6Domino6 Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 ESP files are there for a reason. Screwing around with game original content (even to make a total conversion) - easy way to totally bork your install. If you're concerned about too many ESPs, wait until the inevitable Wrye Bash release that will allow you to merge ESPs. I can think of a somewhat valid reason to want to edit the skyrim.esm. Say there's something that you want to remove from Breezehome. In my case the fire pit in the living room. Your esp does this. But for some reason the firewood in the centre of the darn thing still pops up through your living room floor. These objects only appear because something calls them. What could be doing that other than an un-editable file? I'm pretty certain there are no other mods running that affect Breezehome.The fix for things like that is to actually drag the item outside of the rooms so it spawns but the player doesn't see it. Or find the hidden trigger that keeps calling it. But more on the topic: Modifying the esm has rarely ever been a good idea...but I prefer easy installs and I'm not a fan of even non-BSA texture replacers since it's easy to screw up your textures if you don't pay attention. The biggest issue with modifying the .esm is that if they want to actually use an esp it may conflict with certain things because it is based off of the default world, not yours, and it would automatically choose the esp over the esm for things it will load. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sunnie Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 Theres no valid reason for messing with the Skyrim.esm itself. Your example of the firewood in Breezehome is a case of not fully removing all the related components from the decoration enable parent and setting them to "initially disabled". Screwing with the esm will mess up quite a few things, and you can not upload the Skyrim.esm here if you did manage to modify it. Also, necroing dead threads is not really kosher. /public service Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soulslayerzx Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 Wait, so if you upload a esm of your own with custom content. That will cause trouble!!!???? Not like I'd be making money off of it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sunnie Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 Wait, so if you upload a esm of your own with custom content. That will cause trouble!!!???? Not like I'd be making money off of it... No, I said you can not upload the "Skyrim.esm", which is the main Skyrim game file, it is a vanilla asset and can not be uploaded anywhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soulslayerzx Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 Wait, so if you upload a esm of your own with custom content. That will cause trouble!!!???? Not like I'd be making money off of it... No, I said you can not upload the "Skyrim.esm", which is the main Skyrim game file, it is a vanilla asset and can not be uploaded anywhere. No, like if I rename it to something like custom.esm . With my own custom contents and mixed in with some skyrim stuff. That'd still be trouble? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
6Domino6 Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 No, like if I rename it to something like custom.esm . With my own custom contents and mixed in with some skyrim stuff. That'd still be trouble?If it contains elements of the game that are unchanged then no. To distribute an ESM without trouble it needs to be something like deadlydragons.esm where the game will not play the same game (if it plays at all) without Skyrim.esm loaded. However I believe in Oblivion people made ESMs that made whole new worlds that actually replaced Tamriel with custom content, which as far as I know was acceptable because they were not distributing Bethesda assets, they made their own worlds and were just borrowing the engine. If you were to make a whole new world that didn't incorporate unchanged elements of Skyrim (ie All buildings, npcs, monsters, landscape made by hand) then you MAY have found a way around it, but in all honesty the line is so thin between modding and pirating when it comes to changing the actual Skyrim.esm that it may not be worth making an ESM meant to replace skyrim.esm unless you decided to manually strip the unchanged elements that you aren't using, since anybody using a CK on the new esm could access portions of the game. If I were you, not that I know exactly what you're planning, if the world I wanted to create was different from Skyrim in terms of location, I would add a way for the player to move to the new land rather than replace the main file for one, and for two I would create it from scratch (whether it is using their assets or using your own, since they do allow us to use their assets to build houses, etc) so there was no legal trouble. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trees415 Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 You guys are making this way more complicated then it needs to be. You can not upload the skyrim.esm file in any state or under any name, period. To do so would constitute piracy or copyright infringement. You are welcome to make your own changes to the file for your own enjoyment, however to do so is just asking for trouble. Modifying the esm has rarely ever been a good idea...but I prefer easy installs and I'm not a fan of even non-BSA texture replacers since it's easy to screw up your textures if you don't pay attention. Wait, what? If anything, using a BSA package for texture replacement is carries more risk then just leaving the files loose within the file structure. However, neither really pose much of a risk to begin with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
6Domino6 Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 Wait, what? If anything, using a BSA package for texture replacement is carries more risk then just leaving the files loose within the file structure. However, neither really pose much of a risk to begin with.I've had more issues with loose texture files than BSAs, but I don't use a ton of texture mods. I typically use 2-3 at the most not counting body mods. One for the actual world, one for static items, and sometimes one other one that just covers other stuff. The biggest issue I've ever had was with a body mod in FO3, could never get the raider tats to work properly when they were naked. It was a pain tracking down the files to delete and replace them. :/ But off topic! Trees is right, distributing skyrim.esm BAD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Korodic Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 This question is answered already. Skyrim.esm is off-limits. Do not bother attempting to alter it or look for a way to alter it. You are free to distribute your own esps and work, the skyrim.esm is bethesda's and you do not have permission to redistribute it even if you edit that. So even if you could for whatever reason you'd want to, it is illegal. Case closed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bben46 Posted March 13, 2012 Share Posted March 13, 2012 No, like if I rename it to something like custom.esm . With my own custom contents and mixed in with some skyrim stuff. That'd still be trouble? ALL of the 'stuff' included in the Skyrim.esm is copyrighted. Putting that copyrighted material in your custom.esm and then distributing it without permission - even if it is free - would still be a violation of copyright. Violating copyright is NOT about making money from the copyrighted material, it is about using somebody elses work without their permission. Bethsoft has given their permission for us to make AND distribute FREE mods. But NOT the game itself, as long as they are based on, but do not change the original game files. A new esp or esm after the original doesn't change their files, it overwrites them each time the game is started. The original files are never touched by a mod. That is why you can always get back to the vanilla game by removing all of the files that are added by a mod. If you want to make your own custom world, look at the Nehrim mod for Oblivion to see what they did. You can make a custom.esm that contains everything you want that is not included in the Skyrim, then load that one after Skyrim.esm and you will then have everything, and your esm will overwrite what you want to change. And you do not have to worry about verifying whether or not you remembered every little detail from the Skyrim.esm that you didn't change. And unlike making a partial copy of the copyrighted Skyrim.esm it will be legal to use, as long as the original Skyrim.esm is loaded also. The way this works is the Skyrim.esm is loaded first. Then every other esm or esp modifies (mods) that in the order they are loaded. ALL esms must be loaded before any esps. ESMs are master files that can contain assets used by multiple esps. So their content MUST already be present for an esp to either use it as is or to overwrite a portion of it to modify the game on load. The next problem is updates to Skyrim. Any update will probably wreck any change you made to the Skyrim.esm. And, it may not change all of what you did and crash. Forcing you to go back and reverse engineer the esm again to get whatever you changed back. This is what happened to many of the 4GB patches before Beth included the LAA bit in their own patch. However since they were based off of a program that modified not the vanilla Skyrim.esm on the hard drive, but a part of the esm that was loaded into RAM on each start, they didn't kill the game when they failed after a patch. Changing program to bypass any DRM is a legal land mine. There have been various contradictory ruling over the years. But they all agree that distributing the game after doing it is piracy. The actual current ruling - NOT a legal law, but a ruling on copyright exemptions by the US librarian of Congress - who is not a judge, but who is the keeper of copyrights - says you can do it for the purposes of research or investigation ONLY. :facepalm: And NOT for playing the game :blink: or for distribution. Distributing a game modified to bypass the DRM is piracy and will get a ban here. For anyone who doesn't understand, uploading the game (or any copyrighted material) where it can be downloaded is considered a form of distribution - even if it is for free. For reference, here is the link I used. http://gizmodo.com/5...t-means-for-you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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