[LE] Mod I made suddenly stopped working.

[xtif]

Sorry, I originally posted this under mod troubleshooting before I realized that was the wrong place for my issue. Apologies for double posts....

 

Admittedly, I am a novice modder. My modding experience extends as far as cracking into an ESP in Creation Kit in order to change the appearance of a mod added NPC... which has always been successful.

 

So, I decided to delve in a little further. I've been playing when Enhanced Lights and FX by Anamorfus for months now, and I love it. I recently decided to download Dawn of Skyrim, which I also love. BUT there are a few aesthetic compatibility issues between ELFX and Dawn of Skyrim. Such as light sources being left behind by ELFX even though the light fixture was removed by Dawn of Skyrim. Or fixtures added by ELFX are sitting in the same place as Dawn of Skyrim added decorations.

 

I figure, no big deal. All I have to do is remove the phantom light sources and move anything that's overlapping, right? I load up EnhancedLightsandFX.esp, ELFX - Exteriors.esp, ELFXEnhancer.esp, and Blues Skyrim.esp, and then begin working on my own ESP, Dawn of ELFX.esp.

 

It was going well. I am saving often, making backups of my ESP, and checking each city in game as I completed it in CK. I worked on it for about 3 days (while it wasn't a ton of work, CK being so fickle and temperamental made something that should've taken maybe a day, take a little bit longer).

 

So I finished it up last night. My ESP has all DLC ESPs (as per ELFX), the 3 ELFX ESPs, and Dawn of Skyrim's ESP as master files.

 

The load order that worked best was

 

EnhancedLightsandFX.esp

ELFX - Exteriors.esp

ELFXEnhancer.esp

Blues Skyrim.esp

Dawn of ELFX.esp

 

(LOOT agrees with this load order)

 

I wake up today, ready to take before and after screen shots in game. So I disable my ESP and load up Skyrim, and finish taking "before" screenshots. Then I enable my ESP and load up Skyrim again... only to find that, while anything I added to the game was still there, anything I moved OR removed, is back where it used to be.

 

I fiddled with my load order a little bit, because I figured that disabling it maybe made things wonky... to no avail. So I load it back up into CK and... low and behold... same problem in CK. Everything that I moved or removed is back in its old spot in CK too. So basically any deleted light source, any moved or deleted fixture, is all back to the way it was before. The only thing that isn't back to its original state is the light sources that I added.

 

So I start swapping out some of my back up ESPs, to see if maybe something went wrong with my final ESP. Same thing with all of them.

 

This is beyond my scope of troubleshooting, so now I am here.

 

I accept that my work went down the drain, but what I am hoping for is for someone to help me figure out how/why this happened, or what I did wrong when creating my patch, so that I can remake it and have it actually work... and not just temporarily :geek:

[agerweb]

I take it that your mod modifies one or more of the other esp's. If this is the case your esp won't remember any of the changes you make unless you make the mods you are changing temporary master when loaded into the CK.

 

To make a mod a temporary master load it into TesVEdit and change the header to ESM and save it. I think there are a number of programs like LOOT that will also let you ESMify a mod.

[xtif]

I already used Wrye Bash to ESMify the 4 master ESPs, so that CK will recognize them as masters and apply them as such when saving my ESP. Other than ESMify, I haven't altered anything directly in Dawn of Skyrim or ELFX. My ESP lists all DLC ESMs and the 4 ESPs from Dawn and ELFX as masters when viewing it in NMM, LOOT, TES5Edit, and the CK. And when I open my ESP and set it as active in the CK, it opens all of these master files along with it.

 

Once I finished my own ESP, I reverted the ESPs from ELFX and Dawn of Skyrim to regular ESPs before starting up the game.

 

Like I said, the mod was actually working last night, and everything was working as intended before I went to bed. It showed my changes made both within CK and in game. It wasn't until today, when I temporarily disabled my ESP for the sake of before screen shots, then enabling it again, that it stopped showing these changes. It's just bizarre to me because it maintained the stuff I added, but anything that I moved or removed didn't stick.

 

For example, Dawn of Skyrim adds a merchant stand in the same place that ELFX adds a light post in Solitude: screenshot

 

In Windhelm, Dawn of Skyrim removes a torch from the vanilla game which ELFX added its own light source for, so you can see this patch of light, with no corresponding light fixture: screenshot

 

In my ESP I removed the light post that was colliding with the merchant stand in Solitude, and removed that phantom light in Windhelm (among many other things). My changes were reflected both within CK and in game last night. After disabling my ESP and re enabling it today, not so much.

 

Another example, in Whiterun, Dawn of Skyrim adds laundry decor in the same place that ELFX adds a light fixture: screenshot

 

In this case, I didn't remove the light fixture, I just moved it somewhere, where it wasn't interfering with any decorations. This change was working/showing last night, but today the light fixture is back where it started. :pinch:

[agerweb]

Then the only thing I can think of is that maybe the game load order now does not have yours as the lowest mod.

[xtif]

Yeah, the first thing I checked was my load order, and mine is lowest.

If it were just not showing in game but showing in CK it would be a different story. But the fact that the data is now missing from my ESP even in CK is weird.

 

So I guess let's pretend I am starting from scratch.

 

I want to make a single patch ESP that modifies stuff from both ELFX and Dawn of Skyrim, to make them play a little bit nicer together.

 

So first thing I do is ESMify the ESPs from ELFX and Dawn, right?

 

Then I load all of those ESMified ESPs into CK, without setting any of them as active?

 

So now, I can move/remove stuff and when I hit save it doesn't save directly to any of the ESPs I loaded, but instead prompts me to name my file and select which directory to save it to. And once I save it, it will show all the ESMified ESPs as masters. And anytime I open the newly saved ESP into CK, it will also open the corresponding master files. And when setting the load order in NMM and/or LOOT, it will require that my ESP be loaded last.

 

Am I missing a step? Or a setting?

[agerweb]

You should create and save an esp in the CK first with nothing except Skyrim and any DLC you need. Then close the CK and reload your esp and the two ESMified mods you are going to alter make a few changes and check everything is working. Clearly something went arwy last time.

[xtif]

Oooh, yeah, I definitely didn't save the ESP on its own before loading up the other 2 mods.

 

Aside from that, I did everything else right?

 

(Also, thanks for taking the time to read/help out :wub: )

[agerweb]

If you hadn't created the esp first, it wouldn't have been loaded into the CK recognising the new masters. That's the only thing I can think of.

[xtif]

Now I just gotta psyche myself up enough to do everything all over again :facepalm: