basic advice - mod setup recommendation and other questions

[gvman3670]

You could add 5000 mods to Mod Organizer. But you can only activate up to 255 .esm/.esp files. Texture and mesh replacers generally don't have master or plugin files so they don't count toward the engine's max.

 

You can use Wrye Bash to combine some mods of similar type. The newest version(s) of TES5Edit can merge them as well. Be sure to add them as executables inside of MO to use them, just as with any other executable files.

[RitualClarity]

You could add 5000 mods to Mod Organizer. But you can only activate up to 255 .esm/.esp files. Texture and mesh replacers generally don't have master or plugin files so they don't count toward the engine's max.

 

You can use Wrye Bash to combine some mods of similar type. The newest version(s) of TES5Edit can merge them as well. Be sure to add them as executables inside of MO to use them, just as with any other executable files.

 

lol.. now that I read my previous post.. I see I could have confused him.. Yes. best of all install all variations of mods create profiles and keep on creating and installing. Install 5000 mods  perhaps even more if you do run into the active esm limit then just unclick them. However keep in mind many mods do place stuff into your save and need to be properly removed. I generally have a few basic saves to start from that have no mods to use for this very purpose.

 

[Twycross448]

Understood (I hope).

 

But regardless of which failures I may (or not) blunder into in the future, let me thank all of you who contributed to this thread so far.

Thank you all for your inputs and insights. I really appreciate it.

 

4-4-8

[yatol]

You can use Wrye Bash to combine some mods of similar type. The newest version(s) of TES5Edit can merge them as well.

 

similar type? it's more complicated than that

 

 

-mods with a translation file, for exemple violenz

if you merge violenz with something, and you don't copy paste violenz.txt into nameofnewesp.txt, your mcm menu will be $this, $that...

 

-mods with scripts, for exemple citrus head

that esp is only a dozen line, but if you copy paste it into x.esp, it no longer work  (if you rename x.esp to citrus head.esp, it's back to life)

 

-when i copy paste some esp to the paarhurnax dilemna esp, some xxyyyy from the dialogs got replaced with 03yyyy for some reason

 

-i read somewhere there's a problem with cell or worldspace, don't know what is is

 

screens are better than blabla

 

 

an esp with ihud, smim, sdo, better snow, better town texture, sfo dragonborn, verdant copy paste into tamriel reload hd

some grass are missing here, if i load verdant after it

here's the result after copy pasting the merged esp into verdant esp (copy paste don't replace what is already there)

tamriel replace x with y, verdant replace x with z, you can't have both, you have to choose

 

 

[Twycross448]

Alright, I'm baaack.

 

This one is hopefully a pretty quick question:

 

I currently have 2 custom races installed (and working, safe for my issue). The "Children of the Sky" one and the "Drow Race (Unofficial Dawnguard Edition)".

 

My problem is that the Drow Custom Race incorrectly uses the custom body of the COTS mod instead of the normal body (CBBE HDT Bodylside 2 in my case) all the vanilla races and NPCs use.

Is there a way to tell the Drow race to use the normal body instead? (Likely involving the CK if I had to hazard a guess.)

 

(Load order loads COTS first, then the Drow, then the newest version of the RaceCompatibility patch [overriding the versions included with both custom races]).

 

 

Cheerio!

4-4-8

[RitualClarity]

Long shot not sure. however with MO.. "Yea MO".. (have to do that every once in a while for AwfulArchdemon ) Anyway with MO you can open the files and "hide" those files that you want that are in conflict with other files. So in this case it might be possible to try to hide the file that is conflicting with the other mod. Then you will only see those files you desire. Keep in mind that there is more to it than that. Some files might not look right just hiding as in a body there are many files besides the body that can be used. Anyway it is an avenue that you might want to try to explore however only someone that understands both of those mods should advise you further so that you know for sure it is the correct thing to do and what files to hide.

[gvman3670]

I'd suggest SkyKids over CoTS any day. Far more stable and way less buggy. Installs easier and comes with an armor patcher, too. The NPC child replacer that SpyderArachnid made is even better looking than the CoTS kids.

 

Inside of Mod Organizer/mods/(drow race probably) you should be able to copy and paste a skeleton, body mesh and textures in to use. If it gets borked somehow simply reinstall the mod you changed and it will be back to normal. I do this with races and followers all the time. MO even makes that a simple process (unless all the files are in .bsa format).

[Twycross448]

Thank you again for your input, folks.

 

@ritualclarity

 

That is exactly the point. The two shouldn't conflict in this way, since the Drow mod does not even have a custom body... the only files both have in common are the RacialCompatibility ones, which all get replaced by the separate, newer version anyways. RCOTS does have a custom body, but it is saved under a different folder than the usual body. (it is under ..\meshes\actor\character\oriental\x117\(fe)malebody_0.nif whereas the normal CBBE body the vanilla races and NPCs use (and the Drow custom race should also use) is found under ..\meshes\actor\character\characterassets\(fe)malebody_0.nif)

So why the Drow suddenly decide to use the RCOTS body... no idea, really.

 

 

@gvman

Thank you for the suggestion. Though I'll be frank. I think the SkyKids NPC replacer looks horrible in comparison to the RCOTS one. (Mind you, I am speaking only for me and my personal taste here. It is not my intention to lessen the efforts the authors of SkyKids have put into that mod.)

Still looks better than the nightmareinducing, horrendous gremlin/goblin hybrids Bethesda wanted to pass as children, though. ^_^" And regarding stability and bugginess ... since I haven't tried it, I cannot say wether or not you are right on that account, but I do acknowledge your opinion on it and will remember it.

 

Your other suggestion (copying mesh/skeleton/textures into the Drow Race mod), I will attempt tomorrow when I have the time. I'll get back to you if it worked or not.

 

 

EDIT:

 

I deactivated RCOTS and put in SkyKids instead for testing. While visually I like RCOTS way better, I can confirm that with SkyKids, the strange problem of the Drow Race using the kid bodies is gone.

Edited February 9, 2015 by Twycross448

[Twycross448]

Aaaalright. Me again. This time in relation to the Creation Kit. (Hopefully, this is an easy to answer question.)

 

So, for testing purposes, I decided to add a bit of "flair" to my house in Whiterun (Breezehome) by having a girl roasting over the fire (using assets form the ZaZAnimationPack).

 

I created the NPC, placed her, placed the zbfSpitRoast furniture item (replacing the spit already present), aligned both of them... but how on earth do I now tell the NPC to play the appropriate animation (zazapc302 or somthing like that) over and over and over? I would also need to make her not react to any input at all, as she is intended to be scenery only.

 

Any hints welcome.

 

4-4-8

[Aydoo]

You have to setup a custom AI package.

 

[Twycross448]

Phew. Okay. Thank you for the tip, Aydoo. And here I thought I could just assign an animation easily.... *laughs*

From what little I have seen so far of the CK, it is every bit as buggy and clunky as Vanilla Skyrim itself. *rolls eyes up*

 

Alright, guess that is the price I have to pay for letting myself get infected with the Skyrim Modding flu.

 

Btw. just to get this out there: I have a slight learning disability, so if I happen to ask question where every seasoned modder just facepalms or goes RTFM, rest  assured I do not do so to rile people up. It just happens to be easier for me to learn stuff when it is explained to me slowly, piece by piece.

[halieslade]

I'll chime in here mainly because I just went through 2 weeks of hell trying to get Skyrim to run stably.  With the help of a few folks here on LL, I finally succeeded and in the process learned a great deal about modding Skyrim (I still have an awful lot to learn).

 

The best place to start, I think, is Sacremas' "Skyrim Modding Guide"  He points you to Gopher's videos, which you've already discovered, but also offers a wealth of other experience that will help you to avoid some of the pitfalls of modding this game.

 

There's also a thread I began and which turned into kind of a travelogue of my own problems with modding the game - mostly self-inflicted.  Sacremas and a couple of others were big helps to get me going:   "I need to whine a little bit".

 

Most of the best advice boils down to going slow, testing each step of your mod plan as you go, and keeping backups.  MO lets you build profiles so you can go back to a prior working profile if you goof things up too much.  MO will also run other programs you'll need, like SKSE, FNIS and LOOT.  I have a couple of USB drives that are handy for backing up the large game files.

 

LOOT is important.  It comes with MO, and it will tell you if each mod it sorts has conflicts or dirty edits you need to look at.  (I use TES5Edit to fix those problems as outlined in Sacremas' thread above.) 

 

Be very wary of some of the mods you'll find out there.  It may say there are 10s of thousands, but most of those are either old and outdated or poorly written.  Or they'll conflict with other mods you're running.  That's why it's important to go just a couple of mods at a time, test and verify before installing more.  And if you install any texture replacers be sure to back up your texture folder in case the mod overwrites the vanilla files and you're faced with deleting/reinstalling key files.

 

Proceed carefully. Ask lots of questions.  This board is a great place to get answers.

 

[Twycross448]

Oh, believe me. Out of the roughly 340 Mods I have currently installed (about 180 of which have their own .esm/.esp), there is maybe 5-7 that do not have any conflicts at all according to TES5Edit.

Still, from what I could tell, Skyrim runs pretty stable at the moment. On Saturday, I played trough the main story line up to the point where you first go up to High Hrothgar. Before that, I visited all major cities/settlements to make sure most regions had at least loaded without crashing. And I played through the Dark Brottherhood and Thief Guild questlines. No problems so far with playing, so I daresay, for the moment at least, it is half-way stable.

 

I will certainly take a good look at the links you provided later. Thank you for that.

 

My current main gripe is with the CK, which is (to me) confusing, completely unintuitive and throws dozens of errors even of you only load Skyrim.esm and nothing else.... Sheesh. (And yes, I run all the programs, including the CK, though MO.) Hell, it does not recognize the scripts in the Mod folders, even when run through MO. You need to copy the scripts to the vanilla folder. Bad design. (Not a problem, since I have a clean backup archived just in case. Just saying.)

 

 

@Aydoo

I was now able to set the whole thing up more or less. Only two things remain now. First, I need to find a way to make the NPC not react to any outside input and the second one is a problem likely part of the ZaZ Animation Pack itself (when playing the spitted animation, the upper body flops around while the hips and lower body/legs/feet stay in the pose they are supposed to have), so I'll take a look over yonder.

 

But this was a big help. Although I admit that I did not understand the guy in the video much. I am not a native speaker and he spoke relatively fast and had an accent that was very hard for me to make out. But the clues were enough to point me the right way.

 

 

Anyways, my thanks to the both of you. I'll continue on my quest now. Cheers!

 

 

EDIT:

 

TL:DR

 

Problems I am having right now:

 

- adding a custom dog race to SexLab so the creature animations work with it

- making an NPC not react to any kind of input (basically turning the NPC into a static decoration)

- making the upper body of the NPC not flop about when using the ZaZAPC301 spitted animation

[Twycross448]

Okay, regarding the "adding a custom creature race to SexLab"....

 

 

I made a custom dog race ( "Husky448CompanionRace") based on the armored husky companion from Dawnguard ("DLC1HuskyArmoredCompanionRace"), and now seek to add it to SexLab...

 

I tried to add the custom race to the sslCreatureAnimationDefaults script file as suggested in a thread I found, then recompiled it (without error!) so the dog section of it read like this:

Dogs = new string[9]
Dogs[0] = "DogRace"
Dogs[1] = "DogCompanionRace"
Dogs[2] = "MG07DogRace"
Dogs[3] = "DA03BarbasDogRace"
Dogs[4] = "DLC1HuskyArmoredCompanionRace"
Dogs[5] = "DLC1HuskyArmoredRace"
Dogs[6] = "DLC1HuskyBareCompanionRace"
Dogs[7] = "DLC1HuskyBareRace"
Dogs[8] = "Husky448CompanionRace"

But in game, it still does not work. All "normal" dogs, including the Dawnguard ones, work okay, but the custom one does not and still gives the error that it is not recognized by SexLab. So it seems this way of adding a custom race is no longer viable (or I made a mistake).

 

 

In another (somehwat newer) thread, Ashal (sp?) gave the following code snippet:

int i = SexLab.CreatureAnimations.Length
while i
    i -= 1
    sslBaseAnimation Animation = SexLab.CreatureAnimations[i]
    if Animation.HasRaceID("WolfRace")
        Animation.AddRaceID("MyCustomWolfRaceID")
    endIf
endWhile

Problem for me is I have no freaking clue what to do with that piece of code. (Scripts and me is like asking a squirrel to perform successful brain surgery... )

 

Could anybody in the know deign to give me a helpful hand here, please?

 

4-4-8

 

[Aydoo]

 

Okay, regarding the "adding a custom creature race to SexLab"....

 

 

I made a custom dog race ( "Husky448CompanionRace") based on the armored husky companion from Dawnguard ("DLC1HuskyArmoredCompanionRace"), and now seek to add it to SexLab...

 

I tried to add the custom race to the sslCreatureAnimationDefaults script file as suggested in a thread I found, then recompiled it (without error!) so the dog section of it read like this:

Dogs = new string[9]
Dogs[0] = "DogRace"
Dogs[1] = "DogCompanionRace"
Dogs[2] = "MG07DogRace"
Dogs[3] = "DA03BarbasDogRace"
Dogs[4] = "DLC1HuskyArmoredCompanionRace"
Dogs[5] = "DLC1HuskyArmoredRace"
Dogs[6] = "DLC1HuskyBareCompanionRace"
Dogs[7] = "DLC1HuskyBareRace"
Dogs[8] = "Husky448CompanionRace"

But in game, it still does not work. All "normal" dogs, including the Dawnguard ones, work okay, but the custom one does not and still gives the error that it is not recognized by SexLab. So it seems this way of adding a custom race is no longer viable (or I made a mistake).

 

 

In another (somehwat newer) thread, Ashal (sp?) gave the following code snippet:

int i = SexLab.CreatureAnimations.Length
while i
    i -= 1
    sslBaseAnimation Animation = SexLab.CreatureAnimations[i]
    if Animation.HasRaceID("WolfRace")
        Animation.AddRaceID("MyCustomWolfRaceID")
    endIf
endWhile

Problem for me is I have no freaking clue what to do with that piece of code. (Scripts and me is like asking a squirrel to perform successful brain surgery... )

 

Could anybody in the know deign to give me a helpful hand here, please?

 

4-4-8

 

 

I would go and start reading the CK wiki tbh. This is your best start. It has information on just about everything you need to know. I'd also start googling tutorials on CK basics (and on youtube..) as well as basics of the game's programming language Papyrus, which you can find some basic primers here  Before you try doing anything with scripts you need to understand what each part of the script does, why they have to be written certain ways, and what the calls are trying to do.

 

I don't use Sexlab or any of its derivatives so I won't be able to help you any there.

[Twycross448]

Well, if I had a choice, I wouldn't touch anything script related with a 100 foot pole.

To think that all I want is to make SL recognize a custom dog race... too bad SL is not set up in such a way that it can automatically recognize the presence of certain keywords attached to an actor in the CK. Would make life a lot easier for those like me with scriptphobia.

 

Btw. on a similar topic:

is it me that the Dawnguard dlc1HuskyBareCompanionRace is invisible or is that actually correct? The "normal" unarmored huskies show up normally, as do both variations of the armored version, but the unarmored companion husky is always invisible when I try to place it.

[Twycross448]

If I have set up a conversation where the player asks something and the NPC has 5 possible answers it can choose from, all flagged as random, is there a way to make 2 of the 5 more common than the other 3, which should be rarer?