Removing and renaming stuff in the .esp?

[vurt]

Is it safe? I have a some stuff i'd like to rename (both in my New Vegas mods, and in my Skyrim and possibly FO3 mods) - e.g model names of grasses.

 

I've also got a few items i want to remove completely. Right now i've just done a "Delete" over the item in GECK, saved the .esp. Is this ok to do or not?

 

I've tried FNVedit autoclean afterwards but it doesn't clean or find anything.

 

Thanks!

/n00b

[kylemarshiku]

Would it be weird to say it depends? But I think that is the answer. I once had an issue where a weapon pack mod had a few weapons that kept crashing the game whenever an NPC spawned with that weapon. I went into FNVEdit, deleted the problematic weapons, and the game was fine. However, a side-effect was that some NPC's just had their bare hands afterwards, probably because they had been affected by the leveled lists.

 

I've also had situations arise because of conflicts. Like, a wall appearing where another mod added a doorway. So I went into the GECK, hit delete, and saved. Worked like a charm. But that's an easy placed object situation. Not sure if this is considered clean or dirty, to be honest. But it seemed okay...

 

As for renaming model names, I think you'd just want to check that any entries in the esp that reference those models are updated properly.

 

Not an expert, but that's my take anyway. Hope I've been of some help.

[dubiousintent]

My understanding is that when you "rename" an object, you are creating a new "form"; a copy of the original "base form" with a new "Editor-ID", which the GECK automatically assigns a unique Form-ID. The old named form remains. (That is the preferred method, because it doesn't break things still depending upon that original form name, like the DLCs.) The key then is: which form (Editor-ID) is referenced by plugin records. Only those which use your "new Editor-ID" names will display the related artwork.

(Please see the 'GECK Form-ID, Base-ID, Ref-ID, and Editor-ID' section of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article.)

If you intend the vanilla game to utilize your replacement artwork, you have to use the original "Editor-IDs" and replace the artwork files (NIF and/or DDS). Otherwise, just replacing the existing references in the base game and DLC records will break any mods which still reference the original "Editor-IDs". (That is the essence of the problem mentioned with "leveled lists" leaving NPCs with bare hands.)

xEdit/FNVEdit's "cleaning" only works on records meeting certain criteria. (That gets complex enough that they have created "autoclean wizard" for it because so many people can't seem to follow the guide on how to manually configure for it.) Such criteria as "Identical to Master (ITM)" (which may nor may not be intentional) or "dirty edit" records. Creating a new form should not meet such criteria (but it's the GECK, so who knows. Most "dirty edits" are accidentally caused by the GECK itself).

Deleting a "form" is not recommended as it's "deleting the references (DTRs)". From the (older) "TES5Edit Cleaning Guide":

Deleted references are a significant cause of crashes and game bugs. This is because if one mod tries to modify a reference that another mod has deleted, then the first mod cannot find the reference, and this then causes problems. A deleted reference can be fixed by undeleting then disabling the references and moving it to a position where it is no longer visible in the Creation Kit (TES5Edit sets the Z axis position to -30,000 units). This has the same effect as deleting the reference, without causing issues. Deleted references can be cleaned automatically using TES5Edit.

-Dubious-

[vurt]

Thanks!

 

I think i'll just work on this for a while until im happy and then write down what i've done and recreate it from scratch with better naming etc. It's not a complex mod so it can probably be done in an hour.