Search the Community

Cleaning the Official Master ESMs NOTE : I do not have any Bethesda games installed anymore, and xEdit has changed greatly since I last had it installed. Anyone wishes to re-do this topic in a new thread bringing it up to date .. Crack on This guide assumes using TES5Edit on Skyrim Nexus, Or SSEEdit on Skyrim SE Nexus Due to this guide being dual purpose ( For Skyrim and Skyrim SE ) for the rest of this guide I will refer to both tools as xEdit. Screenshots of tools used may be one or the other, or older versions, which does not matter, the images are only to illustrate the method / options used. Why Clean the Master Files ? Firstly because the masters have entries that are identical to the same records in Skyrim.esm or other DLC esms'. They exist because Bethesda may have looked at something in the CK and an unneeded entry was auto included in the plugin even though the item was not altered in any way. The Official Creation Kits are notoriously buggy and randomly create dirty / wild edits, often when the author of the plugin is completely unaware. Wherever that plugin is placed in your load order its records overwrite all the conflicting records from plugins loaded before it ( the rule of one ) resetting the settings back to the values contained in the Official Bethesda DLC. It won't cause crashes, it just changes the values of plugins loaded before it. Which can alter mods that you have for Weapon Damage, Armor, Lighting, Food Effects and so on. The masters are very early in your load order but there is potential for a mod to be made as a fake.esm, and placed among them, and so ITMs in a later loading master may cause problems for that mods esm. Chance is remote that a master will affect another master, and this procedure is best used on all of your mods plugins, but cleaning everything of ITMs ( Identical to Master records ) causes no harm, is more optimal giving the game less to process in your load order, and so it is best to get rid of these completely unnecessary dirty edits. The Second reason is that Bethesda chose to delete some things that are in the Official DLC. Any mods loaded with references to deleted records from the Official Bethesda DLC will cause your game to crash. This problem particularly affects older mods ( especially mods that were made before newer official patches were released, with more deleted references the old mod did not anticipate - It will also become problematic for the Skyrim Special Edition community where old Original Skyrim mods are being converted to SSE, and Bethesda have deleted even more records from the plugins before they released the newer plugins for that version of the game ). xEdit can restore and properly assign values to these records that will disable them and still allow mods to access them. This is done using the "Undelete and Disable References" option. For further explanations of why it is still recommended to clean the games masters .. Read on from this post, Zilav and Arthmoor, most valued technical and vastly experienced modding authors, weigh in on the subject. The following mostly apply to mod authors, but worth knowing about for mod users too : xEdit will also report when a mod has Deleted NavMeshes as part of the report from Automatic cleaning. Like deleted references, any mod that references a deleted NavMesh will cause Skyrim to Crash. Properly optimizing your mods NavMeshes and checking your mod for Deleted Vanilla NavMeshes ( which can also be caused by a CK wild edit even if you did not do it yourself ) is important. Mods altering the same cell and the same NavMeshes when your mod is not optimized will cause Skyrim to Crash. Poorly optimized NavMeshes with errors reported by the CK will make Skyrim unstable. Instabilities like fast travelling to a location and Skyrim crashes. Note the ones found to be deleted in the games masters, cannot be undeleted. To fix deleted Navmeshes in your mods, Arthmoor has provided a walkthrough in Skyrim - Fixing Navmesh Deletion in TES5Edit Manually cleaning your mods is also important to remove wild edits. This is mostly down to the experience of Mod Authors to solve such problems, but there are a few noted later in this guide which are in the DLCs which everyone can easily Manually clean. Some mods can have accidental Wild Edits in them caused by the author looking at how Bethesda did something they wish their mod to do as well. These Wild Edits often prevent Skyrim from doing things like advancing quests, spawning NPCs, assigning dialogue to NPCs, preventing NPCs from patrol areas they are assigned to. They can also alter Vanilla Lighting and Triggers that the author wished to use. All of these things affect any plugin with conflicting records loaded before a mod with Wild Edits. Mod authors - Learn to use xEdit, and ensure the only records in your mod plugins are what you would expect to be in there, its the most important tool the community can make use of when used properly. Mod Users - Follow this guide... Before moving on to the Manual cleaning, something everyone should do prior to Manual Cleaning : Automatic cleaning of Bethesda's ESMs with xEdit With the games Original esm's installed ( You can use Steam to Verify Integrity of Game Cache of Skyrims files to ensure you have good error free copies of the original master files ), and in accordance with the following wiki article http://www.creationk...ty_Plugins_List : Load up xEdit. 1. Right click the plugin selection screen and select "none" 2. Tick the relevant esm to edit, and click okay ( If you have not cleaned any of your Master files yet, the first one to tick will be Skyrims "Update.esm" ), then click Okay After each of the following actions, wait for a message in the message window that the previous operation has finished / Done : 3. Right click the plugin after you get the "Background Loader : Finished" message,and choose "Apply Filter for Cleaning" Wait until Filtering is finished then .. 4. Right click the plugin and choose Remove Identical to Master Records Wait until it finishes then .. 5. Right click the plugin and choose Undelete and Disable references Wait until it finishes then .. 6. Close xEdit, and it should check with you that you wish to save the plugin ( this only happens if you have made any changes to the plugin to save, if it just closes .. Then you have not cleaned anything ) Rinse and repeat the Automatic cleaning ( steps 1 - 6 above ) for each of the master files. Working from first to load, to last, not including Skyrim.esm or any unofficial patches ( No point doing Skyrim.esm, and the unofficial patches are already done and should not be cleaned ) So clean in this order Update.esm Dawnguard.esm Dawnguard.esm ( Yes it needs to be done twice ) Hearthfire.esm Dragonborn.esm Dawnguard.esm needs to be cleaned twice ( as of xEdit 3.1 onwards - After doing the automatic cleaning routine once on Dawnguard.esm, and saving it, load it up again in xEdit and you will be able to clean a few more ITMs ) : ------------------ Dawnguard.esm needs manual cleaning aswell as automatic cleaning After the automated cleaning is done, you can also now manually clean a few more Wild edits xEdit will not have touched ... Recently Arthmoor has brought to the attention of the community additional information regarding manual cleaning of Dawnguard.esm, which everyone needs to do for their own setup same as automatic cleaning ( because nobody can legally upload official master files anywhere, everyone needs to do their own ) First load up xEdit When the plugin selection comes up, right click and select None Then put a tick in the box just for Dawnguard.esm, click Okay After its finished loading, right click Dawnguard.esm and choose "Filter for Cleaning" 1. For "CELL 00016BCF: Remove XEZN subrecord referring to RiftenRatwayZone [ECZN:0009FBB9]. Otherwise it blocks the official fix in Update.esm." .... Expand the records as in the following screenshot, and right click the indicated sub-record, and choose Remove 2. For "CELL 0001FA4C: Wild edit. Remove this record. It's a testing cell." .... Expand the records as in the following screenshot, and right click the indicated record, and choose Remove 3. For "CELL 0006C3B6: Wild edit. Remove this record. It's a testing cell." .... Expand the records as in the following screenshot, and right click the indicated record, and choose Remove NOTE : This guide used to include cleaning instructions for "CELL 00039F67: Wild edit. Remove this record. It's a testing cell" ( The WICourier edit ) - But since the new version of TES5Edit 3.1+ now cleans that as part of the automated cleaning ( which you should have done prior to manual cleaning ), you no longer need to clean it manually afterwards. ----------------------------------------- Now that the Master files are cleaned, you could put them in a zip, and get your mod manager to install them - Maybe at a future date you want to do a refresh of steam cache and it redownloads the masters which are not the same as the originals anymore (because you cleaned them), so then you would need to reclean them again. But beware, Bethesda have started redoing some masters due to Creation Club mods compatability, so make sure any redownloaded masters are not newer than your previously cleaned ones, because in that case you will need to reclean and rezip them again anyway. You can go through the rest of your Load Order using Automatic cleaning of ITMs and UDRs on all your mods plugins. The sequence of cleaning mods plugins should be after you have your Load Order correct, masters are cleaned, then clean them with the last to load being the last to clean. Mod authors should have done them already, so most will probably not need cleaning. Also look out for any mod specific cleaning instructions in the mods description. Prime example = The Unofficial Patches will not need any cleaning, they are already done, and any remaining ITMs in those plugins should be left alone because they do have a purpose .. ( its a very rare occasion when this is true ). The xEdit Work In Progress Development topic is at the following link https://www.afkmods.com/index.php?/topic/3750-wipz-tes5edit/ Development project is at GitHub https://github.com/TES5Edit/TES5Edit And newer versions of xEdit (3.2.7 +) have a link to Discord top right of xEdit window.

Some of you may know I created a mod called Auto Loot for Fallout 4. Well, Auto Loot has a crazy holotape system for configuring the mod in-game, and that system involves 89 terminal scripts, 1,250 menu items, 55 global variables, 21 form lists, and 11 perks, spells, effects, actors, and actor references, and 1 cell. So, I wrote a script for xEdit to help me keep this mess under control. Here's what SourceCraft currently features: Automatically generates complete, ready-to-compile terminal scripts in Papyrus (.psc files) Support for GetGlobalValue and HasPerk menu items Uses tokenized templates (.txt files) for the overall script structure, terminal fragment functions, and code snippets Determines whether menu items are toggles or settings If menu items are toggles, determines whether menu items toggle "on" or "off" (0 or 1, AddPerk or RemovePerk) If menu items are settings, generates code that sets a GlobalVariable to the expected value If menu items are toggles or settings that should toggle or set multiple properties, generates code that uses a while loop to set those properties If menu items are settings that run on a reference, generates appropriate code (e.g., Player.AddPerk) Generates all required terminal fragment functions (no redundant code) Generates all required property declarations (no unused properties) Adds comments to terminal fragment functions with the menu item text Once I enhance, expand, and refactor the terminal script generator a bit more, I plan to break the script into modules and support other script types - where applicable. No screenshots - because this is all code - but here's a script I generated after getting while loop generation working.

I'm wondering if it is possible to use the merge Plugins standalone (Nexus 69905-2-3-1) to merge the ESP files after they have been added to a WB307 project created from a monitored installation? I'm testing with using the feature to create a project which includes all of the current videos available for VOTW as a single project. Project creation worked perfectly, The question stems from realizing that all of those esp files can be merged into a single esp. But I'm having issues getting the Merge plugins standalone configured correctly I believe. Following Gamer Poets video, I'm realizing that I'm having integration issues. If someone is already using this program with WB307, and FO4, I'd appreciate a quick heads up on paths and integration. Specifically Papyrus integration, and manager paths. I have a feeling I'm missing something very basic, but I have no Champollion De-compiler, or Papyrus flags path (no source files to extract) and as a result I can not activate the script fragment handling check box. (Damn shame everyone ignores poor WB ... there should have been a check box for it like NMM and MO) Thanks

I copied this file, "generate bash tags.pas" from Esserbee's guide for FNV. The script mentions it's compatible with TES5 and therefore I ask you guys, is this the best way of generating those bash tags for Skyrim plugins? Is there an alternative? What's the best way of doing it? Should I always inspect each plugin to check if all needed bash tags are set? Thanks! Link to Esserbee's guide, relevant section on generating bash tags where the script can be downloaded.

Hey there, I'm testing this mod and both xEdit and Wrye Bash report an error. xEdit outputs: [00:02] Background Loader: <Warning: File [01] Skyrim Bigger Trees Full.esp with Group GRUP Cell Children of [CELL:000096C5] (in Tamriel "Skyrim" [WRLD:0000003C] at 20,-9) is missing an overriden record for [CELL:000096C5] (in Tamriel "Skyrim" [WRLD:0000003C] at 20,-9) This is a known error and has been brought up in the mod's forum, but no answer was provided. Is there a generic way to fix this in xEdit? Here is the cell in question.

As for Skyrim just here only ask questions about Fallout 4. When creating a modification adding new STAT with NavCut for workshop I noticed that none of the meshes from Vanilla or DLC which have NavCuts do not have "Obstacle" flag for them. (creationkit.com reference) I have add "Obstacle" flag to the new STAT with NavCuts or not?

xedit-lib Description xedit-lib is a project to build a DLL Wrapper for the xEdit framework. This will allow developers in the TES/FO modding communities to make use of xEdit's record definitions and functionality to read and write plugin files from the language of their choice. Developers can then focus on implementing larger solutions rather than constantly re-inventing the wheel. The library will include extensive documentation, a full suite of tests, and plug-and-play wrappers for multiple programming languages. The languages which I plan on building wrappers for, in order of priority, are listed below: - Delphi (primarily for testing) - Javascript (with NodeJS) - C# - Python - C++ - Ruby - Java Design The library will be designed similar to xEdit scripting, though with a number of notable improvements. A primary goal is to yield enough functionality from the library to create a full GUI application as an alternative to TES5Edit at a future point in time. It's also important to return arrays from library functions so users can use functional programming paradigms for iteration, filtering, mapping, etc. All functions in the library will use the cdecl calling convention for maximum accessibility. All functions will use boolean return values to indicate whether or not the function executed correctly. All functions are internally wrapped in an exception handler which prevents exceptions from bubbling up to the calling application (which results in runtime errors). The library will allow applications to load multiple load orders without having to unload the DLL. The library will never directly pass out interfaces to files, records, groups, or elements. Instead, when an interface would be returned from a function the library instead stores the interface in an internal list and passes out an index (or handle) to the stored value. The calling application can release a single handle, or reset the entire interface store between extremely large operations. This should not be an issue, as the limit for handles is ~4 billion, which could only be reached if you loaded ~4GB of plugins or stored all elements in all loaded plugins multiple times over. We would run out of RAM accessible to the 32-bit DLL before we would run out handles. The library will feature extensive serialization methods, which will allow users to serialize and deserialize elements, records groups, or even entire plugins to/from JSON, XML, and YAML. Progress You can track my progress on the library from the GitHub repository. The planning document shows an overview of the functions that have been implemented and have not been implemented. As of 11/2/2016, I'm close to being halfway done implementing the library itself. Once the library itself is implemented, I will be working on the testing suite and wrappers for different programming languages. If you are a software developer and would like to help make this project happen sooner, please let me know. I'd greatly appreciate any help the community can offer me on this project. Use Cases I envision a number of use cases for this project, including patching, automation, resolving plugin errors, and building new mods. This project is, in many ways, a spring board from which many other projects can be made. I personally plan on making an Electron AngularJS application using this library. Working on Mod Picker has shown me that I really like the architecture and systems involved in web development, which are by my measure superior to desktop application development in many areas. (most notably GUI design) Please refer to the use cases document for more information about how I plan on using this library in the future. FAQ Q: What about Mator Smash and Merge Plugins? A: Those application will continue to be supported and developed. While fighting with Delphi to get the GUI to act as I want is very tiring at times, the battle is mostly won for these applications. I do not currently plan on phasing out support for them any time soon, and I am looking forward to coming back to them to polish things off. It is possible that these applications may be "remastered" into Electron AngularJS applications using xedit-lib sometime in the distant future. Q: What about Mod Picker? A: Mod Picker is still my primary focus. I'm only working on xedit-lib in my off-hours. (~10 hours/week, where 60-90 hours a week goes to Mod Picker) Q: This is awesome, but I'm not a developer, how can I help? A: I don't have a job right now. I'm building modding tools full time right now. I'm hoping to continue doing this for the next 6 months, but when my funds dry up I will, inevitably, have to go out and get a Software Engineering position somewhere locally. If you'd like, you can donate to me on PayPal to support my efforts. Additionally, I greatly appreciate your feedback and encouragement on all of my projects. Q: Can you really match or exceed the xEdit GUI's functionality in a new application? A: Absolutely. xEdit has a fairly simple GUI, and building a GUI using HTML/CSS/JS is a heckuvalot faster, easier, flexible, and customizable compared to building a GUI with Delphi or another programming language. Q: When will you be done? A: I expect to have the library "completed" sometime in December. By Christmas at the latest. The GUI application will follow, with an alpha release ready for use by 2017. Things should be pretty solid by the end of February. This is all just estimations though, and really depends on how much time and work Mod Picker will require over the next few months.

{ Merge Plugins Standalone } Gallery - Latest documentation News - Public beta made available, 09/22/2015, 11:59PM (PST) - Alpha made available 05/23/2015 - Development started 04/29/2015 Description Merge Plugins Standalone (or just Merge Plugins), is a tool for combining mods from Bethesda games which have .ESP/.ESM files. It uses the xEdit codebase as an API, and can be used with Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout New Vegas, and Fallout 3. Merge Plugins Standalone is the successor of my Merge Plugins xEdit Script. Features Merge Plugins Standalone is a feature rich application that offers numerous advantages over my Merge Plugins Script, let alone manual merging. Below is a list of some of the most notable features: MERGE PROFILES: Create profiles to manage different games or load orders. Each profile has its own settings and merges. MERGE TRACKING: Merges are tracked. When you update a mod, any merges that mod is a part of will be classified as needing to be rebuilt. INFORMATIVE GUI: A rich, extensive GUI gives you all of the information you need to know to make merging decisions on the fly. ASSET HANDLING: Merging manually will break the association of your source plugins with certain assets, leading to bugs. E.g. the grey face bug, voiceless NPCs, and garbled MCMs. Merge Plugins handles all of these assets for you, moving them to correct paths so they can be found by your new merged plugin, preventing these bugs from occurring. SCRIPT FRAGMENT HANDLING: Papyrus script fragments are used in Bethesda games to handle crucial logic in Dialog Topics, Quests, and Scenes. When merging the FormIDs of certain records have to be changed due to conflicts, which can break the association between script fragments and their associated records. This leads to bugs such as dialog not triggering events, quests freezing, and broken scenes. Merge Plugins Standalone locates broken script fragments, decompiles them, adjusts their source code, renames them, and then recompiles them. BSA HANDLING: The program detects BSAs associated with plugins being merged, and accesses the assets in them as necessary for asset handling purposes. It can also fully extract BSAs for plugins being merged, or create a merged BSA from the BSAs associated with the plugins being merged. MOD ORGANIZER INTEGRATION: Merge Plugins integrates with Mod Organizer even better than the Merge Plugins Script. Merged mods produced by Merge Plugins become mods in Mod Organizer without any post-merge steps. Just merge and go! USER REPORT SYSTEM: Merge Plugins Standalone connects to a server which has a database of user submitted reports on the merge-ability of plugins. Unlike the Merge Plugins Script, you can easily create and submit reports on plugins you've merged directly from the application. Once submitted to the backend, reports will be reviewed and added to the dictionary file if approved. There is a separate dictionary file for each game supported by Merge Plugins. Reports associated with plugins are displayed directly in the GUI, allowing you to make decisions on what to merge based on the experiences of other users. DICTIONARY VIEWER Merge Plugins Standalone has a Dictionary Viewer, which allows you to view the dictionary. The viewer supports both sorting and filtering. INTEGRATED UPDATES: You can update the dictionary or the program directly from the program itself. Heck, if you want, you can even elect to have the program download and install updates automatically! FILTERABLE LOG: Trying to troubleshoot? A filterable log with messages grouped and labeled according to what part of the program's functionality they correspond makes it easy. EXTENSIVE OPTIONS: Tweak the program to your liking, tapping into integrations, asset handling, the GUI, etc. ABUNDANT DOCUMENTATION: With over 30 pages of documentation, Merge Plugins is one of the best documented modding programs currently available. Help yourself by referring to the documentation when you have a question. Setup 1. Unpack Merge Plugins somewhere. E.g. C:\Program Files\Merge Plugins. 2. Start Merge Plugins. 3. If you don't see a profile for your game, right-click in the box and choose "New profile", then specify a profile name, game mode, and game path. You can browse for your game path by clicking on the browse icon. 4. If your profile is valid, its background color will turn a shade of light green. You can then select the profile by clicking the game icon (or any other part of the panel). 5. Once you've selected a profile, click "OK". Configuration When you first start Merge Plugins you should do some initial configuration. To start, click on the gear icon near the top of the window, this will open the Options Form. Once there, you'll want to: (1) configure integrations Go to the Integrations Tab. If you're using Mod Organizer, check the "I'm using Mod Organizer" checkbox. Then click Detect Integrations. If any integrations aren't found, you'll want to install them or browse to find them on your system. Make sure you verify the paths found by Merge Plugins, especially for Mod Organizer if you have multiple installations. (2) set your asset destination directory Go to the Merging Tab and click the browse icon by the text box. The folder you choose here will be where merges are placed. If you're using Mod Organizer this should be your Mod Organizer mods folder. (3) set merging options Go to the Merging Tab and check the boxes corresponding to the options you want to use. You'll want to use "Extract BSAs" or "Build Merged BSA" if you aren't using Mod Organizer. You can leave everything else as the defaults. (4) register a username Go to the General Tab and enter a username in the username text box. Click "Check" to verify the username is available. Once you have a username that's available, click "Register". This username is put on reports submitted to the backend. A username is required if you want to submit reports on plugins you've merged. Thanks APIs: superobject, TurboPower Abbrevia, ZeosDBO, xEdit xEdit: zilav, hlp, Sharlikran, ElminsterAU Testers: bla08, hishy, Kesta Translators: dhxxqk2010, Oaristys, Ganda, Martinezer, EHPDJFrANKy License Merge Plugins is released under the MPL. You can view the source code on GitHub.