Newbie to modding in need of help - Hommlet sign post

Ok, before posting this in the CMF thread, I'm dropping it here in case I forgot something or it doesn't work. I've been using it myself for a long time actually, with no problems, but only recently have I added the signpost graphic and Chuchulainn's mesh, and also I made a few last minute adjustments. So please test it and tell me if it works okay.

Edit: d'oh! accidentally put protos.bak instead of protos.tab

View attachment 1876

Edit by ShiningTed: try this.

 

The attachment is broken.

 

Yeah, I updated yours with my changes. Thanks for fixing the attachment (and for all the help).

 

I think it should work fine with old saves. Have you installed Ted's latest release from the CMF? I forgot to mention that you need his (well, Chuchulainn's) new mesh. I tried removing the mesh from my game folder, which reproduced the CTD you mentioned, so I think that's the problem. If you don't want the whole update, just extract the data.Co8-5.0.0/art subfolder into yours, that should do it (I hope). And if you already had Ted's update, well, let me know so I can try to fix it. Either way, thank you for taking the time to test my mod.

 

Ok, I uninstalled everything and deleted the ToEE folder, then did a fresh reinstall of ToEE, Co8, and everything from the CMF. I started a new game, saved it, and only THEN applied my mod. It worked, no problems at all. So unless my computer is special (I doublt it - it's a fairly simple script!) there's probably an installation issue here.

Tell me, when you hover the hand cursor over the sign post, what does the caption say? Does it say 'The Post', or is it by any chance 'Door'? If it's the latter, then you've got the wrong protos.tab. If not, I'm stumped. Has anyone else tried this mod?

P.S., @ Ted: Thanks once again. It never occured to me such a thing even existed, since the only two examples of interactive modded items I've seen were Livonya's chest and that tree stump in your tutorial. I'll give it a shot.

 

Great! Thanks a bunch.

1. Thanks, will fix.

2. That's exactly what I've tried to do, with the exception of the Church and Burne's tower (since they're close to the world map entry points anyway) which are at the end of the list. As you said, the traders are more 'popular' (heh) than the teamster, which is why they're on the first page and the teamster is not. The town elder doubles for the carpenter's and laszlo's houses (so if you're doing that big quest chain without my dialogue shortcuts you'll probably be using it a lot). Renton services the Jinnerth quest, DH fed exes, and the woodcutter, so likewise he seemed worthy of the first page. The rest are mostly one time use in terms of quests, except possibly the cabinet maker. I think I'll bump him up since he sells masterwork items and pays full price for wooden items. Any other suggestions with regard to this matter?

3. The Grove, Church and Tower are special cases: For the Grove, it's to avoid the slowdown I get outside (and I'm guessing I'm not the only one...), and for the Church and Tower, well, I figured if you're going to travel there by signpost and not world map, might as well teleport you right in. Actually I hadn't planned on including the latter two at first, but otherwise I'd have the last page with one option only, which looks silly IMO I'll probably remove those two if I add other locations to the Post later on, though.

4. :thumbsup:

5. Yep, I just didn't have a portrait for the signpost available. When you don't specify one, the game just assigns a default 'temp' (hence the T) portrait. I couldn't find a way to disable the portrait, so until I make one for the post, I guess T-man stays... besides, the T kinda looks like a signpost, doesn't it?

6. I had also considered this before. Unfortunately, there's a 5 response per page limit in ToEE. So if I added an exit option to every page, there'd only be 2-3 destinations per page, and a couple more pages as well to accomodate all the existing ones. In addition, most of the time you don't click on the post unless you want to actually go somewhere. So I left that out due to high cost / benefit. Perhaps if our dll hackers got rid of the 5 response limit...

Don't worry, your criticism is very constructive and much appreciated.

 

Ok, an update- as per Ted's and Gaear suggestions I've done the following:

1. Changed it to a scenery object.*
2. Fixed 'the board' duplicity
3. Changed [Leave] to [Exit]
4. Added a portrait (just the ingame graphic of the post itself). Nothing fancy, but far less distracting than old T-man
5. Fixed a clipping issue by making that area behind the fence (a few tiles) inaccessible. I doubt anyone will miss it...


*The old MOB files are now redundant. However, deleting them will invalidate saves where they were present (unless you don't mind never setting foot to Hommlet). See notes.


One issue I'm having trouble with now, is that the mouse cursor doesn't change into a hand icon, unlike the other interactive scenery objects (e.g. door icons and guest book). Does anyone know how to fix this?

File:
View attachment unzip_to_main.zip

 

I was using the previous version with no problems and loved it. I added the new update and am now getting slowdowns walking around Hommlet as well as a strange and fatal (CTD) effect when teleporting back to the inn using the worldmap. My party becomes a single blue ring near the sign post which now has a ton of colorful butterflys around it. Kind of cool, but kind of not. (am running 5.0.2 with all current updates)

 

Butterflies usually indicate you forgot to clear the map cache after installing the new mod.