Tattoos overwriting each other from different mods?

[Nap1985]

I just made my first mod. Amateur attempt at making a synth type face tattoo. It seemed to be working fine, but then I installed a new tattoo mod today, and for some reason its single tattoo has replaced one of my tattoos in Looksmenu. It has my tattoos name, but the texture from the new tattoo. WTH is going on? Is there a limited number of slots available? Is there some setting I missed? I thought it would be pretty straightforward additions to the tattoo options in Looksmenu. I have Looksmenu Customization Compendium, the Cyberpunk Tattoo mod and a half dozen body overlay mods installed and they all work together just fine.

 

I read/watched several tutorials and I didn't think I missed anything, but apparently I did?

 

I put all my tattoos in a new category as well, so it's really odd that it would overwrite one of mine.

 

 

[RaidersClamoring]

Did you recreate a texture folder in Data with any expected subfolders so you can override the original record at deployment?

[Nap1985]

I....think so? When I went to pack the mod to upload I manually created the new folder structure elsewhere, and put all the files in the correct places within. They all worked just fine before installing this other mod.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by override the original record?

[Nap1985]

I think I may have figured out what I did wrong. When I created the new category in CK, there's a little box that says "Chargen Index" which I left at 0. I suspect it needs to be a different number both from all vanilla categories AND mod added categories? I'm working on remaking the mod playing with that number but if anyone knows specifically what that box does, I'd appreciate it!

[Nap1985]

Don't think that's it, but, apparently you cannot have multiple face tattoo mods. They overwrite each other. I uninstalled everything but Looksmenu Customization Compendium, and realized there's a LOT more options than were previously available. So the other face tattoo mods I had installed were overwriting LMCC options.

 

There's got to be a way to add options from another esp without overwriting other mods.

 

Edit: Would an Xedit merge patch solve this?

Edited January 7, 2023 by Nap1985

[RaidersClamoring]

Exactly what you discovered is what I mean by "override", except think of the vanilla masters as mods as well. When you place a mod beneath another one you are overriding whatever implementations and changes made by that mod (in this case to tattoos) to the exact same files you are changing, and the same is true of the vanilla plugins. To be the winning mod you need to load last, so adjust your load-order and instruct your users to do the same (or to just use one tattoo-mod).

A merge would only work if you aren't modifying the exact same files. For instance the other mod may have included an entire library but is only really changing some files that you aren't changing. Then you can create a patch/merge.

[Nap1985]

Thanks, I guess I assumed tattoos and makeup mods could be stacked. Like armor and weapons. Or hair and eyes. Didn't occur to me you could only have one. I thought I was doing something wrong when creating the esp. Merge patch doesn't work. Mator mash doesn't work. I'm assuming merging the actual plugins might work. But for now I just added the tattoos to LMCC for personal use (tried contacting LMCC author, haven't heard back), and will probably just make a vanilla replacer that includes just textures for release.