FO3Edit, Deleting, Initially Disabling, or Invisble Object Creation

[shiholude]

Greetings and thank you for this awesome mod! I have been using it for longer than I can remember, and it has aided me in my understanding, curiosity, and desire to mod addons for Fallout!

 

This discussion is poised at the differences between mods that "disable" objects, the FO3Edit-recommended action of setting these to "initially disabled", and the invisible object approach.

 

To start off with, I would like to state the obvious: “deleting is bad... m'kay?” Whenever you start physically removing objects from the game, you present a very large opportunity to cause some serious issues with other mods – including official expansions.

 

DELETING an object from the a cell or worldspace removes only that specific reference for the item, however deleting the object itself (under its associated group title – static, miscellaneous, and static respectively) requires the removal of all objects associated with that object. Deleting the object may increase performance for users, as it is one less item to load (or several depending on how many are in the cell being loaded).

 

INITALLY DISABLING an object removes the specific object or “parent” object from ever being loaded by the game to begin with. If a mod references the object, it will be loaded as if it was enabled. Caveat: FO3Edit will set this object to a reference location at -30,000 Z-axis. I’m not sure if this means that it will still load the object, just at 30K below the surface, or that it will not load the object, unless referenced, at which time it will load it at -30K Z-axis. I need more information here. If the case is the ladder, then it would likely have similar performance benefits to deleting.

 

INVISIBLE MESHING an object will not remove the object, leaving a reference-able physical component in-world. The “parent” object is altered to include the invisible mesh. Being invisible, this could also improve performance, as the game doesn’t need to draw anything for the object.

 

I have seen all three of these methods, and while they all work effectively to some extent, my search here is to find more specific recommendations for particular situations. So, let me begin the experiment by giving three objects to be “removed” from the game, and get your feedback on them. I have my own assumptions, but I’d like to get feedback from others first before voicing my own bias, as your opinions may very well sway my vote. :)

 

Object 1: A piece of Paper. This item would be included in the vast amount of nuclear-proof documents that somehow survived a blast that ripped buildings and people apart like, well, paper. This object is a non-interactive component (cannot be looted or moved by the player). However, as a separate item from the landscape below it, it can be targeted and used as a referenced object in a specific cell (although I’ve never actually seen this).

 

Object 2: Empty Beer Bottle. It’s a junk item, sitting in the Muddy Rudder, along with about 50 of its counterparts strewn all over the floor, tables, and on top of garbage cans. It is interactive and sellable, can be referenced, but holds no vanilla intrinsic value other than the 1 cap its worth. Yes, other mods already use beer bottles to refill with a liquid of some sort – but I’m talking in terms of vanilla settings here.

 

Object 3: A Rock Pile. This is a large piece of landscape, which is built/placed on top of another object such as groundcover (at least in all cases that I’ve seen). The rock itself isn’t critical to any current quest or NPC pathing, nor does it open up a tear in the landscape or space-time continuum.

 

So my question to you is this: which of the three aforementioned processes would you use? Feel free to expand outward to other objects as well. I just wanted to present three objects that are on my mind, but this shouldn’t be limited to my needs alone. :)

 

I apologize if this has been discussed in any detail before, but I’ve not seen anything yet in my searches.

 

-Shiholude

[chakka]

Actually I think you may be better off posting in the fo3edit thread instead of making your own as in 5 days your thread will be buried. The fo3edit thread wont get lost because its attached to an uploaded file and is a popular download.

 

Their is also a manual that comes with fo3edit that discusses what you bring up already too...

[shiholude]

I was going to post the discussion there, but the discussion threads on mods get very little viewing - mostly selective to those looking for that specific mod, whereas these forums are more widely viewed (IMO) . So I decided to take it somewhere that it might see more light and discussion. I did leave a comment pointing to this thread, so hopefully that will draw people into the talk more.

 

Regarding the manual, I've been through the entire thing more than I care to admit :), and their recommendation is to always set it to "intially disabled" - to the point that they even have a built-in feature to do just that with deleted objects/references. That is what sparked this discussion in fact, because I'm curious if there really is any performance benefit of setting it as they suggest, yet still load the meshes at -30,000 units (extremely out of any visual range - under the landscape). I know that when I loaded up a file in GECK with FO3Edit's changes to about 100 objects, the loading process took a noticable time longer than it would normally - even on my system which is not an extreme-top-end-system, but still damn fast (stats in my profile).

 

What I'm hoping to accomplish here is to discover which is best for different situations - if any. Does one method have a performance advantage over another? If deleting the object increases performance, where disabling it does not, are there situations where deleting an object would be more "acceptable" than others. What about the invisible texture creation? A good balance of performance enhancements, stability, and partical usage is what I'm after.

 

Thanks for commenting!

[ccmechanic2]

All that depends on the modder's intentions, And Example of Default data being set to deleted but is still there can be seen in the mod ( Megaton House and Theme Overhaul.esp )

in Fo3editor. every thing in that mod shows up as an error But that Kind of error is deliberate, and you have to know what to look for to understand this. Example : lets say you edit that mod and set those items to disabled, you know what happens then? The game wont launch. If it does then the house would be gone. Setting thing to deleted is so much different that actually removing the items. So your question is valid in seeking knowledge as to what would be more efficient for the game. Again that is the modder's choice.

Fo3 edit is a tool we were blessed with to use to see inside the game's coding. It is very powerful indeed. But it only shows 60 % of all the actual data being used. Geck show it in a different way as well as fomm yet another way. your on a good road here to seek knowledge, thats a great start . I hope my input helps you in some way. I have a link too here on the nexus. It has quite a bit of this specific knowledge you seek.. Perhaps it may also help. >>>>( http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15780#fileanchor ).

[freddy_farnsworth]

Hello!

 

I am learning, I have a rule I am using that is helping and I have proved to me on my mods it matters.

I make my world and edit it with stuff, At some point I turn it into a esm. Now i create a esp for further

overwrites. If I have to edit landscape or refs or navmesh they will work as long as it is a ESP. If I masterupdate it

the landscape and refs and Nav have problems, even in geck i get weird errors. Landscape appears

unedited ect. water errors more... Put it back to esp and all is well. So I no longer add NPCs (2tone skin prompts the need to MU) to my esps and try to keep them clean of above. A ESP can override a ESM but once it is a ESM

it can no longer override, so all data loads even conflicts as they are all masters.

 

Can cause this kind of behavior, bad data.

 

Not etched in stone I am just struggling to understand all this.

 

freddy