Automatic outfit merging about easymod HOT 2 OPEN

@focustense Hope you don't mind me putting in my two cents here, the open questions were just intriguing and I thought maybe I could try to help answer them.

Regarding reliably identifying an "outfit changer mod", it'd be best to do as you said and just have any mod affecting the NPC outfit as a npc-changer mod. I agree that'd it be a bloated list, but its best as identifying any possible mod that makes a change, leaving it up to the user to decide what mod to be their default outfit,

The outfit mods being used as a dependency would definitely affect the standalone aspect of EasyNPC, but copying all the records would be problematic as you've stated. The only problem I can imagine with that is armor merges that people like myself use to save esp spaces, but given that that generates its own plugin that can be selected in EasyNPC, I don't think that'd pose a large problem.

Regarding the outfits and body carryover interaction, I'd actually lean to having the outfits overwrite the bodies. Bodies are typically seen as the base (as I'm sure you know) so any outfits should overwrite it in the rare case where users have outfits that don't match their NPC body type. Any risks of clipping could be expressed to the user, leaving that decision up to them.

I don't think having visual integration would be a good idea, at least on the backend portion given the amount of combinations you'd have to do to show all the choices for a user (each outfit with each face). If you were to go this route, you may want to make it a multistep process where the user first selects their face, then the visual preview changes to show that face matched with all the different possible outfits. It'd be really helpful on the enduser's side, but I am not sure if the work to implement that is feasible or something youd want to undertake.

Hopefully this is helpful!

from easymod.

Hej, I hope it's okay I also add some cents, but I wanted to make the argument that outfits should be integrated into the merge, not set as masters
A lot of NPC overhaul mods change outfits as well as faces, because to an NPC overhaul creator both are visual edits that you'd make in improving the appearance of an NPC
If you then have to set those appearance overhauls as masters it's going to cause conflicts if they have loose files, and it'll also mean you're not merging them (they will take up plugin slots)

Usually NPC overhauls that change outfits don't add quests and or locations where the gear can be obtained, and outfit mods that do aren't NPC overhauls. Maybe you could distinguish between these two kinds of outfit mods? The former is merged in, the latter is set as master

from easymod.