Hi.

In my custom quest I'm trying to create a thief, and add an item to the thief. Here's what I did.
-Create a marker heading where I wanted the thief to appear.
-Create an alias called "ThiefSpawnPoint", pointing to the marker.
-Create a new alias "AliasThief", select "Create Reference to Object", use my Actor, assign "Very Hard" as level, create at "ThiefSpawnpoint".
-Create a new alias "StolenObject", select "Create Reference to Object", use my Item, assign "None" as level, create in "AliasThief".

Sadly no thief showed up, I am guessing that the stolen object wasn't created either, but I can't tell without seeing the thief.

What I want to do:
-I want the above to work, obviously.
-I also want to do all this at a certain quest stage. -Is it possible? (I started thinking about scripting it using functions such as "PlaceAtMe", but that's usually very troublesome to get it to work correctly in my experience.

Help appreciated.
Thanks.

*bump*

Did you look through the tutorial quest on the wiki. It teaches you to do almost exactly what you're trying to do:

http://www.creationkit.com/Bethesda_Tutorial_Creating_an_Actor

(Look about 1/2 way down the page for "Making an Enemy")

Then to enable the thief:

http://www.creationkit.com/Bethesda_Tutorial_Quest_Loose_Ends

(Look about 1/2 way down for "Out of Order")

That looks just like what I was looking for.
I decided to go with the Disable/Enable way.

-I placed my actor.
-I double-clicked the actor and checked "initially disabled".
-I assigned an Alias to my actor.

-I edited the script that is supposed to enable my alias.
-I first added an Alias property called "HT_AliasThief" ("Alias Property HT_AliasThief Auto")
-I then added the following line to my code: "HT_AliasThief.GetReference().Enable()"

Now the script refuses to compile. It says there's something wrong with the line I added and I can't figure out what?


EDIT:
The script extends "TopicInfo Hidden" - could this be the cause of the problem?

Too bad nothing ever works in CK..

Most likely you want a ReferenceAlias property, not an Alias Property. http://www.creationkit.com/GetReference_-_ReferenceAlias is a function of the ReferenceAlias script, which is what Quest Aliases are instances of.

ReferenceAlias Property HT_AliasThief Auto

Once you do this you can enable it a dozen different ways as well. Through your quest script, using a quest stage, dialog, scene whatever. It's really handy!

You could also just make an ActorBase for your thief and use a Game.GetPlayer().placeactoratme(etc. etc.) function. This will allow you to make as many as you want whenever you want and you don't have to worry about aliases.

I guess placeatme and placeactoratme are the functions of the day.

That should be a thing, function of the day. We could hold competitions to see who could do the craziest things using that function as much as possible.

New problem:

Apparently the built-in [censored] script can't handle all functions. It started messing up when I edited the script manually too much (too much = adding 4 lines of code).
So I decided to throw away the stupid built-in script and substitute my own. Which is pretty much an exact copy of the old crap, but with another name and properly indented code.
I should've known I was not allowed to do something freely in CK, though! Now the script doesn't run at all.

Here is my script:

Scriptname HT_QuestProgress02 extends TopicInfo  ReferenceAlias Property HT_AliasThief AutoFunction Fragment_0(ObjectReference akSpeakerRef)  Actor akSpeaker = akSpeakerRef as Actor  GetOwningQuest().SetObjectiveCompleted(10)  GetOwningQuest().SetObjectiveDisplayed(20)  GetOwningQuest().SetStage(20)  HT_AliasThief.GetReference().Enable()EndFunction