[LE] Model replacers for Skytest Realistic Animals and Predators?

[InDarkestNight]

Skytest is probably my favorite mod of all time. Its irreplacable, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its flaws. Notably, in all honesty, it could do with some better models for the female horkers, along with the horker, bear, and sabrecat cubs.

 

Etayorius did try to make his own models, but he admits his skill in such was severely lacking, and it really shows.

 

We've had a number of fixes for the mod, but for some reason the bad models have never really been addressed. The best we got is a mod by xtudo that replaces the horker models with the default one. Recently, I saw a new mod for it pop up and was hoping it was finally the fix I was looking for, but turns out it was not; it was simply a compilation of all the currently existing fixes, along with a new feature that replaces the young mammoths with one of mihail's models.

 

Really, I don't get why this hasn't been done. I mean, lets be real, is it really THAT big of a deal to make 4 new models? Especially considering that in this case they would all just be slight tweaks of the vanilla models. The female horker model for instance was just to supposed to remove the tusks and make them a bit more slender. Would it really be too much work for a more experienced model-maker to do this themselves? I mean, we're seeing mods coming out all the time and surely required far more work than this would. I don't see why someone hasn't decided to take a break and work on something comparatively simpler. Then again, its been quite a while since I've been a new creature mod. In fact, I don't think a new one has come out since 4thunknown quit.

 

I would do this myself, but in all honesty I couldn't do a better job than what Etayorius did. I've actually tried to use models from Real Wildlife as replacers, but honestly it doesn't seem like much of a fix to replace the cub models with miniature versions of the adults, and that doesn't fix the female horkers either way. The best I've come up with is a patch that simply removes all the young animal spawns (though part of that honestly was because I felt sorta bad killing the mothers of baby animals).

 

When I uploaded my first and only mod, I had other big plans in store. I was wanting to make some proper integration patches, and maybe make a few new ones of my own, but I found it was simply beyond my skill. Either way, I have no way to make my own models, as I stated, so I couldn't add young variants to most animals from other mods anyway. The best I've manage to come up with are some esp's that just disable the young animals and revert the stats of animals to vanilla while keeping their new AI and schedules. On top of all this, I can't figure out how Skytest works. I tried to make a mod for myself that expanded on the vanilla animals, but with compatibility and consistency with skytest built-in. It completely stalled early on because I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to get the baby ducks to follow their mothers around. Besides, it was hard to stay motivated on the thing knowing I would never be able to share it anyway since I would have to make use of models from several different mod authors, including the famous mihail. Of course, I wouldn't have had enough models anyway, seeing as few animal mods have young variants. I was actually planning on using the lynx model from animallica while using one of mihail's models for its pelt. Seriously. Besides, it still didn't solve the problem in that I really have no idea what I need to set the stats for everything to in order for everything to be in line with skytest. As for those integration patches, honestly another problem was that I was worried they would overlap too much with the ones from evrymetul. My patches would have been basically those, but with stat adjustments like the one that exists on the Animallica Lore Edition Redux page.

 

Yeah, I had A LOT of plans, but I quickly found that I had simply bitten off far more than I could chew. I have thought about uploading my disabling patches, but they hardly seem worth uploading. Besides, from my understanding a lot of skytest users already have their own stat-reversion mods.

 

I love this mod so much, but it annoys me that I can't do anything to perfect it while simultaneously no one who has more skill than me bothers to try. I realize this post probably won't lead anywhere, but its worth another try I guess. I would be honestly surprised if it happened, to be honest.