I'd like to make a simple script that adjusts the health of an actor on the fly. I want it to work for any actor that spawns of the same type under a certain condition. Unfortunately I can't find a way to use 'self' in an actor script condition.

Scriptname PTAtronachAdjustScript extends ObjectReferenceActor Summonevent OnLoad();Summon = self	 ;;;; this doesn't work, so how can I get the actor that just spawned?if Summon.GetRelationshipRank(game.getplayer()) >= 1	;do stuffendifendEvent

So how would I do this?

Wouldn't this work?

if Self.GetRelationshipRank(game.getplayer()) >= 1        ;do stuffendif

Unfortunately not, the GetRelationshipRank function requires an actor property or the script won't compile (with 'self' it says 'GetRelationshipRank is not a function bla bla').

EDIT: I'm still unsure what exactly they mean with 'actor script' btw. In Oblivion you had references and base objects, which makes sense. In Skyrim there are references, base objects and 'actors'. Whatever that means. When I choose an actor property I still have to choose a reference, yet it is somehow different. ???

Oh. Right. Perhaps your script needs to extent Actor then instead of ObjectReference.

Uh, yeah. The new script system is quite confusing and inconvenient sometimes. Declaring it as an actor script worked and made the actor property useless. Thanks!

Try to use the function GetActorRef

Summon = self cant work because summon is an actor and self an objectreference. Try with summon = (self as actor)

or

if (Self as actor).GetRelationshipRank(game.getplayer()) >= 1		;do stuffendif

You could also make your script extend actor instead objectreference. (I see Arthmoore already said this)

Yeah, the property thing with actors is somewhat confusing because you have "Actor" which is for the reference, and "ActorBase" which is a property to point to the base actor. Which plays mind games because they labeled the base actors as "Actor" in the object window. Further confused by the fact that several functions you'd expect to only work on a base actor only work on their references, like the SetRace function that's been messing with me.

Just a note - unless you need to cast "self" to a more derived type, like amgepo mentioned, or pass it as a function's parameter, you shouldn't need to use "self". For example, the following two lines of code are exactly equivalent, although I'm not sure if the compiler does enough optimisation to make them equally efficient:

self.SomeFunction()

SomeFunction

Casting "self" to a more derived type is only useful if you want to have a script attached to objects of various types in the same hierarchy, such as http://www.creationkit.com/ObjectReference_Script and http://www.creationkit.com/Actor_Script, but generally that's probably not something you'll need to do.

Cipscis

This should be your code... Change

extends ObjectReference 

to

extends Actor

Scriptname  extends Actorevent OnLoad()if self.GetRelationshipRank(game.getplayer()) >= 1	    ;do stuffendifendEvent

Like I just said, it's probably better not to bother with adding self. in front of function calls such as this:

ScriptName PTAtronachAdjustScript extends ActorEvent OnLoad()	If (GetRelationshipRank(Game.GetPlayer()) >= 1)		;do stuff	EndIfEndEvent

Adding superfluous code like that is rarely a good idea. If you think the code needs to be made clearer, that's where comments come in useful.

Cipscis

Might be one doesn't need self... I have not thought of testing it before. However I see bethesda uses it in both the wiki and even scripts. Again I would not know why..

If you look through Beth code you can see them using multiple if...endif blocks, all testing the same condition.
Whereas a coder would use some elseif's between.

Not all the Beth dev's are coders, so it's only natural to see that a fair bit of 'cut-n-paste' of code went on.

Cipscis is correct. You don't need self as you've used it.

Example. Here's code attached to an object placed by an explosion. It teleports the player. There are four uses of the self keyword. The only one that needs to be there is the one used inside the function call.

Scriptname TeleportScript extends ObjectReferenceActor Property playerRef AutoEvent OnInit()	self.SetMotionType( Motion_Keyframed )	RegisterForSingleUpdate( 0.5 )EndEventEvent OnUpdate()	playerRef.Moveto( Self, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, True )	self.disable()	self.delete()endEvent

I was doing the same when i started.