How important is filesize. poll

[lyth]

Third Option: Primarily covered already, but I'll reiterate and detail.

 

If you're going to rely on textures from another mod - and require all or most of the textures - then make it a seperate download from yours. Then, at least, everyone who already spent the time to download that mod need not spend the time again just to get the data for yours.

 

If you only use a couple textures, in which case your filesize isn't increased much, then make sure you include only those items and textures in your mod. If you only include one cape in your mod, then cutting out every other cape and relative texture from the mod will reduce the unneccesary excess by far.

 

If working on a really large cell and you repeatedly create, move, delete, and alter items and are not sure you have a clean enough final result, back up your work and determine what everything in the details list is. I have spreadsheets detailing every single placed item for every cell I'm working on in my projects. It might seem like a waste of time, but having a list detailing everything you need to know about objects, their location, their references, etc. can speed up cleaning, scripting, and modification a fair bit. And it really doesn't take that much time to create - particularly if you do so from the start of the project.

 

If you make a new version of a mod that only adds enhancements, such as adding the capes, then seperate that off the original, keeping the old version available, and adding a link in the description pointing to the new 'enhanced' version. It may take extra work, but perhaps a lot of people are happy downloading just the original to cut off the increased filesize or performance hit. The poll might tell you some, but as different changes have different priorities in peoples minds, the only real way to tell is to release a seperate version and see how much more or less that gets downloaded. If everyone stops downloading the old one, then it should be fairly obvious that people think the change worth it. If you keep getting downloads on the old, then clearly there are people who think the changes not worth the boosted size.

 

[@Vagrant - You say there's likely a definite limit to loaded esms. Do you know how many it is? If it's 8 or 12, it's a significant issue. If it's 256, then it's probably worth seperating a number of projects out there into esms and esps or making them just esm format. How many people out there run even 100 esps?]

 

Referring to what Vagrant said -

The primary benefits to esps as I see them are that they are modifiable and they do not indicate or assume that anyone will be relying on the data they contain. If you release an esm, then every future version must be backward compatible with it. This is a big issue with works-in-progress, and generally a bad idea for projects changing specifics, such as cell information, adding items/script which may be removed later or revised entirely, etc. How many people would be upset if 90% of their mods suddenly stopped working with Bethesda's newest patch due to a small change to 'fix' an issue with the official esm? Also, esps are loaded after esms. If someone's esp contains a small change that conflicts with one in your esm, that may be an issue. If you released an esp instead, yours could simply be loaded after theirs, gaining priority over the conflicted element.

 

Esms, however, are good for very reliable modifications which are intended/necessary for numerous esps. Good for large projects and TCs, but also for very modular projects where you want certain data consistent between every modular piece and to provide that consistency to a third party.

 

Currently, I am on several projects. The largest two are broken up into multiple esps for modular reasons. There are also a couple esms providing new item definitions used in all or most of the esps. This way I can start each esp from scratch, while still having all the necessary definitions for statics, gear, containers, etc that I desire. It results in having cleaner esps and in not loading duplicates for every single esp loaded. Unless it results in an issue due to esm limitations, I only need 2 esps using each definition before it starts providing a definite (though initially small) benefit. It also means that once released, people can use all the objects I've defined to produce their own esps while I can continue to update and release new version of the esm. So long as I don't delete defined objects and people don't release their own version of the esm, there should not be any issues from doing so.

[WarKirby3333]

@Povuholo: Yes. I cleaned it through the details menu.

 

 

 

@All: I have come to a decision that should keep everyone happy. First, I will not be releasing multiple versions simultaneously. It causes a lot of confusion to downloaders- something I have learned from first hand experience.

 

 

 

I will release all future versions as an ESM, and I will remove all unused textures to reduce the filesize. I will also cut down the corridors in the basement a bit.

 

 

 

Thank you for the advice, this poll is now closed.

 

 

 

WarKirby

[Switch]

If the thread is all concluded, I guess I'll lock this.