Autopilot pre-release crap...
We made it to solitude, yay!
Still undergoing some testing, the feature IS getting a standalone version and should be released very soon. It was meant to be released in the next few days, but I’ve been reworking the code. Getting it to work and getting it to work well/efficiently are two different things. I’ve changed some of the coding to reduce the chances of bugs, as the system is quite fiddly and relies on things happening in a very specific way. A number of things could cause it to break suddenly. Making a minor change to even the order of this code can break the entire thing. I still need to change more code - the system works absolutely fine, I just want to implement it better so that you change your destination without needing to stop autopilot. Should be easy. There are some bugs that I can’t see a feasible, efficient way of eliminating via script but they are almost entirely eliminated by correct usage so far.
There’s a minor problem with pathing which is as to be expected really. The horse follows an invisible path to get to a destination. The horse could get lost along the way, even if just for a very short time. This is further exacerbated by the addition of extra models/locations along the path such as extra lanterns on the roads or forts etc. The horse will be more likely to walk into these models or get lost. I have quite a few mods that could create this problem and I needed to get an idea of how much of a problem it will be on the average modded game. It would be significantly worse in a mod added land/location with poor navmeshing. I tried to pick two furthest points with terrain obstacles such as mountains. I did a trek from Dawnstar Sanctuary (black door area) to Riften, taking about 10-11 mins real time. He got lost far less than I thought so I was really happy.
Fixing a pathing issue would be difficult for a number of reasons. The first is that I can’t do much about the navmesh of the game/location so that’s out of the question. I CAN make smaller point distances for travel in the AI packages. Say you want to go to whiterun I’d have a few nearby locations to travel to before getting to whiterun itself, each with fairly short distances between them so that the pathing looks very smooth. However, for long distance travel, this is only going to make a difference right at the end of the journey, which is kind of pointless. On a short distance journey then the furthest point may not make any sense to travel to. It would also not be possible to implement for a custom destination.
Due to how fragile the coding is, I am debating on whether to include source files.
I am tempted to release it pretty much as a modders resource because I support the modding community and I do think it could have potential applications such as a scene in a quest. However, anyone that wants to do anything with it will have to have at least a basic understanding of HOW the system works to be able to utilise it.
As it is a working mod for users, I definitely don’t want people inexperienced with modding and/or papyrus to mess with my mod and then break it if I supply the .psc files. I’d be inundated with false bug reports, negative comments and messages. If someone breaks it trying to experiment, I am absolutely not going to spend X amount of time fixing it.
I would rather mod authors who are interested contact me so I can talk through their idea, send the .psc, explain how everything works and how they might achieve their goal and offer to help implement it if they are struggling. It’s not a mod for someone new to papyrus to tinker with because altering 1 line can change whether the mod works at all.
Regardless of whether I upload the .psc or not, the permissions will remain somewhat the same.