Editing Hearthfire Manor designs & my idea for a "Card Catalog

[KeCap]

I've been trying to get my head wrapped around Skyrim modding. I've watched a tonne of videos and looked at other people's work, but I am still stumped on how to achieve my goals. I've got about a dozen crazy and interesting mod ideas but these are my first two because they address things in the game currently bugging me.

 

1. Changing the layout/plans of the Hearthfire Manors. The Manor as it stand's is a cluttered mess and the various additions make very little sense. The greenhouse is well designed, but the library is terrible (two storied, circular and limited shelf space???)

-I want to change the layout/design of the various additions. Problem is, I can't find the additions in the Creation Kit. I know I am correctly loading the Hearthfire files because I can find plenty of it's files (BYOH labeled things and all) but I cannot find the object I need to load to edit the layouts...

-Anyone have any insight on where I should look?

 

2. A card catalogue. This goes with my first idea. I plan to change the library addition into a much larger library/study. I want to categorize the books in the game under various topics (Altmer books, Nordic history, etc). Shelves, or sections of shelves would be dedicated to those subjects. Instead of having to sort the books individually (a tedious process) I plan to use a an object in the game world (the desk that looks like the old style card catalogues) that you interact with and can drop all of your books on. It would then sort the books and place them among the neighboring bookshelves accordingly. I believe this should all be very possible with Papyrus and SKSE.

 

 

Any thoughts?

[KeCap]

And a further question; Would anyone be interested in mods that do this?

[kromey]

And a further question; Would anyone be interested in mods that do this?

I think an organized, cataloged library would be one sweet addition to the game; I find that I don't typically read the books in Skyrim because they're so random, and I can never find a good work of fiction when I'm in the mood for a story (or a good history when I want edumacated).

 

I can't comment on the Hearthfire plans because, despite having bought the DLC, I haven't yet built any of them (been too busy working on my own new mod, Lichdom, and what little time I've spent playing the game I'm working on the TG and DB quest lines at the moment).

 

I'm afraid I also can't help you figure out where/how to get started. But you asked if there would be interest, and I am interested in an organized, categorized, and cataloged library. :thumbsup:

[KeCap]

I managed to find the location for the various manors.

 

The more I plot out the idea of a card catalogue and the various scripts I'd need the more plausible it seems. Problem is I would prefer to do it to an already existing player abode instead of having to build my own (something that would be far beyond my rudimentary skill). Hence the desire to mod out the existing manors. If I can prove that this will work, though, I'd like to make the catalogue itself available as a mod or set of scripts that others can use in their own mods so that they can implement nice libraries and such.

 

The idea could be expanded out to a house steward whom you could dump all of your items on and will sort them into the appropriate containers. But that might make life too easy.

[KeCap]

Another question; How do I hide objects in the render window? I don't want to delete them and I don't want them to be invisible to the player. It's just that the manor cell has ALL of the various building options shown in the render window so there is a tonne of stuff shown and over lapping. I only want to work on on building addition but can't seem to isolate the render window to that