Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul by Shurah

[Elgar]

Hi guys,

 

What do you think about the Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul by Shurah ? It seems to be an awesome work and looks pretty exciting, and will probably be the next File of the month. I scrolled through a lot of comments and the only issues I saw reported were caused by mod incompatibilities or were quickly corrected by the author. He strongly recommends to use the Unofficial patches, and the description page and FAQ are neat and detailed.

 

You know the saying : "If it seems too good to be true, it usually is." So I wondered what do you think about this mod ?

 

Videos : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEFdan-sAeAgM-4VUutkHrQ

You can even see Anoriath going hunting without aggroing everybody !

[VaultDuke]

haven't tried it. from the description, it looks like most stuff except the "special behavior" section is nothing more than slightly tweaked daily schedules for NPCs. e.g. I couldn't care less whether the Apothecaries open and close at different times than the General goods merchants. All vanilla npcs already have daily schedules that send them to sandbox in a certain area. This lets them do most if the stuff mentioned even in the special behavior section (like farmers farming and lumberjacks using the sawmill.) it sound like in vanilla they do it at random and with the mod at fixed times.

of course, for the combat and weather behavior i'm assuming people already use Wet and Cold and Arthmoors mods to make NPCs react to them. sure, more diversified flee behavior in the new mod, but then again, the other mods top priority is to let NPCs survive.

to me this mod looked overly elaborate for little extra gain on my setup. overly elaborate equaling buggy (or a compatibility nightmare with tons of Navmesh edits) was my initial reaction and so I thought i'll wait to see how popular and supported it still is in 2 months.

[Elgar]

Thank you for your post.

 

According to several comments this AI overhaul seems to "bring life" to NPCs. Look at the 6 screenshots in the "From users" section of the Images tab. Also, the video "CAIO - Human Behavior - Free time" in the Youtube channel I linked to in my first post, about Sinmir the Bannered Mare barfly, is really exciting !

 

I noticed this comment :
 

Reading the extensive changes this mod makes to the AI, I was really expecting this to be full of bugs and problems. Wow was I wrong. This is how the AI in the game should have been right from launch. Even with plenty of other mods in my list there are no problems or slowdowns.

Things I've observed that are awesome:
- Alvor and his daughter having several conversations about things like boys, making a sword or shield
- NPC's now visit each others stores and homes, even go outside of town, sometimes on a horse
- dialogue that I've never heard before, way to many to list, there are entire scripted conversations that were obviously in the original files but I've never heard them before
- NPC's don't greet you every time you just walk by them
- NPC's doing things like repairing their houses or carrying a bucket when they go to gather vegetables
- the town drunk in Riverwood will sometimes just go lay on the wolf rug right in the middle of the floor in the tavern
- the taverns are actually lively in the evenings, and it's not just a bunch of NPC's randomly wondering around inside, they are doing things that they don't in the vanilla game
- NPC's that are normally always in the exact same spot now wonder around some and do different things, for example I saw Janessa leaning against the post in the market where normally you see the battle born guy

Thank you for the awesome mod, it has breathed new life (literally) into the game, and the best part is that it works.

 

 

I haven't tested it yet, I have to reinstall Skyrim first and I'll have free time to do this in a few days, but if everything is true it seems a major improvement to me.

[KNakamura]

It's actually (from what Arth said) hilariously buggy because of how it does the AI overhaul. (Aliases. A lot of them.)

[VaultDuke]

watched a bit of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTMo1QTCSow#t=525

the restored conversations do look awesome truth be told. I almost feel sorry for Braith.

[Elgar]

It's actually (from what Arth said) hilariously buggy because of how it does the AI overhaul. (Aliases. A lot of them.)

 

In the FAQ it's actually featured as an advantage :

 

Contrary to "AI Overhaul project", my mod is compatible with almost everything, due to the fact that I use quest aliases to inject my AI, while "AI Overhaul project" edits the entries related to NPCs.

 

 

But I don't have modding knowledge at all (except as a user of course), so I can't comment on that.

 

EDIT : one statement from the author about this :

I don't use scripts.

I used the same method than the one used by "Run for your lives" and "Wet & Cold". Except that instead to add conditions on my custom quests and thus some scripts, I assigned a low priority to my quests (<30), then I created an alias for each citizen as well as aliases for Unofficial NPCs and finally I added conditions to my custom AI packages.

I'm thinking about using a SkyProc but for generic (NPC such as guard, bandit, ect) because this method works well only for unique NPCs (named).

 

[VaultDuke]

apparently, the dialog seen in the video I linked above is not "cut content" but simple vanilla content most people miss:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Braith

e.g. Braith's conversations with her parents, in vanilla skyrim they run as long as the quest to make her stop bullying Lars is active. the mod probably just puts them into an endlessly repeating loop now.

I wouldn't be surprised if half the stuff people cheer about is placebo; vanilla stuff they now pay attention to for the first time.

rewatching the video again, I get the feeling, that most of the shown conversations will get old fast if seen for the third time or so. depending how they are weighted in the mod, and how many of those "cut conversations" are actually (and rightfully so) quest specific one-time lines in vanilla, this mods popularity might indeed fall quickly. Follower commentary overhaul and guard dialog overhaul are already borderline.

so i think i'll stick with my current load order for a while and see how the new competitor will develop.

[Elgar]

You're right, but according to what I read in the comments it's much more than unnoticed vanilla conversations or content. Two reports for example :

 

I had just started the golden claw quest and Camilla was showing me the way to bleak falls, when Sands of Time triggered a wolf attack in front of the riverwood inn. I fought the wolf and Camilla ran back to her house. When i checked on her, she was upstairs at the dinner table with her brother. I then went to the inn to find it full of people

 

 

Things I've noticed so far:

Andurs comes out of the catacombs to shop

NAZEEM GOES TO THE CLOUD DISTRICT! 

The Shoals from Live Another Life go to the inn in Rorikstead

I saw Sinmir coming out of Dragonsreach 

Adrienne uses the smelter, Eorlund takes a break, and Hrongar chills under the roof in Jorrvaskar's back porch. 

Will report more later!

 

 

Don't misunderstand me : like I said I didn't test this mod yet, so I'm not sure if it's just overhyped, or mod of the year. 

[VaultDuke]

the free time behavior is probably the most if not only unique feature of this mod. chilling, praying and shopping seem like a nice addition.

it does sound and look from the screenshots, that all citizens will often do the same thing at the same time though (many shots show crowded shops, inns or tables). so there may be a specific time when whiterun is empty, and everyone is shopping at belethors. not sure how immersive this is after the third time.)

Hunting and wandering around sounds nice as well, but then again, there are other mods that already add wandering NPCs without endangering the "plot/vanilla" ones. or making you search for them.

the flee behavior: my NPCs flee from dragons, vampires, cold and rain. they have appropriate confidence levels set otherwise. this probably means they would attack a wolf. I'm ok with that.

I'm just not 100% sold on the concept and execution yet. couple this with apparently a ton of compatibility and fine tuning issues, and I'm confident in waiting.

lets just see, mods I use, that are touched by this new mod:

reduced NPC greeting,

When vampires Attack,

Run for your Lives,

Wet and Cold,

Holidays,

Inconsequential NPCs,

Guard Dialog Overhaul,

Follower Commentary Overhaul,

Immersive Creatures (adds riding Stormcloaks and Imperial Soldiers)

All those are much more focused and polished and from long time modders. Not sure i'll jump the train. The additional benefit is minor and the risk high. on top of that, I doubt a script free mod could offer it's option in an as detailed fashion as the above list does.

but please let us know of your experience, once you try it. I'd be happy to read a positive comment from an experienced mod user (something usually rare in the comments on the nexus)

[Arthmoor]

Andurs comes out of the catacombs to shop

NAZEEM GOES TO THE CLOUD DISTRICT! 

The Shoals from Live Another Life go to the inn in Rorikstead

I saw Sinmir coming out of Dragonsreach 

Adrienne uses the smelter, Eorlund takes a break, and Hrongar chills under the roof in Jorrvaskar's back porch. 

Will report more later!

Andurs is wholly an enhancement, which is cool, not vanilla behavior

 

lol @ Nazeem, but yeah, that's also cool. Also not vanilla

 

The Shoals in LAL go to Rorikstead because I told them to, so that shouldn't be surprising to anyone and this AI mod doesn't make them do it.

 

Adrienne already uses the smelter in vanilla as part of her normal sandbox package.

 

The rest, dunno, I never paid much attention to those two but that's probably also extras thrown in by the mod, which is also cool.

 

Generally speaking, I don't have a problem with the idea of enhancing the AI routines for NPCs. Breathing new life into things is great. The method for doing so leaves a lot to be desired though.

 

* Permanent aliases take up memory. A lot of it.

* Permanent aliases lock the NPCs in even when they die and will not release them for corpse cleanup.

* Permanent aliases mean their AI is being calculated at the highest level at all times. This cancels out any engine based optimizations that are in place when you're not around.

* There are 1000 additional slots beyond the vanilla NPCs that are used to pull in mod added NPCs too.

* When I tried it out, I got an initial load screen nearly 5 minutes long and my rig isn't exactly shitty.

* Subsequent load screens are 3x longer than normal in my setup, despite claims that this should not happen.

* Only NPCs in your game at the moment the mod is installed will be affected. All additional mods added later will be ignored. (This may be good or bad depending on your point of view)

 

Stuff like that makes me leery all around. If this is really more about navmeshes than it is about the AI itself, that's fine, the game has a whole mess of navmeshes that are bad that we simply haven't had the time to hunt down and fix. Shurah said somewhere that he's spent nearly 4000 hours on this mod. I barely have half that time logged in the CK + game for everything I do with Skyrim. A lot could be fixed just with properly functioning navmeshes alone, combined with whatever the other vanilla issues were. I think scenes and a few scattered quest issues.

 

For those who are willing to deal with the increased cost in performance, the mod will definitely do what it says and it will do it well. The better your rig, the less you'll notice the drain, but there *IS* a drain.

 

 

 

I used the same method than the one used by "Run for your lives" and "Wet & Cold".

This isn't actually true though. As mentioned above, the AI mod runs its alias fill when first installed. Once that's done, it never goes back for a do over. The aliases do NOT provide protection with the "essential" or "protected" flags so they CAN still be killed while fleeing if the dragons or vampires don't deprioritize their targets properly for some reason.

 

RFYL and WVA trigger their aliases dynamically, on demand. So any NPCs present in the area at the time gain the protection. Vanilla and mod added ones. Yes, I use scripts for that but that's the ONLY way you can account for these things on demand rather than through static one-time fills at the start. It means I don't have to worry that someone might later install Interesting NPCs or CRF or something and they'll gain the benefits regardless. They get placed into temporary essential aliases so if something does go wrong, they don't die because of it. Plus my mods will also protect mod added villages that have the proper keyword setups, which Shurah's mod can't do since it can't know about those places. So there's still a place for things like RFYL and WVA, and yes, even the "go home" feature in Wet & Cold as well since it's using the same kind of dynamic setup I am.

[Elgar]

Thank you Arthmoor for this long and detailed reply ! Very interesting.

 

I'm actually relieved because reading

For those who are willing to deal with the increased cost in performance, the mod will definitely do what it says and it will do it well.  The better your rig, the less you'll notice the drain, but there *IS* a drain.

 

 

is really far from

It's actually (from what Arth said) hilariously buggy because of how it does the AI overhaul. (Aliases. A lot of them.)

 

 

So if I understand you correctly the mod is not "hilariously buggy" and does well what it says, but I notice two major issues :

 

- it puts a big strain on the memory and the game engine

- the protection of the citizens during an attack is not perfectly guaranteed.

 

Thank you for these informations.

 

If I understood correctly what Shurah wrote, he chose the aliases method in order to avoid editing the entries related to NPCs, and therefore allowing a maximum compatibility with other mods. I'm curious : let's assume you would want to achieve the same goal of this mod, i.e. an AI overhaul and expansion of every single named NPC in the game, what would be your method in simple words ?

 

Sorry to bother you with my questions, I like to understand things, even if I'm not a modder myself. 

[Arthmoor]

Well. Whether or not it's "hilariously buggy" would depend on what you want to define that as. The comments on the mod at Nexus are filled with reports of NPCs who aren't doing what they should be, NPCs who are stacking on top of each other competing for markers, and clustering while doing nothing a lot. That could be due to any number of factors but it's definitely not an issue with the vanilla game despite what's been claimed.

 

Assuming everything works and your load order doesn't disturb things, then yes, it should work as advertised for the most part. With a huge drain on memory as I said. It could conceivably use up enough to crowd out other things you may want.

 

Assuming I ever wanted to do something like this (which I don't, so let's be clear on that) I'm not sure. Seems to me the more prudent solution here is to fix any defective navmeshes (harder to find than you might think), fix any scenes that aren't firing correctly, and then tweak the AI packages themselves to put things together. It wouldn't be nearly as comprehensive a project, but it wouldn't have any of the downsides involved with locking hundreds of NPCs up in permanent aliases either.

 

4000 hours: http://forum.step-project.com/topic/8341-immersive-citizens-ai-overhaul-by-shurah/page-4#entry132824- I don't participate on the STEP forum, but I do lurk it. Knew I'd seen it somewhere

[Elgar]

Ha ha good catch !

 

And thank you for your replies. Very informative. 

 

 

EDIT : Wow, that's impressive ! 

 

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198010540635

Shurah was indeed probably right when he gave a 4000 hours estimation for his project, since he already logged almost 5000 hours in CK + Skyrim.

 

And Arthmoor, you're far too modest when you say that you barely have half that time logged : http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198051804717

 

You guys are... passionate ! Ok, I stop there, or you'll think that I'm a creepy stalker. 

[Nico coiN]

@Arthmoor : wow ! 117 h in the CK during the 2 last weeks...

Is it the unofficial patches merging process that takes so long ?

[lmstearn]

This looks pretty impressive. He's going to have to put a few extra hours in for Interesting NPCs as well.

I'll take his good advice and start a new game with it (for fear of the dragon bug).