Random patrons in taverns

Talk about the mods you'd like to see in Daggerfall Unity. Give mod creators some ideas!
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andromacus
Posts: 113
Joined: Sat May 23, 2020 9:07 am

Random patrons in taverns

Post by andromacus »

Here is another idea of mine for tavern improvement.

Currently, as you know, in the various taverns you can meet always the same flats NPCs. Actually, after a while, you can also tell by the building exterior which faces you will see inside.

I think it would add some variety to the game if the patrons of the taverns could be randomly generated by picking from the various flats available in the game. In this way you can never know who you could meet in a tavern and, if there is the chance to link some quests to some specific flats (eg guards, mages etc) that would open a lot of possibilities.

There should be however some restrictions:

Innkeepers, barmaidens and prostitutes should always remain the same

There will be "common" flats there are easier to encounter versus more rare flats

Obiouvsly characters like kings, princes, the King of worms etc should never appear

If an NPC gives you a quest, he should remain where it is until the quest is active (even if the player leaves the city)

Don't know if feasible but I would appreciate something like that

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emmathepony
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Joined: Sat Jun 29, 2019 5:26 pm

Re: Random patrons in taverns

Post by emmathepony »

There's a mod that that mostly does what you want right here!

andromacus
Posts: 113
Joined: Sat May 23, 2020 9:07 am

Re: Random patrons in taverns

Post by andromacus »

Thanks a lot! However that mod isn't exactly what I was thinking about. I was thinking about changing randomly the flat NPCs , not spawning 3D ones. For example, in one of the small taverns you always find the innkeeper, the barmaid and a beggar. Maybe that beggar could be replaced one day by a blue cloacked lady, another day by a blonde man and so on, so that every time (and in differenti taverns) you meet different people

imsobadatnicknames
Posts: 371
Joined: Sun Jun 02, 2019 4:28 pm
Location: Colombia

Re: Random patrons in taverns

Post by imsobadatnicknames »

andromacus wrote: Mon Oct 05, 2020 3:58 pm Thanks a lot! However that mod isn't exactly what I was thinking about. I was thinking about changing randomly the flat NPCs , not spawning 3D ones. For example, in one of the small taverns you always find the innkeeper, the barmaid and a beggar. Maybe that beggar could be replaced one day by a blue cloacked lady, another day by a blonde man and so on, so that every time (and in differenti taverns) you meet different people
Well... I could easily take the code that my Populated Buildings mod uses to spawn 3D NPCs inside buildings and modify it to place random NPC flats inside taverns (and that's actually the way both my Tavern Games mod and my Mercenaries mod work). The only problem is that, since each tavern has only one quest spawn location, this system could only be used to place one random NPC flat per tavern, and the random NPC would always spawn in the same place inside of each particular tavern model. However, if someone were to modify the WorldData block of each tavern to put several quest spawn points inside, I could easily write a mod that populates every tavern with an assortment of random NPC flats.
Released mods: https://www.nexusmods.com/users/5141135 ... files&BH=0
Daggerfall isn't the only ridiculously intrincate fantasy world simulator with the initials DF that I make mods for: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=177071.0

imsobadatnicknames
Posts: 371
Joined: Sun Jun 02, 2019 4:28 pm
Location: Colombia

Re: Random patrons in taverns

Post by imsobadatnicknames »

Now that I think about it, other way to do it could be by using the World Data Variant system. Essentially, you could edit the World Data block of every tavern to create a few variants of every tavern interior with different NPCs, and then use the "worldupdate buildingAll" quest command to shuffle between the different tavern interior variants every day.

The only problem would be that replacing the entire interior might mess up quests given by tavern NPCs if you need to come back to talk to them again, I'm not sure.
Released mods: https://www.nexusmods.com/users/5141135 ... files&BH=0
Daggerfall isn't the only ridiculously intrincate fantasy world simulator with the initials DF that I make mods for: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=177071.0

andromacus
Posts: 113
Joined: Sat May 23, 2020 9:07 am

Re: Random patrons in taverns

Post by andromacus »

This last option is the one closer to the idea I had in mind. Ideally a quest giver NPC should stay unchanged as long as the quest is active, while the others should change (except for the NPCs "working" in the tavern)

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Hazelnut
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Re: Random patrons in taverns

Post by Hazelnut »

I think that worldData variants would be a be heavyweight way to achieve this. May be worth seeing if you can work with UV to add more spawn points in his taverns overhaul mod and use those. Or you could have some code that runs after taverns layout that moves NPCs around or something like that?
See my mod code for examples of how to change various aspects of DFU: https://github.com/ajrb/dfunity-mods

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