Modding Channel

[CptCOOTS]

For any NEW to sim settlements modders, I'm starting a Twitch channel where I do some modding and today I'll be starting a series on "your first Sim Settlements plot" at noon est (2 hours).
https://www.twitch.tv/captain_coots

 

[CptCOOTS]

Today's episode went well I think, the audio got cut a little due to Twitch.
We went over setting up some records in the CK and started the build on the first level of a Residential plot.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/308345832
Attached is the mod incase you want to follow along, all records start with COOTS_

 

[VersusXV]

This is a really cool idea! I'll catch it on youtube as it seemed when I tried going on the stream as if all audio is muted. I'll wait for a youtube video, and/or try to watch next time.

It'd be really epic to learn some scripting stuff & other advanced thing possibly. Scripting in particular seems really hard to "break in" and really get the logic of how it works. I think once we have learned a certain amount it becomes a lot easier to just pick up new things on the Creation Kit Wiki, or from reading script by other mod author to try to understand the methods they used. Beginner stage is the hardest since we're pretty much limited to "copy what the wiki says, then wonder why it isn't working in-game".

So far I tried a simple onequip script to equip a paired object but found it pretty confusing. It was protectron armor pieces for fitted for humans, did the leg & arm pieces. Stopped because the rest would require animation stuff, was going to make the protectron arm double as a wrist blaster. Who knows, maybe some script magic can find a way around this? Pretty much where the laser blasts originate from needs to be changed & ideally the player's hand positions too, it'd be good enough if I could make the player's left arm be down like the 1 handed melee animations & the other just be normal.

I'm kind of hung up on the idea of if I make a Commercial Plot it should sell stuff I made, and that if I make anything I want it to be implemented in game via a Commercial Plot as IMO that's like the most lore friendly way.

 

[CptCOOTS]

I'm going to address each of your points in turn:

This is a really cool idea! I'll catch it on youtube as it seemed when I tried going on the stream as if all audio is muted. I'll wait for a youtube video, and/or try to watch next time.

There is only a small stretch where the audio is muted (the timeline is red) and I was just bullshitting around. Twitch, a lot of times, defaults for me to having the video proper muted. Try again.

It'd be really epic to learn some scripting stuff & other advanced thing possibly. Scripting in particular seems really hard to "break in" and really get the logic of how it works.

Doing a proper tutorial with scripts will be tough, especially given the live nature of Twitch streams. What I can do is pick a few scripted things, pre-implement them, and then go over both what I did to set up the records in the CK as well as go through what the script does line-by-line.

I'm kind of hung up on the idea of if I make a Commercial Plot it should sell stuff I made, and that if I make anything I want it to be implemented in game via a Commercial Plot as IMO that's like the most lore friendly way.

Well you're in luck then. In the Sim Settlements series of tutorials I'm going to make 1 of each building type, working my way up in complexity (-ish).
IMHO, the complexity for plots go
1. Recreational & Martial.
2. Residential & Agricultural.
3. Commercial.
4. Industrial.
5. Advanced Industrial.

We are starting with Residential (which we should be able to finish on Wednesday) just because, and on Friday we should be doing Agricultural (which will take 1-2 sessions). I'll then go to recreational where I'll focus on retexturing stuff (1-2 sessions), so that one has an added bonus. We'll do Martial after that and I'll try to show how you can use the plot to spawn NPCs (another added bonus) (1-2 sessions). We'll do Commercial after that and this will probably take 3 sessions. I'm going to set up a custom vendor with y'all and do some basic kit-bashing to make a custom item that the vendor can sell (lots of added bonuses) and a custom piece of furniture. After that we'll do Industrial and we will set it up to produce custom items (borrowing from what we learned before). Then to cap off the plot-type tutorials we will do Advanced Industrial which may take quite a few sessions (I have no way to gauge this).

Once those are done, and this looks like over a month of streaming!, I will probably do a couple "script tutorials" where we go through the logic of some existing scripts, and if I get enough easy ideas I may implement something new.

I plan on the Sim Settlements tutorials to cap with implementing a custom leader (we may do a 100% custom NPC) and custom flag (texture work!).

 

[VersusXV]

Sounds amazing! I've been thinking about the other types of plots since my addon only has residential & martial so far but want to try to make sure they are feature complete if I am able.

Doing a proper tutorial with scripts will be tough, especially given the live nature of Twitch streams. What I can do is pick a few scripted things, pre-implement them, and then go over both what I did to set up the records in the CK as well as go through what the script does line-by-line.

I think that would do quite well, then on the comments(can you see comments live?) people could maybe ask some question about things they didn't understand or ask about certain type of script. Getting the "flow" of things seems to be the main challenge, getting a baseline level of knowledge and of the logic behind it. From there it would become possible to learn through experimentation. Without already having the baseline "flow" of things, it feels a lot like trying to reinvent the wheel.

We'd probably learn a lot from the process behind Industrial & Advanced Industrial Plots (since I think scripting comes into play a lot more there) plus a few other things. I'll try to think about what kinds of things I'd wanted to do from scripting so that I might be able to add suggestions. There's the protectron wrist blaster thing, which I'm not sure if it requires going into Havok Tools or if script can solve it. Other ideas included extensions/changes to home sweet home's settlement raiding though I've heard from others that this would be very advanced to do.

We are starting with Residential (which we should be able to finish on Wednesday) just because, and on Friday we should be doing Agricultural (which will take 1-2 sessions). I'll then go to recreational where I'll focus on retexturing stuff (1-2 sessions), so that one has an added bonus. We'll do Martial after that and I'll try to show how you can use the plot to spawn NPCs (another added bonus) (1-2 sessions). We'll do Commercial after that and this will probably take 3 sessions. I'm going to set up a custom vendor with y'all and do some basic kit-bashing to make a custom item that the vendor can sell (lots of added bonuses) and a custom piece of furniture. After that we'll do Industrial and we will set it up to produce custom items (borrowing from what we learned before). Then to cap off the plot-type tutorials we will do Advanced Industrial which may take quite a few sessions (I have no way to gauge this).

Once those are done, and this looks like over a month of streaming!, I will probably do a couple "script tutorials" where we go through the logic of some existing scripts, and if I get enough easy ideas I may implement something new.

I plan on the Sim Settlements tutorials to cap with implementing a custom leader (we may do a 100% custom NPC) and custom flag (texture work!).

Very exciting IMO!

 

[VersusXV]

Some topics that come to mind, after thinking about rebooting my addon(Your tutorials are definitely a motivational booster for this!). My ideas might be applicable to the tutorials since what I'm going for is probably what we ideally should always do from the start.

Custom Foundations & Custom Terraformer pieces:

• I went ahead and made a few custom foundation SCOLs already so they're ready to go. About 5-7 are usable IMO, the others being more of the prototype/test sorts as I will include some experimental ones then delete some later if gameplay ends up revealing certain ones to be useless. My method was to assemble them, create SCOL that includes a Static Collection Pivot & name the SCOL _Oversized. Then I positioned this _Oversized SCOL at 0,0,0 along with the base 2x2 Concrete Foundation and scaled this scol to align as closely as possible with the Concrete piece. I then Fragmented the static, adjusted only the Pivot so that it can serve as a 0,0,0 origin point for the newly sized SCOLs that I named _2x2. This way it should be as close as possible to the base Sim Settlements' Concrete Foundation and that like the Concrete/Wood Foundation pieces these will also be able to perfectly match up with plots after the fact by using Place Anywhere's copy object position commands with the 0 / = hotkeys, since the origin point will match up perfectly with any plots.

Foundation pieces are relatively simple to implement into the build menu from the CK though likely unfamiliar to the newcomers. But the best way would be to do so via Script so that like Kraggle's(& I think also your addon too with the custom City Planner Desk variants) it never makes the build menus disappear on uninstall/reinstall/etc, since with foundation/terraformer additions it would cause the Sim Settlement section to disappear. I can mimic JTBryant Foundations or another SMM enabled mod but the catch is if my mod ever gets disabled the user will lose the menu containing the relevant subcategory. We'll need to ideally create script to add the custom foundations, also edit the Nifs so that it includes Snap points in an functionally identical manner as the base Sim Settlements foundation pieces and possibly(?) we need to add navmesh to the generated Nif if Vanilla non workshop mode pieces were used which is probably the best practice to go with as it avoids external mod requirements.

• Custom Terraformer pieces being the same as above but add in texture work, or perhaps maybe can be done simply as a Material Swapped model pointing to a newly created texture?

Basic 3DS Max/Outfit Studio mesh fixes: As a quick example one of the test pieces I made has the obvious slope issue. Wanted some Diamond City pieces as I have a good DC Exterior retex set from Luxor for them, decided to make a SCOL of it anyways as I can use it as a test for the 3DS Max, or Outfit Studio if possible as a substitute. If 3DS Max would be required, then something like this is a good trial for it to learn the workflow as it's observably just 8 vertices in the center that are problematic so the modeling work is really simple.

• Another one but it might be a moot point (since Advanced Industrial will be covered) are branched Residential plots.
• Plots that require external files/DLCs being set up to only conditionally appear if the user has the required files present: Your addon has this present with Nuka Bar which requires having Nuka World for the plot to appear in rotation and the Slocum's plots which require the CC content.
• A Holotape or MCM for user configuration: What comes to mind right now is if I might make a large number of foundation pieces, and possibly have variants for Material Swapped versions it might be good to be able to hide/show them on an individual basis