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News, Notes, and Carousels

Kris Takahashi Other 7 Comments

Rosequest_by_numerikuI decided to take a moment from scratching myself to do a little blog maintenance. For a while mod users like numeriku have been adding images like the one above to Nexus, and I figured at some point I should look into creating a user gallery here. Coding isn’t something I’m familiar with, so mostly I have to make use of whatever widgets the smart folks at WordPress have provided.

And they do provide. The music player is just one of the countless handy widgets available, and they’re constantly being updated and improved. However, what we needed now was a slideshow function, so I was pretty pumped up to see an actual functioning carousel, with titles, captions, user comments and reblog options already built in. This is precisely what the masses have been clamoring for, and it was there the whole fucking time.

Well, not exactly. It didn’t take long for me to realize after the eighth or so image showed up in the sidebar—>, the older thumbnails weren’t being hidden. They were being stacked. Happy face turned to sad face.

113Well, that’s not quite the sad face I was going for, House.

494

Okay, that’s better. I have a fairly good connection, and it was struggling to load the front page. That is as the teenagers say, “no bueno.” I don’t know if teenagers actually say that but it sounds like a cheerleader would. Anyhow, for now I’ve posted a few images as an example, and posted on the WordPress forums to complain.

http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/gallery-widget-sidebar-showing-too-many-images?replies=1

Hopefully there’s a way to do this that I’m just not seeing, or Batman is going to drown in his own tears. You wouldn’t do that to Batman, would you, WordPress?

 

News, Notes, and Advertisements

Kris Takahashi Other 10 Comments

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A common question I get is when the mod will be finished. I have no idea. Perhaps if the earthquake that hit last night was twice the magnitude and swallowed me whole, that would certainly be the end of the mod. Instead, it was just a 5.1, not enough to cause major damage but enough to tweet out a series of crude adolescent jokes, such as:

1. Imply earthquake caused by sex
2. Imply earthquake caused by someone’s mother
3. Imply earthquake caused by sex with someone’s mother

All I know is that every time I feel like I’m done with modding, I get another idea in my head and then it’s another hit of the crack pipe. There should be a support group for people like me. You know, modders who like to exaggerate the effects of a relatively harmless hobby by likening it to doing drugs.

It’s not cool man, not fucking cool. But I can’t stop, it’s just like being addicted to heroin.

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NO YOUTUBE I DON’T WANT YOUR MONEY HERE TAKE IT ALL YOU CORPORATE SCUM!!!

0X2SKUMYou may have noticed, but I’ve disabled advertisements on Youtube because I am worried about the influence of corporations on art and bwahahaha no in all seriousness they simply don’t make enough greenbacks to justify annoying people. We’re talking tens of dollars per month. Actually more like ten of dollars. As in ten dollars. There’s no point.

However, WordAds revenue has been surprisingly steady, and makes more than enough to cover all blog related expenses, including the office walrus. As such, advertisements will continue to be placed on every page, post, video and image posted to the blog, as well as handwritten on Zora‘s scars and Vardath‘s chest hair. In fact, if you play Mogo’s Mead backwards, it’s actually a jingle for peanut butter. Moreover, Tikrid‘s shield will henceforth be known as the Tampaximum, for ultimate long-lasting protection.  AT LEAST IT CAN, for the right price. Corporations send your emails to kristakahashi@gmail.com.

The additional revenue has allowed me to purchase a number of upgrades for the blog, from storage space – weekly updates would not be possible without the 10GB upgrade – to expanded file upload types (one example would be mp3 files which really help save on storage space as opposed to WAV) and hopefully other useful widgets and things that should enhance the overall experience. All in all I really appreciate all of you who have whitelisted this site in AdBlock, as the pennies accumulated help sustain the wiki, which is what you’re all here for anyway.

And now, a word from our sponsors:

News, Notes, and Scene Stoppage

Kris Takahashi Other 2 Comments

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A user mentioned today that the scenes used in place of monologues get interrupted from time to time, so I figured now is a good time to discuss what can stop scenes and why it’s important when reporting the behavior to be as specific as possible. With scenes, things can get wacky given all the different variables in Skyrim, but this doesn’t mean they’re hopeless. You just need to apply the right failsafes.

In this case, the user mentioned Eldawyn would stop her story and start waving her tankard, which is likely due to the vanilla bard mechanism that forces random NPCs to join its audience (There’s actually a faction called the BardAudienceExcludedFaction that is extremely useful in keeping certain NPCs, like innkeepers, from getting drunk and acting the fool). Of course, adding Eldawyn to this faction is one way to keep her scenes from screwing up inside the Bannered Mare. However, I think the real culprit was setting her scenes to interruptible, which can cause them to get, well, interrupted.

Other things that can stop a scene are:

• Missing Audio Files – F5/F9 will usually skip the missing audio phase and basically tell you if this is the case.

• A Phase Doesn’t Finish – Scenes are based on phases. If Phase 1 isn’t complete, it can’t move to Phase 2. So let’s say I tell Eldawyn to move to a specific spot for Phase 1, like a chair. Then in Phase 2, start talking.

However, if some other punk ass NPC is sitting in the chair, Phase 1 won’t complete and the scene stalls. This NPC is literally a scene stealer. He’s sitting in a chair reserved for someone else and preventing the scene from progressing. This is more of a quest thing, as most monologue scenes don’t require getting to a spot, but something to think about nonetheless.

• Combat End – If a scene is set to end on combat, then vampires and other hostiles can kill a scene halfway. This can also be a useful tool to get a scene unstuck. The solution in most cases is setting them to pause on combat.

• Another Scene Interfering – Scenes play in order. Sometimes one scene doesn’t fire because it’s waiting for another to finish. There’s no reason a vanilla scene should override one that’s currently running, with one exception.

If your scene is set to interruptible, it can be killed by a separate scene. This is what happened with the user who was trying to talk to Eldawyn. The interruptible flag is used for things like stopping a bard song halfway to play another song, but I think in general it’s a little too fragile. It kills scenes way too easily. Putting a stop on other scenes via a script is better.

Understanding how scenes work can be fundamentally crucial to deducing when bugs occur. But in most cases, it’s important to describe either the line the scene got killed or the behavior of the NPC. Being told Eldawyn was waving her tankard told me everything I needed to know to fix it. Here, she goes through her scene and resists the temptation to flagon wave.

More Monto Music
Here is a new song from Ronja Monto. Man, the end really gives me the feels. It’s even better in context, and I’m really stoked about having this NPC in the mod and the way it adds an extra dimension to one of the followers. I’d tell you more, I just don’t want to get too spoilery.

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This picture basically sums up my feelings about this song. Now, all we need is the other person involved to voice his part, although that can be any time between now and forever. Still, as someone who considers composing music to be as difficult as casting magic, it’s really great to have such a healthy soundtrack for the mod. Ronja, Giramor, Arisen1, Anduniel, and Sebastain Schneider all did and continue to do great work.