LE How are people modding Skyrim?

[Xepha537]

So, I'm really quite perplexed. Other than texture replacers, how are people modding Skyrim already?

 

I just spyed this little mod Secret Of The Dwemer - which from the description looks like a really neat way of adding weapons/anything to the game (everyone should do this). Now I probably won't use the mod (I've literally had Skyrim installed a week), but it got me wondering how people are doing more complex mods like this without the CK.

 

What tools are people using?

 

A similar question: are we able to check for conflicts and such a-lá FO3Edit?

 

I'm aware of SkyEdit, but it appears to be very much alpha at the moment.

 

I probably won't be doing any modding until the CK lands/have played the game some more, but without a FO3Edit type utility to analyze and clean esm/esp's, I won't be releasing a thing...

 

What's the deal here? :confused:

 

 

This makes me feel like such a noob again... :facepalm:

Edited January 1, 2012 by Xepha537

[Fatalmasterpiece]

tesnip hex editing

[NordicMist]

The few mods I tried to create or edit with SkyEdit made my game crash, so I'm basically using Tesnip (FOMM) together with an hex editor (e.g. needed for importing DESC fields who require null-terminated strings).

[Volek]

That mod you mentioned may be one of the more complex ones out there, but from a modder's point of view, it's quite simple. It isn't a real quest, it adds 4 items that you need to craft a 5th item. Still a very good mod, the modder certainly put much time and effort into the creation.

 

I made all my Skyrim plugins with TESsnip (Fallout 3 Edition), nothing else, and i think 99% of the plugins out there are TESsnipped too. It requires a lot of guesswork and patience, but imho it's totally worth it. At least for me, i made all my mods for myself and my own gaming experience in the first place. I really like Vanilla Skyrim, but i love to try things and experiment. TESsnipping is kinda fun once you get used to it and know what you have to do to achieve certain things.

 

I tried SkyEdit, but it doesnt work for many records and subrecords, for example you can't edit NPCs. There's also a Skyrim version of TESsnip called TESvSnip, it is able to read more records and subrecords than the old version, which saves you some guesswork. But i experienced one huge downside: after loading Skyrim.esm into TesVsnip, starting the game takes ages. Loading savegames and fasttraveling takes another two ages. Loading Skyrim.esm into Fallout's TESSnip doesnt slow down the game at all. Maybe the Skyrim version is bugged, or it's just because i got a crappy computer.

 

Some people managed to create new Worldspaces and Cells with the Fallout 3 GECK, they somehow imported Skyrim resources to the GECK, built a dungeon and converted it back to Skyrim. I respect these efforts, however the GECK'ed dungeon mods i've seen so far are just empty tunnels and mazes. It's possible to make "simple" mods like Secret of the Dwemer with just TESsnip (basically copying&pasting existing stuff, then changing them to your liking), but for good looking dungeons and complex quests you'd certainly need the CK.

 

I too am waiting for a tool that can analyze and clean esm/esps. Even the most simple mods may crash someone's game. It's a PITA to hunt down and eradicate bugs with TESSnip. But you can't always blame the mod-creator or the mod-user. The first thing that needs to be analyzed and cleaned is Skyrim.esm itself :P

[Astymma]

You're also going to find that some content is difficult to edit/make that was never difficult to edit/make in the past with Morrowind or Oblivion. Any text resource stored in the interface folder in TRANSLATE_ENGLISH.txt or TRANSLATE_YOURLANGUAGE.txt can be a major PITA to edit ( see the above post about using a hex editor to ensure null-terminated strings to avoid seeing things like the character "{:content:}quot; in your strings). Also, some content is dependent on Flash Action Scripting contained within the SWF files of the User Interface. Along with the author of SkyUI, I've been searching for a way to get, what I thought would be easy..., new hair color choices into the CharGen screen. But here's the kicker, I could not find ANY record related to races, heads, head parts or anything related that points at the two known hair color formid lists HairColorlist (FLST record, formid=000e7bed) or HairColorListDoNotUse (FLST record, formid=000001f3). Oddly, though perhaps not considering who we're talking about here, the HairColor list that appears to be being used in the CharGen screens is HairColorListDoNotUse lol :) Also, HairColorList contains 15 hair color shades (there are 15 choices in the CharGen UI slider) and also 17 hair color feathering entries for a total of 32 subrecords so it looks like the tradition of including unused, unimplemented or forgotten content is still alive. HairColorListDoNotUse only contains the 15 hair colors the CharGen UI slider displays. The hair color lists are FLST records containing LNAm subrecords that point at CLFM records (like Form ID: 000A042D: CLFM HairColor02LightBlond is one of the LNAM records in the two hair color lists). The CLFM records contain a CNAM subrecord that stores the RGBA color information (in hex, read from left to right) that is applied onto the hair texture. So the above HairColor02LightBlond has a CNAM of 43 3D 2E 00 which is decimal RGBA values of 67 61 46 00.

 

So here's the problem, I know WHAT the information says, WHERE the information is and WHERE it's being shown... but creating a mod and adding a new hair color to both of the hair color lists does NOT show up in the UI as a new slider option. So somewhere there's a hard coded entry saying "there are 15 hair colors" and I can't find it. I've looked at the decompiled SWF action script and that's a bit of a nightmare, I really feel for schlangster and the SkyUI team trying to muddle through code that contains absolutely NO labels, just raw values.

 

YMMV, it's fun AND frustrating... but editing things prior to editing tools being available is always like that :)