Converting SkyrimSE Mods back to SkyrimLE

[KoolHndLuke]

Just thought I would start a thread about how to convert mods either made or converted for Skyrim SE for Skyrim LE since most of us around here still like and use "Oldrim". The reason is because a mod that I always have used in my game was deleted on the Nexus and now is ONLY available for Skyrim SE. This pisses me off because there seemingly was no good reason to delete the mod for Skyrim LE. The mod in question here is Fantasy Soundtrack Overhaul- which I like better than any other I have heard for the game.

 

I found this on Bethesda forum by an author talking about doing this;

 

 "I've read that it's not possible to convert a mod back to original Skyrim once it's been converted to SSE. However, I have just tested my mod and initial testing show it works just fine.

Obviously all the meshes need to be the old kind, but aside from that there were no issues and once the ESP file has been saved in the old CK again, the extra CK errors on initial load are gone."- anonymous

 

So following this, I copied the files I needed and put them in my game folder. Then I opened the esp in the CK and saved it. Now I am going to test in game to see if it works- which I'm fairly certain it will. Some mods supposedly only for the SE version can work in Skyrim LE "out of the box" while most will need varying degrees of work to make them compatible. I would not recommend trying this unless you know a thing or two about mods and how to fix possible problems.

 

If you have experience converting mods either to Skyrim SE or back again, then please do comment and maybe share some knowledge with the rest of us since we do not all want to have to switch to SE just to use certain mods.

[Guest]

You have pretty much no tools to do that.

 

Textures can be converted.

Meshes are hard.

HKX almost impossible.

And so are ESP. (In case the new format is ESL then you are just out of luck.)

Code is the same, but while SSE can run as is PEX files from LE, the opposite is not true, so you need to recompile them.

[KoolHndLuke]

1 hour ago, CPU said:

Code is the same, but while SSE can run as is PEX files from LE, the opposite is not true, so you need to recompile them.

Can't they be recompiled in the CK by opening and saving them again? Or is there more to it? Also there is little reason to convert any animations since LE has so many excellent ones. Aren't really that many ESL's to worry about either from what I have seen- most authors don't seem to care one wit about converting to it. Textures can be converted fairly simply with either Gimp or Photoshop with the dds plugin, right? That just leaves meshes that cannot be converted without much work and I don't know how to use Blender yet. I remember seeing a vid one time where an author was showing how to convert a mesh using Nifskope by copying the correct branch nodes or something like that.

[Guest]

Just recompile. CK is fine.

Of course you need the sources to be able to recompile.