This is the release of 3.07.3, which has some minor fixes as I spent most of the week half-assedly preparing for the next episode of Lore Friendly. Now that I’ve got that jettisoned from my brain – it’ll be published Wednesday – I can go back to doing something or other.
I’m going to also try and learn GECK as well, as nonoodles is starting her own project. However, if I do manage to figure shit out, the characters will just be demos. I don’t want to put too much effort into them since I’ll have to reconstruct the entire dialogue when adding them to Fallout 4.
Lastly, thanks to King626 for the screenshot.
New Quests
• Children of the Dust
• The Curse
New NPCs
• Sorax (SageHalo)
• Kleera (Jessica Osborne)
• Hag (Cassandra Wladyslava)
• Minedrahl (Ludvig Lindblad)
• Sorax’s Wife (Ronja Monto)
• Ariele (Lucy Starita)
• Lyela (Ainsley Brennan)
All Fixes and Tweaks from v3.07
• Fixed improperly connected dialogue in Zora and Isobel‘s initial greetings
• Added two missing meshes for The Aldmeri Prisoner
• Raised decibel level for Gromash
Lol, you don’t have to sound so lugubrious about learning the GECK, Kris. It’s a simpler version of CK, you’ll be right at home in it.
Not that it matters one way or another, I’ll be around to take care of compatibility patches and so forth but yep, Nexus page is fine as it is. Tbh, I’ve been on the site long enough to know it’s the worst job on earth ever, and certainly didn’t help matters when some asshat started gnawing on my head the moment I posted that damn faq.
Sooo…just returning to the peace and quiet of the olden days rather than doing some project…and maybe actually finally get around to tackling Fallout collision problem again. That would be nice. Can’t call yourself a mesher if you can’t fix your collisions :)
Ha, I’m just being lazy. I realized the similarities were there when I added the lines to Vincent, but it’s one of those things where it’s juuuust different enough to make me uncomfortable.
Yeah, stay away from the Nexus page. That place is a warzone. I think I mentioned when I started this blog that you and Unedjis should stay here where it’s nice and warm. If someone tries to mess up the “comfy” vibe on this blog I will just send them to the void.
But it’s also nice that the Nexus comment section exists as a place where people can rant unmoderated – a place we can peruse every now and then. It’s just not a site I recommend visiting more than once a week if even that.
It’s strange that you consider Nexus comment section to be a hostile, emotionally tiring place. It’s nothing special at all compared to certain forums on the Internet (and I’m not even referring to stuff like 4chan and other (in)famous troublemaker forums, which I don’t visit).
Ha, if you browse 4chan, you’ll find /v/ doesn’t even like Skyrim, every thread is about how much it sucks. /vg/ has a thread, and occasionally mentions Interesting NPCs, but in general it’s not apples to apples. Those sites don’t even talk about the mod.
The Nexus comment thread isn’t that bad, but you’re 10x more like to find a hostile comment pertaining to this mod than anywhere else. Those are going to bother people involved with the project more than someone railing on against some AAA game.
Personally I actively search for criticism because it’s so important to improving the mod. But I don’t recommend engaging hostile people. It’s best to lurk, determine if the criticism has merit, and glean what you can.
Still, a lot of criticism is vague, glib, or unsubstantiated, so even then you’re digging through an ocean of shit for the occasional diamond, and it’s a job I wouldn’t wish on anyone. But it’s also something I have to do because I know I’m not perfect and criticism is so vital, even if most of it is toxic.
It’s not something the actors, nonoodles, or anyone else should. If I get feedback on an actor that I agree with, then that feedback should come from me and hopefully it’ll go down easier coming from someone they trust and has their best interests at heart.
Yeah, Bethesda games as a whole are known for having an unpleasable fanbase, and this attitude can also carry out to mods.
I wouldn’t call the Nexus forums hostile per-se, I mean there are a few people spewing shit, but then again there always are on big sites like that. Most of the people are nice (though a few of them can be incredibly stupid), it’s just the sheer volume of opinions/comments/stuff like that, that make it kind of overwhelming.
Right, pretty much every site is like that. The higher the volume of comments, the more likely you’ll find a turd in the soup. And it only takes one turd to ruin the whole batch.
But again, hostility isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes people are angry for a damn good reason. And if you can keep your “customer service” hat on and train yourself to respond like a robot, you might be able to get even more information that can help the mod.
The problem with Nexus is the way the comment section is constructed. Everyone uses the main comment section regardless if they’re reporting bugs or just saying hello. At least here I can isolate the bug reporting from people who just want to post fan art. I can hold comments for approval to prevent trolls and check if criticism has merit before exposing it to the masses. It’s not really about limiting my exposure to shit-flinging – because I need to hear it – as it is limiting the exposure for people who just want to be comfy.
Yep, that’s it in a nutshell. I like Nexus. It’s a great site. However, taking care of a mod page, especially one that draws as much attention positive or negative, like 3dnpc, is horrendous. I don’t mind people who come around asking for assistance; in fact, they are the reason I stayed on. But at the end of the day, either you are shackled to the page and the mod or you are modding. There’s a deal of difference between being an onlooker and being the one caretaking.
I did suggest freezing the page when Kris made it clear he wasn’t going to be on there much, and it still strikes me as the best option. Honestly, if I wanted the pleasure of tending a mod – and I’m not counting those OCS patches, they are barely mods – I would have uploaded them a long time ago.
Unedjis is an angel, though. He’s a rock in a storm.
tl;dr not enough minutes in a day for all this.
On an unrelated note, just heard about C0DA and tracked it down via the convulsions of anguish in the TES fanbase. Hilarious. No wonder I’d been stuffing Skyrim full of whimsy.
Well, I’ve actually considered removing the Nexus page altogether at some point. It’ll require more moderation here, but again, I think I can keep it civil so we all feel as cozy as bunnies.
I’m honestly not sure how anyone could say anything bad iNPCs. The breadth and depth of characters is just so far beyond related to Skyrim that I’ve seen. Not to mention the amazing quests which add I don’t even know how many hours of extra play and the replay value of different dialogue options and quest choices.
If I were to say something critical it would a wish for the Windpeak Inn to never be used again for anything iNPC related. As much as love the mod for making me go out of my way to see little gems of Skyrim that I never noticed before or linger in towns that I typically just passed through, I never before noticed how truly horrible Karita’s singing was before I was required to spend extended time in Dawnstar and I really am getting quite sick of her voice.
I think that quest note distribution should be shared between multiple innkeepers, as a rule, anyway.
Lol, I’ll keep that in mind. Mostly I’m running out of room everywhere in Skyrim.
edit:
@lonewolf
the morthal innkeeper has the note too, but that’s it. I guess I figured with so many notes I didn’t want to bury the player in a pile of papers. By limiting the notes to nearby locations, you’re only getting 1 or 2 at a time.
One change I already implemented was removing the objective at the start of The Curse so it doesn’t seem like a quest. This will make it less confusing I think when the initial scene ends because you won’t be expecting a quest, it’s just some phenomenon you witnessed like Alik’r harassing Redguards.
Well, I mean that there’s no reason why, say, the note that directs you to Viranya in “Vigilance and Virtue” should be held only by Keerava, making her a single point of missing the quest (like I did on my first playthough). Viranya seems thorough enough to send multiple notes to innkeepers in general vicinity, and, in general, if the government is distributing notes, it can distribute them to multiple innkeepers. They seem to have printing presses or their equivalent in Tamriel, anyway.
Elrindir in Blood of Kings is the worst, though. Non-archers have no particular reason to visit his place often, anyway.
Mod-added places and innkeepers make the issue, relatively mild in Vanilla, worse.
This probably should’ve been posted in ideas and suggestions forum.
Limiting a note to a hold or to general area (Dawnstar and Winterhold sharing stuff is plausible), which would result in 2 innkeepers on average having a note, sounds like a good compromise between “notes, notes everywhere” and a “single point of failure”.
Also, a good option in some other cases would be having both an innkeeper and his wench/helper having a note. The player would still see one note per place.
Good points. A lot of these decisions are relics from a time where I didn’t know how to script certain things.
For instance, Elrindr. I can just make a trigger that accomplishes what the note does once you enter Whiterun. Although you’d still have to visit the Huntsman I suppose to talk to Helcyon. I wonder if there’s a vanilla guard comment that mentions suspicious people or something.
edit: found one – One of the guards said he saw a mage appear out of thin air. Man’s been hitting the skooma I say. Whiterun guards will say this provided prereqs are met, pointing you to Elrindr. Fits because Helcyon seemingly(literally in terms of the game mechanics) appears out of thin air.
Also using vampire related Dawnguard guard commentary will be an excellent way to start Vigilance and Virtue.
Psychic guards, man.
More than anything it’s something I’ve wanted to vent about for a bit of time now and this conversation seemed appropriate though I’ll understand if future updates end up utilizing the inn. Thanks for the indulgence.
Since we’re on the topic of inn keeper missives though, I have to say I would love if the inn keeper at Falkreath actually gave out a copy of Rumarin‘s fake Jarl decree on pie. Sorry if there is an actual physical copy of this document out there in the game and I somehow missed it. It would make for a nice source of confusion for people new to the mod and a good laugh for those who have actually done the Raven of Anvil. And in that vein it could be a nice small thing if every inn in the game supplied one document that made an amusing reference to an iNPC event but had no actual utility as far as finding characters or starting quests is concerned.