I have a scene where I need an actor to bleedout until another actor walks over and casts a healing spell for a couple of seconds. As the spell is cast, my actor bleeding out will say something like that is feeling better or whatever, and then stands and engauges in a conversation with them for the rest of the scene. My bleedout actor is already in shackles, and when the player releases the shackles it sets a quest stage that starts the scene.

The guy in shackles falls from the shackles and actually already does the bleedout for a second without me even adding anything to make him do it. I don't know why thts is unless it's part of the animation for the shackles upon release? Then he immediately goes to his mark for the scene conversation I mentioned above.

So, in a nutshell, I need the player to release the shackles and the actor locked up will fall to the floor and do the bleedout animation. (Start scene) My 2nd actor will say to the 3rd actor, "Cienna, see if you can help him" and Cienna will travel to my guy bleeding out and cast a helaling spell for a few seconds, and my guy bleeding out will say he feels much better and get up and talk to them.

I have all the packages including the actor casting the spell, I just can't figure out how to keep my guy in bleedout while she is casting the spell.

Thanks!

Well, you could add an Ability Spell script or place a script on his Alias that does Debug.SendAnimationEvent(Target,"bleedOutStart") a couple of times per second. If he tries to get up he'll immediately reenter bleedout (which ends up looking like they tried to stagger to their feet and fell again), and if he's already in bleedout the event has no effect. Then once you're ready for him to get up, do Debug.SendAnimationEvent(Target,"bleedOutStop") and he'll get up, stagger for a moment, then do whatever he's supposed to do.

You can try using the PlayIdle command with the EnterBleedOut and ExitBleedout Idles, but in my tests the actor's other AI would override those quickly. It might work if you temporarily assign him a DoNothing package but I think the SendAnimationEvent method would be simpler.

OK, I might need help with this, lol. He's definitely in an alias so it's no problem putting a script on him, but what controls the timing for the bleedout? I guess I'm uncertain how to make the bleedout start and stop at the appropriate time? Would I need to check for a certain quest stage or something?

It would be SOOO much easier to be able to simply make a AI package for him that all that package did was make him bleed out. I could have that as his package action for the first couple of phases of this scene, and after say phase 3 (when the healing was completed) his next action in the scene would be to go to his mark and complete the conversation in the scene. God, that would be so easy. Is there a way I can set an AI package like that? (Since it's a scene it should override everything else.)

Okay, I'm striking outside my area of expertise here so take this with several solar masses of sodium chloride...

Can you create a DoNothing package with a script fragment in the On Begin and On End that sends the respective bleedOutStart and bleedOutStop events to the actor? I'd say use the Idle animations instead but the bleedout-related Idles aren't selectable for some reason.

I'm just jumping in here blindly, but could you tell the actor to play the bleedout anim with a PlayIdle command? That may override the normal bleedout controls and timers and whatnot.

Arthmoor has Ralof and Hadvar doing something similar in part of his Live Another Life mod, where you have to rescue one or the other in the Helgen Cage to get back on track with the main quest.
You might look at his mod and the stages / packages / alias that he implements to get that rolling.

If I'm not mistaken I believe there is a wounded package, you could look around some of the civil war camps?

There are Wounded markers, but I think they just make the actor sit or lie down, not enter bleedout. Probably worth testing, though.

Alex: You could probably use PlayIdle instead of SendAnimationEvent. The Idle property names are EnterBleedOut and ExitBleedOut.

OK, I think I might have something I can use. In my scene, I put a dummy dialog in like they use for head tracking, and put the playidle in that dialog info in my scene. That is working (but he's clipping through a wall during his bleedout, lol) so I'll have to make him go to a mark a few feet from the wall, and say something like I'm too weak to walk, and collapse into the bleedout, run the healing part, and in his next dialog action stop the bleedout and resume his normal package. I think that will work - off to finish it and test (crosses fingers)!

SetNoBleedoutRecovery()

OK, well, here's what I have so far. It's crappy quality because I just ran it through Windows Movie maker to compress to save a little time. But hopefully you get what I'm after. Also the voice acting is just scratch tracks I put in to test with so don't pay attention to that. Hopefully the whole thing isin't totally lame, lol. Thoughts?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuMyT_oCQE4

That's pretty impressive-looking! Maybe move the "See what you can do for him!" to a bit after he falls, but it's a great scene!

Also, Cienna has the best voice ever