Using FO4Edit to compare ESMs

[minime453]

Hey all!

 

I've been working with an ESM recently and merged an ESP which causes the CK to make an autoedit to the ESM when loading my ESM after merging.

 

The text in the CheckInLog is this: AUTOEDIT: Removed invalid forms

 

I opened up the ESM in FO4Edit and compared it to the merged esm that hasn't been loaded by the CK. I can see that the automerged has removed 6 forms from the ESM, but I can't seem to figure out what those forms are.

 

Is there any way to find which forms exist in one ESM but not in another inside of FO4Edit? It's the only way to figure out what is causing problems in the ESP so i can clean it up and merge is properly.

 

Any help is much appreciated!

[PJMail]

Load the first esm in Fo4Edit, right click on that first esm, select 'compare to' and locate the second esm. It will be loaded as if it 'overrides' the first so you can then use 'apply filter selected files only' (choose only those 2 esm's) and in the filter only check the first 2 'by conflict status' sections. I tend to uncheck only 'multiple but no conflict' to remove all the same (green) records.

 

Thank you niston for showing me this.

Edited March 4, 2021 by PJMail

[VIitS]

xEdit 4.0+ has a feature called "Delta patch", which basically uses "Compare to" as the base, but keeps only the changes.

 

So if you load the old plugin in xEdit, then right click -> Create Delta patch using", and point it to the one with the CK-touched version, it will generate a plugin that has only the differences between the two. Any records removed in the later version will be flagged as deleted in the delta patch.

 

One note though, if you are going to be doing any work in the delta patch, you should save and exit xEdit, then relaunch and load your patch*, then do your work. That allows the internal structure of the delta plugin to be finalized.

 

 

*it will have a .esu file extension, if you want to make it into a plugin the game/CK can load, just change it to .esp/.esm/.esl. The file structure is the same, Elminster just made a new file extension so they won't be accidentally loaded. Among other things, it is a quick way to make patches out of replacer versions of a plugin, either for you to publish for mods that allow patches by not replacers, or to make use of a replacer patch that hasn't been updated to match the newest version of the mod.

But comparing two versions of of a mod your are developing like above is one of the primary reasons the feature was made.

[PJMail]

Wow - I wondered what that was. Is there an up-to-date (V4) user documentation on Xedit anywhere? All the 'official' ones a missing all that good stuff.

[VIitS]

Primarily the new features are all documented in the What's New. You can look at it in xEdit, tab at the bottom with "Information", "Messages", and "Referenced by", and it is also listed on the Tome of xEdit (accessible through the Help button in the top left in xEdit). The What's New is section 18, here is the link to the section about the Delta Patch feature: https://tes5edit.github.io/docs/18-whatsnew.html#Createdeltapatchusing.

 

If you don't already know about it, one of my favorite features is "Copy to Selected records" (and its counterpart "Remove from selected records"), that can save a ton of time if you are doing something like adding (or removing) a specific keyword to a bunch of records.

 

edit: There is a lot of information in there, especially for the 4.0 release, but I highly recommend at least skimming through it if you are a frequent xEdit user.

[PJMail]

I am always happy to say RTFM to a person who asks 'how do I do this', but I don't expect them to read 10000 lines of 'whats new/release fixes'

I knew about the Tome and of course and read it ages ago - thus my statement "Is there an up-to-date (V4) user documentation".

I take it from your answer that is "no". Shame, as even I (writer of TFM's and 1000's of lines of 'release fixes') don't read the update history of a program.

 

Saying that - thanks for pointing out where there is some information to narrow my google searching to.

 

Concerning "Copy to selected records", I use the 'drag' method a lot but one of the things I hated is I couldn't 'copy and paste' - meaning copy a particular feature from one record into different record (even of different type). Example is a condition (which is the same structure in multiple record types). Another example is the navmesh (if say I am converting a static into an activator). Dragging only works 'sideways' - i.e. between different overrides of the same record. Sounds like 'copy to selected records' will work to multiple records of same type at least - is that correct? Hard to understand from a release note.

Edited March 6, 2021 by PJMail

[VIitS]

Yes. You can also use the base "Compare selected" feature (which has to be used in order to use copy to selected) to look at multiple records side by side, and the default behavior is to auto-compare up to 4 selected records. It won't let you compare two records of different types though, and if they are in different groups (such as REFRs in two different Cells), auto-compare won't work and you have to right click -> Compare selected.

 

And I wasn't recommending reading the whole thing, just skimming the table of contents and looking at the details for any features that sound useful or interesting. I have found a couple nice features that really compliment the way I use xEdit that way, which is why I recommend it, so you can find ones that would be most useful for you.