I would like to ask some specific questions about the upcoming CK, for only planning purpose, so we won't waste time in this month (or two) of wait. It may be usefull for a lot of ppl to know those things, so lets get started:

1 - My first concern is about lipsynching, we are gonna have something like Oblivion CS, or we have still rely to Oblivion CS to generate lipsynching? It was a pain in Fo3 and FNV, not because it was hard or anything, but it was just a time waster and tedious to menage.

2 - On the dialogues we have the same 250 chars limit for each line, or we have more or less limit on this? Just asking this because in Skyrim Ididn't see any long dialogue lines, but plenty of consecutive lines, and knowing this information can save some time to write up dialogues for who is planning to do new dialogs, without the need of cutting them later on.

3 - I've noticed into the BSAs some language strings files, I tried to open them with a text editor, but it seems that those files are not plain text. I guess those files are needed for localization of all the text in the game, we will be able to create those files with the CK? This feature would be cool for who plan to translate their mods into different languages, without the need of releasing different esp/esm and having everyting in one single release.

4 - This question is about animations, in specific weapons animations. In Oblivion we were forced to use what the game offered and we couldn't create new anims for different kind of weapons if not with hacks or changing completly a weapon type to something else, but Fo3 and FNV allowed to add new set of anims and acreate compeltly new anim behavior, so we are going to have this also in Skyrim (think of making crossbows and spears without "hacking" bows or anything else)?

5 - Last question, and less important but curious to know. We will be able to override vanilla interfaces with out custom ones in BSA archives? Because the other past games only allowed to override interfaces by having all the files uncompressed on the folders, but would be cool to have the ability to override with BSA.

Thats it, I would appreciate an answer to those questions, even a "Shut up!" kind of answer will be appreciated.

Can we create a weapon and choose an existing animation for it?

I've made Katars and I would like them to use the Hand 2 Hand animations.

Shut up!


You're welcome.


Oh wait, I'll write something useful: It's very, very unlikely that the lip sync bug of the CS will be in the CK as well.

1. Probably not. Oblivion, Fallout 3, and New Vegas were all based on the same engine. Skyrim is almost new, including the animation system. You'll probably be able to do it there.

2. Yes.

3. No [censored] clue.

4. I doubt it. The modern Fallouts allowed you to add custom animations for weapons, because guns come in all shapes and sizes. The places you hold the gun, the places you store the ammo, how the gun moves when you feel the kickback, all very different. You can't easily create general animations to make guns use without severely limiting what the artists can make. Swords, Bows, Staffs, all these things don't have that problem, so you don't need custom animations. I doubt they included that feature because it would just waste time implementing it.

5. Try it and see for yourself. There are already interface mods. Go pack one and see if it works.

I don't imagine the OP was asking members to guess for him.

No, but it's still fun to guess.

My guess?
1- Can't say at this time.
2- Can't say at this time.
3- Can't say at this time.
4- Can't say at this time.
5- Can't say at this time.

The Engine no longer uses FaceGen the software (almost positive I read this was one of the suite's dropped) it uses a proprietary facegen created by Bethesda and as such the chance that the Old Oblivion CS would most likely be completely worthless on this front -> not to mention that it would gnerate .lip files which the game does not use, so this is going to have to either be included or someone is going to have to make a 3rd party app to generate these.


No Idea.


The game no longer uses specific Animation Slots the Character profile defines ALL usable animations (we are not sure if this file matters to the game but its there), also animations no longer contain Active Sequence Names so the only way the game would know what an Animation was meant for would be by naming convention (all previous games have already did this to a smaller extent) or by dynamically assigned Animation Sets where you get to pick what animations files are assigned to a specific action on a per set basis -> I am hoping for this as it allows the greatest flexability.


Yes, does not require the CK to do.

I can answer this one:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes5Mod:String_Table_File_Format

As noted in our blog post yesterday, we'll be sharing more information on the CK through the wiki and videos we're working on. Should be good stuff.

Ok thanks for the answers, waiting for the wiki. And yeah it was aimed to the staff members, but also members that know some more technical stuff or have reasearched through the game files, so is not a problem.


I'm worried because on the back of the game box, in the bottom part where you usally find all the copyright stuff, there is written "FaceGen from Singular Inversions Inc. FaceFX Software used for facial animations". But playing the other day I've noticed that my version which is in italian have italian lipsynching, looks like an automated system, but I'm not sure.

Tiring yes, tedious NEVER!

As far as I know, Skyrim uses .fuz files to compress both lip-synch and .xmwa togheter. I am pretty sure that the CK will come out with a .fuz compressor, but i don't know if it's automatic or not. We'll have to wait and see.

I'd like to know how friendly with multi-display configurations the CK will be. I use my TV to actually play most of my games these days, and I have a secondary monitor for more desktop-oriented work.

I'm hoping that I will be able to use my TV display as my primary viewport and my secondary monitor for any informational displays or tool windows or the like -- pretty much everything aside from the viewport if I can manage it.