Turning an esp into an esm (master file) with GECK or FOMM

[youreviltwinSA]

I need to turn an esp into an esm (a master file), but I can't figure out how to do it! I did a search for this info and the stuff I've found talks about using the "FO3 plugin" program, but I'm sure there's a way to do this just using the GECK or FOMM. (I had hoped that simply changing the file extension from esp to esm might do the job, but apparently not.)

 

I've done a mod that makes changes to all the game's energy weapons, and adds extra stuff like P94 plasma rifles and YK42B pulse rifles to the lists of enclave energy weapons. I've also done a small add-on for Operation Anchorage users that adds gauss rifles as enclave weapons. The problem is that for the levelled lists in the Anchorage file to include the P94s and pulse rifles, I've had to include duplicates of those weapons in the Anchorage file, which seems a bit silly, and is annoying as when I slightly modify one of the weapons in one esp I then have to go and make the same change to the duplicate weapon in the other esp. This problem would be solved if I could simply make the "normal" version of the mod into a master file, and then have the anchorage version an esp that simply adds gauss rifles to the levelled lists included in the master file.

[cmal]

In FOMM, hit the Plugin Editor button. Open the mod in question, select the Spell menu, and go down to Make esm. ESM doesn't use file extension, there's a flag in the file header itself, so one cannot simply change extension.

[youreviltwinSA]

Thanks very much! Just gave it a try and it worked fine.

 

Am I right in thinking that esm's can't be edited in the GECK? I guess I'll keep the original esp file handy, and if I need to make any more changes I just then make another esm version of that and overwrite the old one.

[Deleted1084753User]

Easier way to do it is to use FO3Edit to set the esm flag manually, you don't need to change it into an .esm then. If you need to edit the plugin again, just open up FO3Edit, remove the flag, close and open the plugin up in GECK as usual. No need to mess around with an actual .esm file :)