What are some usefull tips when using the creation kit

[Lewis]

As a beginner thats working at making a mod at the moment what are some usefull tips and tricks to know to make my life easier.

[Mikenekro]

It depends on what type of mod you want to make.

1. If you don't know how to program, Learning programming will help immensly if you are trying to create any mods with scripts that alter things in the Game-World.
2. If you want to make visual mods, then knowing how to use a 3D modeling program will help if you want to create new armor or weapon models.
3. If you want to alter textures and the like, you'll want to learn how to create textures but I have never tried that.

Other then that, you can read this: https://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Category:Getting_Started



I'm in school for Software Development so most of what I know about modding TES games comes from the scripting side of modding so here's a few tips about that:

- For a list of every Function in Papyrus (Starting from under the "Pages in category "Papyrus" " section): https://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Category:Papyrus

- From the link above, if you look under "Subcategories", you will find a ton of other useful events, latent events, SKSE functions, etc...

- I would also definately recommend getting Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE) as it adds some pretty useful functions that you won't be able to use without it.

- Also, Read the notes when you find a function or event from that link because sometimes there is a better way to handle what you are trying to do and it will often let you know. For instance, if you want to do some processing every time a cell loads you might think to use the Event, "OnCellLoad()". At first glance it seems to be what you would need, but in the notes section it clearly states "This event will only fire when entering a cell that is not already loaded in memory." which means that event probably wont fire if you exit and return to that cell through a loading door. This could cause some issues if you want to run that code every time that cell is loaded in this manner.

- Learn about Properties as well as these are very important: https://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Bethesda_Tutorial_Papyrus_Introduction_to_Properties_and_Functions

- Learn about Aliases: https://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Quest_Alias_Tab and https://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Bethesda_Tutorial_Quest_Aliases

- Creating quests can be very touchy and hard to get working correctly if you mess something up. One thing to look out for are null aliases. What this means is the alias that you referenced in your quest never got filled and there are many small things that can cause this to happen. A good way to check if your aliases are being filled is to use this console command (Without Quotes): ShowQuestAliases "YourQuestID"
That will show you which aliases are being filled

- Another thing with creating quests is dialogue. The dialogue can be tricky to get working and the last time I used it, there was a trick to getting dialogue to appear in game that you needed to do every time you added a new quest. If you did not do this, the quest related to the dialogue would not start, dialogue would not appear when talking to NPCs with dialogue, and the quest objectives would not appear. I don't know if this has been fixed or not but you may run into this problem. I still remember how to find the Dialogue fix and i'll post it below:

Skyrim CreationKit Quest Dialogue Fix
Note: Make sure the CreationKit is NOT running while you do these steps (Until step 6)
1. Go to Steam. Switch to the tools view.
2. Find the Creation Kit, open its properties.
3. Click "set launch options"
4. Enter this command into the launch options: -GenerateSEQ:pluginname.esp (Where pluginname.esp is your mod file)
5. Save the changes.
6. Launch the CK and DO NOT disturb it while it processes.
7. go to your skyrim directory (steamapps/common/skyrim) you should find the .SEQ file
8. go to your skyrim data directory (steamapps/common/skyrim/data) and create a new folder called "SEQ" (or leave it, if you already have one)
9. move your pluginname.SEQ file to the new SEQ folder (steamapps/common/skyrim/data/SEQ)
10. run the game