Starfield quest modding observations, questions, hints

[zaira]

I want to collect some impressions I got during Starfield modding:

• Adding Voices and Soundeffects are a pain now, need a proprietary tool with a restrictive license (200 audio files maximum)
• Lib Sync is not possible for now
• The coordinate system of Papyrus has changed - the Units are different, functions like MoveTo requires different values, hard to figure out without documentation
• There are some really strong helper functions like Actor.MoveNear() - but they don't seem to work yet
• Offset Animations are replaced by "AnimationFlavours" - and they are far more stable now. Example: slave.ChangeAnimFlavor(AnimFlavorHandCuffed)
• Working on Scene board is far better then in Skyrim - you can change quest stages or run scenes without Scripting now
• If you document your quest stages you can see this in the stage dropdown menus of Actions and Scenes - and the stage transitions are visible on the Scene board - yeah!
• Console is much more powerful and allows a kind of macro scripting see the Hotkey section of https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/36543-enslaved/
• Console allows calling Papyrus functions - eg. StarfieldConsole.ini :

  [Macros]
  kneel=cgf "enslaved_pose_manager.toggle_pose" "kneel1"
  [Hotkeys]
  NUMPAD0=kneel

  - together with Hotkeys this is a strong opportunity to add additional Game mechanics to the Game.
• Start Scene action - you can start new scenes based on conditions right on the story board - this reduces, again, the amount of required Papyrus code a lot and makes Quest design much more fun.

Edited September 20, 2024 by zaira

[ag12]

Generally, everything around scenes and Quest Alias system is much better.

Also, I don't know if you came straight from Skyrim or if you did the Fallout 4 detour, but just in case you're onboarding from the old-old CK from Skyrim: if you need to control multiple actors with same behavior, there are Ref Collection Alias in the Alias tab. They work just like normal Alias' but you can put infinite amount of actors in and they all get the packages, etc.

 

Some other fancy stuff, too, but that was a huge feature for F4 and it helps me so much I figure I mention it whenever I can, lol.

[Djlegends]

5 hours ago, zaira said:

I want to collect some impressions I got during Starfield modding:

• Adding Voices and Soundeffects are a pain now, need a proprietary tool with a restrictive license (200 audio files maximum)
• Lib Sync is not possible for now
• The coordinate system of Papyrus has changed - the Units are different, functions like MoveTo requires different values, hard to figure out without documentation
• There are some really strong helper functions like Actor.MoveNear() - but they don't seem to work yet
• Offset Animations are replaced by "AnimationFlavours" - and they are far more stable now. Example: slave.ChangeAnimFlavor(AnimFlavorHandCuffed)
• Working on Scene board is far better then in Skyrim - you can change quest stages or run scenes without Scripting now
• If you document your quest stages you can see this in the stage dropdown menus of Actions and Scenes - and the stage transitions are visible on the Scene board - yeah!
• Console is much more powerful and allows a kind of macro scripting see the Hotkey section of https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/36543-enslaved/

1st one you can grab a free license for 10 years so don't have to worry about the cap limit

[Djlegends]

video here btw

 

[zaira]

19 hours ago, Djlegends said:

1st one you can grab a free license for 10 years so don't have to worry about the cap limit

I am wondering if they care about the content I plan to produce....

[Djlegends]

6 hours ago, zaira said:

I am wondering if they care about the content I plan to produce....

doesn't matter just be ambiguous lol

[zaira]

3 hours ago, Djlegends said:

doesn't matter just be ambiguous lol

if I see how this application is realized - with an own launcher, with online resources - I expect that there is a data flow to the company...

They usually call this "Telemetry" but actually they can see what you are doing - there is no commitment to DSVGO or similar policies for this tool.

Edited September 20, 2024 by zaira

[Djlegends]

9 minutes ago, zaira said:

if I see how this application is realized - with an own launcher, with online resources - I expect that there is a data flow to the company...

They usually call this "Telemetry" but actually they can see what you are doing - there is no commitment to DSVGO or similar policies for this tool.

should be fine even with your work plus you can always read their TOS to see whats allowed

[zaira]

On 9/19/2024 at 4:38 AM, ag12 said:

I don't know if you came straight from Skyrim

Since I didn't like the mad-max / comic style of FO4 I never touched CK for FO4...

[zaira]

It seems that the wem audio conversion initegrated in CK is not affected by the100 soundfiles limit

[Djlegends]

6 hours ago, zaira said:

It seems that the wem audio conversion initegrated in CK is not affected by the100 soundfiles limit

that would kill of the modding scene if it happened lol

[zaira]

One of the major problems are the distance measurements in travel or escort packages that are still based on beeline distance rather then on navmesh distances. This was not noticeable in Skyrim, as the cells were organized in such a way that Z-level overlaps rarely occurred. In Starfield, however, this is the standard case, so the clean calculation of distances is a serious problem.

 

I try to let an NPC escort the player on the ship to it's brig - almost impossible because the NPC "reaches" the brig on a different deck.

 

On ships I have to organize travelling via intermediate markers - but even this is unreliable.

Edited September 21, 2024 by zaira

[zaira]

A new cool feature is the distance measurement in the cell editor - you can right click on a reference to start distance measurement. This way I noticed that Bethesda changed the display units completely. In Skyrim I placed an actor with an offset of 80 to have him in dialog distance. In Starfield I have to use a distance of 1 or less than 1.

Edited September 21, 2024 by zaira

[Snapdragon_]

18 minutes ago, zaira said:

A new cool feature is the distance measurement in the cell editor - you can right click on a reference to start distance measurement. This way I noticed that Bethesda changed the display units completely. In Skyrim I placed an actor with an offset of 80 to have him in dialog distance. In Starfield I have to use a distance of 1 or less than 1.

 

Yeah, the unit scale in Starfield is approximately 1/100th of Fallout 4.

In FO4, a human was around 100 units tall, whereas in Starfield they are around 1 unit tall.

 

The scale difference is most apparent when loading a Starfield human & Fallout 4 human into the same Blender scene.

Edited September 21, 2024 by Snapdragon_

[Djlegends]

11 hours ago, Snapdragon_ said:

 

Yeah, the unit scale in Starfield is approximately 1/100th of Fallout 4.

In FO4, a human was around 100 units tall, whereas in Starfield they are around 1 unit tall.

 

The scale difference is most apparent when loading a Starfield human & Fallout 4 human into the same Blender scene.

from the CK Wiki

 

Distance Measures

• When measuring distances between objects in the Render Window, distance is now measured in meters.

[Djlegends]

btw you can use this for converting Units to M with Starfield
https://ck.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=Unit&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop

 

also heres the formula to convert use ChatGPT for approx results

m= WU/69.99125119 and WU = M * 69.99125119

[Djlegends]

wait nvm heres a better conversion

for SSE/FO4 to SF Units M = WU/70 

for SF to SSS/FO4 Units WU = M * 70

[zaira]

One thing isn't that clear for me - we have esp, esl and now light, medium and "normal" master.

 

XEdit is only capable to modify "normal" masters, CK is only capable to modify esp.

So if I convert my mod into a master I can use xedit to remove dirty edits but I cant continue modding with the cleaned file - XEdit refuses to save my mod when I reset it to esp.

Now I built https://github.com/Perchik71/Creation-Kit-Platform-Extended for Starfield because this CK Extension allows to edit masters but this extension doesn't work.

How can I clean dirty edits without cleaning it again manually before each release?

Edited September 22, 2024 by zaira

[Djlegends]

4 hours ago, zaira said:

One thing isn't that clear for me - we have esp, esl and now light, medium and "normal" master.

 

XEdit is only capable to modify "normal" masters, CK is only capable to modify esp.

So if I convert my mod into a master I can use xedit to remove dirty edits but I cant continue modding with the cleaned file - XEdit refuses to save my mod when I reset it to esp.

Now I built https://github.com/Perchik71/Creation-Kit-Platform-Extended for Starfield because this CK Extension allows to edit masters but this extension doesn't work.

How can I clean dirty edits without cleaning it again manually before each release?

you can clead dirty edits with Creation Kit we had this ability since Oblivion lmfao

[zaira]

18 minutes ago, Djlegends said:

you can clead dirty edits with Creation Kit we had this ability since Oblivion lmfao

how?

[Djlegends]

57 minutes ago, zaira said:

how?

when you open to select your plugins there's a button at the bottom called details
make sure you have your plugin marked as active before clicking it
it will then show all the records that is located in your plugin
you will then need to press the Del key to delete your dirty edits and click the yes confirmation
then load your plugin and save the plugin so it will delete your changes

[Djlegends]

use with xedit so you can see which plugins are ITMs

[zaira]

Oh. I obviously never clicked on this button 😆.

Anyway, yes I can see the records there without details, so I don't know what I am deleting.

[Djlegends]

57 minutes ago, zaira said:

Oh. I obviously never clicked on this button 😆.

Anyway, yes I can see the records there without details, so I don't know what I am deleting.

hence why you use Xedit so with it

[zaira]

I observed that the crowd NPCs are a different race - they cannot be stripped for sex scenes even if I allow the naked skin armor to be equipped by crowd race - the naked skin becomes invisible on crowd NPCs.

And if I change the race skin data so it is similar to the human skin race, the skin still remains invisible. There is something special that prevents rendering the skin.

Since these NPCs are spawn from leveled lists and there are no information in ActorBase like actual skin - I cant fake stripping by creating a human race clone.

 

The actual appearance of crowd NPCs is build by armor.

 

Edited September 22, 2024 by zaira