I want to make a "patch" for BC and OCO2 and have no idea how to do it

[hrews]

Hi!
As summed up by the title, I'd like to (try to) make patch for Better Cities and Oblivion Character Overhaul 2.

My idea is to modify Better Cities' NPCs to adapt them to OCO2. People who use the former mod are likely aware of some weird faces with extreme slider settings, and adding OCO2 on top doesn't help. This is the main reason I refrained from using Better Cities myself.
Other problem, more objectively an actual incompatibility, is that BC's NPC's don't use OCO2 eyes or hairs (elfs with human-like-vanilla eyes). A fix for this could actually be called a patch.

The help I'm looking for is for learning how could I tweak these NPCs with this two goals in mind. I'm not precisely very skilled with the Construction Set, I fiddled with it a couple of times and not much else. Thus any tutorial you may think could help me is welcome.

I know I could probably find guides around, if I looked hard enough. But I find myself lost when look for these tutorials on my own, I just don't really know where to start.
I'm aware that this task could be challenging for someone with minimal mod-making skills, but I'd like to at least try.

Thanks in advance :smile:

PS: I have no idea what tag should I add to this post.

Edited October 5, 2017 by hrews

[hrews]

I just realised I posted this in the wrong subforum. Please moderators, could you move it to"Oblivion Construction Set and Modders"?

[DrakeTheDragon]

As you wish.

[hrews]

Well, if nobody, for any reason, says anything, I'll experiment anyway, and post my progress and issues here.

PS: thanks for moving the thread DraketheDragon :smile:

[Striker879]

If you are wanting to make a releasable patch then you will need to learn how to change an ESP file into an ESM master to create your patch using Wrye Bash (the ESMify/ESPify thing).

 

If you are simply doing this for personal use you could simply edit the Better Cities ESP while also having the Oblivion Character Overhaul ESP loaded but not active. The problem with this method is every time an update for BC is released you'd need to completely redo your edits on the new version (or you could simply make do with the older outdated version of BC).

 

It is possible to use Construction Set Extender, which will take care of the ESP masters problem, but I'm not certain if it has a way to make the OCO ESP loaded but not active (though I suppose it wouldn't matter, as the whole point of your patch would be to make the weird faces look OK with OCO).

[hrews]

Yeah, the point is to make something releasable to the public, so I'll keep that in mind.

 

I haven't tried CS Extender. When I tried to modify the faces with just OCO loaded I noticed that the program renders them similar to what they'd appear in game, perhaps their features slightly more exaggerated. If I can't load it at the same time as OCO though, I imagine it would have to be guess work (making it much more tedious). I'll try anyway.

 

Other thing I noticed from OCO is that it installs NPC-specific face textures (under Textures\Faces\Oblivion.esm). I have no idea whether that's really important for the purpose of this patch or not. Would I have to modify those of Better Cities NPCs?

[Striker879]

I don't have any hands on with Better Cities, but any of my own personal "extra NPCs" type mods I just load Oblivion.esm Oblivion Character Overhaul.esp and then my own MyExtraNPCs.esp as the active ESP. In my case I'm not making a patch so my own ESP doesn't require any master except Oblivion.esm, but by having the ESP from OCO loaded when I create my extra NPCs their features are completely compatible with OCO.

 

In your case you will need to have both Oblivion.esm and the Better Cities ESP as masters (so that your patch will change the BC weird faces) and by having the OCO ESP loaded your edits will be saved in your patch ESP and will be compatible with OCO. Depending on how extreme the slider positions are with the weird BC NPCs you may need to go through multiple edit/test cycle to "de-weirdify" them (face geometry sliders are "linked" by default, so you change one and others move at the same time even though you don't neccessarily know it).

 

Something else to keep in mind is that it's not possible to edit an NPC without those edits affecting all of the NPC's different records. Because load order wise your patch ESP will need to loaded below both the BC ESP and OCO ESP you will need to use bash tags to make certain that your patch only affects those things you intend (not certain if the BC ESP is already bash tagged, but I would guess that it has whichever bash tags it requires).

 

- Edit - If the BC NPCs are vanilla races then OCO will affect them in regards to textures etc. If the BC NPCs are custom races then the only affect OCO will have is the difference in head mesh shape, and how that interacts with their head shape slider positions.

Edited October 9, 2017 by Striker879

[hrews]

That's good to know.

 

I guess that if I made the esp with OCO loaded so it only has Oblivion.esm and Better Cities .esp(s) as masters (as you said), it could also be useful for people who don't like the BC faces but don't use OCO either. I like that.

 

I checked if BC has any Bash Tags, and the Full version (without the Imperial City, that's another .esp) has:

"Actors.AIPackages

C.Water"

The IC .esp only has "C.Water". I don't really understand a lot about the tags, but judging by what you say I should definitely look it up...

As far as I know all the NPCs are vanilla races.

[Striker879]

What little I know about bash tags comes from their descriptions in Wrye Bash Advanced Readme.html (found in your Data\Mopy\Docs folder).

 

When more than one mod uses the same bash tag then load order wins (i.e. lowest mod with the same tag gets used in the bashed patch). Bash tags allow a mod to be higher than a conflicting mod in the load order and yet still have records it needs included in the bashed patch (providing of course the conflicting lower mod doesn't use that same bash tag).

 

So in your example, if you didn't use the bash tag Actors.AIPackages for your ESP then the AI packages from Better Cities would be used in the bashed patch, even if your ESP affected some BC NPC's AI packages. If you include the bash tag Actors.AIPackages in your ESP (which will by it's dependence on the Better Cities ESP as a master need to be lower than the BC ESP) then any changes (intended or otherwise) that your ESP makes to Better Cities NPCs will be used in the bashed patch.

Edited October 13, 2017 by Striker879