I was thinking it would be cool if the normally empty houses would have changing inhabitants and even changing furniture etc.
For example on monday you would enter a house and theres a man and woman living there, next sunday you enter the same house to find some raiders setting up camp. A week later ghouls have taken residence, or rats have infested the place.
Also random camps in the exteriors would be cool. Imagine a couple Ceasar raiding parties or NCR rangers crossing the wasteland, setting up camp at different places.

In principle, easy enough: just make separate interior cells and use a script to change which cell the door connects in. Of course i don't know the limitations of the engine and it's scripting system, so that may be impossible

Couldn't you also (and this may be easier) attach scripts to the various random spawns that involves a random number selection, disabling every 24 or 48 hours, respawning them, and a random creature spawnpoint or three that are scripted such that the spawns made actually make sense?

Propably, but creating completely different cells would allow different decorations: furniture, tags, bodies and skeletons.

You can put everything in once cell, then enable and disable stuff..

Entirely possible. Entirely to much work.

Take a look at the megaton house in geck, definitely not for the faint of heart.

Fairly easy. For a good example in GECK, look at the Hanger1 and Hanger1b interior cells for Nellis AFB. After a certain point in a quest (Volare, I think), the entry point swaps to point at Hangar1b.

I don't remember if there are other cells that get swapped out like that off-hand, but that one leaps to mind.

Multiple cells is probably better if you're swapping out entire interiors. Except that the contents of containers won't move unless you move them with a script.

Interesting idea, I may consider trying this in my upcoming "NVInteriors Project". At least one or, two test cells to see how it goes but, I think the time scale would have to be more than just hours, days. I would think it would be much better if it were based around weeks or, months.

The first thing that comes to mind is, you stumble across a small trading outpost, Where one NPC can repair well and, the other is selling chems. You come back in one week to find there bodies crucified outside and, the interior ransacked by the Legion. If it takes you two weeks to get back the rats or, roaches have moved in, taking longer to get back to the cell maybe even something more sinister has moved in. Oh, and the bodies would still be up on the crosses, possibly over time changing into skeletons.

I would need some help from scripters that are more skilled then me, I can do remedial scripting but, this would be well beyond my skill set. I could do the interiors no problem, the scripting is another story. :brokencomputer: I do have an idea of a few people I could hit up to lend a hand. :dance:

I'll keep this in mind, it could turn out to be very cool.

thanks for bringing this up.

cev

My guess, without looking at the GECK, is that they do the node swaps in the quest script for Hangar1/Hangar1b - since the update of the interior is tied to the quest.

However, placing an activator object (I use the standard non-lootable crates or a piece of rubble as the model) in the cell and hooking in to OnLoad() means that you'll get a chance to change things when the player visits the cell again. It won't fire again until the node has been purged from memory (or they reload the save), but that's generally often enough for something like that.

In the random traps mod, I use activators hooked up to OnLoad() to randomly disable an associated mine/trap when the player first visits a cell. Now, out of cleanliness, I disable the item after it fires for the first time so it vanishes from view and the OnLoad() code never runs again (because it's disabled). But I could have also left in there, blended in with the scenery and out of reach, so that it could fire again on future visits. I'm actually doing something like that with Primm, where the next time the cells load after completion of the quest, the residents will have disabled all of the remaining traps.

Onload() would let you make things vanish/appear on subsequent visits, if you're not too fussy about the timing. For keeping track of how long since the last visit, look at the http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36640 (VFSReputationBenefitNorthScript
and VFSReputationBenefitEastScript). If you want to be fussier about the timing, you have to run a quest script that uses a GameMode block to constantly monitor the situation. I tend to prefer OnLoad() so that I'm doing fewer conditional checks.