Emma/Grumpy MW companions (Wolf, Beryl, Hurd)

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Loriel
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Joined: 28 May 2015, 00:44

Re: Emma/Grumpy MW companions (Wolf, Beryl, Hurd)

Post by Loriel »

Darklocq wrote:Further testing notes:

I was able to use Ingred from Domehome, to an extent, but after most every combat she goes into "fighting nothing" mode. E.g., will fire all her arrows, hundreds of them, at an invisible enemy in the ground. Doing a Calm Humanoid on her, then dialoguing with her scripts (follow, stay, etc.) seems to take her out of this fight response. Her ring works as expected, and does does not flip out and go into fight mode when summoned by it, while the rest of the Domehome staff do, at least if there's another of the NPCs in the area. Different rings (Staff Ring versus Ingred's Ring).
Known problem - see https://bugs.openmw.org/issues/3550
Witchgirl Morgana seems to be working in these regards (no combat problems so far, though there's no ring, or at least not yet). But she's very dangerous, and isn't working in some ways. Most notably, her option to not summon atronachs doesn't work. She summons one just to fight a Kwama Forager, and it has killed me several times by accident. I've learned to work around it, but don't use her much. Mostly just to distract Gaenor with summons while I hit him from behind.
Same behaviour in vanilla Morrowind - consider her to be forgetful, so you need to remind her of the combat settings frequently. Playing as a breton helps somewhat, it cuts the damage you take.
Thief Constance exhibited the fight problem, but this was in proximity to others; need to test her alone.
Haven't tried Constance yet - a quick check using verify in the construction set shows several script errors - mostly wrong syntax by Emma in removing spells. Probably not critical to play.
Basically, all companions freaked out eventually in proximity to Abot's Guar (the rideable one), which is badly malfunctional, and runs through the ground into the water table. It also monkeys with NPC companion dialog, and adds guar-riding stuff to them. So, don't try that mod with OpenMW.
Never tried it - thanks for the warning. Probably worth posting a separate warning/report for that mod.
Wolf Companion and Dog Companions seem to work fine. I've used the wolf a lot, but the dog's barking is too loud for me.
Good to know :)
Companionable Cats: Only the kittens are available. Can't add the adult cats even with the console. Just get a "thwack" sound, like they've fallen from a great distance, but they do not visually appear.
Haven't looked at this mod (yet). What errors are thrown up by "verify" in the cs?
Someone else's Jasmine companion, based ultimately on the same Emma/Grumpy script package but customized a lot, was working fine, until her quest scripting kicked in at player Reputation 3, and she broke after trying to give me a telepathy ring (still broken after I added it via the console).
Jasmine's author was Jac. Haven't played that mod recently, though I think I contributed to the early testing long ago.
Again, would be useful to know what errors are thrown up by "verify".
The Emma/Grumpy pack donkeys and pack guars are not working for me; they are non-responsive when you buy them; same goes for Pack Animal Merchant by Baratheon79, which seems to be the same basic scripting. The guars and rats added by Balmora Expansion work fine, as do the Bethesda Mournhold rats.


Sounds like a script problem, but I don't see any errors from "verify". Further investigation needed. Any errors in the log?
Laura always goes into sleep-awake-sleep-awake cycle, after I interacted with her last time. Even before this should would not follow. Respawning her does not help. I just left her at her house. She even does the sleep loop if you use her ring to get her to go to Vivec.
My own experience is more positive - provided you use the current daily version (thus getting the recent fix to the same name journal entry" problem) and rename one script. Without them, she is severely broken.
The only companions I have zero problems with, other than the usual obstacle-navigation issues, and sticking arrows in my back, and getting in the way of mine, are the Bethesda Mournhold mercenary guy Calvus Horatius, the above-mentioned pack rats, the BE pack guars, and Dawn, who is definitely derived from Grumpy's Companion Project (and includes its readme), and is very simple. Curiously, Grumpy's own originals didn't work in OpenMW when I tried them.

My general conclusion is that the scripting of the Dawn companion, though simple, is very robust and resistant to error, both combat- and movement-related. If I were to create a new companion mod, I'd start with that code, though Jasmine's levitation is better (you have to turn Dawn's off manually). The bulk of the companion problems seem to be engaging in inappropriate combat (often with nothing, but also often with the PC and his/her other followers), and also custom scripting that eventually breaks (quests, special items, teleportation/meetup, sleeping, etc.).
Inappropriate combat is a known problem - see bug 3550
Other problems need testing individually to diagnose the causes.

Thanks for the extensive testing and report.

Now that Emma is a visitor here, perhaps some of the problems can be fixed.

Loriel
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Darklocq
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Re: Emma/Grumpy MW companions (Wolf, Beryl, Hurd)

Post by Darklocq »

Loriel wrote:
Darklocq wrote:Further testing notes:

I was able to use Ingred from Domehome, to an extent, but after most every combat she goes into "fighting nothing" mode. ...
Known problem - see https://bugs.openmw.org/issues/3550
Cool. I added some additional notes there.
Loriel wrote:
Darklocq wrote:Witchgirl Morgana ... her option to not summon atronachs doesn't work. ...
Same behaviour in vanilla Morrowind - consider her to be forgetful, so you need to remind her of the combat settings frequently. Playing as a breton helps somewhat, it cuts the damage you take.
I am playing a Breton, ha ha. I work around it with additional Resist stuff, and just staying out of the way.
Loriel wrote: Haven't tried Constance yet - a quick check using verify in the construction set shows several script errors - mostly wrong syntax by Emma in removing spells. Probably not critical to play.
The most common error I'm seeing in this set of mods is extraneous endifs, mistaking elseif as requiring its own endif. When one does this:

Code: Select all

if foo
   if bar
     something1
     elseif baz
       something2
     endif // mistaken endif actually closes "if bar"
   endif // endif to close "if bar" now actually closes "if foo"
   something3
endif
then something3 never executes. This problem can cause entire cascading chains of if logic to close early and not do what they're supposed to.
Loriel wrote:
Darklocq wrote:... Abot's Guar (the rideable one) ... don't try that mod with OpenMW.
Never tried it - thanks for the warning. Probably worth posting a separate warning/report for that mod.
Well, I have lots of mod-testing notes, at https://wiki.openmw.org/index.php?title ... and_Cheats (substantially updated just today). That would make for a tremendous number of threads if all posted to the forum. These are from live playtesting, not the formal one-mod-at-a-time tests used per https://wiki.openmw.org/index.php?title ... Guidelines for updating the https://wiki.openmw.org/index.php?title=Mod_Status page, though I've done some of that and worked on that page as well.
Loriel wrote:
Darklocq wrote:Companionable Cats ...
Haven't looked at this mod (yet). What errors are thrown up by "verify" in the cs?
Darklocq wrote:Pack donkeys and guars ...
... Sounds like a script problem, but I don't see any errors from "verify". Further investigation needed. Any errors in the log?
No idea yet; I am only starting to figure out OpenMW-CS, and I need to get so familiar with the errors thrown by the Bethesda game files themselves (there's a large number of them, especially about path grids and such) that I can tell which ones are mod-related. I have not figured out log interpretation yet either. It's on my to-do list.
Loriel wrote:
Darklocq wrote:Laura ...
My own experience is more positive - provided you use the current daily version (thus getting the recent fix to the "same name journal entry" problem) and rename one script. Without them, she is severely broken.
I'll get the daily, but it's too late for me to fix this in current game. I've found that adding any mod at all now, even a .omwaddon that does nothing but fix a typo, badly bollixes up my game (e.g. causes clothing and other item meshes/textures to break, etc.) OpenMW really does not like people monkeying with mods loaded or not and what order, after a game has been going a while. IIRC, one has to rename a script that has "." in it to use "_", right?
Loriel wrote: Inappropriate combat is a known problem - see bug 3550
Yes, but without resolution, and marked "Low" priority, which sounds like "will probably never be fixed". <sigh> I guess the average player doesn't use companion mods, but I wallow in them, so this matters to me. Heh.
Loriel wrote:Other problems need testing individually to diagnose the causes.
In progress, a bit at a time. I'll be more use in this regard after I get more familiar with OpenMW-CS and OpenMW's logs.
Loriel wrote:Thanks for the extensive testing and report.
My pleasure. I'm a documenter and problem-fixer at heart. Thus my huge mod playtesting results page. :-) Thanks for the responses and pointers, Loriel. After I get some real work done this week, I'll look more into upping my level of CS savvy.

PS: Do you know if there's a way to exceed OpenMW's mod limit (I think it's 256, including Bethesda's original files). Some of the mods I'm testing use multiple .ESP files, and the limit gets reached easily, especially when testing every other vendor mod ever made, or trying out a whole bunch of Balmora mods to find out what works with Balmora Expansion and what conflicts with it, etc. The best I've been able to do is cheat the limit a little by manually installing some mods into the live Data File directory of the game itself, if they are just mesh and texture replacers and don't have .ESP, .ESM, or .omwaddon files.
Loriel wrote:Now that Emma is a visitor here, perhaps some of the problems can be fixed.
I hope so! I'm glad you're here, Emma. I really adore your work and want to get pretty much all of it working in OpenMW. I even dig the basic Beryl and Hurd (whom I interpret as siblings, given the shared surname) and want to pal around with them. Really want those cats, too. Meow!
Loriel
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Joined: 28 May 2015, 00:44

Re: Emma/Grumpy MW companions (Wolf, Beryl, Hurd)

Post by Loriel »

Pack Donkeys
I can't reproduce the reported problem with Emma/Grumpy's Pack Donkeys, either with OpenMW 0.41 or with the latest nightly.

Purchasing, summoning (using the packdonkey ring) and giving direct commands (ie changing follow status) all work with no apparent problem.

One unfortunate side-effect - when Laura and one of the pack donkeys are both following the player, Laura's altitude seems to mirror that of the player, rather than the local ground level, so she spends much of her time above/below ground level, with no apparent ill-effects. I don't recall whether there was a similar problem in vanilla Morrowind.

Testing was fairly brief, extended play might reveal other issues.

Loriel
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Darklocq
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Re: Emma/Grumpy MW companions (Wolf, Beryl, Hurd)

Post by Darklocq »

Okay, it's probably a conflict between Pack Donkeys and another mod, then. I s'pect that resolving that one would also resolve the similar problem with other similar mods (Baratheon's Pack Guars, Panther Buddy, etc.), since it's the same "dealer takes your money, but the animal will not follow' symptoms. Given the issues with Abot's Guar, I'll obviously try removing that one first. However, I have to wait for another game to do so; even the tiniest change to mods and their load order bollixes up my ongoing game really badly. I guess I can try starting a test game and going straight from Seyda Neen to Suran for donkey testing. :-)

Nightlies: I tried, but they mess up my entire game (half the meshes/textures break, with much of the game day-glow pink and dotted with giant "!" icons), even if I start a new game. The only way I can switch to nightly builds is to remove all mods, start a new game, and add one mod at a time with a new game each time, until I identify which ones will work, even at game start, with the current build. That would be a whole day of un-play just to start over. I'll do it eventually, but only after I've gotten what I can out of the current run.

Even starting a new game with my current mod list caused nightly OpenMW to crap out, and this occurred with nightlies as old as early March. OpenMW has become incompatible with some mod I have, sometime between Jan. 28 (the date of the build I'm running) and March 8 (the oldest nightly I can find on the FTP server; all the nightlies available there exhibit this issue, including yesterday's). I've filed a bug report about this as a regression, though it will take a long time to figure out which mod in particular it is.

I'm also going by the downloadable pre-built nightlies. I could try compiling one myself, but last time I tried that, even the prerequisite-dependencies `make` script failed (possibly it's demanding compiler binaries and libraries from Homebrew, and I'm more of a MacPorts user). I posted on GitHub about this, in case someone recognizes the problem (I found an almost-identical problem thread about compiling MySQL, on another board, and the solution posted there did not resolve the problem for the OpenMW Mac compilation dependencies build).

Jasmine update: I went back to a savegame from before I hit Reputation 3, and avoided giving myself her ring much less using it, and she seems to work okay, other than she always prompts you to accept a ring she doesn't actually give, every time you open dialogue with her when she's in follow mode. Annoying, but workable. I suspect that most of her own quest scripting is now broken, though. I wasn't actually doing much of it anyway, so no big deal for me on this run, but I'll see if I can get any of it to progress; I haven't visited her family home yet, or dealt with the ex and his bounty hunter Waylas. If you attempt to use her ring, she's just toast, and cannot even be recovered with `PositionCell` and other tricks (she'll appear for a split second then vanish; using `Move` to bring her back into the space at about the same position as the PC has the same result; she goes back into whatever weird place she's at, instantly. Anyway, her ring-related behavior doesn't appear to have a related quest/journal thing (i.e., one cannot use the console to skip ahead, as far as I can tell); it's just a reputation test that triggers a dialogue and a ring-giving script. I'm guessing a variable for "already done this" is being set somewhere, but not correctly. Or the script that sets it didn't compile, or something like that. Hopefully I can figure out more OpenMW-CS stuff as I go. Of the Verify errors I was certain were part of this mod (`jac_` prefix), none of them appeared to relate, and were mostly about leaving areas like Caius Cosades's house. It's frustrating that there doesn't seem to be a way to filter out errors and warnings by what file they come from (to exclude those generated by MW, Tribunal, and Bloodmoon).

I have not gone back for Thief Companion Constance yet.

Discovered something interesting: If you get a really high bounty (I was curious what would happen) Ingred will turn on you, on sight, and no calming, charming, or other techniques appear to work, nor does `StopCombat`. Witchgirl Morgana also turned enemy, but only after a dialogue. Calvus does not, just quips about your crimes and that you'd better watch it. Dawn, the rather simple companion, has no reaction; she's pretty oblivious to everything but being attacked. I didn't have Jasmine in the area for this test. I also expect that these reactions are the same in vanilla MW, but who knows?
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psi29a
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Re: Emma/Grumpy MW companions (Wolf, Beryl, Hurd)

Post by psi29a »

The nightlies aren't going to fix themselves and will become 0.42 unless you start filing bug reports. ;)

We'll need behaviour before and after change, including what is the correct behaviour if possible.

Reports can be filed here: https://bugs.openmw.org/
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Darklocq
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Re: Emma/Grumpy MW companions (Wolf, Beryl, Hurd)

Post by Darklocq »

psi29a wrote:The nightlies aren't going to fix themselves and will become 0.42 unless you start filing bug reports. ;)

We'll need behaviour before and after change, including what is the correct behaviour if possible.

Reports can be filed here: https://bugs.openmw.org/
:Noted, and I already filed a report, with screenshot. I want to get a fresh compile working if I can, to ensure that the problems I'm experiencing with nightlies aren't just due to different compilation conditions. I've had a few issues for longer, also involving broken meshes/textures, like Vampires (non-Ash) and the Orc in the Vivec city temple with the construction scaffolding, showing up with day-glow faces. I think the only way to isolate this problem is to get the cell ID and x,y,z position after going there, then start a new game with only one mod loaded, and console to that location; add another mod and do it again, then repeat over and over until the problem resurfaces and can be blamed on one mod (even then it'll require testing with that mod alone and if it works fine testing it in series with additional mods until the combination of mods that doesn't work is pin-pointed. Basically the same tedious process as identifying extension conflicts in old MacOS 9. :-0

It seems especially weird to me that you can identify which meshes and textures are not working by looking them up (I did this with a kilt mod the resources of which were exhibiting this problem, since it was easier to pinpoint those than the vanilla Ms and Ts that were failing), and add a `data=` line to the config file for an additional mod Data directory at the end of the load order that consists of nothing but fresh copies of the meshes and textures in question, and they're still not loading when this happens. Yet you can do effectively exactly the same thing with a game-in-progress by adding a M-and-T-only mod (new clouds or a replacement Adamantium texture, or something) at the end of the load order and it works fine. The mesh and texture files themselves that are showing up weird are not broken, since they worked fine earlier. Something about how the game engine is loading them is at fault, or gets made to be faulty, after a certain point with particular but presently indeterminate mods. Given a system this complex, I'm not surprised.

Good Jasmine news so far: Despite the "let me give you this ring that I don't actually give you" dialogue looping bug, she seems to be working okay otherwise. Just do not try to use "Jasmine's Ring" via console or she breaks completely and is irretrievable even with console trickery. '''Update''': One side effect is that the ring-giving material replaces her usual health report (and there's not an NPC menu item to get it back), so you never know when she's injured; just remember to Restore Health on her a bit after every fight.
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Emma
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Re: Emma/Grumpy MW companions (Wolf, Beryl, Hurd)

Post by Emma »

I mentioned on the previous page that I think this part of the script might be the culprit for why Constance et al are attacking:

Code: Select all

if ( soundPlayed == 1 )
  set noSay to 1
  StartCombat aa_comp_constance
  set noSay to 0
;  messagebox "Working"
  set soundPlayed to 0
  set combatCheck to 0
  set combatMode to 0
  set combatDone to 1
endif
I wonder if someone who is testing them could try and see what happens if you just outcomment this line:

StartCombat aa_comp_constance

(or the equivalent for Hurd/Beryl)

I know there is also one endif too much - I think it is harmless, it was harmless in MW, but of course it could be causing harm in OpenMW.

I hope so! I'm glad you're here, Emma. I really adore your work and want to get pretty much all of it working in OpenMW. I even dig the basic Beryl and Hurd (whom I interpret as siblings, given the shared surname) and want to pal around with them. Really want those cats, too. Meow!
Thank you :) I have no idea what is up with the cats - I just read your post so I haven't looked in the Morrowind CS, but I'm fairly certain the script is identical for them and the kittens - could it be a problem with the model, maybe?
Loriel
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Re: Emma/Grumpy MW companions (Wolf, Beryl, Hurd)

Post by Loriel »

Cats
Brief testing.
The cats are being created, with no errors, but are falling through the floor.

Try "1em_cat4 -> getpos z" which gives a value of about -7700
Then "1em_cat4 -> setpos z -500" which places it at floor level, until it falls through again.

Loriel
Loriel
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Re: Emma/Grumpy MW companions (Wolf, Beryl, Hurd)

Post by Loriel »

Constance
Emma wrote:I mentioned on the previous page that I think this part of the script might be the culprit for why Constance et al are attacking:

Code: Select all

if ( soundPlayed == 1 )
  set noSay to 1
  StartCombat aa_comp_constance
  set noSay to 0
;  messagebox "Working"
  set soundPlayed to 0
  set combatCheck to 0
  set combatMode to 0
  set combatDone to 1
endif
I wonder if someone who is testing them could try and see what happens if you just outcomment this line:

StartCombat aa_comp_constance

(or the equivalent for Hurd/Beryl)
Yes, looks like that fixes it.

Accompanied by Laura and Constance, after any combat the two companions started fighting each other.

With that change, they no longer do so.

Haven't tested Beryl/Hurd yet - I presume similar situation there.

Haven't tested Constance long enough to identify other problems - from "verify" in the CS I expect to see some spell removal problems, which I suspect relate to Constance's "assistance" dialogue options - the spells involved appear to be permanent.

For example

Code: Select all

Begin aa_condetanim

float timer

if ( timer <= 40 )
 set timer to ( timer + GetSecondsPassed )
 else
 set timer to 0
 Player->RemoveSpell "aa_con_det_cr2" 1
 stopscript aa_condetanim
endif

end
where the final "1" in " Player->RemoveSpell "aa_con_det_cr2" 1" is treated by OpenMW as an error, rather than ignored as I presume vanilla Morrowind does.

Loriel
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Emma
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Re: Emma/Grumpy MW companions (Wolf, Beryl, Hurd)

Post by Emma »

So it did work?! Yes, yes, yes!! I'm really so glad that it did, and that I at least remembered that much about what we did in the script. If it is fine also with Beryl and Hurd, and no other problem arises because of this removed line, all Grumpy-based companions might be working. And Laura already works after your removing of that extra dot in the script-namn.

With the spell and the error related to it, I don't recall how it was in Morrowind, I don't even recall the script condetamin itself.
I also have no idea why the cat but not the kittens are falling into the void, most likely this is related to the model and the question is then how to cure it. I haven't looked at it in the construction set, though.
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