Player Home Community Resource

Good Player Home Modding Practices

1) Give credit to nif, texture, and script makers and and other assets which are drawn from.

2) Make an attempt to figure out if a popular mod already occupies the space where you want to build. If a popular mod sits in the same place or even the same cell, nobody will use your mod and it will make both mods malfunction due to navmesh and other conflicts. Contact the mod author regarding a merge if there is synergy.

3) Don't situate your house on a border between cells ..... check position in CK first ....... If front door of a mod is right on the border of 4 cells this means the navmeshes for 4 cells need to modified and finalized ....... 4 times the compatibility problems.

4) Never use vanilla assets and never make vanilla base asset changes as this can effect every item in the game. Make a Duplicate and use that.

5) Skyrim has severe lighting limitations and there is no way around them.Only a few shadow casting and non shadow casting lights can light surfaces and this is determined partially by your FOV. After you light your house you need to walk every area of your house to look for lights that flicker depending on where you look. Areas where a lot of light sources are visible are the worst offenders. THEN you need to activate the spell Candlelight and do it all again, unless the place is so bright that you doubt anyone would use Candlelight. If you have lights that only turn on during the day you need to check during the daytime too.

6) If you make any landscape height adjustments, don't do that near a cell border if you can help it as it will make seams if other modder makes changes to the adjacent cell.

7) Check your mod with SSEedit for wild edits and ITMs ....... the CK generates these like crazy even when you are careful.

8) Avoid persistent item flags unless you really need it

9) Initially disabled is your friend ..... don't delete vanilla items especially base objects.

10) Navmeshing is a pita , don't span cell borders with changes as this is a recipe for disaster in terms of compatability

11) Keep your house as focused as possible ..... don't make changes outside your cell unless they are really compelling ..... your world edits may break somebody else's mod and are a nightmare to troubleshoot

12) Don't use Guard NPCs to limit access to your home ...... they require scripts to keep them under control which are rarely done properly.

13) Adding a key that you need to find can be equally problematic as you can't just leave it sitting in the world somewhere because this is risky. Another mod may load something in the same area and send it flying. Another mod may move the object it is sitting on. Depending on how the meshes load the object may just fall through the floor or fall though the ground when a NPC walks by. Perhaps the best ways is to just set up a collision box in front of the door with a script that checks if the player meets some requirement before disabling......... this requires knowledge of the Papyrus scripting and aliasing and actually setting up your CK to work with scripts........which is way too convoluted :(

14) If you have windows consider making them transparent and building a fake exterior just outside. Then add time of day lighting using the external emittance mask but keep the source point outside.

15) Don't allow instant fast travel. Usually keep the map marker hidden until discovered. It is easy to create a book or note that when read will reveal the marker. Include a COC marker and give COC instructions in the mod description for those that want to assess the mod.

16) Don't make Landscape Height changes where your home is (or any cell) unless you are willing to use xLODgen by Sheson.  Without this the vanilla LODs will cause popins and abrupt landscape switches when you approach your house.  Sheson is an elite modder and xLODgen works perfectly for SSE in my experience.  Use DynDOlod (or other method) to get the 4 and 8 LOD details for your house.  Install xLODgen and run it with the -sse flag then just generate 4 and 8 level Terrian and Object LODs just for those cells.  It is better to do this using Mod Organizer 2 as then the generated meshes and textures go into the overwrite directory for easy merging with your mod.



Player Home Faction Sensitive Barrier Community Resource

This is a community resource that includes a working mesh, trigger and script for a collision barrier mesh which activates when a player enters the area and then deactivates if they are a member of a specified faction.

The script is designed so it is fed by properties defined at the object level



This mod includes a working barrier that only allows access if the player is a member of a faction specified at the script object level as a property.  In this case it is the GreybeardFaction and the barrier is located in cell 32, -17 at the site of Dragon Tree Temple (oldrim mod).  It also has properties for messages displayed for all the conditions in the script (activated, passed, failed, leaving).

This type of script allows player home modders to gift their creations to players as realistic rewards for completing quests via FACTION.  Don't you hate it when after your slay the first dragon in Skyrim for an age the Jarl "lets" you buy property.  Create your own faction if you want nothing to do with Vanilla.

This approach is self contained and no quests are required.  Give the house by adding the player to a faction.  Most of the work can be done in SSedit.  As the barrier is part of a separate esp, It is best to not merge with the house mod itself, as being separate allows multiple entry options or no entry control at all.  Using this script indoors requires extra steps to prevent NPCs from interacting with the barrier (not described here).

How to Modify for Your Own Use

1) Make your player home like you always do ......

1) Use MO2 or equivalent to load up this mod properly

2) Open up the barrier.esp in SSEedit and have a look at the structure and what records are present and absent.  Nothing is extra.   Exit SSeedit
 
3) Included in the mod is a script source called aaBarrierTrigger.psc.  You could just use this as is but it is safer to make a brand new script with the same code with a  unique filename starting with aaa.  Example aaaYourName.  That prevents script conflict if you want more than one barrier in your game. You can't just copy the current script and rename in in the file system ....  it will be broken.

4) Open up your house mod.esp and this Barrier.esp in the CK with the barrier.esp as the active file. Have a look there too at barrier.esp's records.  You cannot just copy the objects I have created as the CK strips them when you do this.

5) In the object window (not cell object window) look for the aaaDragonBarrier object and duplicate it with a new name unique to you.  Make sure it still points to the  mesh \meshes\clutter\eyeofmagnus\aaaBarrierSTATIC.nif.

6) Drag this new object you created so it surrounds the door to your house.  (this is why your house mod needs to be loaded too).  Fine position it  You should be able to see it at this point in the render window.  When you are finished select the "Initially Disabled" flag on this object and make sure it is checked.  You are done with this object.  

7) Create a trigger using the little T cube button the the CK ribbon.  Select New and then click in the render window where you want place it.  Use the arrows on the object manipulation cube to EXACTLY place it so it completely surrounds the barrier object you already created.  If you have script lag be generous in the extra size of the trigger.  Once you attach a script it CANNOT be moved.

8) In the Object window look under the Misc tree for the Message branch and you will see some records aaPass, aaFail, aaActivate, aaLeaving.  Edit the string values for each to your taste.

9)  Attach your duplicated script to the trigger object using the script tab.  You interact with this script by setting properties (leftclick on script select properties and then edit them).  playerRef property MUST be set to "player".  Faction property needs to be set to the faction that the player needs to be included in to be allowed into your home.  aaaDragonBarrier01 need to point to the collision object you created earlier.

10)  Save your esp and exit.

11) Open up your saved esp in SSEedit and clean up.  You may want to delete ALL navmesh related records including those in the Worldspace branch.  This way you can edit your house mod as much as you want and as long as you don't move the front door everything will still work.  You probably want to get rid of my objects too or you will have a strange purposeless barrier in 32, -17.  If somebody ports Dragon Tree Temple you can use this mod as is. Don't forget to check for errors using the built in validation tool in SSEedit and remove any wild edits.

12) Test....... use the player.addfac 00##### 1 to add your character to the faction you chose testing if the barrier activates.  For the GreyBeards it is 002c6c8. 

13) The Collision Object can be almost any item that is a static in the game.  Just change the NIF