Need Help Adding Tags to Publishable Mod

[Gorgopis]

Please.

We're trying to publish a mod as a modders' resource, but cannot find where during the Nexus publishing process to add mod-tags to our mod page.

Have we missed something obvious? The tutorials don't have a dedicated tip to guiding end-users with tags.

[IsharaMeradin]

This is not done during the publishing process but afterwards. Visit the mod's page. You should see a blue button with the text "+ TAG THIS MOD". Click it and the tag window appears. As the author any tag you select will become green and have a value of 99. Tags that users select will be orange until a certain threshold is reached where it will then turn to a light yellowish green. As the author any tag selected by users that you reject will become red and reset to 0.

[Gorgopis]

Thank you!

 

If you are still reading, we have a couple of follow-up questions.

 

Our "mod"-file intends to replace a SR vanilla-nif with a custom nif. (To be downloaded solely to users' pc desktops, not to a mod manager.)

 

The process we see is the user will also need BAE and NifSkope.

 

1. BAE for the user to extract the SR vanilla nifs and textures.

 

We provide Instructions to copy our nif and replace the vanilla one in the extracted archives.

 

2. NifSkope to open our custom nif to perhaps revise the texture paths point to the right directories on the user's PC.

 

We also will be advising the user to make a zipped backup copy of their legitimate game.

 

We have tested our file and the method on 3 PC's, and got success without breaking the game, but. . . .

 

3. Do you predict any hiccups for users?

 

Bethesda extracted nif files show all the same dates-modified, (say 12/15/2020: 6:46 AM). Our replacement will be tagged with a different modified date. Users will have different dates on their extracted file-archives, too.

 

Will date mismatches in vanilla archives make SR CTD? We considered a bulk-file-changer for the user.

 

Thanks for any knowledge!

 

Best--

[IsharaMeradin]

Your average user will not want to mess with third party tools any more than they must. There is no reason to not package for use with mod managers.

 

Dates do not matter on individual files. Users should also not unpack their BSA files. Just provide the NIF replacer with the correct folder structure. You can include instructions on how to change texture assignments if you really want to. But one should not use textures intended for one NIF with those from another. Best just to provide the textures that your NIF requires along with the correct folder structure as well.

 

Honestly, packing up a 7z / zip / rar file with:

Meshes > Some folders > replacer NIF file(s)

Textures > Some folders > replacer DDS file(s)

will be much easier on the end user to install and much easier for you as an author to trouble shoot any reported problems. Your proposed method leaves way too much room for error on the end user's part.

[Gorgopis]

Your advice is much more user-service oriented than how we're doing things. We may be going about our good intentions all wrong-headed.

Here's our reasoning, below, and it leads us to a circle. This circle seems to involve helping modders vs. helping the gameplay experience.

 

+++

 

Lets say we dislike a "flawed" SR vanilla nif. While this vanilla nif is widespread in Skyrim LE, many custom mods also depend on it, or actually build on it, as a user can see upon examining the nifs provided with these custom mods.

 

So some custom mods continue the obvious flaws. We had hoped users might prefer to replace the vanilla nif with our improved one.

 

Why would we bother?

 

We thought our effort would serve modders who use the CK with only SR, update, and the DLC as masters. We visualized that If they manually replaced the vanilla nif in BAE-files with ours, they would get a head-start on their own intended mods with our improved nif.

 

Their gameplay experience might not improve, however, if they have custom mods with nifs that overwrite ours, of course.

 

 

Now, if we pack our nif via the mesh>/textures>etc. route, should we recommend that modders who want to work with our improved nif, to set ours as a master, after SR + update + DLC?

 

We are currently using our improved nif in our own playthroughs, and we're seeing the benefits in our gameplay.

 

But we did not install it as a local mod. We simply manually replaced the vanilla nif with ours, using BAE. So far it has succeeded on our PC system.

 

Thank you for any pointers.

[IsharaMeradin]

All I can really tell you is this: As a mod author, I'm not going to re-pack my base game BSA files to contain a modified version of a NIF file, even if the original NIF file is "flawed". If I need that NIF file and I agree with the "correction" to the "flaw", then I will add it to the game as a loose file. When the mod is complete and permissions allow, I will pack the NIF file in my own BSA or include it as a loose file depending upon what the mod is doing.

[Gorgopis]

Thank you for your continued patience.

 

Hmm, could we offer our "improved" NIF as a loose-file, Modders' asset at Nexus Mods? To be downloaded straight to users' PC desktops?

 

Our mentality is: we've seen tutorials put up on the Mod Pages, along with downloadable instructions, or along with read-me's, etc. Why not provide a loose-file NIF? Unless there's a protocol for that. We're tyros.

 

We could add, "For Experienced Mod Authors" accompanying text? We will provide before-and-after images of the textured mesh in question.

 

We'd like to offer it "permissions-free" to kind of give service back to the community. . . .

 

And, as for our crediting others' Permissions, do we credit Bethesda, for the original NIF which we tweaked?

 

Thanks, again.

[IsharaMeradin]

That would probably be the best route.

[Gorgopis]

Well, muchas gracias! Mod-Publishing Success!

 

But meantime, we are puzzled by one minor issue and one more important issue.

 

1) At Nexus Mods, when we type in our mod title to search for it, we get a zero result in the search window, and yet users are finding it.

 

We can use our mod page to bring it up, and then we can see its hierarchy in the Nexus-categories tree, but if we navigate (as a user might) to that primary category, and search our title, it still doesn't appear.

 

Since people are finding it, we are probably feeling OK, but we like to understand stuff. We wanted to test its "findability" from a user perspective, in case we needed to better title and categorize it.

 

2) On a second, more important issue, we have finished a custom-NPC mod, after following a solid tutorial. We also made a custom tint-mask for our NPC.

 

We tried a few times to extract our character.esp via the CK, but a warning popped up, "No tintmask."

 

Do we need to pack mesh and texture files manually, with correct folder structures (all the way back to the Skyrim folder?), nesting our own facegeom/facetint folders with our character-nif and custom tintmask?

 

Can we trust Vortex/Mod-Organizers to sort it out, for user-installation?

 

Thanks!

[IsharaMeradin]

#1 It is possible that you have set certain types of content to be blocked from your searches. If your mod happens to fall into one of those categories you will not be able to see it. It is also possible that your mod falls into this situation: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/9669743-my-mod-isnt-showing-up-in-new-today-on-skyrim-le-nexus/

 

#2 You need to make sure that you created the face gen data for your NPC and you need to ensure that said files, with folder structure (back to Data folder), are included in your BSA or provided as loose files.