Custom Mod Directories

[TechFreak1]

Just recently picked up Fallout 4 again and wanted to use Immersive Wastelanders for a Horizon (desolation) Survival play through but going through the requirements... it's a mess no doubt about it. Last time I fixed it by sifting through the textures and meshes. But that meant any other mod I liked to try out would mess everything up again...

Soo I decided to create a patch and shove everything for Immersive Wastelanders in it's own directory, then I realised something If we had a simplied Mod folder structure that would make life so much easier.

It would be structured like this:

Actors - Mods - PlayerAssets (For player mods), CompanionAssets, GlobalAssets.

So a typical file directory / file location will like look this:

Textures\Actors\Mods\GlobalAssets\Face\LMCC\AGCP Blood Spatter 1_d.dds or ideally Textures\Mods\Actors\GlobalAssets\Face\LMCC\AGCP Blood Spatter 1_d.dds

This way everything would simply be pointed at singular texture location if it's using the same textures and would simply need the esp files and the vanilla files are left untouched or can be used for retextures or use the custom vanilla directory - leaving the default directory for own custom mods. Plus I plan on using this directory for my own mods so I can play test my own mods and have a single modded install with other mods.

My other point is it provides more options and prevents hosing up the entire damn install due to a dirty mod therefore if multiple mods use the same file texture it's easier to identify after it's been installed by NMM or Vortex - that is one you thing you lose with drag and drop installs.

So in that in mind I spent about 12 hours going through all 1100 + with a fine tooth comb through the LMCC Esp copy (Used xEdit to create a new esp with the copied records) and sorted all the textures outs (I ultimately want to create a custom bsa2 archive for all the mods I use to play with so I don't have the hassle of my work being undone by a dirty mode or corrupt esp plugin).

But here is the rub, Fallout 4 takes ages to load and so does the creation kit with the newly created esp - I left it for a 40 minutes and creation kit was still stuck at 95% and then I left it over night still 95%...

Now that background info has been put aside, my questions are the following:

1) Can we use custom directories for textures and meshes actors (players/npcs etc) instead of having to use the default set directories i.e Actors -> Characters -> Character Assets -> Face Details?

2) Also is there a character limit to directories?

 

Meaning can it handle something like this: Actors\Mods\GlobalAssets\Face\LMCC\RoboAsimov\RoboAsimovLFTACRightBrow_d.dds

 

Or are we limited to X number of characters in the file/folder tree?

 

Finally does Xedit have a find and replace all function?

 

Meaning Instead of having to trawl through all the 1100 odd records and putting the directory changes manually every single test as it would save hours. Time which most people do not have lol... and I'd rather spend that time play testing the mod or patch instead of going square eyed looking a massive table. I looked through the XEdit tome and did not find any info on such a function.

 

I tried hiding no conflicts, filtering etc and every single change after awhile took 10 minutes... and got longer... which from past experience resulted in a mangled esp file. So I'm not entirely certain if it's xedit or creation kit's / game's inability to read long directories. I don't want to spend another 12 hours changing actors\Characters\Character Assets\FaceDetails (default texture directory for LMCC + plus the LMCC directory has generic file names for brows such as browsX and brows0X - X denotes a number) to actors\characters\xyz custom directory just to find it doesn't work.

 

Manually changing the textures location via the creation kit would be even more time consuming especially creating patch files.

 

Lastly what is the latest version of the creation kit?

I do not have the bethesda launcher installed and just don't need another redundant launcher on my PC if I can avoid it - the current version I have is 2.0 and file version is 1.10.15.0.

 

If it also make's difference, I am launching the game with F4SE as I found that Looks Menu does not work correctly for me if Fallout 4 is not launched with F4SE.