Bats can fly low and trigger fights with guards. * The bat texture color is rather bright making them rather visible at night. * There are birds that fly oddly low and slow, it looks like they are gliding (no wing flapping) while almost touching the ground. * It might make more sense for insects rather than birds to appear when playing in Morrowind (and Tamriel Rebuilt areas).
Note: I'm currently only using "Passive Healthy Wildlife" that affects creature behavior. This was installed late so most creatures still act as vanilla creatures.
* Fireflies have white squares at the tail end (during the night), this is presumably a OpenMW issue. * The bat texture color is rather bright making them rather visible at night. * There are birds that fly oddly low and slow, it looks like they are gliding (no wing flapping) while almost touching the ground. I think these are OpenMW problems, the rest may happen with Morrowind.exe too. Probably the bat color can be fixed setting the NiMaterialProperty specular to black
if you are not already up to date with them, try updating morrowind code patch and mwse-lua (run MWSE-Update.exe), I am not sure but I think those problems with fireflies should have been patched there.
[EDIT] if it still does not work after updating, please try this patch
Missed your reply. I was already on the latest MCP beta and MWSE. The patch did the trick. Thanks man! It actually made fireflies so much less noticeable that I thought they despawned.
To anyone trying to use the patch: Folder structure is wrong; in Meshes folder create "firefly" folder and drops all 3 files into it.
Could you update all of the firefly meshes in Thaedyn Vyr's mod, please? The update of the flying fireflies work beautifully with the latest MGE XE/mwse 2.1. (regular morrowind) The old meshes had the white squares since the Jan 6 mwse 2.1 update.
To fix the mesh while keeping the brightness, the NiFlipController needs to target the glow map (as it did before 1.18, as far as I can tell) and all colors in the material must be set to black, then they'll glow again as they are (probably) supposed to be. The problem was that there only was a glow map and no base texture applied, so the game just rendered these parts in the material's colors with the glow map. Changing the material to black also means the NiAlphaProperty works as intended, thus fixing the transparency. I also added a NiZBufferProperty to eliminate sorting issues (don't ask me how exactly this works, but it does), and while I was at it I fixed a few other things I had noticed while examining the issue (but they are probably not noticeable unless you get REALLY close and pause the game, they may improve performance a little bit, though).
Oh, I did not think the update was needed in a rush, it is only a mesh and you can just download it from the link Pherim provided [EDIT] I've just uploaded it as xfirefly fix extra file if you need a bain ready package
What is the source of the butterflies used in this mod? The credits only say they are fetched from a modding resource. I think they would be a nice substitute to the horrible butterflies currently used in Tamriel Rebuilt.
the readme says: - added edited butterflies, original by Lady E, retextured by Daduke so I probably edited original from Lady E. probably from Dragon's Breech mod and used Daduke's retextures for them (I can't find a link for that at the moment) Note that AI behavior/scripting is what usually affects creatures movement, and that I tailored/scripted for this mod so it is not likely to work elsewhere without changes/understanding how things work From what I remember, apart the retexture, TR butterflies have mostly static AI so they don't fly around much
Yes, the wander distance of TR's butterflies is quite short compared to yours. I had a look at your butterfly script, and I don't think the advanced AI behaviour you have implemented is anything we would like to replicate. We also have the requirement that our mod needs to work well on OpenMW, which you don't. The butterflies should also be persistent in the game world and be placed into level lists, although some day/night switch would probably be nice. So it would probably require some experimentation to make it work well.
It would be nice if you could find the link to Daduke's textures, at least so we can see the original permissions (I assume it is fine to use them, since you were allowed to redistribute them here, but it is still preferred to get them from the primary source).
I had some discussion with the asset devs at TR, and it doesn't look like the models are good enough for our purposes. So I don't think you need to waste your time looking for the source of the textures. I will let you know if they change their minds.
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it actually works quite nicely. Just whitelist the mobs you want to make chill. Just look for them under the "ab_" prefix. No more rabies bites, angry guards, or anxiety-inducing battle music while shopping around town at night. Of course that means you won't be able to make bank off of all the random tufts of bat wings and bat fur, but if you're persistent, you can still bonk all the bats you want. Only this time it'll be on your terms!
If you could tell me how to modify my files to remove the bats, that would be great, thank you :^)
check 2 posts below
If you don't mind I have some questions. Your explanation might help, though I do not insist on replying.
1. Considering the reason why some people hate bees and bats this mod adds I decided to edit their behaviour in CS and changed their Fight AI to 0. I don't know if this is gonna work but I haven't had any problems with them yet. In fact, I didn't even find them. Any hint on where and when they usually spawn so I can test?
2. Regarding issue with birds flying into statics.
I know you already explained why scripts work this way. Just wanted to specify - after they fly into obstacle how much time it takes for them to fly away? In my game they keep getting stuck even after a minute.
bees spawn at daytime, with 75 <= AI fight <= 82,
so you have about 40% probability of them being aggressive, depending also on player distance
bats spawn at nighttime, one kind (ab01bat01) with 71 <= AI fight <= 83, one kind (ab01bat02) with 81 <= AI fight <= 88
so the ones really aggressive are just ab01bat02, and you can almost avoid spawning them using the
set ab01DayOnlyBirds to 1
console setting,
or skip all night spawning with
set ab01DayOnlyBirds to 2
console setting (as explained in the readme)
> keep getting stuck even after a minute.
AI is slow. Depending how far the next random flight destination is, it may take 3-5 minutes to calculate the route, depending on your computer speed. In the meaning time bird often will try and slowly move up/backwards
That could be some progress. But last time I heard about it a multiplayer OpenMW server is able to manage all global variables correctly only by tweaking per-mod configuration, good luck with it.
I am sure that the problem is exactly with flying creatures, because turning this plugin off removes the issue.
I am playing on standard engine, not OpenMW.
Generally I love your mod, it makes Vvardenfell living and beautiful. But I would be grateful if you fix it or write some console command to immediately disable the birds following.
player->additem gold_001 1000
and charge it on me
This mod has been engineered in about 2004, well before a Morrowind Code Patch option could provide required payment for traveling followers, so that was a non-issue.
If you choose to enable an option in Morrowind Code Patch, you should at least be aware of it and realize you can disable the option before asking to change a 20 years old, highly optimized and hardly manageable vanilla Morrowind code (and I have no idea how to do it from standard scripting anyway).
I doubt that more than a couple birds could be following player at the same time, anyway you could just disable/use less strict economy changes if you want more cheap travelling. Or use my scenic travel mods option so travelling is always cheap (for the same technical limits). Or just add 1000 gold using console (but then again why are you using strict economy mods?)
Re: birds following
In the years I have tweaked this and other mods several times, trying to answer (often contradictory) requests; I have made toggleable
- spawning in interiors
- spawning nocturnal creatures
- no spawning where you place a special ring
I could add another toggle to make birds never escort/follow player, but that's the only way I can implement fake factions to have a prey/predator behavior of creatures which is a major point both in this and water life mods, so bear with me if I don't want to do it.
So before talking about "uncalled for aggression from the author though on literally every comment that has any sort of issue", maybe take the time of reading the whole threads about my mods histories and support given in all these years.
Here are some observation, I'm not really sure which of these may be due to OpenMW and which are due to mod limitations:
* Fireflies have white squares at the tail end (during the night), this is presumably a OpenMW issue.
* Saw fireflies (3) + bats (2) at night in Ald-Rhun, these don't seem to fit the region.
* Birds occasionally get somewhat stuck (stay in place and eventually back off) from things like daedric shrine walls and (modded) ship sails, that they fly into.
* Saw a kwama forager picked a fight with a firefly.
* Bats can fly low and trigger fights with guards.
* The bat texture color is rather bright making them rather visible at night.
* There are birds that fly oddly low and slow, it looks like they are gliding (no wing flapping) while almost touching the ground.
* It might make more sense for insects rather than birds to appear when playing in Morrowind (and Tamriel Rebuilt areas).
Note: I'm currently only using "Passive Healthy Wildlife" that affects creature behavior. This was installed late so most creatures still act as vanilla creatures.
* The bat texture color is rather bright making them rather visible at night.
* There are birds that fly oddly low and slow, it looks like they are gliding (no wing flapping) while almost touching the ground.
I think these are OpenMW problems, the rest may happen with Morrowind.exe too. Probably the bat color can be fixed setting the NiMaterialProperty specular to black
[EDIT] if it still does not work after updating, please try this patch
To anyone trying to use the patch:
Folder structure is wrong; in Meshes folder create "firefly" folder and drops all 3 files into it.
Here it is: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uj2rohq67d6bvvu/WAABBG_Firefly_Fix.zip?dl=1?
Of course, if you like you can put it in the mod.
[EDIT] I've just uploaded it as xfirefly fix extra file if you need a bain ready package
- added edited butterflies, original by Lady E, retextured by Daduke
so I probably edited original from Lady E. probably from Dragon's Breech mod
and used Daduke's retextures for them (I can't find a link for that at the moment)
Note that AI behavior/scripting is what usually affects creatures movement, and that I tailored/scripted for this mod so it is not likely to work elsewhere without changes/understanding how things work
From what I remember, apart the retexture, TR butterflies have mostly static AI so they don't fly around much
It would be nice if you could find the link to Daduke's textures, at least so we can see the original permissions (I assume it is fine to use them, since you were allowed to redistribute them here, but it is still preferred to get them from the primary source).