FYI, here's the usual cause of the issue where the Vampire Lord's Detect All Creatures ability doesn't highlight anything, and pointers as to how it can be fixed using the Creation Kit (assuming some comfort with using it) so that it detects everything it should, including dwemer constructs:
Dawnguard does an interesting thing with Detect All Creatures to get an effect that differs from the Detect Life/Detect Dead spells, in that it reuses one of the vanilla game's snow textures when generating the glow used to highlight creatures. If some other mod interferes with that, and my guess would be that a visuals/ENB/weather mod caused the issue in my case, then the ability will activate but won't appear to highlight any creatures.
To fix this, I used the Creation Kit to copy down just the Detect All Creatures spell effect into a small mod of its own, then pointed the spell effect in that mod at another appropriate texture in my game folders. I load that mod after Dawnguard (which should happen in any case!), et voila, problem solved. Detect All Creatures now highlights everything it should just fine for me using that texture, including dwemer constructs.
For the time being, my mod points at a snow replacement-texture file someone else created for a performance mod I no longer use, and so I can't make my mod available to others without hijacking a mod creator's assets. But it's a pretty simple fix, and taught me a little bit about that particular DLC in the process.
Thank you! I managed to fix it. Strange though the original pointed fx .dds files are not overwritten by other mods... Edit: Finally realized that it is a certain .bsa file that overwrites the original textures. Fix is simple, just extract that two effect textures from skyrim-textures5.bsa, then rename them to avoid conflits with other mods(because loose files always overwrite bsa), don't forget to edit the path accordingly in an esp.
Just saw this reply, glad I could help. Thank you as well for the details! It's the sort of thing that teaches me a lot about the game and modding. I might make the mod now using Skyrim's own assets.
Just thought I'd give you a heads up on the dwarven automation issue. All you need to do is remove the conditions under the magic effect listings. By default, the vampire skill itself only has the interior condition listed, but since you're going for colour coding, you'll simply want to remove "Has Keyword - Keyword: ActorTypeDwarven" from either the detect life or detect undead, depending on colour coding you desire for it. You may also want to remove the ActorTypeDaedra from one of them too, as well as the NoDetectLife from both. This way you'll have the overall same effect as the vanilla skill, but with colour coding. That being said, you'd want to create duplicates of the effects you're using from vanilla, or the changes will effect normal detect life spells.
Hopefully that helps and isn't too confusing.
Edit: On another note, just wanted to say thanks for the clarification in description of how this helped fix the issue with the skill not detecting life. Was working on a mod for new spells, had an issue, so now going to try colour coding on mine to see if it fixes issue.
love the idea just a quick question / request, would it be possible to do the same thing to the aura whisper shout? and if so would you consider doing so as an optional file
That's a good idea. I haven't found that shout yet in my game, so it didn't even occur to me. My main concern is whether magic effects are significantly different from shouts. For example, if I add spell effects to shouts, I wouldn't be surprised if Skyrim suddenly makes shouting cost magicka. But I'll look into it and see what I find. Thanks.
The thing is, Detect All Creatures highlights in white, so adding the effects of Detect Life and Detect Dead just mixes in blue and red for the friend and enemy highlighting (I'm guessing - since Detect All Creatures doesn't work at all for me, I actually haven't been able to test that). I mix the effects rather than replace them so that, for players who have Detect All Creatures working properly, they can still see dwemer automatons as they're supposed to.
Aura Whisper, though, highlights everything in red already. Hence, if I added the Detect Life / Detect Dead effects, creatures would show up highlighted as either a mix of red + red, or a mix of blue + red, so it would be somewhat difficult to actually distinguish friend from foe. I could remove the Aura Whisper's default red highlighting, but that would prevent it from working altogether on dwemer automatons. It doesn't appear possible to actually change the color of a particular effect, at least not through SSEEdit, so I can't force Aura Whisper to be white and thereby work just like Detect All Creatures.
It's something I'll have to think about some more.
10 comments
Dawnguard does an interesting thing with Detect All Creatures to get an effect that differs from the Detect Life/Detect Dead spells, in that it reuses one of the vanilla game's snow textures when generating the glow used to highlight creatures. If some other mod interferes with that, and my guess would be that a visuals/ENB/weather mod caused the issue in my case, then the ability will activate but won't appear to highlight any creatures.
To fix this, I used the Creation Kit to copy down just the Detect All Creatures spell effect into a small mod of its own, then pointed the spell effect in that mod at another appropriate texture in my game folders. I load that mod after Dawnguard (which should happen in any case!), et voila, problem solved. Detect All Creatures now highlights everything it should just fine for me using that texture, including dwemer constructs.
For the time being, my mod points at a snow replacement-texture file someone else created for a performance mod I no longer use, and so I can't make my mod available to others without hijacking a mod creator's assets. But it's a pretty simple fix, and taught me a little bit about that particular DLC in the process.
Edit: Finally realized that it is a certain .bsa file that overwrites the original textures. Fix is simple, just extract that two effect textures from skyrim-textures5.bsa, then rename them to avoid conflits with other mods(because loose files always overwrite bsa), don't forget to edit the path accordingly in an esp.
Hopefully that helps and isn't too confusing.
Edit: On another note, just wanted to say thanks for the clarification in description of how this helped fix the issue with the skill not detecting life. Was working on a mod for new spells, had an issue, so now going to try colour coding on mine to see if it fixes issue.
The thing is, Detect All Creatures highlights in white, so adding the effects of Detect Life and Detect Dead just mixes in blue and red for the friend and enemy highlighting (I'm guessing - since Detect All Creatures doesn't work at all for me, I actually haven't been able to test that). I mix the effects rather than replace them so that, for players who have Detect All Creatures working properly, they can still see dwemer automatons as they're supposed to.
Aura Whisper, though, highlights everything in red already. Hence, if I added the Detect Life / Detect Dead effects, creatures would show up highlighted as either a mix of red + red, or a mix of blue + red, so it would be somewhat difficult to actually distinguish friend from foe. I could remove the Aura Whisper's default red highlighting, but that would prevent it from working altogether on dwemer automatons. It doesn't appear possible to actually change the color of a particular effect, at least not through SSEEdit, so I can't force Aura Whisper to be white and thereby work just like Detect All Creatures.
It's something I'll have to think about some more.