Creation Kit - How do I find all the Guard actors for each hold?

[vlainstrike]

EDIT: SOLVED - See pics below

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I'm very new to the CK, so please bear with me.

I'm trying to make a mod that will replace all the guard's armor with a different set of armor for each hold, but I'm having a surprisingly difficult time isolating which specific actors I need to edit.

 

After a lot of searching I was excited to find this guide explaining the process to change the guard's armor:

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Skyrim
Making a New Outfit in the Creation Kit (Simple just a lot of words)
=======================================
1. Open the Creation Kit
2. Load Skyrim.esm, and any of the mods that you wish to use for the custom outfit
3. In the Object Window click on the Items tab, then click on Outfit
4. Right click anywhere on the list that pops up to the right (where the outfit list is), and press New
5. In the new window that opens find where it says ID and click next to it, now type a name for your outfit ex. AAAMyOutfit
6. Now DON"T close that window, just move it to the side for now
7. Go back to the Object Window and click the Items tab, then click Armor
8. Now one at a time pick a piece of armor that you want to be in the outfit and click ONCE on it so that it becomes highlighted, now Drag the armor into the Outfit window that we opened in #5. Once you have picked all the armor that you wanted you can press OK at the bottom of the Outfit window
9. Now go back to the Object Window and click on the Actors tab then click Actor, now you can pick (or make) an actor that you want to wear the outfit
10. Once you have picked the actor you want double click on it, an Actor edit window will now open up. Now click on the Inventory tab
11. Look for the words Default Outfit and click the tab under it, now you can look for the name of the Outfit you just made, once you found it click on it

If you look to the left of the tab you just clicked you'll see a list of armor, if the armors in that list are the ones you picked for the Outfit you made then you picked the right one

12. Now press OK in the bottom of the Actor Window
13. After all that click File then Save, and name it what ever you want

Finished!

But isolating the specific actors that need editing is proving to be maddeningly elusive.

I've clicked on the actor list, and put 'guard' in the filter, but not all of the actors which appear in the resulting list seem to be 'real' actors. I know at least some of them are correct because when I double click on them I can see their body and armor in the preview render window, but A LOT of the others (particularly the ones that don't have a race listed under the race column) can't be viewed even though these actors have the word 'guard' in their id - when I double click on these others, instead of a guard appearing in the preview render window I just see a big 3d "M" with a 3d arrow jutting out of it, and I have no idea what this means or why these 'actors' don't seem to have a model.

I'm trying to learn by searching, reading, and watching lots of creation kit video tutorials, but nothing seems to address this specific question. I've even tried cracking open the .esp's of existing mods that do what I'm trying to do (e.g. Various guard outfits for Every cityTS Edition) in the CK, but even then I don't know how to isolate the id's of the specific actors changed by those mods.

 

This has been incredibly frustrating, so if anyone can help I'd greatly appreciate it.

Edited November 18, 2015 by vlainstrike

[Feralkyn]

Disclaimer--I'm still SUPER new to modding, so all of this might be totally off :wink:

 

Just a thought, but what you COULD do is move your Cell View Window to each town, double-click the guards there and see their base name. I'd make a notepad file with the filenames for each guard and for their Outfits, too. I had to find Falkreath guards for a mod I'm doing and I don't remember it being difficult--typing Falkreath into the search box with the Actor list open did it, iirc? Could try the town names that way.

 

As for the big M, it means they're levelled with the player, so instead of a preset actor you get a template that, when in-game, spawns the correct levelled actor. You can still check out the base/outfit for these in the details--the M is still correct.

 

Edit--if you sort the Actor list by name and look at all the ones that start with Guard, that should work. The ones I used in my game are represented by M in the creation kit, but are "real" guards in-game. You can double-click that M and go to Edit Base (don't actually edit anything), then go to the Inventory tab. Once there you'll see Outfit, and I assume if you want to change a guard's appearance, that's what you'll want to go look up in the CK.

 

For example, my Falkreath guards will have OutfitListGuardFalkreath, so if I tick All and look that up in the CK, I can look at the Outfit directly, and edit or make a new one.

Edited November 16, 2015 by Feralkyn

[vlainstrike]

Thank you Feralkyn, I'll give those suggestions a try. That information puts my mind at ease a bit - I was concerned that if I tried to edit the outfits for any of the guards rendered as 'M' that I would end up breaking something.

 

My other concern is that I want to avoid accidentally changing the outfits for Imperials and Stormcloaks because I already have a couple mods that take care of those groups (i.e Perfect Legionnaire for Imperials, and Skyrim Knights for Stormcloaks).

Edited November 16, 2015 by vlainstrike

[vlainstrike]

I dare say I think I found the step by step answer here

Edit the appropriate guard leveled list. To find out which one, open a few of the Imperial Guards' Actor Values in the CK.

I'll walk you through one and do it right now. Just give me a bit to write a guide :wink:

Okay so I'm going to open a guard's Actor Value...I'm randomly picking in this case: CWSoldierImperialNotGuard, I"m guessing he's an Imperial Soldier who isn't a formal Guard.

I'm not 100% sure if he's what you're looking for but this will be good for a general example :smile: .

So I open him up and click "Full" at which I see a big... "M" sign. This M I believe means that the character has no "identity", in particular this character has no identitiy because of something in the corner of his actor window.

You should see "Template Data" with a few things checked:

Use Traits, Use Stats, Use Scripts, Use AI Data, Use Inventory...etc. Almost everything is checked here. What this means is that this particular record "CWSoldierImperialNotGuard" uses all of the checked traits of the "ActorBase" value shown, instead of having its own stuff. In this case the ActorBase this record uses is "LCharSoldierImperial".

You want to change the guard's inventory though...so we have to find an editable inventory record, and if possible, the base record (the one that everyone is referring to).

So this particular record isn't much use to us. Let's click Edit to see where "LCharSoldierImperial" takes us.

When you press Edit it will bring up a "LeveledCharacter" list. This is a new feature in the CK (I believe at least). Basically some records point to a list of customized characters from a list. This way they can have templates of characters stacked up without having to hand place everything. The same goes for the Template section I explained above.

But anyway lets pick anyone from the list...lets say "EncSoldierImperialBretonM01MaleSoldier"

After opening "EncSoldierImperialBretonM01MaleSoldier " Click Full to look at the Soldier. You'll see a nice mustached Breton Imperial Character. Cool stuff! Definitely a bit closer to editing a record with the proper inventory.

But if you notice in the bottom left his "TemplateData" has "Use Inventory" referring to the inventory of another record...dammit! Gotta dig deeper.

Click edit to open this record: "EncSoldierImperialTemplate".

Now that you're in "EncSoldierImperialTemplate" you'll notice that this particular record doesn't use any template data. This means that this is the base record. Awesome! You can click "Full" to see what it looks like. It's basically a plain Imperial NPC.

But we don't care about his looks for this one, you want to Edit his Inventory! So click the Inventory tab for the NPC.

You'll notice he uses a specific Inventory item called "CWSoldierImperialGear". It's icon is a green question mark...which means its a Leveled List, or basically a list of items that will be called upon at random when its used.

You'll also notice that he has some "Outfit Objects". Outfit is basically the particular clothes/armor that the NPC is FORCED to wear. There are two of them: Default Outfits and Sleep Outfits. You can edit these later on if you desire, but we'll focus on editing his weapons for now.

So double click "CWSoldierImperialGear" to open up the Leveled List for it.

You'll notice that he uses some weapons in particular:

ImperialBow, ImperialSword, SteelDagger

Along with some other items at random:

LitemTorch50, BaseArrowSteel75, LootDrinkList25, etc etc.

You can open up those leveled lists to see what they contain too. But the main thing to pay attention to is the weapons he's equipping.

If you want to add your weapon to all the guards you'll have to edit this Leveled List. You can choose to remove "imperial sword" and drag and drop your weapon into this list (after you make it as a new weapon record of course!), press ok and then your weapon will move out to all NPCs who use this template.

That's pretty much the extent of it!

User avatar

Sarah Edmunds

Posts: 3236

Joined: Sat Jul 08, 2006 8:03 pm

Post » Thu May 24, 2012 11:14 pm

Oh I noticed you wanted to edit the armor too. Well you just need to add your items to the CK, then open up the "Outfit" record on the side, make a new record and drag your armor into that new record. Then edit the ""EncSoldierImperialTemplate" 's outfit and then all the guards using his template will get your new armors :smile:.

Good luck!

Also this little piece of info was what I needed to isolate & compare the changes made by the esp's of similar mods:

Load your mod in the CK (as the active file).
Click the "Load Master/Plugin files" icon (the first on the left of the toolbar).
Click once on your mod in the "Plugin/Master Files" list in the "Data" window to highlight it.
Click the "Details..." button. The list that appears shows all the forms that were edited.
Drag the bottom scroll bar to the right. Between the "Editor ID" column and the "Offset" column there is a hidden column. Drag the column divider a bit to reveal the hidden column. It is the "Form ID" column.
The Form ID's are very useful. Write ones down for the forms that interest you. Then close both the Details and Data windows and do "Edit->Find Text" from the top CK menu and type in a Form ID then click the "Find Text" button. Click the "Objects etc" tab. You should see the Object with that form ID listed there. Double click the object and it's form will open.

Edit: If a modder has been diligent, he will append something in front of any forms he creates (perhaps his initials). Let's say he appended "xxx_" to his forms. Then simply type "xxx_*" in the Filter field at the top left of the Object window in the CK, then scroll all the way down and click on "*All" in the left window. You will see all the forms beginning with "xxx_".

Also, any edited forms will have an * after their name in the Object window in the CK.

I'm hoping this information, combined with the guide to create new outfits that I posted in the OP, will produce the desired results for each hold. Time to test!

Edited November 17, 2015 by vlainstrike

[vlainstrike]

Eureka! Whiterun Guards in Maty743's finest!

http://i66.tinypic.com/2dk0caa.jpg

http://i68.tinypic.com/hun1j8.jpg

http://i67.tinypic.com/2i6lx1d.jpg

[vlainstrike]

It was agonizing trying to piece together these steps on my own, but I think the results are worth it. It took all 3 puzzle pieces that I posted earlier in this thread, plus a couple critical tips from Darkfox127's youtube tutorials, to finally arrive at the finished product.

 

The first was from the first couple of vids in his Skyrim Creation Kit (The Basics) series which instructs you how to edit your ini files to allow multiple masters when running the CK for the first time. I'm sure this is old news for CK veterans, but this is a crucial step that can easily be overlooked by noobs like me.

 

The second was from his

video which instructs you to temporarily tick the Record Flags as an ESM in TES5Edit under the File Header for the mod from which you are using assets (Noldor Content Pack in this case) before venturing into the CK to create your plugin patch. This is done in order to trick the CK into thinking it is a master file for your new plugin.

One final tidbit was found here, which allowed me to view the specific details changed by other mods that do the same sort of thing. Again, probably obvious to veterans, but tracking down this kind of info for the first time can often be problematic. Being able to compare my work to similar mods helped me hone in on which NPC templates actually needed to be altered. Once I started to see the patterning of the nested actor records, it became much easier to track down the 'core' guard templates that needed a new outfit, which would then be automatically distributed to its 'child' actor templates. This must be done without going too deep, else I believe it would end up altering non-guard actors.

 

Now that my proof of concept is finished I can start altering armor and weapons for guards in the other holds not covered by Halendia's Replacer patch for Omegared99's amazing Gallery of Armor (which covers Solitude, Windhelm, Markarth, and Riften)

 

Hopefully the consolidated info in this thread will help anyone else in the future that wants to personalize all the guard armor of each hold to their liking.

Edited November 18, 2015 by vlainstrike

[scrivener07]

And this is how you you learn to mod. Why cant more people be like you. Kudos for you.

 

Maybe you would consider contributing to the official wiki http://www.creationkit.com/Category:Community_Tutorials

All these years and STILL only a handful of tutorials.

[vlainstrike]

Thank you for the kind words scrivener07. To be fair, all the info was out there, else I never would have made any progress; it just wasn't all in one place. I'm very grateful to the people who posted all the guides that I used.

I was rather surprised at just how many little steps are involved in creating such a seemingly simple change to the game.

Edited November 28, 2015 by vlainstrike