Discerning which scripts are MINE.

[QaxeIsKaze]

This is a fairly noobish question, but it's an important one.

Beth saw fit to give each mod its own Voice, Meshes and Textures folders, but just lumps all the scripts into one big folder. I've got 2 of my own mods that use scripts, but I've tried a fair number of other people's mods, and have their scripts in my Scripts folder as well. I'm running into a lot of trouble when I upload a mod onto the Nexus, and leave out a script that was needed to make a quest run.

 

Here is my difficulty: some scripts are obvious, ones named after the quest I made. Also, ones with less obvious names but where dates match up to the date I made a quest. But what about the others? I've had troubles with quests failing and rebuilt them from scratch, so I've got those scripts in there too. I would like to clean this all up and make sure that my mod players are getting what they need.

 

Oh, and BTW... when I use DEFAULT scripts, such as DefaultSetStageAliasScript, does my main quest script take care of that for the player? I do not have such script files in my folder that have matching dates. Meaning, if I made my mod on 12/31, but the date for DefaultSetStageAliasScript is 12/8... is there a chance it still needs to be uploaded?

 

Can anyone lend some advice on how to discern which scripts go with which mod? Thanks for your patience.

[TheGreenLion]

Well like you said they are all lumped into a big pile. I've gotten very well practiced about tagging anything I modify with a unique prefix (for instance mine is TGL). If you use vanilla scripts you won't need to upload those, it's all tied together in the .esp/.esm.

 

It also depends on the scripts, if they are all part of a quest you can go through that quest and find your scripts that way. It's still stuck in your quest, so the missing script will be there somewhere. Another way you might go about it is moving your scripts folder to the desktop, and have steam verify the cache by right-clicking on Skyrim in your games library, going to Properties, navigate to Local Files and click Very Integrity of Game Cache. It should find and redownload your Scripts folder. Then you can compare it to the old scripts folder and eliminate the scripts that are part of a vanilla Skyrim install inside your old folder.

 

All you should have left are scripts added by your mods and other people's mods. Then, hopefully you don't have a ton of mods with scripts in them, and (if you're like me you keep copies of the zipped mods) poke through those and find any with scripts and move those scripts back into the restored scripts folder.

 

That's the only way to be dead certain that what is left are scripts you've added. I hope that helped, and good luck! :thumbsup:

[IsharaMeradin]

  Quote

Another way you might go about it is moving your scripts folder to the desktop, and have steam verify the cache by right-clicking on Skyrim in your games library, going to Properties, navigate to Local Files and click Very Integrity of Game Cache. It should find and redownload your Scripts folder. Then you can compare it to the old scripts folder and eliminate the scripts that are part of a vanilla Skyrim install inside your old folder.

Actually, to restore the scripts folder you need to verify the Creation kit. The PSC files are installed with the CK. By default there are no PEX files in the script folder. So techinically everything in there is mod added.

 

You could use the built in archive tool in the Creation Kit to create a BSA of the mod you are working on. There are some instances where it doesn't pick up on everything but 90% of the time it is pretty accurate. There is an external version of the archive tool that is 100% accurate but I'm still not sure on how exactly to use it as it requires setting things up just right.

 

However, going forward it would be good to come up with a prefix for all your files and even all your Creation Kit records/forms. Then if you have a lot of mods you could go so far as developing mod specific prefixes to place after your main personal prefix.

[TheGreenLion]

Doh, that's right. Thanks for correcting me, Ishara! And a pretty good solution I might add, that does give me a thought though. Usually the psc files aren't uploaded, so it would be reasonable to assume that there would only be source files of the mods the author made. So if you sorted them by date, all the vanilla source files would be the same while the additional source files should have a different date.

 

Then you could hunt down the pex files pretty quickly. Although you'd still have to know which of those went to which of your mods. :biggrin:

 

Okay so looking at my own list some mods do have source files loaded in, but it does narrow down your possiblities significantly.

Edited January 1, 2013 by TheGreenLion

[QaxeIsKaze]

Excellent. Thanks to both of you.

Question: At what point in the process are you giving your scripts custom prefixes? I do want to do this, and vanilla game scripts seem to do this, but I'm unclear where it's done. Meaning, do I do this while in the CK or is it done by actually going into my file and renaming the script files that way? (I hope you didn't already say this and I misunderstood)

 

Thanks again.

[IsharaMeradin]

I always make my script first in the CK on the object in question and give it the name & prefix I want there at that time. Only use an external editor if I'm so lost in the script that I can't figure out which is the line the compile errors are referring to. Or when I'm in the middle of testing the script and I just need to make some tweaks without actually changing properties.

[BaronofHe11]

For one reason or another I wasn't able to name script fragments I created for dialog topics. All of these have generic names that the CK created like TOL_17848454. Trying to rename the script caused the game to not trigger the script.

 

Currently I'm playing around with a new method of keeping things together. I do tag everything I work with with boh but I also use a unique data folders. So each mod I am working on has a data folder. When I want to work on BaronsTravelMod I rename the real data folder to XData and rename BaronsTravelMod-Data to Data.

[QaxeIsKaze]

Dang. I really don't think ahead. I never thought I'd even make a quest, let alone make several, so I never thought to pay attention to what kind of scripts I was accumulating. Blast. But this archive idea sounds promising. It would be great to just give people 1 file to upload instead of a bunch of files they need to slop in place.

 

Oh, and the point was made that the original Scripts file doesn't contain things like defaultsetstagealiasblahblah.pex . This makes me wonder, if every modder who uses this default script, how is it that any of these mods are compatible? I mean, if I upload the default script .pex file into my mod, and others do that, the users of our mods would be screwed? What am I misunderstanding here?

 

"I always make my script first in the CK on the object in question"

Custom scripts I need, such as a "Death Script" to set a stage, sure. But things like QF_ILQ01_010381D8 -- what CK named the script for my quest apparently -- don't "seem" to be nameable...or are you saying that you create your scripts before even opening your quest? CK made several of these for me when I created the quest, or made some dialogue. Sorry I'm not grasping this as quickly as we'd like.

Edited January 2, 2013 by Ahondara

[BaronofHe11]

You aren't missing anything. They are not in fact compatible.

[Eckss]

In the CK, navigate to: File – Preferences – Scripts and set yourself a prefix.

 

This won’t help with ones that are already created, but you can check under: Gameplay – Papyrus Script Manager. This will list all the scripts and you can Right-Click on a script to access Use Info for that script. Once you’ve identified a script fragment as being used in your Mod, Double-Click on the script’s usage reference that points to something in your Mod and you’ll be taken to the place where you wrote that script fragment. There will be 2 Tabs, the one that is normally shown is ‘Papyrus Fragment’, the other is ‘Advanced’. Click on Advanced and then on ‘Rename Script’. This will allow you to rename the script without causing the CK to lose it. Once you’ve done this for your older Mods, you can ensure that you name all future scripts thus preventing this problem from re-occuring.

 

I hope that was clear enough, as I’m still feeling the after-effects of New Year.

Eck. :D