The CK has a lot of nice features but there are some things I would like to change.

It would be nice if when you right clicked on something as well as the Edit option there was a View option. Often I just want to see it's 3D location or what scripts are on it or whatever but I don't want to change it. It would help on cleaning up your mod afterwards of unwanted edits. I've been resorting to just exiting the CK without saving and then reopening it but that just wastes time.

For a more general edit prevention mechanism it would be nice to have a hotkey when pressed any changes like when you pull apart a cell to see how it is put together is not saved. When you press the hotkey again your mod returns to the state it was in when you first pressed it, no changes saved. Or Something like Blender where you can roll back to a previous save.

It would be so nice if the CK was open source like Blender. Just think what some nice savvy computer people could do with it.

Have you tried hitting cancel? That should close the window without making any changes to the content.

The tool doesn't have many 'avoid dirty edits' features because for Bethesda there is no such thing as a dirty edit.

Yes, but I still end up with a lot of cells marked as edited when I either didn't or didn't intend to make any changes.

I'd like a better way to locate the stuff belonging to the loaded plugin. I think it's TESSnip or another one that has an "active" box to check that isolate the content of the plugin.

I will 2nd this one.

Would also be nice if the CK was more stable (stop crashing).

Also I'd like to see the linking of basic stuff like putting together bookshelves or armor stands just simplified (like it's already put together rather than going through a tedious process repeatedly).

Not 100% sure about complete bookshelves but there are cells the devs have mad containing ready made stuff like that. All you have to do is copy and paste. These cells are generally named "warehouse xxx".

Personally, I copy and paste the bookshelf that is in Breezehome when I want to add one to a mod. All right, I know, I should learn about how to make one from scratch. One day...

Should have thought of that. I have tried copy/paste from other mods and that has been a failure for me, even though the source is fully functional. Bookshelves are pretty tedious to put together, as well as armor stands/plaques/cases. It seems like that stuff should already be ready to go (as are the Winterhold bookshelves).

I'd like to see some fine tuning on the tools we have, mainly, remove the weird glitches and make the UI a little more user friendly.

For Starters:

-No errors Loading up just the base game file - Skyrim.esm (Elsweyr.esm / Highrock.esm / tes6.esm etc ) shouldn't kick out dozens of "harmless" errors.

Coming from a programming background, having to ignore errors repeatedly on every loadup just seems wrong. Even with "Yes to All", it's a little bothersome, like a shareware demo program or something. Come on, Bethesda, a touch more polish next time.

-No "harmless" but consistent error messages loading up interior cells. "IdlefreaSorrowLoopwhatever", I am looking at you.

" " Loading up Scripts - you get the idea. No errors at least when just loading the base game data should be a reasonable goal.

-As I said above, make the UI a little more user friendly - have some tool tips or at least some documentation files that cover all the features accurately. Someone took the time to program the stuff, after all - someone's got to have a minute or 2 out of the dev schedule to type in some information about what the features actually do or the context for some things. Otherwise, some options can be confusing like the conditionals for Quest -> Scene -> Phase Events; depending on what type of object you select, sometimes there are options that do not apply, but are not greyed out. Clarification on stuff like that would be nice.

- Maybe allow for a bigger world (if not limitless) without getting weird animation errors at some point.

-Did they ever fix the broken LOD generation thing? I know there are mods for that now...

Just a few things off the top - I'm sure the more experienced mod makers around could rattle off a list of many more things, but atm I'm still pretty fresh with Skyrim's CK.

What's the goal of this thread? A lot of the attitude in here is quite ignorant, entitled and seems rather destructive...

A proper for loop.

Documentation for the file formats. So we don't find out the hard way that the apparently random bytes following sub-record X are not in fact padding and can corrupt your mods if misunderstood.

I'd like a human-readable serialisation tool. I'd like a declarative, domain specific language to write things like spells and dialogue and scenes and compile them into esps. I'd like decent facilities for copying records between esps and for pasting chunks of one file into another. Hell, I might be willing to write the DSL if I just had a reliable, documented intermediary language.

I'd like not to have all my quests suddenly stop working for a year this time round, until someone finally gets the go-ahead to tell us all about SEQ files.

That sort of thing.

Review some of the frustrations of the CK in the hopes of influencing design in the next one?

I'm not holding my breath for a DSL, but I'd quite like that for loop.

I thought the attitude in here was simply one of friendly commiseration:

"Why then, 'tit none to you, for there is nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so." (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2)

OP:

"The CK has a lot of nice features but there are some things I would like to change."

Pointing out flaws and stating things that could be improved upon sounds constructive, rather than destructive. I think that Bethesda has benefited greatly from ideas and constructive criticism from its modding community over the years.

I saw no harm intended. Tone and general attitude is easy to misinterpret with text-based communication. Even emotes can be interpreted as sarcastic, ridicule, etc. at times. Try not to read malice and offense behind every critical post. Again, no harm intended, just a voicing of frustrations and potential improvements.

I am pretty sure the main reason most of us are on here is...

What I would like to see is the ability that 3D programs like 3DS have where you can select polygons and then grow the selection which expands to the neighbouring polygons. In the case of the CK you select static dungeon pieces and the selection grows to those connected to them.

^

Nice. I was approaching the point of tackling the dauntingly tedious task of assembling a bookshelf. Thanks for reminding us we could do that. Now I always have the option of copying one from somewhere so I can tackle other things and save learning to make that from scratch for "another day."

I have assembled my own weapon racks and stands, of which only the stand that's split into vertical slices gave me some trouble, I think mainly due to the intended spot being at a weird angle and not snapping together right, etc. I have since learned the trick of assembling stuff with the snap to grid on, then turing it off to re-position, etc.

Still, I have looked at bookshelf assembly (I took one of the in-game ones apart to check it out). And it seems like a pretty time-consuming process... I wonder, is there is any downside to copying one from somewhere and moving it? Potential bugs, etc.?

Uh?

To get it right, you musn't select the components of the bookshelf in the render window but in the Cell View window. Enter "bookshelf" in the filter and select everything showing in the results. Careful if you do that in Breezehome; there are two bookshelves out there.

You give me an idea for a mod: ready made bookshelves for (lazy) modders.

AV, probably some comments seem ignorant because some or most of us might not know how things are put together and the reason things have to be the way it is, but there's not bashing nor mal-intent in the discussion. Maybe enlighten us instead of accusing us? Its just a forum discussion among modders with varying degrees of know-how.

I had no luck copying bookshelves and I'm surprised that ladyonthemoon has been successful. It is very tedious but not difficult (unless you have a lot of shelves and the tedium overcomes you). Here is the tutorial I followed if you are interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8hr1Tp4hrI&list=PLiPgFWIHsr8VjN8EZltd8oesJpymGriA6&index=6

It's not difficult at all, as long as you select the objects as I described earlier, in the Cell View window, and not in the Render View window. Post #14.

And I'm tired being sent to YouTube!