Ordinators in Mourning Voices

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Description

Voices for the Ordinators in Mourning – voice talent of MorrowindShorts.

Here’s is the first polished version of the Ordinators in Mourning voices.

First a sneak preview. (link is external)
A second sneak peak. (link is external)

Based on the discussion in this thread I made a script and sent it to MorrowindShorts who was very quick to record the lines for us. Some lines are location specific (only spoken in the Catacombs) or have other conditions. Lines are mostly inspired by 34th Sermon of the 36 Lessons of Vivec and the Book of Dawn and Dusk. Motifs such as silence, weeping, ghosts, and a passionate dislike for sacrilegious outlanders feature heavily. [See .pdf script here]

The sound files are 64 kbps MP3s due to game engine restrictions, but just in case OpenMW allows it in the future I have higher quality .wav versions of them too waiting on my computer.

I have made an .esp file where the voices have been added to the game. The affected NPCs are all the generic Ordinators in Mourning as well as their Marshal, Erendes Hlevran. A new script “T_ScNpc_Mw_NecromOrd” has been assigned to these NPCs so the dialogue system recognizes them as Ordinators in Mourning, and the script should be assigned to any new Ordinators in Mourning placed in the game.

In addition to just adding new voices I’ve tweaked the Ordinators a little – to give them and the city of Necrom some extra flair:

1) Ordinators in Mourning check whether or not the player is acting in a disgraceful manner – “disturbing the silence of Necrom” – by running or jumping or having a weapon or a spell at the ready. They vocally chide the player for being disrespectful, tell them to stop, and their disposition towards them will lower by 5 points. Ignoring the warnings by flailing one’s weapons in front of an Ordinator in Mourning while jumping up and down can cause the disposition to drop all the way to zero. Ordinators with disposition of zero have a 1 in 4 chance of declaring the player to have committed a sacrilege for which the penalty is death – that is, the player gets a 5000 bounty. I’ve been testing this feature for some time now and I personally think it adds an element which has been missing from Necrom: it is a place of mourning, a holy city, the sanctity of which the Ordinators now protect. The players will now have to think twice before dashing around. [Technical note: checking if the player is being an ass is done in the “T_ScNpc_Mw_NecromOrd” script, and the dialogue system then filters a correct angry response based on the information from the script. Every now and then (20 per cent of the time?) this doesn’t seem to work like intented, and the Ordinator utter a normal line of dialogue even if the player is acting disrespectfully. I suspect that this has to do with the way the game’s hardcoded bits in regards to voiced dialogue work – and I don’t think it’s an issue. It’s nice to have a certain element of uncertainty.]

2) Ordinators in Mourning now have a higher Destruction skill and have a new fire spell. They have enough magicka to cast the spell only once. While in combat, each time the Ordinator in Mourning shouts the war-cry “Let fire consume thee!”, they get a refill of magicka to cast the spell again. This adds some variation to combat.

3) Similarly, each time the Ord-in-Mourn shouts the war-cry “The Thrice-Sealed House withstands the storm!” they gain a little health back.

All the three things above are something that I feel make for even more interesting Necrom. I hope you try it out and like it, but I understand if some don’t like these tweaks. They are relatively easy to clean out, if need be.

Things I would want to do to make Necrom and its Ordinators even better:
- Add more of them. Necrom is really empty and there are plenty of artifacts left without proper guards
- Add a couple of new written Greetings for the Ordinators in Mourning which better reflect the voiced lines – currently they use very generic guards’ greetings

[also: MorrowindShorts was really cool to work with, so if we ever need any new voice actin done he’s our guy. ]

Comments

Wow man, consider me im

Templar Tribe's picture

Wow man, consider me im-fucking-pressed on the new changes and additions. This will totally make for a very interesting world for players to explore. Are we going to try and tackle new voices dialogue per house? Like another one for the indoril and one for the dres and one for hlaalu and one for Redoran ? Maybe even the telvanni?

Outstanding stuff! The idea

Rot's picture

Outstanding stuff! The idea of enforcing calm wasn’t entirely unexpected but this is better than I could have imagined.

Forcing people to advance at MW’s walking trudge could be excessively frustrating for low-level players, though that depends on the implementation – if the script detects the player character’s actual speed rather than simply basing itself on the function that says they’re “running”, then I have no issue with it.

Things I would want to do to make Necrom and its Ordinators even better:
- Add more of them. Necrom is really empty and there are plenty of artifacts left without proper guards

Agreed. The emptiness is magnified by the fact that all spacings are enlarged (I think the idea of tightening necrom exteriors has been definitely abandonned), but it looking a bit… lifeless, isn’t exactly wrong.
I liked the old idea of having bonewalkers with sacred strips of clothes patrolling around, except that would be redundant with the ordinators and clash with the aesthetics. Maybe one or two static ones in front of the bonewalker smithies?

To add to the new Ordinator behaviour, I think something essential that’s still missing from Necrom is control at the entrance. It doesn’t have to be much, but forcegreeting other races at least the first time they enter the city from outside or the docks, to make them pretext pilgrimage / mourning / (or whatever quest they’re doing if it’s legit) would be the absolute minimum imo. (even every time would be fine. detecting the player levitating or jumping above the walls if an ordinator is close? perhaps too much, but since they’re already reacting to dashing and so on, it wouldn’t be out of character)

Yes, the entrances of Necrom

Rats's picture

Yes, the entrances of Necrom should have some sort of vetting before allowing entry. 

The script that the Ordinators have is not very elegant and does indeed detect running rather than actual speed the player is moving (see below). That being said, getting an Ordinator attack you for being disrespectful doesn’t happen easily – so the players may still run around if they want to.

 

T_ScNpc_Mw_NecromOrd

I see it’s also limited at a

Rot's picture

I see it’s also limited at a 512 radius combined with, I assume, the ordinator’s Hello reaction radius, so it seems reasonable.
At worst there’d always be the option to short-circuit the RunningPC part of that script if, e.g. ( PC Speed + Athletics < 40 ) – better than running kinematics calculation on all ordinators.

This is good stuff! Should be

Aeven's picture

This is good stuff! Should be cool for the city of Almalexia once we get to that too, if the same person could make it.

Putting this up for review. I

Rats's picture

Putting this up for review.

I believe we do not have a standardized way of reviewing this sort of content, so I’m suggesting that everyone who feels like it should test the plugin. Report bugs, dislikes and ideas for improvement. And then, at one of our Sunday meetings perhaps, we can collectively decide if this can be merged.

As you said that’s not quite

Rot's picture

As you said that’s not quite reviewable but I’ve looked over the file:

On the script:  the reset blocks don't make sense to me, they are basically setting the armed/spelled/etc indicators back to 0 every other frame, even if the player still has a weapon drawn/etc. – based on the local variable rather than the function, looks like they should have been so instead

 

as it is the script must have reduced the frequency of weapon/spell/running/jumping/ voiceprompts by 50%,
so unless that was intentional you should retest whether with a fixed script these happen as often as desired or too much!
and if it was intentional, it'd be cleaner to do the same by tweaking the Random100 conditions, because it’d look like a bug to someone reading the script.

Voice entries: they all have a “Dark Elf” race condition and some (those specific to Catacombs, and one in Thief also) have a class Guard condition too. Shouldn’t be a problem (unless non-Guard class individual ones are added), but not necessary either since no NPC who doesn’t already meet these conditions would have the “TR_NecromOrd” var added to them in the first place;

Assume the unequal chances on some Hello (25%/40%/35% on “Hear the will of the ancestors! Sheath your weapon!” etc) are as intended;

"TR_m2_Erendes Hlervan" has other standard spells with higher cost so he'll cast those instead after the Fire line;

Should they have a specific dialogue variant for the standard guards’ “you violated the law” spiel?:

 

(impressive voice acting on MorrowindShorts’ part!)

I’ve uploaded a new version

Rats's picture

I’ve uploaded a new version of the esp file with the script fixed as per Rot’s suggestion.

The unequal chances are indeed intentional, for entirely subjective preferences. Similarly, Erendes Hlervan’s ability to cast other spells is also intentional – he’s a super special marshal guy, after all.

The Ordinators could and maybe should have some new written dialogue as well. I haven’t had the time to think about it.

Also: If someone wants to record a (relatively) high quality trailer video about these voices for our Youtube channel, that’d be neat.

This is amazing! The lines

Dormichign64's picture

This is amazing! The lines are excecuted very well, and the idea in general is super cool. This is sure to add that missing flavour to the city. Now to do something similar to the other major cities… (not necessary but would certainly be something of interest at least)

There’s a bug with Attack

Rot's picture

There’s a bug with Attack voice resultboxes I’ve since come across (in this) – here for “Let fire consume thee!” and “The Thrice-Sealed House withstands the Storm!”,
Basically if an Ordinator-in-Mourning is made to StartCombat from dialogue and if Random100 gives one of these lines, there’ll be two error messages. (can someone confirm? wouldn’t be the first time a bug happens on my install only… here using StartCombat in the console should reproduce it)

Maybe MCP could help with that? Fortunately for these features it should be possible to sidestep the bug regardless – include MenuMode detection in the ordinator NPCs’ scripts and prevent scripted lines if the second-to-last* frame was in MenuMode
(*because MenuMode == 0 on the transition frame when a new dialogue entry is displayed)

EDIT: script tested in the above mod, just add non-scripted versions of these voice entries if [local/globalvariable]==1

 

short control

if ( MenuMode == 0 )
    if ( [local/globalvariable] > 0 )
        set control to ( control + 1 )
    endif
else
    set [local/globalvariable] to 1
    if ( control > 0 )
        set control to 0
    endif
endif

If ( control >= 2 )        ;out of MenuMode for two consecutive frames == if MenuMode was dialogue, we're now out of dialogue
    set control to 0
    set [local/globalvariable] to 0
Endif

Alright, to actually get this

Atrayonis's picture

Alright, to actually get this into the Tamriel_Data update after this one, we're going to have to do some fixing with that code from Rot above.

I'm on it. I'm also doing

Rats's picture

I'm on it. I'm also doing some experimenting on how to add gatekeeper NPCs for Necrom to make the city feel more "forbidden". If it doesn't feel like it works, it can be cut though.

Due to circumstances and the

Atrayonis's picture

Due to circumstances and the time passed, I'm merging this as-is (with Rot's script addon, using a local TR_NecromOrdAct). The voices have already been merged into Tamriel_Data v04.

I wanted to add something to

Ateiggaer's picture

I wanted to add something to the idea of running speed, feeling of a forbidden city:

How about, if the player keeps being disrespectful by running around in front of ordinators, jumping, levitating into the city illegaly etc. after a certain treshold the ordinators force greet you like when you comitted a crime, but instead of having to pay some fine or going to prison, teleport you outside the city walls, esentially kicking you out. Of course the option to resist would be still there, in which case they attack you normaly.

Or would this be to complicated to implement?