Technical Info concerning Interiors

[sandor]

How to make a buyable house for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Part II
By Smokindan and adapted by sandor.


Alchemy Garden
I made this a separate room in the Tower but it is usually integrated into an existing room (the Kitchen, for example.) They?re a bit fiddly but as long as your assign parents as you go you?ll be fine. Add a tree for a bit of variety (scale it down though) and try for a wide range of plants. Put a few recipes and a table in there as well.


The Basement
This one?s pretty open to your own interpretation and probably depends on where your purchasable house is. Basement?s are usually for training, so be sure to put a few mats and dummies in. I also put in a bed roll. Make sure to create a parent for the Basement and assign objects to it.


Teleports
Most importantly, YOU MAY HAVE TO MAKE YOUR OWN DOORS. I experienced a problem where, when using ChorrolTrapDoor2 as a door between my cells, where I was teleported to an outdoor cell. I didn?t realize that my mod conflicted with another using the same door. If you have multiple rooms, be sure to make sure the teleports work fine. Just double click on a door and go to the Teleport tab. Choose the cell you wish to teleport to and select the door or ladder you wish to arrive near. Position the door markers so the arrow is facing into the cell (this is the way the player will face when teleported to your door or ladder).


Step 3 ? The Vendor
The vendor for your buyable house can either be in a new cell and, hence, a new shop or be an existing vendor. Since I made my buyable house for the Skyrim for Oblivion mod I made a new cell and shop for my vendor, Baryn Indarys, a Dark Elf. For ease of use, I?ll describe both ways ?


Making a New Vendor
Firstly, create a new cell. Using my guidelines above make the shop or home whatever you like.

Now we create our vendor NPC.
It?s probably best to edit an existing NPC, thereby eliminating any need to fiddle around with meshes and models. Right click on the NPC you wish to use as your vendor and change its ID. Click OK. When prompted to create a new object, click Yes. Voila, you have your vendor! Remember to get rid of any scripts on them, change their level, make sure they aren?t a quest object, don?t have any RAI and anything that will change how they will interact with the player. Insert them into your newly made cell.

Now to make our vendor?s chest; which will house our purchasable receipts (created later.)
Using an existing ?VendorReceipts?? as a base create a new object by editing the ID of the object and name it something along the lines of ?1SKxxSDHouseRiftenAddons01?.

Give your chest a reference by double-clicking on it and, in the box that says Reference Editor ID, type in something like ?HouseRiftenAddons01Ref?.
Don't assign ownership(the script will take care of that) and make sure that "persistent reference" and "initially disabled" are selected.

Double-click on your vendor and go to the Merchant Container tab. Choose a ?VendorChest?? which you want your vendor to sell i.e. the Publican goods. Alternatively, make your own vendor chest, by creating a new item, and adding what you want your vendor to sell to the container (persistent reference checked). Be sure to insert both chests into your vendor?s cell, making sure that both are under any interiors (you don?t want the player stealing anything do you ?)

Luckily, you don?t have to use any parents in this cell but you can assign ownership to your cell. Right click on your cell ID, choose Edit and go to the Interior Data tab in your Cell window. Assign your NPC as owner of the cell (the NPC can sell all the stuff inside, if selected via the AI) and choose to make your cell a Public Cell. Done!!


Step 4 ? Scripts, Receipts and Quests
All you objects are in your cell/s and have parents assigned to them, right? You?ve checked it in game? Your lighting doesn?t look unnatural and you can walk around without getting caught on things? At this point it?s probably a good idea for someone else to test your mod and see how they like (or don?t) things.

Receipts
This is probably the easiest part of the whole plugin. Go to Items-Books in the CS and find a note which looks like a receipt (any receipt will do for example HouseBravilDiningAreaReceipt). Edit it and give it a new ID i.e. ?1SKxxSDHouseRiftenLightingReceipt?. When prompted to create a new item, click yes. Double-click on your newly created receipt and come up with some kind of flavour text for it. For example, my lighting receipt (red) was:

This entitles the bearer to various lights on all levels, to be promptly installed in your tower in Riften. This includes:

6 Chandeliers
Various Candles
Floor-mounted Candlesticks
Fires

Baryn Indarys' Fine Goods
"Right Next to Gromeil Oak-Hand's Forge!"

Baryn Indarys, Proprietor

Do this for all your rooms or generalities. Remember to put them in the receipts chest you created earlier.

Every receipt has a script attached.

Scriptname HouseFurnReceiptScript

short Doonce

begin OnAdd

if ( Doonce == 0 )
SetItemValue 0
set Doonce to 1
endif

end


Quests
Before we do scripts, a quest is needed for your house. Click on the Q icon in your taskbar. Right click on the left-hand column of the Quest interface and choose New Quest. Name the quest ?Buying a house in [whatever your city is], leave the script for now (you?ll make it later), give it priority of 20 and add the function ?GetIsPlayableRace == 1?. You can just copy and paste it from the other buyable house quests.

Now we add Stages. Go to the Quest Stages tab and create 3 stages; 10, 20 and 30.

Go to stage 10 and in Log Entry right click and select New. Type in some text along the lines ?I just a bought a house in [city.] [Directions to the house I just bought.]?

In the Result Script section, to the right of the Log Entry, type in the following, according to your buyable house (my comments are like this):

Player.RemoveItem Gold001 20000 (Removes however much gold the house costs)

Player.AddItem 1SKxxSDPCHouseRiftenKey 1 (Adds the key)
SetCellOwnership 1SKxxSDRiftenTowerforSaleKitchen (Sets ownership to the player. Be sure to do this for all cells in you house)

SetCellOwnership 1SKxxSDRiftenTowerforSaleAlchemyGarden (As above)

SetCellFullName 1SKxxSDRiftenTowerforSaleKitchen "My Riften Tower" (Changes the entry room from ?House for Sale? to ?My Riften Tower?)

ModPCMiscStat 15 1 (This increases the player?s fame by 1)

Go to stage 20, create a new log entry that says something along the lines of ?I?ve now arrived at my house. I should get furniture at [vendor.]?

Go to stage 30 and type in something along the lines of ?I?ve now bought everything for my house.? Be sure to check End Quest and type the following into the Result Script Box:
StopQuest [ID of my quest]

This is perhaps the most important part of your quest?dialogue!! Go to the Topics tab.
Creating a quest and dialogue.

Always modify your dialogue via the quest window.
Go to the topics tab. Add the topic "greeting", right-click on the "Editor ID" listing and select this topic.
Right-click on the "Editor ID" listing.
Select new and type: "1SkxxSDHouseInquiry". Add three more topics: "1SKxxSDHouseDecline", "1SKxxSDHouseBuyRiften" and "1SKxxSDHouseTooMuchRiften".

Add info's to the topics as shown in the examples.
Greeting: "Hello, my name is Baryn Indarys, proprietor and owner of Fine Goods etc.".
Inquiry: "There's a tower available in Riften at a very good price of 20,000 septims.".
Decline:"Well, come back if you change our mind.".
Buy: "Very well, here is the key.".
Too much: "Oh well, you don't look like the rich type. Come back when you've raised enough money."

Add the "inquiry" topic to the greeting (via add topics listing).
Add the other three to the "inquiry" topic (via the choices listing).

In the "Conditions" listing.
Make sure that for all the topics GetIsID "1SkxxSDBarynIndarys" == 1.
In this case the vendor is also the quest giver.

Add the conditions to the"inquiry" topic as shown in the screenshot.
Checks if you own the "Tower for sale".

Add the conditions to the"buy" topic as shown in the screenshot.
Checks if you have enough gold.
Also add "SetStage HouseRiftenWealthy 10" to the "result script" listing.
The result script removes the gold (see above) etc.

Add the conditions to the"too much" topic as shown in the screenshot.
You don't have the gold.

sandor has attached these images (downsized versions):

Conditions Inquiry.jpg (221 KB) | Conditions Buy.jpg (212 KB) | Conditions too much.jpg (213.13 KB) | Alchemy Garden.jpg (193.16 KB)