Modding guidelines compliant with TES5EDIT?

[dragonslayer2k12]

I recently discovered what a dirty edit is and why it is bad. So I recreated my latest mod to be as dirty edit free as possible. That means moving stuff far down and away from the default room when modding it instead of deleting stuff. Unfortunately I also discovered that some stuff just doesn't want to be moved like dead salmon in breezehome. I had to delete those two dead salmon and drag two new dead salmon into the room and put them where I wanted them to be. If I moved them and loaded a save game where the player already had breezehome, the salmon were still in their old positions. This happens even after going outside, pulling up the console and typing resetinterior whiterunbreezehome and wait atleast one hour and they are still there even if I use the pcb command too. But if I delete them and create new they don't have the problem. All other things in that home work just fine with moving them except for dead salmon I have no idea why.

 

So I have to assume that some things just have to be deleted? That means some dirty edits are going to be unavoidable. But what I would like to find here is some kind of guide or instructions on how to make a mod in such a way that TES5EDIT does not need to be used on that mod? in other words a TEST5EDIT "compliant" mod. Does anyone have links to such a thing around here?

[David Brasher]

You can initially disable certain items instead of moving them down out of sight or deleting them. Then they will not be visible or usable in the game and will not create UDR references.

 

TES5Edit even has a function that can automatically do an operation like this on a mod that a new modder built: Undelete and Disable References. (This may be where the badly named acronym "UDR" comes from.) This function does the same thing that you are talking about manually doing when you build your mods. Although I would say it is better to just never delete the references. Then you don't have to spend time using the function and verifying that it worked.

 

Deleted references are not actually "mod dirt." They are bad things that can cause CTDs if two mods refer to the same items and one of them deletes them, but they are not mod dirt. Mod dirt is unintentional or avoidable edits to things that do nothing toward making the mod function as designed. If you delete items, you did it on purpose because you wanted to edit the game to be that way.

 

The stock answer would be that there is no way to build a mod that TES5Edit does not need to be used on. Modders are always supposed to do their final modcleaning in TES5Edit before uploading. They may have done a really good job while building the mod and not find a single thing to clean, but they are still supposed to check. This way the mod is clean by the time the gamers get it, and they don't need to clean it, and if they do try, then they won't find anything to clean out of it.

Edited November 12, 2012 by David Brasher