Soooo hows this going :3

Currently it's on the backburner unfortunately, or better yet "delayed until further notice" just as ALL my projects.
It wasn't my decision. I'm forced to.

First my father suddenly died a few months ago, which was already delaying just about everything, not considering my mood around this time...

...but now to make things worse my laptop's broken for about 4 months now, sent in to Dell's for out-of-warranty repairs on a near-regular basis, everytime sent back with a nice little signed report stating "everything's working fine again", yet still not even booting or staying alive for more than 10 minutes. 3 times I sent it in, 3 times I got it back still broken, every time it was either the same defect again or a completely different and new one not occuring before. Recently 3 times a service technician came to us (after my brother threatening Dell Support with his lawyer and a "fraud" trial) and again 3 times he either couldn't repair it or it was just still broken and we only didn't notice until he left.
For a complete list of what exactly happened each time refer to my other WIP threads for my dragon race, but what started with a single defective graphics card expanded into almost ALL components being exchanged... twice or thrice in succession... not rarely in vain... and not rarely without "unneccessary" costs for myself...

It's a never-ending story, and that's the only cause for why I can't tell you when I will ever be able to go on with modding, else I certainly would.

I am so sorry to hear about your father, I hadnt been reading up on your other thread sadly so I didnt know.
Well I hope your computer does get fixed up, I hate when things go bad on them x_x its never a easy fix it seems...
Perhaps I will see if I can make any sense of the script XD

My un-intentional "downtime" (metaphorically speaking) seems to not be coming to an end soon. I'm going to assemble a new PC now and still have to decide about all the parts.
I lost track of the hardware market development since I was so satisfied with my Dell laptop 4 years ago and didn't even keep in mind there will always be some time "after" it.

Oh well, in the meanwhile modding on this little netbook I got for work is rather tedious at best and I'm not making much progress in any of my projects.
The performance issues when using Blender, NifSkope or even paint.NET with more than 3 files opened at once I could easily ignore, but those are nothing against not having the game nor the CS installed and not being able to "test" new stuff myself at all!

Anyways, I just wanted to let you know I'm somewhat back on track... sort of...
Today I continued the v3.0 updates for other bodies by performing the task for AB TFF. Unfortunately I must have used some wrong resources or something, because the exported lowerbody wasn't aligning with the upperbody properly anymore. Else I would have posted a RELz thread instead now... ah well, it's an easy fix at least.

However, it IS making progress again... slowly... but still... just so you know.

I am working on a Robert v5 stock replacer (clothing/armor) I was thinking of doing versions for this if you like, aka pants refitting and shoes being made. Also I wouldnt mind working on the FF version either when you get the final one done. :3 Might take a look at the no boobs for females too.

Glad your sorta back XD

Yay progress!

Goodness, you've had a very bad turn. My heart goes out to you, sorry I wasn't around to offer condolences sooner.

Thanks for the heads up.

Well, the non-aligning-issue I was talking about turned out not to be fixable that easily... however, it now got fixed though.
I needed to import a fresh new skeleton as armature... don't know why that did the trick though. In Blender all meshes were always aligning perfectly fine, just not anymore after export. It wasn't the import/export settings either, surprisingly. Nothing helped but this.

Anyways, with that obstacle out of the way I'm currently preparing the update release.
Now on a different topic I have a question for you all to help me decide.

As I still got reports from people that my installation instructions in the readme are too complicated and they couldn't understand what to do, I was thinking about maybe restructuring the folder structure of the archive.
I mean, having all optional files in their respective subfolders inside the Argonians' textures or meshes folders seemed a nice idea to me when I first started seperating the huge all-bodies-in-one compilation package into one-package-per-body, but on a second thought people complained about nothing happening by just putting the whole damn thing into their data folder, as it "should" be the case for "all" mods or something along that line.
Well, now I'm thinking about making a complete folder structure for every optional feature, so people could simply go into the folders for the feature they want and put their contents into their data folder, just as they're used to.
As an example this would be the folder structure for a few optional features then:

-archive's root directory  -spikedtails	-meshes	  -characters		-argonian		  -contents of folder  -jdayTfeet	-meshes	  -characters		-argonian		  -contents of folder  -iabt	-textures	  -characters		-argonian		  -male/female			-contents of folder

For archives containing more than 1 body there would be multiple folders for each feature like:

-archive's root directory  -spikedtailsRobertV3  -spikedtailsRobertV4  -jdayTfeetRobertV3  -jdayTfeetRobertV4  -iabt  -iabtForFeet

Of course, if you just put the whole thing into your data folder, still nothing will happen, but those features are optional "intentionally" after all.
Also OBMM likely won't be able to create an OMOD from the folder structure right away, but as usual my archives will come OMOD-ready anyways, so there will be proper necessary installation scripts already.
Or maybe I should even prepare 1 default configuration which will get installed when just putting it into your data folder?

Now I need your thoughts about it. Will it improve usability or will it just create further confusion? Yay or nay? :shrug:

@Nivea: Thanks for the offer. It would be a huge help and very much appreciated.
The v3.0 releases of AB can be considered "final", so the meshes inside these highly likely won't change ever again and could easily be used for adapting other clothing items to be equippable on Argonians.
I still have the package you did for me once already. I just didn't get around to give the body meshes inside these the necessary update.
As you're going to work with V5, I should next go and add mesh support for V5 into AB Robert as well, I guess. The textures are already V5-compatible, so it's only meshes left to do (more precisely only a bent lowerbody). I just hope the difference at the connection lines between the variations of V5 is as inexistant as it was with Robert's other releases.

Hmm those new options do seem to be more user "friendly", the more simple your mod pathing can be the less likely people will do somthing stupid and then blame/bug you. XD I think you should go with it.
I think the major difference between v4 and v5 is the toe/finger nails and "tackle" UVing, not to big a body shape size. I got tired of useing other peoples stock replacers and they are all for v4 anyways, so I figured it would be simple to just add support for your mod as I go along. I will be redoing the armors as well, see if I cant do a better job.

This absolutely is, hands down and without a doubt, the most frustrating thing I've ever tried to install.

Further I don't think the packages are complete on the download page.

I've found spiked tails textures for females in the vanilla archive but not the male vanilla archive.
There does not seem to be any spiked tail options in the either of the Roberts Folders.

The spiked tail dds files in the vanilla female I found looked more like a a whole body texture and looked nothing like the normal tail dds.

Why or why do body mod makers package these things in the most needlessly convoluted manners possible? Where renaming multiple variations of meshes in multiple folders is required.
While OBMM scripted installs are great and all - Personally I don't like OBMM for replacers and having 1000 OMODs is not stable at all.

I was going to make a great BAIN package for this and even offer it to the authors for uploading if they wanted but it seems that it is incomplete.

====================
Edit -after reading post 57 above.

http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=957424&hl= is the way to go and a compilation package that is formatted the right way could be much smaller than all the packages combined. BAIN allows for complex overwriting all within one package.
As it is now I'm trying to go through each option and create a base like so

10 AB Vanilla
11 AB Vanilla + Spiked tails
11 AB Vanilla + SAF
11 AB Vanilla + SAF + Spiked Tails

where packages numbered 11 contain only the required meshes and textures for that feature. Then repeat that theme over and over for each body mod.

20 Exnem
21 Exnem variations

25 HGEC
26 HGEC variations ... and so on

The problem I seem to be running into is outlined above. Missing parts.

====================

Edit 2

So can I just used the spiked tail dds in the vanilla female folder (the only one I found named thus) for the others? That is if it is indeed the right dds at that.

Also I noticed in Nivea's download for new textures that both the footmale.dds and the footmale_n.dds are exactly the same they look like they are both normal maps only. Is that correct because the screenshots seem to give the impression of different textures, not just new normal maps.

===================

Edited out the file tree as it is being sent.

===================

Hmmm - wish I'd noticed that the scripted feet require pluggy - too bad. I stopped using pluggy for stability reasons. Would have saved me some time with this.
corrected above - the missing spiked tail bit was regarding the textures not nifs. Sorry if confusing.

Well, I was literally shocked to read this, and immediately went and downloaded every single package and thoroughly checked them through and through again.
It was alarming, but it was a false alarm. All packages are complete.
I should have known better, as I'm usually not that headless to miss out files when packing my mods, but I also never believe my own confidence... when will I ever learn?... ah, probably never that is.

So let me repeat. Every package includes everything that's needed. It's just the differences between the bodies, and sometimes also the ways I designed some things, which make it happen that some packages contain files others do not.

For example in the VanillaMale package there's no texture specifically for spiked tails as I thought I could save some space by re-using a section of the normal tail texture for the spikes. Granted I should have done this for the VanillaFemale package as well instead of just putting a whole TFF texture in there, but forgive me for not thinking on this the first time I created this package. It's still not at v3.0, mind you, so those improvements definitely will still come.
AB Robert doesn't need any different textures for normal or spiked tails, as it's the first at v3.0 which means it uses "seperate" (Slof's Claws For Demons) textures for the tail spikes anyways, so there goes the need for this.

There are some things I "can" do. Most bodies did never have spiked tails to begin with, so it's still up to me to decide how they will work from now on. But some did, and I have to stick to their way by all means!

Regarding Edit 2, you should not and most likely cannot use assets from one package for another. They're already complete on their own and you will only end up mixing up things and confusing/corrupting your install.

As for Edit 3, you must be confusing something already. Scripted Argonian Feet does not contain any textures to begin with, so why should I mention anything about them in the readme? I stated one would be best off using AB for the textures on those feet to look right, so it's up to Argonian Beautification's readme to tell you what to do exactly, and it does (though I know it's still confusing already).

The indentation of this FileFolderTree tool seems to be a little buggy. It's very often missing where it should be, making it hard to understand the actual folder structure, if you don't know how it should be in the first place, which luckily I do.
It might take a while to proof-read it all over, but any files listed in my readme to be "renamed" of course shouldn't end up with their actual filename in a final install. So things like "footmaleforfeet.dds" or "footfemaleforfeet.dds" should not be there, the game will not use them. The same goes for "tailspiked.dds" or the like, just in case as I haven't found these yet.

I don't know how time-critical this project is, but I would suggest waiting for the packages to reach v3.0 before including them. There are quite some things going to change, you might have to start over again and again otherwise.


P.S.: In defence of Nivea, I just downloaded and checked both her archives as well. They're both totally fine. The two files are NOT identical.
I admit I don't know why there's an almost black alpha channel on the regular one (almost completely translucent), but when you make them opaque again, one is a totally fine diffuse map and the other a normalmap.
The game will ignore the alpha channel on the regular texture unless there's an alpha property in the NIF, which never will be the case for body meshes. So it's totally valid.
Again I should have known better, as I was using it myself until my laptop broke, but that's 5 months since so... ah well.

P.P.S.: Good news for you, probably. The latest state of my approach (used for my dragon race) doesn't require nor use Pluggy anymore. As soon as it is mostly done it will be ported over to be used for upcoming SAF releases as well.

Hmm - alright - well apologies to Nivea as well I loaded her textures in game and they look great. But opening in Paint they both look identical.

I cannot get spiked tails to appear using HGEC and Roberts male though. No Argonian has anything remotely resembling a spiked tail.

As for the filefolder tree - yeah confusing - I will PM you a link for my package.

It is quite possible I drastically messed up reading the instructions - which by the way were identical for every body mod. Right off I can say that renaming files over and over is very confusing and that you are stating that each mod has what is necessary even though it what is used is different ... add to that identical readmes and it is easy to get lost. So what I did was for each subsequent sub-package that had only a feature (spiked tails, scripted feet) would only contain the necessary information and would over-write the files from the previous sub-package if chosen.

The only one that seemed to have spiked tail dds file was the vanilla female. (I did not check TFF or BAB though).

What I did not find in the readme files was what to do with the errata mesh files (feetONLY, etc).

and yeah I got confused regarding difference between Argonian Feet and Scripted Argonian feet. The readmes talked about Scripted Argonian Feet and yet there is a link was there for Argonian Feet and not Scripted Argonian Feet. I later realized that the Scripted Feet was found on the nexus page and that only two body mods used it (It looked like a purely optional file not a core file). then also there were argonian feet meshes in each package but the scripted feet were in a separate folder.

Anyway, I've successfully converted other body mods (Roberts male and female) into BAIN packages and thought I knew what I was doing till I came upon this.
Sorry no confusion meant and certainly no hard feelings. I'l edit post above.

Don't worry. One cannot offend me by stating facts or telling the truth. Not that I'll ever take a post as an offense anyways.
I'm very well aware of the confusion my folder structure in these archives is creating, so there's no need to feel uneasy for mentioning it.
Your opinions towards this matter are very well appreciated. That's what my WIP threads are for after all.

Btw. I'm getting the impression the new planned folder structure I was talking about a few posts earlier resembles a BAIN archive quite a lot actually, or is it just me? I just won't have any default folder that is installed by all means, simply because "everything" is optional in AB.

No tails on males reminds me of an issue with Robert's V4 ESP... hmm, here's the readme excerpt regarding this:
---
#############
# REQUIRED PLUGINS (or replacements for them won't work obviously. Without these you won't see many of the features ingame!)
#############

Slof's Oblivion Better Beasts (http://www.slofshive.co.uk/index.php?page=modarticle&modarticle/id=5ifgqqku2oc)
For the Claws and/or Spiked Tails!
Will also be needed for the tails to show up when using Robert's Male Body V4, as it points to a completely uncommon folder for tail meshes!
Claws Textures now also mandatory for the claws on Argonian Feet and spikes on Spiked Tails! Get either from Better Beasts or from one of Slof's Claws for Demons releases.
---
Maybe I should also mention somewhere down there that the AB Requirements package serves the same purpose... but it was never meant as a long-time solution after all. It's just that Slof's BB now only supporting RobM and RobF bodies will completely mess up your Khajiit when using it with other bodies. There's no need to worry about your Argonians, as my AB will take care of them being completely fine again regardless of which body you're using. But what to do with the poor Khajiit? There is no such thing as a Khajiit Beautification yet with full support for all bodies and the like.

You're probably right with AB VanillaFemale being the only one with a tailspiked.dds. The others all did have tails (and proper sections for the spikes) already included in their full-body textures, so there was no need for such a thing. In v3.0 it will most likely also be gone in AB VanillaFemale anyways, so it doesn't actually matter that much.

As for those "errata mesh files (feetONLY, etc)", here's the readme line regarding them:
---
#############
# MORE INFORMATION AND INSTALLATION
#############
...
---Manual Install:
...
--Meshes: (found inside "\meshes\characters\argonian")
...
-The files for the different bodies to replace jdayT's Argonian Feet are in their respective "\Feet..." folders, just copy them into "\meshes\characters\argonian"
---
These are the files you're talking about. There's no special treatment necessary for those. They just replace jdayT's original files from ArgonianFeets with meshes fitting the respective body the package was done for.

Argonian Beautification is just a compilation of the mods Slof's Better Beasts (the Argonian features of it) and jdayT's ArgonianFeets. All I did was adapting the meshes to make them fit all respective bodies and some minor fixes now and then. Well for jdayT's feet it was a bit more than just that, but it's all in the readme anyways. Finally I created my own full-body textures from combining the seperate ones of ShadyTradesman's IABT and retouching a few seams here and there, and then I adapted these to fit all respective bodies as well.

That's why there are files for jdayT's ArgonianFeets included in AB.
Scripted Argonian Feet however is an "Add-On" to be used instead of jdayT's ESP, as it only covered Vanilla NPCs, the feet were not "forced" to stay equipped, and quite some other things people were asking for.
It also features a wide range of especially adapted meshes to be worn by Argonians without them loosing their feet in the process... that is of course only when this part ever gets done. The scripts are not yet working perfectly and the mesh support form my side is limited at best. The whole project still only being useable with Robert's Male Body V3/4/5 (the seams between V4 and the others aren't that noticeable) and Team FantasyFigures female bodies doesn't help either.
It is a stand-alone mod (even a project of its own) for what it's worth and might only require AB to get proper textures on your Argonian feet.


edit: My, I hope this doesn't read as harsh or offensive to you as it does to me on a second read... or what's the word... schooling?
I mean me always pointing you to rather obvious lines inside my readme... but this only shows how confusing and difficult to understand it really is.
It's hard not to sound harsh or offensive when you don't want to in just written text... and why should I ever want to sound offensive?

Well Paint really is not a um.... good program to begin with unless you mean paintshop pro then I have no idea but I use photoshop. Prolly best to test in game before jumping to conclusions a texture replacer doesnt work



Ah that would be my photoshop it adds white alpha channels by itself to all my .dds unless I add in a black one, its kinda broken but it doesnt hurt anything unless its alpha is enabled which would be odd for a body.

Nivea -
again sorry I jumped ot conclusions based only on the view of the file out of game - all apologies. Great work btw - will always be installed now. Those lizards look scaly now!

Drake-
No offense taken - I like school, but those lines are not clear to me.

Are you saying that all the files in - oh let's use the folder FeetVanillaMale (from the Vanilla package), where these files reside:
Malefeet.nif
MalefeetONLY.nif
MaleFeetTribal.nif
MaleFeetwithPant.nif
MaleLowerBody.nif

If wanted to make a folder that was just supposed to install only the Scripted Feet and Normal Tail then which ones would I include and which would I get rid of?

When would I choose MalefeetONLY.nif over Malefeet.nif?

There seem to be no real explanation of what tribal and pant are about in the vanilla folder as well.

----- also what I meant by not seeing tail spikes is on females with HGEC - switching to Roberts female in game to test that too.

As soon as this gets sorted out will send link to package.

thanks for your patience with me.

[edited bad grammar]

Alright, all those files you listed, from inside the respective "feet..." folders, are exactly the same files as there are inside jdayT's original archive, just fitting the respective body of course.
There is no renaming or using one instead of another, as they're ALL used. Well actually not "all", I remember one of them wasn't even used in the ArgonianFeets.esp, but I could also be wrong of course.
As for their purpose, well they're just different alternatives of feet with legs in underwear, feet with legs without underwear or only feet without legs. ALL to be found ingame at once when jdayT's ESP is in use.

Again, those have nothing to do with Scripted Argonian Feet. Scripted Argonian Feet contains everything it needs mesh-wise on its own already. So don't get confused.

You don't even have to care about Scripted Argonian Feet in your BAIN package. That is of course only if you not also plan to include this into it as well.

In Argonian Beautification for meshes there's only one deciding choice for feet: "will jdayT's ESP be used or not?"
For textures it can be expanded into: "will any Argonian feet be used or not?" As both, jdayT's ESP and my own SAF might look odd without proper textures for their feet meshes.
This is neither the case for TFF (it's original full-body texture covers Argonian feet perfectly already) nor for Nivea's male reskin (there's a seperate fitting texture for feet).
But any other body mods (or Vanilla bodies) don't have fitting textures for these feet, so they WILL look odd when not using AB's textures.

Hmm, no tails on "females"? That's a new one, but it could as well just be related. If there's no ESP assigning meshes and textures to the Argonian race the way Slof's BB does, then the tails might be searched for at a completely wrong place. Are regular, non-spiked tails not working either? They're at the same location, so if it's the missing race settings, this would proof it. If they "do" show up, then most likely the tails' NIF wasn't properly renamed due to getting confused by the readme instructions again.
I repeat it for clarity. There must not be any "...forfeet" or "...spiked" or any such alternatively-named files in use. The game's always looking for the regular filenames, thus the whole renaming after all.

"I" have to thank "you" for your patience with my folder structure. People not using OBMM to install AB usually just give up instead of asking me for help... or so it seems...
I can only hope the new folder structure will be better!


edit: Btw. I just downloaded OBMM and Wrye Bash on this machine. I hope I can still create an OMOD without having the game installed.
I'll take a look into BAIN now as well, as I never got to it before my laptop died, although I already wanted to try it out for a long time.

edit2: Bah, shouldn't have chosen the OBMM self-installer! There is no "Oblivion installation directory", stupid thing! Just install it already!... alright, I'll take the zip.

edit3: Ah, to hell with you! Well, alright, then it will "not" be OMOD-ready anymore, fine!... well at least until I get a pc where I can install the game on.

I didn't mean no tails - I meant no spiked tails. Tails look normal is all.

Just tested with Roberts female and it http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo54/psymon11b/ScreenShot96.jpg

Switching back to HGEC and testing that again.

Of note BOSS has the suggestion to leave deactivated the two argonian Hair mods and that does not seem to work. testing that further too.

I merged the changes from Slofs Better Beasts into RBP so that could be a factor - will test that angle too.

You'd be surprised by what BAIN can do and how much easier it makes installing-uninstalling-reinstalling. Just have to get it all up to date up front. Of course there is http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=957424&hl= and http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=957424&view=findpost&p=13910653 I often point people to.

Probably if you don't have oblivion installed then even Wrye bash/BAIN will be a major pain. Don't know the answer to that except install Oblivion. Not sure what my BAIN package will do for you then.

more to come

[EDIT 1] ok so looking at the file structure of Argonian Feet (not the scripted version the jDayT version) I see there is meshes that match Roberts Male body - does this mean that he included alterations of Roberts Male Body meshes for use with his feet? Or is it more that these were included for support? that is unclear to me did he alter more than the feet (like upper body, etc) he said he revised in the readme but didn't say what parts.

If he only touched the feet or legs then only those need to be included and that would be broken down into slender, normal, and bulky.

Your Scripted package then I'm assuming is good to go as it is - but then only for TFF and Roberts male. Does this mean that if a person wanted to install HGEC that they would not work?

You were right about Wrye Bash. It's not even starting without the game present either. So no looking into BAIN either yet, what a shame.
Guess it's time to get myself a new pc badly. But on the other hand this means there's nothing left to do that I CAN do keeping me from releasing the package update right away...
Ah, wait. Somebody was requesting non-spiked tails for TFF. Guess I'll give it a quick look to see if I can do it. I failed once on this when I started AB, the lowerbody is just too non-fitting to simply "stick" a regular tail into it, but now my modeling skills have improved slightly and what doesn't fit from the start simply gets "made" fitting. There were no regular tails on TFF ever either, so I'm free to design their final shape myself.

The original meshes jdayT created were created of and thus made fitting to Robert's Male Body and his own variation of a TFF alpha body (as far as I remember).
He most likely only reshaped the legs though, the Argonian feet were completely new meshes right from the start. There's no need for adapting anything else either. The feet just have to fit to the rest of the body somehow, achieved by the means of slightly bent legs.

Now I don't really understand what you're after with "If he only touched the feet or legs then only those need to be included and that would be broken down into slender, normal, and bulky." though.
Let me say it again, these files are for clothing items. You can't leave any out, or you will encounter missing-mesh indicators ingame when using his ESP. I think jdayT used the muscular body meshes to start from, but at least that's what I did for AB Robert and SAF. They fit all other variations at the waist without noticable gaps, so I never really thought about doing the others as well... at least not in the near future, the difference would be just too insignificant.

As for SAF, the scripts will of course work regardless of the bodies in use. But you know what you get when using clothing items not made for your bodies, don't you?
Apart from the obvious texture issues the legs wouldn't align to the upperbodies anymore either, as SAF also only contains meshes for feet and legs (which then will be Robert's Male and TFF for Argonians obviously).

Take a look at my dragon race WIP. There you can tell my scripts to control "the whole body", so it won't matter anymore which body replacers or whatever you use on your other races. My dragons in your game will have properly working Robert's Male and TFF bodies, as their textures are also unique to their race and not touched by any body replacer or anything.
This is not the case for Argonians though. Although I could expand the SAF scripts to cover the whole body as well either, making all your Argonians have Robert's Male and TFF bodies regardless of what your other races have... but it would require a hell of a lot of meshes from a Robert's and a TFF Stock Replacer to be renamed into properly fitting Argonian alternatives my scripts would then detect and use accordingly.

I hope this clarifies a few things.

While your Dragon Race looks interesting - I'm not touching anything more until I get AB down pat/solid.

So here is the file path of the meshes/character/_male folder in the Argonian Feet (jDayT version). as you can see it contains the folder RT - which if I understand robert's male is where is stored all the variants that need to be renamed and placed into the _male folder. There is both nvde and clothed versions. This is what is making me wonder if he:
1. Adjusted all those from Roberts Male.
2. Included them for convenience.
3. Left them on accident.
the readme is not clear what was adjusted and it seems unlikely that he would have needed to touch the upper body parts. Also then if it is meant to be a complete replacer for Roberts male then does that mean that his esp does everything that the Roberts Male esp does and more? The point is that the file path for Roberts male, Once installed, does not have rt in the path. And, these do have both nvde and clothed versions in his meshes folder.

It would seem that it would be better to make instructions that the race mod in question should be installed first (whether that be manually, with OBMM, or preferably with a Body Mod BAIN package) then this package is installed.

It is my sort term goal to get a working AB bain package, as well as, have very solid and very complete Roberts Male and Female BAIN packages. Creating these then - I want to promote that they be released in such a manner - Body mods still remain one of the types of mods that are still packaged in arcane and confusing modes.

[edit 1] Ok I finally got spiked tails on HGEC - Not that I have a clear understanding as to why I didn't before. In closer inspection of the archives I see the HGEC archive for AB had the textures tucked away inside another folder under textures/characters/argonian/female - called exnem. I looked at EVE and at the original exnem mod and that is not used in the file path.

Also - one must absolutely keep BW's Argonian Hair and CT-argonian Headsets active to have access to those headsets added. Keeping them deactivated as per BOSS instructions will not work.

Perhaps a merged esp with these headsets and whatever feet mod is preferred would be ideal - an AB esp that handles all the various components. You know for those who don't want 5 esp slots for one race.

Oh my, now I understand your confusion from all the time! Now, what's this whole stuff doing inside jdayT's archive? I can't remember this being in there in the version I downloaded last.
That's a complete installation of Robert's V3 minus the ESP!! I'm sorry I didn't realize sooner that this stuff is actually "in there"!
That's highly likely not intended. It's just shouting for incompatibility and conflicts that way, and I didn't get these when I first installed it... or at least I can't remember such a thing.
The whole "_male" folder should not be in there, if you ask me.

There might be some things in the "textures" folder either, but the "clothes" folder is alright, even if the "rt" folder inside there might already be present on your drive from a Robert's Male Body install, the "ale_fc" is definitely required, and the "characters" folder shouldn't do any harm. The files in the "argonian" folder will get overwritten by AB, the "corwynfemale" folder won't be used at all anymore, and while I have no idea what the imperial male groin is up to in there I doubt it will do any harm. Anyways, for what it's worth, after installing AB nothing from the "textures/characters" folder of this archive will be used anymore.

Glad you got it working now. Yes, those subfolders are in every one of my packages. They're from the time when this was still a huge package with files for all supported bodies in these folders, just seperated by those subfolders with the names of the respective bodies. It was that huge, it couldn't even be uploaded to PES anymore! I left it this way so there won't get anything installed by just placing the whole thing into your data folder, as you still have to choose which features you want to use. That's by far one of the most annoying decisions I ever made, I must admit. That's why the readme says 'IABT textures for female bodies are inside their respective folders in "\textures\characters\argonian\female\"'.
...alright, I already admitted this was a bad idea.

First I didn't know why you were always talking about "headsets" and stuff. Now, do you say there's also some hairstyles from these mods included in jdayT's ESP? What are these doing in there again?... Oh my... am I glad I just have my SAF now.

I never intended to do any ESPs for AB, as AB was and always should stay a "replacer" package, a compilation of meshes and textures to replace those of other mods with. Using those mods and thus their ESPs was intended to be "required" for AB to work. After all, it was which ones of these mods you were using what decided about which features from AB you wanted.
Guess that was yet just another "bad idea", or not?

But I will stick to keeping AB and SAF "seperated". Neither one is really "requiring" the other to work, and I'm not going to change that. They're two completely different stories... and projects after all.

Well, it's past 5 AM already and I couldn't yet upload the update release. Guess it will have to wait till tomorrow then, when I'm not so sleepy anymore.
The non-spiked tails for TFF are in, making the different packages yet more similar to each other regarding their contents. Quite a lot of lines could be removed from the rewritten manual installation instructions due to that already, no more exceptions all over, yay!

Excuse me for not being able to answer for some hours, but I really have to go to bed now. I hope most of your questions were answered already and you won't encounter any more trouble now.


Oh, ehm, for those interested, this is what is going to be the new manual installation instructions for the new folder structure of packages at v3.0 (final):
---
---Manual Install:

--Textures:

-IABT textures for your respective body are either inside the "IABT" or "IABTforFeet" folder
just copy the folder contents into your "data" folder

-If you use the Argonian Feet, use the contents from the folder "IABTforFeet"
else use the folder "IABT"
(Some bodies might have only ONE body texture which will work for both options though, so there won't be an "IABTforFeet" folder then)

-If you use the Spiked Tails from Better Beasts, there will be folders named "IABTspiked" or "IABTspikedForFeet" when required for your respective body

--Meshes:

-If you want to use the spiked tails from Better Beasts, copy either the contents from the folder "spikedtails" or "spikedtailsForFeet" into your "data" folder

-If you don't want to use spiked tails, copy the contents from either the folder "normaltails" or "normaltailsForFeet" into your "data" folder

-If you use the Argonian Feet, use the respective "...tailsForFeet" folder
(this removes the disturbing toe-claws not fitting the argonian feet)

-The files to replace jdayT's Argonian Feet so they fit your respective body are in the folder "jdayTfeet", just copy them into your "data" folder
---
If there's still anything unclear, tell me now so I can correct it tomorrow before uploading.
Ah, damn, I missed a few lines for the situation when there is more than 1 body covered by a package... ah, well, tomorrow.
(By "tomorrow" I mean "in a few hours". I'm not going by time but by wake and sleep periods. As I'm going to bed now, "today" is about to end. )

:snoring:

Sounds good except that the the readme doesn't say to rename - does that mean that you are going to have the files already renamed?

If that is the case then I will see if I can get a working package uploaded by the time you get back for you to check out the bain structuring.

The headset mods I was mentioning:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=13050
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6553
and I'm also using the http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=13087 and http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=13444.

I'd bet getting permission to merge those in with whatever feet mod would be possible and therefore making a pretty neat package all around for argonian beautification.

I'll add more here if I find anything else.

thanks

Well if you did merge them I would ask for a unmerged .esp with just the SAF, as they will really conflict with any beauty/race overhaul mods.

Yeah probably true - though load orders can work some things out I tend to merge changes into my copy of Race Balancing Project with tes4edit. Would be neat to see those headsets distributed like hairs and such are with RBP.

All done with the AB-BAIN package moving on to Redoing more complete and controlled versions of Roberts Female and Roberts 4 (maybe even what is available from 5).

Hey Drake-

Sent you a pm with the link to BAIN package.

That took some work - mostly due to reverse engineering thought about what was what. Hope I got it right.

Questions though that may not have stood out in my PM.

1. I noticed while going through the various archives that the BAB and TFF had no special textures for Scripted feet - that is correct right?
2. there is a tail mesh for normal tails that are not to be used with scripted feet - what is this for? Especially for the vanilla bodies. Don't the textures from IABT use the regular meshes? Is that just a back up?

and finally I can't get the scripted feet to work. Even if loaded after RBP and bashed patch and making sure I've got Pluggy and the right meshes and Roberts male - no go.

[edit] alright my turn for sleep now. Check in later. cheers.

*Yawn* ... that was a good, refreshing nap.

Yepp, you read that right. There will be no more "renaming" necessary with the new folder structure. So I guess round-about half of the initial confusion should be dealt with already.

Oh, here's the missing line at the end of the instructions regarding more than 1 body in a package:
---
-In case there is more than 1 body covered by a package there will be several versions of all these folders, conveniently ending with the name of the body their contents are made for.
(E.g. "spikedtailsRobertV3" and "spikedtailsRobertV4", or "jdayTfeetExnem" and "jdayTfeetHGEC")
Just use the fitting ones for the body you're using.
---
What do you think? Confusing again? Or should one generally be able to understand it?

I'll take it the instructions are good-to-go so far then?
Anyways, I'll package and upload the new AB TFF v3.0 now. I will also include some information for creating an OMOD from it, like new description, new installation script, everything I don't need OBMM for to create but will need OBMM to get it into an OMOD. Unless this is done the thing won't really be "final". So it's enough time to see if the new folder structure along with the new instructions is received better by the broad audience now or not.
...Though I of course hope for the 1st.

Hmm, weren't some of those Argonian hairstyles and headsets already included in RBP?... No, you're right, they aren't. I could have sworn...
But, shouldn't it nowadays be possible to merge just about every cosmetic mod of this kind in with the bashed patch, using the proper tags of course that is? I did that and it never failed on me... weird.
Though I agree, having those features "available" is NOT the same as having them distributed to, and thus "used" by, all your NPCs already. But weren't there already other projects doing this as well?
I remember my Argonians did have some of these rather uncommon hairstyles (why don't they just say "horns" anyways?)... but I'm unable to tell where they were coming from out of nowhere.

Well, if you always pertain all possible combinations in proper merged ESPs, so no option is taken away from the user, then it should be fine to create whatever merges you like.
All's working well now? No more confusion or questions to be asked? Then I'm really glad it all worked out in the end... and I'm off to upload AB TFF now. :bolt:

Oh, you were posting while I was still writing this one.

That's right, some bodies don't need special textures for the Argonian feet. TFF is one of them, one texture suits both perfectly, Bab could be another, but I don't remember anymore. However, I do remember that all was well, so when there is no special texture for feet, then it is not needed.

The "normal" tails in the AB packages are what Slof did with the spiked now done with the regular ones. It's simply necessary because it's a merge with Slof's Claws, they're included in the tail NIFs. You haven't taken a look into those files yet, I guess, else you would have noticed.

Now that's strange. Nothing apart from a certain OBSE version and a certain release of Pluggy should be required for SAF to work. And nothing I know of is able to intervene in its doing its job.
Did you get the initial popup message telling you the arrays got initialized successfully? Just read your PM, so it did... hmm, weird. I don't know if it's compatible with the latest OBSE, but it still did work for me the last time I played, so... :shrug:
I'll try to find other causes for it not working "although" it was initialized... but it's really strange.

Wait, I just stumbled upon a post from MagicNakor a while ago, having exactly the same problems, initializing alright but nothing happening at all ever after.
In his case updating to the latest version of my ESP, the yet-to-be-released unofficial v0.5b, fixed it. I guess you could try this as well then:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=URF9QXUG

Hope it helps!

edit: Damn, it's time to make that thing "official"!! :banghead:
edit2: Alright, now it IS official on all hosts. Hope that solves a few problems and won't create even more ones!

edit3: AB TFF v3.0 is officially released on all hosts. Here's the http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1068138.

Ohh wait I think I know what went wrong with getting the feet active.

I didn't have the jdayT's feet installed - and assumed that all the meshes you provide were enough.

Testing that now and will use the 0.5 beta for the SAF too.
The download for TFF was MUCH easier to understand.
Still - I advocate to moving to BAIN install for these and will update the BAIN package and link once I test the above.

Thanks

=======

then also are there plans to implement the scripted feet with any other female body replacer?