Trying to make a patch

[walrus2517]

I'm trying to make a patch for Vurt's WFO to remove a few trees that interfere with my mod. I opened Vurt's WFO in the GECK, but not as an active file, and deleted all the trees in in about 5 cells. I then saved that as a new esp.

 

However, I tried loading the new esp at various points in my load order and the trees from Vurt's WFO were always there anyway. I figured loading it anywhere after Vurt's should work but even putting it at the very end of my load order didn't work.

 

Any ideas?

[JasonDangerously]

In my opinion, you're going to have to load his as the active and make the changes that way. I'm not entirely certain how it all works but if you change things in a mod and save the changes as a separate esp then it has to be lower in the load order for the changes to apply. But with what you're talking about, I'm not certain that the trees being removed would be registered by the game, especially if you're saved in the cell in question. You'd have to leave the cell and save otherwise the game may be loading the trees from 'memory' based on your save. Like I said, not sure how it works but I know it would be simpler if you edited the trees in the mod's esp instead of making a new one. I played with the MERC mod for FO3 for a bit but I didn't like the layout of the base, so I just edited the base in the MERC esp and it worked fine.

 

Honestly, I don't think the trees being deleted is being saved to the esp you're making, which is why they're still there despite removing them via the GECK, better just to edit his esp. Well, unless you're planning on posting this mod then I'm not sure you have any option but to move your mod to a different cell.

 

Hope that helps.

[walrus2517]

I have obtained permission from the modder to just post an edited version of his esp, however, I was trying to figure out how to do patches because I have other mods that put spawn points and such in the same area and would rather just post patches than contact every modder.

 

I have been loading saves from a cell adjacent to one edited so that may be the issue.

 

It also occurred to me that maybe you can only patch ESM files in the manner I'm trying. For ESP files I'm probably stuck editing the file itself as you said. I'm guessing this because I made a patch for Increased Wasteland Spawns (which is an ESM file) the same way and it worked. Don't know why I didn't think of that before. :)

 

Thank you very much for the help.

[Gribbleshnibit8]

Not having used VWFO, I'm not certain, but I'll assume that it comes in esp form. If this is the case, then your issue is due to the fact that the GECK will not recognize plugins as masters. To get around this you need FNVEdit. Open VWFO in FNVEdit, wait for it to load fully, then expand the mod in the tree view. Click on the File Header section (it'll be the only one without a + next to it). Now go the the right pane and find the Record Flags line. Right click and select Edit. Check the first option in the new window, then click OK and close FNVEdit with saving.

 

Now VWFO is a master file and a plugin can use it as a master file.

[walrus2517]

Not having used VWFO, I'm not certain, but I'll assume that it comes in esp form. If this is the case, then your issue is due to the fact that the GECK will not recognize plugins as masters. To get around this you need FNVEdit. Open VWFO in FNVEdit, wait for it to load fully, then expand the mod in the tree view. Click on the File Header section (it'll be the only one without a + next to it). Now go the the right pane and find the Record Flags line. Right click and select Edit. Check the first option in the new window, then click OK and close FNVEdit with saving.

 

Now VWFO is a master file and a plugin can use it as a master file.

 

So it is as I suspected and why it worked for IWS (esm) and not VWFO (esp). Thank you very much for the help.

[JasonDangerously]

Glad you got it sorted out, happy modding. =)