Problem editing esps in the construction set

[Retribution]

I decided to edit the face of an NPC in a mod I have. I opened the esp up, edited the face, and saved it. The construction set won't load with that esp, and neither will Oblivion. I've edited esps before and they worked just fine. What's wrong with this one?

 

Edit: Could it be this?

http://i44.tinypic.com/2v953c4.jpg

[Jenrai]

Hmm... could be... but thats an EID conflict, not a Form ID conflict. EID conflicts shouldn't be fatal as both the game and the CS can set things to dupes like that. (though they can screw things up some)

 

I have my own race repopulation thing wich uses a whole bunch of custom races to replace vanilla NPCs and those in some mods (come on. Ten races in the entire world when I can choose to be one of about 30? pfft) The problem I found editing them was that sometimes, instead of editing an existing reference and saving the change in my new plug in, the CS, for reasons far beyond the comprehensions of a mere mortal such as myself, decided to save new copies of them to my plugin, but kept their original IDs. Result was a Form ID conflict. Which does have a nasty tendancy to be utterly fatal. :|

 

Let us know if sorting your conflict helped anyways, and if not, I'm sure someone more skilled at all this malarky than me will come along with a handy tip or two.

 

Good Luck.

Jenrai

[Retribution]

Well, the esp works fine if I don't open it in the CS, so I'm guessing the reason that it's crashing when I just change a face is that it changes something about the mod right when I open it, as shown by the screen.

[Retribution]

bump

[Retribution]

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[Jenrai]

Sorry mate, this flew down the pages and I missed it.

There may be a much simpler answer to this than we were thinking of anyways then, if its only freaking out when you change the face. Do you have any other cosmetic mods loading in the CS at the time? As in, are you trying to use features from another mod?

 

If so, its crash because one of the Construction Sets many faults is that it doesn't like making .esps that rely on other .esps. It tries to "orphan" (remove the master file requirement) when it tries to save your new plug-in, if its master is an .esp, resulting in the crash, I think. Regardless wether I'm right or wrong about why it does it, it can't save an .esp thats dependant on another .esp. Master file requirements are a real pain in the ass to remove, so the best way to do it is actually to change the file that it requires.

 

How to do this for modding:

1 - Get TES4Edit, Gecko, or Wrye Bash.

2 - Open said utility and find the .esp with your cosmetic resources. If you're using Gecko, open it, select "copy to master" (or whatever - don't remember exactly but its something like that) and change the needed file to an ESM. If you're using Wrye, scroll down your load list to the mod, right click, and select "ESMify self" ... if you're using Edit, I'm afraid you'll have to read the docs (like you shouldn't anyway! :P ) because I use Gecko and Wrye, so whilst I have TES4 Edit, I only ever use clean/check/merge my work.

3 - Open the CS. Load your esp as the active mod. Load the ESM you just made the cosmetic mod into as well.

4 - Make your changes. Save. *crosses fingers and prays to the Night Mother it works*

5 - Close the CS. If you used Wrye to esmify the mod, espify it. If Gecko, you're still got the esp, so remove the new esm from your load order. (better to remove it from the data folder entirely, but save it in case you ever want to do something similar again. Save you having to esmify it all over again)

6 - Use your utility of choice to change the master of your new plugin to the original cosmetic .esp

7 - Playtest. Shoulda worked.

 

Hope that makes sense.

Good luck.

Jenrai