Modding question

[wilbatruss1257]

Would it be technically possible to make a personal and functional mod that combined all my downloaded weapon mods into one ESP by copy-n-pasting all the data from the ESP's I wanted to use into a singular ESP? Like opening all the ESP's in notebook, copy and pasting each of the data into one mods ESP and just re-naming it so it'd function as a giant mod in itself. I'm a grug when it comes to modding, I have a ton of mods and i'm trying to lower my load order as much as humanly possible.

[M48A5]

Technically, yes. It has been done before with some of the game overhaul mods.

[madmongo]

Notebook?

 

In general, most weapons can just be copied into another mod with something like FNVEdit. I have done this for dozens of weapons mods that I use. Once you have all of the weapons in one mod, then you can also do things like add them to various leveled lists so that the weapons appear randomly throughout the wasteland.

 

Some things can cause you problems, though. You need to make sure that your weapon doesn't depend on something else in the mod, as that will break things if you only copy the weapon over. This applies to things like custom ammo and custom sounds for the weapons. You can often get around this by loading up the esp you are copying from and then making a copy of the custom sound or ammo (with new IDs), then create a copy of the weapon, and change the copy of the weapon to use the copied custom sound/ammo/whatever.

 

If weapon assets are packed into bsa files, you will probably need to unpack them.

 

Once I copied all of the weapons I wanted into a single mod, I made that mod an esm so that I could use it for various other personal use mods, like custom NPCs. Just remember that if you make a mod like a custom NPC that uses weapons from your custom combined mod, you can't release the NPC mod with the custom combined mod on the nexus (or anywhere else) without permission from all of the mod authors whose work went into your combined mod, which you probably aren't going to get. But as long as it is for personal use only, having the weapons mod as an esm is often useful.

Edited April 7, 2020 by madmongo

[Mktavish]

I think the simple copy/paste method you are looking for would be found in Merging Plugins.

Actually copy/pasting data from one .esp to another , would require an in depth understanding of how those mods are working. Which even for a seasoned modder would require some study of each to then figure out how to do that without a strong possibility of messing stuff up.

Which then leads to , if being for personal use , you might as well just make your own from the get go , while data mining those for how/what/why.

 

Ahh mongo got me with a ninja :ninja: :laugh:

[wilbatruss1257]

Are there any good guides for merging specifically for New Vegas for someone who's a total grognak with modding lol?

[Mktavish]

grognak ... that is funny

Yes there are guides for merging.

 

But I am not the one to point where.

 

dubious is the master of catalogued data.

seek his advice towards that end.

 

Which I mean I am not well versed with the data he can provide.

And you will never know untill you take that step into his catalogue.

But so you know dubiousIntent ... is one of my long standing friends here.

Which there is no escaping what he has brought to the forums.

A curator of an extensive library

And definite needed information.

It is however hard to find pertinent pieces

Which I don't know how to suggest to do different.

But the situation of perplexity does exist.

Evenstill , I would never hope to dissuade my brother in arms for what he gives to the forums.

For that which he hath dispensated , is worthy to last beyond those that have no worth in thier foundational principals.

[dubiousintent]

I had the same problem trying to figure out how to merge plugins when I started with FNV. There were bits and pieces scattered around in various videos and forum posts, but not what I considered an in-depth tutorial. (And I have a preference for written process descriptions over videos.) So I created my own as a wiki article. It does link to the various other sources I drew from. However, it is designed to minimize the amount of "surgery" required, so less than ideally suited to your purpose. There is a companion piece "Multiple file Merge-Up Procedure" which does step through the process of merging a couple of ESMs. Neither are what I would consider "light-reading".

 

Please see the wiki "Merged Plugin Guidelines for Personal Use" article.

-Dubious-