Why do modders change the names of the textures ?

[CreeperLava]

The title says it all, how is it advantageous to do this ? It's a real pain for the user to compare textures with different names. Wouldn't it be simpler to just let each mod overwrite the other entirely (mesh and texture) ?

[JimboUK]

There are times when you don't want to overwrite a texture or mesh, new items are an example, if I want to make a gold chest and just replaced the existing chest texture with my gold one then every chest in the game that uses that texture will be gold.

[CreeperLava]

Thank you for your answer. I wonder why there are renames in texture replacers then ?

[JimboUK]

Thank you for your answer. I wonder why there are renames in texture replacers then ?

 

A renamed texture shouldn't work for a replacer, the name and filepath should remain the same unless the person edits to NIF to reflect that name change, however it would be a very odd thing to do for a replacer.

[Dragon32]

You'd get a renamed texture in a replacer if the mesh has changed. If the modder's changed the mesh's UV map then applying the vanilla texture will just look weird. So, the NIF retains the same name (no need for a plugin to point to the new model) but the texture's different to prevent visual weirdness.

[CreeperLava]

But, why not just replace the vanilla texture then ? Unless a texture can be used by multiple meshes, and you just want one of these meshes to use a different texture ?