Guide on how to port mods over to SSE

[Silvist]

Heyo everyone,

 

Seeing as the SSE section of LL isn't up yet, I figured I'd throw this out in the mean time.  Someone was kind enough to share this guide in another modding community I'm part of, so shout out to WoodsDweller for sharing!

 

The guide is from Arthmoor himself, so its pretty extensive.  Take a look at it here:

 

http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/4633-skyrim-se-things-to-know-when-converting-standard-mods-to-sse/

 

I'll quote it here:

 

 

 

 

With Skyrim Special Edition on the horizon, and with the go ahead given to be able to discuss modding technicalities finally given, it's time to throw up a quick list of things I've noted need to be done in order to get an existing mod from 32 bit Skyrim to work on Special Edition.

 
BSA Files
 
If your mod uses a BSA file (and pretty much any decent one ought to be if it has assets to provide), you can't simply use that file with SSE. The game will either hang or crash at the opening menu. Fortunately all you need to do in this case is unpack your existing BSA file somewhere and then use the new archive tool that comes with the new CK to repackage it. The reason for this is that they've changed the header structures and compression methods.
 
Animations
 
Animation files for 32 bit will not work out of the box. Depending on what they are, you may end up with NPCs or the player stuck in a default pose unable to move, or perhaps even being unable to move the camera at all. Fortunately Bethesda has supplied a tool with the new CK that will allow you to update your .hkx files to the new format. This is presumed necessary due to Havok being upgraded to 64 bits.
 
Water and Flow Data
 
There are numerous instances throughout the game that have been updated to take advantage of the new water flow mechanics that were introduced. So far as I can see, every river has had the flow type changed and new drop in icons have been placed to indicate the direction the water should go. In some cases the type of water has also been changed. Mods which edit cells with water in them will need to update this data or they're going to cause noticeable patches of rivers, lakes, and even the ocean that don't look right or flow properly with the surrounding cells. Yes, Bethesda themselves forgot to account for this in their DLCs too so guess who's going to have to fix that now 
 
New Ground Clutter
 
If you've been watching any of the new footage that's all over Youtube you're either already aware of this or are wondering if it might be true. It is. There's TONS of new ground clutter objects all over the place. Mostly plants and shrubs, but some occasional rocks and other small things as well. Mods which edit populated areas will need to be mindful of this when updating so that the new plants can be accounted for. All of this was added to Update.esm so if you're not already using it as a master, you need to be, so that you can move these new objects out of the way of your stuff to avoid ugly clipping. It also appears some landscaping may have been done too.
 
Scripts
 
Nothing new here, but I'm mentioning it because there are rumors afoot that they will break. They won't. Your scripts can be copied over as-is with no modification. Absolutely no changes to any of Skyrim's 13000+ scripts were made beyond many of the DLC ones getting recompiled with their debug statements commented out. Which the source code had already but the .pex files did not.

Meshes

Meshes for SSE may need to be updated. There have been some changes which the Nifskope guys are better equipped to explain but the updated format for them lies somewhere between what 32 bit Skyrim offers and what Fallout 4 offers. So far as I've been able to tell, all of the ones my mods have work, and USLEEP's fixed ones aside from one troublesome Horker work too. There's some possibility that old meshes may be a slight performance drag but it may not be enough to matter in the end.

Textures

The only significant thing that's changed here is that SSE is no longer supporting .tga based textures. If your mods happen to be using those for some reason, they need to be switched over to using .dds textures instead.

ESP Files + NPC Facegen

ESP files need to be loaded into the new CK and saved out to be sure they're updated correctly. If your mod includes edits to NPCs or new NPCs entirely, you absolutely MUST do this. Failure to do so will result in your NPCs having heads which are entirely black - not just the usual issues with the familiar grey-face. The CK will automatically update any needed facegen data in your mod, and it may generate some for you that you didn't know you needed. When it does, don't include the .tga files it still generated because the game will ignore them entirely.

Records Updated by the new Update.esm

All of the game's grass records (GRAS) have been updated to push higher grass density.

Most of the game's Image Space Adapters (IMAD) have been updated with new alpha and blur values.

Most of the game's Image Spaces (IMGS) relating to weather have been updated with new HDR values.

A few Landscape Textures (LTEX) picked up an unknown INAM value, along with a couple having specular values modified.

Many snow and ice related statics (STAT) have been updated with new texture sets and material shader settings.

5 new landscape texture sets were added. Referenced by many of the other edits.

The entirely new Volumetric Lighting group (VOLI) was added. These are used in weather records.

Pretty much every typ of water (WATR) was updated for the new water shaders.

The vast majority of the game's weather types (WTHR) have been updated to include the Volumetric Lighting information.

Record changes in Skyrim.esm

Yep, there are apparently also some stealth patches embedded in Skyrim.esm too.

Several book records have been corrected and will now show up as ITMs if checked against USLEEP, which hasn't been exposed to the new CK. USSEP, which has, had several additional records improperly reverted back to vanilla despite those being wrong.

 

 

 

 

Hope this helps answer some questions regarding modding SSE.  I take no credit for this find, figured the community could use the info.

[Guest]

This post (thanks for it) will be moved to the new section we are creating for SSE.

But because it is just a re-post of another post on a different website, probably it will go in Oblivion (not the game, the real meaning.)

 

[RitualClarity]

I personally appreciate the useful info and link to the original source. I don't thing it should go to oblivion as it is still a good source for us to point to. (this thread for this site ) let the members look at what is here and if they wish.. they then can jump over to the source to ask questions or get updates as needed.

[darkfender666]

Does this mean all mods wll have to be fixed ?

Wewill lose so many ....

[SamTT]

Does this mean all mods wll have to be fixed ?

Wewill lose so many ....

 

For now you will. Texture mods will still work. All what is using SKSE is maybe abit tricky atm.

[Guest]

OK.

 

Topic derailed.

 

Please use: Skyrim 64bit Special Edition Information thread.