Hello there, glad you dropped by. I'm about to take my first wobbling steps into the world of modding, and I need a bit of guidance.

One of my friends requested that I make a retexture of the Crusader armor from the Knights of the Nine-plugin, oddly enough. Seeing as I've never made a mod or done anything advanced with photoshop before, this was a bit of a challenge. Eventually I managed to make a pretty decent-looking retexture, and all that's left should be to get it into the game. Here's my trouble though, I don't want the new textures to replace the old ones but rather be for an alternative set using the same meshes as the Crusader armor. Reading a tutorial on adding custom textures for weapons and armor in Oblivion told me that the texture is to be attatched to the .nif file containing the armor mesh somehow. But I'm pretty sure that making a copy of the mesh for my texture and uploading it is illegal, so I was wondering if there is an alternative way for this?

You simply need to make your mod dependent on the Knights of the Nine DLC since you're using assets directly from it. Make sure to put that in your readme and that your mod IS dependent on KotN.

Well, that's the plan. But how do I do that?

have a read of this:
http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/De-Isolation_Tutorial#ESP_Mastering

Hmm, looks useful. I'll take a look at that tomorrow, right now I'm near fainting from exhaustion... thanks for the help though ^^

All right, I checked it out, but it really doesn't tell me how to solve my problem. I'm using this http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/How_To_Create_New_Re-Textured_Items as a reference for making re-textures, but going by that method, wouldn't I have to make a copy of the original mesh in order to get a separate armor with my textures? How can I work around this?

In oblivion there is no way around this as far as I know. I think this is one of the reasons that they added texture sets to fallout 3. :shrug:

There are a lot of retexture mods and I believe they all retexture the mesh and upload it.

Isn't that illegal? <_< I mean, that's what has me the most worried, and I don't want the first mod I upload to be removed and get my account banned because of it.

Well if you take a look at other texture swaping mods its what they have done. I don't think Bethesda minds, since its the only way.
Its what we all have been doing for years now.

If you want concrete answers you can always ask a moderator.

Okay... um, how do I do that? :3

Look for a thread that's been locked (they lock them at 200 posts so there should be several if you go back a few pages)
then find the post of the Mod who locked it.
Go to there profile (click there name) and hit the send me a message button.

Okay, I'll do that. Thanks for your help, and for putting up with my newbish self. ^^

Let me know what they say since I'm somewhat curious as to the official position.

Right, I got the reply, so I think I somehow understand how it works now:



So basically, uploading the mesh shouldn't be a problem so long as you can't use the mod without the official plugin. I found this kinda strange since you could easily rip off the meshes and use them to make your own, non-KotN-dependent plugin with only a basic understanding of the CS, but I suppose it's okay then... :shrug:

SO its all good as long as your plugin file is dependent on KotN.

Okaay, um... I tried the bit-flip method and turned the Knights.esp into a master file. I made a plugin that adds the armor to the game, with Oblivion.esm and Knights.esp as the registered masters. Problem is, when I created the plugin, it copied the data from the Knights.esp, resulting in the possibility to play my mod even without Knights.esp active.
*sigh* :facepalm: What am I doing wrong?

*EDIT* Actually, scratch that. Even without my plugin, the game registers the content of KotN, though it doesn't load the resources so the equipment is invisible. Does this have anything to do with me having Oblivion GotY edition?

Hmm... is this (1) supposed to be literally nothing but a retexture, meaning you get the Crusader armor as normal through Kot9 and it looks different, or (2) a separate piece of armor that happens to use the same model but is obtained by other means?

If it's (1), why bother with a plugin at all? Just put your files in the textures/ and meshes/ folders as overrides with the original file names. If the user doesn't own Kot9, they'll just have some useless files sitting there doing nothing.

(1) is already in function. I have uploaded the re-texture on tesnexus simply because I could not make the plugin dependent on KotN. I am aiming for (2), but even following the online tutorials I haven't been able to make my plugin KotN-dependent. Heck, the stuff from KotN shows up in my game even without the Knights.esp active, though like I said the equipment isn't visible.

Have you actually edited anything from Kot9? If there are no override records, the master might not actually be necessary... I'd change something from Kot9, then change it back (the record will still be marked as edited), and see if that creates a proper dependency.

Tried that just now, still no difference. Though I wonder if it's something with my game, or my computer. I downloaded a mod that adds a separate re-textured set of the crusader armor (Path of Darkness), which supposedly is dependent on KotN. I could play through the added quest and get the new crusader set even without the Knights.esp active.