Converting esp to esl

[Bernt]

I just read on Reddit an - unconfirmed- comment that you should be able to change an .esp in to an .esl using FO4Edit instead of needing the CK.

 

Does anyone here know about that? My game is currently 1.10.40

[ZeroAndOne]

If I did that I would have just sold it to Creation Club instead. It's too messy to build these games right now. Instead I suggest the standard method of ESL for creation club & mods that are published as ESL. With the focus being on the ESM & ESP which relies on the community testing of the last 2-3 years proper. Old school build utilizing Merge Plugins to reduce 600 ESM & ESP into at least below 254 total ESM & ESP. That or the choice to rely upon what & how you have played FO4 up to this point, that process, namely because we know it works. ESL is designed to work with all the other content, however, that's impossible. The amount of work should be minimal to achieve a stable build of 500-600 mods for FO4 (because it's kind of a PC game missing 500-600 things.) Also, because of the pattern that developed with the many other Bethesda games we mod, that over time, they became harder to build a fresh & new set of mods which resulted in stable builds. Professionally, the streamlined process you developed to play that game requires a backup copy, because it will be too difficult to make it again in the future. I don't convert to ESL because I don't have to do that if I can already merge 600 mods into 254 so that it will load. The focus is getting that 1-600 amount to be a stable game in testing, see, this requires testing play (which sucks). If you have a particular technical question, I'm not sure that those people come in here to mod talk, it's more of a open forum, but there might not be anyone in here ever that is creating ESL, much less converting ESM/ESP to ESL. Sorry about that, but it is encouraging you to not perform unnecessary work if you don't have to. Quick, Fast, Easy, and You're a gamer man, don't forget to move around so you can play many different games, don't get stuck, take a vacation today on golden wings.

[jaydawg55]

I have seen a couple ESP to ESL conversion documents on the Nexus (Skyrim SE). You could search the site for them.

 

My interest in the subject is because I want to find a way to include all kinds of small "fix" mods while keeping my plugin count below the 255 limit.

 

To me it sounds like ZeroandOne thinks we should leave the ESL space to Bethesda and learn how to merge the ESP plugins we use to stay within the 255 limit. His point has much merit. Because ESLs are a new feature, we don't know what impact having a lot of ESLs would be on game stability.

 

But as a practical matter, it sure would be nice to have ESL conversion as an initial solution that let's us play a highly modded game while a combined ESP is developed.

 

Mod it until it breaks, right?

 

[pra]

Get a somewhat recent xEdit, then you can rightclick a plugin and select "compress formIDs for ESL". After that, you can edit the flags in the file's header, and check ESL there.

 

To make a true ESL, you will need to change the file extension from *.esp to *.esl, too. This will have the effect that the file will be loaded before any ESP.

 

However, you can leave the file extension as is. Such a file can be loaded after real ESPs, but still only takes up an ESL slot. I'm not entirely sure inhowfar this is intented behaviour, but ESL-flagged ESPs seem to work as "light plugins", as opposed to being a "light master" at the moment.

NMM doesn't properly support such files, though. But, you probably shouldn't use it anymore anyway...