New .esl format

[chucksteel]

I was just wandering if anyone had any more info on the new .esl format available in the FO4 Creation kit? About all I can find is linked on the Creation Kit Wiki

 

 

Light Plugin: .esl

• Light plugin (.esl) file are a new optimized file format, introduced in the 1.10 Update. They behave like a normal plugin, except for the following:
  • .esl files are read-only. Active development should be done in an normal (.esp) plugin.
  • .esl files bypass the 8-bit plugin ID limit (255).
  • .esl files have a budget of no more than 4,000 forms.
  • .esl files are treated as unique files from the .esp it was converted from, so saved games will not be compatible between them.
• To convert a normal plugin (.esp) to a light (.esl) plugin, load your .esp file, and under File, select Convert Active File to Light Master.
• It is good practice to run Compact Active File Form IDs to optimize your formids within the 4,000 form budget.
  • NOTE: Compacting form ids does change formids in the plugin, so only do this before converting to .esl, and not on a .esp (plugin) you plan on releasing.

 

From what I can gather they are small but, fall outside of the load order limit. (assuming they are 64-bit but I haven't looked at one yet.)

 

has anyone tried them or have any more info about them?

[JonathanOstrus]

They don't exactly fall outside the load order limit. Rather they combine to occupy a single load order slot. From what I've gathered doing my own testing esl's occupy the FE (254) load order space. So you technically now get one less spot to put in esm/esp files because FE (254) and FF (255) are now reserved. When you activate an ESL the game engine will automatically numbers the records into that space and it somehow keeps track of this using some kind of mapping. So if you were to reorganize your esl load order the reported form id's from a help console command will be different based on the order. However any items that were placed in the world or in inventory and such remain intact because of the internal mapping that is going on.

[RedLeviathan]

Good to know. What I can observe so far, ESL file is basically ESM file. It has the header, and renaming it to ESM just make the engine treat the file as standard ESM, and not occupying the FE load order.

[Deleted15964729User]

Just a little headsup... xEdit now reads ESL's nativly, so far it's worked perfectly for me. You can yank it at https://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/3750-wipz-tes5edit/

[SMB92]

So given this info, you technically can't use the ESL files in place of a true merged mod because there is no way to keep it patched. And you really wanna hope a mod in question doesn't conflict with your load order.

 

To summarise, you'd have an order of ESMs, ESLs and the ESPs. If the ESLs behave as ESMs, I wonder if you can slave them to anything at all? I'll have to check if you can convert ESP to ESM and then to ESL.

 

Seems like a missed opportunity to have unlimited small mods...

[SMB92]

Well the process for creating a precalc patch is really convoluted now. Have to have a copy of the ESPs converted to ESMs temporarily so I can change the masters to the ESPs in xEdit after I've done generating.

 

I'm not sure if ESL is exactly like ESM, I can save directly as an ESL? I'd like to see if I can just rename an ESL to ESP and add my/convert my ESP masters..

[choochoo1]

I managed to get a mod converted to an esl, if you change it's extension back to esp it will recognize it but it seems to count against the load order again, even if it was saved as an esl. From what I have seen esl files are master files like esm files and can have esp files slaved to them like any esm files. I have an issue that it reads loose files fine but it does not recognize the BA2 packed files, that said, that may be an issue on my end, I just started learing how to pack files. the biggest issue I have had with the process is not getting the file converted to esl but actually activating it as NMM does not recognize it, I ended up having to edit the plugins text manually but so far it seems to be working with 255 OTHER mods installed and running. Im planning to look at it more tonight/tomorrow.

[SMB92]

So if you are running 255 plugins, I wonder if that means they merge with the FF block? If so then I wonder if the ESLs can be placed before any ESP patch, and merge at runtime as normal with patched data overrides?

[zilav]

All esl plugins are loaded in FE slot.

[choochoo1]

I have 255 plugins plus 5 or so esl files and they still all fall in the FE slot.

As for order, the game reads them as a master so they will load with the esm files near the begining of the order.

From what i have seen patches for esl files will work but tbeg count as an esp and will take a slot. I do not know if you can make a patch for an esl file tbat is itself an esl file. Might try that tonight.

Edited September 19, 2017 by choochoo1