Critters and fungi and farm crops - oh my!

Seasonal variation in Skyrim is amazing. Seasonal Alchemy does a great job of changing the ordinary alchemy ingredients during the various seasons. Some ingredients will change appearance in certain seasons. Others will disappear. Most will only be harvestable during select seasons.

This mod expands seasonal variation to a number of other natural phenomena that would immersively have it:

• Critters (optional): Ants, bees, butterflies, dragonflies, fireflies, and moths will disappear during Winter and parts of Spring and Autumn. Ants and bees are active slightly longer than other critters.
• Fungi: harvestable fungi - all the various mushrooms - disappear during Winter and Spring.
• Farm crops: cabbage, wheat, leek and potato plants disappear during Winter and Spring. Gourds (and CACO pumpkins) are not covered, because you really need to use Kabunouveau's replacers.
• Bird nests: Wild bird nests are empty during Autumn and Winter. Chicken nests are empty in Winter.
  

Requirements:

The mod requires Seasonal Alchemy. An optional patch allows new versions of Seasonal Alchemy's seasonal inis to take precedence over the Seasons inis of Seasonal Landscapes, Shrubs of Snow, and Turn of the Seasons (because if you are using Seasons of Skyrim, surely you're using one or more of these).

The optional seasonal variation for critters requires CritterSpawn Congestion Fix. Critters cannot be swapped with the Seasons of Skyrim framework, so a script-based solution is necessary. The new scripts have to attach to the proper version of the basic critterspawn scripts. Using a different version (e.g. vanilla or USSEP) of these scripts will cause... issues.


Optional seasonal variation for other mods:

The mod also contains seasonal patches for a few mods:

• Complete Alchemy & Cooking Overhaul
• CACO Farm Overhaul
• DMT's Stuie Appleseeds Apple Trees in Skyrim
• Ducks and Swans
• Grow Tomatoes SSE Port
• Harvestable Elves Ear and Frost Mirriam SSE
• Nature's Bounty: specifically the Don't Leave me Hanging - Plants mod
• Sepolcri
• Tundra Berries
• Waterplants' water lilies (the patch works with both the lily only and the full version)
  

Non-Seasons adjustments:

The mod also includes four Base Object Swapper inis that make various non-Seasons related changes.

• The first swaps the Elves Ear and Frost Mirriam plants from Harvestable Elves Ear and Frost Mirriam and CACO for the (superior, IMHO) plant models from Jelidity's Don't Leave Me Hanging - Plants.
• The second overwrites the BOS ini from Don't Leave Me Hanging - Plants to make three changes: 1) any kind of mountain flower can be swapped for any kind of herb, 2) swaps are randomised on each load, and 3) the z-axis position of Frost Mirriam is adjusted upwards, to prevent plants from being buried in the ground.
  

• The third slightly lowers the position of the water lilies from Waterplants.
• The fourth slightly lowers the position of the BYOH carrots added by CACO Farm Overhaul.
  

These BOS inis are optional but also harmless, even if you do not use the mods they target.


Compatibility:

The mod should be compatible with just about everything.

The seasonal critters won't work well with Seasons mods that change the rhythm of seasons, e.g. by making it permanent Winter, or making seasons change faster. The scripts call the months of the game, and assume that months correlate with seasons in the standard way.

The solution for seasonal critters will, however, affect any critters added by other mods (e.g. Lepidoptera), unless a mod adds new types of spawnpoints. 

If you manage to find an incompatibility, let me know and I will see if I can solve it or note it here.

FAQ:

Q: ESPFE?
A: Yes. Obviously!

Q: This mod mostly just makes stuff disappear. Seasonal Alchemy replaces things with non-harvestable plants. Couldn't you do the same?
A: No. No, I couldn't. I wish I could. I'm a simple modder. I have added a few replacer models for things that really needed it: CACO apple and Ironwood trees and  Spring cornfields. I have also experimentally added a sprouts model which replaces some crops during Spring. But mesh and texture work is way outside my skillset. I look eagerly forward to the day when a talented modeller (*cough*kabunouveau*cough*) makes proper seasonal models for the crops!

Q: Does critter seasonality finally work?
A: Yes. At last. I spent rather a lot of time figuring out what was wrong in v1.2, and trying out various solutions. Eventually I decided to apply the universal solution of asking someone who actually knows how to mod. Enter tarlazo. Tarlazo not only diagnosed the problem (scripts are baked into save at game start, preventing seasonal swaps), but volunteered to write the script-based solution that v1.3 contains. Above and beyond... Give them some kudos!

Q: I don't like [insert feature of the mod here]. Why did you do that?
A: Either because I wasn't thinking clearly, in which case thanks for pointing it out - I'll try to update this. Or because that's how I like it, in which case feel free to change it! Most of what this mod does can be easily changed by editing the seasonal inis, and it is very hard to break things with Seasons (at worst, you won't get the seasonal change you were hoping for). So go experiment!

Q: This mod does too many damn things at once! Why don't you make a FOMOD to let users pick and choose which parts of this mod they want or need?
A: See answer to question two above... Having said that, its on my to-do list.
     Version 1.3 now comes with a handy FOMOD to let users select the patches they want. Fingers crossed it also works.

Q: Seasons modding is hard! How the **** have you got it to work?
A: 1) Trial and error. 2) Sweat, tears and modding. 3) Iterate... Having said that, my Seasons-based LO is a wobbly, messy WIP. But it's getting there :)


Credits:

tarlazo for help diagnosing the problem with seasonal critter swaps and for writing the scripts-based solution.
AdmiralAlbia for Seasonal Alchemy, on the shoulders of which this mod is built.
Jelidity for Turn of the Seasons, specifically for the dummyobject01 mesh that I have used from that mod, and generally for Turn of the Seasons (with TateTaylorCH), which was groundbreaking work on modding Seasons, and has wonderful open permissions.
Corsafire1 for Remove Harvestable Plants and Remove Tree Mushrooms and Ingredients, the meshes from which I was able to use as a basis for seasonal variations in this mod thanks to their open permissions.
powerofthree for Seasons of Skyrim, Base Object Swapper and the Divines know how much else - the entire framework upon which seasonal variation (and half of everything else I'm doing these days in Skyrim) is built.
renthal311 for the model for the Spring cornfield, and their gracious permission to use it.
Ztree for the tree and plant models from Hoddminir Plants and Trees that I have used for seasonal apple trees, Ironwood trees and sprout models, another mod with wonderful open permissions.
m1sf1t711 for help testing v1.3 of the mod and providing valuable feedback.
Rudy102 for the chicken nest texture from Rudy HQ - Hay SE, which has wonderful open permissions.
The USSEP team for the chicken nest mesh from USSEP, which also has lovely open permissions for meshes.
Kanjs for the wild bird nest model from Kanjs - Bird Nests and Eggs, which again has wonderful open permissions.

All of these great people deserve thanks and Kudos!