"I visit Whiterun from time to time, mostly to make deals." - Ennis

Preface: I like the general feel of NPCs in Skyrim, a lot. After having played Oblivion, where the NPCs swiftly strut about in zigzagging trajectories, and Morrowind, where they jerk around the place like spastic noodle men, the movement of Skyrim's characters looks believable (to me at least). So it's quite a shame that they don't travel a whole lot. The furthest they might go is a farm on the outskirts of town. Especially frustrating is that some NPCs mention arrangements in distant places they are never seen traveling to.


Overview

Commute enhances the schedules of certain NPCs in the hold of Whiterun (for now). Currently they are as follows:

Lucan Valerius travels to Whiterun on tirdas and hangs out at Belethor's.

Lillith Maiden-Loom travels to Riften on the 21th of each month, browses the market if she still has time, then dines in the inn and sleeps at the Bunkhouse. The next day, she will follow Maven around on her daily routine, followed by dinner at the Black-Briar manor. She heads back to Whiterun in the morning of the 23rd.

Ennis travels from Rorikstead to Whiterun to browse the market every morndas, middas and fredas.

Faendal brings wood to Whiterun every tirdas and turdas and spends some time at the Drunken Huntsman afterward. However, he tends to lose his wood while traveling once the player leaves the area he's in.

Alvor visits Warmaiden's every middas and spends some time working at the Skyforge.

Commander Caius travels to Riverwood on tirdas, patrols briefly and spends the next eighteen hours at the inn, staying the night. He does the same for Rorikstead on Fredas.


(In)Compatibility and other problems

Commute works entirely off of quest aliases. This ensures compatibility with all mods that edit an NPC directly. It also shouldn't conflict with other mods that add AI packages to an NPC using a quest alias as long as the associated quest has a priority greater than 0. And it's compatible with Open Cities.

Due to the quest-based implementation, all NPCs affected by this mod are constantly loaded in your system's active memory. This is necessary; otherwise, the game would lose track of an NPC who travels too far away, and they would slip through the fabric of spacetime. Unfortunately, quest aliases have an impact on performance. I haven't had any problems yet, but as more NPCs are added, they will start cropping up (or so I've been told). That's why I'm releasing hold-based modules, starting with Whiterun.


Your input needed

I need ideas. If you know any other interesting dialogue that is left to the imagination, or if there's someplace you'd like to see a specific NPC go, please post about it.

There are also some technical problems I need like help with;

• I've tried and tried to make Arcadia (the alchemist) carry a flower basket. It worked when I edited her directly, but not when I used a quest alias. For one, the CarryActorManualScript that I'm trying to attach to her never seems to take effect. I presumed that attaching quest-based scripts to actors was an important and widely used feature.
  
  
• In the vanilla game, when Lucan Valerius dies, Camilla takes over the store. I would like her to do this whenever Lucan is on his trip to Whiterun, but I can't figure out where this is governed.

Screenshots

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/577833752910069250/AF8C69AA4E806F2AF2C8AFFE6DDE32667DBA0DCB/
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/577833752983915251/88D568781865E5178A289219F16ED68B20576092/
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/939248355134663389/31E53AAABF1DB9F86E318F75FA9AFCF6364D97D9/
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/939248355133539747/8139CFA92DC610253477F61E44B22205E338B810/
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/938124819560995805/521B2532DC8E7C37E1C3B12FCE6025FF37F36EAF/


Kudos to Arthmoor for technical assistance.

Sounds like just the kind of little (in change, not scope/workload!) mod that I love to see and will enjoy having in my game.

Sounds great! I love mods that do more to make NPC's behavior a bit more dynamic.

If possible, I would request that you come up with a mechanism to notify the player of the NPC's absence. There's nothing more frustrating than looking around for an NPC and finding out that they're nowhere to be found.

A simple way would be to post a letter attached to the doorframe of shops, homes, etc, detailing that they'll be gone on an errand and will be back soon. You could script this such that the note is .Disable()'d at the appropriate times and gets re- .Enable()'d on the days that they will be away. (You would have to come up with a way to prevent the player from actually taking the note... perhaps just use a paper mesh and make it an activator that fires a MessageBox instead, though that's less immersive)

Aaahhhhh, scripting!

Sorry, I'm completely illiterate when it comes to papyrus. I'll be doing this down the road though, since it's a useful skill to have, so thanks for the suggestion.

Great idea! It's always the little things that make such a big difference to immersion.

I'd really like to see Ysolda interacting with the Khajit merchants, is it possible?

I'd also like to see Jon battle born visit Solitude and try to apply the college.

PS: Are you going to make them essential? I don't want the NPCs to die from a random bandit or wolves...

It wouldn't be that hard. Give me a list of NPCs and times, and I can do it for you. You can attach the scripts to the notes yourself and place them in the world.

I typed out something, but I read through and found the answer. This mod sounds great.

Can you please make it where children will chase after bugs? I know that might be a little hard to put together (possible?) and you'd probably need to add them in yourself around the children. It's worth asking, though.

I don't think it's possible to add dialogue without editing the NPC directly. I can, however, make Jon go over there, play the lute, then drown his sorrow at the winking skeever.
Solitude is a long way off, though. I could configure him to jog.

As for Ysolda, I think there's already a scene where she talks with Ri'saad. Without dialogue of my own, all I could really do is make her loaf around the camp for a little while.
NPCs do not die unless they are in your vicinity. If you're concerned about them, run away as fast as you can.

Come to think of it, part of the reason I made this is because I like putting some of these NPCs in danger. I even have that ill-advised bEssentialTakeNoDamage=0 ini tweak...
No! I'm gonna do it myself! >:L

She does? I've never seen her getting out of town. O_o

I'd also like to see that wood elf meat merchant actually get out of town and hunt animals.

I do not exist.

Now you know that feel.

Well, I just went looking in the creation kit and I didn't find any scene with Ri'saad. So I probably imagined that.

As for the wood elf, great idea.
No, I do not exist

Hmm, children chasing bugs isn't really within the scope of my mod. Unless they're going to chase bugs that are miles away from their hometown.

Wooie! Cuttin' deep there, Vinu!