Merging Mods

[frogsot]

I am interested in combining several of my mods I made into a single mod. What would be the best way to go about this for the smallest amount of plugin files?

[mindboggles]

I've been using FNVEdit and running Mator's script for combining mods and it's worked pretty well.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37981/

[RoyBatterian]

I do it entirely by hand, usually doesn't take very long. Once you get good at it, you can merge just about anything pretty quickly. There's a few snafu's to watch out for, references need to be present before things that make use of them can be merged. There's a topic around here somewhere rickerhk and myself discussed it and gave tips to someone else.

 

Previous info in dialogue topics needs to be handled with care, xEdit doesn't seem to update these records.

 

Usually voice files are as easy as changing the sub folder name to the new esp/esm, sometimes though you'll have to rename files afterwards.

[ManehattanProject]

Yup. I was the recipient of the tips. I will give a warning with something I've dealt with: multiple changes to worldspaces can get really messy. I've actually given up on that merge plugin as we're into the scripting phase. Any additions will be done by Copy As Deep Override after changing the FormIDs from here on out. It seems a lot cleaner (and a lot faster, because it doesn't have to renumber half a zillion FormIDs).

[Deleted3624098User]

I also used matortheeternal's plugin, v 1.9 on two of my Fo3 mods.

Before merging I cleaned both mods, making sure that no cells or worldspaces were in both mods.

I got an error message telling me the mod maybe wouldn,t work, but it did, and kept my mods sound and fresh in my new mod.

Recommended for a non emgineer head:-)

[matortheeternal]

Yup. I was the recipient of the tips. I will give a warning with something I've dealt with: multiple changes to worldspaces can get really messy. I've actually given up on that merge plugin as we're into the scripting phase. Any additions will be done by Copy As Deep Override after changing the FormIDs from here on out. It seems a lot cleaner (and a lot faster, because it doesn't have to renumber half a zillion FormIDs).

 

renumber conflicting formIDs will only renumber record formIDs that absolutely have to be renumbered.

[RoyBatterian]

When you are authoring, sometimes you need to "copy as overwrite" I've asked zilav for this function, hopefully it gets added and is only available in some kind of "expert" mode to prevent inexperienced users from using it and breaking things. Until such time as that is available it's easier to just drag the records in by hand, particularly with scripts and quests and quest stages since they might have other dependencies that need to be merged in first.

 

Be careful with copy as deep override, sometimes it doesn't work as expected. Particularly with cells which contain Persistent and Temporary records, it might only do one at a time. Good idea to always check afterwards and make sure everything is merged.