[Help] Attempting to patch Seniors Wear Vanilla for mislabelled vanilla NPCs - need some guidance

[JustCaroAnon]

There are a few (or possibly many) NPCs in the game that are not using the Elder Race, but are clearly otherwise intended to be elderly (eg they use the OldKind or OldGrumpy voicetype, they have the headparts and etc set to the ones used for old people). To my annoyance, they're all skipped by Seniors Wear Vanilla. At least one is very often seen in the game - Gerda in Dragonsreach. There's a few others, I haven't yet tracked them down (I'm cross-referencing the lists from UESP - the Elder Race list and the four Voice Type lists.)

 

What's the better option here - edit these NPCs to use the Elder Race, or try to integrate them into Seniors Wear Vanilla some other way? I'm not even sure how the mod itself manages to work, but my thinking is that changing the NPC's race is more likely to mess something up.

[Pauduan]

1. Open the ESP in CK.

 

2. Add the NPC from the record list - simply double-click their name, and switch the outfit to the path set by the mod).

 

3. Switch the outfit per your liking.

 

The one mod I've seen get most NPCs right is Remodelled Armor. The ESP has the needed edits for most NPCs. I tried multiple variations of many mods, but no modder wants to go through the names individually so a few fall through the cracks. It's not difficult to assign them yourself and if back up the ESP before hand, rollback is painless and takes less than a second.

[JustCaroAnon]

I think Seniors Wear Vanilla must work a different way - from opening it up in Tes5Edit, it seems to work by adding alternate ArmorAddon records, and somehow redirecting these in the Armor records? It seems like a much more complicated way.

 

I'll look at the elder outfit records in Ct77's Remodeled Armor, I remember seeing those once when I was fixing up my general armor and clothing replacers merge but I didn't think to look at it again. Those (IIRC) use a much simpler method.

[Grey Cloud]

There are several mods out there which deal with elders and the elder race in different ways - Consistent Older Pepole, Old Means Old, The Extra-ordinary Hags and several more. Depending on what you are trying to do, use one of those and save yourself the grief.

[Pauduan]

5 hours ago, JustCaroAnon said:

I think Seniors Wear Vanilla must work a different way - from opening it up in Tes5Edit, it seems to work by adding alternate ArmorAddon records, and somehow redirecting these in the Armor records? It seems like a much more complicated way.

 

I'll look at the elder outfit records in Ct77's Remodeled Armor, I remember seeing those once when I was fixing up my general armor and clothing replacers merge but I didn't think to look at it again. Those (IIRC) use a much simpler method.

Remodelled works exactly the same way. It adds new Addon records for a new set of items placed in a folder called "Elder' under clothes, then adds each NPC to wear those items. The advantage (for us) is that you only need to add the NPCs you find are missing (I haven't found any, TBH) into the NPC list.

 

This is a shot of the archive folder:

 

 

And this is the esp being edited, as you can see not all records exist:

 

[JustCaroAnon]

11 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

There are several mods out there which deal with elders and the elder race in different ways - Consistent Older Pepole, Old Means Old, The Extra-ordinary Hags and several more. Depending on what you are trying to do, use one of those and save yourself the grief.

The problem is that there's a number of NPCs that they don't cover, because for one reason or another they're not using the Elder race (but are using the voice types, detail assets, etc). For example, Gerda in Dragonsreach - clearly using Elder assets and voicetype, but in the CK she's set as a Nord, not Elder. Consistent Older People doesn't do anything with armors either, IIRC - it just does some stuff with headparts and other assets.

 

From looking at Seniors Wear Vanilla, it's doing all its work solely with ArmorAddons, which explains why it's so easily disrupted by other mods that edit armors and can be very inconsistent sometimes. Unfortunately, it's not only not compliant with CCF and WAFR, it's also not been patched for USLEEP, and has a tendency to overwrite or be overwritten by literally anything else that edits armor records. CT77 actually made whole new Armor records in addition to the ArmorAddons, which means a little more eyeball work to patch everything to match USLEEP, CCF and WAFR, but also means that they still work even with other mods modifying armors installed. (And since zEdit seems to have finally stabilised a little, I can use it to view two records side-by-side, which is helpful.)

 

Now I just have to figure out how the meshes work...because it looks like CT77 didn't rename the vanilla meshes or anything, but then I can't figure out how those outfits are still using the vanilla meshes (plus, I have to account for using some replacers for male armors as well, which don't have any setup like this). I've had a lot of trouble in the past with renaming or moving NIF files, but I've finally gotten Nifskope to play nicely on my system again so now I have another avenue for fixing them.

[Grey Cloud]

It's late here and bedtime but to which NPCs are you referring? I'll have look in my game over the next few day and post some screenshots if applicable.

[JustCaroAnon]

5 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

It's late here and bedtime but to which NPCs are you referring? I'll have look in my game over the next few day and post some screenshots if applicable.

Comparing the elderly voice type lists to the Elder race list, I've come up with these:

 

• Agnis
• Alexia Vici
• Angeline Morrard
• Nana Ildene
• Gerda
• Bothela
• Wilmuth
• Thadgeir
• Ulfr the Blind
• Sergius Turrianus
• Olfrid Battle-Born
• Nurelion
• Herluin Lothaire
• Guthrum
• Fultheim
• Dengeir of Stuhn
• Runil
• Calcelmo
• Calixto
• One of these Nobleman NPCs

Isabelle Rolaine is corrected by USLEEP to use non-elderly assets. I don't think I'll change the race records on any of them since that seems likely to cause trouble, but I can

[Grey Cloud]

Right. I was in Markarth so:

 

Calcelmo. There is no 'elder race' for non-humans. There is a face but no body texture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nana Ildene. Mine is altered by Dames of Skyrim (DoS).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bothela. Altered by DoS. Nana's skin is the same as Bothela's.

 

A couple of Donnel. Crap lighting in there but he has wrinkly skin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vigdis Salvius (forgot to get the hubby). Altered by Extraordinary Hags (appearance) and a body I downloaded.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't recognise some of the names on your list so I'm guessing they are from specific vanilla quests. I don't do vanila so I wont be able to get those.

 

What I'm trying to demonstrate here is that with the right mod combination you have lots of options with the oldies. The voice thing isn't a problem to me as I frequently play with no sound and always ignore what is said anyway.

[JustCaroAnon]

13 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

Right. I was in Markarth so:

 

Calcelmo. There is no 'elder race' for non-humans. There is a face but no body texture.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

 

Nana Ildene. Mine is altered by Dames of Skyrim (DoS).

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

 

Bothela. Altered by DoS. Nana's skin is the same as Bothela's.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

A couple of Donnel. Crap lighting in there but he has wrinkly skin.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

 

Vigdis Salvius (forgot to get the hubby). Altered by Extraordinary Hags (appearance) and a body I downloaded.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

 

I don't recognise some of the names on your list so I'm guessing they are from specific vanilla quests. I don't do vanila so I wont be able to get those.

 

What I'm trying to demonstrate here is that with the right mod combination you have lots of options with the oldies. The voice thing isn't a problem to me as I frequently play with no sound and always ignore what is said anyway.

It's not the voices or appearances that are the problem though. I use CT77's remodeled clothes and armor for females, and a combination of Aoki's, DarkSchneider's and BadDog's revealing male armor replacers. But I don't want the skimpy armors showing up on elderly NPCs, whether they're flagged for the Elder race or not.

 

 Because SeniorsWearVanilla only uses the Elder race list, it doesn't change outfits for all of these NPCs, and because I can't figure out how it works I'm going to try using CT77's elder outfits (and possibly expanding them a little if I need to add some more) instead to make sure that those NPCs are all using the vanilla armor and clothing meshes.

 

That's pretty much the entire purpose of what I'm doing - force all 'elderly' NPCs, whether or not they have their race set to 'Elder', to use vanilla clothing meshes instead of skimpy ones. I just had to figure out the easiest way to do it, and I'm not totally clear on how CT77's works because the meshes aren't being redirected in the elder ArmorAddon records, and they can't be the same filenames as the skimpy meshes. SeniorsWearVanilla uses an extra set of ArmorAddon records that are added to each Armor record, but it's prone to being disrupted if any other mod loading after it also edits the Armor record (leaving all the old people in the game in their underwear). SeniorsWearVanilla was never patched for compatibility with USLEEP, CCF, WAFR, or anything else, so I'd prefer not to have it loading last and messing all of those up.

 

As I said above, I've had trouble before with renaming NIF files or moving them into different folders, usually having the outfit turn invisible in-game - I know that with renaming NIFs there's apparently stuff that has to be done in Nifskope to make it work again, but I'm not sure if there's similar issues with changing the NIF file's location. My current plan is:

1. Extract all the vanilla outfit meshes from the vanilla BSA.
2. Overwrite those with meshes from USLEEP, CCF and WAFR where relevant. (Or any other mods I have that involve outfit mesh fixes.)
3. Copy the Armor and ArmorAddon records into a new ESP, make sure they're all up to date, then rename them.
4. Put all of the vanilla meshes into new directories.
5. Redirect the ArmorAddons to the new filepaths.

 

[Grey Cloud]

Well then, it seems to me that you are looking at this from the wrong direction. If SWV doesn't do what you want, find a mod or mods which do. I have to use several mods to get what I want. Also there is the problem I mentioned above that only humans have an 'elder race' so you are never going to get 100% success.

 

Your 5 point plan seems to involve a lot of work for very small reward. There is a great potential for making mistakes and causing problems.

[JustCaroAnon]

2 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

Well then, it seems to me that you are looking at this from the wrong direction. If SWV doesn't do what you want, find a mod or mods which do. I have to use several mods to get what I want. Also there is the problem I mentioned above that only humans have an 'elder race' so you are never going to get 100% success.

 

Your 5 point plan seems to involve a lot of work for very small reward. There is a great potential for making mistakes and causing problems.

I have yet to find a mod that's covering all of these NPCs though. SWV didn't do it, and while I have to dig back into the original ESPs (and see what happens if I uninstall SWV and let CT77's mods do all the work) I don't think CT77 would have covered them either. If SWV wasn't so easily messed with, I would have just added these NPCs to it, but it seems that playing with the list of ArmorAddons is an easily-disrupted method.

 

(And the only reason I'm duplicating and moving the NIF files is that I can't figure out any other way to get the vanilla clothing meshes to show up. I've not had much to do with NIF files before though, and that's probably why I can't figure out CT77's implementation.)