TES5edit guidance

[JoeVertigo]

I'm not really interested in modding per se but I'd really like to get my mind around creating a "merged patch" with TES5edit to make mods compatible for myself. I honestly couldn't find any useful resources anywhere, "Create merged patch" tutorials all over the place barely scratch the surface of the topic. I'd love to understand the nature of plugin conflicts but I simply cannot google most of the stuff I see in TES5edit. I know I'm asking a lot, but if there's anyone out there that would be willing to explain some of the stuff to me via skype or email, based on screenshots from my TES5edit with a detailed question I'd be really grateful. I'm more than willing to gift a game (or 3) on Steam or GOG for such assistance. :)

[jackowonderful]

it's pretty intuitive. open your mods together, drag entries across between conflicting mods. highlight mods with lists and create a patch.

[gsmanners]

The way patching works is pretty straight-forward. The game simply overrides anything higher in the load order with information it finds lower in the load order. That's the key to understanding how it works. Suppose you have two mods:

 

Mod A: Makes Breezehome bright.

Mod B: Makes Breezehome dark.

 

And say mod B is lower. The game will make Breezehome dark. If you want it to be bright again without changing the load order, you have to create a mod C with just that information. And that is what a merged patch is.

[JoeVertigo]

Yeah, it's pretty straight-forward and intuitive when you have two mods and TESedit speaks English. It gets a bit more confusing once you have 12 mods that override the same thing and you have no idea what the thing actually does. There's a lot of stuff I just don't get from simply looking at it, like this:

 

http://i.imgur.com/X7y068S.jpg

 

Why do the DLC overwrite each other with something that seems to be two completely different things and why does other mod overwrite it with *nothing* and what should be the merged patch result of this?

 

I mean, sure, it's all easy when you know exactly what everything means. ;)

[gsmanners]

What you're looking at there is conflicting ACPRs. Why, you ask? I don't know. I don't even know what an ACPR is. As far as I know, it's something the CK uses for who knows what reason. Honestly, I would just ignore it.

[JoeVertigo]

You see, how am I supposed to know what to ignore? :smile:

 

Also, I would love to know why does the "automatic" merged patch crash my game on startup even if I delete everything in it so there's no overrides whatsoever...

[gsmanners]

The game crashes because this is Bethesda software. All these "fixes" are really just workarounds for longstanding (10+ years, now) bugs in the "brand new" engine. Good example:

 

UDR: Undelete and Disable References. As far as I can tell, this does two things. 1. Bloats the size of your plugin. 2. Prevents the engine from crashing (if you have a save that contains info about said references). Why is it necessary to disable a reference rather than delete it? Because the engine is crap, and it crashes when it encounters the slightest tiny difficulty like that. Now, you might argue that Bethesda never encounters this problem, but that would be incorrect because this very issue plagued the DLC release "The Pitt" for Fallout 3 (an allegedly older engine).

 

So, basically, you do what you know will work. The rest you ignore. Just like the way Bethesda operates.

[alex2avs]

Check this post : http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/757526-how-to-create-a-compatibility-patch/&do=findComment&comment=6044753

 

All the steps are there, and it's a good old method.