Any ways to bypass 255 mod/Esp limit?

[BotoxGod]

Yes i know this forum has been made mutiple times and i read a lot of them myself as i have come across this problem many damn times

But as making a forum yourself, you are more able to read as a 1st party rather than 3rd and come up new or your own answers and none of the solutions work for me. Which is normally just less mods or merge which doesn't work for me.

 

I play Skyrim lots but a lot of people, you download skyrim, spend days modding it and fixing your save games and then another day, you find out you have too many damn mods. What? You never came across this?

 

I have tried various methods and come across this problem all the time.

 

Methods Tried -

Uninstalling mods: IMPOSSIBLE, a lot of these mods are like needed, really. A lot of mods are patches to others and stuff, i have been going down to like hardly installing non lore friendly mods but it's impossible.

 

Wyre Bash - Wyre Bash only adds in very few mods to merge. So no...

 

TES5Edit Script merge mod - It doesn't add in all the mods i put in mod list and i don't know which mod is which because i have too much and lots of them are incompablite. And as said, a few mods are displayed, but way more than Wyre Bash but still not a enough to make a difference.

 

Stop having so much mods!:

A. I know

B. Lot of these mods are patches or small things, they are not each a big game changing thing, so 370 mods is actually like 297. And around 150 of those are small things, like add singular armour or add a few spells

C.So it's not actually that a lot of mods. All of people thinks it's too much, at first i thought it was too much. But i realized how little mods you can put on in skyrim. Hey if a lot of people spend hours or days modding this thing, it's not actually a lot. And it's counting mods that are patches or mods that have seperate and lots of esp for some reason or that change small things., so yeah. It's actually not a lot.

 

I know merging mods is not easy btw, i know the effort teams put behind Bash and TES5Edit or the Script. Yes the ids and refs are all connected for odd reasons like Fallout and G.E.C.K but i actually need something to merge over 100 mods.

 

And can something explain why this limit is? And does anyof my question reason for it?

Does have something to do with 32 bit and 64 bit in programs?

 

Can a Modder or Bethesda bypass this?, i know it's mathically impossible however someone doesn't have to follow the limit follower, like MO, someone could use a virtual load order and treat all esps as one ESM.

 

My one suggestion however it's probably stupid

A program to merge all Esps active to 1 ESM that overwrites records judging on load order. Sounds easy but much harder than it sounds, (and btw idk if Esm are capable of even compling records that follow lord order. Just a idea and theory in my mind)

 

Basically

-Virtual Mod Filing like Mod Organizer

-Your mods e.g. Textures, Esps, Music

-Programs that convert all those to fit in a esm, for e.g. Textures will go in a rearrange order, sound in yea and Esps to records

-Records based on load a order, so that one esp will overwrite another esp record

-All in one ESM now, For e.g. Mod Organizer (Using Mod Organizer as it's a good example), it automatially change your mods based on load order to 1 ESM.

Yes this idea is not easy and flawed. But it's seems a possible solution rather than patching the game's engine.

 

Anyways, you guys got any ideas or solutions? (Anything even if beta or expermital, i got like 371 mods and i will not uninstall one)

 

 

 

 

 

[zilav]

Game uses 32 bits integer value named FormID to identify records, where lower 3 bytes are the actual number, and high byte is load order. That's why the limit is a range of 1 byte = 256 plugins, or more precisely 253 since load orders 00 and 01 belong to Skyrim.esm and Update.esm, and 255 is always a saved game.

Combining mods into one virtual ESM file like you want is technically impossible.

End of discussion.

[Nyquist]

Hmm I will answer the easy question about loading more than 255 plugins. A simple analogy comes to mind. When trying to take cash out of a ATM, you want to take money from two bank accounts each having their own credit card. Each account individually does not have enough money. But you really want to just take that sweet money directly from these accounts at the same time. SO what you are trying to do is inserting a first credit card and the trying to force a second credit card down that slot at the same time. One might argue that it is a design flow. So what may I tell you about this.

 

Having virtual file management does nothing to prevent the inherent limitations of the game engine itself, it is a hard limit. There is no such a thing as a "fix" for it. Even worse is that depending on your rig you might have a soft limit. YOu computer might only load up to 200 plugins or less. That needs also to be tested before continuing the installation process

 

Basically I would suggest against creating a mega esm. You should read about master files and master plugins. Also having such an automated system would be insane and would break more load orders that it would fix since soe key choices in mod merging require human intelligence. A machine will be incapable of knowing what should or shouldn't remain. They are loaded first and are overwritten by whatever other plugins follow them. Also 370 mods are great to have but patches despite their small changes are considered game changing since they fix compatibility issues.

 

One reason why mod merging is so difficult is because the pex scripts while merging can become non functional etc. Also I wonder why you need such a huge list of mods. It's not like a character can wear those 200 armors anyways ;)

 

There is however a magic fix and it is mod merging, and you had found it. Since you have ModOrganizer create a new profile and merge some mods and test them if that works they become merge able. I think quite a few armor mods especially simple ones that can only be crafted can easily be merged. Most texture plugins can be merged.

 

Since you have such a huge mod list it might appear counter intuitive but you have to know what each plugin does by heart. If you don't you are just begging for problems. I have around 200 plugins and I literally have fired each of them up un TESVEdit to take a look at them. But you will anyways dabble into the territory of plugin merging and there is only a very limited support for that. Since you read however the TESVEdit manual the whole testing process should be pretty easy even if very long. So look at what mods are mergeable and then test the others on case by case basis. It shouldn't take more then a month. But still I am not sure you will get to merge sufficient amount of plugins.

[bben46]

Short answer - No

 

Long answer - it involves how binary/hexadecimal and decimal artthmetic work

255 Decimal (base 10) number is FF in Hex, (base 16)and 11111111 in binary ( base 2) - F is the hex equivelant to 16 in decimal and is the bigest single digit that can be used ( No, G is not possible in hex, as there are only 16 possible digits 0 through 9 and A through F)

 

The game engine allowes only 2 characters to store this number in - and they used hex - so the number is FF (255)

There is no way to change the size of that storage space without completely rewriting the game engine - and then after rewriting the engine, the game would have to be remade using the new engine. If you have a big game company with lots of programmers, and 6 or 7 years with nothing else to do - you might be able to do it. Hopefully the next game will use a new 64 bit game engine - but I wouldn't hold my breath. :geek:

[BotoxGod]

Oh i see, sorry as this has been asked before but seems like there's no magicial way to bypass it.

 

I just try merging it again, even though it would not help much.

 

My rig can handle it trust me.

 

The huge list of mods are various things, from patches, small fixies, armour but in all and all. I have to reduce it in the end.

 

Thank you guys for answering!

[mindw0rk2]

My Skyrim has about 500 mods installed not counting script, mesh, texture and interface mods. You can merge alot of stuff: almost any patches, many "new places" mods, small mods, NPC overhaul mods, encounters mods. I warn you, this is a long process through trials and errors. You need to test every single mod you merged. You need to know load order of merged files. And you need to keep track of all files you merged.

For example my MERGED_Patches.esp file contains about 80 patch files, and my MERGED_Places.esp file about 60 mods that add new places.

 

All you need is alot of time, patience and this script: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37981/?

[Ceruulean]

You can merge Climates of Tamriel modules (Not the .esm file!) and RLO files together, if you have them. Also, all armor mods can go together(unless there's one with scripts, but it's unlikely), and a lot of small fixes are probably fine being merged into a single patch.

[Skyler6669]

I have over 300...soooo...I don't get all this talk about ESP limits. I'm problem-free. Well...for the moment, that is, until I install another mod that screws my game up and I have to do a bunch of stupid work to fix it.

[ISOWarrior]

Just use Merge Plugins. Works like a charm for me. Just 1 advice: merge small things like clothing, hair, retextures and vanilla followers before big ones like script and quest mods. The big ones are more likely to work incorrectly after merging, so merge them only if absolutely necessary, and be careful about the compatibility issue. If something doesn't work the way it is intended, try fixing it manually in CK( different solutions for different problems here, sorry, can't give exact advice, but if you have some CK experience, I think you can figure it out). At least that's what I do.

[maredark3d]

You can merge the mods and use bashed patch