My Character Tracker for Skyrim app has been updated to v1.2. This is a very important update to me as it adds tracking for mods and DLC, a feature I’ve been hoping to implement from the start. It’s now not only a character tracker, but a mod tracker too!
While the original app was build using mostly UIKit, this update was developed with SwiftUI, so it requires iOS 13.
Mods
Mods in Character Tracker are essentially packages for new modules (armors, followers, houses, quests, etc.) and their required ingredients. The official DLC (Dawnguard, Dragonborn, and Hearthfire) come with the update as mods.
QR Codes
The main way of importing a mod into Character Tracker is by scanning unique QR codes. These QR codes contains JSON data with all of the mod’s information.
If you find a QR code for a mod you want to track, simply tap the QR code scanner button at the top of the Mods tab and scan the code. Note that these QR codes can get very large and may have image background which can make them difficult to scan. Make sure you have them open on a large screen so they can be scanned properly.
Creating QR Codes
QR codes for Character Tracker can be generated from data manually entered into the app or from data automatically generated from mod files.
To create a QR code from a mod or module you’ve inputted into the app manually, simply the Export button at the bottom of its page. From there you’ll get a QR code with the Character Tracker logo in the background that you can share.
The second way is by using xEdit Armor Export on PC to automatically generate QR codes for armor mods directly from the mod’s files. Instructions are in the readme on the GitHub page. This script works by reading the armor stats and crafting ingredients and generating JSON from that data. This also includes a GUI written in Python for adding images to the mod and module which can be automatically fetched from the Nexusmods page for the mod.
Generating QR codes has some limitations. As mentioned, these QR codes get very large. QR codes typically just store short URLs, but these QR codes store the entirety of the mod’s information directly in them. This is because they don’t depend on any server connection. That way users can create their own codes without requiring any web hosting. Because there is a limit on how much data can fit in a QR code, mods with too much data (especially those with lots of images which are encoded by their full URL) won’t be able to be created into a single QR code. I have plans to implement multi-QR code generation for large mods, but currently mods that are too large can’t be made into single QR codes.
Elaine Lyons 