My first mod: Did I just doom it to fail?

[Taiine]

I have an issue, and it is one I am dreading big time.

 

I've been set on making my first mod that’s more than just a stats edit or simple object placing... I been mashing together tutorials from YouTube and around other sites on creating your own player home, though a good chunk of these are old, or done in such a way that you have to already know how to do it to understand what they’re doing (skipped steps, missing info etc) Thus mashing through as some cover details others leave out and so on.

 

So by following these along for the last three months slowly building up this nice tower, learning bits and bobs along the way. But now I realize something done at the very start may have destroyed the whole thing.

 

Duplicating a cell to make a new one.

Yes several tutorials on youtube and forums, and other sites showed them duplicating a cell (mostly AnisesCabin01) , deleting everything from said cell, and renaming it.. creating yet another cell. I didn't know it at the time, but apparently this is a big fat nono.

 

So I have a duplicate of AnisesCabin01, thus what I just learned the other day is a 'dirty edit' and I thought, can I not just delete the duplicate? The normal cell is untouched. Only the duplicate had the * mark. Well again tutorials led me astray, I looked it up and found that well yes, yes you can, one said it was simple as just right click and deleting the dupe, watching it have a big D on it, and bam done....

.................it deleted the duplicate AND the real cell. *sigh* and sadly I didn't notice it, not until tonight when I saw a * in the overworld for the Cabin's exterier.. a.k,a for the trap door, sense the cell for belows gone, the teleports gone.

Sadly sense every new day I overwrite my back up with my current file to save as a new updated backup... guess what I lack a back up of. Yep.. the undeleted dupe.

 

So I don't know how to fix this. I am neck deep in the creation of this mod and have come a very long way. I don't care to 'start over' as remakes for me never come out as good and it was a nightmare setting up the outside to begin with.

 

I looked into tes5edit, but most the tutorials are only how to clean the master files, I tried cleaning my mod but the filter when applied and told to remove refs it removes nada... going in and manually deleteing any refs to AnisesCabin01 ends up borking thing's even more. As in the trap door to the cabin ends up pointing to the cell of my tower, and when going through the cabins inside is in my cell? Though going to a back up before the 'cleaning' and viewing, its not there... tes5edit duped it there? I don't know.

 

I'm close to throwing my hands in the air and never touching modding again when I can't even trust tutorials to tell me to do the right thing.

 

Please tell me these tutorials didn't doom this mod to fail, that I can restore AnisesCabin01 somehow and make it as if I never duplacated it to start with.

 

Edit: and yes my towers inside is made in a properly made new cell. NOT a duplicate. As in you give it a unique id and tell it yes to makeing new. vs right click and duping like all thes tutoriuals say to do.. then rename, and then click yes to make new...

Edited October 4, 2015 by Taiine

[Boombro]

Yes, big deal. Do it again. This kind of stuff happens all the time. I have seen bigger projects fail and come back again. You are making a big deal out if this whole trick.

Next time as soon as you duplicate a cell, press f2 and rename it.

Edited October 4, 2015 by Boombro

[Meihyr]

As Boombro stated, when you duplicate a cell, press f2 and rename it because it will save you this hassle. I am working on an enormous player home myself and the state it was in before was terrible. Others liked it but I didn't. I had spent A LOT of time on it but when it came down to it: it was a mess and it needed to be remade. So I deleted the cell and started again. It's a pain but sometimes it's necessary. What I do recommend is make smaller player homes before tackling this again. Get used to making them. That way, things will be a bit more easier for you.

 

Edit: Do what TheFirstEnD said and that should set you on the path again.

Edited October 4, 2015 by JayCrane

[TheFirstEnD]

With tes5edit you can delete from your esp your "deleted AnisesCabin01" (it's simply impossible with CK)

 

- open your esp with TES5Edit

- right click : apply filter for cleaning

- click on worldspace/Tamriel (all green/red/orange line are the things that have been edited.)

- in differents blocks, search AnisesCabin01 location and just delete it.

- if all your creation is only on a new interior cell or a new worldspace completely separated from vanilla worldspace, you can just delete all Tamriel worldspace.

- Like that, your edited things on Anise Cabin and/or Tamriel world will be removed from your esp

 

 

PS : I hope you understand, english isn't my native language

[JetSteele]

Do what TheFirstEnD said; it'll remove the edit from your esp and everything will be good as new again. I'd recommend keeping TesVEdit afterwards too, when your done a mod its a good idea to just clean out things that you don't need as sometimes the ck saves stuff in the esp; blank references to name one thing.

 

Just make backups before you save with TesVEdit encase something screws up. Sometimes when running TesVEdit and then opening a mod I'm working on in the CK, TesVEdit sometimes screwed something up and bugged out the mod; for me one time it didn't allow me to add spells to a race after cleaning. Encase anything goes screwy just load the backup and reclean it in TesVEdit and everything should work properly once again.

 

When modding always keep a good 2 to 3 backups just encase something goes wrong. Always better to be safe then sorry :wink:

[Taiine]

Yes this is a big deal for me. I'm new, this is my first attempt at a mod other than stat edits, but how am I to learn if I can't even trust the tutorials I'm trying to learn from?

 

Its following how they made that new cell that broke everything.

Rightclick, duplacate cell

Double click cell to open edit window

Right click the cell view from the edit window, add name.

Thus yet another new cell is born.

 

That is what three tutorials showed me how to do it that left behind the dupe cell that broke everything. So now I know from here that isn't how you make a new cell. Youtube fails.

 

I started small, from dumping a basic imptower along the cost of winterhold (not the town) to making a basic cell (in the wrong way) and linking them via door. To slowly building up from there with decour. Shoot just last week I finally found a tutorial on nav meshing that didn't go on for over a half hour and acually made clear how to do it and covering vital steps like not overlapping them, with out leaving out vital steps (I hope)

 

So, if I PROPERLY dupe my dupe of a dupe, that should truly make a new proper cell that isn't tied to anything... then delete all refs to all the old cells with TES5Edit even my old dupe.... well that's what I am going to try and hope for the best.

[nonoodles]

 

if I can't even trust the tutorials

 

The tutorials you were following may have been made in the early days of the CK's release, before people realised duplicating a vanilla cell also marks that vanilla cell as edited (a dirty edit). Anyway, like everyone's pointed out, you can give it a scrub with TES5Edit.

[Boombro]

Cell name and Cell ID are not the same.

Riften inn cell id is RiftenBeeandBarb while the name is the bee and barb as an example.

[Mattiewagg]

The CK AND TES5Edit provide backups of your ESP periodically. The TES5Edit backups are found in your Skyrim/Data, in the folder of TES5Edit backups (I believe), and the Creation Kit ones are found in your Skyrim folder.

[Taiine]

Yeah see changing the name in the editor would also create a new cell, leaving behind the untouched dupe... but thats what said tutorials showed. :/ I figured it was there for a reason or what and we'd get to it some where in these ages long videos. With the habit of skipping over details in some of these tutorials whos to say what's being forgotten about or over looked.

 

Well, least it looks like making a dupe of my dupe of a dupe worked in fixing the mess made. Pretty much took my cell and made a proper dupe of it as people said how to here.. then using tes5edit to remove the cabin and my old cell. The untouched cabin file is now back in the cell list, and has no *.

 

Though now I'm questioning what else I may be doing wrong following some of these tutorials. I'm to the point of adding containers...