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About this mod
Ever felt like Starfield has too many dinosaurs and insects, and not enough mammals? This is a WiP mod designed to add some fur to the game. Initial release adds one new creature, a wolf-like mammal, which replaces a couple of insects. More new creatures will be added as the models are designed, created, and tested.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
- Donations
CP's Menagerie is exactly what it says on the tin; a collection of new unique creatures added to the game to balance out the surfeit of dinosaurs and insects. This is a work in progress, and right now I've only got one new creature for you -- but there are more on the way.
For this initial release, CP's Menagerie will replace bearclaws, brightcages, hexohermits, and Cataxi with a lupine creature called a feroclaw.
Installation: This mod contains an ESM plugin file along with new meshes, textures, materials, and geometries. MO2 will install it just fine; I'm not a Vortex user, so I'm not certain that Vortex has fixed that issue with it trying to install textures in the game's Steam data folder. If you use Vortex, you probably know better than me whether you need to go in and fix that for texture mods. Textures need to be installed into the Documents/My Games/Starfield folder. Everything else should be fine in the main data folder. Don't forget to add CP_Menagerie.esm into your Plugins.txt if your mod manager doesn't handle that for you or you're doing a manual install.
Uninstalling: The mod uses bespoke folders and completely new assets, so it won't overwrite anything. If you installed it manually, you can just remove the ESM for a clean uninstall. Deleting the asset folders isn't actually necessary, but it is recommended to prevent your game folder from becoming cluttered with junk from mods you no longer use.
Compatibility: Works fine with PEAK. If you're using JaeDL's Royal Aliens mod, you'll need to ensure this mod loads first so that Royal Aliens overwrites it. The only things you'll lose are the naming tweaks for my creatures -- I removed the possibility of the "geophage" suffix ever showing up for feroclaws, as they only eat Constellation members, not rocks. I also changed the "flocking" prefix to "herding" and I renamed the various Cataxi variants. So if you use this mod with Royal Aliens and load it first, you may see some flocking feroclaw geophages and the Cataxi will retain their original names, but none of the mod's functionality will be affected. On the other hand, if you load my mod last, it will overwrite Royal Aliens and you will lose that mod's tweaks to the bearclaws, brightcages, hexohermits, and Cataxi. Up to you. I can whip up a patch if people request it, but I didn't feel like the name changes were a big deal.
Known Issues: The coloring of the white feroclaw can sometimes look odd when the planet's lighting changes during the sunset and sunrise periods. The shadows almost make it look like it's got patchy colors or stripes, and I'm not sure how to fix that since they look fine in daylight. Also, you may notice the feroclaw's running animation seems like it's limping a bit; this is because they use the skeleton and animation sets of the ashta, which have shorter, thicker legs. Same reason a feroclaw will sometimes turn its body to the side and attempt to lash at the player with its tail, which is sadly unsuccessful as they have thin wiggle tails and not the thick spikes of the ashta. There's nothing I can do about any of it, since modders don't have the ability to add new animations to Starfield. We've got to do the best we can with skeletons and animations that were designed for dinosaurs.
This mod is an offshoot of my arachnophobia mod, CP's Flyswatter. The original uses sanitation bots to replace spiders and insects, and I've always wanted to get rid of the bots and use brand new creatures as replacements instead. It wasn't possible when I initially created that mod, as we didn't have the tools yet at the time. We do now, so I've started replacing bots with unique creatures. Along the way I realized there are a lot of people out there who don't have a problem with arachnophobia or insects, but who'd really like to see some new creatures anyway, and CP's Menagerie was born. Please pardon the fact that the folders and files still reflect the Flyswatter name; there are a LOT of strings involved and a single typo in any one of them will break the mod, so it seemed silly to rename dozens of assets, correct the ESM to reflect the changes, and then spend hours testing it out just to correct the folder names which most people will never even see.
Before you ask: no, I can't add the new creature to the game independently. Doing so would require editing planetary data, creating new spawn data, hooking into the existing scanner system, editing the creature naming system, and a whole bunch of other similarly complicated issues. Frankly put, it's beyond my ability at this time; I don't even know how to begin, and I'm not sure it's actually possible right now because some of those records contain reflection data which modders are unable to view or edit. If it becomes possible and I can figure out how, I'll consider it in the future. For now, the new creatures need to replace existing ones. It's not like this game has so few insects that anyone will miss a handful.
For this initial release, CP's Menagerie will replace bearclaws, brightcages, hexohermits, and Cataxi with a lupine creature called a feroclaw.
Installation: This mod contains an ESM plugin file along with new meshes, textures, materials, and geometries. MO2 will install it just fine; I'm not a Vortex user, so I'm not certain that Vortex has fixed that issue with it trying to install textures in the game's Steam data folder. If you use Vortex, you probably know better than me whether you need to go in and fix that for texture mods. Textures need to be installed into the Documents/My Games/Starfield folder. Everything else should be fine in the main data folder. Don't forget to add CP_Menagerie.esm into your Plugins.txt if your mod manager doesn't handle that for you or you're doing a manual install.
Uninstalling: The mod uses bespoke folders and completely new assets, so it won't overwrite anything. If you installed it manually, you can just remove the ESM for a clean uninstall. Deleting the asset folders isn't actually necessary, but it is recommended to prevent your game folder from becoming cluttered with junk from mods you no longer use.
Compatibility: Works fine with PEAK. If you're using JaeDL's Royal Aliens mod, you'll need to ensure this mod loads first so that Royal Aliens overwrites it. The only things you'll lose are the naming tweaks for my creatures -- I removed the possibility of the "geophage" suffix ever showing up for feroclaws, as they only eat Constellation members, not rocks. I also changed the "flocking" prefix to "herding" and I renamed the various Cataxi variants. So if you use this mod with Royal Aliens and load it first, you may see some flocking feroclaw geophages and the Cataxi will retain their original names, but none of the mod's functionality will be affected. On the other hand, if you load my mod last, it will overwrite Royal Aliens and you will lose that mod's tweaks to the bearclaws, brightcages, hexohermits, and Cataxi. Up to you. I can whip up a patch if people request it, but I didn't feel like the name changes were a big deal.
Known Issues: The coloring of the white feroclaw can sometimes look odd when the planet's lighting changes during the sunset and sunrise periods. The shadows almost make it look like it's got patchy colors or stripes, and I'm not sure how to fix that since they look fine in daylight. Also, you may notice the feroclaw's running animation seems like it's limping a bit; this is because they use the skeleton and animation sets of the ashta, which have shorter, thicker legs. Same reason a feroclaw will sometimes turn its body to the side and attempt to lash at the player with its tail, which is sadly unsuccessful as they have thin wiggle tails and not the thick spikes of the ashta. There's nothing I can do about any of it, since modders don't have the ability to add new animations to Starfield. We've got to do the best we can with skeletons and animations that were designed for dinosaurs.
This mod is an offshoot of my arachnophobia mod, CP's Flyswatter. The original uses sanitation bots to replace spiders and insects, and I've always wanted to get rid of the bots and use brand new creatures as replacements instead. It wasn't possible when I initially created that mod, as we didn't have the tools yet at the time. We do now, so I've started replacing bots with unique creatures. Along the way I realized there are a lot of people out there who don't have a problem with arachnophobia or insects, but who'd really like to see some new creatures anyway, and CP's Menagerie was born. Please pardon the fact that the folders and files still reflect the Flyswatter name; there are a LOT of strings involved and a single typo in any one of them will break the mod, so it seemed silly to rename dozens of assets, correct the ESM to reflect the changes, and then spend hours testing it out just to correct the folder names which most people will never even see.
Before you ask: no, I can't add the new creature to the game independently. Doing so would require editing planetary data, creating new spawn data, hooking into the existing scanner system, editing the creature naming system, and a whole bunch of other similarly complicated issues. Frankly put, it's beyond my ability at this time; I don't even know how to begin, and I'm not sure it's actually possible right now because some of those records contain reflection data which modders are unable to view or edit. If it becomes possible and I can figure out how, I'll consider it in the future. For now, the new creatures need to replace existing ones. It's not like this game has so few insects that anyone will miss a handful.