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Post by Cybersquirt on Jul 22, 2015 10:04:49 GMT
..and I love hearing her stories and comments.. But, uhm, not when I'm trying to listen to another NPC. Is this her or is it game mechanics or both? Is there no - no dialogue now, someone else is talking? This is the second time I've had to replay a major scene because she's got commentary at the same time one of the npc's is telling me more about what just happened - this time, Paarthurnax - and I can't hear either of them.
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Post by Sniffles on Jul 22, 2015 11:07:54 GMT
Have Vilja stand back from the PC in her settings. Then when that happens move to the person you want to hear with your back to Vilja. The game should hand the dialogue to whom you are facing.
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Post by Cybersquirt on Jul 22, 2015 11:20:43 GMT
She's supposed to do that - I've told her to give me some room and I have not told her to it's okay to run ahead of me but I have told her to stop warping to me. She's decided she needs to be ... close to me most of the time. Not as bad as Serena but she is pushing into me a lot and landing on me when she (#$%^&@*) warps to me. I won't tell you what I do in response. <.< She was behind me when this happened. I anticipated her needing to say something so I even dialogued her before I talked to the dragon.. apparently she had more than one thing to say. edit: dunno if it means anything but she's suddenly sandboxing rather quickly, very much like Serana. edit2: so then I need to talk to the Jarl, and Vilja decides she needs to have a chat with Irileth at the same time - who is, as always, right next to him. So, once again, I reload (and wait for her to finish having 3 conversations) so I can hear what he's saying.
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Post by Sniffles on Jul 22, 2015 12:31:09 GMT
So dial back how often she speaks?
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Post by Cybersquirt on Jul 22, 2015 13:34:33 GMT
I'll try that but I have no control over how much (or often) she speaks to other npc's. Er, right? In reading up on other fun I'm having with the Rayya bug (when you make her a Blade), I found this in the wiki notes for the Season Unending quest: "If you have a talkative follower, they may continue to talk to you during the negotiations, making it hard to follow what is going on. Take them outside the conference chamber and ask them to wait before you take your seat." So now I know where Vilja's gonna be for that.
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Post by CollinMacleod on Jul 23, 2015 0:26:01 GMT
Traveling Together > Regarding Your Behavior > Regarding Some Of Your Habits > Don't Talk With Other Followers And/OR Don't Chatter To People In Cities.
Usually her A.I. is pretty good about such things, as an example when I did the peace talk, the very long peace talk at High Hrothgar. She sat in the chair next to me and didn't talk a single time...
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Post by Sniffles on Jul 23, 2015 1:04:47 GMT
I hate micro managing things like every tiny aspect of a follower. Vilja is without a close second on what can be adjusted but on the other hand her spontaneity in odd situations is delightful. The best of the best of the best of the best was in the same meeting Colin mentioned, as Arngeir was about to speak and Vilja asks, 'Did you fart?'. Please oh please put that back in! Vilja, giving a whole new meaning to off the wall comments.
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Post by thenryb on Jul 23, 2015 2:45:34 GMT
I do very little micromanaging with Vilja. About all I do is configure her not to demand to be allowed to lead and to STFU when I am in stealth.
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Post by CollinMacleod on Jul 23, 2015 3:29:23 GMT
I have all her settings at default. I think she is pretty perfect out the the box, so to speak. I did change her settings in my test run, to make sure her various wardrobes worked, but I still left it up to her. I have never had a corrupt formlist, or any other weird issue. I think people play with her settings too much myself. She is entitled to get confused. I have found through much testing, that she can resolve most if not all issues on her own if you give her enough time to work it out. Presumed limits of memory and computer power of course.
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Post by Sniffles on Jul 23, 2015 4:41:55 GMT
I have all her settings at default. I think she is pretty perfect out the the box, so to speak. I did change her settings in my test run, to make sure her various wardrobes worked, but I still left it up to her. I have never had a corrupt formlist, or any other weird issue. I think people play with her settings too much myself. She is entitled to get confused. I have found through much testing, that she can resolve most if not all issues on her own if you give her enough time to work it out. Presumed limits of memory and computer power of course. Spratzk groibish froddlee... < collecting my cabbages... thoughts. There are is a broad spectrum of playing styles. Roughly at one end you have I'M GOING TO BEAT THE GAME SKYRIM!!! and at the other extreme someone like me who let's the game, the monsters, the scenery, the NPCs, the scenery, the followers, the scenery , the occasional quest, and did I mention the scenery?, take me in my ventures, flights of fancy, wherever things happen to go. So there is no one perfect playing style. There also is no perfect companion. However, Vilja easily comes very close with a myriad of adjustments to an already wonderfully complex pseudo character companion. And she is adaptable so easily! From Kitten's KILL MAIM HURT-A-LOT, think that Jack Nicholson picture from The Shining style, a minute of adjustments and the PC is Merida from Brave with Vilja easily adjusted to either. BUT!!! One thing about Vilja everyone should keep in mind. She's almost a PC. She has a life and extensive dialogue all her own. If you really want to enjoy her companionship to the fullest you will make an effort to accommodate her with some extra saves so the PC can get the jobs done as well as Vilja getting her 2 cents in.
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Post by Cybersquirt on Jul 24, 2015 2:48:43 GMT
Traveling Together > Regarding Your Behavior > Regarding Some Of Your Habits > Don't Talk With Other Followers And/OR Don't Chatter To People In Cities. Usually her A.I. is pretty good about such things, as an example when I did the peace talk, the very long peace talk at High Hrothgar. She sat in the chair next to me and didn't talk a single time... Ah, I didn't see that setting. Thanks! But I think I'm just going to leave her outside... see my response to the next quote of yours. I think that may be the way to go. She's still talking when I have my weapon drawn and I'm nearly always in stealth. I'm going to hit her with her rest spell and just tell her not to go shopping in every city.. she wanted to go, right after we finished killing a dragon, at an hour when the only available "store" was the tavern. I think there is something to this. iirc, she didn't start going naked and have other wardrobe weirdness until I told her not to equip her shield indoors. Have you all thought about pruning the options a bit? Some of that stuff just doesn't seem to work anyway: the "stop warping to me", for example, unless "give me space" is conflicting with that; as I've learned, "you shouldn't have extra storage"; the "don't go shopping" doesn't stop her from wanting to, instead it makes me always tell her it's not a good time**; and, while working seems creates all kinds of trouble, half of the wardrobe menu ( ). As I'd said in my previous posts, she was sandboxing almost immediately when I paused to look around.. I wonder if she was waiting for the "letter from dad" script to fire, as she seems to have nomalized now that I got it. Sometimes I get confused just trying to navigate her menus. I can only imagine what it takes to code all that stuff. **I assume this is to allow her to do quest-related "shopping"? Unless a company has developed a rock-solid game (is there even such a thing anymore?), giving players so many choices is rarely a good thing.. particularly when it leads to Vilja getting confused. As I've seen, scripts and their instances are already a mess in the base game.. my count is quite high, having played roughly 900 game hours.. It only gets compounded with DLC (including fan mods). The only reason my game hasn't exploded yet, imho, is I didn't run much DLC for quite a while.. and Vilja was a less-complicated girl with simpler needs.
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Post by Sniffles on Jul 24, 2015 3:13:56 GMT
Cybersquirt, just to mention Vilja isn't a -finished product-. She's a continual work in progress. The menus are a product of Vilja's evolution. Everyone who has worked on her knows they are pretty complex and not exactly indexed all that well. It's a question of how? The menus are in character for the most part which is obviously desirable. They could be made a lot simpler by indexing them like an encyclopedia but at the loss of the personal theme flavor. There could be two indexes, one in character, one entirely game mechanics, but the two overlap and much of the game mechanics has been put in the game play flavor as possible. Finding a happy medium when two entirely different worlds cross is a very difficult balancing act. IE, be assured a lot of head scratching has gone and no doubt will go into those menus in further Vilja releases. Personally I think the entire menu system should have an alphabetized out of character version that can be accessed as an alternative to what Vilja presently has. Just another hundred or two hours of work. After all, Emma and Amgepo are wasting several hours each night sleeping when they could be working on Vilja 4.1!
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Post by Seyheb on Jul 24, 2015 8:37:42 GMT
I’m a strong believer in giving players choice and I would be opposed to reducing that choice. Giving players choice is a very good thing. What is unimportant to one player will be important to another and vice-versa. I believe one of the great strengths of the Vilja mod is the choice players are offered. The problem isn’t that choice but the fact that some players aren’t always aware of the choices available to them. Also the options tree can sometimes be difficult to navigate for someone not familiar with it. In fact players sometimes ask for choices that they don’t realise are already there. The tree has been added to incrementally over time and maybe it would benefit from some rearrangement of the order or at least a separate guide just for the choices available, such as you suggest, Sniffles. I don't think we need to burden Emma, Amgepo and Wolf with preparing such a guide, though they would have to approve the final draft of course.
I find Vilja and her options remarkable stable for such a relatively detailed companion, and I do experiment with her options in my setups. Also, those of us on the playtesting team are always on the lookout for any issues that might crop up, particularly when we see someone on the Nexus or elsewhere making a comment about something they have experienced. For example I have been using her wardrobe system for a long time now and find it works very well and is very stable. I believe most wardrobe problems come about due to players deleting or moving clothing or armour mods around without first removing the items from her wardrobe, which is a cause of formlist corruption. Also using high poly items or running other mods with a lot of script activity in the background when their computer has difficulty in handling the load can be a cause of delays in re-dressing when moving between cells. The Vilja mod itself is very light on script activity.
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Post by Sniffles on Jul 24, 2015 10:18:11 GMT
I’m a strong believer in giving players choice and I would be opposed to reducing that choice. Giving players choice is a very good thing. What is unimportant to one player will be important to another and vice-versa. I believe one of the great strengths of the Vilja mod is the choice players are offered. The problem isn’t that choice but the fact that some players aren’t always aware of the choices available to them. Also the options tree can sometimes be difficult to navigate for someone not familiar with it. In fact players sometimes ask for choices that they don’t realise are already there. The tree has been added to incrementally over time and maybe it would benefit from some rearrangement of the order or at least a separate guide just for the choices available, such as you suggest, Sniffles. I don't think we need to burden Emma, Amgepo and Wolf with preparing such a guide, though they would have to approve the final draft of course. I find Vilja and her options remarkable stable for such a relatively detailed companion, and I do experiment with her options in my setups. Also, those of us on the playtesting team are always on the lookout for any issues that might crop up, particularly when we see someone on the Nexus or elsewhere making a comment about something they have experienced. For example I have been using her wardrobe system for a long time now and find it works very well and is very stable. I believe most wardrobe problems come about due to players deleting or moving clothing or armour mods around without first removing the items from her wardrobe, which is a cause of formlist corruption. Also using high poly items or running other mods with a lot of script activity in the background when their computer has difficulty in handling the load can be a cause of delays in re-dressing when moving between cells. The Vilja mod itself is very light on script activity. The Vilja menu needs a major something. There are redundancies and multiple ways to access certain topics, and some things are very unclear or confusing. As example, instructions for Vilja to wear certain things at certain times and places. Do those instructions conflict with, compliment, or simply operate along side of her wardrobe functions? Then there is what menus are available at what times? Do they vary in the city, indoors, the wilderness, while in stealth, in combat, or any other circumstance? And then there are oddities. If asked to make a campfire and there isn't room, Vilja will sandbox indefinitely. You can also ask Vilja to set up a tent AND make a campfire. She might not have room and will sandbox, OR she will find the room, usually on top of a bedroll. To add to the mayhem you can have Sindra along and tell her to use her bedroll. And what you end up with is.... AMAZING! TWO campfires, one of which can be used for cooking foods, one Vilja will cook foods in but not cook foods for actually making foods and there's poor Sindra in her bedroll under a blazing campfire. GACK!
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Post by Seyheb on Jul 24, 2015 16:55:37 GMT
The options for when and where to wear armour, helmet and shield etc. are independent of the wardrobe and outfits but work seamlessly alongside them. I think that’s implicit in the manual, but I’ll have to re-read it to be sure. It could be mentioned in an guide to her optional settings though. As for the question of the campfire, if a cramped site forces the camp fire too close to or into the tent, I just ask Vilja to remove it again. I’ve never experienced her being stuck in sandbox mode if she hasn’t got enough room to set a campfire, but now you have mentioned it, I will see if I can reproduce it. However I don't think that’s really something for a guide except maybe as a warning note.
As for the way Vilja’s dialogue tree is arranged currently, I suspect altering it would require a lot of work on the part of Emma, amgepo and Wolf, and although the idea has been raised in the past, I'm inclined to suggest just preparing a guide to the optional settings for the time being. I think the best approach for the guide would be to list her available options together with explanations of how to access them. That way at least players should be able to find out easily what optional settings exist first of all and then how to access them. I'm prepared to help produce such a guide, so I'll post in the WIP section first, then if it is agreed we can follow it up. In any case it needs a separate topic if it is going to be taken further.
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