Hello Everyone!

[TechFreak1]

Hello everyone!

 

Long time lurker and mod file user (I won't say mod user... that just makes me sound like a junkie! :laugh:).

 

Usually I just mod files for my personal use (usually mod cleaning and patch files) as well tweaking the game here and there so I can familiarise myself with the tools, ease my boredom and get the most out of my PC or laptop's capabilities.

 

I'm looking to get into modding properly and to provide some insight, I'm also on Windows central under the same user name : :smile: (plus saying so also prevents private messages on window's central saying my username is being hijacked on Nexus Mods Forums haha).

 

My main motivation for getting into modding is to acquire knowledge, skills and use what I'm learning to enjoy games as well as using these new skills to find a better job haha.

 

Those who know me on Windows central know that I have a tendency to posts that are actually essays :laugh:; however on this forum I'll breaking from that habit for the sake of expediency and efficiency - plus most my posts will be structured like this - as it's easier to read quickly and at a glance,

 

My mods will be around the games I'm playing - this is also that I can attest factually that my mods are compatible with xyz and work correctly for my set up.

 

Currently I'm playing Fallout 4 (with Horizon on Desolation + Survival) thus my mods will be centered around Fallout 4 at the present time.

 

Near future plans is to create a similar mod to armor by race mod for Fallout 4 and no, I won't be creating any over weight NPC meshes... :rolleyes: like some armor meshes in that particular mod so please don't ask.

 

The present plans are to create a undies by race mod, I just find it galling that we only have a choice between nevernude and custom nude bodies but not both - the one mod I've come across - (Enhanced Nevernude) and Wearable underwears -Vanilla-EVB-CBBE - doesn't address the issue fully.

 

However If there is another, please do suggest it as I don't want to spend time creating a mod or patch for a mod that already exists and does it better - as it's a simple mod in concept without much scope for improvement.

 

My other plans are:

 

1) to create a mod resource / impact change for best practise so that we can have vanilla textures residing along side custom textures plus avoiding silly mod conflicts due to texture overwrites.

 

For instance all the modded textures would go into Actors\Mods\GlobalAssets\ - Ideally Mods\Actors\GlobalAssets - This directory will be the main directory for all commonly used textures for both the player and NPC mods, Suchas eyes, face, tattoos, clothes, armour etc.

 

Instead of having these textures in other locations and ending up with a whole mess of files and plus it's much cleaner to extract as opposed to manually extracting the textures/meshes or reinstalling all the mods you use if hose up the install. Plus all modded textures will have to have unique names or reside in unique folders.

 

This also prevents having two installs - one for mod testing and a modded playthrough with other mods - but I've hit a snag - which I'll post about in the fallout 4 sub form - as detailing this will turn this post into an essay lol.

 

So an actual working example (for my own personal patches) is: textures\actors\Mods\GlobalAssets\Face\LMCC\RoboAsimov\RoboAsimovLFTACRightBrow_d.dds - I Plan to use LMCC for all my mods as it's much more expedient and cleaner to use a combined resource and to contribute to said resource.

 

The reason I moved it to this directory, it has a files with generic file names suchas browsX or brows0X (where x denotes a number). This will create a conflict as the default location for LMCC textures are actors\characters\character assets\facedetails.

 

An example of circular conflicts in Vortex is Simple Male Redux as it uses actors\character\BaseHumanMale and that is not the only Mod I've come across, I mention this as I wanted to use Immersive wastelander for my current play through so I can get the end result shown in the mod screenshots.

 

But unfortunately I've across the texture issues again, the last time i fixed this was to manually install the textures but that created issues with other mods thus hosing up my install completely as NPC's ended up with disfiguring textures and there was no way to fix them with the creation kit or FO4 edit as they were bugged into my saves.

 

Thus rendering all my saves unusable due to the lack of the conflicting ESPs - the game would constantly crash everytime I came across a disfigured NPC. As I installed it before playing the game first time hence why all my saves got bugged but this time it's through a current play through without any saves made with the optional mods installed.

 

2) to improve XEdit as it is in dire need of a find and replace all function - spending half a day on creating a plugin by trawling through 1157 records is not something I want to do often just to create compatibility patches for other mods so they don't cause conflicts.

 

I've looked through the Xedit tome and was not able to locate such a function, if it's there please do tell. The find all and replace function would make such a task trivial and no longer than 10 minutes.

 

So that is it in a nut shell.