BadPenney Posted July 24, 2009 Share Posted July 24, 2009 It has been recommended to me that I might convert my .esp to an .esm with FO3Edit before uploading, in order to avoid problems with recent official patches. I have some questions about this before taking the plunge. I regret if they have been answered in earlier threads, but my searches haven't revealed them. Can Fallout 3 access more than one masterfile without modification? If not, what needs to be done? Are there drawbacks to creating an .esm for a mod? If so, what might they be and are there ways to soften their effects? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cipscis Posted July 24, 2009 Share Posted July 24, 2009 Fallout 3 can access multiple master files without any modification, but the GECK requires a change to its ini file. If I remember correctly, the following line needs to be changed:bAllowMultipleMasters=1ESM files will always be forcibly loaded before ESP files, essentially creating two sequential load orders, which may or may not cause issues with compatibility.In order for an ESM to modify data that originates in another ESP file, additional records are required in the file header. I believe that FO3Edit might be able to automatically generate these records, however. Having a look at some of the FO3MasterUpdate discussion threads on the official forums should give you a good idea of the benefits and drawbacks of using master files instead of plugin files. These discussions were brought up in lieu of the v1.5.0.22 patch debacle. Cipscis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eldiabs Posted July 24, 2009 Share Posted July 24, 2009 BadPenney - I'm using and .esm and .bsa for my fort freeway mod, and have had no reported issues except for one user having to unpack the .bsa and manually add the textures and meshes to their relevant folders. Besides that, it's reported as the most stable release of my mod. I've had no conflicts with other .esm files that do this either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BadPenney Posted July 24, 2009 Author Share Posted July 24, 2009 Thank you for your responses. I hadn't looked outside of Nexus threads for info, so pointing me elsewhere to look was very helpful. I'm still mulling over how to approach this. It seems that many people are reporting good luck with 1.6 even without using MasterUpdate. The pasty white flesh glitch is such an obvious flaw that I can't help believing it will be remedied in the next patch, and that is all that is bugging me about the current 1.6 patch, now that I know the treeLOD is a non-issue. I may experiment more with making my affected NPCs into custom races, since my one custom race NPC still looks normal. If that seems to be ineffective then I may just .esm-ify, in the end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quetzlsacatanango Posted July 24, 2009 Share Posted July 24, 2009 Thank you for your responses. I hadn't looked outside of Nexus threads for info, so pointing me elsewhere to look was very helpful. I'm still mulling over how to approach this. It seems that many people are reporting good luck with 1.6 even without using MasterUpdate. The pasty white flesh glitch is such an obvious flaw that I can't help believing it will be remedied in the next patch, and that is all that is bugging me about the current 1.6 patch, now that I know the treeLOD is a non-issue. I may experiment more with making my affected NPCs into custom races, since my one custom race NPC still looks normal. If that seems to be ineffective then I may just .esm-ify, in the end.One minor thing to consider - you will have to de-masterize it every time you want to update it. You can't modify an .esm in GECK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BadPenney Posted July 24, 2009 Author Share Posted July 24, 2009 One minor thing to consider - you will have to de-masterize it every time you want to update it. You can't modify an .esm in GECK.Yes, that is true, which is one of the reasons I have been hoping to avoid turning it into an .esm. After spending some time today trying to turn my NPCs into custom races to avoid the 2 tone look, I've decided that it is too much trouble. My one NPC that is unaffected by the glitch is a custom race that uses the Type V body mesh and 2 outifts that Luchaire modified to work with it. I thought that I might just be able to copy the vanilla meshes and textures into renamed directories and have custom races point to those. Not only did that not work, but the NPCs looked 2 toned in the GECK as well as the game. If I changed all of my NPCs to custom body meshes and textures with compatible outfits then it might work, but I think that would swell the size of my mod, make more work for me that I had not intended and push out my release date. So I'm thinking that masterizing my plug in is the way to go at this point. When Bethesda patches away these problems then maybe it will be unnecessary to do this sort of thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BadPenney Posted July 25, 2009 Author Share Posted July 25, 2009 Also, I think that it might be simpler to keep an .esp version of my plug-in handy to work on in GECK, rather than converting one to .esm and back again each time I want to make a change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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