Use various NPC-only animation markers present throughout the game, for immersion or taking screenshots.
INTRODUCTION
You’ve probably seen NPCs in the game repairing something, working out, leaning on a desk, or performing any number of animations. Most of these use a kind of invisible furniture, usable by NPCs (even your current follower, sometimes) but not usable by the player. This mod changes that, so many of those markers can now be interacted with and used just like you would use a chair. It can make for a nice bit of added immersion, and of course can also be useful for screenshots.
This was originally planned to be part of Command NPCs until I decided to split them, as you can command your followers to use any unowned markers. As you can see in the demo video, the Incapacificator 3000 can also be useful to “encourage” NPCs to leave a marker that you want to use yourself.
Making changes like this to base game objects in the world isn’t without caveats, and I’ll get to those below. There are pros and cons to this approach versus (for example) using a script-based solution to spawn an animation marker, have the player use it then remove it when they’re done – there are already other mods like that on this site. The approach I’ve gone for here is very simple. It’s (almost) all base object overrides where I’ve changed the mesh used and added a few attributes here and there. The main benefits are that this mod can be enabled and disabled at will (again, more on that below) and that your followers can also use these markers.
USING MARKERS
This mod makes two kinds of ‘furniture’ usable by the player, existing furniture items that already have a visible model but weren’t interactable (like surgical beds, laptops, exercise equipment, etc.) and invisible markers that might be placed anywhere. The interaction box for most invisible markers is around desk height and below, so make sure you’re looking slightly downwards when looking for a marker to use. If you’ve used the toilet on the Frontier then you’ve already seen an example of such a marker, it uses one of the same invisible trigger volume meshes that I’ve used in this mod.
Invisible markers that are out in the open or might be mistaken for a vanilla game interaction have [Animation] appended to their name, to avoid confusion, such as Use welder [Animation]. Some will indicate that NPCs will use a different animation to the player, like Chair [Read tablet, NPC] – this is saying that the player character will treat this as a normal chair, but NPCs (inc. followers) will also read a tablet if they use it. Some rare markers that say [Player Only] can only be used by the player, NPCs cannot use them.
Below the name of the marker you’ll see the usual activation button prompt. There’s a special case to be aware of here: if the prompt says NOT FIRST PERSON SAFE this means that you should switch to third person view before attempting to use that marker. This is usually because there’s no animated exit from that marker, and the view cannot be switched between first and third person while using it. If you use one of these while in first person, you’ll be unable to switch to third person after leaving the marker. If that happens, just find any nearby chair, sit in it and then stand up again, that will fix it.
FINDING MARKERS
This is best shown in the demo video, but you can use your scanner to find the location of animation markers. They won’t highlight, but the name will appear on the right and you can use that to hone in on them. I realize this isn’t ideal, I was hoping to find a material that highlights in the scanner but is invisible normally, but unfortunately I was unable to, so this is what we’ve got.
If you’re using Command NPCs to order someone to use a marker, they will be unable to use any that are marked as “owned” by another NPC or faction. These are sometimes shown in the scanner by the red stolen icon.
The player can still use these. One of the few cell edits I’ve made in the mod is to remove the ownership from the dance and workout markers/equipment at Paradiso (The gym on the 5th floor, and the dance markers by the stage at the rooftop bar) so you can use them with your follower. The usual Command NPCs caveats apply, pathing to certain markers may be impossible for followers, it’s best to use Sarah or Barrett if you want voiced feedback for them not being able to use something.
PLUGIN VERSIONS
You’ll notice that there’s a variant of the mod with three plugin versions, switchable with a Windows batch file, SwitchUsableMarkers.cmd.
The first of these (“normal”) is the same as the main mod.
The second (“vanilla”) is an attempt not to disrupt load orders when this mod is disabled; in this version, all invisible markers have their regular, non-interactable model. This retains the other changes the mod makes (i.e. to keywords, ownership, and any markers that have been moved) and furniture with a visible model can still be used. The idea is to switch to this version if a marker is obscuring something you need to interact with, or if you like just stay on this version until you want to use an invisible marker, if you don’t want them active in your game all the time. I’ll return to this in caveats below.
The third version (“red tile”) makes all supported invisible animation markers visible, shown with a red tile on the floor. This is the easiest way to check where any markers are in a given area. This also allows you to pick markers by clicking on them in the console, just as you would with any other static or piece of furniture. As shown in the demo video, this is useful for disabling markers that you don’t want as otherwise NPCs on your ship or at your outpost might still try to path to them. If you’ve disabled vanilla items on your ship like for example navigation tables, it’s likely that there will be associated animation markers left behind; now you can remove them.
There is also a Shattered Space plugin; as of version 1.1 this now includes the new Shattered Space animations (like the groat knife prayer) and moves a few markers that would have obstructed things. There are multi and single plugin versions of the Shattered Space addon as with the main plugin, the SwitchUsableMarkers batch file from the main multi plugin will also switch Shattered Space plugin versions.
Two landing crew markers (the ones NPCs use around your ship to inspect it) are in a separate plugin due to issues mentioned below; this is optional and you should definitely read the section below caveats before using. These are multi plugin and will switch using the batch file.
CAVEATS
There are two possible issues that you can run into when using this mod, both of which I’ve spent quite a lot of time trying to mitigate. The first is when a marker obscures something else that you want to pick up. You can see this for yourself in the vanilla game actually, drop something small like a tablet on top of the toilet seat in the Frontier and you won’t be able to pick it up again as it’s now within the toilet activation volume. You can try different angles, crouching etc. and often find a way to pick up whatever item it is, but sometimes it will be unavoidably obscured. That’s why the vanilla version exists in optional files, and also why I split this plugin from Command NPCs in the first place. If you can’t find an angle and/or use something else to knock the item you want out of an obscuring activation volume, you can switch to the other version of the mod (or just disable the mod for the time-being) and continue without any problem.
The second issue occurs as a result of adding geometry (the activation volume itself) to markers. The game designers never intended the player to be using these markers, so they may be placed too close to a wall for proper entry/exit, or too close to another marker or piece of furniture for both to be unobstructed. There are a few different ways I’ve fixed this in testing depending on the marker. For some I’ve switched to a smaller volume, for others I’ve had to add keywords to allow entry/exit to the marker and ignore geometry, etc. In some rare cases I’ve had to move markers slightly as they were too close to a crafting bench etc. and were blocking it as a result. This is likely something you’ll see on modded ships that use a lot of animation markers, or on custom ships you’ve made yourself as you won’t have been able to see where the vanilla markers were. You can use the red tile version of the mod in those situations to disable any troublesome ones, they’ll stay disabled until/unless you make any structural changes to the ship.
Attempting to drag (i.e. hold the activate button, then move) an owned marker will be seen as stealing by NPCs. This is a vanilla game bug with all owned furniture, it’s not specific to animation markers.
LOW FPS ON NPC/REMOTE SHIP TAKEOFFS
Prior to version 1.5 of the mod, using another mod like Astrogate that includes the ability to have the player ship take off and land without you on it would cause a few seconds of very low FPS during the acceleration phase of those takeoff animations. In some situations this may also have affected NPC ship takeoffs, although this was difficult to verify. Testers have reported that this should now be fixed in version 1.5, although if you also use the mod More NPC Marker for vanilla ship habs it may still occasionally happen.
Credits:
xtcrefugee
