I have an actor, and he is a 'Unique Actor' alias for a quest. I have several quest related packages, so I placed them in the 'Package Data' section for the alias, but the actor doesnt do any of them. It's like they dont exist. He does the default package I placed directly on him, and that's it. I checked with SQV and he is assigned as the alias correctly. The quests stages advance correctly, but he wont take on the additional alias packages. All of the packages have simple 'Getstage' conditions on them so he does certain things at certain stages. Does anyone know what could be preventing him from taking on the packages?

The way I understand it, it should pile the alias packages on top of his normal ones, right?

Thanks,

Alexander J. Velicky


Boy I've had a lot of questions lately... I need the weekend off, I think.

I have a follower that I am attempting to use an alias for when running her routine follower stuff. I have just started building her this week and her packages are proving to be challenging. Here are a couple of things I can tell you from what I've encountered so far:

I had to script my packages to get them working and even then there has been issues. I'm not sure how easily similar packages are going to work together. Are you giving your actor several of the same kind of package? Even with a condition that should have set the packages apart for my follower the right package wasn't being chosen on evaluation. I don't know if that was a confusion over the packages themselves or if it was a problem over the owner of the package (there was one package not owned by the alias). Also, are you evp'ing the actor?

Hmm, well. I am doing EVP, not only several times in script, but I also tried ingame to see if I could jump start him.

The packages are: 3 in alias, 1 on the actor itself. The one on the actor itself is a Sandbox with no conditions. Just to give him a package when all others drop off for now. The three in alias are two Sandbox and one SayToPlayer. All three of those have GetStage quest conditions.

Every single time I have tested (like 4 or 5 times at least), he has done the Sandbox that is not part of the alias. He appears to be refusing to acknowledge the alias packages whatsoever.

Interstingly enough; when I poked around the quests ingame to check their Unique Actor alias's and the packages set up within, I discovered that in several cases, one or more of the packages added by an alias, were on the Actor to begin with. I wonder if this has to do with them having the same issue we are? Hopefully not and it's just messy design or coincidence... (Or needed to reorder package priority)

Have you tried bumping up the priority of your quest that contains the alias? As I understand it, quest priority impacts both what package stack is used and how often an actor re-evaluates their package stack on their own. In my mod I have an NPC with their default, directly assigned packages; then I overlay a quest's alias with associated packages onto them to make them a follower; and then I overlay a second quest's alias with a higher priority on top of that to make them perform other follower actions based on packages when needed ("move out of my way," "sleep here," etc.). So in theory it can work.

So you have correctly functional alias packages actually being stacked on top of default ones like they should be? Could you perhaps get some pictures of your alias window just to see if I'm missing something silly? (Or just describe how you have the alias set up)

Because I cannot get the game to recognize these darned packages. What's your quest priority at? I have my dialogue quests at 0 (as they are for default dialogue spoken at any moment), then my main quests at 50. Should I make it higher? Shouldn't it being 50 already override anything else? Or does that extra boost make a difference for some silly reason?

EDIT: Most of the main quests seem to have their priorities somewhere between 80-85. I'm raising mine to 80 (From 50) to see if that magically fixes it...

Yeah, I'm in a bit of a different situation from you, I think, in that I'm modifying a vanilla NPC, Aela the Huntress, who already has radiant quests and such associated with her. So I set my quest priorities high, in the 60-75 region. A few I even bumped up to 99--lower would probably work, but I was too impatient to do the set-and-test dance of figuring out just how low would work.

My reference aliases are constructed fairly simply--Unique Actor set to Aela, and "Allow Reserved" is the only checkbox that is checked.

If raising the priorities of your quests doesn't help, let me know and I'll upload a screenshot or two.

Raised the priority to 80 and no difference. I may try checking Allow Reserved as that appears to be the only difference...

I'm thinking maybe I made a bugged alias, so I'm creating a new alias on a different character to check if HE works with the alias packages.

DOUBLE EDIT: Arrrghhh!!! The alias's on my second quest wont even fill! What the hell! I have two alias's on my second quest, one for the same guard and one for another person. To test these two to see if maybe the guard is just a fluke, I changed the guard alias on my second quest to another random NPC from my mod. They say REF -> NONE when I sqv the quest, so they aren't even filling for no [censored] reason...

You know, I should mention, PaladinRider was having very similar problems with NPCs refusing to execute packages in a landmass mod he was creating, as detailed in http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1354960-npc-ai-packages-have-got-me-stumped/. I think he ultimately concluded it was the navmesh bug preventing the NPCs from moving. Or it was, at least in part. I recall that your project also involves creating a new land, so perhaps you're having the same problem? You could try doing basically the same quest/alias/packages but in vanilla cells and seeing if that worked, as something to compare with.

Anyway, I don't know if it will help, but here are a few screenshots of my quest/alias/package setup:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/image.php?id=54946
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/image.php?id=54947
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/image.php?id=54948

I'm quite certain that I'm not doing everything in the Bethesda-approved fashion, but hey, I'm new at this, and it seems to be working, so I'll take what victories I can get.

All your stuff looks indentical to mine... Except you have a few other things on the alias in addition to packages. Gah. Also, the two alias's on my second quest refuse to fill. They are Unique Actor Alias's with absolutely no prior requirements of any kind or anything. I made them specifically for these two quests, yet they wont fill. I get this: http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/487752425900006332/2D75BC40EC1ACB1BD595DC65C4339012F76FA347/

Nobody is doing their packages.

And I don't think its navmesh issues. My mod is an esm, and I have bandits in several of my dungeons that function perfectly fine. I think it's something screwing up with these damned quests...

EDIT: So I changed all the people to Forced Ref's just to see what would happen; the Alias's in my second quest now fill properly, however they all still ignore their alias packages. Though, I used a loophole in my dialogue to trigger a Scene that's part of the second quest, and it went off without a hitch. My guard walked to a switch, activated it, said a dialogue line, waited a few seconds, then the scene ended and he defaulted back to his package. So the ONLY part that isn't working is the god dang alias packages.

I may just place packages directly on everyone to get around this. It will be messy, and just like Fallout, but at least I can move on...

DOUBLE EDIT: I just thought of something... I'm using the condition 'GetStage' on my packages. But I notice a huge amount of vanilla ones use 'GetStageDone'. Is GetStage broken or no longer used in the CK? If all my packages have false, or broken conditions, I imagine the game would ignore them...

Do either of you have functional packages that have quest stage related conditions? Which ones are you using?

Nevermind, an equal amount of their packages just use GetStage... Gaaah!

I couldn't get my packages to trigger with GetStage or GetStageDone. I had to add unique conditions and script them to get them triggering and changing for me correctly, but that got them working fine. I did a lot of testing last night and figured out that I had a broken package that was confusing the issue for me. Things are working fine for me now....package wise...I think... every time I fix one thing something new and bizarre happens. It's a minefield in the CK. I'm not buiding too extensively right now. I'm mostly getting a feel for how things work, because there seems to be so much to break.

On each stage of your quest that the actor needs to change packages, force the actor to evaluate his package: alias_Actor.GetActorReference().EvaluatePackage().

I do. Even using the console to force him too had no effect. I now place all my packages straight on the NPC's like we had to do in Fallout and everything is working. A little bit more messy, yes. But it works, so I'll take it.

It seems you didn't say here, but somewhere you said you used 'Reserve Reference' and got it working. Well, good news so far. If I do Reserve Reference, I can at least get all my alias's filling that are 'Unique Actor' types. So that's a start. I'm going to try now to see if I can get packages on alias's to work, since I think the filling of the alias's that was broken earlier may have been messing up the games ability to process the additional packages or something. Hopefully this will work.

There's no problem if it doesn't, it just clutters things. My NPC's for my Fallout mods each had like 70 packages on them, and that quickly became a biatch to sift through. If each small quest related group of 5-10 packages is sorted into scenes and alias's, it's SO much better. Let's hope this works.

EDIT: Packages still dont work, but both quests have the exact same priority so I'm going to offset them and see if that works. Maybe it cant figure out which to put on top, so it throws them out for some silly reason. After all the MQ have randomly staggered priorities, so I'm guessing it's because you cannot have them at the same number. Will report back.

DOUBLE EDIT: No dice. Made the first quest 80 and second 81, and he still appears to totally ignore his alias packages.

using packages in aliases will replace their existing ones, not add onto. at least that is how it is working in my quest.


i have an NPC that can be hired to do work for you, and you can dismiss them when you dont want them around anymore.

the way i set this up was i copied how the Marriage quest handles it (since that uses package replacing aliases).


i have a blank reference alias that is set to forced: none and ticked optional. i placed the desired packages in the box.

then in the dialog fragment i call a function from a script attached to the quest:

function DismissEmployee (Actor Employee, ReferenceAlias DismissTo)DismissTo.ForceRefTo(Employee)EndFunction

in the dialog fragment the code looks like:

(GetOwningQuest() as YourQuestScript).DismissEmployee(akspeaker, DismissedEmployee)

the DismissedEmployee is a referencealias property that points to your blank alias

Actually that would make a lot of except a few things. Currently, that would make the top package (The only one from the higher priority quest) invalid, which would mean he would have NO packages. Except, he still executes the base package just fine. The one placed directly on him. Meaning it's not replacing them. Though it isn't adding them on top either. Plus, I tried with just the one quests packages, and it still didn't work.

Can I assign a condition to an alias, to make it not assign until later on? For example, could I put a GetStageDone condition on the Guard's alias in the second quest, so that it only fills that alias once the first quest is completed? That would remove the conflict. Or do the match conditions only check once when the quest starts?

having the optional flag checked makes it so that the reference doesnt have to be filled at all times (when it set to forced: none, it stays dormant until filled). then on whatever stage you want, you can force the reference into the alias.

if you specify the alias, the quest will try to fill it as soon as it starts, and if it cant it will fail, hence not giving the package in the alias. (at least thats my understanding of it)

What? So either I have optional, where it fills at start if it can, but otherwise I'm screwed?

What I don't get, is that I've been looking at the vanilla quests, and they have their alias's and packeges set up just like mine. So why don't mine work?

Okay now I'm really determined to figure this out since I can't see anything that I'm doing wrong and I'll be damned if I let the entire alias package system go unused. Here are some screenshots:

Here's the alias: http://i1118.photobucket.com/albums/k609/AlexanderJVelicky/Alias1.png
Here's the guard I'm trying to do all this with and his packages: http://i1118.photobucket.com/albums/k609/AlexanderJVelicky/Alias2.png (This is the package that he always does. It's a simple sandbox package so he had a place to go since his guard patrol isn't set up yet.)
These are the flags on the first package he should do during the quest, but fails to: http://i1118.photobucket.com/albums/k609/AlexanderJVelicky/Alias3.png
And these are the conditions on that package: http://i1118.photobucket.com/albums/k609/AlexanderJVelicky/Alias4.png

Anyone see anything wrong?

What kind of package is the second package?

WaitAtPortal is a sandbox, meetPlayer is a ForceGreet with another GetStage condition, and WaitForChoice is another sandbox, with another GetStage condition.

Keep in mind that all of these function perfectly fine if I put them directly onto the NPC.

Well Alex. We meet again. I think it's because so many people have been having problems getting Aliases to fill. Found this forum searching to see if anyone has found a sure fire way to make aliases fill.

Indeed.

If you reserve the first use of that reference, then check 'Allow Reserved' on any overlapping uses, they all seem to fill on Unique Actors. (At least that did it for me)

What boggles my mind is how my packages just dont work no matter what if they are in alias...

Are there any console commands I can use to check what's firing ingame? I don't know any that are package related.

Not that I know of, however, I've used a LOT of Debug script on Package Fragments to see whether they fire or not.

EDIT: Also, I'm still having problems getting my aliases to fill. I have no idea why.

Well, the way alias's fill, it's done in one of two ways; either if one fails they all fail (Like light bulbs in series), or it goes down one by one until it hits one that fails, then stops trying to fill the rest.

So if you have none of your alias's filling at all, it could mean either. But if half fill, and half dont (And they aren't marked optional), then the top one that fails is the issue, and the game just stops trying to fill after that and moves on.

I used all Optional Flags, and have discovered that ALL of the references that are currently In game, loaded, and Enabled, are filled.

However, my top 5 Aliases are not: and all of the actors that fill these top 5 should be currently Disabled, based on the quest stage that I'm on.


Going to get coffee. Gonna be a long night.



EDIT: So, I managed to fill all of my aliases by working around a few things. Now it appears that I am having another problem. My Alias/Actor won't execute the dialogue topic of his "ForceGreet" package. However, he does still move to the player in force-greet type fashion.

Also, I have noticed that when I look at my quest with SQV MOD1QPart1, I get

State: Waiting for Stage

anybody have any clue what this means? Also, sorry for hijacking your thread Alex.