Richard123 Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 (edited) OK, so here's what I'd like to do. I've got Francesco, TNR All Races, and ColourWheels Sexy Female NPC's (as well as several dozen others, but these are three I'm concerned about now). What I'd like to do is collapse the face data only: ColourWheel onto TNR, then TNR onto Francesco. This way, I'll get all the improved faces, but keep Francesco's gameplay modifications. Any ideas? I think WryeBash might be the way to go, but quite frankly, reading through the documentation, Wrye scares the bejeebus outta me. I can learn it if I have to, but I've can avoid it, I'd prefer to. And obviously, I'm not enthused about the prospect of using the TES4Edit tool to manually copy all the face data over, cause that will take forever... Thanks in advance for your ideas! Edited January 20, 2012 by Richard123 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Brasher Posted January 23, 2012 Share Posted January 23, 2012 This sounds like a task for an experienced modder. My guess would be that the most useful tools for this would be the CS and TES4Gecko. It might involve things such as mod merging in TES4Gecko and setting the priority for one mod higher than for another, but at a different stage the lower priority mod might be set higher than another. You might need to do things such as extreme modcleaning in the CS or TES4Edit to chop out most of a copy of a mod before merging it into something else. And if things do not go well, you may end up doing lots of manual renaming to copy in the CS, or like you suggest, copying and pasting in TES4Edit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard123 Posted January 23, 2012 Author Share Posted January 23, 2012 ugh... I was afraid of that. You suggest using TES4Gecko. Although I've used it before, I'm not seeing any (immediately obvious) means of setting one particular part of a mod as higher priority, while leaving the rest low. In my past experience, it will just take all changes from the higher ESP and mash them onto the lower. So, for example, if the higher ESP changes a particular NPC's face, let's say Jensen, while the lower changed her stats, the merged result would have only the face changes, and I'd lose the stat changes. You also mention "extreme mod cleaning". I'm not familiar with any way in TES4Edit to leave a <null> entry in a particular line for a given entry. As I recall, were I to try, I would get "0" instead of <null>, or it would default to stock Oblivion ESM entry. And I would still have to do it line-by-line, I can't do a mass edit. And (just to mention), I avoid using the CS. All it does is crash on me anyways, and the damn thing takes forever to save any changes you make, so I just avoid it. So, I guess I'm stuck, eh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Brasher Posted January 23, 2012 Share Posted January 23, 2012 TES4Gecko can only have an entire mod set to a a certain priority. Different parts may not be set to different priorities. This is where the extreme modcleaning could come in. You could surgically amputate large parts of a copy of a mod so that when you merge, none of the components that would have an incorrect priority would be present. Only one mod can touch an NPC. So you are correct that you cannot just mash the face added by one onto the stats of another. That part would have to be manually done over a long period of time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard123 Posted January 23, 2012 Author Share Posted January 23, 2012 drat and fooey. OK then, now I have to start learning how to make a macro. Thanks David! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omeletted Posted January 23, 2012 Share Posted January 23, 2012 No, Wrye Bash is the way to go. With the proper load order and bash tags, there's no need to mess with merging stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard123 Posted January 24, 2012 Author Share Posted January 24, 2012 Can it do partial overwrites? Like, face data from Mod 1 will overwrite all others, but any other changes from Mod 1 will be discarded? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrakeTheDragon Posted January 24, 2012 Share Posted January 24, 2012 (edited) Can it do partial overwrites? Like, face data from Mod 1 will overwrite all others, but any other changes from Mod 1 will be discarded?If you make Mod 1 load pretty early but give it the Bash Tag to import its facedata into the bashed batch, it will restore Mod 1's face data after the others overwrote it. That's the functioning of the bashed patch and the Bash Tags, picking apart the settings a mod touches and only keep the details you want, and also the explanation for why the bashed patch should always load last. Btw., did you know that without the bashed patch Oblivion doesn't even know "gender seperation"? If a mod touches one gender of a race (a Male Body Mod for example) and leaves the other gender untouched (Vanilla settings), the other gender will end up as Vanilla when it's loading last. Only the bashed patch can prevent this (merging male settings from male and female settings from female body mods)... and many other things along the line. Edited January 24, 2012 by DrakeTheDragon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard123 Posted January 24, 2012 Author Share Posted January 24, 2012 OK, that's perfect for my needs. Do you happen to know of a good how-to manual for WryeBash? I tried looking it up once, but I found the documentation to be, shall we say, "sketchy at best"? I'm more than happy to get in there and start writing my own Bash Tags, I just couldn't figure out how... Re the "gender differentiation," I had always considered this to be deliberate on the part of the game designers. If nothing else, it allows one to have two separate settings for male and female. Eg: Vanilla settings for the male, but one of Edhildil's tanline mods and Ozmo's oil highlights for the female. Two separate fur/scale patterns for male and female Khajiit and Argonians would be another example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClayboTGW Posted January 24, 2012 Share Posted January 24, 2012 (edited) I have around 400 mods merged down to around 100 using the CS save as ( new Mod) function, Wyre Bash to tweak my load order tes4edit to fix any conflicts.. I learned this by a lot of trail and error... its not hard to learn just make sure you backup you original mod esps before starting.. right now I have 80 gigs of mod data running with hardly any crashes ever. Edited January 24, 2012 by ClayboTGW Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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