I've been going through the quest tutorials and such on the wiki, and the aliases system is very interesting, and looks very powerful.
There's a lot of cool stuff that could be done with it, and it should also help to avoid some conflicts if people use it well.

For example one thing we can do is add temporary AI packages to NPCs, without editing the base NPC itself. So if I make a mod that improves Lydia's companion AI through an alias (overriding her normal AI with new packages), it will be compatible with a mod that changes Lydia's face and inventory. You could even change Lydia's name through an alias.

So you can override all sorts of properties of NPCs and other things without actually editing the base objects themselves. I'm hoping people will put this to good use.

And I haven't even mentioned its use for radiant quests yet.

Sounds like good stuff.

Hopefully with clever use of this and some tightening of mod design it might be possible to create more mods with a single .esp and less conflicts to boot.

I'm still taking my time going through the tutorials (decided to do them as if I knew nothing about modding, just to try and avoid doing old CS/GECK mistakes. :s)... so I haven't really dug into aliases yet... but from the sounds of it, I could do the below examples...

Override CoW 'auto join faction' at the bridge and move it to a new npc entirely.

Override the end of the 'Go to the Lecture' quest with 'Go see X NPC' and then have X npc continue the "go to the Lecture' quest.

Pause/stop the auto quest giving of NPC's and replace them with "Do you wish to accept this Quest' message box.

Yes?

I don't know if you'll be able to use aliases for that (I still need to learn more about them), but I do think those changes should be possible in some way.

The only problem is, if you're trying to edit a reference alias on a screen that's only 900 pixels high. You're either forced to take your monitor out of it's native resolution (which looks horrible) or spend money on one that's not widescreen format. Otherwise you've lost about 200 pixels worth of the menu at the bottom with no way to access those functions.

Heh, fair enough... I expect I'll get to it sometime in the next day or 2 (I'm _really_ taking my time and having fun 'relearning' things about CS/CK)... I you hit in an answer to this before me, please point me to it and I'll dig into it!


Huh? I'm on 1280x720 (landscape mode) on a 65" HD TV (yea, yea, I'm weird, but I like sitting 6 feet away and still being able to read my screen. )

So am I missing something here? Something doesn't display correctly in the CK? There's a bug in the CK? [sarcasm] Say it ain't so! [/sarcasm]

Probably an aspect ration thing then? I'm at 1440x900 and the bottom end of the reference alias menu can't be accessed, which includes the OK/Cancel buttons (but that can be worked around). There's stuff down there though that is useful that I can't get at without butchering my screen resolution and making it difficult to read things.

What WHAT?!

Oh man, I need to go home and cuddle with my CK. I think the two of us got off to a bad start this morning.

The CK is overwhelming but a few hours following along with the Wiki and hopefully I'll return to my old comfort level with it.

My screen is 1280x1024 and the reference alias menu almost fully covers it vertically. When I have the window at the top of my screen, the bottom slightly overlaps with the windows toolbar. So yeah a vertical resolution of < 1000 does seem to be a problem.

Yessssss, Aliases are so very rad. Use them. They will make you happy.

Having 2 different Mods attaching ReferenceAlias to the same actor caused all kinds of havok for me during the CK Beta so much so that I decided I would never use or create a mod that attached an RA to a vanilla actor with a script or package attached as both of these conflicted in horrid ways from the actor poofing out of existance to the game crashing... not a good idea either way.

Design Monkey? Excellent! Smithers Release the Hounds on Capture mode! I must have this developer at my disposal at all times! Prepare the Cage and Banana Pudding snacks!

I collect Monkeys. You're a Monkey. I therefor must collect you! It's just an added bonus you seem to know about this alias thing. ;p

Ouch. I would've hoped that whatever quest with the highest priority would have priority with the reference alias and the other one would be ignored.

Going to have to take a look at this too.

I think the ReferenceAlias should only be used with 'Generic'/Radiant actors instead.
Like in one of Companion Quest, where Farkas turns into Werewolf while Player is locked up in the room. If you read the Quest script, you will find that ReferenceAlias(s) are used for SilverHand NPCs that ambushed the player and 'Observer' ref
Bethesda Developers apparently wanted to have a Radiant Shield-Brother to accompany the player, so any of the Circle members could be the 'Observer' RefAlias for the quest. But in the end, they resolve to have Farkas as the only option.

Plz note that both Farkas & Aela are ActorReference in that Quest Script's properties

hm I'm on 1680x1050, which is the same ratio, and can see the reference alias menu just fine. May be something bugged with that specific resolution, or perhaps you have your display area stretched offscreen?

No, my display area is not stretched off screen. The Reference Alias screen is the only one that extends past the bottom, and yet I can see it is also one of THE most powerful screens available to quest builders. Dear God, just the chance to not have 20 conditional AI packs stored on a base NPC record alone is enough to drool over. Not to mention that this provides a safe and clean way to haul in vanilla NPCs without butchering things on them too.

I wonder if I'd be able to see anything if I switched up to 2880x1800

Interesting. Actors should be able to be in multiple aliases at the same time. Can you give me any more details on what you were trying to do here? Feel free to PM.

I decided to start over with my files from scratch so it took me a bit of time to make sure what was going on was not dirt from testing files.

1) Hellos' and Goodbyes' -> not compatible at all only 1 mods will ever show <- unless there is some way to get these to cohabitate from 2 different mods that know nothing of each others existance.
Note: kinda minor overall but you do lose some quest pretense when your openings' and closings' do not work.

2) AI Packages -> they seem to both apply in some hierarchy for instance I noticed travels will override follows forcing the player to do the travel based quest first -> basically temporally breaking the second until you finish the first.
Also as was mentioned up top priority takes precedence as well so a 70 follow quest will override a 40 travel.
Note: while this is probably the only and best way to handle quests adding Packages to the same actor it would be good practice to wiki document that modders should find a way to see if this actor is already busy with another quest before being allowed to give out another that involves any kind of travel.

3) scripts seem to run in parallel and I think this is where I ran into the odd issues with my previous tests.

ALSO quest TIF_ quest script fragments I have already run into incompatibilities here where 2 mods used the same fragment name and totally borked the quest running....
On a side note to the above I tried to write some basic scripts for quests that did things I will end up doing alot like scn ssGetOwningQuest().SetStage(5,10,15,20,25,30,...->you get the idea) and compiling these then manually assigning them as my fragments so multiple quests would use each script so I could alleviate some of the same name issues but every time I did this the fragments stopped working and upon reloading the mod those fragments returned an error and just did not work -> would there be a way to do this?

Everything else seems to be going very well and I think with a bit of forewarning on the wiki tutorials to help people not fall into some of these pitfalls things will work out in the end.