BrettM
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Posts posted by BrettM
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One possible alternate conclusion could be that perhaps Serana's memories aren't quite as good as we're lead to believe. She certainly appears to have a good memory and seems sane enough, but given the fact that Elder Scrolls have a tendency to make anyone who reads them go blind and mad, it's no telling what kind of devilry it could have played on her whilst in her suspended state, regardless of reading it or not the sheer exposure over such a long time could have unforseen consequences. Again this is going back to the deus ex machina but we have no real way of knowing how the Elder Scroll could have impacted her "memories", I find this a more logical conclusion than attempting to bend every other possible truth around her apparent "surprise at a cyrodiilic empire"
However, her surprise isn't the only evidence we have for the length of time.
Durnehviir speaks of coming to the Soul Cairn during a time when dragons were vying with each other for territory. This would almost certainly be after the Dragon War, when the remaining dragons were left leaderless after Alduin's banishment, since I can't imagine Alduin allowing this kind of extensive infighting under his rule. However, since there were still plenty of dragons around, it had to be before the Akaviri showed up and began their extermination campaign under Reman.
His bargain with the Ideal Masters was to keep watch on Valerica, which means that she was already in the Soul Cairn when he arrived, and Serana had already been locked away. Thus, the time frame must be somewhere between the late Merethic Era and the end of the First Era even if we assume Serana's memory is flawed.
Another bit of evidence comes from Serana asking the identity of the High King. If she had been shut away before the reign of King Harald, I'm not sure this question would have occurred to her, since Skyrim was not truly an independent nation before Harald, who formed the first Moot and is considered the first true ruler of Skyrim.
Given her comment about a "war of succession," it may be that she was familiar with Borgas and the war that followed his death. This would imply that she was locked away during the interregnum between the First and Second Empires, which could explain her surprise at the existence of an empire in Cyrodiil even if she was familiar with the Alessian Empire. It would also be congruent with Durnehviir's story, as there were certainly still many dragons around at that time according to Paarthurnax and the story of Olaf One-Eye.
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There is an Excel spreadsheet by Xylozi on the Nexus (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/2018/?) that has every ID from vanilla Skyrim. You can easily search it to find all kinds of tables.
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Oh, excellent! Thank you for that link. I had ferreted out some of those numbers from examining Bethesda nifs for my tutorials on texture animation using NifSkope, but I knew I was missing a lot.
So far I have fairly well mastered the controllers for BSLightingShaderProperty and the one for NiAlphaProperty, but I can do more knowing the numbers for all of the variables, and the information will help me to get some of the other controllers figured out.
I had a pretty good handle on most of BSLightingShaderProperty values, but you certainly gave me some useful revelations here. For one thing, it seems my problems with controlling glossiness were due to believing that LOWER values were less glossy. Oops. :)
If I can get the same handle on BSEffectShaderProperty, I'll be sitting pretty.
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Fantastic! Ummm ... you wouldn't happen to have the same kind of rundown for the BSEffectsShaderProperty, would you? Or any information on the shader property controllers? :D
Truly, this tutorial deserves to be spread widely.
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For those looking to do extensive renovations on the structure of Hearthfire homes, there is now a mod out there that provides new wall meshes for Lakeview that can be used to replace the monster walls that Bethesda used with modular wall sections. I assume they can be used with any of the Hearthfire homes, though I haven't tried it yet. See Lakeview Manor Custom and Modular Meshes.
For those looking for a really WIDE selection of decorations to use, in any home, check out the FPI Gallery for Console Decorators. Over 1,700 static items, including furniture, collectables, tableware, food, and a lot more.
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For your teleport problem, see DarkFox127's video tutorial on Custom Load Doors. He even provides the simple script you need.
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I like the texture set option myself. I think the processor overhead of the texture swaps is a good tradeoff for the memory overhead of multiple copies of the same nif.
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Absolutely Essential Mods: A Quality World Map (which you have), SkyUI, and one of the item-sorting mods. (I use the one by Saige. YMMV.) These make the interface so much nicer and easier to use that I can hardly imagine playing this game without them. Since you already have SKSE, then you won't have any problem installing these.
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I'm a pretty raw newbie at modding, and I realized too late that my mesh folder hierarchy is not really organized well for supporting future resource packs or mods that I have in mind. I would like to reorganize it to take most of the current subfolders, which are applicable only to this mod, down one level to their own parent under my umbrella folder. That's why I want to move the nifs.
But there are a few hundred of them and probably well north of 2,000 forms tied to them, some of which are using multiple texture sets. As you can see, it would be a nightmare to do this reorganization without some kind of ability to do a global search & replace of path names, and a triple nightmare if there's no way to prevent stripping of texture sets during the process.
So I was hoping someone knew of a solution for this type of problem. Otherwise, I guess I'll have to learn to live with it, chalk it up to experience, and start a new umbrella folder for future work.
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I haven't, but you can use the in-game console to manipulate the item if you're on a PC. Open the console, click on the item, and use the setpos and setangle commands to put it where you want it.
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I'm not sure if this could be done through a script, but i handled a problem that sounds similar by attaching a small script to certain items that has nothing but a function that returns the value of its parameter. I set the parameter to the desired value when I attach the script The function is later interrogated by another script attached to an activator that has the items as linked refs.
In your case, I don't know if it's possible to attach a script to something created dynamically. If it is, then I guess the script on the token could contain a set function that can be used by the creating script, as well as the function to return the values to the interrogating script.
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Thanks, but that's not a reasonable way for me to go with this mod. I'm applying multiple texture sets to the same items, and I'd have to have a dozen or so copies of each of the nifs to put the texture sets in them. That would be ... a lot of nifs. Which is also why I want to be able to move them without stripping the texture sets, because it would take forever to go through them all and reassign the textures, making sure I got the right ones back in again without missing or duplicating any.
Hard to understand in this day and age why the file-handling options are so primitive and so mouse-dependant. Don't the devs at Beth know how to type?
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If you listen to some of the things Alduin says (in dragon language, of course) during his attack on Helgen, it seems as if he is not quite aware of how much time has passed. He was banished in the heat of battle, and may have come out still in battle fury, heading for an area where he might have expected to find some of the rebels of the Dragon War, figuring on getting some revenge. So he taunts his victims with statements about their foolish pride in thinking the scroll would get rid of him, not realizing that the common run of humanity no longer speaks the language or knows anything about what actually happened back then, believing that he's dealing with his enemies.
Paarth's whereabouts is a good question, given that he says he took up residence near the time wound specifically to await Alduin's return. Yet he doesn't seem to have had any plan for actually doing anything about it.
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Here you go. DweRmSmWallHole01 is used in three cells: MarkarthWizardsQuarters01, MarkarthAbandonedHouse, and Mzulft02. In the first case it is paired with a DweClutterArchSm01 to make a little alcove. In the second case it joins to a MineCLWallDoorB01. In the third case it fronts a MineCWallDoor01. So it looks like you have several choices right there, and it will probably fit in front of several different mine or cave doors.
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Is there any way to keep the CK from removing texture sets assigned to a form when you change the location of the nif to a new folder? It's the same blessed mesh, just in a different place, yet the CK seems to insist on stripping out the textures as if it were a new mesh and I don't see a way to tell it not to do that.
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Did you try finding the form in the CK and looking at where it is used? Then you will know what Bethesda thinks is a suitable match. :)
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I'm working on a mod that has a large (VERY large) number of forms, and recently realized that it could use some reorganization of the folder structure for the meshes. However, there doesn't seem to be any function in the CK for doing global search-and-replace on path names, and it would be an enormous task to go through that many forms one at a time to change the paths.
What makes the problem worse is that quite a few items make use of texture sets. For some reason the CK insists on stripping these from the form if I move the mesh to another folder, and I have to reapply them. So any method of changing paths has to be one that does not strip the texture sets.
Is there any solution to my problem, or do I just need to live with things as they are?
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Regarding the cover, I really recommend that you check out Daniel Coffey's Better Book Mesh resource. Even if you don't download it, the page for that mod explains everything you ever wanted to know about how book covers are defined in Skyrim. However, the mod provides a PSD template for making cover textures for his meshes that is super handy. I've made two book covers with this mod, which you can see HERE and HERE.
In short, you need two meshes: a low-poly mesh for the World Art (what you see lying on a table or sitting on a shelf) and a high-poly mesh for the Inventory Model (what you see after you take the book). Both use the same cover texture, and it is applied using NifSkope as with any other mesh.
Regarding the pictures, it is possible to wrap text around a picture by ensuring that both are enclosed in <p></p> tags. For example, <p><img src=...> Here is my text.</p>, similar to using one of the illuminated letters.
The problem is that there doesn't seem to be any way to control the wrapping, such as by forcing the text to wrap-right or wrap-left, or of forcing the text to begin at the top border of the picture rather than the bottom. You have to insert the image tag deeper in the paragraph and see where it comes out, then move it and try again to get the usual kind of alignments that are used with picture books.
I found this to be such an enormous pain that I ended up placing all my illustrations between paragraphs or on facing pages. If you look at the books provided by Bethesda, such as the Beginner's Guide to Homesteading, they seem to do the same thing.
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I think you may need to complete the test by returning the horn and going through the little ceremony the Greybeards will perform before you can enter the College using a Thu'um. You will still be considered a student, so you'll have a College quest stuck in your log if you decide to ignore that quest line.
If that bothers you, then StayFrosty05's work around is the only alternative. However, that does mean that you will end up missing Words (for Ice Form and Slow Time) that can only be learned from College quests. Even if you don't want to play a mage, you can still get through the College main quests using Shouts instead, with the exception of demonstrating a ward for Master Tolfdir. For example, a quick Yol will work in Saarthal when Tolfdir tells you to try casting a spell at one point.
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Keep in mind that Paarthurnax is a known enemy of Alduin. Wouldn't his approach to Skuldafn have raised an alarm among the dragons that were guarding the place, not to mention alerting the dragon priest? OTOH, Odahviing was Alduin's chief lieutenant. Perhaps he could approach without raising suspicions because Alduin's forces did not yet know that he had been captured and compromised. If that speculation is correct, then it makes sense for the Dragonborn to take the risk of accepting Odie's offer instead of killing him. It was the safest way to get into Skuldafn.
It was also the quickest way, and there was quite a bit of urgency to get to Alduin as quickly as possible before he regained his strength. Many days had already been wasted in getting to Whiterun, persuading the Jarl, learning Odie's name, and setting up the trap. More time would have been wasted getting back to Paarthurnax. Was there any guarantee that Paarth would have then agreed to fly the Dragonborn to Skuldafn? If Paarth had refused, then the Dragonborn, having already killed Odie, would have really been up the creek. Oops!
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My Conjuror uses a one-handed weapon (usually a conjured one) and a summon in the left hand. He gets by fine without blocking. My Destruction mage uses Dual Cast, so he has nothing to block with even if he wanted to. He gets by fine as well.
I don't consider blocking a crucial skill for any character that doesn't carry a shield, since most of the perks are designed for shield use. Two-handed blocking can be fairly effective and might be worth perking a little into Block, but it certainly isn't crucial. For anything else it just isn't worth it, IMHO, and certainly not for mages.
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Cheat?? Levitate?? Man up, Dragonborn! You have Whirlwind Sprint for that kind of challenge, and it works just fine. A few pieces of gear enchanted with Resist Fire along with a good Resist Fire potion help in getting to the chests on either side of the Forge, but the chest in back is just a Wuld-Nah-Kest away if you aim right.
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As for vanilla, roll with bound bow and atronachs and you should be fine. Once you get Daedra lord its overkill.
^This. My conjurer went with Bound Sword, Bound Bow and the best summon available at each level in the left hand. It worked fine and I did not need any cheats or tricks to get 100 in Conjuration. I did spend some perks in One Handed and Archery, but I had enough points to spare to get the essentials there.
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You left out dragons. Who wouldn't want to play as a dragon?!
Paarthurnax - Do I have a choice here?
in Skyrim LE
Posted
Odahviing's comment about the "tyranny of the Way" should not be taken as an indication that Paarthurnax was going to use force to impose it. The Way forbids the use of the Voice for domination and conquest, so it seems unlikely that Paarthurnax had any such intention. That would be as contradictory as destroying a village to save it. The impression that I got was that he meant to spread the message as an evangelist or missionary. Paarth even admitted that the others might not listen, but he was determined that they would at least hear. Where's the force in that?
Odahviing, wanting to go his own way and make his own rules, probably considered any set of external rules or strictures as tyrannical, even if accepted voluntarily.