[LE] Benefits of ESM instead of ESP ?

[maxarturo]

Hi everyone.

The question says it all.

If a stable ESP with heavy cells and functions is converted into an ESM ?, will this make it even more stable ?.

Or there is no point in doing so ?.

Thank you very much.

[agerweb]

I think it comes down to performance not stability. For an ESM the game will load only persistent references (game objects) and temporary references only when cells are loaded (ie are 'seeable' by the player); For an ESP the game will load all references at start up.

 

Also the reference handle cap is something just above a million and all mods in a players load order are counted; my large new world mod has 220k temporary references (but only 12k persistent) if it wasn't an ESM it would add a large chunk towards a players limit.

 

To find the reference count in xEdit Apply Script -> choose count_loaded_refs_in_load_order

[maxarturo]

Thanks agerweb.

You had me at "performance"... !.

Thanks for the tip, i'll certainly use xEdit to find the reference count.

Do you by any chance have a links on how to convert the ESP to ESM ?.

I had to reinstall my web browser and i forgot to export the 'Bookmarks' before uninstalling, stupid me !, i lost a bunch of things that interest me and they are very hard to find in the vast web universe...

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On another note.

Do you remember about 1.5 month ago that i posted something related to the 'New Auto Cleaning' process of Tes5Edit ?, that it shrinks the esp even if doesn't actually find any 'dirty edits'.

After a lot of real time testings and searching for any deleted references that xEdit may have deleted, it turns out that nothing is deleted from the mod and the deleted / removed references are from Vanilla NavMesh.

The 2 weird things that i found with this 'Automatic Process' are:

1) It finds 'Vanilla NavMesh' references that not only the mod has nothing to do with it, but also that i haven't ever even load that cell, not to mention that i haven't touched anything vanilla to begin with.

2) Everytime i use the 'Auto Cleaning' and then load the esp in CK, it keeps finding "Unfinalized NavMesh" in the exterior vanilla cell where my mod's NavMesh connects to the Vanilla, and of course the NavMesh is 'Finalize' and not a single vanilla vertex is touched.

If i 'Auto Clean' the esp and go in game, the vanilla NavMesh has no problems, npcs go back and forwards.

If i don't 'Auto Clean' the esp and go in game, the vanilla NavMesh has no problems, npcs go back and forwards.

I think this is a bug in the last version of Tes5Edit.

* I was planning to post the above on my original related post, but i lost my bookmarks...

Thank you very much.

Edited September 10, 2020 by maxarturo

[agerweb]

In TesVEdit change the esp's File Header to ESM simple as that. By the way ESM's seem to like NPC's to be persistent (you can set their flag in TesVEdit as well if they aren't)

 

I have continued to stay away from xEdit V4 and its autocleaning; it does seem to find things that aren't there.

[maxarturo]

"By the way ESM's seem to like NPC's to be persistent (you can set their flag in TesVEdit as well if they aren't)"

Is there a specific / special reason for it ? and if i don't make them persistent, will this generate any issues ?.

Sorry for all the questions, but i have no experience with ESM files, and i don't want to risk the 'Stability' that the mod has at this point, no freezers, no ctds, no bugs, no conflicts, the mod runs like a well tuned swiss clock...

And it concerns me especially for the mod's actors, since to reduce the possibility of issues been generated in all my heavy cells (especially on weaker systems), none of the actors are 'Enabled' until it's time to use them, this means that when you enter a cell there is not a single actor 'Enable", well to be more precise 98% of all the mod's actors.

[agerweb]

I noticed that Custom created NPC's if not persistent do not play there packages correctly; although I was told when I asked years ago that it was good practice to make all NPC's persistent anyway. If you have created an NPC you can make it persistent whether it starts in game or not.

[maxarturo]

Thanks for the info.

I will test this without the "Persistence" and with the "Persistence", after i finish with the updates of course, mostly to see the impact it may have on the 'Save File'.

Thanks again mate.