Akopian

@Nagevit is reassuring that these things are being examined. Especially a way of managing conflicts in ba2 files. Until your reply, nobody has seemed interested. And of course, managing load order is a big deal for the plugins. You might want to add a warning, if you have not yet, that it will merely be alohabetizing in the short run. For me, I have just had to learn how to do it all on my own.

How do I disable the plugin management system? I found it in the settings file. It would be nice to do that from the load order screen as that is where we have to turn it on. Or to put a reference to the settings on the load order screen at least. Also, before continuing, in the load order it would be nice to add commented out lines for the load order to group plugins together if we are going to have to do a lot of manual adjustment. In my own plugin text file, I have commented out category names in the text file where I group mods where load order will matter related to the same subject (like SHIPBUILDING). Makes it easier for me to make sense of load order decisions to have the files organized. Tagging files as belonging to certain groups for filtering purposes might be an alternative way of looking at them together in one place for relative positioning purposes. Either way, a little organization to ease things for the user trying to make decisions would be useful. For the reason stated earlier by another comment on here about how Vortex seems to weigh alphabetical order as a default every time it orders things and then requiring a reorganization, the Vortex's plugin management system really does not work very well for me. Particularly, a lot of ba2 files are loaded with esm files. Vortex does not take into account that the order of those files might be set up in a particular way to favor textures and such from a specific mod over another. I know the management system is temporary anyway, but I do hope you are considering these problems. Vortex does so well finding "conflicts" in loose texture files and allowing us to choose which ones we prefer. It would be a step beyond manual ordering of plugin texts if it managed ba2 files as if they were loose files perhaps deploying a few pre-combined ba2 files that reflect choices of which texture is preferred instead of the originals based on user preferences. Looking at ba2 combiners and such, it sounds like that might be a difficult process, but if it can be done, that would be a pretty big reason to prefer Vortex anyway. I am glad you are trying to address the load order plugin text issue, by the way. Thanks for that. For now, though, I have to figure out what has caused the game to no longer load . . . I am pretty sure something has been enabled that I had disabled, but in any case, I will figure it out. My careful load order was adjusted much more than I expected! Still, I applaud the effort.

When you say he is not a modder himself, do you mean mod creator? Lots of people that use mods really do not seem to know what can and cannot be done. So I figured that this forum about "mod ideas" would be for people who were not mod creators to put forward ideas of what they would like to see. I figured there was no reason for mod creators to put forward mod ideas as they could just implement them on their own. OR it was a place for creators to see if they thought something was possible and discuss that, but there appears to be a more technical area for that. Anyway, I think it is perfectly OK to ask if something can be done even if it can be hard. I have been using mods since the old days--Ultima Online had a sort of addon that was eventually sanctioned by the game itself. There was Dark Ages of Camelot. Morrowind. All sorts of things. So many times, mod authors figured out ways to do things that were considered impossible to do or too complicated. I will never put it past the creative, devoted community to say this or that is absolutely impossible. Already they have far surpassed expectations of what we thought they would be able to do before the Creativity Kit came out. I am really impressed. And different authors seem to specialize in different things, pushing forward what is possible. So even if I am a mod author, I might not know every aspect of what can be done and what cannot be done. It may very well be extremely difficult or impossible to make destructible environments or account for ship breaches and the void of space. I am not a mod creator. But I have given up pretending to know what they could do. Perhaps instead of making new objects, they will make "inanimate npcs" and then use those physics engine things they use in Skyrim to warp the "inanimate npc" so that it is morphed when hit into a different shape? Perhaps a hole can be simulated by simulating the gravity effect of the Starborn powers and have the effect push toward the location of the "hole?" Do you know all the variables of how those effects work and how they could be changed? I sure don't! I do know that there are mods that can change gravity in a ship. Maybe there is a way to change the orientation of gravity? Perhaps ship damage can be simulated by script effects that cause textures to overlay the existing ones under certain conditions? Can that be done? I don't think anybody knows how yet, but perhaps somebody knows of a way it could be done. Could we simulate the destruction of a building by messing with the size and shapes of objects so that if something hits it it will act like smaller objects when they get hit? Then maybe you stack all these new items together and they fall apart like small items getting blasted apart. So maybe instead of a wall you have a bunch of pieces stacked as a wall and when something large or forceful enough hits it it falls apart like happens when I run into a stack of stuffed animals in the game as it exists now? People already make new objects, so why not objects that can be moved? Saying that nobody can do something here on the forums is kind of like going to an inventors conference and then pronouncing all the things you think cannot ever be invented. It is so hard to say what clever people will never be able to do! Sounds rather like a challenge to me! (but not one that I can answer--like I said, I am a modder to the extent I have used mods for decades, but I am no mod creator).

Oh! I thought it might be useful if you guys defined what some of your terms are. I can kind of guess from the context and from using vortex what some of them mean, but I am not really sure. Here are the unclear words based on what I read here (unclear as that they are not defined and have never run into them before--I am sure they are crystal clear to you): Stop Pattern - Not sure what that means at all Top level folders - the very top folder for a staging folder would be the name of an archive in most cases and the next level would be the first folder in the zip file, right? A "mod type system" seems to include two designations so far: data and collections. I suppose you could have sub data types like textures or interface as those are sub-folders of data. I do not think there is a collections folder, so the mod-type is not merely which folder the mod info belongs to at the top level. A migration is making sure after an update that all the data from before is formatted properly to be used after the update? Migration logic refers to the rules involved in changing the format to meet the requirements of the new update?

I want to see if I have translated the new structure so far. Instead of a staging folder for a mod needing a data folder at its top level (if it changes anything in the data folder or its subfolders) you can now change the type of file to mod type: Data folder and that will directly deploy the files to the data folder. Is that correct? And old mods using the old system still can have the data folder so long as they are not mod type Data folder? I, for instance, would go back and make sure that if a mod was supposed to be installed in a data folder that it had in the staging folder for the mod a "data" folder if it did not have one already, and put the files that were supposed to be installed to the data folder inside the corresponding folder in the staging folder's data folder. I will no longer need to do that if a mod is designated a mod type: Data. In fact, if I did add a data folder, then after deployment I would have in the actual game "data" folder an extra but useless "data" folder, correct? Sometimes though, mod authors compress their mod creation file and name the zip file. So you might have MODA.zip and instead of the first folder being data, it might be MODA and then inside that folder would be the "Data" folder. This caused problems. I always solved that by moving the data file to the first folder file and deleting in this example the MODA file. Now I will no longer need to move the data folder because Vortex will do that on its own, correct? Now for a new issue since I know where to ask this: Sometimes mod authors have lots of ba2 files with lots of esm files that reflect how they have broken up their texture projects. I found that I could use a single esm file if I loaded a blank esm file with the same name as the relevant portion of the ba2 file. Using the blank.esm mod, I would make a master mod for all of that author's ba2 mods. I would rename all the ba2 files of an author to comply with the name I renamed the blank esm file (xxxx-y1.ba2 ... xxxs-yz.ba2; and the esm file xxxx.esm). That would load all the ba2 files by that author while only using one esm. Before I would do any of that, I would first create a folder with the name of the esm file (like "xxxx esm folder") and drop that into vortex or just have it "install" that empty folder. That would create the staging folder. Then I would just manually move my esm file and ba2 files into a data folder inside the xxxx esm folder. I noticed that if I moved the folder with all of those files into vortex instead of just the folder, vortex would try to compress the whole thing into a zip file (for reinstalling later as a sort of reference and version archive) and that took forever. My computer was much faster at just moving the uncompressed folder into the staging folder rather than compressing then uncompressing. To monitor for updates of those files, I would keep the uncombined versions in vortex as disabled (and delete the ba2 files of the disabled folder to save drive space), and that would at least notify me if I needed to update the author's part mod to my master version containing all of the ba2 parts of mods. Is there any reason why that procedure would no longer work? Is there something about the procedure that might have been messing up something for me without my realizing it? Thanks for your time presuming you have read this far. I have found most of how everything works with vortex to be a bit vague, but I used to be an attorney (had a brain injury so no longer), and I am kind of good at sussing out difficult instructions--but not perfect! That is why I want to make sure I have all this straight. Oh, one final questions. I know that supposedly several fomods were messed up and then fixed by vortex. Does this mean that the old fomods were putting vortex installations into a data folder whereas the fixed fomods should just now have the type data and no reason to have an actual data folder in the staging folder?

We could justify an auto loot thing as perhaps after battle your team of professional looters comes in and cleans the place out. I shouldn't have to point at each thing and say loot this! (I no longer carry stuff in reality, i just carry an electronic inventory of what I own in the game I play--which is why it appears weightless). I could not justify being able to carry around shot up space suits and such even if they were not too heavy. Where are my pockets? My backpack is a jump pack? How am I supposed to hold all this junk while fighting? I carry rocks around in my arms???? No, I have a team of brave porters or maybe tough robots picking up around me. But I still have to point at every little thing (if we can sell it, we want it!) and say pick that up, and that and that. This mod would solve that. Fine, I can be called to open the locked up stuff. Afterall, not everybody can be a genius, but sheesh, I should just need to say one time, get the files, the pencils, everything! This mod makes sense when you think of it like that. Afterall, how else could I be the leader of the biggest cleanup squad/janitorial service in the universe? I believe it is my sacred duty to eliminate all this mess everywhere I can find it. It should be done as efficiently as possible by a dedicated team led by me--but not done by me personally. As for scanning for animals and plants. . . hmmm. Better make that optional, for I am personally the Audubon of the future and the botanical equivalent. Only I am qualified to properly identify and classify wildlife and plants in the wild. I earned the certifications (four for plants and four for animals--even animals that look like moving plants) to prove it by pointing my device and making careful observations of all of its observations. These observations must be seen by me at the time of scanning to be of any value (cause I will forget which data matches which animal--the scanner does not keep a picture silly). Only I can read that the device said this or that animal could live on a farm (and strangely open all the doors in the farm but still stay nearby) or that I can raise this plant on that planet in a greenhouse (but strangely not in the same greenhouse on a different planet with lights that emulate the plant's home sun). Personally, I just like having an excuse to go exploring, particularly, I like to go to the beach and watch the alien sunrise or sunset. Seeing the fish is just the excuse "Great day for fishin', ain't it?"

As a bonus, let's compare different meshes too in those crafting consoles too! Hahaha. Amaze me by telling me you can make that easy too! You guys have gone so much further with so little than I thought you could that I would not be completely surprised, but I am betting, not yet.

I wrote a lot here, but it all speaks to the issue of finding a simple way for the regular player to mix and match textures between different texture packs easily. Ideally what I am looking for would be something like a crafting console with which I could pick between different textures from that item provided by different ba2 (and loose file) texture packs as a texture mod, and then have the chosen texture apply to that item wherever it appears in the game. If it is clothing, it would be nice if it could take multiple textures for the same item and randomly (with some restrictions if possible) apply them to npcs too. I know that is a big ask given the condition of the game for modding, but failing that, I was hoping for some other lesser solutions that might incorporate progress made by other mods in accessing and manipulating items in game. Or heck, just a good comparison tool that is easy to use outside the game to make it easy to compare, choose and package preferred texture files between different texture packs. NEAT THING ABOUT LOOSE FILES First, a little background. I use ba2 and esm files as everybody prefers, but one thing I did like about loose files was how easy it was to compare and choose textures between large texture packs. You could do it in vortex, do it manually, and I think there were a few little programs here and there to see the dds files I think they were called? Back when I played Valheim when it first came out, I had a bit of my drive devoted to organizing and picking the textures I preferred for different objects. Was easy. I have used mods for years before that, but Valheim was the first time I really understood what loose files were and what I could do with them. Most of the comparisons I could do outside of the game. Nothing in game would let me compare textures side by side or back to back. Everything was done simply by replacing one texture with another in game. IN-GAME TEXTURE COMPARISONS THROUGH THE ARMOR AND CRAFTING TABLE IN STARFIELD In Starfield, right now, we can see some different textures for some weapon and armors through the texture mod at the crafting tableS. I do not know if that means we can see textures from different mods, as there are not that many of them that do this, but at least in-game I can see some stuff and choose what I like between what at least one mod author is offering. IF CLOTHES CAN BE MODDED NOW, CAN THEIR TEXTURES BE MODDED AT THE TABLES? Can this be expanded to clothing? I know that this mod says it can add a legendary mod slot to clothing:https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/6558 I presume it works but did not use it because I did not want to overpower my character by making even clothing more powerful. But if they can do that for legendary slots, what about the texture modification slot? IF WE CAN COMPARE DIFFERENT TEXTURES FOR CLOTHING, CAN WE DISTRIBUTE THOSE CLOTHES TO DIFFERENT NPCS LIKE A MODDED WEAPON WITH RANDOM VARIATION? Of course, I would like to see more than one kind of texture for the same items on npcs. I know that enemy npcs can use modded guns. Could they be assigned (preferable somewhat randomly within their work sphere) modded texture clothes? Supposedly, the same author with the legendary clothing has made new outfits that can be added to leveling lists. If there was a texture designation as a modded item, would that choose how the item showed up in game as a modded outfit? IF WE CANNOT ACTUALLY MAKE MODDED TEXTURES STICK, HOW ABOUT JUST SEEING THEM AT THE CRAFTING TABLE If we cannot do that, is it possible to use the crafting stations to see the textures, perhaps convince texture modders to include the mod name in the name of their texture, and use that as a way to pick a preferred clothing item for the npcs to default to? I say include the name of the mod so I will have at least have an idea of which mod author is making most of the textures I like as I look in-game. IF WE CAN MOD CLOTHING TEXTURES, CAN IT BE EXPANDED TO MODIFYING OUTPOST TEXTURES (AND SHIPS?) EVERYTHING? Finally, assuming that using a crafting console to change textures for clothing, armor and weapons, I wonder if there could be a way to in a similar way "mod" other items in the game that we can craft through the building menu to the extent that we can could choose a texture (or at least see the textures to better decide which we prefer). MEMORY PROBLEMS I presume that loading all this new information could slow things down for people, but if just having a mod I could load temporarily might allow me to make choices, cut down on mods with textures I was not really using (or maybe prune those mods of specific textures), and maybe make a good combined texture patch would be helpful. FAILING EVERYTHING ELSE I guess lacking all of that, it would be nice to have a stupid simple way for the average player to upload and compare different replacers for textures for the same item from different sources at the same time, choose their preferences, and then have them be added to a master file (maybe a final load esm/ba2 combo to be the preferred combined texture patch). I have seen that ba2 files can supposedly be pruned and combined, but well, being stupid to some extent (I at least have a true brain injury!), I can tell you that the methods are not "stupid simple." If you have read this far, thanks. I am an enthusiastic mod user; I love the work the community does. I know that the work you do is free, and do not expect somebody to just jump on this like I was their boss at work. I just wanted to describe the need, and remember to try to be the solution too, maybe suggest possible solutions (in my amateurish, ignorant of mods way). I apologize about being so wordy, but I do truly have a brain injury and before that I was an attorney. So I maybe go overboard trying to be understood, and struggle mightily to do anything different. Believe me, I did a lot of editing despite all the mistakes (which is why I am no longer an attorney!).

Is it possible with the new modding tools that somebody can make a mod that will allow better control over what materials are "tracked?" Unless somebody knows something I and others do not, there does not seem like there is a good way to untrack specific resources if you no longer need the recipe or cannot find the recipe that originally was used to set up the tracking.

Somebody with knowledge of shaders and filters should make a mod that changes the shaders used based on the type of sun the planet has and its distance from that sun. I think it would be a real kick to see how that changes the environments.

An amusing post! i agree with most of it. I am hoping that Bethesda intentionally left plenty of room for mod creators to fill in the world. Seems like Bethesda nowadays can confidently throw a program out there, and the mod creators do a lot of fine tuning and content creation for free. I wonder if the modding community's creativity factors into how much fie tuning they. It seems so easy to pick a possible solutions to a programming challenge, and then allow somebody else, if they want to, explore the other ways of meeting the challenge. This means they do not have to always pick the very best solution. They just need to go ahead and pick one and then leave the rest to the community. That has to take a lot of pressure off of the developers. All the big Bethnesda games seem to be like a playground or just a platform with context for letting their imagination and creativity run riot, creating many different variations of the game from one actual game. Kind of brilliant. I mean, people still play and mod Oblivion. Even Morrowind is still out there. Anyway, thanks for your post. AS you can see, it got me thinking. By the way, there are mods that can increase the frequency of enemy spawns supposedly. I have not used it yet, but I have been eyeing it.

Good overview Heyyou. Right now we mostly do not seem to have genuine mods. Most things seem to be tweaks, some quite clever and complex but still, fancy changes of game settings. Even so, I bet there will be an explosion of modes when the Creation Kit comes out. I really look forward to it.