• cycle: 168 miles
• run: 57 miles

They love switchbacks at Mahogany Mountain. It seems like half of the switchbacks are purely for kicks, at least the ones near the trailhead. It’s fun, that’s for certain. The map above includes images near points marked in red were I took photo. There are a number of routes to choose from, and my route on this ride took me to Grove Creek (mile 5) and up Mahogany Mountain Trail to a twisty trail called Sneaky Shiz (mile 8). The view above Sneaky shows Utah Lake down below. Trail signs are plentioctoful down near the trailhead in that twisty back-and-forth business, but up above not so much. Bring a map.

Trail tracking by Cyclemeter.

previous month

In TES V: Skyrim Special Edition, moving weapon position style or adjusting weapon positions for better fit on your character is a fairly straight-forward process by editing the custom skeleton, “XP32 Maximum Skeleton Special Extended” (XPMSSE) by Groovtama. As of April 2017, the only weapon styles available for immediate play include 1-handed swords on back, daggers on back hip, and Belt-fastened Quivers (BFQ) with bow. All the nodes for the other styles exist, but haven’t been set yet for download. Let’s set our own default weapon style! We can also adjust the positions of weapons and quivers to better fit the character if needed.

This tutorial assumes comfort with file management and willingness to learn if not some experience with editing nif files. I share step-by-step instructions on turning main weapon edge-side up and adjusting weapons-on-back distance. The process is the same for choosing other XPMSSE-included weapon styles.

requirements

If you don’t already have the custom skeleton you’ll need to install that first and make sure it’s working in game. We’ll also need the handy tool, NifSkope, to edit the skeletons (male and female).

• XPMSSE 4.20 by Groovtama (old 4.20 no longer available)
• NifSkope - Niftools

Make a backup copy of your skeleton files in case something goes horribly wrong. Best to copy them to a backup folder so you can easily copy them back to start over.

Skeleton nif-file locations:

• \Data\meshes\actors\character\character assets\skeleton.nif
• \Data\meshes\actors\character\character assets female\skeleton_female.nif

• cycle: 191 miles
• run: 72 miles

I took some days off mid-month to travel with some running in other states. Only 8 bicycle rides, but extended the miles by 75 over March.

Lake Tahoe looks pretty in April. Met some heavy fog along the snowy driver over Mt Rose from Reno, and it turned out quite sunny at the lake.

My Earth Day ride took me to see the Provo River

• cycle: 115 miles
• run: 77 miles

I took off an entire week mid-month, but I still managed to beat my February running miles. I’m gradually increasing my distance per outing, and for April I’ll be focusing more on cycling.

This photograph of Utah Valley was taken at the very end of the month during a bike ride.

updated 2020 January for Werewolf Time Meter version 2

This article introduces some Papyrus scripting techniques and reviews my scripts for “Werewolf Time Meter” mod for Skyrim Special Edition. In a nutshell, the “Werewolf Time Meter” borrows the blue magicka bar as a countdown meter during beast form transformation. If you have limited experience writing scripts or programs, please see introduction and tutorials on Papyrus Reference.

resources

• Werewolf Time Meter on nexusmods.com includes script sources in archive (BSA) or on GitHub
• Creation Kit Papyrus Reference on creationkit.com
• Setup for Script Work with Creation Kit and Notepad++

intro

Instead of focusing on learning Papyrus, I go over technique and the workings of the two scripts making up “Werewolf Time Meter.” See “Creation Kit Papyrus Reference” for brief examples and tutorials.

The mod includes three script files (actually four): a spell-effect script allows the player to enable and disable the meter and the other controls, a main controller to display the meter, and a player-alias script to handle events. In the plugin there exists a spell effect to disable (damage) magicka regeneration preventing the time meter bar growing until beast form ends. This means upon detecting the player’s character has become a beast, the spell effect must be added. Remove if exists when not in beast form.

The player-alias OnRaceChangeEvent alerts the main script to check if beast or not to start or stop updating the magicka bar. During transformation the main script polls infrequently to calculate time remaining and update the meter. Since checking the player’s condition is very fast, we could probably get away with more frequent updates but only needs to be fast enough to update bar. 3-7 seconds seems acceptable.

Since the player cannot normally use power spells in beast form, we could probably forget the case of enable/disable toggle during beast form. However, mods may exist allowing it so we should at least consider the possibility. We should also consider odd scenarios and try to make the script as robust as possible.