Something strange happened when I converted my mod from an .ESP to an .ESM

[trashgarbage666]

I've been working on a large-scale overhaul of New Vegas for a while now, and I came to a point in the project where I needed to make several custom NPCs. After I got a few of them made, I noticed that their body was white, while their heads retained their original skin color. I already know the fix for this problem, though: convert your mod into an .ESM. So I made a backup of my mod, converted it, started a new file, and teleported to my custom NPC. Sure enough, converting my mod fixed the issue, but it broke something else in the process. Possibly multiple things, but I don't know yet.

 

In vanilla New Vegas, at the very end of the character creation process, Doc Mitchell says "try not to get killed anymore" and a message pops up asking if you'd like to enable Hardcore Mode. What's going on behind the scenes is that a script forces the player to remotely activate an object, and that object shows you the message. In my mod, a different message pops up, and after you were done with that, it shows you the hardcore mode message as per usual. But now that my mod is an .ESM, it doesn't work. Even if I disable collision, go out of bounds, and activate the object myself, nothing. The object that shows the hardcore message works when activated manually, though.

 

I'm not really sure what to do. Are seemingly random problems like this common when converting .ESPs?

 

EDIT: So, I had an idea: What if I used a leveled character spawner instead of a unique NPC? I gave it a try, and it worked fine! Correctly toned limbs on a "new" NPC, no .ESM required!

Edited June 14, 2019 by punchbattle

[dubiousintent]

We've tried to collect the little that is known about this in the "ESM and ESP Files" entry under the "Misc Topics" section of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article.

 

Sounds to me as if you ran into the caution:

It sometimes helps to think of using ".ESM" files to add new things, and ".ESP" files to change existing things or modify existing areas.

 

"Spawning" seems to fall under the "modifying an existing area" caveat.

 

Also:

references by packages to markers and other scripted objects need to be persistent or they will not work in an ESM.

 

 

-Dubious-

[Mktavish]

We've tried to collect the little that is known about this in the "ESM and ESP Files" entry under the "Misc Topics" section of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article.

 

Sounds to me as if you ran into the caution:

It sometimes helps to think of using ".ESM" files to add new things, and ".ESP" files to change existing things or modify existing areas.

 

"Spawning" seems to fall under the "modifying an existing area" caveat.

 

Also:

references by packages to markers and other scripted objects need to be persistent or they will not work in an ESM.

 

 

-Dubious-

 

Ya that's a good notice ... but on the last thing there ... doesn't anything referenced by anything need to be persistent ? What cases do not need to be persistent ?