Editing companion Race - Crashes at Oblivion's Location

[0303456]

Hi, I need some help on how to edit a Companion/Follower's race using Costruction Set, the proper way. Mind you this is for my OWN enjoyment and I'm not intending to upload it anywhere at all.

 

 

WHAT I USED:

This custom race: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/45281

This companion: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/17743

 

WHAT I DID:

1) Open Construction Set

2) Go to "File" --> "data"

3) Mark with the "x" the following plugins -> "Oblivion.esm", "[Companion].esp" and "[Race].esp".

4) Set "[Companion].esp" as active plugin.

5) Press OK and let it load everything.

6) Go to NPC -> Race of the companion OR I order the columns by "Name" (not ID, but Name).

7) When I find the NPC name (my companion), Right-click and select "Edit"

 

:cool: I change name, race, level Offset, color of hair, face completion, everything (FIRST "Face Advance", only then "Face" or Construction Set crashes for me).

9) Then I apply and save everything.

 

FIXING (?) STEP 4:

I tried first without selecting an "active pugin" and when saving I created a new ESP. When activating it with wrye Bash, Oblivion doesn't start. Ergo, I set the companion.esp as active plugin on Construction Set (STEP 4) and saved in it. I could select the mod on Wrye Bash and Oblivion launched!

 

MY CURRENT TROUBLE IS AS FOLLOWS:

When I go to the dungeon in Bravil Castle, where my companion is supposed to be, my game crashes when trying to enter.

 

What did I do wrong for it to crash at that certain place?

If there is a better way to replace a companion with, IDK, a character I create in-game then I save and replace the original companion, I'd like to know.

 

Be seeing you :tongue:!

Edited March 1, 2019 by 0303456

[DrakeTheDragon]

Oh, I successfully turned Stoker into my Drake and Viconia De'Vir into Kaira, so whoever I'm playing with will always have their companion by their side. It isn't really hard to do, but there's some pitfalls in Oblivion modding one needs to know in order to avoid them.

 

I personally went the patch way. That is I created a new plugin with both the custom race and the companion mod as master and inside it changed the companion's race to mine. This way I left the original mods of both the race and the companion untouched. But of course it makes for one additional plugin.

 

The most important part of all, and what you probably ran afoul of, too, though, is the fact the original Construction Set cannot create interdependence between ESPs and ESPs. The moment you save (or load?) the ESP, non-ESM masters will get lost. Only ESMs can be masters of plugins.

Give it a try and load your plugin again into the CS. I'll bet my monthly wages the masters will be gone and not loading with it as they normally do. Now there's 2 ways of getting around that problem and making an ESP a master of an ESP regardless:

 

1) Use Wrye Bash and right-click > ESMify the ESP that's to become master before you open the CS. Then you can select the active plugin you want to work with and all masters it should have "as ESMs". And when you're done and saved everything, simply use right-click > ESPify to turn the previous plugin back to ESP before you start the game. With this solution just keep in mind to "always" ESMify the ESPs that are masters every time you're going to edit your plugin requiring them again, and to turn them back to ESPs again every time before you next start the game.

 

2) Don't use the Vanilla CS but Shademe's Construction Set Extender (CSE) instead. This one was altered so it supports ESPs as masters natively.

 

And never forget, once an ESP is a master of another ESP, load order becomes vital so the masters load before any plugins requiring them.

 

 

Can't say much about your crashes though. Could be caused by it, could not be. But it'd be first priority anyways to fix the lost masters of your edited plugin.

[0303456]

Oh,

I'll try what you posted right away. Thanks Drake!

[0303456]

Oh my god, I can't believe I could run the game and see my new companion even with a new name!

But the companion I made has no voice?

Since you created your companions from your own characters, I suppose you used some Face conversion to transfer from your Savegame to your Esp file? Or did you make them by scratch? I mean, it's fun playing around with sliders, I won't complain. But I spent 2 hours creating my main character.

Can you open Savegames with Construction set?

[Striker879]

Wrye Bash can be used to transfer faces from Saves files to your (or another) characater.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Yes, exactly. I had my main and support characters' faces already created before inside the game through the usual painstakingly long process we all go through, so I simply used Wrye Bash's handy tools to export his and her faces, among other actor setups, over into my patches.

 

As for the voices, this depends on 2 different things.

 

- Either you need to copy and paste the original companions voices into a race folder fitting your custom race:

The original voices are usually found somewhere inside "Data/sound/voice/<name of the companion's plugin>/<race display name>/<gender>/" and you'll have to copy them all into "Data/sound/voice/<name of the companion's plugin>/<new custom race display name>/<gender>/" basically.

 

(I'm saying "display name" here, because it's not the same as the EditorID for the race, as one would expect, but the exact text "displayed" inside the game. So take my dragons for example, their EditorIDs are along the lines of "DrakeDragonRedGold", but their display names are "Dragon (Red Gold)", so the resulting folder name for their voices would be "dragon (red gold)". There's an article about all that somewhere, I think here: https://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php?title=Fix_dialogues_in_localized_non_english_versions)

 

- Or you need to select the exact same race the original companion is off for the voice for your custom race. (There's some pulldowns in the race settings enabling multiple races to share the same voice, as well as custom races to not need their own custom ones.)

[0303456]

Thanks, it was difficult at first because of the folders I don't remember what I did, I think I changed the name of Race folder to the current race name and he had a voice again. That was cool!

Although I'm still wondering how to make NPCs using my own savegames. I need to experiment further with a program called Oblivion Face Exchange Lite that I downloaded from here.

And thank you for your help :D!!

Edited March 10, 2019 by 0303456