Hi, all.
I am a real newbie, as I am new to mods and to forums (I don’t understand half of your discussions and 90% of the acronyms – LOS?? BoB?? MML??).

I started playing Oblivion a couple of months ago and played it for a few weeks. Then I heard about mods and decided to try some. By the time I tried a few, I knew I wouldn’t resist making one myself.

The idea came when I installed “More Maids”, Growlf’s and Oonas clothes and decided to dress up the maids in those fancy clothes and armors. I spent uncounted hours just going back and forth trying to find the ones I liked the most. (buy+carry+try it on a maid+back to the shop+etc)

Then I said to myself: Wouldn´t be nice to be able to see all those clothes before buying??

So I started my career as a modder: I created a showroom in Divine Elegance’s basement where models will wear all those fancy clothes, walk the catwalk and the player may look at them and choose which ones to buy. (If I ever share it, I may call it "Divine Elegance Fashion Show")

It was lots of fun unveiling the secrets of CS and making it do what I wanted.
Now a first alpha version is almost ready and I wonder if I should share it. And this is the reason for this post: I would appreciate if you guys could give me some initial orientations / suggestions / recommendations on what I should do in order to share my mod. Things like:
- First of all: Is this idea any good for other players?
- Sharing ethics and 'etiquette'
- How to get authorization to use other mods I used to build mine.
- Should I get some players to test it in advance (and how to find them) or I just upload it and see what happens?

Thanks in advance on any feedback you may give me.
QQuix

Welcome to the Nexus! I can't find anything about sharing etiquette but a general rule of thumb is to make sure you use the proper tags, and be sure to communicate that your mod may be offensive to some if it adds any adult material to the game. As for approval using other mods, Read the Read Me's to see if the author of those mods approves the re-use of his work, or if he wants his approval requested first. Regardless, you should be sure to credit them in your own readme. And yes, I do like the idea of your mod, should make things alot easier. As for troubleshooting, personally, I would ask a few people I know to help me troubleshoot. I would choose people that have already proven that they can give useful technical information regarding any problems that may be encountered. Now then, most of the forum members here are insane(yes, that includes me). However, we still value order and civility, so we ask that you adopt:

The Ten Commandments of Nexus

1) NEVER mention Cthulhu. To do so is to invoke 'The Golden Touch of Death' from Lord Slythers Golden hand.
2) NEVER demean the The_Terminators fishy-sticks.
3) Fear the grues
4)Don't feed Bob(You'll see him eventually, I'm sure)
5)Worship Lisnpuppy, Queen of the Snow Arena and Goddess of the NEXUS(or suffer disembowelment)
6) Have SPAM and don't Fun!(Accept SPAM only from Gman)
7) Kneel before the awesome might of.....Freddy's Accordian.
NEVER attempt to encourage sanity
9)Praise the Pies!!!
and last but not least
10) Embrace the insanity( for you shall see little of anything else )

Welcome again!

You also may want to check if your mods are conflicting with anything. Oblivion Mod Manager may work, but you won't necessarily need it. The Oblivion Launcher may work too. Also if you provide us with the load order you were trying, we might work this out.

That said, welcome to these awesome forums!

Here's your Blackhawk helicopter...

Enjoy!

Thanks for the welcome and for the feedback.

Lord Slyther, I don’t expect conflicts for, as I see it, the only potential conflict is with a mod that changes|uses Divine Elegance´s basement, as that is the only thing my mod replaces from the original game. Everything else is new stuff. If you are aware of any mod that uses DE’s basement, please let me know (and I may move my showroom somewhere else … but it wouldn’t fit as nicely).

I suppose my stats are unusual for the gamers community, so I provide them for your enjoyment:

• I am Brazilian.
• I just completed 60 years of age and 40 years in the IT business.
• In general, my English is good, but, here and there, what I write is not exactly what I mean (please, take this into account when you find a phrase that is a little out of place)
• I am having the time of my life with this new ‘toy’ I found a couple of weeks ago: the TES CS
• Now I am a part time Oblivion modder (at least for the next few months)
• Oh, yes …, I am also into sci-fi books (must have about 500 of them), but don’t ask me anything, as I don’t remember a single one of them (which is good: I will enjoy them all over again when I get to my old age)

As for insanity, I am not a ‘Brazilian Nuts’, but my lifetime hero is Don Quixote (if you know him, you know what I mean).

Jojo man, I will follow the rules and won’t demean anything. But I am afraid I may demean myself stating that I have no idea of what fish sticks or Blackhawk helicopters mean here (or Kudos, or LOL, or grues, o SPAM, or … ). As we say here at home: I feel like a Virgin in a whorehouse.

You needn't worry Quix, we're a pretty helpful bunch. LOL means 'Laugh out Loud', SPAM I will leave to Gman to explain(as soon as he gets here), and Grues are the mysterious creatures who dwell in dark places and devour the souls of men. Fishy sticks are the delicacy of choice for the forum members here, and the blackhawk helicopter is Slythers membership gift to you(aquired by his arms dealing trade). As for the Kudos, the more the better. You recieve kudos for uploading great files or being especially helpful to other forum members. And if you wrack your brains, can you ever recall reading a book called Callahan's Crosstime Saloon? It's my personal favorite.

Nope, I am sure I didn’t. I looked at the link and the synopsis look promising, as my favorite theme is time-travel.
If Lord Slyther likes SF, as an arms dealer, he (and you) may enjoy Harry Turtledove’s “Guns of the South”, where a bunch of modern mercenaries equipped with AK-47s time-travel back to the American Civil War and join the Confederates. It is very well written. (I had to look up the title in Wikipedia, but, at least, I did remember the author’s name. Not bad)

Hi, QQuix, We have some things in common or near, as nationality, age, job...
This veteran thing at my avatar is somewhat misleading too as I must be frequenting the forum and the modding scene for a month or anything such this.

For a couple of times I opened the reply window but doesn't find what to say at the time, seemed to me than others more experienced should manifest first.

One of the things I wanted to ask was if your mod was meant to allow players seeing their choices before buying or was designed to play predefined performances.

Anyway, if you planned using third part items, you would need to decide between two ways:

first, your mod would be dependent of other mod being active in the player game, this would need at most you sending a thank to the original model modder and making sure to mention his mod in the credits, unless he/she stated different in the documentation.

the second way would be you cloning and adding the respective files into your mod. The procedure wouldn't be very different from the first case, except you would ask to use his files in you mod, too. This would need you caring the meshes files (nif) texture path pointing to your mod paths instead the former ones (thing that could lead to mistake if tested with the mod 'father' present in your setup) and so failing in games lacking the father mod.

Welcome to the twilight zone of sanity

Hi, nosisab. Maybe we even know each other. That would be funny!

As for the mod:
Without the mod, the player goes to Palonyria and buys whatever he/she wants. But the list may be huge, depending on the mods installed (Growlf alone adds more than 300 item iwith his “Growlfs Hot Clothes And Armor”).

With the mod, the player goes to a new showroom in the basement and female models (I have 6 at the moment) will take turns walking the catwalk wearing clothes from the Divine Elegance’s Catalog.

In the first round, the models will wear clothes from “Palonyria´s Special Selection” (actually, clothes that I have hardcoded in the scripts)
[up to here the mod is ready and working beautifully … it is very funny (and enjoyable) to see the girls walking the fancy clothes … as I am using UMPA’s Sexy Walk for the animation … hope nobody calls me a chauvinist pig ]

In the second round, the player can open DE´s catalog (the same huge list as the buy/sell menu) and select a set of items for the next model wear in the catwalk.
[this is what I am working on right now. I have been pressing my brains for two days in how to build this list and was almost convinced that I would have to choose from the two options you mentioned. But just this morning I had a hint from Dragoon Wraith, in CS Wiki, that put me on the right track for a third way to do it. I just coded a test script and it run as expected.
This way, my mod will be independent from other mods. The models will wear whatever clothes from whatever mods the player has installed. The only restriction is that, if the player doesn’t have any of the items hardcoded as “Palonyria´s Special Selection”, the mod will skip that round and go straight to the user selection.

Anytime, as the models take turns on stage, the player can put that outfit either in an ‘order list’ or in a ‘wish list’. The ‘order list’ will be used to reduce the number of item in the ‘buy sell’ menu. The ‘wish list’ will be remembered, so the next time the player visits DE, he/she can choose to review just the previously selected items.

The third stage is when the player will actually buy wathever he/she chose downstairs. [not much done here yet]. I think I will not mess with Palonirya but, instead, expand the role of my Palomirya (her twin sister – today acting as Stage Manager) and give her merchant skills.

Ooops, the text turned out too long … but you can’t hold a father when he is talking about his children.

As for authorization, I already have UPMA’s (he answered very quickly) and I am waiting for Growlf’s.

Welcome Qquix, to our little slice of insanity. Enjoy your stay at the Nexus.

I'm very tired today and my brain isn't working well, so I'll keep it short for now.

-T-

Welcome Qquix!

SPAM is a lunch meat that comes in a can. Most people think it's nasty, but it's quite good when fried.

I will provide a picture tomorrow, as I am currently typing this on my iPod Touch:D

I am also really tired and worn out from a party I was at today...


I suppose you could just Google SPAM on Google Images, but it just wouldn't be the same...

Welcome to Tesnexus.

I promise your English is much better than my Portuguese.

I too am an old man playing a children's game. 61 years old and working in and around electronics for 44 years. I consider computers to be just a subset of electronics. Somewhere along the way, I acquired a BS in computer science and worked as a fortran programmer for several years. But that was too limiting. At present I am partly retired and work as a consultant on several brands of motor controls. It sounds like you will bring a lot of programming expertise to the forums.

I have been reading Science Fiction since I was about 12. My all time favorite SF author is H. Beam Piper. Who died in 1965 with only about a dozen books published. Most of which have been reprinted several times.

HA HA! Love the new custom title, Ben! And have you ever read The Callahan Chronicles?(There's a link in my second post)

As for the kudos, here goes your first, as you came with the right foot to the forum and a correct posture (not to mention your modding perspectives seems very well tuned )

Ah, and since you are Brazilian you will 'sacar' the meaning (or would be a pun?) of my sig name. It is the name of my very first D&D 1rst edition character. A mage that pretended to be a mysterious one

Hi again bben46 now we are not 'alone' anymore and someday we, the 'seniors' (if not just because our age), will be the majority, hehe

And we aren't oldies, we are 'ancient ones' LOL

Edit: We share the taste for SciFi too, but I think this is something almost all, if not plain all of us here do. Anyway just commenting our favorite books and authors would ask for a whole thread for itself

Nosibab. I noticed your nickname even before I first posted here. But it sounded kind of Japanese, and I thought it should be just a coincidence. Only last night I noticed your full nick name. Very, very good!! I loved it.

Hi, Bben. I started my career as a professional programmer (assembler 360), but just for a few years. Only in the 90s I resumed programming, in a venture of mine into Artificial Inteligence. But I do love programming. I always joke that, if I win the lottery, I will become a full time programmer.

If anyone is wondering, there is nothing special in my nickname, just than it make the full sense only in Portuguese, as it means something like: "The one nobody knows", or "It's not known who he is" by how it sounds when spoken. I thought it being a good idea to a RPG character who pretended to be mysterious... long time ago

Well, to you and bben46, QQuix, will not surprise I too coming from the /360 and /370, since in those times the firsts chips to 4 operations calculators, TTLs logical ports and the such, were the fashion. This was before things like z80 and Sinclair micro computers being released.

QQuix, not long time ago I was wondering how to use the OBSE function IsModLoaded to control what quests to start, so that only the ones related to existent mods would do so, in game ( BTW, a way to condition some quest being ever started to the presence or absence of certain mod). Maybe you can look through this idea, maybe it is even related to the 3rd way you mentioned before.

As I see it, the IsModLoaded should be enough if you only need to know if a mod is installed or not. (provided the user does not change the esp name, as I do).

But you still can't reference its objects without duplicating them in your mod

What I am doing goes like this: suppose you need to reference an item created by Mod X

• Use CS to find in which cell Mod X creates the item and write down the item’s name
• Add a scripted item to that cell
• Write a script that scans the cell looking for the item type (using GetFirstRef/GetNextRef) This fits nicely in a onload block.
• Cycle thru all items found, looking for the one that matches the name (function NameIncludes or CompareName)
• Save the reference and keep it alive >> that is the reference you need.
• If the item is inside a container, look first for the container´s name and, then, cycle thru all items inside

In my case, I don’t look for an specific item. I look for any container in the vendor’s cell and duplicate everything inside to my “Main Dresser” (that is where my models get their clothes). This way, any item added to the shop by any mod will be there and I can build my “Consolidated Catalog”

The only issue I can think of is if a future version of Mod X changes the name of the item/container

Sorry. I forgot to mention before that SPAM is also considered "random posts," or "junk email." That's why the phrase "Have SPAM and don't fun!" is ironic.

Here is a picture of SPAM (the meat):




Enjoy!

I had the Idea of mod communication while talking with Vagrant0 somewhile ago, I must confess I forgot it until now
If possible at all, this would involve some quest script doing the communication area role.
the problem about inter-mod reference is that the engine numbers the references depending on the load order (in fact it prefix then with a hex byte keeping the CS formID intact). Yet is possible to retrieve this on fly (or so I think before actually testing it) and someone else seems to have had similar idea as there is a mod recently released that recover these ID on actual gaming. See this FormID finder mod

Repeating, I have not tested this idea as I had other problems, most of then related to the 'real world' and just forgot it. But I'll be working it as I have direct plans on using it, if it is possible at all, of course

Anyway, I am saying these things as so vague concepts since your curriculum says you can manage then if need.

Edit: Is not fundamentally different the way you planned, the mod verification would perform mainly the role of defining what quests to start. Obviously the target mod changing the ESP name is a problem we can't control.

I now pronounce this affliction of sanity OVER! (((I shall reign over vacuum cleaners once more!))) I never promised you that Bob. (((Oh.))) Welcome to this forum. Ye who still have it, give up sanity now. Or (((I will stare at you until you do.))) That's new.

sorry for off topic, but



I AM INSANE AND ALWAYS WILL BE

I believe you have not been informed of
Commandments 11-15:

11. To insult wolves is to invoke a fimbulwinter upon thy house, especially in a thread a certain somebody might read.

12. Although not an endangered species, Canadians are not to be hunted, trapped, shot, harvested, captured or introduced to captivity until further notice.

13. Yes, people from outside your country will post on these forums. Deal with it.

14. Speak not of Ninjalord or Peregrine the Bird from Hell.

15. Always know what you're talking about before you say anything.

Welcome to the Forums.

Thanks again for all your warm welcome. You made me feel at home and gave more confidence with my ‘first steps’ on the Modding universe.

I just finished my first Mod (the Divine Elegance Showroom, mentioned earlier) and, now, I need your help on how to get a couple of kind souls to do some preliminary tests before I share it.

Although I tested it thoroughly and it looks good and sound, I would hate to share it and find out it doesn´t work as well in a different environment.

So, my question is: which would be the most appropriate Nexus Forum to post a “Testers wanted!” thread? (I already asked on a thread I started a month ago, but it has a very specific title and I suppose very few people will notice it)

Thanks in advance for any advice you may give me.

Well how I missed out on this little gathering of old-timers.

I'll never know, next time somebody send me an invitation.

But welcome to the forums QQuix.

I'm 50, a Floridian, and don't speak Portuguese.

But I did get my start in computers in the late 70s.

So I suppose you could say we have some things in common.

I look forward to seeing you around the forums.

Storm Raven

Thanks Storm Raven.

When I first posted, I didn’t imagine the forums would have so many old-timers. I even imagined the kids (anybody below 40) laughing at an old gamer. Now I see that there is room for everyone and everybody gets along nicely.

If you allow me, I would like to take the opportunity to say that I uploaded the mod I mentioned earlier. It is called “Divine Elegance Showroom” http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=17588

I am impressed with the number of downloads (266) and the number of views (1220) within the first 14 hours after I uploaded. I suppose it got some attention.

And, from the few nice feedbacks, I am relieved I didn’t make any major mistakes.

If and when you guys have a chance, give it a try it and let me know what you think.

And maybe I am not a newbie anymore

Tested yesterday your mod. first with a bare setup. No Umpa's and no cloths's mod, yet the result is impressive. Of course the girls doesn't seemed professional top models moving like mondaine people, and Palonyria's stock cloths aren't something any impressive. But was clear it's truly potential, so I download the Umpa's and Growlt's ones.

This can be said of your mod: it gave an yet greater purpose to those mods, you integrated then in a wonderful way yet letting your own mark in the process. No, for sure you aren't a newbie anymore, indeed you never was, here, in the usual sense.

Now the showroom was a real one. I take care not letting the common Cirodiil females copy the sensuality of the top models (but I think this is impossible mission once they see then ).

I rated it 10. Don't care if it have yet some pointed flaws here or there in the comments. These minor issues are expected in beta releases. Clearly there is no structural flaw in the concept and so they may, can, and surely will be fixed as soon discovered.

I'm proud having you in the "Ancient Old Ones Clan" (age is not the issue here, but helps). I believe the whole community feels same way.

Thanks, Nosisab. You are part of it, as you were very helpful with my technical questions in the Troubleshooting forum.

I already implemented the suggestions and found what was causing the Nord girl greenish skin tone for players that use Anti-aliasing (it was the color tone of candles on the wall).

Since there is no major problem with the Beta version, I will wait for additional feedback that may show up.
In the meantime, I am working on a little extra that I think will please the players.

Friend, surprise me, for now I know what you can do