Trying to make my mod an ESM but running into issues

[Sovrath]

I wonder if someone has experience turning a large mod into an esm without some of the issues I'm running into.

I can turn the .esp into an esm but the face textures are now that artificial "black" and there is no sound for dialogue.

I've looked at a few videos but the videos I've watched are just the straightforward "this is how you go through the steps in xedit."

Any thoughts or perhaps a link to a mod that has solved this would be great appreciated.

[xkkmEl]

Face textures and dialogues are in directories that contain the filename of your plugin.  If you rename the plugin, you need to rename the subdirectories accordingly.

[Sovrath]

ok, that's a start. But I can't load an esm in the creation kit to do that so how would that be done? Thanks.

[scorrp10]

Why on earth do you want it to be an .esm?    Just cause it it large does not mean a thing.    ESM does not give you size advantage.  You only want to make a mod an .esm if want it load real real high (among the first), and you expect it to be used as master by many other mods.   

[Sovrath]

 

22 minutes ago, scorrp10 said:

Why on earth do you want it to be an .esm?    Just cause it it large does not mean a thing.    ESM does not give you size advantage.  You only want to make a mod an .esm if want it load real real high (among the first), and you expect it to be used as master by many other mods.   

This was my thought as well. However, my mod has a lot of references and I've had people contact me asking to make it either a .esl (but there are too many references for that) or an esm.

Since an .esl is out of the question I thought perhaps a .esm would suffice as I don't believe it counts toward "reference limit" or some such thing.

Edited February 14 by Sovrath

[xkkmEl]

No such link between a "reference limit" (though I doubt you're actually nearing 16 million!) and esm/esp.

Esm only makes it possible for other mods to refer to your objects and references in their CK properties and aliases.  It's really only useful for "modder's resource" and "infrastructure" type mods (I'm oversimplifying a bit here).

Edited February 14 by xkkmEl

[xkkmEl]

3 hours ago, Sovrath said:

ok, that's a start. But I can't load an esm in the creation kit to do that so how would that be done? Thanks.

Search you mod's subdirectory structure, with Windows explorer or some such.  This is completely separate from the CK itself.

Once you make your mod an esm, you indeed have a little dance to perform in order to open it again in the CK.  That's a good enough reason not to make it an esm if you don't expect other modders to need to refer to your objects/references in their own mods.

Edited February 14 by xkkmEl

[Sovrath]

41 minutes ago, xkkmEl said:

No such link between a "reference limit" (though I doubt you're actually nearing 16 million!) and esm/esp.

Esm only makes it possible for other mods to refer to your objects and references in their CK properties and aliases.  It's really only useful for "modder's resource" and "infrastructure" type mods (I'm oversimplifying a bit here).

Thanks, it's not really about "me" but other players who seem reticent (which is fine) to download my mod because it has a lot of references. I made the mod for a friend who doesn't use mods and I personally don't have a huge amount of mods.

I think the idea is they want to play my mod but they don't want to deal with all the references it will add.

And "yes" I thought that esm was an infrastructure file or something that a mod references but I keep getting people asking for .esl or .esm.

[scorrp10]

Well ok.

https://stepmodifications.org/forum/topic/18995-reference-handle-cap/

According to this, temporary references are loaded in game memory only when player is in the area where they are needed.  Once player leaves they are unloaded.   As long as they are defined in a master plugin.  And there is a limit of 2^20 (a million) of concurrent references in memory.   So because of this, any mod adding a large amount of worldspace should be a master plugin.   That said, it does not state that it has to have an .esm extension.   Pretty sure that just flagging it as ESM is enough.

If the plugin file extension remains .esp, you need not rename the facegen and dialogue directories, and CK should allow editing it.

[Sovrath]

4 hours ago, xkkmEl said:

Search you mod's subdirectory structure, with Windows explorer or some such.  This is completely separate from the CK itself.

Once you make your mod an esm, you indeed have a little dance to perform in order to open it again in the CK.  That's a good enough reason not to make it an esm if you don't expect other modders to need to refer to your objects/references in their own mods.

Thanks, I think I'll just leave it as a .esp. Your input was helpful. Appreciate it!