Mod Author Skyrim Mod Editing Set-Ups

[Pronema]

I find modding Bethesda games easy after years of doing so but have never really gotten into making something myself.  I can generally work out any bugs I come across myself, with the rare exception, and have made little world edits, the odd building, and added test weapons, such as weapons that don't do any damage, since Oblivion.  Weapons and ammo like bolts that do no damage are actually really useful for goofing off with enchantments from mods like Summermyst, I currently have 217 mods with no bugs, though my framerate is not the greatest.

 

I was wondering how all of the mod authors here like to organize their Skyrim builds for editing their own mods. Do you use MO and a keep your Skyrim folder clean?  Have a separate MO for editing and playing or use NMM for creation but MO for playing or don't use a manager at all?   Do you use multiple monitors, hot load your plugins to edit them without closing Skyrim, or write mods in pseudocode first?  Do you actually play through Skyrim with your mods or is the mod creation and knowing others play them what you enjoy most?  I am trying to learn both the reasons the authors make their mods and more about the efficient mod editing set-ups and practices here. 

 

Any advice for someone who generally knows how the CK works already, but finds fiddling with my Skyrim setup for hours every time I have the motivation to try and create something enough of an annoyance that I haven't bothered creating anything myself other than bug fixes for other mods would be great. 

 

But the point of this thread is for the real mod authors around here, not the modders like me to share their workspace set-ups and where they get the motivation from to create their mods.  

 

 

[MadMansGun]

20 minutes ago, Pronema said:

I was wondering how all of the mod authors here like to organize their Skyrim builds for editing their own mods. Do you use MO and a keep your Skyrim folder clean?  Have a separate MO for editing and playing or use NMM for creation but MO for playing or don't use a manager at all?

no mod managers over here.

 

21 minutes ago, Pronema said:

Do you use multiple monitors, hot load your plugins to edit them without closing Skyrim, or write mods in pseudocode first?

no, no, and wtf is "pseudocode"?

 

25 minutes ago, Pronema said:

I am trying to learn both the reasons the authors make their mods

dragon porn.

 

38 minutes ago, Pronema said:

 and more about the efficient mod editing set-ups and practices here.

a fuck load of folders on my desktop.

[KoolHndLuke]

Dido everything MadMansGun wrote. I have fuckin folders everywhere, several copies of some mods because I forget where I put them, several unfinished mods, a bunch of folders with extracted meshes and textures. I keep thinking I should clean it all up, but, I never do.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Pronema said:

...

 

 

I do use MO to create mods.

 

First create a folder for your mod in MO Mods folder.

 

Then the sub-folders you need.

 

I don't do pseudo-code, I do code directly, and I used Notepad++ to develop and compile the code.

 

CK is run from MO, and I keep the mod esp in the overwrite folder until I finish the mod.

 

I also keep a file with all the things I have to do for the mod. A sort of TODO list.

 

In case I do anims, or meshes, or textures, then I create usually a folder on the desktop to putt all the partial work inside, and move in the mod folder only the items I have to test or are completed.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, CPU said:

 

I do use MO to create mods.

 

First create a folder for your mod in MO Mods folder.

 

Then the sub-folders you need.

 

I don't do pseudo-code, I do code directly, and I used Notepad++ to develop and compile the code.

 

CK is run from MO, and I keep the mod esp in the overwrite folder until I finish the mod.

 

I also keep a file with all the things I have to do for the mod. A sort of TODO list.

 

In case I do anims, or meshes, or textures, then I create usually a folder on the desktop to putt all the partial work inside, and move in the mod folder only the items I have to test or are completed.

 

Why do I do mods? Because it is more fun than playing a game for 3000 hours.

[Pronema]

On 7/6/2018 at 12:45 AM, MadMansGun said:

wtf is "pseudocode"?

It's sort of a shorthand used to plan out how the "real code" should look and run.  Say you're on a bus and get an idea, but can't remember the exact papyrus commands you'll need to use to do it. 

 

((You may being facetious, I know a few programmers that actually would rather just code in C++ since most programmers know that and ignore pseudo altogether, but figured I should explain just in case.))

 

With pseudocode someone could write a half-assed outline and anyone else with coding experience should be able to understand it.

 

Pseudocode for something like the stolen sweet roll mod, I can't remember what it's called, from the nexus where every time that line is used the actor is "turned into" a sweet roll would look something like below:

 

Spoiler

If   

      Something PlaysAudioClip "Let me guess, someone stole your sweetroll" //It may not be this simple, but you know what I am trying to do from this

Then

      Do MagicEffect FrenzyNoSpell at ActorLocation  //This is a made up Magic Effect that would look like the Frenzy spell explosion but not do anything

      Place Sweetroll at ActorLocation  //Does ActorLocation or anything else I am using here actually exists in Papyrus?

      DisableActor  //It doesn't matter if these commands exist, they just give me an idea for coding later when I have access to the real thing.

End If

1

 

[MadMansGun]

i'm not a programmer/coder/scripter

10 PRINT "THIS IS ALL I KNOW"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

 

[Nazzzgul666]

 

On 7/6/2018 at 8:45 AM, MadMansGun said:

no, no, and wtf is "pseudocode"?

 

Essentially code that doesn't work.  Longer answer, it's something that looks like code, but dismisses all the language specific stuff. Can be useful if you're planning complex code, or you don't want to code yourself but rather tell a coder what you want/how it should be done without beeing too specific. While i studied math they tought us to write pseudocode, which makes some sense imho. Stupid engineers who don't really understand maths can still do what we tell them.

 

Looks like 

if Madman sober

 do animations

else

 LLforum;

 

... or something like that.^^

[MadMansGun]

7 minutes ago, Nazzzgul666 said:

Looks like 

if Madman sober

 do animations

else

 LLforum;

ERROR: "Alcohol" not a valid Property for MadMan.psc

[Pronema]

Do any of you that create stuff in the CK like to have a standard naming convention?

 

Like starting all your magic effects, weapons, armor, and item names with a shorthand for your mod?  ((Like making a new cloak magic effect that creates raining cabbage and naming it UncleSheosCabbageRainCloakFFSelf , where "UncleSheos" is the name of your mod and you then follow Skyrim naming convention or do you do something different?  That's sort of what I try to do.))

[Nazzzgul666]

I'm not a modder, but i know from the according console commands that most modders do so but shorter. I.e. instead of UncleSheosCabbageRainCloakFFSelf it's called USraincloak or something like that. At least using initials instead of the mods name is quite common.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Pronema said:

Do any of you that create stuff in the CK like to have a standard naming convention?

 

Like starting all your magic effects, weapons, armor, and item names with a shorthand for your mod?  ((Like making a new cloak magic effect that creates raining cabbage and naming it UncleSheosCabbageRainCloakFFSelf , where "UncleSheos" is the name of your mod and you then follow Skyrim naming convention or do you do something different?  That's sort of what I try to do.))

Yes. And you should do to.

 

First of all, all mods should have a three or four letters code. for example one of my mods has "fm4s" another "ssx", etc.

ALWAYS prepend all the stuff you create with your code. Scripts and all other objects.

Magic Effects have usually the name of the spell they are attached to with ME at the end.

Quests for MCM have MCM inside the code.

Armors Addons have the name of the armor with AA at the end.

Shouts spells that are in couple with a non shout shell have "Shout" at the end.

 

Scripts can have probably the same name of the quest, but you actually need at least one character difference. So you can append Script or just use a shorter version of the name.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, MadMansGun said:

ERROR: "Alcohol" not a valid Property for MadMan.psc

You used the wrong compiler the right one gave me this result:

1:	if Madman sober
2:		do animations
3:	else
4:		LLforum;
 
Compilation error at line 1: Madman property or variable not found, do you mean MadMansGun?
Compilation error at line 4: LLabforum is a known variable and not a statement, did you miss the "browse" directive or the "postunrelevantcomments" directive? You can also use is at LLabforum.browse()
Compilation error at line 4: unexpected character ';', that is not Java or Javascript or C#, or C, or C++, you dumbass programmer.

[MadMansGun]

1 hour ago, CPU said:

You used the wrong compiler the right one gave me this result:

01101000011101000111010001110000011100110011101000101111001011110111011101110111011101110010111001111001011011110111010101110100011101010110001001100101001011100110001101101111011011010010111101110111011000010111010001100011011010000011111101110110001111010100100101010010011100110101000001101000011001010100010101110010010000100110101000111000