Prettier Bandits

[karlpaws]

1 hour ago, EinarrTheRed said:

I've also thought about doing a unique and prettier version of Eisa Blackthorn, encountered just outside Forelhost.

I think you meant Frostmere Crypt, but yeah she'd be a good candidate.  There are mods that make her a follower or otherwise enhance her (I think normally just vanishes when she leaves instead of going to Moorside.. or at least she can?)

 

She could be an interesting linchpin in the eventual SBC quest, depending on how it goes.  There is a wide open "What happened?" loose thread related to her, Ra'jirr and maybe some others trying to revolt in White River Watch and getting kicked out.  Could be tied to taking captives and she and the others were just ok with killing those that fight back (cause now its self defense) but raping and mind-raping are just going too far. Although the bandits that are left behind are also getting ready to revolt when you sneak in, so maybe the leader's just an encouraging kind of guy.  Or maybe Skyrim bandits are blind hating bigots.  Who knows.

 

Have you done Salonia? The wife of the couple in the endless attempt to get to Solitude? Being a random encounter and entirely disabled by some mods (at least I haven't seen it in a while, which makes me sad), it might not mean much to some but she'd be another candidate.   There is also the "escaped captive" that points you to Mistwatch but she might use a standard bandit look even while just wearing rags so you might not have to.

[EinarrTheRed]

Correct, Frostmere... you may sort me out yet!  LOL

 

Salonia could be done, and so can the escapee from Mistwatch, she's actually already a unique NPC so that would be an easy one.

[interfaz]

I love this mod but i can't use it  . The problem is when i use this mod, all of the Nord race members in the game stop melee attack like they forgot how to melee attack... They are just getting close to their opponents, draw their swords and then nothing happens.

[EinarrTheRed]

Not sure what would be causing that.  Prettier Bandits does not alter the combat AI nor the animations in any way.  It sounds like you've got another mod that is altering the Nord race itself.  The only alteration I made to the Nord race file was to add in the new hair colors as option (which technically I could remove because once I've baked them into the actor file and facegen the change to the race file is no longer needed, I plan to remove that in future versions).

[karlpaws]

7 hours ago, interfaz said:

I love this mod but i can't use it  . The problem is when i use this mod, all of the Nord race members in the game stop melee attack like they forgot how to melee attack... They are just getting close to their opponents, draw their swords and then nothing happens.

I've had something similar happen recently though I had not noticed it was only nords. I've been using the mod for a long time, and thought it was due to the Animated Armory mod I tried out recently but the problem has continued even after I went back to my prior save.

[EinarrTheRed]

I'll look into it though right now for the life of me I can't think how PB could be causing it.  It sounds as if they are missing the attack animations, as if somehow something had removed them for the Nord race.  I can't imagine how PB could be the cause of that because the mod has never made any alteration to any animations, list of animations, etc.  Just isn't part of the mod.

 

For this to affect every Nord, rather than just specific NPCs it would have to be some root level change to the Nord race.  So looking at the Nord race file in CK the only changes I made to there were on the Face Data tab by adding in the new hair colors.  That is the only global change PB makes to any of the races and it makes that change to all the player races (except Argonians and Khajiit).  That change could be safely removed in TES edit as its only needed to add those colors to the individual actors when I'm creating the new appearance, once its baked into the facegen data, the race change is no longer necessary (this is something I plan to do in future releases).

 

The Combat and Attack Data change are unaltered.

 

There's nothing else in the mod that makes a global change to any of the races.  Since I make that same change to Bretons, Imperials, Redguard, and the elves as well, I'm puzzled as to why would only Nords be affected?

 

Beyond that every other change PB makes to the NPCs is contained in the individual actor files, which means Nords not altered by PB shouldn't be affected IF PB were the cause.

 

I'm more than a bit baffled as to where to begin looking.  Especially since I'm only seeing two reports of this now and the last update was in November of 2019 and nothing has changed in the mod since then.

 

The more info you guys can provide the better the odds of tracking this down.

[karlpaws]

Well I noticed that even though I went back to an older save, that never had the animated armory mod installed, had run FNIS after removing the mod (at least I really think I did because I'd also installed Billyy's update) the block anims that the mod added are still present.

 

So either something got baked in somehow wierd or I did something else wrong.

 

Possibly that's what's going on for someone else.

[EinarrTheRed]

52 minutes ago, karlpaws said:

Well I noticed that even though I went back to an older save, that never had the animated armory mod installed, had run FNIS after removing the mod (at least I really think I did because I'd also installed Billyy's update) the block anims that the mod added are still present.

 

So either something got baked in somehow wierd or I did something else wrong.

 

Possibly that's what's going on for someone else.

Could be, certainly sounds like something isn't going right with that mod.  I have not seen the bug described and just went back and did some testing today, all NPCs have all their combat animations in my game.  But I don't use any mods that modify combat animations.

 

Also, I'd point out that if you had previous versions of PB installed and didn't see this issue, then there's no reason for it to appear now, especially since the mod hasn't changed since Nov of 2019.

 

But on the off chance that maybe some other mod is adding animations in a way that depends on edits to the race records, here is a version of PB with those race records cleaned out.  You guys can try that and see if it fixes anything.  It will not otherwise affect your game because as I mentioned above, the race record changes were only needed to add the hair colors as options I could select when creating the NPCs.  Once the updated appearance was created and baked into the facegen data, its no longer necessary.

 

Prettier Bandits.esp

 

[Dididort]

8 hours ago, EinarrTheRed said:

Could be, certainly sounds like something isn't going right with that mod.  I have not seen the bug described and just went back and did some testing today, all NPCs have all their combat animations in my game.  But I don't use any mods that modify combat animations.

 

Also, I'd point out that if you had previous versions of PB installed and didn't see this issue, then there's no reason for it to appear now, especially since the mod hasn't changed since Nov of 2019.

 

But on the off chance that maybe some other mod is adding animations in a way that depends on edits to the race records, here is a version of PB with those race records cleaned out.  You guys can try that and see if it fixes anything.  It will not otherwise affect your game because as I mentioned above, the race record changes were only needed to add the hair colors as options I could select when creating the NPCs.  Once the updated appearance was created and baked into the facegen data, its no longer necessary.

 

Prettier Bandits.esp 775.38 kB · 1 download

 

Was having a similar issue with combat AI and weapon/shield bashing. This fixed it. Thanks!

[EinarrTheRed]

19 minutes ago, Dididort said:

Was having a similar issue with combat AI and weapon/shield bashing. This fixed it. Thanks!

Really?  I'm genuinely happy it did but also pretty surprised.

 

Could you guys do me a favor and let me know what mods it was conflicting with?  I'd like to look into this a bit further, has me quite curious now.

[karlpaws]

On 2/7/2020 at 12:30 AM, EinarrTheRed said:

Really?  I'm genuinely happy it did but also pretty surprised.

 

Could you guys do me a favor and let me know what mods it was conflicting with?  I'd like to look into this a bit further, has me quite curious now.

 

Since I'd just rebuilt my load order and was trying some new things I was kinda worried that the issue showed up again.

 

I opened my whole list in TES Edit and  took a look at the race stuff in the version I had.  No conflicts, which surprised me a little.  I thought at least Unbound would have something.  It was missing some attack data values so I copied them over from the Unofficial patch (or the Update patch, I forget which exactly) and nords attacked me again.  I got a lot more non nords showing up so I'll have to see what happens over the next few days as I test a few other things.

 

I wonder if something got tweaked (either when I was doing things, though I don't remember doing anything with the racials)  or if something got moved when you started the work on the Vigilants?  I would also question the racial edit, but that's the only think I can think might have happened... or at least when.

[CrazySloth]

Anyone has a Requiem patch for this mod? Apparently it edits the stats of the vanilla races and Requiem doesn't like that

[karlpaws]

2 hours ago, Astral Wanker said:

Anyone has a Requiem patch for this mod? Apparently it edits the stats of the vanilla races and Requiem doesn't like that

You could try the edited ESP he posted a couple comments up.

[EinarrTheRed]

^^ What Karl said.  I'll be updating the front page with the patch soonish, was looking at a couple of other small things before I did so.  The above patch removes the edits to the races entirely as they were an unnecessary and left over from the mod creation process.  If that clears up the issue with Requiem, please let me know.  I'm trying to keep track of all these issues and whether they've been resolved or not.

[Psalam]

I've just started using this version of the mod in a new game. Unfortunately, I'm having significant issues with the "dark face bug." All my Thalmor have it. A Redguard bandit has it. However, the Dunmer necromancer I enslaved does not. It is the lowest mod in my load order that changes the look of ANY NPC. Any ideas?

[EinarrTheRed]

7 hours ago, Psalam said:

I've just started using this version of the mod in a new game. Unfortunately, I'm having significant issues with the "dark face bug." All my Thalmor have it. A Redguard bandit has it. However, the Dunmer necromancer I enslaved does not. It is the lowest mod in my load order that changes the look of ANY NPC. Any ideas?

Not sure.  Three possibilities come to mind.

 

First is that maybe the game just isn't reading the data in the bsa.  I've heard that can sometimes happen, glitch in the TES engine but I don't know much about it.

 

Second is that somehow all that data is just missing, I'll double check tonight but it should be in the BSA  (facegen doesn't have handy file names, just numbers so manually checking and matching specific files up is a bit of a pain).

 

Third is that you have some loose data that is overriding the BSA.  Any loose facegen data for those NPCs from any other mod would override the BSA regardless of load order (and you shouldn't need to put PB at the end of your load order, it should be fine higher up).  Because of the lack of easy to read file names on the face gen, that stuff can be really hard to track down.  But couple things you can check, look in your Meshes > Actor > Character > FaceGenData > FaceGeom > Prettier Bandis.esp folder, that folder should either be empty or not exist, we used to have that when all the facedata was loose but the bsa makes that folder obsolete.  Same in your Textures > Actors > Character > FaceGenData > FaceTint > Prettier Bandits.esp   That folder should be empty or not exist (you can safely delete both folders).  If that clears up some or most of your problem then that was it.  The harder part will be tracking down the NPC data in the Skyrim.esm folders because some of the PB data resides there as well (because its facegen data for the NPCs originally from Skyrim.esm that got their appearance updated, keeping track of all this stuff on my end is just sooooo much fun ?).

 

That's about all that I can think to suggest for now.  I'll look through the BSA and double check things.   The change in the esp should not be causing the issue, its essentially the same esp and all the NPCs are unchanged from before.  The only difference is I removed the race file info which was only still in there as a left over from the hoops you have to jump through to add custom hair colors to the NPCs when creating them (its only needed then and serves no function after the NPC is made).  At worst you'd have NPCs with default brown hair (Skyrim defaults to med brown hair if the actual hair color is missing) but it still wouldn't affect the face textures (facegen).

[Psalam]

10 hours ago, EinarrTheRed said:

Not sure.  Three possibilities come to mind.

 

First is that maybe the game just isn't reading the data in the bsa.  I've heard that can sometimes happen, glitch in the TES engine but I don't know much about it.

 

Second is that somehow all that data is just missing, I'll double check tonight but it should be in the BSA  (facegen doesn't have handy file names, just numbers so manually checking and matching specific files up is a bit of a pain).

 

Third is that you have some loose data that is overriding the BSA.  Any loose facegen data for those NPCs from any other mod would override the BSA regardless of load order (and you shouldn't need to put PB at the end of your load order, it should be fine higher up).  Because of the lack of easy to read file names on the face gen, that stuff can be really hard to track down.  But couple things you can check, look in your Meshes > Actor > Character > FaceGenData > FaceGeom > Prettier Bandis.esp folder, that folder should either be empty or not exist, we used to have that when all the facedata was loose but the bsa makes that folder obsolete.  Same in your Textures > Actors > Character > FaceGenData > FaceTint > Prettier Bandits.esp   That folder should be empty or not exist (you can safely delete both folders).  If that clears up some or most of your problem then that was it.  The harder part will be tracking down the NPC data in the Skyrim.esm folders because some of the PB data resides there as well (because its facegen data for the NPCs originally from Skyrim.esm that got their appearance updated, keeping track of all this stuff on my end is just sooooo much fun ?).

 

That's about all that I can think to suggest for now.  I'll look through the BSA and double check things.   The change in the esp should not be causing the issue, its essentially the same esp and all the NPCs are unchanged from before.  The only difference is I removed the race file info which was only still in there as a left over from the hoops you have to jump through to add custom hair colors to the NPCs when creating them (its only needed then and serves no function after the NPC is made).  At worst you'd have NPCs with default brown hair (Skyrim defaults to med brown hair if the actual hair color is missing) but it still wouldn't affect the face textures (facegen).

The folders you mentioned do not exist in my game. Hair appears to be fine even in the ones with "dark face bug" (I hate that term since, for instance, the Redguard has a lighter face than body).

[EinarrTheRed]

Okay if its a Thalmor added by PB and not just one updated from the original group, then there shouldn't be anything overwriting that (shouldn't even be possible).  So that leaves two possibilities, either somehow the data didn't get packed in or else for some reason your mod isn't reading the data from the BSA for any of the Thalmor.

 

Since you tested this in the past and didn't have this issue, my best guess is for some reason its not reading the data from the BSA.  I'll zip up the loose files in a bit and send you a link.

 

It's puzzling because the Thalmor haven't had any further changes for a very long time, curious.

[Psalam]

22 minutes ago, EinarrTheRed said:

Okay if its a Thalmor added by PB and not just one updated from the original group, then there shouldn't be anything overwriting that (shouldn't even be possible).  So that leaves two possibilities, either somehow the data didn't get packed in or else for some reason your mod isn't reading the data from the BSA for any of the Thalmor.

 

Since you tested this in the past and didn't have this issue, my best guess is for some reason its not reading the data from the BSA.  I'll zip up the loose files in a bit and send you a link.

 

It's puzzling because the Thalmor haven't had any further changes for a very long time, curious.

I'd appreciate that because I generally like this mod (and for that matter your other mods as well).

[EinarrTheRed]

Okay, here's the same mod in loose form as a 7zip file (ironically loose its about 35% the size of the same mod in BSA format).

 

Its all the same files I built the BSA from so if dropping this in solves it then we know it was your game just not reading all the data from the BSA.  If that's the case I don't know what to tell you, I've heard of that happening but never had it happen to me.  I don't know what causes it other than "ask Bethesda". ?

 

Prettier Bandits v9.1 (loose) MEGA

 

 

[EinarrTheRed]

@Psalam  Did that fix the issue?

[Psalam]

4 hours ago, EinarrTheRed said:

@Psalam  Did that fix the issue?

Sadly, no. It's not enough to make me pull my hair out so I don't intend to pursue it any more at the moment. They are primarily there to be used in AYGAS (and HSH). As my game develops I tend to keep the named NPCs and I have no issue with those.

[EinarrTheRed]

Okay then I'm pretty puzzled, the face gen for the Thalmor is there and for some reason your game isn't finding it.  Only thing I can think at this point is maybe its a glitch with MO and however it organizes stuff.  I had thought maybe you were just getting that bug where sometimes the TES engine decides not to read part of a BSA, which I don't fully understand why that happens either and I've only read about it (its never happened to me).  If that had been the case the loose files should have fixed the problem.  So this is something else.

 

The Thalmor haven't been updated from any of the past versions or beta testing you've done, so I guess if you wanted to track it down, what have you changed recently?  Other than that I don't know what to suggest.

 

You could try just re-exporting the Thalmor yourself and see what effect that has.

[Psalam]

16 minutes ago, EinarrTheRed said:

Okay then I'm pretty puzzled, the face gen for the Thalmor is there and for some reason your game isn't finding it.  Only thing I can think at this point is maybe its a glitch with MO and however it organizes stuff.  I had thought maybe you were just getting that bug where sometimes the TES engine decides not to read part of a BSA, which I don't fully understand why that happens either and I've only read about it (its never happened to me).  If that had been the case the loose files should have fixed the problem.  So this is something else.

 

The Thalmor haven't been updated from any of the past versions or beta testing you've done, so I guess if you wanted to track it down, what have you changed recently?  Other than that I don't know what to suggest.

 

You could try just re-exporting the Thalmor yourself and see what effect that has.

I don't use MO. I use NMM.

 

I don't know how to export the facegen on unnamed NPCs. If you would be kind enough to tell me where to find their names I am more than happy to hit Ctrl+F4.

[Psalam]

I need to do some more looking into this, but let me tell you the story.

 

I started a new game with ASLAL as a Thalmor justiciar at the Thalmor embassy. All the Thalmor there (except Elenwen) had the dark face bug. Earlier today I ran across a party of Thalmor justiciars leading a captive and they were perfect (as was their captive). I also saw a pair of Vigilants in their shiny new steel armor who looked fine. I am not sure that the NPCs I've seen are not part of the vanilla game/some other mod since the ones I can definitively attribute to Prettier Bandits all appear great.

 

So, I apologize.