DrakeTheDragon

Can't remember seeing anything as complex as what you're describing, but with Blockhead nowadays anything goes, even different body models and skin textures per actor/NPC. Just fitting clothing/armor models, so you won't loose the unique appearance by wearing the wrong item (the body still comes with the clothes after all) is still a little bit more difficult (read: I didn't manage to get my last attempt at a framework for that working). There's been projects coming close though. SetBody Reloaded rings a bell, even more so since it expanded to use Blockhead for the base. Mesh Extended Swap System on LoversLab is the first making use of the equipment overrides, but I've read mixed results from users. Guess every approach still has its drawbacks. Maybe when I have the time again I'll take a look at Blockhead's source code to figure out how it's meant to be used and my own attempts of using the equipment overrides so far have always failed.

Pretty off-topic in a thread about TES4Edit, but it's your's and the OP can change the topic at any point as far as I know. Archive Invalidation however is only to do with assets/external resources, not plugin or masterfile records. Are you by chance still using both your plugin and the plugin you copied the races from at the same time? EditorIDs are only valid inside the plugin they originate from. 2 races in 2 plugins having the same EditorIDs will not make one overwrite/ride the other automatically or anything. If a plugin is meant to overwrite/ride a race from another, it "absolutely must" be made like a patch, with the other plugin as parent/master. Else, as far as the game is concerned, the races from both plugins will have totally different FormIDs (2 digits plugin-index + 6 digits actual form) thus be considered separate races.

It's undocumented, but back in the days it was commonly known. Huh, so the newer versions of Wrye Bash renamed it to reflect what it actually does. Nice to know. My version of Wrye Bash, and such my knowledge about it, is probably as old now as my last mod release, which was... aeons ago. I'm glad I could help, and congrats to your release! :thumbsup: I think I'll give it a try myself the next time I reinstall EDOA into my game. (Had to remove it the last time I was able to play as it became too taxing on my PC. It's not exactly a performant one, this virtual machine.)

Hmm, I would have to take a closer look into the working of the scripts, but the changelog says it's not affecting the race, so I take it the race check part you posted is inside some global kind of script and defining which races to add the ability to. If so, then getting the plugin to "know" the custom races would be the only thing needed, yes. This is done through parenting/mastering, but there's an additional problem in Oblivion's CS with parenting to an ESP. The normal CS can't save that state. Only ESMs can be made parents/masters in that. There's 2 ways to get around that limitation: 1) Use Wrye Bash's ESMify to temporarily turn the ESP into an ESM (it's just a header flag flip, not changing the actual file type), then open it together with your plugin as "active file" use its race IDs and save. Turn it back into an ESP through ESPify before you start the game. And keep in mind to always do it in this order every time you're going to touch your plugin again. 2) Use Shademe's Construction Set Extender (CSE) instead of the normal CS. It is an OBSE plugin extending the CS when the CS is launched through OBSE ("obse_loader.exe -editor", the manual explains it all). The CSE can define ESPs as masters/parents and also save that state. And yes, the correct syntax for "getIsRace" only takes 1 race ID each. So your second notation with the "||" ORs was correct: if (player.getIsRace Khajiit) || (player.getIsRace ANQKhajiitCathay) I just prefer to also use brackets in such cases, as I've run into functions which will take everything behind them as additional parameters instead. With all this done your plugin must only load after the masters/parents, then it should work. However, I've also read a note in the instructions saying NPCs won't be affected immediately but take some time. So maybe you even had it working already once but never gave it enough time to see the effect.

That's because there is a strong difference between a virus check and a tool to check for "identical to master" records or this other major mistake thing people keep accidentally putting into their mods occasionally "only". "Clean" here doesn't mean it doesn't have any bugs. It's just "TES4Edit-cleaned" of the most obvious mistakes automated cleaning can actually remove 100%. "Wild edits" are a thing of knowledge. No tool can tell you if you did it on purpose or in mistake. But "identical to master" records are a thing which shouldn't be (unless the plugin is meant to "revert" changes another plugin did back to Vanilla), thus a tool for 100% reliably detecting and removing them is not a bad thing. And really, how technically simple is it to check if a Vanilla record was touched but not changed in your plugin? This is impossible to detect wrong or to miss even one. And people keep posting it on their mods, because back in the day it was all good practice to check, and occasionally clean, your plugins/master files before release, but later it became a "requirement" users got used to be looking for. You can't change the users' expectations anymore, so you can only play along and post these things. For better or worse.

At a specific number of posts you can even write your own title. :tongue: But yes, apart from Kudos there isn't much. In the past there actually was a time in which posts, and with it members, had a "recommendation", a rating of sorts, and everybody could thumbs-up or thumbs-down any post they read. A post with a too negative rating was even automatically hidden. It was like community-driven moderation in parts. But it didn't work. There were too many bad apples who, as usual, ruined it for everyone. Helpful and valuable posts were hidden, because someone didn't like the author and arranged a group of people to vote their posts down. Useless, insulting and rule-breaking posts, even outright lies, were up-voted to the heavens by likewise individuals/trolls, up to a point where even having posts made no sense anymore. So the recommendation feature had to be forcefully removed again. Don't know if you remember, but that's also why Endorsements for files or images can only be given or taken and there is no thumbs-down for that anymore either. These features in the past always defeated their own purpose themselves after a short while. But I agree. A "helpful post" marker, which you can either give or take away, no "unhelpful post" counterpart, might actually be a useful thing. Well, let's see what we'll get when the forum software will be changed in the future. As for the question at hand, I think the, albeit incomplete, list of "PRN Nodes" from here would be a start: https://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php?title=NifSkope_Comprehensive_Guide#Glossary There should definitely be a more comprehensive list somewhere though.

The first thing I learned, in school, university, and in online forums such as this, is different people have different skills. Only because things are a child's play for me I could do with my eyes closed, it does never automatically mean they will be so for everybody else, too. There's people like me, who put their first lines of code into a computer at the age of 4, sometimes even think in algorithms, and can learn to use every software from a short read and playing around. And then there's people like my uncle, calling me in the middle of the night only to ask: Needless to say English isn't his strong point either. But if your house's walls are coming down or your facade is falling apart, he's the man you'll want. There's people who don't have the skillset, or perhaps even only the time, to understand and learn these things as easily as we have. Them coming here and asking around, even if it's questions like "which mod manager is best", which, apart from a majority voting, can't ever be answered truthfully (which they can't know either), are neither in the wrong place nor does it make them "dummies" on this site. In fact they still will learn it in the end, just from us instead. And who knows what other skillsets they will bring to the table, things which will be very valuable to us and which we in turn don't know anything about? This is a topic still, because it comes up again and again with almost every new visitor. Learning from the masters is the key. That's why people ask, and that's why people like us keep answering.

Just a little correction, but there are 2 unrelated limits at play: The 255 max. number of plugins + master files is "not" including BSAs. It's simply the maximum address range the game has for FormIDs from plugins and itself, so there cannot be more than 255 plugins/master files "active" at the same time. And then there's indeed another limit at play, the number of maximum so-called data files, that is ESP, ESM and BSA in your Data folder. I don't recall the exact number on this one anymore, it wasn't 255 though. This is what ghosting in Wrye Bash can fix, and WB will also complain when you are above this limit with un-ghosted files. The fix mod brought up does a lot of other supposedly very useful things, and maybe it also fixes the "2nd" limit (didn't check). The particular issue of people not getting even close to the 255 hard limit on active plugins I myself, or others I know, haven't ever encountered so far. But maybe others have and the fix fixes it for them. Going by its description and words of its creator alone though, the fix is about everything else but what its title says. Didn't yet get around to give it a try though, as is the case with almost every new mod I wanted to try, so I'll stand back from stating anything definitely.

Can't help you with where all the weapon mount nodes are located inside the actor skeleton, well, not without firing up my virtual machine and taking a look at it in NifSkope myself... but there's several different ones. However, if it's about actor/NPC animations and you only want to look at them, open the skeleton NIF in NifSkope, open every body part, clothing or armor item you want for the show in a separate NifSkope, use "copy branch" > "paste branch" to copy their NiTriShape/Strips nodes over under the "Scene Root" branch of the skeleton (they will automatically align to the respective bones), and when you're done go to "Spells > Animation > attach .kf" (or what it's called), browse for the KF file of the animation you want to view, and e'viola the skeleton and all body parts, clothing or armor it now wears will jump into pose and you can use the animation player to make it move. And yes, editing existing animations (.kf files) in Blender (at least an older version where the NifTools im-/export scripts still work) is in many cases also very easy, if you know how animating in Blender works. Similarly to NifSkope you first import a skeleton ("armature only" option checked), but with animation, and browse for the KF file in the "keyframe" input field, which will import the skeleton, put it into pose and make it controllable by the animation imported. Then, if you want/need, select the skeleton, go to import a body part, clothing or armor item ("geometry only, parent to selected armature" option checked, see the pattern?), and you will end up with the exact same result as in NifSkope previously, just now you can also edit the animation (provided you know how that is done in Blender). Keep in mind specific kinds of action/movement animations will look odd outside of the game, thanks to switched axes, bogus rotations/translations etc. etc., and this "oddity" also has to be preserved by all means on editing them in Blender, or they won't look right in game anymore. I'm far from an animation expert though to know it for all the types. I do poses and idles mostly, some creature movements, actions and the whole deal of my flapping (or not) wings. There's way more I don't know anything about yet though. The CS Wiki lists a lot of those specifics already though. It's just the articles are very dated and not on par with today's ways of im- and export.

I myself was using several mod managers over the years since 2006, although for a long time I sticked to manual install. OBMM was the first I think. People kept asking, I provided OMOD-ready versions of my mods and had to give it a try myself for programming their install scripts. I'm still using it nowadays, but not as my manager anymore. Its "Utilities" menu still comes in very handy in regards to Archive Invalidation, Steam BSA timestamp fixing (not a Steam user myself though), BSA archive browsing and extracting whenever I need a Vanilla resource for modding it, and OMOD-to-ZIP conversion for those few mods only available as an actual OMOD still. NMM was the second, or third, mainly due to me wanting to know it so I can explain it to those who ask (a part of the job kinda deal). Didn't yet switch to Vortex (my current mod installation is way too complex for a successful transfer) and never got Mod Organizer MO/MO2 running in my Virtual Machine (probably a problem with creating virtual file systems inside a virtual file system or similar). So I can't vouch for those. Nowadays I'm back at Wrye Bash's BAIN, as it's the most straight forward and uncomplicated of the bunch (kinda keep telling it "automated -manual- installs", as every option inside a BAIN archive is in fact a manually installable mod). Other than f.e. OBMM BAIN also reinstalls files from previous installed but overwritten mods, when a newer installed mod was uninstalled and took all files it overwrote with it. OBMM would have left a hole of missing files. But all in all Oblivion is a very old game and the majority of its mods are almost antique, from a time where there was neither managed installs nor standardized folder structures in mods releases. Not every manager understands every other manager's mods. OMODs can only be installed by OBMM (afaik), BAINs can't be installed by either OBMM or NMM/Vortex(?), and certain manual install packages (requiring you to "rename" optional/alternative files) cannot be installed by any (straight away). So every manager in existence will have problems even "understanding" a lot of (older) mods, and they will need to be re-structured first before they can be installed. But then "every" mod manager can install every mod, or at least I can make them so they can be installed in every manager I choose. It's really only a matter of personal preference at this point. Just stick to the manager you know best and fix those mods it can't understand. Though Wrye Bash I was already using long before OBMM, just not for its BAIN (don't think it was even a thing right at start). Its Bashed Patch is invaluable nowadays where everybody wants to have at least 50+ mods. Load order is important, yes, but in this old game load order alone can't fix everything. Did you know, for example, that the game's own plugin merging on load does not even distinguish between male and female parts of race records at all? The race record loaded last will be taken into account 100%, male and female parts at the same time. This is already a known issue when using a male and a female body mod. Their plugins won't mix without undoing each other's changes. Add other cosmetic mods or even character overhauls into the mix and you will loose a whole bunch of vital features. Now, yes, there's always been manually-made compatibility patches, for use of one body mod together with another or together with a certain cosmetic mod or character overhaul even. But how many patches from 3rd party authors are you going to look up, search and install, until even the patches start undoing each other's changes? Make your own patch merging "all" race-affecting mods you got? Damn well "I" can do that, no problem. But is it just as simple for everybody else? With the Bashed Patch and the community-and author-collected and -sanctioned over the years Bash Tags (tiny snippets at the end of plugins' descriptions telling Wrye Bash which parts of the plugin are the important ones and need preserving, for example only the male parts of a male body mod and only the female parts of a female body mod, or only the hairs/eyes added to X races of a hair/eye mod) the tool will create a patch for you which will have merged all potentially endangered critical changes, and only those, from all conflicting plugins in your load order. And it even overcomes the Rule Of One and the non-splitting of record parts the game's own plugin merging so fails in doing. Just get your load order correct, click a few checkmarks and let the tool build the patch at the click of a button. With this ever-growing lack of free time for modding I started encountering a decade ago, at one point even I wasn't up for making all my patches manually myself anymore. The single click of the button was soon the preferred choice even for me.

Hmm, it isn't actually "in game", but yes, if you go to "Data Files" from the launcher, then you should at least see the plugins. It may not show any load order, or even provide a means to change it, but it will at least show which plugins exist. If you don't see the plugins you put into the Data folder inside even "Data Files", then, as far as the game is concerned, they physically aren't there. Now we only need to figure out why. I'm a little bit reluctant, as you said you also tried putting them into the Data folder manually, and it also didn't work. But usually, on later Windows OS, the thing called UAC, or perhaps also a different name nowadays, overly protects everything inside "program files" or similar system folders, which goes as far as making it so files put into there by other apps will not "actually" go there but into a VirtualStore folder somewhere in your User folders instead. The Windows Explorer, however, will "pretend" the files would be there, so if you take a look into your Data folder yourself, it will technically lie to you. The files aren't there. However, I've only heard of this being the case when an app installs the files. I don't know if it ever was the case also for manual install through Windows Explorer. But nowadays, with Windows 10... everything is possible. Steam by default installs into program files. But there is ways to make games install somewhere else, outside of the overprotected places, as well, even ways to "move" already installed games, I think. But I'm not a Steam user myself, so I don't know the specifics. This would definitely be the first thing I'd check. The game should not be installed anywhere inside program files or even worse system folders. Many people install it into "C:/Games/" for instance, or even on a different drive. But anywhere outside of Windows' folders is fine.

I would've found this way earlier, had you posted in my comments directly, but I'm glad to know you managed to fix it already. Though I'm still wondering what could've been up in your case, that a complete reinstall fixed it. With Oblivion it's normally unnecessary to ever reinstall the game.

Well, if you installed only mods from this list, then it looks like the only cause can be exactly this mod, WalkBlessed (Diagonal Move). As it's not a normal mod but an OBSE plugin (a DLL inside "Data/OBSE/plugins/"), make sure you really uninstalled it correctly, e.g. by checking in your "obse.log" which plugins are loaded, because it sounds like it's still functioning in your game.

Not sure what it's to do with "Scripted Effect", as this is only 1 single effect which can do anything a script can achieve and you can only change its icons or visuals at most. But a list of all existing and available effects can be found on the CS Wiki here: https://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php?title=Magic_Effects_List This is also the place where you can find all about the individual dialogs and setup menus in the CS and their respective options and choices. Basically it's always the first place I go to, if I need to find out about something plugin-wise. Staggering is an animation though. I don't think you can trigger it with a spell, unless you script one to do so.

Sorry for the late reply. I wasn't able to visit any non-work-related website since the weekend. Yes, of course, the material property is what I suspected as well. There's a, on the one hand nice and on the other sometimes bothering, ruleset in play with how body parts work and what makes a mesh in a NIF an actual skin-ed body part. When the material says "skin", no matter what properties, and the "name" of the NiTriShape/Strips node is one of "upperbody"/"arms", "lowerbody"/"legs", "hand", "foot" or "tail", then the game considers it an actual body part, even if it's inside a clothing item, will use the texture slot from the current race settings according to the name (thus I grouped the multiples) and override any and all material properties with the shade settings done in CharGen/FaceGen. It will also ignore any texture settings in the NIF, but still the textures referred to there "must" exist or missing texture errors will ensue regardless of the override. It's no surprise the ears didn't work on a custom race, when for example they were set up to use a specific slot texture of the current race like explained above and the texture in the slot was surprisingly fitting, while the custom race had no fitting texture assigned to that slot but the "footmale"/"footfemale" one. Though for all specifics I'll have yet to take a look at the NIFs concerned as coming from the mentioned mod. Though I know of no way to set a mesh up so it uses a different "ear" texture for different races. Now that your's are no longer material "skin", they also won't adapt to race, skin tint or color anymore.

Hmm, this whole setup only has an effect on the ears that automatically show when not hidden by helmets or wigs. It has no effect at all on ear meshes inside helmet or wig NIFs. Those are solely controlled by what's set up inside the NIF itself. You say the ears look alright when worn by non-custom, Vanilla races? What body/body mod are you using, if any? I'm trying to get a hold of the Vanilla ears NIFs to take a look inside, but this'll anyways be useless, if your ear meshes come from somewhere else and the setup inside your helmets or wigs with ears is different than what I will find. That's what we'll need here to get down to this, the properties and settings of the NiTriShape or -Strips block inside your NIFs. edit: No, as I expected the Vanilla ears I found make no sense. They can't have been the ones used with their settings as is, else you won't have changing texture with different race.

Ah, okay, that's why the questions come in that order. Then all is well. :sweat:

Well, the game doesn't have almost any of its files outside the BSA archives originally. Replacement doesn't mean physically replacing (=overwriting) a file. All the game's files are inside the BSA archives. Just like in ZIP archives there's a whole folder structure inside there. You won't find for example "meshes/armor/iron/m/cuirass.nif" anywhere inside your data folder (unless you're already using another item replacer mod replacing said file). But if you place a different "cuirass.nif" into "meshes/armor/iron/m/", provided Archive Invalidation is correctly set up and working, the game will automatically use the external, so-called loose, file over the one inside the BSA. If, however, Archive Invalidation is not working, the game will simply ignore the replacement file and stick to the one inside the BSA instead. That's why normally uninstalling a replacement mod only involves deletion of its files, not somehow recovering previously overwritten files instead, as no files have actually been overwritten.

And now you're seeing the same old item from the original game still instead of the contents of the new NIF file you made? If so, we might have to check your Archive Invalidation, as in other distributions than the retail disc (like Steam or GoG for example) it's required for all kinds of replacements to work. I also take it the replacement NIF file is in the proper place, that is exactly where the original game's NIF file would be when extracted from the BSA? The folder structure inside the BSA and outside with loose files has to match, of course, for replacement files to work.

Hmm, can I see the whole script here, so everything's in context, check the order in which things happen and where stuff can go wrong?

Hmm, basically it makes the items it runs on value-less the very first second into the game. If that's really from Mage Equipment, I wonder what purpose it had.

What means did you use to get them into game? Is it a new item record you put an instance of somewhere into the game world? Or are you trying to make it replace an existing item, e.g. by simply making it a replacement NIF? We need to figure out if simply your replacement isn't taken, or if there's something wrong within the NIF instead.

Then you would have a steel-looking madness armor. But I'm starting to think the degree of changes is becoming too much for what can actually be done with NifSkope alone and will require use of an actual modeling app like Blender or 3DS Max or the like. You technically can edit meshes to the same granularity as with a real modeling app in NifSkope, but the complexity will quickly reach levels of programming in Assembler or worse. There's no handy tools like selecting vertices and moving them around or scaling them. Instead you'll have to edit their coordinates in a list of coordinates by hand. There's also no simple selecting of 3 vertices and adding a polygon spanning all 3. Instead you'll have to add another set of 3 vertex indices to the list of vertices of the mesh and then make all arrays and counts update accordingly. Etc. etc. And when you already go into a modeling app for the task, then changing textures or adapting texture maps is also a whole different game. What exactly is it you're up to or trying to achieve anyways? Maybe going at things from the other direction will lead faster to the goal.

GetButtonPressed is only for use with message boxes. It's not for detecting the pressing of keyboard keys. I'm afraid this will require OBSE instead. Either OnKeyDown or IsKeyPressed, 2, 3 could be used. I personally prefer IsKeyPressed2 for things like this. But now we need to know what kind of spell this is. If it's of only temporary effect, like an actual Spell or Power or Potion, and has to be re-cast every time, the loop could be broken via a stop flag variable perhaps. Though if it's more like an Ability and endlessly running, it cannot be stopped unless forever, and then it can't be made working again, unless by another trigger somehow. Provided it is a Spell and will cease running after a time, the stop flag will also be cleared the next time it's casted. Then a script like this could do: float timer short stopTimer Begin ScriptEffectUpdate if IsKeyPressed2 <yourKeyCode> set stopTimer to 1 endif if stopTimer return ; abort script run here endif if ( timer < 5 ) set timer to timer + getSecondsPassed else ; insert block of code that has to run after 5 seconds endif End

Its DDS file will be untouched, and in game you'll be swinging a longsword around that's looking like an axe. The only changes having a "functional" effect in game will have to be made in the CS in a plugin or master file. All you do outside will only change some visuals... appearance, if you like. In weapons you can change some attribute defining part of their type in the NIF, but without also changing the attribute defining the other part in the CS things will only look weird as a result. Like a 1-hand sword being worn on your back but materializing out of thin air from next to your hip, as the NIF defines where the sheathed weapon is mounted on your body, but the CS defines which unsheathe animation will play. And sometimes the wrong type of item defined in the NIF will just not work at all, if it does not match the type defined in the CS. For example you can't just use a quiver NIF as a new shield, so it's held in your off-hand, without the NIF for the quiver also being changed accordingly.