Nirnroots in a mod

[Worldsong]

I'm currently looking at fixing & updating an old mod that creates the river connection by Leyawiin that I was looking for in another topic earlier. It seems to be the best & least complicated solution to the problem. However, in its adding seawalls along the river, it deleted at least 3 Nirnroots in the reshaping of the river bottom. It also moved the LeyawiinYellowGateMarker a bit as it was now in the water instead of the road originally there. In my recent reading of modding info, it's been stated that one should never delete objects flagged as persistent and avoid moving such objects as well. In looking in the Construction Set, I found Nirnroots are flagged as persistent - presumably because they're not supposed to grow back (absent a regrowing mod).

I've had no CTDs walking around there, so it seems the deletions & moving didn't cause problems. But I'm wondering if it would be possible to restore those deleted Nirnroots by adding 3 more in new locations & making them persistent? I'd also like to know what the LeyawiinYellowGate marker is for, as I haven't been able to find any info so far on how to get such info from a marker.

So can anyone tell me whether Nirnroots are ok to delete or move even though they're flagged persistent and whether how to tell when a marker can be moved safely? Or at least point me to info that explains more about persistent objects that I can read. Any info would be appreciated, thanks!

[mhahn123]

Certainly not ok to delete outright. They should be treated like any other persistent reference and disabled instead. I've moved them in mods and patches and never had any odd behavior, knock on wood. But they are persistent, so the potential is there for them to act up. If you want to be completely safe in that regard it is best to disable the original and place new ones. 

Not sure what you are referring to on the Leyawiin Yellow Gate Marker. Would have to load up the CS to look at it. If you mean the door teleport marker that exists with all doors those are safe enough to move. To get info on objects that you can't access directly, such as subspace boxes, look in the cell object list. You should be able to open an edit menu that way IIRC.

[Worldsong]

Thanks for your reply, mhahn! Yeah, still not sure what that YellowGate Marker is - it's just a red x and double-clicking to open its Edit pane doesn't really tell why it's there. Anyway, I took a look at the mod in TEs4Edit and it shows the Nirnroot sound item as deleted in the cell reference with the Nirnroot itself as the parent. I know I still have to learn more about how TES4Edit works and what all its color codes mean, etc. (I downloaded the manual for it over at the Fallout 3 area). But from what I've seen from looking at other tutorials on how to remove dirty edits in TES4Edit, it seems that if I deleted that cell reference for the deleted Nirnroot sound, would the Nirnroot now show up from Oblivion ESM? Is that even possible or a good way to recover objects that shouldn't have been deleted and aren't way down at the Z level -30000?

[smr1957]

If you remove the record that is overwriting the original one, then yes, the original item that is represented by that record will appear in the game, as it is no longer being overwritten.  Just make sure you are absolutely sure of what you are doing, save a backup so you can revert back if needed, and then test the change in the game to ensure that all is as it should be.

 

Though as far if the item is something that should NOT be in the game for whatever reason, then you would need to change it so that it was not deleted, but was instead flagged as initially disabled, set the Enable Parent (XESP) to PlayerRef, set the enable flag so it was Set Enable State to Opposite of Parent, and then set the Z position to -30000

[Arthmoor]

22 hours ago, Worldsong said:

I'd also like to know what the LeyawiinYellowGate marker is for, as I haven't been able to find any info so far on how to get such info from a marker.

If you go to the cell where that marker is located, then look through the cell window at the bottom and find it in the list, you can right click on that, select "Use Info" and the CS will tell you if anything is referencing that marker.

[Worldsong]

Thanks for your quick reply, smr! Saw that a bit ago and went back to load up the mod in CS and made a note of the Nirnroots' Object Ref #s in the Oblivion ESM. Then backed up the mod I'm looking at and loaded it in Tes4Edit, found the delete references and deleted them. And the Nirnroots now show up in the mod in CS and in game! Now just have to move them to the land instead of over water like they are now. Thanks for the other tip too.

Thanks for that tip as well, Arthmoor. It's always nice to learn such tips from experienced modders like you and smr as I'm starting out in modding and want to do things right when I change a mod, etc. Oh, and I think there's something you may want to look at for your UOP. As I was making sure the Nirnroots were back in the game, I happened to notice what seems to be a mesh problem with the castle wall by the river - the upper parts of the wall buttresses were sloping outward and not meeting up with the lower part of the buttresses. I looked in CS for the original Oblivion ESM and those mesh problems were there. The affected static is a large one and is called leyawiinLeywiinCastle02 (0003E058) If you look at the other side of that static around the corner, the upper buttresses are vertical, not sloped.

[Arthmoor]

I took a look at the castle wall but I'm not seeing an issue with it in the CS. Could you provide a screenshot of what you mean?

[Worldsong]

20 hours ago, Arthmoor said:

I took a look at the castle wall but I'm not seeing an issue with it in the CS. Could you provide a screenshot of what you mean?

Ok, here's a couple shots of the wall in question. I've circled the error spots. In the 2nd picture you can see how the upper buttresses on the other wall (marked by black straight line) are vertical as compared to the error ones.

I used your tip of looking at the Use Info for the LeyawiinYellowGateMarker (00035555). It does show 2 AI packages using that spot, LeyawiinGuardPatrolDayYellowGateToHarbor and LeyawiinGuardPatrolNightYellowGateToHarbor. I wondered which NPCs would use those packages and when I looked at the Use Info for those packages, they don't list anyone!  Out of curiosity, I checked the other nearby red X markers, and the following have nothing listed in their Use Info:

DarJeeSwimMarker (000359A1), LeyawiinBeggarAtDocks (00015D94) & LeyawiinPatrol01StartMarker (00035553). So it looks like those 4 markers have no function in the game?

 

[Arthmoor]

Ah, I see what you're looking at. I was looking at ground level and wasn't seeing the issue.

Yep, those 2 yellow gate packages are unused as well so that makes things easier I guess

[Sigurð Stormhand]

4 hours ago, Worldsong said:

Ok, here's a couple shots of the wall in question. I've circled the error spots. In the 2nd picture you can see how the upper buttresses on the other wall (marked by black straight line) are vertical as compared to the error ones.

I used your tip of looking at the Use Info for the LeyawiinYellowGateMarker (00035555). It does show 2 AI packages using that spot, LeyawiinGuardPatrolDayYellowGateToHarbor and LeyawiinGuardPatrolNightYellowGateToHarbor. I wondered which NPCs would use those packages and when I looked at the Use Info for those packages, they don't list anyone!  Out of curiosity, I checked the other nearby red X markers, and the following have nothing listed in their Use Info:

DarJeeSwimMarker (000359A1), LeyawiinBeggarAtDocks (00015D94) & LeyawiinPatrol01StartMarker (00035553). So it looks like those 4 markers have no function in the game?

 

Can confirm those issues are present in the original retail version from the DVD, looks like we'll be fixing that.

[Worldsong]

Yeah, kinda hard to believe that nobody has noticed or reported that problem in 15 years. Makes you wonder how many other such errors might exist.

On 12/5/2021 at 5:54 PM, smr1957 said:

If you remove the record that is overwriting the original one, then yes, the original item that is represented by that record will appear in the game, as it is no longer being overwritten.  Just make sure you are absolutely sure of what you are doing, save a backup so you can revert back if needed, and then test the change in the game to ensure that all is as it should be.

 

Though as far if the item is something that should NOT be in the game for whatever reason, then you would need to change it so that it was not deleted, but was instead flagged as initially disabled, set the Enable Parent (XESP) to PlayerRef, set the enable flag so it was Set Enable State to Opposite of Parent, and then set the Z position to -30000

I did try that but I was not able to set the Enable Parent for an object I wanted to remove to PlayerRef, as it kept insisting on a cell name nor could I select the reference in the Render window. What you're describing seems to be a manual way of doing what the TES4Edit Auto Clean does in doing the UDR filter, right? At least that's how I was able to get an object deleted correctly by running the UDR, as in checking the mod in TES4Edit didn't show the disabling & parent thing  after I simply deleted an object. Once I ran the UDR it showed up in TES4Edit correctly.

On 12/5/2021 at 7:53 PM, Arthmoor said:

If you go to the cell where that marker is located, then look through the cell window at the bottom and find it in the list, you can right click on that, select "Use Info" and the CS will tell you if anything is referencing that marker.

Arthmoor's comments also seems to suggest that looking at the Use Info would be a good practice as well before considering deleting an object. I knew about UDR in the Auto-Clean before but I didn't really understand how it worked until smr's comment *and* reading Arthmoor's Compatibility Patch tutorial when he talked about using UDR to finish the deletion of objects in a mod, as well as my looking at my mod after deleting an item and looking again after running the UDR.

I've looked around and there doesn't seem to be really much in the way of good info regarding deleting stuff in a similar vein to Arthmoor's addition to his tutorial on dealing with Persistent Objects that any new modder would find useful to read for a better understanding of how deleting objects works in Oblivion. I think a new article in the Knowledge Base here about deleting would be a useful thing to have. It  could be called something like "The Dos and Don'ts of Deleting Stuff in Oblivion"

[smr1957]

Yes, exactly, Worldsong - it is manually doing what the auto-clean UDR does - results are the same.  And it could be a difference between TES4Edit and TES5Edit - that's I cannot be sure of - though usually things will generalize across version.  Grad you got it sorted, though!

[Sigurð Stormhand]

5 hours ago, Worldsong said:

Yeah, kinda hard to believe that nobody has noticed or reported that problem in 15 years. Makes you wonder how many other such errors might exist.

Hundreds, I'm sure.