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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

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 10 - Finishing Touches)

Well, it's been a fun adventure but now we're almost done. Over the course of this series we've taken Groot's Solitude from a promising mod with some compatibility issues that was a little rough around the edges to a fully functional and integrated part of my modded game world. Today we'll cover the final steps to put the proverbial bow on top of this project.   Facegen   Dismemberment   A Final Texture Tweak   And with that, we've crossed all the 't

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 9 - Navmesh)

Welcome back everyone, and thanks for your patience while I focused on a small side project for a little bit. The truth is, I had to take a break from this for a little bit because I was very frustrated about some lost work that happened (because of an error on my part) when I upgraded to the new version. Fortunately, second-to-last versions of both deleted mods were in my xEdit backup folder, which will help us get back on our feed pretty quickly. Let this be a lesson to all of you - save those

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 8 - Cleanup)

Before we move on to navmesh, we still have a few various items to clean up, mostly in the residential district of Solitude. Let's look at our punchlist and see what we still need to work.   Major Conflicts * Imperial Physician entrance * Books of Skyrim Town Square EA02BB62 - Hex Floor needs different texture 3800806B - ZDD static needs to move FE1DC863 - Shackles from "Public Executions" mod need to move 440089A2 - Unique sword "Justice" needs to be put on table EA02BAAA - Rotate C

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 7 - Marketplace)

Welcome back! Today it's time to tackle the conflicted market stalls and other items in the marketplace area. Let's look at our punchlist to see where we stand currently:   Major Conflicts * Imperial Physician entrance * Books of Skyrim Town Square EA02BB62 - Hex Floor needs different texture 3800806B - ZDD static needs to move FE1DC863 - Shackles from "Public Executions" mod need to move 440089A2 - Unique sword "Justice" needs to be put on table EA02BAAA - Rotate Cairn 90 degrees EA

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 6 - Town Square)

Welcome back everyone! Now that we've resolved both the conflicted buildings, it's time to start working down the rest of the punchlist. Let's look at what we've got left to do, and arrange it by location.   Major Conflicts * Imperial Physician entrance * Books of Skyrim Town Square EA02BB62 - Hex Floor needs different texture 3800806B - ZDD static needs to move FE1DC863 - Shackles from "Public Executions" mod need to move 440089A2 - Unique sword "Justice" needs to be put on table EA

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 5 - Bookstore)

During the previous chapter of this blog, we talked about the two major terrain blockers in Groot's - especifically, the Imperial Physician whose door ends up off center because of a building model change and the bookstore from Books of Skyrim that ends up in the same space as Groot's alchemy lab. We successfully repositioned the physician, but we couldn't get the bookstore to share its current location. Additionally, literally as I was writing that entry, I got a message from the mod author adv

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 4 - Physician's Office)

Welcome back! Yesterday we toured the modded area and identified a number of items that we need to address in order to properly integrate the mod. Today's we're going to focus on the two "big rocks" - the conflicted buildings used by Books of Skyrim and Imperial Physician. In today's blog we'll look at the physician first, relocating the entry to his interior so it's not conflicted anymore. We'll also start working on the bookstore, though that will spill over into tomorrow because of time const

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 3 - The Grand Tour)

Welcome back, folks. Now that we've gone through Groot's Solitude in MO2 and xEdit, it's time to see what we need to do in the CK. We'll start out by taking a tour of the city, starting at the outer gates and working our way down to the Blue Palace. What we're looking for today are any overlapping meshes, blocked passageways, or visual irregularities (Z fighting, texture issues, etc). This stage is important because it helps us plan out the best way to fix the issues, rather than just tackling e

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 2 - xEdit Conflict Resolution)

Welcome back, everyone! Yesterday we took Grroott's Solitude through installation and cleaning, and we did a bunch of navmesh repair. With that taken care of, now we can move on to conflict resolution.   Finding and Resolving Conflicts in xEdit Before we start looking for problems in the CK and in the game itself, we'll review this plugin in xEdit. The goal is to find records that more than one mod are trying to edit, and make sure the "winning" entry allows all the content to wor

Modding Case Study: Grroott's Solitude (Part 1 - Getting Started, Mod Cleaning, Navmesh Repair)

Hi everyone, and welcome to our second Modding Case Study (formerly known as "Mod Cleanup Case Studies"). I changed the name because the emphasis will be as much if not more on integration than on corrective action. This time we will be reviewing Grroott's Solitude, which adds additional streets and buildings to the city. When I pre-screened this mod, I was expecting a lot of problems integrating Legacy of the Dragonborn, but the author has subsequently produced a patch, which is good.   

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