I just want to say I really appreciate what you've been doing with this mod.

A question about this update, though: Shouldn't the updated .esp be in the Data subdirectory?

Sorry to hassle about the ESP name change, but I just noticed that all the patches won't work either because the name in the patch masterlist is now wrong. For now, I am going to rename your ESP to make all the other things work.

Hope this is helpful to you.

Changing the ESP name will also invalidate any progress made under the original name. The game will treat this as an entirely different mod.

Thanks! To be honest it doesn't make a difference, I usually prefer to keep the ESP separate as it is just simpler, but didn't do that for the last upload.



Yikes, I had no idea that would happen, sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you for letting me know. Now I know to never rename the esp. Before I run off and tell everyone to rename the esp and upload the correct named esp, you haven't altered the patch to fit the new esp, right?

I will go ahead and revert the name back to the original ShezriesTownsMaster.esp

Glad it helped.

I did initially, but changed it back to use the original name once I found all the other issues - so no problems with restoring the original name for me

I will post here what I posted on the Nexus thread, about the Blood Brotherhood quest, which is the next thing on the list to do....

Once I know that people are okay with the quest structure and no journal updates etc... I am just waiting on feedback on how people felt about the current quests with no journal update. I actually find it more realistic to do it like that and find it less limited when making a quest. There is no way I could have structured the Quest to Find the Septim Crown like vanilla quests as those quests are so linear. Then I can look at how to implement the quest around the Blood Brotherhood. I think this quest could be very interesting and involve a lot NPCs in the town. The problem is how to handle the quest if the player is not Dark Brotherhood, how to handle it if the player wants to join the Blood Brotherhood and how to handle it if the player wants to help his Dark Brotherhood brothers destroy the Blood Brotherhood.

Edit...this is what I want to do after thinking on it. Make this quest available only to the Dark Brotherhood, it is simpler that way. You meet (have already met) those two Dark Brotherhood members in the Cloak n' Dagger, they have told you already that they are there to find information on the Blood Brotherhood. I want to make these two characters integral to the quest. I want the player to form a bond with them through the quest. Possibly even a little romance with which ever is the player's opposite gender. So I want to make them a main part. Make the girl prettier and the guy more handsome and give them real personalities.

So you join to help them. You all make a plan and go your separate ways and arrange to have a meeting point, once you have done whatever task you need to do at the time, you meet back with the others to exchange information and make the next plan. This continues until you are ready to take on the Blood Brotherhood Sanctuary. You have to find the sanctuary, get the password to enter it, find information on the leaders and other things before you are ready to actually tackle their sanctuary.

Once you have the information, you must infiltrate the sanctuary and reach the leaders and do them in. Meanwhile your friends will head off to gather enough Dark Brotherhood to attack the sanctuary. Once they can get in, once various things you have to do are done then they can join you in wiping out the Blood Brotherhood. That is where you get to join the Dark Brotherhood in storming the Blood Brotherhood Sanctuary.

Buuut, it is not that simple, there will be losses on the way and many surprises. Also don't think this will be the last of the Blood Brotherhood, I like them too much. :laugh:

The problem with almost all MJY textures is that the author of those knew that they should be converted to DDS format to be usable by Oblivion, but on the other hand, it seems had no any idea how exactly all those DDS formats and alpha channels work. From technical point of view all MJY textures are just a big mess... well I wish I couldn't say that, but then that would be untrue.

The main issue in your case Shez, is that those textures are saved in DXT3/5 format and have alpha channels all white. And if you have normal map saved in such format with completely white alpha channel, then the object reflects all the light that hits it, so that's why the view is not the most pleasant one when you carry torch around. To fix this issue all normal maps (with _n suffix) need to be re-saved to DXT1 format. And it's also good to re-save all other MJY textures to DXT1 as well.

I know that re-saving so many textures (nearly 300) in Paint.NET or GIMP can be a very tedious process, but if you want I can convert those for you and send you a link, as such work in Photoshop takes less than 10 minutes...

Shez...

I like your ideas.

That would be brilliant and solve the issue once and for all. I would be really grateful if you could do that, please.

Hello and thanks for a great mod, lorefriendly or not I still find it very nice. Kudos!
Anyway, I ran the files through tes4files to create a bsa for myself to see if that would work well - and the errorlog reported some missing files, figured I'd post it here. This is using the latest package and the new esp (re-downloaded 2h ago before I ran them through tes4files).

I don't know if this is true in your case...but I have noticed that when I DL a new mod, and if it says that I have an already similarly named thread or mesh or whatever...AND I tell it to call it a new name...that screws things up. I like to just have it save it as the current mesh...do or die. It might not be what the author of the mod inteded, but at least it runs.

Never ever ever instruct Windows to install a mod file identical to existing by renaming it. It's pointless, as the file's name and location is how it is found by other files and the game itself, so if you change them, the files will not be used at all, and just become dead weight filling up space on the hard drive. Best move is to always instruct Windows to overwrite existing, as some other mod contains the same files so they'll both use the last ones installed.

How difficult is it to create your own unique name for a texture/mesh, etc? Are some people just lazy? What I would do at the least is to call it something like EXAMPLE314159, etc...give it a really unique number on the back that NOBODY would ever want to use.

Not the case, I install everything via BAIN to have complete control over the files.

You're not a modder, so you don't know what you're talking about, Yzerman. When mods use resources from other mods, those resources are already named and placed in a folder structure. Often they also come with an ESP containing just the base object references, which a modder might merge with their own ESP or use as the base for creating their mod from. Some resources can contain tens, hundreds of individual files. The creator of those resources might have stipulated that the folder structure and file names of their resources should not be changed. If new resources are being used which have never been in another mod, then the modder would most likely place the files in uniquely named folders, but when resources are being used, this is unlikely.
If you rename a texture, then you have to edit the texture path in every single NIF using that texture to use the new texture name. This requires nifSkope which not all modders know about and some would not be brave enough to install and use. Bound to be other tools which can do it, but nifSkope is the easiest I know, as long as someone actually takes the time to tell you how to use it. But how do you know which NIFs use an individual texture? If the resource mod includes a single mesh and texture, it's easy, but what if there are 30 textures and 25 NIFs? You'd have to check every single NIF to get them all right. And then some textures are directly referenced by the ESM or ESP itself, so you'd also need to ensure that every one of those references are updated.
If you rename a mesh, then again each mesh is referenced by the ESM or ESP, so you have to track down every single reference and update them all.

Suggesting that modders are lazy for using other people's freely available resources and not renaming every single file to make it unique is unfair on all modders, especially those offering large mods (in filesize), as the larger the filesize, the more resources it contains, and thus the more unnecessary work would be required to rename everything instead of concentrating on improving the mod itself. If you don't want to overwrite identical files with identical files, then put all the resources into a BSA and install them with that instead. But don't forget to exclude from the BSA any files which won't work in a BSA, such as those which need to override existing files with the same name (such as land LOD meshes) - as these files, if left in the BSA will probably not override what they're meant to, and if renamed will very likely cause in-game problems due to the renamed file not being available for the game to use.

It is not that simple to rename nifs and textures and given that there are over 3000 files for Shezrie's Towns, that would be a nightmare.

As Displaynameisalreadyinuse explained, a lot of modders require that the file structure remain the same and there are various very valid reasons for this....

Take Xiamara's sofas for example. This resource is used in hundreds of mods, probably thousands. Everytime you rename a mesh you create a new one. So if hundreds of modders renamed just one of her sofas nifs and the corresponding textures. (which would require Nifscope to do) Then downloaders would have hundreds of copies of the very same nif file and the very same texture files, all simply renamed, but other then that no difference. That would bloat up peoples DataFiles and games hugely and unnecessarily. So you can see there is logical method behind modders madness. ^_^

As it is, those thousands of mods that use that one sofa, call on just ONE nif file and it's few textures. Pretty well organised I'd say, to cause the least inconveniece and problem for downloaders.

For my own mod, any resource mesh I altered, I gave a new name and file structure to, in order that it not overwrite the original that is being used by those thousands of other mods. All mine are under the prefix PG aka Pell's Gate and in the folder PG. Where others created new resources specifically for this mod I left it in their file structure and there are a lot of new works in the mod.



Thanks!

I do not know why Bain is having trouble with the PGGreenWooduniexit2room.nif, it is not named in any way to to make a problem. Unlike some textures I fixed that had an accent in the name that Bain could not read. The only difference for those two nifs is that they were added into the most recent update and so was the vase of flowers nif.

I suggest to fix it that you extract all the files into a folder, find those two files and manually install those two files as Bain will simply not install them. Sounds like a lot but it should be only a moments work. I will keep an ear open to see if anyone else has this problem too. However sorry, I am afraid I would have no idea how to fix as they are named correctly and the vase of flowers is from Jbvw's 'AllNewHouse' mod and has the same file structure as that and has installed with no problems before. It is quite a mystery. :unsure:

The other missing ones are not needed for the mod and thank you for bringing them to my attention, I will clean them out for the next update.

Pell's Gate is exactly my kind of town. I need to make another pass through, but I'm definitely settling down there. I'd still prefer a little more muck but still - it's absolutely wonderful for my honest, hard working, respectable character. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to file the name "Septim" off of my new silverware.

Vorians...you went over my head...but I believe you!

:rofl:

Thanks! Just the kind of honest, upstanding citizens we need in Pell's Gate. :hehe:


Trollf very kindly fixed the MJY textures and I have uploaded them as a separate file for now.

Any problems, comments, suggestions, constructive criticism, observations, litigations, undulations, verbal donations, appreciations, consternations, suppositions, exclamations, insinuations, indignations, remonstrations, expectations, salutations....? :huh:

Anyway, I put up a screenshot of the location of Haven Bay.

So I am considering where to take this mod from here. I have had a good break from it, but want to get back to it. I think, given all the feedback that my efforts would be best focused on improving the atmosphere of the towns rather then focusing on quests, which haven't generated a lot of feedback and interest.

Therefore I think that I will focus on my strengths and main enjoyment, improving the towns life and atmosphere. Instead of large quests I will just make little mini questy/things to do like the little assassin quest you can get from the woman in Pell's Gate Apartments. So I think I would be best off removing the whole Blood Brotherhood thing and not doing a big quest around that. Maybe I will do a little somehing on that in the future if there is time before Skyrim release, but probably not.

Anyway I am going to focus on Lakewood Village first and get some more life and soul into that village. Also fixing any problems I have been hearing about. So there will be an update soon with dialog in Lakewood Village, hopefully musicians, music and dancers in the tavern and some colourful characters.

Out of interest, for those that played this mod, was there a character, if any, that you prefered or enjoyed the most?

Thanks for the bump/reminder. I started playing again (or trying to, which isn't quite the same thing) a few days ago and having found my installation is pretty stable, I am trying to remember all those nifty mods that have come out "recently", things like All Natural (less than three years old), alchemy advanced (less than two years old), and now I remember this one too. No promises on feedback because that would need me to play somewhat, but here's hoping!

Vac

Edit: I can't find the download link? I can see the links for the patches, but not the main file... I'm probably being blind, but...

Whoops! I updated the OP with the download link. :blush2:

Downloaded. Thankyou for the speedy response.

Vac

Always meant to ask about this. Do the NPCs ever come out and wander around outside or am I just passing through the area at the wrong times of the day? Every time I've visited there isn't anyone out and about.