My first mod

[VMorticia]

Hi everyone, I'm new here, and I'm trying to make a mod completely within the Creation Kit, if possible - the less programming-language I need to learn, the better for everyone involved.

 

It started out so simple. I just wanted to make the Dragonbone Bow look better (I like Ebony and Nightingale, but didn't want to downgrade or use enchants outside my play-style). A friend pointed my at Skyrim Creation Kit, and that worked perfectly. I now have my pretty new bow in game, and it's everything I dreamed it would be.

 

However, having discovered this wondrous tool (and been inspired by all the fantastic mods on here), I've now got a whole elaborate dungeon, quest chain, player house and follower all planned out in my head, and have very little idea of how to achieve all of it.

 

I watched a bunch of Youtube tutorials, and figured out the basics of the player-house - that's going well so far (though if anyone can tell me how to trigger an in-game change in the interior design, like when you buy furniture for your house in Hearthfire, I'd very much like to know).

 

My problems arose when trying to make the follower (I've not attempted the dungeon or quest chain yet), and that's where I'm stuck now...

 

I followed part 1 of this guide: http://deck16.net/post/22645519500/making-a-unique-voiced-follower-in-skyrim-part-1

...to the letter, so if I've missed something it wasn't explained there... but the new follower won't follow me. I tried putting her somewhere else, moving her around, as the guide suggested, but she just stands there. The options to ask her to follow me or perform an action are there, but she just won't MOVE.

 

Another issue I have is I want a corpse with a knife in the back in the same room that we first meet the follower... but in spite of telling both knife and corpse not to havok (with scripts as well as the tickbox), the body won't spawn in place... sometimes it'll lie on top of the floating-in-mid-air knife, and sometimes the knife is in the neck instead of the back, but it never spawns exactly where I want it.

 

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated, as I do really want to be able to put this mod out there when I'm done.

[skinnytecboy]

Welcome to the world of modding ;)

 

Your first issue sounds like you need to generate a Seq file. Just Google it. Also, when testing ALWAYS test from a clean save file (one where your mod was not loaded).

 

For your second question, I suspect that others will have better answers than I.

 

However, perhaps try rotating (press W) the corpse so that it is already lying on the floor.

 

Creating mods is no easy task. I recommend that you approach each hurdle one at a time. The answers are out there, you just need to search the right questions.

 

Good luck

[acidzebra]

 

I followed part 1 of this guide: http://deck16.net/post/22645519500/making-a-unique-voiced-follower-in-skyrim-part-1

...to the letter, so if I've missed something it wasn't explained there... but the new follower won't follow me. I tried putting her somewhere else, moving her around, as the guide suggested, but she just stands there. The options to ask her to follow me or perform an action are there, but she just won't MOVE.

 

 

Out of curiousity, where are you spawning her? Out in the beth-created gameworld, or in your newly created home?

 

Because unless you've navmeshed your home already, NPCs won't know where/how to move inside of it.

 

http://www.creationkit.com/Bethesda_Tutorial_Navmesh

I suspect you're spawning her inside your fresh home. Try putting her in an existing place just for testing.

Also, create lots of backups. There's nothing worse than suddenly realising you did a terrible thing... 5 versions ago.

 

 

Another issue I have is I want a corpse with a knife in the back in the same room that we first meet the follower... but in spite of telling both knife and corpse not to havok (with scripts as well as the tickbox), the body won't spawn in place... sometimes it'll lie on top of the floating-in-mid-air knife, and sometimes the knife is in the neck instead of the back, but it never spawns exactly where I want it.

 

 

Sticking objects in other objects in a dynamic physics gameworld is always a bit dodgy. Couldn't you get much of the same effect by dropping the knife next to the body and liberally splash dried blood decals all over the scene? People will get the idea (frankly I think most people would overlook the knife sticking out of the back entirely, but lots of blood is hard to miss). Don't get hung up on the details too much :smile:

 

I watched a bunch of Youtube tutorials, and figured out the basics of the player-house - that's going well so far (though if anyone can tell me how to trigger an in-game change in the interior design, like when you buy furniture for your house in Hearthfire, I'd very much like to know).

Final tip, although this is somewhat advanced stuff; look at the vanilla player housing. I haven't looked at HF but I imagine the principle is the same. All the stuff in Breezehome is already there, it's just disabled and tied to a special activator object. Toggling the activator (which is typically done by a quest), results in all the disabled "children" of that activator being enabled.

[VMorticia]

Wow, that was fast. Thanks.

 

Yes, I was trying to put her in my new player-house. I'll test her in WR or somewhere, next time.

 

The main reason I wanted the knife in the back was I was hoping to (much later) learn how to do a triggered-event to turn the body to ash if you pulled out the knife. I can skip that indulgence and use the blood as you suggested if necessary, but will continue trying to figure it out in the meantime.

 

Yes, I'm very ambitious, but I know I'm still at the bottom end of my learning curve here. Once again, thank you both.

 

New to-do list... seq files and navmeshes :)

[Zylice]

Here's a playlist with all kinds of CK tutorials. They are easy to follow for beginners.

Contains:

•CK Basics

•Quest-making

•Dungeon-design

•Landscaping

•Scripting

•Navmeshing

•Player Home

•Custom Follower

•NPCs & AI Packages

 

plus more! I'm always adding to this playlist.

 

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB4t0GI9oBEa5zVnDmGp_IOfOMR1058uZ

[VMorticia]

So... I've got the navmeshes working, now. Still very wary of the seq files, but at least I think I understand the theory, I just haven't tried it yet.

 

Now I want to add a headless skeleton race to my mod, for a unique NPC (raised dead minion pottering around my base, generally looking like it's doing busywork). I've tried to edit the skeleton race .nif file in Blender, but it wouldn't let me even open it (to be fair, I'm new to Blender). Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Or is there a simpler way to just off with his head?

Yes, I could just let him keep his head, but then it wouldn't be so funny to call him Bob and keep his skull on a shelf.

[skinnytecboy]

Ha. Good stuff.

 

Seq you can create with Tes5edit (open your esp- right click- scroll to the bottom and open drop down menu - click generate Seq file.)

 

Regarding headless skeleton, why not select the head part in nifscope and play around with its alpha properties?

 

I recommend a bit more go ogling to get your head around the above (was that a pun?)

 

:) http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1188259-bslightingshaderproperty-basics/

Edited May 18, 2015 by skinnytecboy