Suggestions for my (first)project

[LittleMage]

Hello fellow allies! I decided to attempt an outfit overhaul of every NPC in the game (barring a few who have unique identifying outfits I do not wish to change such as Psijic).

Since I am a beginner I am really confused on how to proceed. I only know that the end result must be that NPC have a chance of spawning with their normal vanilla outfit or one of the outfit I collected, and that some outfits should spawn all their pieces together. I also don't know how to proceed about the fact I am using resource from around 100 different mods (maybe more) and look out for all the authors for permission seems quite a task.. at the same time I can't really force my eventual users to download 100+ mods (and it would be difficult for me anyway to keep them all, separated, as masters to my mod..). My first trial in CK  was something like this: 

 

I will pick Black Sacrament armor as example. It has many different variants, both in color and in parts of the armor https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/5696

 

I want to distribuite this armor to Assassins. I want the assassins wearing it to wear the full color set of the armor (kinda ugly otherwise imho)

 

In CK I would create a leveled list for every color of the armor (BlackSacramentleather, BlackSacramentshadowscale,BlackSacramentseryllic,BlackSacramentbasyllic,BlackSacramentcypress, BlackSacramentchainmail,BlackSacramentmythril, BlackSacramentunholy,BlackSacramentshrouded), place inside every part of the armor for that particular color (BlackSacramentLeather list has leather armor, leather boots, leather gauntles, leather tasset, leather mask or hood or veil, leather cape, black sacrament amulet. BlackSacramentSeryllic list has Seryllic armor, Seryllic boots, Seryllic gauntlets, Seryllic tasset.. you get the point ) and set each one of this lists with the "use all" check, which will cause the items inside to always spawn together.

Then I would create another leveled list and name it "Assassins", I would place inside all the lists I just created (so now I have Assassins leveled list containing BlackSacramentLeather, BlackSacramentSeryllic,BlackSacramentBasyllic etc.).

Then I would go into the outfit section and look for "DB": this will give me every outfit with DB in the name, they contain Dark Brotherhood armor pieces and all assassins npcs refer to one or another of these outfits (DBArmor, DBArmorUnhooded, DBArmorAncient..). I would delete the armor pieces inside those outfits (DBarmor,DBBoots,DBgauntlets,DBHood) and place inside there my Assassins leveled list.

Boom, every assassin in the game is now wearing one or another color version of BlackSacrament armor (well.. almost. Vampiric kids do not wear armor xD)

If I wanted to keep vanilla around I would do a "use all" leveled list with all the DB vanilla armor pieces inside and place it into my Assassins list, along with BlackSacramentLeather, BlackSacramentSeryllic, BlackSacramentShadowscale etc.

Now every assassin in the game is wearing either his normal armor or a BlackSacrament color variant armor (ok, still minus Babette :p).

I could simply edit the Black Sacrament plugin to do it, but let's say I want Dark envoy https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/69640/ to show up on assassins too.

I set both Black Sacrament and Dark Envoy as esm in tes5edit.

I go back in CK and create a new plugins, loading it with both Black Sacrament and Dark envoy as masters.

I do the same steps as before, creating also leveled list with the check "useall" containing all the Dark Envoy pieces, it will go in the lists Assassins together with all the BlackSacrament lists and the vanilla DBarmor list. I do the same edit to "DB" outfits as before.

Every assassin in the game is now wearing either his vanilla DBarmor, one of the color variant of BlackSacrament or DarkEnvoy.

 

As you can imagine once I have more than 100 armor sets to list together manually this is EXTREMELY time consuming.

Let's say every armor has a medium of 4 color variants it's 400 lists only for the "use all" purpose, then 15 general lists (I thought Assassins, Vampire Armors, Vampire Clothes, Common , Nobles, Mages, Stormcloacks, Monks, Thieves, Forsworn, Elven, Fur, Leather, Hunters, Plates).

And I have to manually distribuite in those 15 lists all the 400 lists made before.

Then I have to manually edit all the intended outfits. Go find all outfits that normally use VampireClothes, empty them an place inside "VampireClothes" list. Find all the outfits that normally use "elvenarmor", empty them and place "elven" list inside and so on.

 

But that's not the worst part. The big headache comes from the fact my new plugin containing all those "general" list will not save items inside unless the mod the item came from is a master to it.

I currently have 69 individual or individual with color variants armors and clothes to distribuite + 12 big packs ( caliber of ApachiiDivineEleganceStore ), which contain stuff going into very different list (Apachii especially is huge, ranging from noble clothes to leather armors to monks stuff).

So, even if I'm willing to put all that time into it, how the hell do I manage the fact that my mod would need 81 masters (!!!) to even be created, and those masters can't be changed or the mod breaks?

I could merge all them together but it's quite a huge size, idk if it's possible.. and anyway this would leave me unable to update my lists on the run when I find new stuff to add.

There has to be a better way to do it.

 

 

(this comes from an answer to a reddit user who was so nice to look out at my thing and try to help me. He suggested me to use JSon files and scripting. I am open to every suggestion I can receive to make up my mind on it and try to fully understand what I'm doing.

Edited November 30, 2018 by LittleMage

[oldladyonthemoon]

Hello!

I wish you a good luck with your project.

You need to edit your post, the text of most of it displays black on black...

[agerweb]

If you replace the contents of an Outfit the new stuff may not show up on an existing saved game.  

[Tigersong]

Yes, I have some advice: Don't make 100 new outfits in your first mod!