I just uploaded http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/69061 to the Nexus, this time for Argonians to clear and furnish a flooded ruin. Since I found myself having to re-learn half of what I did for http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/64038, I wrote it all down as I went along, and made myself http://ghastley.org/Skyrim/ModNotes/HearthfiresMods.html that covers everything.

Some of this duplicates information found at the Creation Kit Wiki, which was a valuable source for individual items of knowledge, but didn't bring it all together. Other parts can't be found there, and I have no problem with it being put there if anyone has the time and inclination, especially if they can add anything in the process. I'll continue to maintain the composite document, as I think the world needs both.

This thread is for feedback, ideas for extensions to the Build-Your-Own process, etc. I'd also like to know if there is a good answer to the lumber mills dialog problem that I haven't thought of. I might have to request a change to the Unofficial Hearthfires Patch to support a Global for "homeowner needs lumber" that any such mod can set.

Hmm, looks good I might have to... 'borrow' your idea of digging out an underground home (I've been trying to make an immersive underground crypt on-and-off for a while...) Also downloading, since I have a character who might enjoy it

For the dialogue... Would it be possible to use GetFormFromFile and check whether the earlier Mod is loaded, and then react accordingly? So that each subsequent Mod would have it's own internal dialogue system, but it would submit to the previously-released Mod each time? Or how about a Master file just for the dialogue? If you're planning to release a series, you could employ a single file to manage all the dialogue, and just have the .esps rely on that? (Edit: obviously that would only work for your own series, but presumably anyone could do likewise, and maybe throw in a compatibility patch, or a community-generated standard master?)

What I really want is for time to roll back and Bethesda to decide on using a global before they wrote the DLC. Then anybody's mod just sets it, and tests it. Didn't happen, and it's hard to fix now, especially as it has to happen before anyone starts their game.

Very cool. I hadn't even realized anyone was finally doing something like this trying to use the Hearthfire framework. Have you run into any problems with the adoption part? Or are you even supporting that yet?

I know it's not even close to an easy system to work with just from what I've seen while fixing bugs in the DLC itself. Can't imagine how much more difficult all this was to pull off from the ground up.

Not quite sure what sort of dialogue problem you're referring to, but as much as we'd like to help facilitate things like this, adding such globals to the UHFP is outside the project's mandate as it's not a fix for an existing bug.

The dialog to purchase lumber at a mill has the conditions (paraphrased) "player owns housesite1 OR player owns housesite2 OR player owns housesite3" so if you don't own a DLC homesite, you can't ask for lumber. In my first mod I created a duplicate topic with the condition "player does NOT own housesite1 AND ... AND players owns modsite" so that only one of the two could be true, and it would still work if mine was the first site built.

This got nasty to do again, as it starts to involve tests for which mods are installed, and extracting quest variables from the other mod etc. The simplest solution would have been if Bethesda had used a global in their DLC, as I'd just have to set it, and the dialog would happen. No duplication, no problem with multiple mods.

Of course, it would require that the DLC scripts, dialog conditions, etc. be changed, and everyone who'd started a game with Hearthfires would have to restart, so it's not remotely feasible, and I wasn't seriously suggesting it. If I had meant it, I'd have asked you!

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As for adoption, there's another mod - Hearthfire Multiple Adoption - that handles that for any player home that provides the right set of facilities, so I set mine up to be compatible with that (and pass the buck completely).

Heh, well, it's actually very easy to change the system to do that. You'd change the dialogue conditions as usual. Easy enough.

Then you'd want a script that runs during startup to check for the existing property ownership status. If any of the properties are owned, your script should be able to tell this easily and set the new global to on. Which is why I mentioned it's beyond scope for us. Possible, even feasible, just not a bug fix Plus doing it this way would require mods to use the UHFP (and later USLEEP) as a master and getting people to do this is already difficult enough for whatever reason.

The only other alternative is a master file intended to be shared by mods of this type that would be practical to use for expanded house systems beyond what the rigidness of the DLC provides for. Something which I think would be even harder to convince people to use.