pack A Real Explorer's Guide to Skyrim

[hishutup]

blackreach overhaul will be included whereas the railroad one will not.

[keithinhanoi]

@keith

Have you try Joopvandie's four Skyrim border mods?

 

Not yet - no time. But I did see that Statmonster quizzed JoopvanDie about Unique Border Gates compatibility in the comments thread for Folkstead and the Border of Hammerfell, and the good news is all of JoopvanDie's border mods are compatible, according to him:

 

I have Unique Border Gates installed, and no conflicts, since I avoided using the main border roads.

 

Even cooler is that Jknjb has created Alternate Start - Live Another Life extensions for all four of JoopvanDie's border locations.

 

I'll be starting a new character hopefully soon just to check these out, especially since the LAL extensions make it easier to go right to those areas. 

[statmonster]

I tried one pack (Folkstead) - CTD when starting in or COCing to Vrostheim, weird red brick textures in Morreath, no issues in Folkstead. I run SRLE plus much of Regs (nothing from Steam though) plus a variety of follower and armor mods.

 

Not sure why I had the CTDs but it might be idiosyncratic. (Does EGs put anything on the island NE of Windhelm?)

The weird red bricks can easily be fixed by replacing a couple if textures. (Rename Riften stone walls and drop them in the new mod folders.). These red stones liked like they might be suitable for an Indian desert theme so I think I see where the author was going but the area was pretty lush and had regular bricks mixed in and just turned me off. Still looks like a three minute copy-paste-rename fix.

 

Overall they seemed interesting and probably worth investigating further.

Edited March 9, 2015 by statmonster

[darkside]

Not yet - no time. But I did see that Statmonster quizzed JoopvanDie about Unique Border Gates compatibility in the comments thread for Folkstead and the Border of Hammerfell, and the good news is all of JoopvanDie's border mods are compatible, according to him:

Even cooler is that Jknjb has created Alternate Start - Live Another Life extensions for all four of JoopvanDie's border locations.

 

I'll be starting a new character hopefully soon just to check these out, especially since the LAL extensions make it easier to go right to those areas. 

They may need to be cleaned with TES5edit as well.

[keithinhanoi]

They may need to be cleaned with TES5edit as well.

 

I saw JoopvanDie's request for help in merging the plugins of his Nyhus and the Border of Cyrodill and Talos Safe Haven mods.

 

Both of them need TES5Edit cleaning, as I've discovered, and Nyhus has 7 deleted NavMesh records (6 from Skyrim, 1 from Dragonborn).

 

I've fixed all that in preparation for the merge, but the user Astakos has pointed out there also seem to be possible unintentional vanilla record edits (aka., "wild" edits) in the plugin for Nyhus.

 

The merge will be a challenge if there are any conflicting FormIDs between the two mods, because there are script fragments, and even the latest 1.8.19 beta of Matortheeternal's script does not yet handle renaming script fragment files to match FormID renumbering, like it does with facegendata files.

 

Despite all this, JoopvanDie seems very interested in cleaning up / polishing his mods, so I am keeping a close eye one them, if not getting involved in helping him out.

[darkside]

Will keep an eye out

[Astakos]

Hi Keith,

 

Nice to see you are actually working on it. Saw your post on Nyhus and Mator's Nexus page.

I have cleaned the mod as well and I have run into exactly the same problems as you had. Was going to post my findings later on tonight but..Wooww boy..you are quick!! 

 

I will have another go when I get back home but i do think that this merge is going to be a real challenge!

 

Re the vanilla edits i have mentioned on Nyhus Nexus page; i do not think that these are critical to merging being successful. Some of them are just wild/dirty edits (NPCs, Worldspace persistent/temporary objects) but a couple (IIRC) on Dialogue are not. I think that they are actually breaking vanilla behavior. Of course I need to recheck on them to be absolutely sure.

 

Will get back to you abt this subject!

 

Thanks! 

Edited March 10, 2015 by Astakos

[Smile44]

I am using these, have not looked at cleaning them yet. I used ASLAL to go to the town in High Rock, can't remember the name. Seems OK so far will test more tonight.

 

[statmonster]

Keith - that's really nice that you fixed up Nyhus. I think these are some interesting mods that add in new cultures and areas but have hesitated to put them in my game as they seemed slightly unstable. are you planning on taking a look at his other mods? One giant merge that put all four in one cleaned plugin would be great.

[statmonster]

I saw that ETaC added a patch for Winterhold Rebuild - ETaC - Complete - Patches - QWR

 

I was wondering if people plan to move to that or some other Winterhold mod now that Expanded Winterhold Destruction Ruins seems to be hidden for who knows how long.

Edited March 10, 2015 by statmonster

[zombiecurse]

Been away for a while, was just wondering where this PACK was at and who is responsible for it now? Always loved this collection of mods. 

[keithinhanoi]

Hi Keith,

 

Nice to see you are actually working on it. Saw your post on Nyhus and Mator's Nexus page.

I have cleaned the mod as well and I have run into exactly the same problems as you had. Was going to post my findings later on tonight but..Wooww boy..you are quick!! 

 

I will have another go when I get back home but i do think that this merge is going to be a real challenge!

 

Re the vanilla edits i have mentioned on Nyhus Nexus page; i do not think that these are critical to merging being successful. Some of them are just wild/dirty edits (NPCs, Worldspace persistent/temporary objects) but a couple (IIRC) on Dialogue are not. I think that they are actually breaking vanilla behavior. Of course I need to recheck on them to be absolutely sure.

 

Will get back to you abt this subject!

 

Thanks! 

It wasn't as difficult as it seems. After cleaning the two plugins and fixing the deleted NavMeshes before merging, there was just one vanilla static object record which caused an error during the merge, which Mator confirmed to be a non-issue. The reason why it was called out as an error is because one of JoopvanDie's two plugins moved the object into a neighboring cell. Mator's script caught that difference in the external reference, and flagged it as a record that did not copy over. So I manually fixed it after merging.

 

I also noticed the facegendata files did not get renamed correctly, but that might be due to my choice of name for the merged plugin - I will have to investigate further and query Mator about it. JoopvanDie renamed them, so there should be no mismatched head skin color on NPCs.

 

Also, I did send JoopvanDie a bunch of feedback, though I forgot to mention the errors Dialogue record errors that TES5Edit identified - so thanks, Astakos, for posting the comment about that. As for the ITMs in the new merged version that he put up, those must have happened with whatever he did after he received the merged plugin from me.

 

Long story short, my main feedback was first, to find a way to add LOD for all the landscape changes and added structures so that you don't see giant holes in the landscape from a distance, and second, to add more wildlife / NPC encounters to the areas he's opened up to explore, so it doesn't seem as empty and somewhat lifeless.

 

Regarding LOD generation, JoopvanDie could really use some help - so if anyone know a source of good information on how to do this, please let me / him know.

 

I haven't had a chance to explore all of the areas of the merged mod, but it strikes me as still unfinished, but with an immense amount of potential to become another interesting area in the outskirts of Skyrim to explore. I commend him for all of the work he's produced already.

 

Keith - that's really nice that you fixed up Nyhus. I think these are some interesting mods that add in new cultures and areas but have hesitated to put them in my game as they seemed slightly unstable. are you planning on taking a look at his other mods? One giant merge that put all four in one cleaned plugin would be great.

 

JoopvanDie has asked for my help to look at his Folkstead mod, near the village of Vrostheim, to try to figure out why Skyrim crashes there with a TES5Edit cleaned version of the plugin and not with plugin before cleaning.

 

Right now, though, I think it's still too early to be thinking about merging all three of his border expansion mods (not four anymore, because with the merge, he removed the Talos Safe Haven mod from Nexus).

Edited March 11, 2015 by keithinhanoi

[Kelmych]

I plan to look at generating LOD for Skyrim including the REGS pack mods using DynDOLOD; there is a lot of information about LOD generation in the DynDOLOD thread.

[keithinhanoi]

I plan to look at generating LOD for Skyrim including the REGS pack mods using DynDOLOD; there is a lot of information about LOD generation in the DynDOLOD thread.

Thanks, Kelmych, that's a good suggestion of a direction to point JoopvanDie in. To be honest, although I've been now and then monitoring the development of DynDOLOD, I've not been reading the forum thread deeply, nor have I actually tried using the tool, for worry I would never actually have time to enjoy the game.

 

The important thing in JoopvanDie's case is incorporating the LOD data into his mod's plugins / assets so that people who don't use DynDOLOD can still see things added / changed by his mods in the distance.

 

I guess I'll have to read through the thread, because my thinking is that I could maybe help him by merging DynDOLOD created data into his existing mods - if that is even possible.

[Kelmych]

I'm not sure how to use any of the LOD tools (TES5LODGen, DynDOLOD) to generate LOD for individual mods, but you could ask this question on the discussion thread. If these mods happen to be using a separate worldspace, then these tools can directly create LOD for just that worldspace.