Advanced Merging

[bigv32]

This may be more of an academic question of "Is this even possible" than an actual strategy, but please read this and let me know what you think. If it works, I believe it could be very beneficial for several reasons I will list at the bottom.

 

I have been playing around a lot more with TESVedit lately, and I have really been focusing on increasing my games stability. So far, between this and being extremely picky about my mods, I am able to play Skyrim all day on the same save without any "unpredictable" CTD's. What I mean by unpredictable is that I know there are somethings I can do in order to force Skyrim to crash by overloading it. One example is if I am running with more than seven followers and I mount and dismount my horse quickly. In this case, I understand it is simply that the Skyrim engine can;t handle the amount if information being thrown at it. However, all I have to do is simply wait one or two seconds longer between mounting and dismounting my horse. Sorry, but this is getting off topic, but I want it to be clear how stable I have been able to get my game through careful merge patches.

 

 

Now, I have been playing around with this idea for a while, but so far have not had much luck with implementing it on anything but a small scale.

 

MY IDEA: Create One (yes One, 1, uno) plugin that contains all the information from all my mods. Thus, I would only need to load three plugins (Skyrim.esm, update.esm, and my Super-Merged-Patch). I don't have any DLC.

 

Here is how I was going to go about it.

 

1. Make a copy of the Skyrim.esm and rename it something.

2. In TESVEDIT, copy all the information from the update.esm and insert it as an override into my merged patch.

 

At this point, I have a merged patch with all the basic skyrim information in it and with only two master files.

 

3. From here, I find all my mods that do not conflict with any others in my load order and copy all of their information as overrides into my merged patch.

 

4. Starting from the top of my load order, I go through and copy mod information into my merged patch as overrides.

 

NOTE: This process takes the longest as it can sometimes literally mean going through each individual entry to see which one I want to win or how I want to merge the differences. I have been trying this only with a few mods as small scales tests but still without much luck.

 

At this point, I have a merged patch with all the default skyrim information in it along with any mod information and overrides that I felt like should win the conflicts.

 

5. (Here is where I have had the most trouble). Using Wyre Bash, I go into my merged patch and change all the master requirements to skyrim.esm in order to completely remove any master dependencies when loading.

 

6. Boot up skyrim with only my merged patch, skyim and update.esms loaded. Results vary at this point.

 

I can sometimes get this to work. An example is a merged patch I created between the Jaysus Swords.esm and one of the compatability patches for Skyre. I can successfully deactivate those plugins and load my game and lose no data at all (ie all the swords are still there). In this case, I can successfully remove two plugins and replace it with one. Please note that I have considered the fact that the two plugins may have been masters for other mods and deactivated those other mods.

 

In the times I can't get this to work, I can't even tell what the problem is in edit because I get errors due to master files for my merged patch.

 

 

So why am I trying this and what would be the benefit?

 

If you have such a merged patch and it worked, it could make adding more mods and determining conflicts with a persons INDIVIDUAL load order. All you would have to do is install the mod and then load the new mods plugin and your merged patch and see what conflicts you had. Then, you could just repeat the process of determining which one should win, and merge the new mod into your own game. I know there are limitations on what TESVEdit can do, but as a theory, this could allow for an individual to create plugins with only the mods they always play with and cutdown on the number of plugins needed.

[Luinithil]

Interesting ideas here. You might want to ask this over at the official Bethesda forums Skyrim Mods section, since many of the modders who use the CK and TES5Edit (or they actually built/actively work on TES5Edit) hang around there very often.