Creature Mod Recommendation pls

[ManaUser]

I've been thinking about adding Creatures type mod, and I've found some I mostly like, but they all have one fault that really bothers me. It's not lore (I'm not too picky about that, within reason), it's defective hit-boxes. All Morrowind creatures have generous hit-boxes because of course hitting isn't supposed to depend on player skill. But some creature modelers apparently don't grasp this, or maybe they just don't know how to change it. Whatever the reason, it's annoying as heck. Can anyone recommend a good creature plug-in that doesn't suffer from this?

P.S. Hope this is the right forum, I wasn't sure.

[Leonardo]

Oh yes it was the correct forum to post this afaik. You can always use Yacoby's ES Search to search for creature mods just type it in and you have a lot of mod links to going through, but the best part is that now is MMH also indexed with ES Search.  

On the other hand can you also take a closer look at this archived thread here at GHF.  

[latendresse76 Avoiding Ilsa Lund]

these are always in my game

Creatures X
Water Life
Where Are All Birds Going?
Atronach Expansion

[ManaUser]

Thanks, but at the risk of belaboring the point, are you sure those don't have the defective hit boxes? Last time I tried Creatures X I'm sure I remember encountering this problem.

[Elaura]

Never noticed the hit-box thing, ManaUser.  Waterlife and Where Are All the Birds Going aren't meant as hunt and kill mods that I can see, anyway.  There are violent creatures that will attack the player, but I've never had any trouble hitting them back.

[Kingpix1]

Antares made some  Cool Mods  aswell!

[latendresse76 Avoiding Ilsa Lund]

the only creature that i have had issues with in CreaturesX would be the bats they are a bit hard to hit and daedric bats like to fall through the ground oh and the dwemer lightining spider thing but there is a patch for that.

[Melchior Dahrk ...indomitable will might rid Morrowind of all its ills.]

Well I don't really know what the defective hit box issue is, but it might be something worth looking into further. However, these are some creature mods I've always enjoyed (in addition to my Atronach Expansion mod latendresse mentioned).

Live Fabricants by lidicus - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/7515/live-fabricants
Under Red Mountain by lidicus - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/7518/URM-creatures
Guar Variants by lidicus - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/7516/Guar-variants
Sload by lidicus - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/7951/Sload

Lidicus' mods have to be added in game manually (they are resources)

Midgetalien's Creatures I - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/6867/Midg ... reatures-I
Midgetalien's Creatures II - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/6876/Midg ... eatures-II

and

Neo's Unique Creatures - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/6321/Neos ... -Creatures

There are several others as well, but I'm leaving work now. Bye!

-MD

[ManaUser]

Thanks again. If I remember correctly the the first creature in CreaturesX that I ran into trouble with was some kind of little flying beetle. It was pretty small, kind of jumped up and down and the hit-bot was only exactly as big as the beetle, making almost impossible to hit. I realize I could (and perhaps still will) just load one of these up and manually weed out all the creatures that bother me, I just wondered if there were any mods designed with this kind of thing in mind.

Anyway, I will definitely check out some of the other recommendations here.

[Elaura]

ManaUser, out of curiosity, are the hit-box and the collision-box the same thing or can they be modified independently?

[ManaUser]

Err, I couldn't say actually. I just know they're too dang hard to hit! I'm not by any means an expert on the modeling side of things. My guess would be that they're the same thing, but I don't really know.

[Kiteflyer61]

If I'm not mistaken, the "hit box" is the same as the collision box. It only makes sense, as the weapon "collides" with the creature. I'm no expert, but I've had trouble hitting certain mod added creatures at times. Morrowind advanced uses some vanilla creatures, such as the steam centurion and spider centurion, scaled up to huge proportions. These creatures suffer from the same problem in that they are hard to hit. The spider centurion is the worst offender. You have to get in close enough to hit the body to be able to actually hit, while the creature can hit you with it's legs. I'm not positive, but I believe the .nifs were enlarged in nifskope or some other 3d program. The CS limits enlargement to 2x, but the creatures in MA are a lot larger than 2x normal. I'm assuming the collision box wasn't scaled up along with the rest of the mesh. This is probably what is causing some mod added creatures to have issues. The daedric bat in TR has the same issues. which according to a couple of the TR modelers is caused by the collision box being smaller than the creature. If the box is enlarged, the creature "bumps" into everything around it (trees, rocks, buildings), but you can hit it normally. With the small box the creature behaves like you would expect, but has a very small "sweet spot" that you can score a hit on.





KF

[Melchior Dahrk ...indomitable will might rid Morrowind of all its ills.]

So, about the creature mods I missed. I forgot Demon Xen and a few others...

Undead Creature Additions - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/5917/Unde ... -Additions
Halls of Destiny - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/7556/Halls-of-Destiny (creatures can be placed in game manually if so desired)
Werecrocs! - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/6846/Werecrocs (I have to credit - or curse - this mod for bringing me back to Morrowind after I quit, I just had to try it out, this creature can also be placed in game and werecrocs are fun encounters )
Creature Additions - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/6863/Creature-Additions

Creature Resources by AcidBasick - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/11927/Cre ... Meshes-Now (great meshes, textures, and animations, probably have to be placed in game manually, note that most of these are included in Creatures X)

Antares' creature mods are all fantastic. I'd echo KingPix1 in recommending them. But for his Undead: Arise From Death mod, I made a personal replacer for Gedna Relvel because I really didn't like her model...

IIRC Wildman's Skeleton Additions are good too. - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/7083/Wild ... -Additions

Silt Striders are in Vvardenfell - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/3632/Silt ... vardenfell (surprisingly good collision boxes)

Giant Spiders by Phaedrus - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/7484/Giant-Spider (not a HUGE fan of the texture, but GREAT animations)

The Undead - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/18/The-Undead (an alternate undead mod to Antares. they conflict apparently, it's really just a matter of preference here, in the past I made compatible versions but I'll have to do it again)

Dahrk Creatures I - http://search.yacoby.net/mods/7499/Dahrk-Creatures-I (a few good creatures in here, though I don't like all of them )

As you can tell, I love creature mods... when I get Morrowind up and running, I'm going to install these mods I'm suggesting to you

[Elaura]

KF, that's where I was going with my question, thanks for the info.  I guess it will always be a trade-off, then.  Realistically, smaller things would be harder to hit.  In order to make the creatures less difficult for the PC with lesser skills, the best compromise I can think of would be to make the smaller creatures more likely to flee and the larger creatures proportionately slower.  IRL, small bats are more likely to fly away than attack and the big flying foxes of Okinawa (fruit bats), although still quite likely to fly away when approached, are much slower than their tiny relatives.  Damage done by smaller creatures should also be proportionate.

It might be time to update some of the older creatures mods keeping the following more realistic relative to size:

collision/hit-box size
aggression/likelihood to flee
damage (unless a creature has poison, the smaller the teeth/claws, the less damage it should inflict)
speed

In addition, I really like how ab0t links creature spawn to FPS.  I wish *ALL* NPC/Creature addition mods would use this method.  It makes it so much more random as to what shows up as well as not overtaxing one's machine and causing slow-downs.

[Melchior Dahrk ...indomitable will might rid Morrowind of all its ills.]

In addition, I really like how ab0t links creature spawn to FPS.  I wish *ALL* NPC/Creature addition mods would use this method.  It makes it so much more random as to what shows up as well as not overtaxing one's machine and causing slow-downs.

I agree, that is a wonderful bit of scripting.

[ManaUser]

So I've been going through some of these, and one thing I had forgotten is that some of these creatures (including the previously mentioned beetle), actually have their collision/hit box in the wrong place. It seems to be especially common that a flying creature will appear above it's box. This can easily be seen in the game with the TCB command. I'm not good enough with modeling, let alone animation to know how to fix that, but it seems like the simplest solution would be to make the collision box taller (which shouldn't normally cause as much trouble as making wider).

P.S. I'm liking Water Life, except I could do without the scads and scads of fish. Anyone know the best way to tone it down a bit? Either with the ring, or in the editor if need be.

[Melchior Dahrk ...indomitable will might rid Morrowind of all its ills.]

I'm pretty sure the ring has an option to turn down spawn rates. Either linking it to FPS or something else. Try the ring.

[Jac Making my way back]

It does. You can configure how many creatures spawn in a cell via the ring.

[ManaUser]

I'm not seeing it. Maybe it's labeled strangely, because I see options to control the spawn rate, or the minimum FPS. On the face of it these don't look like they would help much. Apparently 24 is the highest I can set the FPS cap (yikes!) and even if I turn the spawn rate down, it sounds like the fish would still pile up to ridiculous levels eventually. Am I missing something?

[Elaura]

"Spawn rate" is what you're looking for.  I don't remember how it's worded, but the lower the spawn rate, the fewer you'll get.  Set the FPS high, the spawn rate low, and remember that any fish which are already there in the cell with you where you saved will not go away until you've been out of that cell for however long it takes for that part of the mod to reset.  However, in my experience, the fish don't "pile up".  They do stop spawning over time.

[Kiteflyer61]

If you go into a vanilla interior and wait 72 hours, the game will remove all "bodies" that aren't marked persistent. This was the cause of all the "72 hour bugs" The ones that are still alive should disappear once you go far enough from the cell they're in that the cell isn't loaded. I believe the game (by default) only loads the cell the player is in and the cells immediately around it, for a total of nine, meaning 3 cells should be far enough. I'm not sure if MGE changes this though. If you have distant land active, it may take a longer move to clear the cell from memory, which should make it reload and reset the spawn point.

Hope that made sense.



KF

[ManaUser]

Thanks. I still don't quite understand how the spawn rate is supposed to work, but setting it lower does seem to result in significantly less fish. So far so good.