LE Question about esm files

[megabliss7116]

Made the mistake of posting this in the "General Mod Author Forum", so I've relocated my question here.

 

I've searched the forums for an answer to this but either I didn't type in the proper keywords or am somewhat of an idiot lol.

 

I've have a mod that I have just released. It require navmesh and so I had to convert it to an esm, but since it also has landscape changes I needed to have an esp file to keep the landscape changes.

 

I've run into a bit of a problem, I think I may have set up the esp and esm files wrong. I only put the landscape changes in the esp file and left the objects and navmesh in the esm. So obviously whenever I make updates or changes, I use the unconverted version of the esm (still in esp form). This causes a problem by deleting all objects that the player places throughout the mod.

 

I guess my question is this, should I have put all the objects in the cells into the esp file rather than leaving them in the file that is to be converted into the esm?

[ch0k3h0ld]

I'm sure there are a lot of ways to do this. I am just going to tell you how I do it and maybe some of the more experienced modders on here will give us both some tips. My mod is called the Dovakiin's Warehouse so I named the mod file warehouse.esp. I work in the esp file and then convert to esm with Wrye Bash. I have a second file -- warehouse_landscape.esp -- which I do not convert. The entire interior cell and all new exterior statics are in warehouse.esm and any modified exterior statics (trees, rocks, etc.) the landscape and the exterior navmesh are in warehouse_landscape.esp. I use different names because managing the two esp files would be a nightmare. The esm file will add new things to the exterior but will not modify anything in the vanilla exterior cell, including the navmesh. An esm appears to finalize vanilla navmesh fine so you can add doors, but it does not otherwise modify it. The interior cell does not suffer from the navmesh bug, but the exterior cell does. As of now, there is no reasonable way to fix exterior navmesh that I am aware of. Some people are using FO3Edit to create ONAM lists for their esm files, which lets them modify other masters, but that creates loads of errors for me and I am not comfortable posting something like that. Of course, none of this does anything for the files uploaded to Steam.

[megabliss7116]

Well, I have mine set up similar to the way you've done yours then. Basically my esm file contains all the objects, navmesh and interior cells I have, while the esp file contains the landscape. My problem is that if at some point in the future I need to update the mod with something as simple as changing the lighting, I'm going to have to require people to take out all their items from the home in the mod.

 

Here's my process. I work on my mod that is still just an esp file. Once finished, I created 2 copies (1 esm and 1 esp). After deleting everything in the esp file except for the landscape changes, I then have my esp and esm files that work together. Thing is, at least I haven't found a solution to this, an esm can't be tampered with other than to tack on another esp file with the new changes. So what I have ended up doing is taking that original esp file (the one that I initially was working on to make the mod), adding the changes to that, and then converting that to a new esm file (I keep a copy of the esp with landscape changes so I can just put the new esm and that in the rar file to upload).

 

That's where my problem is coming in, with every time I add changes I need to make another esm file to replace the old one which in turn causes all the player's objects they've placed to be deleted from the interior.

[ch0k3h0ld]

I do the same thing and I haven't had that problem at all. As long as the file name doesn't change, and as long as the item ids of storage containers remain the same, nothing should be deleted. The only time I had anyone lose anything from either the esm version on Nexus or the esp version on Steam was when the CK totally trashed the esp once on my upload to Steam. After that upload, the esp had lost all of its references, like merchant containers, factions, etc. The navmesh was also deleted and all of the item ids changed on the items, including the chests. I started working furiously to redo the navmesh and uploaded it and started testing that before I realized the true extent of the problem. I didn't make a backup of that version before I uploaded so I had to role back and start over for the Nexus version but it was too late for Steam. It had already started auto updating the users. It was a pretty big mess that set the mod back quite a bit on the Workshop. It hasn't happened again, but I save backups now before I upload from the CK.

 

So anyway, unless something goes wrong, you should be able to make revisions to the "master" esp, copy it to esm and upload the result without causing any one to lose anything. The real trouble is if you keep the mod on both Nexus and Steam like I do. It is a real pain to maintain two versions of the same mod. I have a hard time making the same fixes twice for everything and it is too much trouble to split them everytime.

Edited April 25, 2012 by ch0k3h0ld

[megabliss7116]

That makes sense to me. I also thought about putting mine up on steam up as well, but I wasn't sure if the navmesh bug is still ongoing. Since I have ~55 NPC's, it would be completely obvious if it bugs out and they are all standing in place doing absolutely nothing.