User talk:TheRealLurlock/2007 04

Morrowind NPC Pages

I've noticed the recent reformat of the Oblivion NPC pages, and I'm wondering, are we going to do the same for the Morrowind NPCs? I mean, if we're going to make the switch over at some point in time, we might as well do it from the beginning. I don't really care either way, but I'd like to know so I don't waste any time on doing work that will become obsolete soon. --Ratwar 16:13, 6 April 2007 (EDT)

Personally, I was planning on that happening at some point, though we'd need a bunch of people to help implement the changes. The same template used on the Oblivion NPC pages will work just as well on Morrowind pages, so nothing new needs to be set up. It's just a bunch of work, and most new editors are concentrating on Shivering Isles now. Using this format for any new pages will certainly help. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 16:39, 6 April 2007 (EDT)

Deleting an image

Hello Lurlock. I did not know how to contact you so I try it thus. At this image
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Image:Elytra_felldew.jpg
I forgot to mark "Graphic taken from the Elder Scrolls series". I tried to "update" it to the image, but that doesn't work. As I tried to delete it, it sais that only administrators have that right. Could you delete it so that I can upload it twice with description and license or is there a way to make the license show up? --Katan 03:09, 8. April 2007 (MEZ)

No need to delete. Changing the license is easy. Don't need an admin to do it, but I will anyhow. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 21:12, 7 April 2007 (EDT)

Thank you very much! And now I know how it works should I forget it again, hehe. : ) --Katan 03:18, 8. April 2007 (MEZ)

Sorry

Sorry about that busted page Lurlock. It was my first attempt at editing. I'll read the help link you provided and try again. - Forlornhope.

Flora

Thanks for making a start on the flora pages, now I know exactly which plants to find and screenshot! -Lordsword 8 14:32, 11 April 2007 (EDT)

No problem. Saw a section going up, figured it was something I could do at work, where I don't have the Construction Set... --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 15:00, 11 April 2007 (EDT)

On a related topic, I think we should still have them in the Dictionary as well, as then it functions as a kind of Index for the site. If somebody comes across a name they dont know, they can check up on it in the Dictionary. Ill leave it in your hands though.

-Lordsword 8 15:33, 11 April 2007 (EDT) PS. Thanks for removing the double entry. My mistake

Creature Ingredients

FYI, I am pretty close to being ready to start posting creature ingredient pages. Actually, I could post the info boxes pretty quickly already... I've already got all of that data ready, formatted so it just needs to be pasted into the page and saved. I'm just agonizing over details of how to plot all the information that I've assembled, which gets really messy. Anyway, if you'd like to get all those pages in place I could probably post the infoboxes later tonight. (Before getting to that I've got to finish a dozen NPC summaries, finish reporting on Xbox bugs, and do some real life things like shopping for food... but this evening should be doable!) --Nephele^Talk 15:50, 13 April 2007 (EDT)

Well, I could, but I don't have the CS available here, so I might wait until I get home. Actually, I was just looking over your template to see how well it would work for the Morrowind ingredients, when I noticed that it was a bit plant-specific, so I added a few options. The Harvest property is not going to be very relevant to Oblivion creatures, but it will come in handy for Morrowind (where most creature-based ingredients are in leveled lists with a chance of coming up empty). MW plants are going to be interesting as well, since MW plants are basically just respawning withdrawal-only containers with leveled lists, so some work will have to be done to determine the exact numbers in this case, but shouldn't be too hard. (I might also want to add a section for mineral-based ingredients, which are another aspect in Morrowind. Basically exactly like the plants, only the field should say "Ore" instead of "Plant" or something, and probably a location field should be added for them.) Another interesting twist will be Kwama Eggs, which are found BOTH on creatures and in egg-sacs, which are basically like plants/ore. My gut instinct is they will work just as well, only it will use both options. We'll see when we come to it. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 15:59, 13 April 2007 (EDT)

Happy Birthday

If I could bake, I'd make you a cake, but I can't... --Ratwar 10:09, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

Thanks, and a shout-out to Rowdy Roddy Piper, Sean Bean, Jennifer Garner, and Posh Spice, who are the only names I recognize on this list. I'm in some unusual company, I guess... --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 10:58, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

Happy Birthday! But it's kind of hard to get you a present when I didn't know ahead of time... ;) --Nephele^Talk 10:59, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

Happy Birthday!! --GuildKnight (Talk) ^contribs 11:40, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

I missed your birthday? Well, happy birthday anyway... -- Chaos Monkey ^Talk 00:22, 11 May 2007 (EDT)

Birthday Present

Since it's your birthday I figured I'd rummage around for a present ;) First installment is in my sandbox at User:Nephele/Sandbox/4. I believe that's all the Morrowind spell merchants for you. It includes ones you've already done, since I've been using them to figure out whether or not I'm decoding this Morrowind info correctly.

There are few things I took some guesses at, but it would be good to have confirmation of:

• How are the trainers' skills determined? By checking what it says at Morrowind:Trainers it looks like the skills are always that NPC's top three skills.

This is correct. Only difficulty is if there's a tie between the 3rd and 4th, in which case I'm pretty sure the one that's alphabetically first is chosen, but I may be wrong on that.

• Do only Shipmasters offer boat transport services? Or do Gondoliers also provide transport? And are those services determined always by the NPC's class?

Oh yeah, Gondoliers, I forgot because I never use them. They only go from one section of Vivec to another, and I've always found it easier (and faster) just to walk. Probably should include them anyhow, though.

• Are there fences in Morrowind?

No. There's also no way to remove stolen flags from items, and even if you get rid of a stolen item and find a new one of the exact same ID legitimately, it is still marked as stolen. However, you can sell stolen goods to anyone, except for the person you stole it from.

• Is it not worth printing Mercantile skill even for merchants?

As far as I know, this is completely irrelevant in Morrowind. Only Disposition and your Mercantile make any difference. I could be wrong, but it would require some thorough testing. *hint hint*

• For the class name, it looks like you've been using the class' editor name instead of the in-game name for the class. Is that an intentional preference?

The service-providers seem to be the only ones where it's different. (E.g., there is both a Mage and a Mage Service class, which are pretty much the same, except that the regular Mage class does not provide services.) At any rate, the class of NPCs never directly displays in the game, only your class, so it's not that important.

At this point going from a "small" sample of just the spell merchants to mega-NPCs is trivial. I just wanted to wait and see whether or not I've got the details right before going into mass production. My plan was to use Hoggwild's lists to figure out which NPCs are going to have their own page, and dump info for all of them. And throwing in Tribunal and Bloodmoon will also be possible. So let me know whether there are any tweaks, minor or major, that you think would be helpful. --Nephele^Talk 17:26, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

I also just added another data dump at User:Nephele/Sandbox/6, which should hopefully save you some effort putting together the spell listings for each merchant. It's big (198 kB) and a bit awkward to edit... I'll try to go through and clear out the info for the NPCs you've already done. --Nephele^Talk 23:06, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

Thanks for the efforts. Was busy being fed tacos and cake, so I didn't get much done today. I'll take a look at the lists later to see how accurate they are. Figuring out who does and doesn't provide which services is the most tedious part of this, because I have to check them one by one, and most of them are blocked, which involves extra annoying steps. One thing that helps is to see if "auto-calc" is checked. If it is, then you know that that character's stats (including services offered) will be exactly the same as every other character of that class with "auto-calc" checked. If you know that all "auto-calc" Barbarians do not offer services, you only have to check the non-"auto-calc" ones to see if they're any different. If you can find that variable in the file, it should save you a lot of extra churning and bubbling. Anyhow, thanks for the present. I'll see what I can do with it later. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 23:34, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

At a quick count, your list seems to have 2 more names than mine. One of them, "Used Clutter Salesman" is a test character who only appears in a test-cell, thus probably won't be included. The other is "Arrille". I picked these out because they're the only ones with classes other than the ones I checked. Arrille should definitely be added to my list, and in fact he already has a page. Seems your method works so far. Good work. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 23:43, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

Damn, did I mess up something minor on ALL of them? Anyhow, just letting you know there's a few other things in your chart formatting that are unnecessary - I tried to fix them, but I edit-conflicted you, and I figured I'd wait until you were done. First, the header templates now have a |- both before and after, so there's no need to have one on either side of those now. (There was when I first created them, but that got annoying, so I changed it.) Second, you have the chart titles bolded. Since the wikitable class does this automatically, you can remove all the bold markings from the titles. I figure you might save a whole KB or 2 just by that alone... --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 00:30, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

Nah, you didn't mess up on all of them :) There are several that passed the diff check without any problems. Not that the differences really mattered in most cases, but I figured before deleting the info I might as well do a comparison with the existing pages just in case. And looks like you got to that formatting before I could ;) I seem to have chosen one of the older NPC pages as the example that I cut and paste that stuff from.

The info still needs a human touch in places... Demoralize Creature (I think) is always being treated as a mysticism spell instead of an illusion spell. And with spells that do both fortify luck and fortify willpower, there are two identical fortify attribute icons. But I figure doing a quick sanity look-through for things like that is probably alot easier than having to type it all in yourself ;)

Yeah, I was guessing Used Clutter guy was a test (I took out Todd's Super Tester guy because that seemed pretty definite), but hadn't deleted him just in case I was wrong. There are likely to be a few more test people who show up in the full listing, but probably better to have a few extra people than to throw out real people (which I found out after the fact I did with a few Oblivion people... still have to go back and dig them up again).

I've got the autocalc variable in the NPC data, but haven't actually been using it yet. Presumably the class services info is only used by autocalc NPCs? I'll add that wrinkle into the meatgrinder.

Re: training. I'm sorting alphabetically as the second criterion for the skills, so I should hopefully get the tie cases correct. And I'll throw in the Gondoliers... the NPC Summary won't know what to do with them yet (or with the enchanters); I'll try to remember to add them to the template later (or I'm sure you'll remind me if I forget ;) ). --Nephele^Talk 01:30, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

The way autocalc works is that every class has a default set of skills, attributes, and AI settings (including services provided). So if a given class has "Sells Spells" as a default setting, then EVERY member of that class with autocalc will sell spells. By contrast, if a class does not sell spells, then every autocalc member of that class will not sell spells. If autocalc is turned off, however, this means that their default settings may have been changed. Sometimes this is just a change to skills or attributes, but other times it means that their service settings have been changed from the default for their class. At any rate, if you know what the autocalc settings are for each class, you can reliably predict the settings for other members of that class provided they have autocalc. So you only need to check the ones that don't. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 01:47, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

Oops, I just realized that I didn't clarify the format of the info on User:Nephele/Sandbox/4... the tables you see are kind of deceiving, because actually all of the data for the NPC template is already there and formatted. The tables are just to make it easy to scan through the page and get an overview of the information. I played the same trick with the Oblivion NPCs and explained it some at User:Nephele/Sandbox/4/Intro. Basically, you'll want to edit the tables to get at the raw info, copy and paste, and follow the embedded comments/instructions. --Nephele^Talk 19:36, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

Vandal

Just follow my reverts and block 'm! It's all I seem to do the last time....212.238.224.34 09:20, 18 April 2007 (EDT) (Zoidberg)

Hey, thanks for catching these. Just one thing - if you put "+ Vandal" or something like that into the edit summary when you revert these, it'll make them easier to see in Recent changes. (That way I won't add two to the catch-list and then notice that there were 4 more I missed.) It's too bad you can't log in from work - it's slightly confusing seeing you as just an IP address, especially since it's in the same range as the IPs doing most of the vandalism. (I almost blocked you by accident.) If you want, I can give you a signature template like I did for Chaos Monkey, so at least in talk threads we'll see your name... --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 09:37, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

I can log in at work, my PC just won't remember it the next time I'm on the site. Seeing as I'm quite lazy in this regard, I just forget to log in. So you don't have to create a template for me, I'll just try to remember to log in...Zoidberg 09:43, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

Oops - just created one anyhow. Well, feel free to use it or not. Anyhow, since you're on vandal patrol, you might want to check out the Admin Noticeboard thread on the subject. Just found one that you missed because they can create accounts now. Add another to the list... --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 09:46, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

I did see that one, but because I don't know anything about Redguard (I think it was Redguard) I wasn't sure it wasvandalism...Zoidberg 09:50, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

I don't know Redguard either, but the clue for me was the style of account name. 6 random characters, 1st and 4th being capital letters, seen it twice before. Checked the edit and sure enough it was the same M.O., removing plus signs. This sure is one odd duck of a vandal... --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 09:57, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

I couldn't agree more. It really is amazing. I mean, it's not that hard to revert the edits, so what's the point?--Zoidberg 10:01, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

Rewinding A Quest?

Lurlock, I need some help. Basically, I need to know if it's possible to take a quest back a step. In other words, I know you can use 'setstage' to advance a bugged quest if it won't give you an update, but can you use it or a similar command to take a quest back to a previous step? This is in regards to a specific quest in the Shivering Isles. I didn't know if you had it yet so I'm trying to refrain from spewing spoilers all about (though it is a very basic, short, side-quest). More or less the quest just stops and repeats. You know how you can respond with "I'm not ready yet" with almost all of Oblivion's quests and put off doing it? When you do that with this quest the NPC gets stuck in a loop where the conversation defaults back to the beginning of the quest and won't proceed. I hope I explained that well enough, thanks in advance for whatever you got. Oh yeah, happy ruthlessly late birthday too. --AlbinoMudcrab 01:48, 26 April 2007 (EDT)

Yes, theoretically, it should be possible to back up a step in a quest, though some may be more complicated than others. (For example, if a quest sets any global variables at certain stages of a quest, or if items appear/disappear, those will need to be altered as well.) Not knowing the specifics of the quest, I couldn't tell you what complications there will be. (I can't even run Shivering Isles yet, even though I bought it - technical issues.) You might want to ask one of the other Users Knowledgeable About Shivering Isles and see if they've experienced the problem. But I do know that almost anything can be fixed via console if you know how. Also might want to add a report to Shivering:Glitches or the relevant quest page if it's easy to reproduce. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 08:59, 26 April 2007 (EDT)

I considered that "advances" with certain objects and scripts would potentially also have to be reset. This quest is ridiculously short, possibly three parts all in the same area, and the only thing that changes prior to the very end is meeting an NPC once and dialogue with them. The NPC saying he wants to meet is the looping bug, he continually wants to meet. But as you're saying, it would probably be best to have someone check the CS and make sure that's all, or it could be all bad. Essentially, I didn't worry about it and figured possibly something else would re-trigger it, but it's been well over 50 hours now and nothing, so I need to find a way to get it fixed and post it. I did a fairly decent expansion to the quest article a week or so ago which included a writeup on the bug, and I'll go ahead and put it on Glitches and see what happens. Although I have a suspicion that you'll end up answering it when you get your tech problems worked out :) Sorry to hear about that, if it's your "main" PC at your house then I'm triple sorry (I been there more than twice). Anyways, thanks for the help. --AlbinoMudcrab 14:46, 26 April 2007 (EDT)

Oblivion Help

Hey Lurlock! I have noticed your participation in many oblivion quest discussions, and I need your help. I have left a comment at Oblivion Talk:Lifting the Vale(Look at the bottom of the page, The Fangs are Sharp) and as you will see if you read it, I really need your advice. Thanks very much.--Logiccube 09:06, 26 April 2007 (EDT)

I'm unfortunately not able to check out quest-specific stuff like that at this time. (I'm at work, with no access to the Construction Set.) I know I've done this quest, but don't remember exactly how. It was a little confusing, but I eventually figured it out. As for the "kamikaze" method, well, I guess you can see the hazards of trying a stategy named after suicidal zealots. Don't know how to help you except to say just run for it... --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 09:15, 26 April 2007 (EDT)

Ok thanks, but could you give me the name or link to any other admins/editord etc.. that could help me? I just tried going on and trying to get out and find another way into the Fangs, but when I went invisi, the skeletons retreated into a narrow passage, back to where they came, and now they're waiting there for me, so i cant escape :( --Logiccube 10:12, 26 April 2007 (EDT)

You could try asking at the Bethesda Game Studios Forums, or if you want help quicker, there's always the IRC channel, where there's usually a few people to chat with, depending on the time of day. Other than that, the question you posted on the quest page may eventually get answered, but we're not really set up for immediate response support like that. (Sometimes it works, but only if somebody who knows the answer happens upon your post soon after you make it.) The Bethesda forum or the IRC channel are better options if you want someone to respond right away. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 10:18, 26 April 2007 (EDT)

Stones in Hame

Hello Lurlock,
are you sure that there are 25 Welkynd Stones in Hame ?
After finding only 24 of them, I used TESCS to check where the 25th is.
There are 10 stones in Hame Wendesel, but one of them has quite strange coordinates.
I used the console to move to that location and I found myself falling in mid-air forever, with the stone falling faster than me.
So, unless there is some script moving that stone to a more reasonable place, I think that the number of Welkynd Stones in Hame should be 24.
Alegiassi 13:05, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

Sure, go ahead. I just picked the numbers straight out of the CS. I didn't check to see that all of them were actually accessible in-game. Might want to have this conversation on the Hame Talk page instead, though. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 13:11, 27 April 2007 (EDT)