[LE] Register for modders to log which vanilla cells their mod edits?

[cumbrianlad]

Hi,

 

I've thought for a long time it would be great if we had a place to register which vanilla cells our mods edit, interior or exterior.

 

That way if I want to edit a wilderness cell outside Whiterun, for example, I can check the register and see if that cell has already had a house plonked into it by somebody else.

 

It could be used by modders and players alike and would get rid of the bland (and quite frankly useless) comments that all modders have to make in their mod description... you know the one... "May conflict with any other mod that edits this area of Skyrim". Just what use is that to either a fellow modder or a player?

 

If my idea gets a good reception, I could speak to the moderators to see if we could get such a thing going.

 

Edit I altered the poll to allow people to say they don't want a register in the 2nd and 3rd questions.

[maxarturo]

I don't mean to undermine you idea, but something like this would be great at least 5+ years ago, now a days only one maybe three (if we are lucky) mods a year are made that may use a lot of vanilla cells, i'm talking about dungeons/quest/large mods and not player homes which is the only thing been produce by the thousands.

The majority of the modders that created all those mods, and the majority of the large dlc size mods that are available on Nexus, which they all use vanilla cells and were all made some years ago, they are not longer active (most of them are married with a bunch of children and NO MORE FREE TIME), so adding all those mods into your "Edited Cell Map" should be your main focus and it's going to be a big issue and a big pain in the a**!.

Nevertheless you got my vote...

[cumbrianlad]

Thanks, Maxarturo.

 

I realise how big a task this would be, especially retrospectively entering the details of all those old mods.

 

I'm personally willing to potter along downloading mods, checking cells and adding them into any such register. Even if i only looked at 5 or 6 a week, it would very soon start to become useful. If I feel I've got good enough backing I'll take it up with the moderators and do all the initial donkey work myself.

 

Just adding the quest mods I have will get the ball rolling... I've got quite a few!

 

If people on this forum started adding their own and maybe the details for the mods they have that aren't already logged, we could get a decent working register in a few months.

[Hoamaii]

yeah, pretty good idea, CumbrianLad, it sure would help me for some other mods I've been working on. However yes, if the author's not around anymore, resgistering will be hard to get for the vast majority of mods unless someone volunteers to check these mod's edits in Tes5Edit.

 

In my opinion, it'd be interesting to pair this with a "cleaned with Tes5Edit" stamp - there are still way too many mods out here (including very popular ones) with dirty edits. Listing cells edited by a mod is a very good idea, but it'd still be incomplete if accidental dirty edits in other celles are not accounted for, don't you think?

[cumbrianlad]

Hoamii,

 

I agree completely. While it adds to the work of getting the mods recorded, it would certainly be a good idea to at least check for cleaning, which wouldn't take long at all.

 

Mod name | Cells Used | Cleaned SSeedit

Mod x | 21, 15 | Completely

 

Without naming anyone, I've checked a mod in SSeedit that was live and reduced it's size by around 90% from memory. Another much bigger one that didn't work was half the size when I'd finished with it and worked as intended! Some of the wild edits would have stopped a main questline dead in one mod. Lots of people know about the automatic cleaning in SSEedit, but haven't learned how to do the essential manual cleaning.

 

If a mod is badly in need of manual cleaning, that gets harder for someone who is not the mod author to do. That's why I wrote 'Fully'. The cleaning field could be 'No', 'Auto Only', or 'Completely'. It would be only a matter of a couple of minutes to assess a mod that way in SSeedit.

 

Good idea.

[Rizalgar]

While I stand with maxrturo on the timing of it, this is nonetheless a great idea. Seems like something that Nexus should have actually implemented themselves during the upload process for a mod, something that they should actually do now. Not just for Skyrim, but just about all the games that have mods that can make core vanilla changes. You've got my vote, lad.

[cumbrianlad]

Thanks, Rizalgar.

 

I'll wait for a few more votes, maybe a week or two and see where we go. I notice I've now got 3 votes to add more to it. Did you want more and was it Hoamii's idea of flagging the mods' 'cleaned' status?

[npdogg]

The only way I see this being useful or more widely adopted is if it were somehow folded into LOOT. Use some kind of xEdit script to generate the modified cells automagically.

[cumbrianlad]

Thanks for the suggestion npdogg. I'll bear that in mind when I come to deciding the way forward. That does seem like a good idea. I'd need to get in touch with the team.