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About this blog

Greetings everyone! This page contains my various Bethesda blogs. At the time of this update, it contains my troubleshooting playthrough series, my Skyrim modding diary, my mod cleanup case study series, and my Shout Like a Virgin beta test blog. You can access all the entries from the sidebar on the right side of your screen.

 

Playthroughs

I've recently exceeded the 1000 mod threshold, and it's time to start periodically doing brief playthroughs to ferret out hidden conflicts and other bugs. In this series, we'll do shorter, more focused adventures where we try to tell an interesting story and also talk about what problems we ran into them and how we addressed them.

 

  • Charley's Story: Charlotte Ellison survived a nuclear war by spending more than two hundred years in stasis. Now she has to survive in a very new world, facing very new threats. A Fallout 4 playthrough.
  • The Spider's Web: Kirstia's search for answers has taken her to the island of Solstheim. Now she must uncover the secret of The Teacher - also known as Mephala - and continue the journey to master her powerful magical heritage. But can she survive as her enemies, new and old, close in? 
  • The Curious Case of Forrien Hlaalu: A year after she returned to Northpoint, Kirstia is back in Skyrim and looking for answers. The strange events that occured during her search for Sybil Fjotra continue to trouble her, as does the ongoing influence of the strange gods of the Forsworn. After a chance encounter over drinks, a wizard from the College of Winterhold sets her on the trail of a scholar who may have the answers she needs...
  • The Search for the Sybil: Exiled from Skyrim to the remote land of Northpoint, Kirstia Bjissen has fallen on hard times. Just as she hits rock bottom, a voice speaks to her and charges her with a sacred quest that will take her back to her native land - and likely into danger. Can Kirstia find the new Sybil of Dibella before her past catches up with her?
  • Shout Like a Virgin: Miraculously saved from death, Monilee of High Rock finds herself in Skyrim, a land riven by civil war and harboring dark secrets. While she tries to build a new life in this foreign land, she's haunted by half-remembered dreams, and in chasing them she discovers her role in the turning of the ages. However, Monilee has not gone unnoticed by powers outside the mortal realm. Used as a pawn in the struggle between Nocturnal and Dibella, it will take all her wits, endurance, bravery, and stubbornness to reclaim sovereignty over her body and her soul.

 

Modding Diary

This series tracks my modding projects in-between playthroughs and case studies. The main focus will be on the technical processes of cleaning, editing, and integrating mods into a large load order configuration, including managing emergent multi-mod interactions. 

 

Modding Case Studies

This blog reviews the tools and techniques that authors and end users can apply to make their mods as stable and compatible as possible, as well as how end users can integrate complicated mods into a large load order setup. In addition to coverage of well known techniques such as automatic mod cleaning, this blog delves into more complicated issues such as navmesh repair. 

 

Entries in this blog

2023 AE Build

New AE Build Part 10: I Hate Allergies

Well, it's May. Pollen is in the air. Neighbors are mowing their lawn (I guess they missed the memo about not mowing early in the the growth season to protect the pollinators ). My eyes are swollen up, my tear ducts are itchy, and I have a constant low-level headache. So as you can probably guess, I'm not going to be writing a lot of eloquent prose this time. However, I wanted to keep everyone up to date on how the build is going.   Today I focused on overhauling the monsters in the ga
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2023 AE Build

New AE Build Part 9: The Life of The Mind

Hi folks. Yesterday we took our setup from "vanilla with better graphics" to "NSFW Vanilla+" by incorporating needs mods and Sexlab. Today we're going to focus on polishing some rough features and generally getting the game to a more efficient place. After that's done, and if time permits, we'll also look at doing some enhancements.   One little warning about the schedule: Games Workshop has managed to get its hooks into me again, so Bethesda has some competition for my hobby time. Thi
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2023 AE Build

New AE Build Part 8: Hierarchy of Needs

After seven sessions of step by step work, we've achieved a stable, beautified vanilla Skyrim experience. With that accomplishment under our belt, now its time to start moving beyond the vanilla experience and genuinely enhancing the game. We'll begin that process with needs mods. Skyrim AE contains some rudimentary handling of this gameplay in the form of the Survival Mode DLC, but in my experience the Survival Mode gameplay is uneven, never quite sure if its trying to enhance immersion or just
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2023 AE Build

New AE Build Part 7: Purge The Unclean

If you've been following my self-narrated comments in Part 6, you know that as I tried to discover the source of an issue with patching the diffuse maps for character faces I discovered some fairly serious deficiencies in several NPC mods. I won't name and shame them here - I already reported the worst offender to its author - but after spending a bunch of time thinking on how to fix the mods myself, I realized that I was falling into the sunk cost fallacy. The whole purpose of using Easy NPC wa
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2023 AE Build

New AE Build Part 6: All The Differences Between Us

When I wrapped up yesterday, I had intended this session to cover a review of my various SKSE enhancements and patches, including a discussion of which one's I'm adding immediately and which ones are going to wait until later. However, after reviewing them I realized that I just didn't have anything interesting to blog about on that score, so I went ahead and took care of those off the record. Today we'll get back to the NPCs - and in particular, building our EasyNPC population. If you followed
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2023 AE Build

New AE Build Part 5: The Sculpting of The Clay

Welcome back, everyone! Last time we replaced the vanilla bodies for male and female humanoids with the bodyslide-friendly HIMBO and BHUNP bodies, then rebuilt all the vanilla clothing to support their body morphs. Today we are going introduce some features to take advantage of those capabilities - though before we start on that we need to get at least a basic install of Schlongs of Skyrim going first. We won't be doing any customized variations or intersex support yet, but we do need to have SO
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2023 AE Build

New AE Build Part 4: The Forms of Flesh

Well, we made it past our first milestone - Patrician ENB is up and running with no unresolved deficiencies other than that fishing error (which fortunately seems to be benign). However, as you've no doubt observed from the screen shots, we have some issues with potato people in the game world. In this session, we'll focus on making our NPCs more realistic.   Laying the Groundwork First things first, we need bodies. We will be using BHUNP for females and futanari, and HIMBO for ma
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2023 AE Build

New AE Build Part 3: The Weather

Welcome back! Yesterday we got water, fire, and lighting updated, as well as a number of collateral benefits to the outside world from Lux Via. Today, the goal is to get as close to possible to installing the ENB preset - and ideally to actually achieve that milestone. This will start with installing the ENB Particle Patch as well as several environmental mods that will support an installation of SOLAS Weather. Before we do that, however, let's check out Papyrus log from the last session and sno
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2023 AE Build

New AE Build Part 2: The Waters and The Light

Welcome back, folks. Yesterday we set up the bare bones for the new AE build and tested it to make sure everything was working properly. After giving it a clean bill of health, I spent some time going over the papyrus logs and resolved several script errors in the Creation Club content. I also pruned out some unimplemented features from Alternate Perspective that were causing errors in the Papyrus log. All that's left now are some false alarms (FNIS complaining that it doesn't have any animation
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2023 AE Build

New AE Build Part 1: The Immaterial

I decided to start building my new AE setup today since I found myself a little fixated on the idea after the aborted launch from earlier. As I mentioned in my last post, the goal here is to get a lo of the richness and nuance of my last version without the bloat. I will eventually lean on certain elements of the old setup, but other parts will be all new, using the latest tools that have become available rather than the patchwork I assembled in the past.   I started by doing a clean i
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Miscellaneous

I tried to do the Valerica test run on my 1900 mod build... it didn't go so well

Hi folks, I was planning to use my giant 1900 mod build to run a test of the controversial Valerica romance mod. Unfortunately, it didn't go quite the way I expected. I've rolled up this fellow for the quest, and we'll start by traveling to Fort Dawnguard and joining their ranks.     This session will be running on a very slightly updated version of my main build, using 1906 mods. It's not perfectly up to date as many elements have been updated while I was off playing Fallou
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Miscellaneous

Programming Note - Spending Some Time In Skyrim

Hi folks, I'm going to be delaying the second half of Book 4 to make time for a little Skyrim project. I'll probably share some screenshots but I do not plan to blog the story. Basically, a new and surprisingly controversial mod has come out and I'm interested to see what all the hullabaloo is about. According to some, this mod has really superb synthesized voice acting... but it sample it I need to play through a good chunk of Dawnguard, so that'll require my attention for a bit. Depending on h
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Miscellaneous

Settlement Update Tour - Part 3

Yesterday we visited the core of Concord's territory: Quarrytown, Concord, Abernathy Farm, and Ridge. Before we head south towards Red Tourette's territory, we have some business to do east of Concord. First we'll visit the Drumlin Diner and make sure it's not blocked in terms of progress. Then we need to set up the Minutemen base at Bedford Station. Finally, we'll check in with Graygarden to make sure the robots are doing OK.    After arriving at the Diner and fighting off a random gh
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Miscellaneous

Settlement Update Tour - Part 2

Welcome back, everyone! Our tour got a little delayed by technical issues, but now we can continue visiting the settlements and getting them up to date. If you recall from last time, our next settlement is The Slog. It won't be getting any major updates except for defense, since we founded it relatively recently. The big development is that the prisoners were locked up here a while ago have reached 100 submission, so we can treat them like regular settlers as far as jobs go.    
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Miscellaneous

Settlement Update Tour - Part 1

Hi folks, hope you've been enjoying Charley's story so far. She just reached level 47 at the end of chapter 88, and we're a bit past due to make sure the settlements are all up to date. If you've played Fallout 4, you know that by the time you have this many settlements active, it can be easy to get out of whack with resources and start losing a lot of happiness - especially when Sim Settlements 2 is part of the equation.   Additionally, many of the settlements are ready to grow and ne
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Charley's Story IV

Executive Session (Charley's Story, Chapter 88)

If I'd been feeling a little calmer, the smart thing might not have been to go directly to McDonough's office. My armor had gotten fairly beaten up in the tussle with the would-be ambushers and I was low on ammo and stimpaks. If things went badly and I ended up getting thrown out of Diamond City on the spot, I wouldn't be well equipped for a march west to friendlier environs. But what had started as anxiety and self-doubt had been quickly converting to anger. The change started when Sullivan let
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Charley's Story IV

Looping Back (Charley's Story, Chapter 87)

Despite the pleasant activities that preceded my rest, I didn't sleep well. A series of disturbing dreams about Piper haunted me, with various enemies I'd made in the past - raiders, super mutants, synths - putting her in peril while I was paralyzed, unable to help her. In the final dream, Brotherhood of Steel vertibirds were descending around her, loudspeakers droning 'abomination' and 'degenerate.' In slow motion, power armored knights descended from the sky, and I could only stand there, root
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Charley's Story IV

Ghoul Factory (Charley's Story, Chapter 86)

"Knight Tara Astlin, Brotherhood of Steel Recon Team 429 Alpha. It's been three hours since I set my distress pulser. There's been no word from the Paladin or Ferris. Their objective was a satellite array on the coast; they may be out of range. My orders were to hold this position at all costs, but the entire site's been overrun. Without the password to override the bunker's security door, I won't last much longer. Paladin Brandis, sir... it's been an honor, sir."   Heather had found t
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Charley's Story IV

Wolfe Tracks (Charley's Story, Chapter 85)

It pretty quickly became clear that the quarry wasn't going to be the sort of job that Winter and I could handle on our own. Unlike the site near Concord, the raiders here seemed to have set up a much more defensible position - and more problematic, they had at least one suit of power armor. I knew from past experience that even with Winter in the power suit, we'd have some difficulty facing that sort of firepower one-on-one. On the other hand, I also clearly remembered the battle near Natick an
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Charley's Story IV

Reaching Out (Charley's Story, Chapter 84)

"So... what do you think? Do you want me to find out if the Minutemen will set up an outpost here? Even if they say no, I bet I can get the Rangers to send some volunteers."   Wiseman seemed to mentally chew on my question for a while. I'd been bringing him up to date on everything we'd been doing out west - things he's only heard scattered rumors about with the roads mostly shut down. He was excited to hear that the Minutemen were rebuilding, but he didn't seem so enthusiastic about t
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Charley's Story IV

Bunker Hill (Charley's Story, Chapter 83)

I woke up just before dawn, and all I felt was self-loathing. Here I was, cuddling in a relatively comfy bed with Winter while Piper was facing who-knows-what out there in the wasteland. No matter how hard I tried to reality check myself, I just felt pathetic. I was sure I could have pressed on through the night; hell, she'd probably stayed there at Bunker Hill and was just now setting off north. If I'd been more dedicated, I thought, if I'd cared more about her than about myself, I'd be with he
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Charley's Story IV

Chasing Piper (Charley's Story, Chapter 82)

Morning eventually came around, as it tends to, and we set about getting Winter back into her suit. I'd thought about switching with her now that we knew I wouldn't be getting my checkup for a while, but I remembered the request from the cabinet for me to keep my use of it to a minimum. Moreover, Winter didn't have the unusual healing factor that I'd acquired, and having her inside the suit made it a lot less likely that she'd get hurt if (when) we ended up in another fight.   Heather
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Miscellaneous

Quick Visit (Charley's Story, Chapter 82 - Original Version)

Editor's note: This is the original version of Chapter 82 that I published roughly concurrently with my play through these events. In my original outline for Book IV, I didn't plan for Charley to start the mission "Dangerous Minds" until some time later - roughly around chapters 88-90, depending on B-Plot elements - but the game started the quest automatically with a cutscene when I reunited with the relevant characters. At first I thought I could just roll with it and rearrange the sequence of
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Charley's Story IV

Uneasy Alliance (Charley's Story, Chapter 81)

Maxson was waiting when I made my way down to the command deck.   "Outstanding work at Fort Strong," he said. "I knew I could count on you."     "Thank you. I wish it had been Institute we were raiding, but that situation with the nukes was too close for comfort."   "I agree. We're transferring all the warheads to the Prydwen, and we'll deploy troops to occupy the site and screen the coastal approaches to the airport. And don't worry about the Institute -
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Charley's Story IV

Wild Ride (Charley's Story, Chapter 80)

"So report to the flight deck, an operation is about to launch and I insist you be part of it."   I'd expected a lot of different complications that might come up during this visit, but getting drafted into fighting for the Brotherhood wasn't one I was expecting.    "Elder Maxson," I said, "I appreciate the opportunity to prove my good intentions, but I have to ask for some details about this operation. As much as I'd like to forge an understanding with you, I'm not willing t
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