[LE] SkyrimLE Creation Kit NIGHTMARES

[Scd2112]

Hello all Modders who use CK - OH MY GOD! CK=Nightmare!

Well I am a Newbie and attempting to create my own follower mod which I figured would be easy enough or so I thought. I've watched what felt like hours of video's and all seemed some what simple to follow.

Until I actually started using CK and making my own duplicated and edited copies of texture sets and Meshes and so on.

So basically I would create duplicates of the files I would need and then edit them to my satisfaction and of course save them in a newly created Follower ESP file.

All seemed simple for the most part until CK crashed. No biggie almost every video I watched the author would explain "SAVE Frequently" and I did just that.

Except when I reloaded my ESP in CK I would noticed that files I duplicated and edited and created were GONE. So I would start over thinking the whole time wow CK SUCKS. Then CRASH!

So my problem is currently that I can create and have created the files I need. However they are not only in one Follower ESP because each time this would happen I would go to save the Follower ESP and CK would pop up with you can not save this Follower ESP with that name as it's in use. Blah Blah Blah so then I would save it as Follower 2 ESP and so forth. Only when I would load the newly saved Follower 2 ESP the files I created and thought I saved were missing.

So then I decided to LOAD ALL of my saved Follower ESP files and mind you I had literally a dozen at this point. Guess what - All the files I duplicated, edited, and created were their.

However after confirming all edits were correct and files that I needed where in fact setup correctly and save as an entirely new Follower ESP thinking well I got this and NOPE.

I go to load the new follower ESP and again its missing 90% of the files I just duplicated, edited and so forth.

So If you follow what I attempting to explain and have a possible solution and or work around I would much appreciate any assistance given.

 

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[Tasheni]

I understand very well your anger with ck, but to provide you with any help it is necessary to know exactly what you want to do and what you did. You must know that ck has no error handling. If you do something ck doesn't expect, it crashes instead of giving you a hint what's wrong. So please swallow your anger and try to explain what you want to do.

I feel with you - I started years before with exactly the same :)

[Scd2112]

Thank you for responding - Not Mad Actually - Frustrated Actually Yes - So yeah I can only recall that I have disabled error messages in CK with changing the bShowErrorMessages=1 to bShowErrorMessages=0 in SkyrimEditor.ini.

So I do not see what the errors messages are I would and do only get the crashes. So an example is adding a Armor Addon and then to supply a texture set to that armor addon. Then saving. All would seem fine no crashes. Then duplicating another texture set and renaming it and setting up new texture directories and so forth and randomly CK would just close or crash no notice. Anyway I would go to load the exact same esp file I was working with in CK and find that almost of the duplicated files I was working with or setup were missing entirely. So then I repeated this thinking my esp file somehow got corrupt and so I loaded all my created follower ESP files in CK and also SET then to active although I didn't need to set them to active to see that when I load them all then all the sudden all my missing files were now there as long as I loaded all my versions of my follower esp's. Now if I load say the 6th attempt at making they files in say Follower 6.ESP then some of the files I was working on in the version 5 follower ESP would disappear. So is any of what I am saying making any sense?

If So I was only wondering if anyone has a work around?

Maybe I need to enable my error messages I don't know.

Or Maybe you can point me in the right direction for making followers using ECE. That does not cause my current problem.

[Tasheni]

To enable error messages would not help you because there will be no messages in most of the cases ck crashes. Your problem sounds to me like your ck is corrupt somehow. I would encourage you install it new to exclude any issues that would come from this side.

After you have saved your work, look at the esp with TESVEdit and check if all items you have created are there. Before you do any changes to your esp, make a copy and save it away. I experienced broken esps after saving my work, what's pretty annoying. Sometimes the EditorWarnings.txt will be helpful - but sometimes not.

 

To make a follower with ece, there is a very nice video on youtube. It is for racemenu but works exactly that way with ece:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcHw4sqrrx8

Edited September 23, 2018 by Tasheni

[RGMage2]

It sounds to me like the problem here is not that the items are not there, but that you simply can't find them, which really isn't very surprising when you consider how many thousands of items there are in the game, and perhaps your new items aren't where you think they should be.

 

So a couple of tips here: When naming new scripts or objects add a unique prefix to the new name to make it easier to identify in CK. In my own case I usually use "RGM" as in RGMNewArmor or RGMLightScript. In your case I would suggest using "Scd".

 

Then when you want to find one of your items in the object window use the filter in the top left corner and type in Scd, then scroll to the bottom and select "all" and all your new items should show in the list to the right.

[Scd2112]

I was wondering if something was wrong with CK or its associated ini's files. Ok I will Delete CK and it's ini's and Re-download it and reinstall it. I don't think it's CK but more so with the SkyrimEditor.ini settings maybe - Will explain at the End please read on....

Before I do however - These are my current findings - I reenabled my warnings (bBlockMessageBoxes=1 to =0) Thinking that maybe I needed to see some error that might help narrow down my issues But to no avail. I did find some Master Record Errors in the EditorWarning.txt in the Skyrim Directory. Ran Loot and noticed the message stating I needed to manually clean Dawnguard. Forgot to do this completely so I did and followed loots recommended tutorial link. Didn't seem to help fix my CK issues.

Also remembered that when I started this whole mess of a "Create my own Follower" Oh it will be so easy lol. The first Author I followed directions from suggested that I enable (bBlockMessageBoxes=1) because the warning messages were useless and time consuming. Wow it does speed things up considerably. But as I followed along I began to realize that I used ECE (Enhanced Character Edit) to create my current player character which I want to convert mind you to a follower but the author used RaceMenu. I like RaceMenu but I didn't use it to create the player character I wish to convert to a follower NPC. So I scrapped that author and moved on to one who used ECE. Thinking it would better my situation of creating a custom follower from a player character.

Anyway - I'm not new to Skyrim - Have played many play throughs with both LE and SE. Have both versions installed with more then 300 plus mods installed on both versions. I use Mod Organizer on both and have used Nexus mod Manager as well. Prefer MO though.

So anyway - The ECE follower creation tutorial that I switched to required me to load masters from ECE when starting CK and of course bam errors popped up you can not load multiple masters blah blah blah. So I googled this issue and found a solution - Add these lines to the SkyrimEditor.ini under the "General Section (bAllowMultipleMasterLoads=1 bAllowMultipleMasterFiles=1).

So I did and everything seemed ok until just right before CK finished loading it would crash with no errors logged into EditerWarngs.ini. So I google again and find another solution that I needed to add the following again to SkyrimEditor.ini under the Archive section (SResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Update.bsa, Dawnguard.bsa, Hearthfires.bsa, Dragonborn.bsa) So again I did add these lines and this time CK loaded all masters no problem or so I thought. But now I'm here! With this current issue. So ….. and the beat goes on and on and on lol …..

[Scd2112]

It sounds to me like the problem here is not that the items are not there, but that you simply can't find them, which really isn't very surprising when you consider how many thousands of items there are in the game, and perhaps your new items aren't where you think they should be.

 

So a couple of tips here: When naming new scripts or objects add a unique prefix to the new name to make it easier to identify in CK. In my own case I usually use "RGM" as in RGMNewArmor or RGMLightScript. In your case I would suggest using "Scd".

 

Then when you want to find one of your items in the object window use the filter in the top left corner and type in Scd, then scroll to the bottom and select "all" and all your new items should show in the list to the right.

 

LOL - I so already did just what you recommend here and thank you for your help and suggestions - I would use Example "Scd2112-SkinHeadLeeAnn_1". But found or felt as if it were to long so I then converted to "0_SkinHeadLeeAnn" and so forth. Yeah each time I would load a saved ESP after creating and editing in CK I would just click all at the bottom and then type in 0 at the top and then I could see all the files I created. But then began to notice some missing and the rest is posted here so...… Thank you

[Scd2112]

Ok Problem Solved!

Lol wow ok so the problem was with CK's SkyrimEditor.ini file. Read the thread above to find out where I went wrong!

CK works like a charm! LOL well not really but you know what I mean at least it works correctly now.

So a big THANK YOU to Tasheni for helping me discover my solution.

Also Please take my advice if you are new to CK and wish to dive in and have a go at making a custom follower then use the link that Tasheni provided above ------->

by Skyla simply put, you will not go wrong! Easy to follow step by step guide. If I can create a follower in less then a few hours so can you!

 

Again thank you Tasheni and Skyla