V 1.4: New behavior packages added to calves so they now follow their mothers. Keyword Item Distributor is now a requirement for behavior consistency. V 1.3: Changed SPID ini names to fix alphabetical load order. Should now automatically load after Dynamic Animal Variants and override its cow distribution. May fix some cows not swapping for people who use both mods. V 1.2: Fixed some installer errors. This may fix some bugs people have been having. Please let me know. V 1.1: Added basic support for Wild Cows. If you use that mod and SkyTEST together I suggest using my Wild Cows - SkyTEST patch which adds SkyTEST AI packages and bulls to the cow herds.
"Is it compatible with ____?"
YES. THE ANSWER IS YES. The script will replace any cow that uses the vanilla cow record, which is most mods, and the only ones that add new base cow types are already covered by the patches provided.
I have plans for doing similar things with other creatures, keep a look out for more mods like this. :)
There seems to be an issue with the male model being incorrectly swapped. Just installed the mod and the male variants (horned) are using the original mihail cow model, with the udder and no fluff. I dont use any mods that could be overwriting the meshes or textures from mihail mod so I think this might be a SPID bug. Maybe because of the recent updates?
Encountered another problem, probably spid bug and nothing author can do, but anyway, might be useful. Encountered another broken cow after sorting texture conflict, fixed by using resurrect on cow, disable+enable might help too. https://imgur.com/a/OECh4zz
I use this with Dynamic Animal Variants SPID and it works fine. The mod was made with it in mind and tested with it enabled. I can't diagnose every player's individual modded game. If you're still having issues just comment out cow distribution in DAV's ini.
Ye, i fixed my problems by commenting it out. No idea why i happens, but i commented and uncommented it twice and checked 2 cows in different locations.
Absolutely love this mod, it's nice to actually see calves in game.
I'm curious how difficult it would be to make a version where the females keep their horns? Cattle horns are a polled vs horned genetic thing, not a sex-linked trait like you see with say, deer. I can deal with the hornless females and just pretend they're polled cattle if need be lol.
Having the calves and color variations without needing a million patches is worth it.
Yeah I thought about that when I was making the mod, but figured a little more variety couldn't hurt even if it wasn't totally accurate.
I think this would be fairly easy to do yourself if you know your way around mod folder structures - all you'd have to do is replace the female cow models with the default Mihail cows which have both horns and udders. That being said, it should also be fairly easy for me to make a version which provides horned female cows. I'll put it on my to-do list.
Hey, would you be interested in the BAIN-friendly FOMOD installer I made for this mod? It gets rid of the dummy file workaround and reduces the code length. I made it for my own use because Wrye Bash is my sole mod manager.
I'd have asked in a DM, but I don't seem to be able to DM anyone right now.
Hello, I realy like your model, and I will certainly using it with Skyrim Special Edition, but could you remove the S.P.I.D requirements, and maybe use the adorable calves models and female cows as leveled list animals or something, because I want to use it with Oldrim, and S.P.I.D is not up to date with Oldrim, I think that It could also remove some incompatibility problems with some Special Edition users, maybe like Mihail is adding his creatures, Anyway, I downloaded the mod and will soon endorse this is a nice addition to my Skyrim, take care
Your best bet is just using this mod. SPID is required to distribute, so if it isnt available in LE then you can't get the variants unless you use that mod. I believe the difference is this one uses the much more convenient SPID method rather than hand placing them around, so maybe not as much compatibility.
Obligatory "just use SE (or rather AE at this point)" but live your life how you want lol
Thank you so much for this mod! Those adorable calves give me such joy. I am satisfied with how it is working, but I had some trouble and it is still not 100%. I am using Vortex, SkyTEST Redux, Mihail's cows, Xtudo's textures, and Dynamic Animal Variants - SPID version.
I downloaded this mod, and the regular brown calves showed up immediately. Nothing was affecting the adult cows in my game. I reinstalled twice, and then realized that it was not putting the DISTR.ini file anywhere, even though I had selected the Skytest option. So, I manually downloaded the mod and copied the ini file into my Data folder. This worked to replace all the Skytest cows and bulls as shown in your screenshots, and randomize the calf colors. So cute!
However, it doesn't seem to be affecting every vanilla cow, only some of them. I'm not sure why, I tried commented them out in the DAV DISTR.ini file but no luck.
Not a big deal, I actually like the variety in my female cows, now some have horns and some don't. But I am still wondering what I am doing wrong, I know SPID can be a little glitchy from my experience with clothing distributions, but I'm not sure if that is the issue.
Thank you for the detailed report! It opened my eyes to a few installer errors and hopefully those should be fixed now, though I'm not sure it will fix your specific problem. I also don't use Vortex so I don't know if it could be up to some shenanigans.
SPID can indeed be finicky and this is my first mod using it, so it's possible I've simply missed something. I cannot however reproduce the problem on my end with only these mods active. If you're willing, it would help if you grabbed More Informative Console and brought up the console in-game, click on an unchanged cow, and take a screenshot of the info it gives you. That will tell me what cow type it is and possibly the last mod to edit its base ID.
Ok, glad to be of help. I got a bunch of screens. My patch for Skytest is just to carry over the Hearthfires Extended milking feature, it doesn't do anything else.
I posted pics of both correct and original cows. The Rorikstead cows were fine, I didn't go there. All the bulls and calves were fine too.
https://ibb.co/album/cwTZD3
Hope this helps! I did add this (and Skytest) on an existing savegame, so who knows, maybe that's a factor. I'll be starting a new game probably this week so I'll report back if anything is different. :)
Thanks very much for all the screenshots. There didn't seem to be anything particularly consistent about what could be causing the problem-- they were all the vanilla base ID just like the ones that were swapping correctly. So I checked some other files and realized my SPID ini was actually loading before Dynamic Animal Variants SPID because I made an alphabetization error. I've uploaded a new file so that my SPID ini should load after and override DAV's cow distribution. Let me know if it fixes your problem.
Yes, I thought the same.. kind of inconsistent. I'll try your latest version, but I had commented out the cows in my DAV DISTR.ini file already.. XD So we'll see if there is a difference.
As I said, I don't mind the horny female cows.. :D A little variety is ok. Thanks again for this mod!
It shouldn't (other than Mihail's Cow Replacer ofc). I spawned about 20 cows in-game and didn't see any purples. I'll double-check the meshes to make sure texture paths are all correct. Was the cow male or female? Would help me narrow it down. And do you have any other mods that might affect cows?
Are you using CACO or Vanilla? SkyTEST or no? Which texture size options? I'm having trouble replicating the problem so I need to be sure it's not local.
47 comments
V 1.3: Changed SPID ini names to fix alphabetical load order. Should now automatically load after Dynamic Animal Variants and override its cow distribution. May fix some cows not swapping for people who use both mods.
V 1.2: Fixed some installer errors. This may fix some bugs people have been having. Please let me know.
V 1.1: Added basic support for Wild Cows. If you use that mod and SkyTEST together I suggest using my Wild Cows - SkyTEST patch which adds SkyTEST AI packages and bulls to the cow herds.
"Is it compatible with ____?"
YES. THE ANSWER IS YES. The script will replace any cow that uses the vanilla cow record, which is most mods, and the only ones that add new base cow types are already covered by the patches provided.
I have plans for doing similar things with other creatures, keep a look out for more mods like this. :)
I dont use any mods that could be overwriting the meshes or textures from mihail mod so I think this might be a SPID bug. Maybe because of the recent updates?
Encountered another broken cow after sorting texture conflict, fixed by using resurrect on cow, disable+enable might help too.
https://imgur.com/a/OECh4zz
No idea why i happens, but i commented and uncommented it twice and checked 2 cows in different locations.
Any suggestion why this happen and how to fix it?
I'm curious how difficult it would be to make a version where the females keep their horns? Cattle horns are a polled vs horned genetic thing, not a sex-linked trait like you see with say, deer. I can deal with the hornless females and just pretend they're polled cattle if need be lol.
Having the calves and color variations without needing a million patches is worth it.
I think this would be fairly easy to do yourself if you know your way around mod folder structures - all you'd have to do is replace the female cow models with the default Mihail cows which have both horns and udders. That being said, it should also be fairly easy for me to make a version which provides horned female cows. I'll put it on my to-do list.
I'd have asked in a DM, but I don't seem to be able to DM anyone right now.
Anyway, I downloaded the mod and will soon endorse this is a nice addition to my Skyrim, take care
Obligatory "just use SE (or rather AE at this point)" but live your life how you want lol
I downloaded this mod, and the regular brown calves showed up immediately. Nothing was affecting the adult cows in my game. I reinstalled twice, and then realized that it was not putting the DISTR.ini file anywhere, even though I had selected the Skytest option. So, I manually downloaded the mod and copied the ini file into my Data folder. This worked to replace all the Skytest cows and bulls as shown in your screenshots, and randomize the calf colors. So cute!
However, it doesn't seem to be affecting every vanilla cow, only some of them. I'm not sure why, I tried commented them out in the DAV DISTR.ini file but no luck.
Not a big deal, I actually like the variety in my female cows, now some have horns and some don't. But I am still wondering what I am doing wrong, I know SPID can be a little glitchy from my experience with clothing distributions, but I'm not sure if that is the issue.
Thank you again!! Have a great day.
SPID can indeed be finicky and this is my first mod using it, so it's possible I've simply missed something. I cannot however reproduce the problem on my end with only these mods active. If you're willing, it would help if you grabbed More Informative Console and brought up the console in-game, click on an unchanged cow, and take a screenshot of the info it gives you. That will tell me what cow type it is and possibly the last mod to edit its base ID.
I posted pics of both correct and original cows. The Rorikstead cows were fine, I didn't go there. All the bulls and calves were fine too.
https://ibb.co/album/cwTZD3
Hope this helps! I did add this (and Skytest) on an existing savegame, so who knows, maybe that's a factor. I'll be starting a new game probably this week so I'll report back if anything is different. :)
As I said, I don't mind the horny female cows.. :D A little variety is ok. Thanks again for this mod!
The cow in question is a calf.
Looking at the screenshots that's the case.
Thank you very much for this great mod!