Can I use Tes5Edit to add the package to followers? I'd like them to just wander and then come across them by coincidence without me having to use the spell on them.
ya, that's virtually all this mod is atm tbh, an ai package and a spell that adds it to npc's. you'd just be removing the need for the spell. you'd have to add this package as a master to your follower mod then or copy the package itself directly into the follower mod, but it would work relatively the same way.
oh I like that idea, I might try to implement that myself. you'd have to basically implement a whole new follower faction/system for that and make a 'leader' that the others would follow (think of a simplified aft that's devoted just for followers following other followers).
I've been fiddling around with AI packages using Tes5Edit but it didn't go that well. Guess for something like this you really need the clunky Creation Kit.
Ya, the way ai packages are laid out in the database, it'd be almost suicide trying to modify them using TES5Edit. You really do need the CK, but at that point they're super easy to manipulate tbh.
Mixed Unit Tactics has the ability to set leaders that other NPCs follow https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/57589/? You build squads you can command and can make an NPC leader of a squad. I have a vague recollection of another mod that does that as well. They did it with Mjoll the Lioness and Aerin and with those characters that temporarily tag along for quests, so I imagine I imagine it should be fairly straightforward to implement as it must be built into the scripts already.
Skyrim does have it's own follower type of system built into it, but from what I've read it's kind of glitchy at best it's why people just create their own follower frameworks instead. I've never looked at how Aerin follows Mjoll around but that would be a good example to look at now that you mention it. However I do think I would need to make a framework ultimately, which might be a lot of work. I think a basic system can be implemented pretty easily, but even something that's easy can take a week of playing around with if you've never done it before. There seems to be a lot of talk in here of people wanting to see a feature like this though, so I'm probably going to have to figure one out - I also would like to see it, so I wouldn't be surprised if I get around to it sooner or later. I plan on taking this project rather slowly though, I might sit back one weekend and make a huge update, or it might take me weeks to even do anything at all. I doubt I will implement anything that I don't feel is a stable addition to the mod. It's more likely I'll make a patch that people can choose to try out if they wish with a new feature like this at first and get feedback and test it out myself in a full playthru or two before actually adding it into the mod. I'll look into Mixed Unit Tactics though and see what it does, but I'm guessing it's just using a similar system like EFF or AFT or something like that. I don't think I've ever tried out Mixed Unit Tactics tbh, sounds neat.
It's been a while since I've worked on this, but ya, it's one of the features I'll likely add in the future if I get around to it. I doubt it would be very difficult tbh, but I've never tried so who knows.
just took a quick peek at this, ya, they are quite similar although clearly Follower Goes on a Trip is far more developed. It has some nice features, I like the bounty thing he has going on there. I'd have to compare our packages to see how different it is overall, mine permits for just about anything, I'd be surprised if his isn't very similar though tbh, it just has more features. It's utilizing a quest like I mentioned previously with PhaseMaster, which as I figured would drastically complicated the situation for modding it further (it's why mods like aft are limited as well, assumingly). it is an older'ish mod though, maybe I'll continue with this if I can come up with something more unique and useful, as it stands I suppose it could be useful to someone though, at the very least it's very simple and uncomplicated.
been using Follower Goes on a Trip for many years. it's a great mod. stable. don't think i've ever even seen papyrus logs mention it. i've got about 8 npcs wandering the world now. but ya gotta watch the feature for having npcs get captured. it's awesome to see a follower bound, and being led away by bandits. it even takes their armor and weapons away. but i have to disable that feature sadly, because the wandering npc will clear out entire dungeons before u've even been to the place. it will also complete radiant quests without u being involved. i use another mod called Tag and Track to keep an eye on where the wanderers go. and u can see them go to a dungeon where u have a "kill bandit leader" type quest. not long after u'll get the popup, "bandit killed. go collect your bounty" ect. and if u go to the dungeon, there'll be dead enemies or just empty. i got tired of loosing the experience and fun lol i'm very much thrilled to see where you take your mod Blippy!
thankyou for your experienced input, this is exactly the type of information I was hoping to get from people. can't promise what I can fix about those issues, but at least now I'm aware of why people didn't like the other mod, even if only in some ways or by some people. what you're saying certainly makes sense, and I could also easily see how this could get annoying if not outright out of hand. gives me an idea though, initially this mod was meant for npc followers, but my intention is to make it for anyone that YOU want if possible. now, if you wanted to let 15 powerful npc followers run around your map clearing stuff, I suppose that's up to you, but after reading your post, I might try to implement a 'captured' feature myself. ie: you can specify a type of 'wanderer' that you might locate in your travels, where in the situation you're describing, instead of them clearing the dungeon, they would simply be marked as unkillable, and let the bandits capture them, so in that way, you wouldn't come across a cleared out dungeon, but instead a dungeon where the bandits were holding npc's hostage instead which you could then save and be immediately rewarded some how - a thankyou, a financial reward, immediate ability to add them as a follower, stuff like that. granted this is just 'no limits wishful thinking', but I wouldn't suggest it if I didn't think it was at least somewhat possible, but this probably wouldn't be simple to implement either.
I'm big on MINOR CHANGES. the last thing I'd want to do is create some mod that bogs down systems and mucks up other mods, I prefer stuff that works with other mods instead of getting in their way. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, a feature like this might easily become a burden instead of a 'cool feature', so I guess it depends on how it's implemented, how well it can be implemented and how much it would affect a games stability, stuff like that.
thankyou for letting me know about Tag and Track, haven't heard of that one either, it or possibly that map one mentioned earlier will likely be very handy with testing this mod out further.
Your mod sounds very promising. Re this issue of followers wandering around completing dungeons with Follower Goes on a Trip, its actually exactly what I want a mod to do - though I was looking for something that makes various NPCs wander before you even meet them and if they encounter each other either ignore each other, fight or join up to create a party based on their dispositions - this would then create other adventurer bands that you could just bump into on the road or in towns or in dungeons and either fight or join up with based on some sort of initial facing off/parley that could go either way depending on what you say to them. I like the idea that the composition of these adventurer bands would vary and perhaps even include a mix of downloaded followers and vanilla npcs based on factions and the like.
I just hate this whole idea that the player is there to do absolutely everything and is some sort of godlike hero - it would feel much more immersive for me if you were just one of many adventurers wandering around Skyrim. Sure you have your own special plot line with the main quest, but there should be others out there doing quests as well. It would even be great if they add items from them to their gear and equip them and maybe even get notes of quests completion that you can either find when you kill and loot them or see in their inventories if you team up. It would be cool to discover you just joined up with or killed a renowned adventurer. It could even be interesting having an option to keep them wandering once you join them so you can just follow them around and let them lead for a while, or give them instructions to follow you at any point if you are a higher level.
I will keep an eye on this one as it sounds promising as it is as well - would it work in SSE or get ported (since thats what Im mostly playing these days)?
I wouldn't get your hopes up too much just yet. I'm very open to ideas and anything is certainly possible. Keep in mind that although I am a competent programmer already, I am still new to modding Skyrim in general. The biggest mistake I see quite a few mods make is trying to make them do all kinds of things. Just because I can code the game to do something doesn't mean that I should. The engine can only handle so much (especially for toaster type of systems), you throw too much at it and mods start breaking games. I'm up for trying just about anything, but only time will tell whether or not some of those ideas are actually worth implementing.
Lots of good ideas in this post though, I like the idea of the npc's gathering together as well on their own as well as collecting gear on their own and making their own 'band' type of situation. I foresee a couple of issues with this though. First, seeing them fighting each other, not sure exactly how feasible something like that would be - maybe an option we can turn on in the mcm experimentally, but I honestly don't know. My biggest concern with them picking stuff up however is this: Say a couple of them group up or even wander off on their own, regardless, and end up in a dungeon somewhere. There's a couple places where you just stumble across a claw laying on the ground or some other piece of like this. If they decide to pick up that claw, you may never find it. Which is kind of cool and more realistic, but would probably just really get many players mad. I suppose that claw is marked as a quest item though, and they could probably be programmed to not pick up quest items, but clearly this might cause all kinds of unexpected behavior, even though it does sound like a great idea. I know I've seen a mod where the npc's would loot the bodies, I don't know exactly how they do it. I'll have to try and find something like that and look at how it's done, as it is currently, I literally have no idea how to even go about that unfortunately.
I also VERY much like the idea of them continuing to wander, regardless if they've joined up with you or not. This is a concept I've been toying around with myself actually for the past couple of days and would definitely love to see this implemented as well.
You've given me a lot to consider though, thank you for your suggestions, they're tough ones but would be great to have if I could pull it off.
I agree. Sometimes with these things its really a case of what works without messing something else up so not every idea is doable even if they seem good, plus I dont want to derail you from the aspects that interest you most. Sometimes mods that seem to be doing less can have a big impact play, like say, Simply Knock https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/73236 . Elegance with a mod can pay off.
You are probably right with the looting issue, plus it may not always be the case that an item that should be in a specific area will always be a quest one - things like letters or books that act as clues/extra info for a situation could move with them and get out context as well, and the adventurers may end up crazily encumbered with all sorts of crap. An adventurer with 500 linen wraps may come across as delightfully eccentric but when you have met several it would just get bizarre lol. I notice that this mod (perhaps the one you were thinking of) that lets followers loot is an 'on command' one , not one that has them do it all the time https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4744/? . From reading posts it seems to have some interesting bugs though the idea looks really good and gives a sense of fairness - I never like that feeling that Im grabbing everything for myself save the crap I temporarily get my followers to carry because its too heavy for me.
With these sorts of ideas its really a case of what interests you though. I would have thought with the continuing to wander, if you have them follow you they would follow, but if you dismiss them they would go back to wandering as they dont really have a home to return to. Now Im feeling a bit sad for the poor homeless adventurers!
I have been kinda collecting wandering NPC mods and ones that get followers to go places for my next playthrough, not sure if you know of these ones but I thought I would mention the ones that spring to mind: Adventurers and Travellers https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/10527/? Travellers of Skyrim https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/15501/? Go On Ahead https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/76675/? I do wonder what happens with some of these if the NPCs hit a bad navmesh in another mod though. I have visions of some poor traveller endlessly walking into a wall somewhere. Still better than falling through the world though - years back when I played Daggerfall that was a nightmare!
I will be very interested to see what you come up with this one. Not being all that interested in big quests these days I could very happily just bum around Skyrim observing NPC behaviour and seeing where they take me.
>things like letters or books and that's the part that makes me hesitate on it. quest items are likely easy enough to filter and prevent from being picked up, but then you run into stuff like this where I would have to start creating my own filter list for all kinds of stuff which could become a serious pain to maintain, and that's not even mentioning the frustration it would cause people while trying to get a decent list going to begin with.
thx for the Followers can Loot link, I'll check it out - this will help a ton for example code to play with I'm sure and saves me from having to locate it myself :)
I use a few mods to help with my own items carrying. the witch bag you get from witch's tent/tentatpalooza or the basic bag you get with campfire (I think it's campfire) are great little additions. perhaps a little un-immersive considering you're carrying a ton of crap around in a tiny bag, but you also gotta allow for gameplay, and no one is forcing you to use it. I like it for stuff like alchemy ingredients and crafting materials, etc... there is also a nice spell with apocalypse spells called deep storage iirc, I love this one, but it takes a little while before you can get it or use it, and more immersive tbh. another good mod I've recently started using is haven bag.
>they would follow, but if you dismiss them they would go back to wandering well, that's exactly what they should do. when you recruit them, their quest ai should take over and follow you, if you dismiss them, they will revert back to their own ai packages (which is what my mod adds to) so they should just start wandering again. I've been trying to figure out how to search thru a single esp to load a list of npc's out of just that one esp the past couple of days, I figured this would be much easier, but tbh, I don't know if the functionality is there at all. I know additemmenu is doing exactly what I want, but it's skse and I think that code is locked in a dll so I can't just re-create it. I don't want to have to create a dll just for this functionality. I might have to go with an alternate approach to doing this, which would suck. but while searching for this funtionality, I was going over the papyrusutil library and although I need to test it, it appears to have the functions I need to add packages and REMOVE those packages as well, which isn't offered in the default papyrus library for skyrim. so now I should be able to add/remove the package even without using a quest alias which is awesome. so now your poor little adventurers will be able to go back home again soon instead of mindlessly and continually wandering around if you prefer ;-P
thanks for the other links also, I'll check them out as well - I really appreciate you guys linking me so many related mods (especially since I've never heard of them, despite having hundreds of mods stored on my hd over the years), makes my searching much easier tbh.
once I implement a mcm (never did one unfortunately, so might take me a bit to figure it out), the issue where npc's are stuck due to navmesh's could easily be resolved I think in a number of ways, we could run a check to see if an npc is 'stuck' or simply just pull them to us which would also get them out of that bind.
Wandering is one of those activities you see pop up from time to time but often seems to be part of a mod rather than the main point of the mod like yours is. Usually adding a ton of wandering characters that then get into fights big with bandit camps all the time. I have seen a few new followers recently that wander or at the very least have some sort of basic activity routine instead of just sitting in one of the usual inns, but nothing like yours that actually kicks the lazy sobs into getting off their backsides and going do something. Its almost like the Dragonborn is inspiring them to become proper adventurers lol.
If you want more links to wandering NPC mods I still have a few more. Its interesting reading peoples comments as well since you get to see all the bugs and issues (and interesting situations) people found using them. None do what yours is doing though. So thank you for a great idea and all the effort you are putting in with it.
thankyou for your experienced input, ---------------------- no prob, glad to help. yeah it'd be great if u could implement some way for them not to clear dungeons. i was really surprised that it could happen actually. i thought u the player, had to be within the ugrid range before the npc could clear the place, but i tested quite a bit and they'd clear it no matter where i was if you do the capture thing, it'd be sweet to have them in cages inside the dungeons BUT the badass-iest part of FGOTrip was that you could sometimes find your wanderer being led around out in the world by bandits. just like soldiers w/ prisoners, you'd see your follower bound and in prison clothes (or w/ no clothes, cant remember) being led down roads. then u could attack and save 'em. so if u do capture, it'd be awesome to have that
>Its almost like the Dragonborn is inspiring them to become proper adventurers lol. I like that analogy, likely going to use that for the dialogue option to tell them to wander off. :)
>If you want more links to wandering NPC mods I still have a few more Yes please, by all means, link anything related. I would be more than happy to take a look at them eventually, could be very helpful for coming up with new ideas, plus other people might really like to see them as well.
>So thank you for a great idea and all the effort you are putting in with it. I'm glad you're liking it. It's really just a simple mod atm, makes me wonder how much I should actually modify it haha. Been working on a way to get the mod to automatically load npc's and make them wander from an esp as I explained in the description. Made lots of headway so far, it's basically finished, but for some reason I'm running into a nasty scripting bug, while looping through the npc id's and converting them from text to hexadecimal/decimal format. I honestly can't figure out why it's skipping the data. I'll figure it out, but currently I'm at a stand still. The only method I can find to load directly from an esp so far is to use an xEdit script I made. This method works great, it stores the id's and I can read from them from a papyrus script without problems, but I can't figure out how to convert the hexadecimal text into decimal format so that a getformfromfile command can use it. It's really starting to agravate me. I've probably spent like 2 dedicated days on this already and have gotten no where on this one stupid issue.
Mookeylama: >yeah it'd be great if u could implement some way for them not to clear dungeons. I honestly have no idea how to even begin making them do that. Perhaps it's a feature I can figure out eventually, but currently I just wouldn't even know where to start for the most part. I also would prefer this though, or at least have a flag we can flip in a MCM menu that would enable/disable them doing this.
>if you do the capture thing, it'd be sweet to have them in cages inside the dungeons I can tell you right now I will likely never implement this. Not that I'm not open to them being captured, I would love that part. But cages likely won't happen. This would probably lead to conflicts with other mods I would expect. It would be easier to just bind them and have them follow the bandits around or left at the spot they were bound. For the most part I would expect this to be pretty easy to implement, but I'd have to figure out how to detect when they're in a fight/getting captured part. That's the part that would be hard I think. I do really like this idea though and suspect it would be one of the first things I'll try to implement once I get past this mass npc auto-wandering issue I'm currently trying to do. The best part of this is that it might help resolve the first point you made as well (or at least would make it easier to implement) since often they'd just get captured, so they wouldn't clear dungeons as much.
Here are a whole set of possibly related links for you to wandering/travelling npcs. Some seem to be a lot better scripted than others! This one is a pack of followers who wander the map and occasionally return to a set point: Companions and Followers - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/17823 SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/719 This one a bit more localised: Beasty Boys - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17268 This one travels to various dungeons looking for you: Lilith In Search of the Dragonborn - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/86059 SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/13871 This one wanders generally during the week and returns to Candlehearth Hall at the weekend: Kendra - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/75215 SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/13879 Some similiar ones by the same author: Inga - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/75470/ SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/13877 Circe - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/75869/ SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/13873 This one gets followers wandering and following each other as a team, visiting towns and dungeons. It creates a leader symbol you give to the team leader so the others follow them (I suspect based on Mixed Unit tactics?): Adventurers PKG for followers - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/79267/ SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/6598
These are ones that add lots of wandering npcs: Bunch of Wanderers - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/74499 SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/14937 NPCs Travel - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/10229/ Living NPCs - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/11739 The Dragonborn's Eventful travels - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/38559/ Skyrim Live - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/13399/ SIM Skyrim NPC Immersion Mod - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/8228/ NPCs and Horses - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/43749/ Travelling DnD Parties - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/72891/
This one is not strictly about wandering - it tells followers to go to a specified destination: Go On Ahead - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/76675 SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4779/ This one improves AI packages for NPCs and includes some wandering/sandboxing (a bit like Immersive Citizens): AI Overhaul - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50978 I think already linked these, but it may help to have them listed in one place with the others: Adventurers and Travellers - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/10527 SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4560/ Travellers of Skyrim - http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/15501SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1973/
I may have missed some, but there are way more I had saved to try out sometime than I I had realised! I hope some prove useful :) Yours looks like its a kinda unique take on wandering.
I've read about some mods that do something like this, but I think they're more related to radiant quests that don't have complicated scripting or stages to go thru. Each of these quests would likely require separate scripting to accommodate them, which isn't something I'd like to do, and tbh, it's not really a feature I would like to see in my game (it's like playing the game in auto-pilot), just sitting back and letting others finish the quests for me. I wouldn't expect to see a feature like this from this mod.
I haven't extensively tested it yet either myself, but theoretically, they should go just about anywhere, they can unlock doors also, so I don't think they'd be that limited except for places like getting behind the claw doors and other puzzle-like obstacles like that. But I honestly have no clue, any feedback you notice/bugs unexpected behavior (good or bad) is very welcome.
It would. Now Im wondering about mods that affect factions and NPC responses to you. Not something I have been looking at closely enough. Your mod actually has a lot of potential for interesting play alongside others that do related things. I was already thinking about your comment that they will open locked doors and can end in peoples homes and had a mental image of having to use Simply Knock to follow one inside.
well, since they unlocked the door, I wouldn't expect simply knock to work at that point unless they stuck around for a while and the owners re-locked the doors again.
I don't see why not, I'd have to look at it - What exactly did you have in mind (I don't use EFF, always been more partial to AFT myself) but I have used it, but it's been a while - I do have the latest installed while checking compatibility with another mod I made recently, so it wouldn't be hard to test it out.
Let me know what you'd like and I'll try to alter it for ya.
With EFF you have the option to tell your follows to relax,wait,dismiss etc . this can be done via dialogue or using the the telepathy spell .I was thinking if it was possible to be add your wander state as extra option .I've tried all the follower managers and i always come back to EFF because it to me seems less demanding on the system with a heavy mod load.
Alright, give me a day or two and I'll see what I can do to make you a patch, no promises though. It's Mother's Day today here in Canada, so I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to even start on it today (maybe later tonight I'll get a chance) but I wouldn't expect anything until tomorrow of the following day depending on how much trouble it gives me. But I'll at least take a look at it, it sounds like it would be a relatively easy thing to add. But it would probably stay much like it currently is. You might even have to dismiss them after giving them the command before they'll even start wandering since the EFF ai will likely take priority until you do release them. Once I get around to developing an actual system for this (ie: mcm and other features), then I'll look into integrating properly with mods like EFF and AFT, etc.. It might make sense to leave it like this though, I suppose only time will tell ;-P
NP, glad to share - something you might be interested in looking at is the first mod I released recently called Snuggly Serana. it has more code attached to it but also isn't a very big mod, it also basically revolves around manipulating ai packages. Something you might find interesting in that mod is how I automatically detect for mods and specifically how I check for aft and disable it's ai packages so that it doesn't override my own. If you intend on messing with these (admittedly pain in the butt packages) I'd be surprised if you won't have a need to disable aft's ai yourself at some point. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it's probably a really good example for learning from, it's simple, yet complicated enough to teach you some pretty neat practices I would think.
You're right, that's exactly the type of manipulation, alteration and override I could learn a lot from, I'll take a look. Appreciate it and thanks again.
ya, lots of authors have implemented similar packages in the past, I just figured a dedicated mod that does that to whoever YOU want specifically could be useful, plus this type of feature could potentially add lag in some areas you're not use to, this way you'd have full control over how many npc's are actually roaming around.
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I'd like them to just wander and then come across them by coincidence without me having to use the spell on them.
Now I just need another AI package to allow some of my followers to travel in pairs.
I've been fiddling around with AI packages using Tes5Edit but it didn't go that well.
Guess for something like this you really need the clunky Creation Kit.
You build squads you can command and can make an NPC leader of a squad. I have a vague recollection of another mod that does that as well. They did it with Mjoll the Lioness and Aerin and with those characters that temporarily tag along for quests, so I imagine I imagine it should be fairly straightforward to implement as it must be built into the scripts already.
Are you still interested in implementing that follower following follower thing?
i'm very much thrilled to see where you take your mod Blippy!
I'm big on MINOR CHANGES. the last thing I'd want to do is create some mod that bogs down systems and mucks up other mods, I prefer stuff that works with other mods instead of getting in their way. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, a feature like this might easily become a burden instead of a 'cool feature', so I guess it depends on how it's implemented, how well it can be implemented and how much it would affect a games stability, stuff like that.
thankyou for letting me know about Tag and Track, haven't heard of that one either, it or possibly that map one mentioned earlier will likely be very handy with testing this mod out further.
I just hate this whole idea that the player is there to do absolutely everything and is some sort of godlike hero - it would feel much more immersive for me if you were just one of many adventurers wandering around Skyrim. Sure you have your own special plot line with the main quest, but there should be others out there doing quests as well. It would even be great if they add items from them to their gear and equip them and maybe even get notes of quests completion that you can either find when you kill and loot them or see in their inventories if you team up. It would be cool to discover you just joined up with or killed a renowned adventurer. It could even be interesting having an option to keep them wandering once you join them so you can just follow them around and let them lead for a while, or give them instructions to follow you at any point if you are a higher level.
I will keep an eye on this one as it sounds promising as it is as well - would it work in SSE or get ported (since thats what Im mostly playing these days)?
Lots of good ideas in this post though, I like the idea of the npc's gathering together as well on their own as well as collecting gear on their own and making their own 'band' type of situation. I foresee a couple of issues with this though. First, seeing them fighting each other, not sure exactly how feasible something like that would be - maybe an option we can turn on in the mcm experimentally, but I honestly don't know. My biggest concern with them picking stuff up however is this: Say a couple of them group up or even wander off on their own, regardless, and end up in a dungeon somewhere. There's a couple places where you just stumble across a claw laying on the ground or some other piece of like this. If they decide to pick up that claw, you may never find it. Which is kind of cool and more realistic, but would probably just really get many players mad. I suppose that claw is marked as a quest item though, and they could probably be programmed to not pick up quest items, but clearly this might cause all kinds of unexpected behavior, even though it does sound like a great idea. I know I've seen a mod where the npc's would loot the bodies, I don't know exactly how they do it. I'll have to try and find something like that and look at how it's done, as it is currently, I literally have no idea how to even go about that unfortunately.
I also VERY much like the idea of them continuing to wander, regardless if they've joined up with you or not. This is a concept I've been toying around with myself actually for the past couple of days and would definitely love to see this implemented as well.
You've given me a lot to consider though, thank you for your suggestions, they're tough ones but would be great to have if I could pull it off.
You are probably right with the looting issue, plus it may not always be the case that an item that should be in a specific area will always be a quest one - things like letters or books that act as clues/extra info for a situation could move with them and get out context as well, and the adventurers may end up crazily encumbered with all sorts of crap. An adventurer with 500 linen wraps may come across as delightfully eccentric but when you have met several it would just get bizarre lol. I notice that this mod (perhaps the one you were thinking of) that lets followers loot is an 'on command' one , not one that has them do it all the time https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4744/? . From reading posts it seems to have some interesting bugs though the idea looks really good and gives a sense of fairness - I never like that feeling that Im grabbing everything for myself save the crap I temporarily get my followers to carry because its too heavy for me.
With these sorts of ideas its really a case of what interests you though. I would have thought with the continuing to wander, if you have them follow you they would follow, but if you dismiss them they would go back to wandering as they dont really have a home to return to. Now Im feeling a bit sad for the poor homeless adventurers!
I have been kinda collecting wandering NPC mods and ones that get followers to go places for my next playthrough, not sure if you know of these ones but I thought I would mention the ones that spring to mind:
Adventurers and Travellers https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/10527/?
Travellers of Skyrim https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/15501/?
Go On Ahead https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/76675/?
I do wonder what happens with some of these if the NPCs hit a bad navmesh in another mod though. I have visions of some poor traveller endlessly walking into a wall somewhere. Still better than falling through the world though - years back when I played Daggerfall that was a nightmare!
I will be very interested to see what you come up with this one. Not being all that interested in big quests these days I could very happily just bum around Skyrim observing NPC behaviour and seeing where they take me.
and that's the part that makes me hesitate on it. quest items are likely easy enough to filter and prevent from being picked up, but then you run into stuff like this where I would have to start creating my own filter list for all kinds of stuff which could become a serious pain to maintain, and that's not even mentioning the frustration it would cause people while trying to get a decent list going to begin with.
thx for the Followers can Loot link, I'll check it out - this will help a ton for example code to play with I'm sure and saves me from having to locate it myself :)
I use a few mods to help with my own items carrying. the witch bag you get from witch's tent/tentatpalooza or the basic bag you get with campfire (I think it's campfire) are great little additions. perhaps a little un-immersive considering you're carrying a ton of crap around in a tiny bag, but you also gotta allow for gameplay, and no one is forcing you to use it. I like it for stuff like alchemy ingredients and crafting materials, etc... there is also a nice spell with apocalypse spells called deep storage iirc, I love this one, but it takes a little while before you can get it or use it, and more immersive tbh. another good mod I've recently started using is haven bag.
>they would follow, but if you dismiss them they would go back to wandering
well, that's exactly what they should do. when you recruit them, their quest ai should take over and follow you, if you dismiss them, they will revert back to their own ai packages (which is what my mod adds to) so they should just start wandering again. I've been trying to figure out how to search thru a single esp to load a list of npc's out of just that one esp the past couple of days, I figured this would be much easier, but tbh, I don't know if the functionality is there at all. I know additemmenu is doing exactly what I want, but it's skse and I think that code is locked in a dll so I can't just re-create it. I don't want to have to create a dll just for this functionality. I might have to go with an alternate approach to doing this, which would suck. but while searching for this funtionality, I was going over the papyrusutil library and although I need to test it, it appears to have the functions I need to add packages and REMOVE those packages as well, which isn't offered in the default papyrus library for skyrim. so now I should be able to add/remove the package even without using a quest alias which is awesome. so now your poor little adventurers will be able to go back home again soon instead of mindlessly and continually wandering around if you prefer ;-P
thanks for the other links also, I'll check them out as well - I really appreciate you guys linking me so many related mods (especially since I've never heard of them, despite having hundreds of mods stored on my hd over the years), makes my searching much easier tbh.
once I implement a mcm (never did one unfortunately, so might take me a bit to figure it out), the issue where npc's are stuck due to navmesh's could easily be resolved I think in a number of ways, we could run a check to see if an npc is 'stuck' or simply just pull them to us which would also get them out of that bind.
again, thx for the feedback and ideas :)
If you want more links to wandering NPC mods I still have a few more. Its interesting reading peoples comments as well since you get to see all the bugs and issues (and interesting situations) people found using them. None do what yours is doing though. So thank you for a great idea and all the effort you are putting in with it.
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no prob, glad to help. yeah it'd be great if u could implement some way for them not to clear dungeons. i was really surprised that it could happen actually. i thought u the player, had to be within the ugrid range before the npc could clear the place, but i tested quite a bit and they'd clear it no matter where i was
if you do the capture thing, it'd be sweet to have them in cages inside the dungeons BUT the badass-iest part of FGOTrip was that you could sometimes find your wanderer being led around out in the world by bandits. just like soldiers w/ prisoners, you'd see your follower bound and in prison clothes (or w/ no clothes, cant remember) being led down roads. then u could attack and save 'em. so if u do capture, it'd be awesome to have that
>Its almost like the Dragonborn is inspiring them to become proper adventurers lol.
I like that analogy, likely going to use that for the dialogue option to tell them to wander off. :)
>If you want more links to wandering NPC mods I still have a few more
Yes please, by all means, link anything related. I would be more than happy to take a look at them eventually, could be very helpful for coming up with new ideas, plus other people might really like to see them as well.
>So thank you for a great idea and all the effort you are putting in with it.
I'm glad you're liking it. It's really just a simple mod atm, makes me wonder how much I should actually modify it haha. Been working on a way to get the mod to automatically load npc's and make them wander from an esp as I explained in the description. Made lots of headway so far, it's basically finished, but for some reason I'm running into a nasty scripting bug, while looping through the npc id's and converting them from text to hexadecimal/decimal format. I honestly can't figure out why it's skipping the data. I'll figure it out, but currently I'm at a stand still. The only method I can find to load directly from an esp so far is to use an xEdit script I made. This method works great, it stores the id's and I can read from them from a papyrus script without problems, but I can't figure out how to convert the hexadecimal text into decimal format so that a getformfromfile command can use it. It's really starting to agravate me. I've probably spent like 2 dedicated days on this already and have gotten no where on this one stupid issue.
Mookeylama:
>yeah it'd be great if u could implement some way for them not to clear dungeons.
I honestly have no idea how to even begin making them do that. Perhaps it's a feature I can figure out eventually, but currently I just wouldn't even know where to start for the most part. I also would prefer this though, or at least have a flag we can flip in a MCM menu that would enable/disable them doing this.
>if you do the capture thing, it'd be sweet to have them in cages inside the dungeons
I can tell you right now I will likely never implement this. Not that I'm not open to them being captured, I would love that part. But cages likely won't happen. This would probably lead to conflicts with other mods I would expect. It would be easier to just bind them and have them follow the bandits around or left at the spot they were bound. For the most part I would expect this to be pretty easy to implement, but I'd have to figure out how to detect when they're in a fight/getting captured part. That's the part that would be hard I think. I do really like this idea though and suspect it would be one of the first things I'll try to implement once I get past this mass npc auto-wandering issue I'm currently trying to do. The best part of this is that it might help resolve the first point you made as well (or at least would make it easier to implement) since often they'd just get captured, so they wouldn't clear dungeons as much.
This one is a pack of followers who wander the map and occasionally return to a set point:
Companions and Followers - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/17823 SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/719
This one a bit more localised:
Beasty Boys - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17268
This one travels to various dungeons looking for you:
Lilith In Search of the Dragonborn - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/86059 SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/13871
This one wanders generally during the week and returns to Candlehearth Hall at the weekend:
Kendra - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/75215 SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/13879
Some similiar ones by the same author:
Inga - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/75470/ SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/13877
Circe - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/75869/ SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/13873
This one gets followers wandering and following each other as a team, visiting towns and dungeons. It creates a leader symbol you give to the team leader so the others follow them (I suspect based on Mixed Unit tactics?):
Adventurers PKG for followers - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/79267/ SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/6598
These are ones that add lots of wandering npcs:
Bunch of Wanderers - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/74499 SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/14937
NPCs Travel - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/10229/
Living NPCs - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/11739
The Dragonborn's Eventful travels - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/38559/
Skyrim Live - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/13399/
SIM Skyrim NPC Immersion Mod - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/8228/
NPCs and Horses - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/43749/
Travelling DnD Parties - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/72891/
This one is not strictly about wandering - it tells followers to go to a specified destination:
Go On Ahead - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/76675 SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4779/
This one improves AI packages for NPCs and includes some wandering/sandboxing (a bit like Immersive Citizens):
AI Overhaul - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50978
I think already linked these, but it may help to have them listed in one place with the others:
Adventurers and Travellers - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/10527 SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4560/
Travellers of Skyrim - http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/15501SE version https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1973/
I may have missed some, but there are way more I had saved to try out sometime than I I had realised! I hope some prove useful :) Yours looks like its a kinda unique take on wandering.
Trying it out along with jbNPCMap to see where they wander to and fro.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/62022
Let me know what you'd like and I'll try to alter it for ya.