pack A Real Explorer's Guide to Skyrim

[CJ2311]

So, in theory, if using Skyrim Sewers 4 as a normal stand-alone mod, then the load order would determine where your followers / NPCs could go. Either in the new NavMeshed areas added by JK's Solitude / Whiterun / Windhelm if those load after SS4, or following into the sewers if SS4 loads later - is that right? If that's the case, then (assuming one of us who's saying they'd like to learn how to make NavMeshes actually does so) a patch could be made that "merges" the NavMeshes of SS4 and whatever else, which must be later in the load order, and could theoretically be part of a plugin merge using Mator's script.

Load order would indeed dictate which navmesh is used in those areas, however patching is easy as hell (I'll use Dawn of Windhelm as an example):1/- Turn skyrimsewers.esp and DawnOfWindhelm.esp into false esm files using Wrye Bash.2/- Load both files in the CK3/- Go to a world cell which has an entrance to the sewers, and just hit the finalize navmesh button.It's basically a simpler version of the sortof tutorial I posted a month ago.

[keithinhanoi]

Load order would indeed dictate which navmesh is used in those areas, however patching is easy as hell (I'll use Dawn of Windhelm as an example):1/- Turn skyrimsewers.esp and DawnOfWindhelm.esp into false esm files using Wrye Bash.2/- Load both files in the CK3/- Go to a world cell which has an entrance to the sewers, and just hit the finalize navmesh button.It's basically a simpler version of the sort of tutorial I posted a month ago.

 

Wow. I could totally handle that. But you were always talking about how much trouble it was...

 

So where do things get all gnarly and difficult? Joining separate NavMeshes ("islands"?) to make them contiguous? Overlapping NavMeshes from different mods?

[Nearox]

Alright so I put my irl work down and finally went to do some decent playtesting of the following locations:

 

Whiterun Interior: JK's + DoW. This combination is extremely beautiful and very well executed by JK in particular. I did have a rare slowdon in FPS, but nothing extraordinary... And this is on my low system with a HD6950 2GB and a full SRLE install with Vividian ENB... I still hit 30 - 35FPS. The only time it dropped below 30 FPS (to 25) was when looking at the gate from a particular angle, which does not happen often when playing. No clipping issues were observed, apart from the minor ones that Ganda already reported.

 

Whiterun Exterior: JK's Exterior + ETaC + CRF + PCS + BCE (there is a JK compatible version of BCE availalbe now!) = Amost perfect whiterun exterior. I ran around for 10 minutes with a follower and everything seemed to be in order. JK does not conflict with ETaC in any ways and in fact complements it very well. The combined blend of 5 mods here is really good. The only thing I personally would have liked to see different is the market stalls on the corner... I don't like them very much in general, though they do give a sense of liveliness to the area. The housing area added by ETaC (copied/inspired from IS) actually looks somewhat like REGS - Cities. All in all, Whiterun exterior is great this way.

 

Solitude Interior: Books of Skyrim + JK's Solitude: I had no problems entering Book library with a follower. JK's work is, once again, sublime here. I do kinda miss the houses that Nernie's adds opposite the Books of Skyrim building, but I can live with it... Maybe it is better even without Nernie's, a litt bit of open space looks good too. I would recommend to save the headache and remove Nernie's stuff there altogether from REGS - Cities. JK Solitude is superior in every way. 

 

Raven Rock: ETaC module. Wow. Just wow... so much better than Raven Rock Expanded! However I did not test it with Better Docks. 

 

Shor's Stone: ETaC only. I did not test it with Inns and Taverns. However ETaC already adds an inn, so Inns and Taverns there is overkill.

 

StoneHills: ETaC only. Again, Inns and Taverns would be overkill here.

 

Windhelm: JK's + Dawn of = Stunning combination once again. I did not observe clipping issues. Ran around with follower, everything went well. 

[keithinhanoi]

Thanks for taking a good look at all of that, Nearox!

 

Solitude Interior: Books of Skyrim + JK's Solitude: I had no problems entering Book library with a follower. JK's work is, once again, sublime here. I do kinda miss the houses that Nernie's adds opposite the Books of Skyrim building, but I can live with it... Maybe it is better even without Nernie's, a litt bit of open space looks good too. I would recommend to save the headache and remove Nernie's stuff there altogether from REGS - Cities. JK Solitude is superior in every way. 

 

I've just spent 30 minutes going around checking out JK's Solitude with REGS - Cities still loaded. Besides major clipping with one of the houses added by Nernie's, things are quite a mess at Beirand's outdoor smithing area. Clearly they are not going to work together (though I never expected they would.)

 

More importantly, although I really like the changes of JK's Solitude, there are still quite a few rough edges, which I hope to let him know about later. Nothing that would stop me from continuing to use it, but there are some spots where my followers were dropping halfway into the floor of one of the added structures (a barrack?)

 

However, my FPS got pretty low - into the low 20s, though that's with Vividian ENB, not the performance edition, and I've got the Osmodius Solitude Texture Pack active. So I'll have to try again with just JK's Solitude, and the Beth's HR-DLC (or maybe with SRO's textures.) and see how the frames are, and how the texture patterns match up visually.

 

EDIT: @Nearox - from your reporting findings, it sounds as though you may be considering taking Inns & Taverns off the REGS guide. Am I reading into that correctly?

Edited September 13, 2014 by keithinhanoi

[CJ2311]

Wow. I could totally handle that. But you were always talking about how much trouble it was... So where do things get all gnarly and difficult? Joining separate NavMeshes ("islands"?) to make them contiguous? Overlapping NavMeshes from different mods?

The tough parts were in the actual trial and error I had to go through since there are no tutorials of this kind AFAIK, as well as whenever more than a single mod that changes the terrain/navmesh is involved.Skyrim Sewers is easy to patch because it just adds manholes and navmesh entry points to them, whereas using 2 mods that change the same area (e.g.: Cutting Room Floor and Whiterun Outskirts Market) would mean that the landscape has to be fixed manually (using a Simcity like landscaping tool that was spawned from hell) and then the navmesh would have to be fixed if not entirely redone for the conflicting cells.

[Nearox]

Hey CJ, Jenna said the following:

 

 

 

Post-Edit: And that is AWESOME news about CJ   I'm very glad to hear that he is not dead lol. If he is going to update for ETaC v13 though, you might want to have him hold off a week... 

 

I've got another large update coming out here within the next couple days, with a lot of changes for compatibility/patching/and some new Im. Set. content. Just a heads up.

Edited September 13, 2014 by Nearox

[CJ2311]

Thanks for the message, I have yet to be online at the same time as her on Steam..

[Nearox]

@keith about Inns and Taverns: I don't really want to take it out. There used to be a patch for ETaC, let's see what Jenna is gonna release in the next few days. Maybe that patch gets updated as well. 

Edited September 13, 2014 by Nearox

[Teabag86]

I'm very happy to hear you are doing well CJ and it's great to see you stopping by. I haven't downloaded ETaC 13 yet because I didn't want to break REGS. However it looks like everything is progressing well with some clear direction for full compatibility so my thanks to everyone working on this. Cheers.

[afonik]

I would like to suggest 

Corners of Skyrim by alalagi https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29824

and

Hidden Hideouts of Skyrim by lesi123 https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49723

[redirishlord]

Alright so I put my irl work down and finally went to do some decent playtesting of the following locations:

 

Whiterun Interior: JK's + DoW. This combination is extremely beautiful and very well executed by JK in particular. I did have a rare slowdon in FPS, but nothing extraordinary... And this is on my low system with a HD6950 2GB and a full SRLE install with Vividian ENB... I still hit 30 - 35FPS. The only time it dropped below 30 FPS (to 25) was when looking at the gate from a particular angle, which does not happen often when playing. No clipping issues were observed, apart from the minor ones that Ganda already reported.

 

Whiterun Exterior: JK's Exterior + ETaC + CRF + PCS + BCE (there is a JK compatible version of BCE availalbe now!) = Amost perfect whiterun exterior. I ran around for 10 minutes with a follower and everything seemed to be in order. JK does not conflict with ETaC in any ways and in fact complements it very well. The combined blend of 5 mods here is really good. The only thing I personally would have liked to see different is the market stalls on the corner... I don't like them very much in general, though they do give a sense of liveliness to the area. The housing area added by ETaC (copied/inspired from IS) actually looks somewhat like REGS - Cities. All in all, Whiterun exterior is great this way.

 

Solitude Interior: Books of Skyrim + JK's Solitude: I had no problems entering Book library with a follower. JK's work is, once again, sublime here. I do kinda miss the houses that Nernie's adds opposite the Books of Skyrim building, but I can live with it... Maybe it is better even without Nernie's, a litt bit of open space looks good too. I would recommend to save the headache and remove Nernie's stuff there altogether from REGS - Cities. JK Solitude is superior in every way. 

 

Raven Rock: ETaC module. Wow. Just wow... so much better than Raven Rock Expanded! However I did not test it with Better Docks. 

 

Shor's Stone: ETaC only. I did not test it with Inns and Taverns. However ETaC already adds an inn, so Inns and Taverns there is overkill.

 

StoneHills: ETaC only. Again, Inns and Taverns would be overkill here.

 

Windhelm: JK's + Dawn of = Stunning combination once again. I did not observe clipping issues. Ran around with follower, everything went well. 

Great intel, thanks its quite helpful as I sort for a new run. Are you considering removing Inns & Taverns from the list?

 

 

I would like to suggest 

Corners of Skyrim by alalagi https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29824

and

Hidden Hideouts of Skyrim by lesi123 https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49723

Been using Hidden Hideouts Immersion versions, City is very handy if you need to enter discreetly.

 

Thanks for the tip on Corners, I'll check that out. The description indicates it adds a location outside the abandoned prison, so should be helpful for that AS-LAL option.

Edited September 13, 2014 by redirishlord

[keithinhanoi]

I would like to suggest 

Corners of Skyrim by alalagi

and

Hidden Hideouts of Skyrim by lesi123 

I've been using Hidden Hideouts, and would also recommend it.

 

There's some overlap with Fight Against the Thalmor IV, but I guess that wouldn't be an issue if the FATT series are no longer part of REGS. The mod author clearly practices responsible authoring, and includes detailed notes about the FOMOD not quite working with MO (a limitation of MO's FOMOD implementation) and how to merge the optional modular installs.

 

There's three flavors of the plugins:

1. Each location has amenities the player can use & a discoverable map marker,

2. With amenities and no map marker, and

3. no amenities or map markers, and might already be "inhabited"

 

I've been using #3 with plans to switch to #1 later (because my PC will have equipped the locations with amenities.)

 

As for Corners of Skyrim, I wish I could recommend it, but after answering a plea for help on "undeleting" vanilla NavMesh records in the mod, I discovered things seemed a lot more messy that just deleted NavMesh records. Even without having opened it in CK, I highly suspect some or all of the mod's NavMesh edits need to be redone. Also there were loads of ITMs and records flagged with "delete", despite the newest download be labelled as "cleaned." I also posted my findings in the comments thread for the mod.

 

The author hasn't been active since July, and the mod not updated since February, but it's recent enough that contacting him/her would be a good idea before tackling things oneself.

 

That said, perhaps this could be a practice mod for me to learn more about fixing / building new navmeshes...

[keithinhanoi]

BluePianoTwo has released Dawn of Solitude, on the heels of JK's Solitude.

 

But wait... she's already talking about making them compatible in the comments thread! Phew.

 

Will take a look in-game a little later.

 

PS., she's also dropped that she is doing a Markarth makeover.

 

I myself am using Mad Frenchie's New Markarth Adventures (Steam WS only), though I haven't visited Markarth much yet with it loaded.

Edited September 14, 2014 by keithinhanoi

[redirishlord]

BluePianoTwo has released Dawn of Solitude, on the heels of JK's Solitude.

 

But wait... she's already talking about making them compatible in the comments thread! Phew.

 

Will take a look in-game a little later.

 

PS., she's also dropped that she is doing a Markarth makeover.

 

I myself am using Mad Frenchie's New Markarth Adventures (Steam WS only), though I haven't visited Markarth much yet with it loaded.

I'm a fiend for a new Forsworn faction enhancement, but I'm concerned by TES5Edit reporting a deleted navmesh in New Markarth Adventures when I cleaned its 28 UDRs & 668 ITMs.  Thanks for th tip, I look forward to checking it out further.

[keithinhanoi]

I'm a fiend for a new Forsworn faction enhancement, but I'm concerned by TES5Edit reporting a deleted navmesh in New Markarth Adventures when I cleaned its 28 UDRs & 668 ITMs.  Thanks for th tip, I look forward to checking it out further.

674 ITMs, in fact, if you're using the latest build of TES5Edit 3.0.33. 

 

However, those and the all the records marked as deleted except for the navmesh are not going to ruin anyone's day. It should still be "cleaned", though.

 

The navmesh fix for New Markarth Adventures, unlike in the case of Corners of Skyrim as I mentioned above, is pretty trivial in TES5Edit:

• Note the FormID of the NavMesh record which has the Deleted flag --> 0010650A
• Right-click on dwemerhome.esp's override of that record, as listed in the left-hand record tree viewing pane of TES5Edit, and choose Remove in the contextual menu.
• Right-click on the one NavMesh record which dwemerhome.esp adds to that same cell --> FormID xx03883F, and choose Change FormID in the contextual menu.
• In the Change FormID dialogue, enter the FormID of the vanilla record you just removed --> 0010650A, and click OK.
• In the next dialogue, Please select records to update, tick everything (in this case there's just one reference pointing back to this NavMesh record that you're renumbering), and click OK.
• Click OK in the next window that informs you "These records have been successfully updated:"
• Close the TES5Edit window, make sure you only dwemerhome.esp, is ticked in the list of the Save changed files dialogue, tick Backup plugins if you wish, and click OK.
• Voila! You are done. (Move the new dwemerhome.esp plugin out of Overwrite and into the New Markarth Adventures mod, if using Mod Organizer.)

Should I make another tutorial video???? 

 

EDIT: If you are actually an "at the bleeding edge of progress" user with the newest experimental build of TES5Edit 3.0.33 along with MO 1.2.11, you should find that TES5Edit now writes updated plugins directly over the original copy, and does not make another copy in Overwrite. Or at least that's been my experience.

Edited September 14, 2014 by keithinhanoi