Skyrim Modding: Just Spent 10 Hours Modding, Time to Play

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Skyrim Modding: Just Spent 10 Hours Modding, Time to Play

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counterfeitsaint: Feb 26, 2010; I'm a girl, and you're
gnomes, and it's like
what? Yikes.

Guys, he can PM you a pic of what he's talking about if so desired.

# ? Sep 13, 2015 18:13

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 13:30

Ms Adequate: Oct 30, 2011; Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling

boho posted:

Is anyone here familiar with Stevierage's 7B vagina?

Is anyone not?

# ? Sep 13, 2015 18:27

Surprise Giraffe: Apr 30, 2007; 1 Lunar Road
Moon crater
The Moon

Spent a day downloading textures and got SMC working. Seems pretty good! Might be worth replacing Texture Combiner in the OP with a link to SMC

# ? Sep 13, 2015 20:25

Agents are GO!: Dec 29, 2004

Nerd Of Prey posted:

A while ago I talked about doing a visual overhaul of the dreaded Soul Cairn to make it more interesting and hopefully easier to navigate. I've started the work now, and it's kind of hilarious how trying to mod that place is just as depressing and frustrating as questing there. The CK keeps glitching out and turning half the scenery invisible so it's hard to figure out what the gently caress I'm doing, like I'll place an NPC and then realize I put them inside a rock. I don't know if it's having trouble reading the bsa's or what.

Anyway, here's what I've done for starters:

I made the area where you first zone in look more "forested" by enlarging all the trees/shrubs and adding a few more. The trees get smaller and less dense as you wander out into the waste, so there's at least some kind of visual cue when you're getting close to "home." I haven't messed with the navmesh, so I need to make sure the thicker forest doesn't tangle up a lot of NPC's. I tried not to put new ones in spots where you're really likely to walk.

I picked one area with a lot of grave stones and added more grave stones just to make it a bit more visually distinct.

I enlarged/raised a lot of the big stone spires that are around the edges of the map, past the magic barrier you can't cross, and added a few more. It looks neat, and you have a bit of a clue when you're getting close to the edge of the map. I also put a huge fuckoff mountain peak in one spot outside the border which might be useful as a landmark. I flagged it as full LOD so hopefully it will be visible from a distance.

I added a few more of the resource nodes that you need for a couple of side quests there (husks and fissures) which should make the quests less tedious to complete.

I added a bunch more of the generic non-violent ghost NPC's all over the place so the place feels more populated with souls. I concentrated a ton of them in one big desolate graveyard-looking area, which gives you something to look at and serves as another visual cue to tell you where you are on the map. They're spread out, but I'll need to do some testing to make sure I didn't add way too many. A big crowd of NPC's can hurt performance.

My problem now is that I don't have a current playthrough where I've made good progress in the Dawnguard quest. I need to actually play the game for a decent amount of time before I'll have a save where I can test it properly. I could COC myself in there, but for testing purposes I'd prefer to be on the real quest, and make sure it all goes smoothly. If there's interest, I could upload the plugin here once I've had one proper look around, so I can get some feedback before putting it on the Nexus.

Eventually I want to start screwing with the ambient lighting / weather in there, but I don't have a lot of experience with that or a really solid idea of what I'd like to change. Ideally, I want it to be just a little bit easier to see where you're going, without screwing up the original aesthetic too much.

I have that problem a lot with editing exterior world spaces. The fix is to first turn up ugrids to load in the editor preferences (this doesn't affect the game settings.) A good value I found is 9 or 13. Secondly, turn on cell borders by pressing B. finally, you'll need to reload cells each time you change cells with F5.

Don't forget to regenerate LOD with Oscape and TES5LODgen.

I'm sorry I can't give any more specific help, but as I've :qq:

ed before, my PC is dead and will most likely remain so until February because I am poor as gently caress lately.

Whic reminds me: Would somebody -hopefully LtSmash since he has editing access on at least some of my mods and can make sticky posts please post the info that I am unavailable and that I now give open permission on my mods for anyone to continue my work, especially the Improved ASIS INIs. Thanks.

# ? Sep 13, 2015 21:02

Nerd Of Prey: Aug 10, 2002

Everything Burrito posted:

I'm pretty excited that you're working on this because I kinda wanted to do another run through Dawnguard but UGH at the thought of going through the Soul Cairn again (and a secondary ugh at dealing with Serana but that's beside the point). I wouldn't mind taking a character through the quest if you put up a download but I'm pretty slow and not really much of a bug tester so in 6 months you might get a heads up that something broke.

Well, it might take me a while to get that far in the Dawnguard story too, so you might as well start now. Maybe I'll have something for you by the time you get to the Soul Cairn.

Agents are GO! posted:

I have that problem a lot with editing exterior world spaces. The fix is to first turn up ugrids to load in the editor preferences (this doesn't affect the game settings.) A good value I found is 9 or 13. Secondly, turn on cell borders by pressing B. finally, you'll need to reload cells each time you change cells with F5.

Don't forget to regenerate LOD with Oscape and TES5LODgen.

This is all good advice, thanks. I was just wondering if there was a ugrids setting in the editor ini, but I hadn't gone in and hosed with it yet. That should really help.

# ? Sep 14, 2015 00:22

sticklefifer: Nov 11, 2003; by VideoGames

Stevierage's 7B vagina has nothing on Realistic Horse Buttholes.

FutonForensic posted:

Mature Skin is pretty good. Just uh, ignore anything in the downloads related to pubes.

Thanks, just what I'm looking for. I'll probably replace it with Skysight Skins once they come out with women, but these are good and don't make everyone look like Teen Barbie.

# ? Sep 14, 2015 00:38

Xavier434: Dec 4, 2002

Surprise Giraffe posted:

Spent a day downloading textures and got SMC working. Seems pretty good! Might be worth replacing Texture Combiner in the OP with a link to SMC

Yeah it works really well. I recently went through this again myself. One thing that I noticed though is that if you are going to get most/all of the textures from SMC then refrain from using the "optimized vanilla texture packs" from the Nexus. Even if your SMC package is ordered to overwrite them, I ran into both performance issues as well as textures just not loading properly. A very large number of the optimized textures are being replaced by something high quality anyways if you use SMC so there isn't much of a point of having both.

# ? Sep 14, 2015 16:19

Ms Adequate: Oct 30, 2011; Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling

Is SkyTweak known for being crashy? I just installed it and it provides a lot of options I very much like having, but it seems to be crashing more than usual. Not sure if that's a perception bias on my part or just random or what though.

# ? Sep 14, 2015 18:02

Midnight Voyager: Jul 2, 2008; Lipstick Apathy

Hey, I might be able to try out that Soul Cairn thing. I usually just use Atlas which gives the place its own world map and fast travel, but it would be nice to actually try to enjoy the place instead of doing my best to get it out of the way ASAP.

Xavier434 posted:

Yeah it works really well. I recently went through this again myself. One thing that I noticed though is that if you are going to get most/all of the textures from SMC then refrain from using the "optimized vanilla texture packs" from the Nexus. Even if your SMC package is ordered to overwrite them, I ran into both performance issues as well as textures just not loading properly. A very large number of the optimized textures are being replaced by something high quality anyways if you use SMC so there isn't much of a point of having both.

Hm, that's interesting. My MO says I have over 300 non-conflicting files in it, though. I wish there was a way to just yank out all the conflicted files.

Midnight Voyager fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Sep 14, 2015

# ? Sep 14, 2015 21:34

Ynglaur: Oct 9, 2013; The Malta Conference, anyone?

Is 4GB of VRAM enough to use the highest/silliest resolution most alternate textures provide?

# ? Sep 14, 2015 21:41

Mazz: Dec 12, 2012; Orion, this is Sperglord Actual.
Come on home.

Ynglaur posted:

Is 4GB of VRAM enough to use the highest/silliest resolution most alternate textures provide?

It works but with an ENB it's not nearly enough or be honest. If you start throwing 4k landscape textures around I think I peaked at like 12 GB overshoot (so like 16 total) from ENBhost (with UGrid and LOD changes too though)

It'll still run mostly okay, but you'll get stutter as you turn, especially in place, and load times jump up significantly, even with a solid SSD. If you're on a HDD I probably wouldn't even try.

The thing is though you can get by with like 2k/1k textures for most things and barely notice the difference up to 4k. Landscape packs with the 1k normals are a good middle ground there, and vivid landscapes has one like that.

Short answer is yes it will work, but not super great.

Mazz fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Sep 14, 2015

# ? Sep 14, 2015 21:46

Xavier434: Dec 4, 2002

Ynglaur posted:

Is 4GB of VRAM enough to use the highest/silliest resolution most alternate textures provide?

Go with 2k.

Or if you are feeling extra experimental then you could download both versions. Then try running your game using 4k and comparing it to how it runs with using the 2k versions.

# ? Sep 14, 2015 22:21

Selenephos: Jul 9, 2010

If you're running an ENB over everything I have to say I can't really tell much difference between 2K and 4K. Without an ENB, you can kind of tell if you look really closely but as soon as you smother the image in post-processing effects and lighting alterations, it's pretty much extremely difficult to make out the differences.

# ? Sep 14, 2015 22:55

Ynglaur: Oct 9, 2013; The Malta Conference, anyone?

Thanks. I don't bother with ENB, except for the boost part. A 680M only gets so far.

Is 4K more noticeable with armor and weapons, or still mostly the same?

# ? Sep 14, 2015 23:09

Mazz: Dec 12, 2012; Orion, this is Sperglord Actual.
Come on home.

Ynglaur posted:

Thanks. I don't bother with ENB, except for the boost part. A 680M only gets so far.

Is 4K more noticeable with armor and weapons, or still mostly the same?

No, not really. 2k is generally enough for anything unless you really have the headroom.

# ? Sep 14, 2015 23:26

Psion: Dec 13, 2002; eVeN I KnOw wHaT CoRnEr gAs iS

You start to notice if you supersample, though, which is really a pain in the rear end, but these days it's also a super edge case. 4K rendering + actually wanting 4K textures + enb = 0.0000002 fps

# ? Sep 14, 2015 23:36

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Question for anyone with a really good understanding of the guts of the CK: what the hell is "Set Boolean Graph Variable" about in perks? For example, the Ranger perk does nothing but "Set Boolean Graph Variable" to "bPerkQuickShot" and, confusingly, the Quick Shot perk does a "Set Boolean Graph Variable" to "bPerkQuickdraw". I have seen around that there is a bug where if you unlock Ranger while sneaking, the perk will not work. This (apparently) is because the "Set Boolean Graph Variable" function in the perk has a condition requiring that the character not be sneaking. I suspect that this was intended to make it so that the faster movement effect of Ranger does not apply while sneaking. It seems like this works, then, by setting something in the engine when you gain the perk, with the actual functionality basically being a black box. The conditional aspect of this concerns me, because it suggest that if I wanted to add activation conditions to a perk using this mechanic, all I'd be doing is introducing the possibility of another bug preventing the player from taking advantage of the perk.

# ? Sep 15, 2015 01:39

basalt: Jan 11, 2015

sticklefifer posted:

Thanks, just what I'm looking for. I'll probably replace it with Skysight Skins once they come out with women, but these are good and don't make everyone look like Teen Barbie.

I wouldn't hold your breath, the author of SkySight skins has stated that he's unlikely to bother making a female version because Mature Skin and True Daughters of Skyrim already exist. The latter even has a (slightly broken) vanilla body option.

# ? Sep 15, 2015 02:39

Nerd Of Prey: Aug 10, 2002

OK, I decided that I will share my rough work-in-progress version of the Soul Cairn mod here for anybody to mess with. I still haven't visited the location in the actual game to test it myself, but this is not a really complicated mod. I have not even attempted LOD generation specific to this, and what I recommend is to run DynDoLOD on your end, and that way it will work with your own mod setup, custom textures etc. ...not that a lot of mods even affect that zone.

Here's the download link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jhug6qo7916rqlu/SoulCairn.esp?dl=0

Again, I literally have not tested this, so use at your own risk. All feedback is welcome.

I have an idea I've not tried to implement yet... In my Cidhna Mine overhaul I provided a couple of generic followers to help you during the quest. I was thinking of doing the same thing here, but with a ghostly "lost soul" NPC. No custom dialogue or anything, but the idea is they would just quietly follow you and help you, then escape with you when you leave, say a quick thanks and vanish into the ether. I guess I'd dig into the files for that lady from the Aetherium quest to try to back-engineer the mechanics. Possibly not an actual follower in game terms, but simply an NPC programmed to follow you around and help you fight.

# ? Sep 15, 2015 05:14

flatluigi: Apr 23, 2008; here come the planes

Is there a mod out there that can point you to things you haven't discovered yet? There's a shitton in Skyrim and my completionism is already itching at me that I might miss stuff.

# ? Sep 15, 2015 07:22

scamtank: Feb 24, 2011; my desire to just be a FUCKING IDIOT all day long is rapidly overtaking my ability to FUNCTION

i suspect that means i'm MENTALLY ILL

Radiant quests are supposed to point you towards poo poo you haven't seen yet.

# ? Sep 15, 2015 11:00

Woolie Wool: Jun 2, 2006

How long is Patchus Maximus supposed to take? This thing's been running for several minutes at the 100% stage and it's still not done.

E: It's on Weapon Enchantments now and it was previously on Weapon Stats so I guess it's doing something after all.

# ? Sep 18, 2015 21:30

lilspooky: Mar 21, 2006

I think 8+ minutes is not uncommon depending on how many mods you have.

# ? Sep 19, 2015 00:30

Tombot: Oct 21, 2008

Well gee whiz, the Nexus mod manager just got a humdinger of an update! It now allows you to have multiple 'profiles' for mods, effectively allowing you to swap out different combinations of mods at once. The only caveat to this new system is that it requires you uninstall and reinstall all of your mods, which has the potential unintended side effect of :siren:

Permanantly and Irrevocably destroying your mod setup :siren:

and rendering the game unable to load, most likely with many mods now missing and with no way of knowing what's broken or how to fix it.

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/3227959-booo-to-new-nmm/

So yeah, if you just happen to use Nexus mod manager, you may wish to Skip this newest update and its amazing new 'features'.

Farewell Sir Watchford, perhaps in a new age your star will rise again.~~~

# ? Sep 19, 2015 01:38

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Does it make me a bad broken person if I... kinda... enjoy designing a MCM? And is it a bad idea to use ForcePageReset() all over (because it never resets on its own for SOME REASON)?

# ? Sep 19, 2015 09:34

Agents are GO!: Dec 29, 2004

Tombot posted:

Well gee whiz, the Nexus mod manager just got a humdinger of an update! It now allows you to have multiple 'profiles' for mods, effectively allowing you to swap out different combinations of mods at once. The only caveat to this new system is that it requires you uninstall and reinstall all of your mods, which has the potential unintended side effect of Permanantly and Irrevocably destroying your mod setup and rendering the game unable to load, most likely with many mods now missing and with no way of knowing what's broken or how to fix it.

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/3227959-booo-to-new-nmm/

So yeah, if you just happen to use Nexus mod manager, you may wish to Skip this newest update and its amazing new 'features'.

Farewell Sir Watchford, perhaps in a new age your star will rise again.~~~

So NMM is incorporating featured mod organizer has had for two years and fucks up your install in the process? Sounds about right.

# ? Sep 19, 2015 12:04

Surprise Giraffe: Apr 30, 2007; 1 Lunar Road
Moon crater
The Moon

SCM seems to be skipping files when it compiles textures. First the floor in Bleak Falls Barrow was a pixelly mess, then when I fixed that the MountainCliff01/03 textures turned muddy. Hopefully SRO Mountains will fix that, though at 4k it might end up murdering my FPS. Fingers crossed.

Surprise Giraffe fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Sep 19, 2015

# ? Sep 19, 2015 12:55

KakerMix: Apr 8, 2004; 8.2 M.P.G.

Agents are GO! posted:

So NMM is incorporating featured mod organizer has had for two years and fucks up your install in the process? Sounds about right.

That Darkone guy is such a choad goddamn.

# ? Sep 19, 2015 16:47

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Like, NMM doesn't have to be MO. NMM can just do its own thing as a basic entry-level manager for people stepping outside the Steam workshop but not ready to go bugfuck crazy with modding.

# ? Sep 19, 2015 17:01

Monolith.: Jan 28, 2011; To save the world from the expanding Zone.

NMM was pretty easy to get into as someone who never modded anything like skyrim before. Use some common sense., run loot after and it usually works out pretty good

# ? Sep 19, 2015 17:37

Agents are GO!: Dec 29, 2004

GunnerJ posted:

Like, NMM doesn't have to be MO. NMM can just do its own thing as a basic entry-level manager for people stepping outside the Steam workshop but not ready to go bugfuck crazy with modding.

I'm not against there being an easy-mode mod manager out there. I'm against NMM being such an unmitigated piece of poo poo.

# ? Sep 19, 2015 17:43

Everything Burrito: Jun 2, 2011; I Failed At Anime 2022

I was tempted to start with NMM as babby's first mod manager since it seemed easier but I've been really happy that I sucked it up a little and went with MO instead. Seems like either continuing to deal with NMM and/or having to switch over later would have been a bigger pain in the rear end in the long run than starting with MO in the beginning even though it was pretty frustrating to feel like I was way in over my head until I got the hang of it.

# ? Sep 19, 2015 18:29

Agents are GO!: Dec 29, 2004

Even more hilariously, MO is by far easier than using Wrye Bash or OMM/FOMM/Manual Installs from the pre MO era.

# ? Sep 19, 2015 19:11

Woolie Wool: Jun 2, 2006

I looked at my mod list and how complicated it was, and for my PerMa playthrough I just stuck with NMM and removed some mods that I didn't like/didn't use instead of trying to reinstall everything and figure out the order in which I installed things to make them look right. The models and textures were just a giant snarl of overlapping mods installed in a particular order and gently caress trying to figure it out all again.

But yeah I'm not going anywhere near that update. :catstare:

# ? Sep 19, 2015 19:59

Woolie Wool: Jun 2, 2006

Would anyone else think it would be cool if there were a total Realistic Equipment Overhaul sort of mod that replaced all the leveled lists and vanilla weapons and armor with items based on real historical designs? Like instead of hide armor you might get a gambeson, or instead of "leather armor" you get leather lamellar armor (rawhide instead of tanned leather, cut into small plates and laced together, unlike tanned leather it actually has half a chance of stopping a blade), or glass armor being scaled instead of looking like some sort of wacky blown glassware, plate armors like steel plate and ebony having realistic designs, etc.

# ? Sep 21, 2015 00:50

Nerd Of Prey: Aug 10, 2002

There have been a few attempts at more realistic armor and weapons, but not usually replacers. One major exception I can think of is "real bows" which I consider pretty essential. There's no real reason to gently caress with leveled lists if you want to replace old armors with new armors; it would probably be possible to find meshes you like, rename them, and overwrite the armor designs you don't like. It can all be done without a plugin.

It is important to bear in mind, though, that Skyrim does not actually take place in medieval Europe. It's a freaky alien world with an extremely different culture and history that's been shaped largely by gods, magic, and interdimensional travel, so when you talk about "historically accurate" you're already losing the plot. It's not necessarily fair to expect anything to look familiar. You can definitely make an argument for sensible designs, but stuff like glass and daedric armor doesn't necessarily follow the physical laws that we're used to.

# ? Sep 21, 2015 01:51

Jabarto: Apr 7, 2007; I could do with your...assistance.

Woolie Wool posted:

Would anyone else think it would be cool if there were a total Realistic Equipment Overhaul sort of mod that replaced all the leveled lists and vanilla weapons and armor with items based on real historical designs? Like instead of hide armor you might get a gambeson, or instead of "leather armor" you get leather lamellar armor (rawhide instead of tanned leather, cut into small plates and laced together, unlike tanned leather it actually has half a chance of stopping a blade), or glass armor being scaled instead of looking like some sort of wacky blown glassware, plate armors like steel plate and ebony having realistic designs, etc.

Sure. You don't have to go nuts with it but I think fairly simple stuff like that would go a long way and be pretty well received. See: that mod that changes the vanilla sword meshes to be narrow and less paddle-like.

# ? Sep 21, 2015 01:54

Everything Burrito: Jun 2, 2011; I Failed At Anime 2022

Woolie Wool posted:

glass armor being scaled instead of looking like some sort of wacky blown glassware, plate armors like steel plate and ebony having realistic designs, etc.

I'm very interested in these things. I usually end up using lower-tier armor because the glass and etc. armors are super ugly.

# ? Sep 21, 2015 02:08