I found out that DefaultGhostScript is wreaking havoc to my carefully planned dungeons. The root issue is the explosion, which the ghosts go into after being killed. These explosions make serious mess, send all the havoc-enabled clutter flying, and cause certain key items to be lost. I looked into the script itself, and it seems there is an option to make the dead ghosts fade out instead of explode, but how do I get that done, exactly? I thought I'd rather ask experts here first before going ahead and breaking crap out of it.

There is a Property called bFade in the script. Its default value is False, but you can set it to True in the Properties window for the script. Doing that will make the ghost fade out instead of explode.

Thanks. That's exactly what I've been thinking, but was too afraid to try.

Okay, so this did not work. I have no option to set the property to true, all I can do is tick or untick it - by default it's unticked, ticking it makes no difference. I tried changing it directly in the script:


BOOL PROPERTY bFade=TRUE AUTO

But it doesn't work either, the ghosts still explode upon death, ruining my dungeon. Is there any possibility to at least reduce the radius of this explosion, if I can't disable it at all?

There is a explosion property, but oddly it's not used. Maybe the explosion is attached to the death shadder. Try clearing pGhostDeathFXShader property.

Thanks, but I'm actually thinking about a different approach. Most functions of the DefaultGhostScript are of no use to me, what I really need is the ghostly shader effect, which I can apply directly to the actor, and fading out upon death. Going further, all I really need to do is simply adding the latter to OnDeath event, which I could attach to the actor... but how do I go about that? I can't figure out what's happening in the vanilla script, really.

If you want a totally different approach:

Leave your ghosts as they are, explosions n'all, and instead just pin the important objects in place by attaching the "defaultDisableHavokOnLoad" script to them.

What this script does is pretty much make them into a static when they load while still keeping them "pick-up-able". You will never misplace an important object again

- Hypno

Thanks, this is an interesting approach, however it might prove a little time- and effort-consuming to pin every single piece of clutter this way. I guess it should to the trick if I were to keep only the key items in place... it won't prevent a total mess after a couple of these explosions, though.

Yeh it all depends on the context of your mod.

If its a dungeon that the player will only really be visiting once then don't worry about the clutter flying about, it adds to the cinematics

But if your clearing ghosts out of a potential player home then I understand why you don't want them messing the place up.

- Hypno

It seems this explosion on death is a part of the GhostAbility effect, my ghosts explode even when I remove DefaultGhostScript from them. What a mess.

Sorry to mildly derail this, but can I ask what property settings you even used on the script? I added the script to an Actor of mine, and copied the properties from one of the vanilla ghost actors, but my actor in no way shape or form appears as a ghost.

Try adding GhostAbility to your actor's spell list. I haven't changed anything in the DefaultGhostScript aside from fiddling with bFade property to no avail.

Looking at defaultGhostScript.psc (I really want to rewrite that script... there are so many little improvements that could be made) it seems that setting bFade to True should definitely cause the ghost to be disabled when it dies, as opposed to the default behaviour or leaving behind an ash pile.

I can't see anything about an explosion though. As mentioned earlier, that property appears unused, although it may be used by another script that usually causes the explosion. Perhaps take a look at a ghost that is already set up not to explode?

Cipscis

Well, it should, but it doesn't - unless I'm doing something wrong. I guess I'll go hypno88's way and simply pin my key items with the script, which apparently will also need to be tweaked in order to work correctly - releasing to havok upon hit is still enabled by default.