Children of Morrowind

[Elaura]

I'm sorry, I'm not very familiar with the customs of this forum, yet. Jac (my husband) is more of a regular here and he's busy playing Morrowind right now.
;D
Anyway, I've recently gotten back into it and Children of Morrowind is always in my load order, but just recently I've noticed something disturbing. The children don't notice when it's storming outside.

The reason I noticed it is twofold. I'm also using Jac's Lightning strike mod as well as abot's real time travel mods. Occasionally, I see children getting struck by lightning and the NPC's driving the silt striders, gondolas, and ships have special dialog for when it's raining.

My question is, would it be possible to have the Children go inside during thunder and ash storms? Naturally, I'm not expecting to see their parents come calling and them heading for the buildings, I know that isn't possible. I would hope their movements could be limited to cell changes, maybe?

My second question is if you don't have the time to make such an update, Emma, would you allow someone else to make one and distribute it?

[Emma]

Hi Elaura

The children actually never go indoors - in Morrowind, moving around so many npcs wouldn't really work. also vanilla npcs arent really going anywhere unless they are in company with the player. Instead there are more instances of them.

The children are disabled during nighthours based on LOS, and returns in the morning to play.
Changing this and move them to indoor locations would cause crashes when you change the load order and the children happen to be in the alternate locatoin, i.e. not where they are placed in the CS.
When the mod was made, it was a no-go to move npcs around like that. It could of course be that newer utilities have changed this, but I don't want the mod to be dependant on external programs.

EDIT: I'm very rusty at Morrowind scripting and modding now, and I'm busy working on Vilja for Skyrim. If you or Jac are interested in rewriting the scripts so that the kids are also disabled during thunderstorms, I could update the mod to a new version with the new scripts (and include the missing rocking-horse.nif ). But I don't want the mod "distributed" - it has its home on my site and an extra home on GHF, and I like to keep it this way.

[Jac]

It should just be a simple matter of modifying the script so that the children disable during thunderstorms/ashstorms to simulate their going back inside during those weather conditions. I'll check on how to check weather conditions and post an updated script here, Emma.

[Elaura]

Yes, I did mean disabling them, not actually moving them. As far as distribution, if the entire mod had to be changed, I understand why you would prefer having it remain on your site. Especially since you have kept it up and stable for years and intend to continue.

If it turns out only a patch is required, would you still rather it stay here? We would send it to you for final approval regardless.