Thepal

Hi, I'm Thepal. You might remember me from such mods as the Unofficial Morrowind Patch, Nude Females and the Blank.esm file for Morrowind that many TCs used as a base (among other things, such as my on-going Serpent Isle remake in the Oblivion engine). I thought I'd drop in to... well... to be honest... advertise a new project I'm working on. It's called "A Tabletop App" (which I tend to refer to as ATA for short), and is an app that is designed to make running a tabletop game easier, as well as letting people play together even if they aren't near enough to play in person (one of the biggest issues with D&D groups, as people often move away). It's not meant to take away the social aspects (in fact, if people still live together there is nothing stopping them from using ATA as an alternative to a paper-based map while still playing in person), but to make life easier (especially for those new to the game or GMing). I've recently put it onto Steam Greenlight, in order to find a good way to distribute it. As you may be aware, Greenlight requires people to vote on games and Valve chooses those with the most votes to be put into the Steam system. So, the selfish reason I am here is to ask any people who are interested to go take a look, and perhaps vote for ATA at http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=101871517 . The less selfish reason is to continue my quest to see more modders have a go at making their own creations, whether commercial or not. There is so much talent here, as evidenced by the many great mods, and if that talent was put to creating new games and adventures then imagine the variety of new games and worlds that could be created. The independent games industry is growing, and we now have the opportunity to see games being made by more than those few big companies who have previously owned the industry. So have a go, form a team, and make something new. It is possible. So, if you like what you see, please vote at: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=101871517 . Or if you just want to give a fellow modder a hand with his dreams, or show your appreciation by voting, then that would also be appreciated. And if you know anyone you think might be interested, then tell your friends. Well, I now feel sufficiently embarrassed about making a shameful plug, so I think I'll end this post now.

You should check the wiki when you run into problems (in case another modder has already run into the issue). Your problem is that the chest is set to "respawn". You are loading the game (I assume), the script adds the objects to the chest, but as soon as you talk to the merchant all his goods reset back to normal and your items disappear. You basically have to add to merchant containers that don't respawn (which, unfortunately, means that adding via script to any merchants from the original game is basically useless... unless some extra scripting can take care of it be readding the items). This has caused me the most annoyance of anything so far. And, in case you were planning on trying it, you can't add another merchant faction (with another container) to an existing merchant in the hopes they will sell your new items. Merchants will only sell from one faction container.

Hi all. I'm putting together my first actual mod, which is designed to be a Master File that can help us work together in the future. This first mod is for merchants (the next planned Master File will be a Companion one... that will hopefully let companions interact with each other). What I'm doing is creating merchant factions for a variety of goods. Modders who create items that need to be sold by a merchant will be able to place the items (through a script) into one or more of the faction containers, which will then allow the item to be sold by any merchants using the master file. This does two major things: - Modellers don't have to create a new merchant for their mod - Any modder-created merchant (using the master file) will automatically sell all mod items of the correct type the user has installed. So, lets say a modder was to make a furniture store, and utilise the Master File. If a user had that mod, and also downloaded other furniture mods made by other modders, all the furniture could be bought in that original shop. I will do up very detailed tutorials on how to utilise the Master File correctly to make things easy. My issue now is getting it right straight away. If other mods depend on it, I don't want to have to change it later on. What I need help with is deciding on what merchant factions to include. This is my current list: By creating specialisations, merchants can be set to sell a specific type of thing. The general areas can also be used to create more general merchants. Since items can be added to more than one (a new sword could go into Weapons, Weapons - Blade and Weapons - Longblade), an item would appear in any merchant's inventory that it should. If you could help me out with working out what categories/subcategories to include, that would be extremely helpful. EDIT - Adding more as I think of them

Since I usually (and am still currently) work on Total Conversions for Elder Scrolls games, my need to add new content to the game is pretty much sated for now. What I'm working on instead is ways for different mods/modders to work together. Once I sort out some issues with the annoying game not doing what it is told, I'll be releasing step 1.

Did you make your own ESM file? If so, that could be the problem. Basically, when you convert, make sure the Localization flag is unchecked otherwise it looks for localization data (which you wouldn't have for your mod)

Did you make your own ESM file? If so, that could be the problem. Basically, when you convert, make sure the Localization flag is unchecked otherwise it looks for localization data (which you wouldn't have)

I had that issue. It was because I was set to "Appear Offline" on Steam. I think you have to be in online mode. That could be the problem.

You can also create a new quest, give it a script, and make the script AddItem what you want to the vendor container. I've done this and it works fine. You just need to make sure that you have a "Wait" call for a couple of seconds before you add the item, as it doesn't seem to work if it runs right on the game loading.

As everyone else has said, you're paying for the game. The actual box and disk that a physical Skyrim copy comes with would cost the company less than $5. This is a huge game, that cost a *lot* of money. It's the development costs that we're paying for, not the cost of getting it to us (plus the extra to make creating a game worthwhile for Bethesda)

One other thing people usually want is a Wing slot. Not sure if that could go as a back slot, or be something different. I don't really want to say what I think, since I'm not a clothing modder and therefore am not the most qualified to decide.

I like the idea of getting a consensus on this. Clothing modders will probably need to chime in. I would say that you've probably put too many lower down on the body. Some of the extras could allow extra jewelry and such. Not sure over and under is needed for each body part.

I'm getting the same problem with new NPCs. I haven't gotten around to trying to fix it yet though, so I'm not much help.

It is going to be a little more difficult for beginners to pick up. The properties feature is probably going to cause the most confusion. You are no longer (as far as I can tell) able to reference things directly. Instead of saying AddItem DaedricBoots 1, you have to create an external "property" for the script, connect it with DaedricBoots, and add that instead. A little more confusing. However, it should be a lot more powerful. I'm a programmer, so it hasn't given me any issues yet.

I'm not sure why you had to do the first bunch of steps. All you should have to do is the second part (CK->Create Archive->Create a blank esp->Add all your loose files to the Archive->Upload). That's what I did and it worked fine. The Create Archive part will create the BSA and BSL files itself (no need to run the Archive program seperately).

Technically, months and months ago (before release) there was something about the PC version getting a high-res texture pack. When it was releasd, it didn't have it, and people were annoyed. I guess they just pushed back release for SteamWorks.

Archives work, but you can't add esps or esms to them. So it isn't a solution for getting ESM files onto SteamWorks, unfortunately.

Well, TESSnip seems to work for converting to ESMs. But that still doesn't solve the issue with getting it out to the people over SteamWorks.

Any chance of ESM files? That seems like one major oversight.

Slight issue. The Creation Kit does not create ESM files. Which means they can't be uploaded to SteamWorks. Can anyone think of a solution to this (apart from directing people to the Nexus to download master files)? ESP files cannot reference each other (references are removed upon save) Also, are there any tools at the moment to convert Skyrim ESPs to ESMs?

I've been trying to create a unique race for an NPC, in order to make them able to have unique bodies and faces. The body part I've worked out, but I can't find anything in the Skyrim.esm file that deals with setting a face texture. Has anyone run across a setting that sets this? I'm starting to think that it is only possible to have one face texture for everyone in-game, which would suck.

Pity I live in Australia, or I might have put my hand up. I coded one of these modding sites back in the day... What came before the nexus? Hmmm... whatever the big mod site in the Morrowind days was. Edit: Ah! Thelys! Had to go looking through my old files.

Animations are not stored in the character model file. There are instead different animation files that go along with the "skeleton" for characters. It basically says how the bones move. Animations are possibly the hardest part of modding (I can't think of anything harder... or I should probably say "more complicated"). Do you have experience with 3D programs?

We can't give you a definitive answer until we have proper NIFtools and the Creation Kit (and possibly Scripting/Graphic extenders)

Not sure why there is so much hate in regards to this thread. What the thread is about is perfectly valid. Mods should be stored in the format the OP was saying. I know a lot of modders are new to it and might do it wrong, but this thread is about helping them realise how to do it. Simple rules: Inside the zip file should be what you should see inside the Data folder. For example, in my files there is a "textures" folder, and a "meshes" folder, that can be extracted straight into the Data folder (which is what NMM does). If you're including a readme file, then it should be at the same level as those folders (which will also put it in the Data folder). Make sure to name the readme something unique, such as "Thepal's Grass Retexture Readme.txt". A lot of mods call it "readme.txt" which means every mod overwrites any previous readmes with the same name. If you're unsure if you have done it right, open up the zip file in whatever program you use, and see what is inside it. If there is a folder called "My Mod Folder", or "My Documents", or anything like that, then your mod won't install correctly.

I haven't tried this in Fallout 3/NV, but in Oblivion the problem was that every object in the game could only use the one reflection map. So, you could set up a "mirror" that would reflect what was in a room, but every other mirror/object in the game would reflect the same scene. If Skyrim allows multiple reflection maps then pseudo-mirrors are possible (you can reflect the room, but not the player, though it would take a lot of work to get it right). What we really want to hope for though is that they gave us the ability to add real reflections to objects this time... but I doubt it.