SSE Need advice re: cleaning my first mod, wild edits?

[ladyleigh23]

TLTR version: my player home mod seems to contain a bunch of wild edits - how did they get there, and how do I figure out which ones I can delete?

 

 

EDIT: I've made another attempt at deleting things that don't belong and I think I've found most of them (and I still have walls so that's progress), but I'll leave this here because I'd still be curious if anyone has advice about how to prevent these weird edits from sneaking in in the future!

 

 

Full story:
I've been working on my first serious SSE mod, a player home near Darkwater, north of Ivarstead. So far I have spent a lot of time on the architecture in the exterior world space (grid cells 20,-11; 21,-11; 20,-12; 21,-12) including some additions to the terrain of the hillside, and in the new interior cell; I have been working almost exclusively with static objects (some of which were copy-pasted from other cells, and I suspect this might be part of my problem), and have hooked up the doors to load between cells. House looks beautiful, so far so good.

 

I first realized I had a problem when I was running around the world and noticed a rocky waterfall near Whiterun floating 30 feet up in the air.

 

 

 

Oops.

 

(I presume I was trying to move a tree or something in my area and grabbed the waterfall by mistake? But I thought you could only select objects in the same cell as your camera?) So I got into mod cleaning using SSEEdit, and started by deleting ITM files (and undeleted and deactivated references), then started looking for the line that moved the waterfall (and anything else that might have gone wrong - I'm pretty sure I moved some of those blue weather boxes by mistake).

 

Instead I found dozens of lines of changes that I never intended to make, and I have no idea how they got there. Weird stuff like collision markers at golden glow estate and a cave full of bandits. (Like I said, I've mostly been working with static objects; I haven't even touched navmeshing yet, let alone editing NPCs.)

 

 

There are also quite a few items that seem to be ITM but aren't, and apparently conflict with things like Update.esm.

 

 

So I went about deleting anything that seemed like it probably didn't belong, and that was.... disastrous. My house from the outside was invisible/gone except the doors, and when I got inside there was a friggin dragon flying around in the cell, through the walls.

 

At this point I realized that I am a bit out of my depth, and should probably ask for help.

 

So, Question(s) 1: Are some of these things that look like 'wild edits' actually things I need? And how did that happen?

 

Question 2: How do I figure out which lines are necessary to keep and which should be deleted?

 

Thanks in advance for your help!!!

Edited July 3, 2020 by ladyleigh23

[cumbrianlad]

I guess it's just experience.

 

Tips for not getting stuff into your mod...

 

Never copy and paste from a vanilla cell with your esp active.

Never look at a vanilla cell with your esp active. Opening it in the render window won't normally harm, but clicking on any object probably will. Right-click and edit to see its properties will definitely mark it as edited by your mod. Simply opening some exteriors in CK will add records to your mod.

 

It looks to me like you've been working on your mod and checking vanilla cells to see what Beth did.

 

Any colour in SSEedit other than white is something edited by your mod. Even following my recommendations above, the occasional wild edit may creep in. I can't tell you what green, yellow or red records need to be removed, because I don't know your mod.

 

Here's an example:

 

You place a Nord dungeon entrance in Tamriel. It fits well enough except for a tree that's sticking through the roof. You disable the tree in CK (never delete anything vanilla! Disable or move). In CK the tree will show up yellow. It won't do any harm. If you remove the record, the tree will be back sticking out of your entrance. That record can be left alone.

 

On the other hand, while in CK you've accidentally selected several bushes and trees and moved or rotated them a tiny bit 9easily done). They will also show up yellow. Remove these records.

 

Even a lot of the green edits are probably stuff you clicked on accidentally. I generally remove the lot, but I inspect each one carefully first.

 

In the end, you have to look at SSEedit and scroll through it looking for stuff you know you don't want.

 

Get in the habit of never even looking at vanilla cells with your esp active and you've gone 90-odd% of the way to eliminating this. After that, the occasional wild edit should stick out like a sore thumb in SSEedit! I check after almost every CK session. This way it is fresh in my mind what I've just worked on, so I can pick out any wild edits very easily. Also, there are likely to be very few or none, if you follow my recommendations.