I want to get started quickly with modding as there is much I wanna do... ;)

[Pellape]

I want to get started quickly with modding as there is much I wanna do... 

What I need is your links to the best tools available for modding the game right now. I will make a list and you can point out which posts I should read so I can get started to make stuff as soon as possible without to much googling. Okay, if you have not made a good list with links, fine, then I make one. The top thread with news and links is cool and I read a couple of postings but I felt like drowning in information about stuff that is not important for me right now, like a bunch of game updates and so on. That's cool but that stuff should be split up really.

1, A thread with game updates

2. A thread with modding tools as I cannot find one but I might be blind. Forums are often a bloody jungle and it is not always easy to find relative information.

So what do I need right now?

1. The best tool for open and reading the BA2 files and if I recall right, there where a bunch of tools for Skyrim but not all really worked as they should.

2. I need a good plugin for Blender to import and export Starfield meshes

3. I need cool DDS tools as I guess it is still DDS that Bethesda are using and the Net immerse Game Engine right?

4. Is Nifscope adapted now to work with Starfield?

5. Scripting tutorial for papyrus - We really need a library of some sort where all the good free scripts are available. I really dislike that some modders do not include their scripts in Skyrim when they publish their mods so the rest of us can see how they did solve some stuff. Oblivion has the benefit that a modder can never hide their solutions, how brilliant they solved stuff and the only way to see it is to load their mods into CS and backtrack their work and I learned a lot doing so and I did not learned anything trying to do that in Skyrim CK really, not when Papyrus is txt files outside CK. I wanna see the scripts and try them in game, and use the console to see what happens in game if I do this or that and to be able to log it. I do hope this community will become so brilliant and helpful to pull this off, either at Github or where ever. It is only if we cooperate that we can or will allow us to make the coolest stuff, to allow us to take the game and modding to a new dimension, making the impossible possible. 

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I wanna start editing meshes this weekend I think, if I wake up from a hard week at school. I am a Computer Graphic 3D student, so my modding time is a bit limited, well if I am after a good and top grade that is, which I am. So we make similar stuff every day in school as I did as a modder for the latest 18 years. Just more and more tools.   So damn fun but also extremely demanding. This is the hardest and most difficult stuff I have done or made in my entire life and I am 60 now. 

I start a thread in the modding ideas or continue editing my ideas in the bookshelf thread I created earlier. So we keep this thread open for a community debate. I do wanna know what you are able to do and like to make and who enjoys teamwork. If we have similar ideas about a mod, we should teamwork and make a single cool and good solution than making loads of small single mods. The benefit is to have as much as possible within a single ESP and even maybe create a good common ESM, similar to the COBL as I do love the idea behind COBL, which stands for Common Oblivion Library and I do think that Wrye was one of the initiators to that project as he was part of it until he spend all his time to focus at Wrye Bash. I can recall wrong as well     I did made some bug patches to COBL but it was also hard to find anyone that where able to publish them so I included the bug patches in my own big Oblivion mod Legacy of the Champion.  

To sum this thread up. We do need a sticky thread with helpful tips for the modders, a thread that stays clean from other stuff, a thread that will help any player that gets here to actually get started with modding as fast as possible...    The more that wants to get started with modding, the better for everyone.   Even if we do not have CK2 right now, there are stuff we can create anyway, to prepare for the future right now, this very weekend.

Edited December 8, 2023 by Pellape

[StackEmHigh]

Good luck with finding the tools you're after, Pellape.  It will be very exciting when the CK is released!!  Starfield will age like a fine wine.

 

I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

[Pellape]

Me too    i will take one step in a time to start with and make tests with the tools available right now.

First of all, here is the link to the NifTools project https://www.niftools.org/

NifSkope where able to open the game archives immediately in Skyrim and allowed us to save a copy of the NIF outside the archive in Skyrim. I will test now to see if that works for Starfield. Well I cannot make tests by the way, darn. I am at my GF apartment and my compuyetr is in a sleeping state and I cannot access it with the remote.     I have to edit these settings on monday when i get hoe again.

So if I am able to put a descent list together, who here are able to stick it at the top and in which subforum should that be done?

If no one here tested it already, we actually do not know how far the NifTools devs have come to implement Starfield. I will try to find the current state as Starfield is not listed in the readme yet, but Wrye did make a beta of Wrye Bash, which I am using right now as i signed up as a betatester at their Discord so maybe they do have a beta available for Starfield?  I will get into their Discord and ask.     https://github.com/niftools/nifskope

About Wrye bash, they did informed me that it is not possible yet to implement Wrye bash patch but it works great for installing mods with and has not failed me yet to do so. I love Wryes stuff and used it for 19 years now. If I make a wild guess, it might even be so that I am among the oldest and longest Wrye mash/bash users even. 

Edited December 9, 2023 by Pellape

[Pellape]

NifTools are in the remaking of their homepage and nothing is working right now. I cannot find the link to their Discord and the forum is down. I did however find this at a reddit posting:

https://github.com/niftools/nifskope/issues/232

I also found an issue at Github about the current state at their forum and the answer was to peek in the documentation to get the right link.  :O If we peek at Niftools homepage, they do link the Discord conversations there but no one is online anyway right now. No wonder, as the time is 06:00 in New York    i try to make a posting at Github, to get more information, if they will give me one that is.

[Pellape]

Deleted my frustration to find the right links

 

Edited December 9, 2023 by Pellape

[Pellape]

I did find the right link now: https://github.com/fo76utils/nifskope/releases I hope

 

[Pellape]

FINALLY. Damn detective work... Why is it so hard to find right info.... 

I got NifSkope up and running and now i need a break to sleep as I am so extremely tired...     I cannot test to open anything right now anyway....

Okay, so far so good, now I need to make an issue about the current state of NifTools forum and Discord, so I at least get updates to my email    I did a posting in Wryes Discord if anyone knows how to reach the NifTools devs at all right now.    Maybe we should just let them work with this without asking to much questions and interupt their work?     

Edited December 9, 2023 by Pellape

[Pellape]

I made an issue, https://github.com/niftools/nifskope/issues/240 so we will be able to get updates at least...  There is no guarantee we will get any info as maybe they do not have any answers about any timeframes at all?  i know this is a very slow process and nothing that is done over night. The thing is, when it is up and running, they also need the userbase to find them, to actually find the new forum and find the new Discord server     I want to hang around there to get tips and the latest news about the NIF structure so i know what I am doing at all inside the nifs when I edit them, to make things right and as optimized as possible and the only ones able to answer that is the brilliant devs at NifTools really. 

 

I do guess everyone is sleeping right now anyway, and I go back to bed now myself.     Well, now we actually have access to a tool. 

Edited December 9, 2023 by Pellape

[Pellape]

Tool number 2 must be Wrye Bash. Why when there are other tools, like Nexus and I bet OBMM and similar will get rereleased as well but why? What makes Wrye Bash so unique and how do I get it?  Well right now it is in a beta state, What the bash team needs to figure out or rather implement is how to write the esp and esm format correctly, well Xedit is doing that already but I do guess the bash team wants to rely on their own observations of the esp/esm format for Starfield. If you wanna try it out, go and ask for a beta at their Discord.

https://discord.gg/eBryTXG

Here is also their official all games forum

https://www.afkmods.com/index.php?/topic/4966-wrye-bash-all-games/

Wrye Basj is nost likely the oldest mod organizer still available for the netimmerse games and I am extremely impressed by the wrye team, what they have managed to make and keep it updated every year for over 19 years now. The inteface is not windows standard but no mod organizers are windows standard and what is really windows standard anyway.    The interface is built up on a Python and the file handeling is done with C, so that process gets as fast as possible but if you have loads of mods added to bash installation folder, expect it to take a long time to update it every time you open Bash, so put your files elsewhere and put them back if you need to uninstall a mod. It is unwise to uninstall anything you add to the game if it will stay reliable and not crash. Wrye bash needs to have write permissions later and should be run as a computer administrator. The best is really to install your games at C:/games  (my backslash to not work here)

What will Wrye Bash write anyway. The Wrye Bash Patchm which is not implemented yet, which will be neeeded later to merge all objectlists into a single list, to prevent conflicts between different mods. This was a problem in Morrowind, as all mods did share the same memory adresses.    We made a system in Morrowind to prevent conflicts by naming all stuff we created with out initiales and mine was pekThis and pekThat and is still pekSomething I guess.     Some used numbers to get the items on top of the object list, like Neil, who used 1 but that did cause bugs and problems so do not ever name an object to start with a number, never ever.

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Xedit do have some benefits over the CK and that is that it will always be much faster to use. But bare in mind, it is a low level tool/editor and it might break stuff if not used correctly. If you use mods made with Xedit, do expect some bugs might occur as all we do in it, we will not be allowed to make a single misstake, CK will prevent us to make some mistakes but Xedit will not. I use Xedit nmostly if I want quick info fro a mod, backtracing ID numbers or anything else I need quick access too. I did some quickediting of some stuff as well but I do test them if i do properly.

The best editor for any bethesda game ever made must be the extended CS. Take a look here: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/36370 and we need sucj an editor for Starfield later. Damn, I might go and ask him if he plans to make one    he did not make one for Skyrim....

ShadeMe, the author still reads and reply at that forum, so I asked, and we see what he say 

Edited December 9, 2023 by Pellape

[Pellape]

Lets debate the coolest tool of them all, a tool that more and more people ll over the world are using to make a lot of impressive stuff with. We use it in school, and yes, I should do my homework instead of typing here, but I need a break from powertools and garbage like that as I wanna make fun and useful stuff instead, useful for myself    Blender. It is FREEWARE!!!!

https://www.blender.org/

I will try to aid anyone here to get started with any of the tools I provide in this thread and Blender is maybe the tool that has most tutorials made in the world soon as there are so many different things we can do with it within the whole graphics area. It is a 3D editor mainly but not only as it is also a complete tool to make animations and whatever and it is free. Blender can read almost every 3D format, but it presents them as polygons and CAD has their own formats, so do not mix them up,  

It sure takes awhile to get used to Blender but if you ask me, nothing is impossible but I do not know if it is easy to learn or not as I am so used to 3D now and are able to make stuff while sleeping more or less. If you wanna get started, I do think you should start with some weapons tutorials, well not swords but rather shotguns and stuff like that as it is extremely easy to make them. Armor is not that easy as weapons or static objects. Youtube is filled with them. If you want me too, i could aid to find the right tutorial just for you, so you can get started and make something you will be proud over and that you later want to see in game. I love to see my own creations in game as that is so damn extremely creative.

Bare in mind,  We need to await the NifTools team to make a working Importer/Exporter, if there is none as I do not know which, but while we wait, you can make stuff still, save them as obj or blend files and we implement them later on when we can. So get started today.

 

Edited December 9, 2023 by Pellape