Scavver Changelog v1.03

SCAVVER - VERSION 1.03 CHANGELOG - 20160706


- Added SignSanctuaryHill (FormID 00021DD7) and MinuteManStatue01 (FormID 0002FFA7) to the list of items that Scavver scans for when arriving at a route marker and deciding whether this location is a settlement that should not be looted.

- When looting (running sweep package), Scavver will now check for items/markers every 10 seconds to see if he should stop looting and visit/travel instead. This should catch any rare, lingering issues. It should also handle experimental events like turning Scavver into a follower with a companion mod, then pulling him away from his route as you walk back to your settlement.

(Be aware that Scavver has special code that runs when you fast travel away from him, and that teleporting him to you as a companion may cause incorrect values or flags in his AI code. However, I'm willing to work with you closely to iron out any issues.)

- Changed the "Scavver is indoors" Z-axis offset from 2500 units to 10,000 units. So his emergency move will shoot him vertically 4x higher than before, then pull him to nearest navmeshed location. If you consider a cone sitting on a piece of paper, and the circle created on the paper as possible landing points, this may result in him showing up further from his route in remote locations. He should walk back to his route and continue business as usual.

If you use an underground mod (railroad, subway fast travel), let me know if Scavver still gets stuck in the rafters when trying to do his emergency move.



A NOTE ABOUT NAVBUMPING:

I move Scavver by XYZ offsets (100, 100, 60) whenever he gets stuck walking outdoors. The problem with that is I don't know ahead of time if that move will place him inside of a wall, or over the edge of a cliff, etc. That's why I use MoveToNearestNavmeshLocation() at the end of my "navbump", so I know Scavver is moving to a safe spot. The problem with MoveToNearestNavmeshLocation() is that I do not get to choose which spot is safe. In fact, I don't even know where that spot will be because Bethesda hides the inner workings of that function. That's why he sometimes winds up indoors, and why I include an emergency move to get him back outside.



A NOTE ABOUT SETTLEMENT LOOTING DRAMA:

All of this algorithm refinement stems from the lack of settlement check functions in Papyrus. There simply is no way to check ScavverLocation.IsSettlement() or ScavverLocation.IsNearSettlement(). This resulted in getting creative, and a LOT of trial and error.

With Version 1.03, there are now THREE different custom checks to see if Scavver is in a settlement. He checks for hard coded marker numbers prior to looting. He checks for vanilla workbenches, the Sanctuary Hills sign, and the Minuteman Statue before looting. And he checks for all of the above every 10 seconds while looting, just in case something went wrong and he needs to stop.

So... if you use Version 1.03 and post "He looted Sanctuary", I might crawl out of my skin. I might take a long walk and reevaluate what I'm doing with my life. Then, I'm going to come back and ask you 3 questions:

 -- Are you using Version 1.03?
 -- Are you using any experimental mods? (make Scavver a companion, etc)
 -- Did you do anything weird at all with Scavver, the game, or console commands?

Because if you STILL have problems with looting at this point, despite ALL of these safeguards, it's going to be a very rare and strange occurrence. And it would help immensely if you have screenshots, video, your plugins.txt load order, etc ready when you submit a bug report. It's not that I don't believe you... It's that I will be shaking my head in disbelief at Scavver's need to be babysat while I hunt for microscopic bugs.

If anything, this proves that AI can do unexpected things and needs to be monitored closely before the machine uprising.



PERSISTENT KNOWN ISSUES

- Outfits can flicker for up to 10 seconds right after Scavver puts them on and starts walking. The behavior is random and hard to recreate. It used to happen most frequently with the drifter outfit on the corpse by the Minuteman Statue, but Scavver doesn't loot that location anymore.

- There is a mailbox and house in Sanctuary that have apparently been pushed forward by my invisible route marker. I'm not sure how or why this happened, or how to fix it. I've asked around about how to reset a cell in the Creation Kit, and may have to use FO4Edit to find/fix the problem. The search for a solution continues and this is a HIGH PRIORITY problem.

- If you use a settlement boundary mod that expands the boundary beyond 10,000 units from the main workbench, the prior warning about the Venn diagram danger zone still applies. Check out the Version 1.01 changelog ( http://pastebin.com/FS0dPHcj ) for specifics.

- If you use a "build anywhere" mod that drops a workbench wherever, I CANNOT guarantee that settlement won't be looted. Because I don't know if that mod uses a vanilla or custom workbench. (If it is a custom workbench: send me the FormID and mod name, then I will add it to the FormList of checked items.)



SCAVVER FAQ

The FAQ is located at: http://pastebin.com/jQP0vKTX



That's all for Version 1.03. Keep the suggestions and bug reports coming.

ThoraldGM  |  @ThoraldGM  |  ThoraldGM at GMail.com