SSE Merged patch For more than 255 plugins.

[indolu]

WARNING

THIS IS ABOUT CREATING A MERGED PATCH AND NOT ABOUT MERGING MULTIPLE MODS INTO A SINGLE MOD, IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT A MERGED PATCH IS THIS GUIDE PROBABLY ISN'T FOR YOU. THIS IS ALSO JUST WHAT I DO AND IM NO EXPERT. DON'T TAKE THIS AS A GUIDE FROM SOMEONE WHO KNOWS 100% WHAT THEY ARE DOING.

 

 

 

With most load orders that are rather large, a merged patch becomes hard to make, since ssedit can only handle so many plugins at once. I however think i have discovered a way to sort of bypass this limitation. So how do we do this.

As an overview, we will essentially be creating parts to the merged patch, and then using those as a guide to determine what mods need to be merged. since not every mod that you try to merge needs to be merged.

 

1. Make a merged patch called "SSEMerged - A", using either half, or as many mods as it can handle to create the merge.

2. Make a merged patch called "SSEMerged - B", using the remainder, or next set of mods that it could hold.
3. Continue making patching just increasing the letter marker until you have all of your mods merged in at least one of the patches

EX: if you have say 500 mods, then you could have mods 1-200 in SSEMerged - A, 201-400 in SSEMerged - B, and 401-500 in SSEMerged - C. It doesn't particularly matter how many mods are in each merge but having a clear amount in each can help you keep track and make it take less time.

4. Once you have all of the mods in one of the merges, then you should load up SSEdit and select ONLY the merged parts (SSEMerged - A, SSEMerged - B, etc)
5. Now that you can see what mods are the masters to the parts, go through and manually reselect all the masters that it auto selects,
6. Now that you have all the merged part masters manually selected, unselect the merged parts.

7. Now you should make a merged patch as you normally would with the mods selected.

Doing this process should allow you to find all the mods that need to be merged, and put them in the merged patch. Now as a slight disclaimer, I am not an expert in this, and if there is a better way, do post a link below, to the better guide or method. This has worked well enough for me, and I hope it works well for you as well. If someone in the comments wants to suggest an improvement to this method, then i shall edit this post, and try to keep it as best as it can be. Well if I get the time/motivation that is.

[gregathit]

Not to throw gas on your idea and then a match......but that just sounds like a recipe to break the shit out of your mods and thus your game.  Many mods can't be merged without causing a mini-thermo-nuclear explosion (figuratively of course). ?

 

And having 500 mods?  WTF?  Time to re-evaluate your mod choices.  Seriously.  Having that many mods is almost a guarantee of having stuff that conflicts.  My mod manta is if I feel like I can't live without it, then it stays.  Sure, try new stuff, but if it isn't something you feel you MUST have, then dump it.  Either there is something better out there, or it just isn't worth it to keep around in case it breaks something that I do want to keep.  

 

Besides, if a person can do what you are suggesting, which is definitely on the upper end of advanced mod manipulation, why not just merge all your clothes, armor and non-quest mods into one personal mod and call it good.  The more complicated mods, those tend to update fairly regularly, and your method would force you to live without those updates or go back through the process again and again and again.  Not to mention quest and script heavy mods which would most likely be broken as you tried to merge them.

 

TDLR:  Good idea, but wrong implementation.  Instead combine/merge only non-quest/script heavy mods that do not frequently update.  Stuff like clothes/armors/weapons.

 

Just my opinion.  Feel free to agree or disagree.  I just would hate to see someone go through all that work only to be left with a mess that broke their mods/game.

[indolu]

@gregathit

This isnt about creating a single merged mod, its about creating a merged patch. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Yeah merging all your mods is an extremely terrible idea. I'm talking about the process described here. There are several mods that almost require a merged patch such as SL Survival, and if you have more than the limit that ssedit can handle you just cant make it the normal way. So you have to use a work around, like i described. Also about the having 500 plugins thats entirely possible with ESL flaged plugins in SSE.

 

EDIT: Maybe i should put a warning at the top to make sure its extremly clear what im describing.

[JYGGALAG_69]

1 hour ago, gregathit said:

And having 500 mods?  WTF?  Time to re-evaluate your mod choices.  Seriously. 

So many merges seemed like an amusing idea so I popped in here, but I gotta disagree with this. 500 is a totally reasonable number, especially since ESLs exist now (even back in the stone ages when the nexus didn't even have a dedicated "download with ___.exe" I was able to get over 400 mods by merging the shit out of them).

Just going over Aylis' modlist from a few threads above I've got ~490 mods installed with SSE and I'm only having trouble with some missing textures. Granted, that list is more heavily curated than a museum exhibit, and it took me like a day to get it all in the right order, but still. Having THAT put into a few merged chunks of 50 plugins would feel like a pseudo loverslab repack of skyrim.

I for one would LOVE to see some people succeeding at mushing a few dozen things together reliably. All these patches are enough to drive one a bit... mad. Nothing wrong with some order to the chaos.

[gregathit]

1 hour ago, indolu said:

@gregathit

This isnt about creating a single merged mod, its about creating a merged patch. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Yeah merging all your mods is an extremely terrible idea. I'm talking about the process described here. There are several mods that almost require a merged patch such as SL Survival, and if you have more than the limit that ssedit can handle you just cant make it the normal way. So you have to use a work around, like i described. Also about the having 500 plugins thats entirely possible with ESL flaged plugins in SSE.

 

EDIT: Maybe i should put a warning at the top to make sure its extremly clear what im describing.

Ah.  I understand.  While that is better, it still is subject to what I mentioned regarding mods that update regularly.  They would force the user to undertake a large amount of work each and every time a mod updated.  Again, I'm not trying to torpedo things.  I'm just trying to point out a few of the potential downsides that might need to have adjustments made to this.

45 minutes ago, JYGGALAG_69 said:

So many merges seemed like an amusing idea so I popped in here, but I gotta disagree with this. 500 is a totally reasonable number, especially since ESLs exist now (even back in the stone ages when the nexus didn't even have a dedicated "download with ___.exe" I was able to get over 400 mods by merging the shit out of them).

Totally get your point.  However, I have had at the most 150 mods running with LE and when I moved over to using MO2 with SSE, 57 of those mods got the axe.  It wasn't because there were not SSE versions, it was just that they were not things I felt I needed/used or even noticed in game.  With more mods, more conflicts are guaranteed.  It comes down to different view points in the end.  I operate on a do I need it basis and you are operating more on a throw it all in along with the kitchen sink.  Neither one is right per se......provided your game is stable.

[indolu]

16 minutes ago, gregathit said:

Ah.  I understand.  While that is better, it still is subject to what I mentioned regarding mods that update regularly.  They would force the user to undertake a large amount of work each and every time a mod updated.  Again, I'm not trying to torpedo things.  I'm just trying to point out a few of the potential downsides that might need to have adjustments made to this.

Yeah, it is a downside that i dont think can be fixed without making a custom ssedit script, or something similar. The only reason I posted this is because i know a lot of people have load orders that are above the normal limit, and I haven't found any other way to get by the SSEdit plugin limit, so I posted my (subpar IMO guide).

[gregathit]

36 minutes ago, indolu said:

Yeah, it is a downside that i dont think can be fixed without making a custom ssedit script, or something similar. The only reason I posted this is because i know a lot of people have load orders that are above the normal limit, and I haven't found any other way to get by the SSEdit plugin limit, so I posted my (subpar IMO guide).

I would not say it is subpar by any means, provided it is used on the right type of mods.

[indolu]

9 minutes ago, gregathit said:

I would not say it is subpar by any means, provided it is used on the right type of mods.

The main flaw with it, is that you have to know what im talking about in order to actually get any use out of it. Though tbf when you need this guide you probably know what your doing. I mean, you thought i was talking about merging all your mods together, which shows that its not as good as it could be. Though hopefully that bit is fixed with my warning.

[Pinute]

On 3/6/2021 at 11:57 PM, indolu said:

The main flaw with it, is that you have to know what im talking about in order to actually get any use out of it. Though tbf when you need this guide you probably know what your doing. I mean, you thought i was talking about merging all your mods together, which shows that its not as good as it could be. Though hopefully that bit is fixed with my warning.

I've got a blog half written (for months now. I think) which is about manually patching SL mods, and which also talks about why the xEdit merge patch is not supported. In short - one, it doesn't get leveled lists right, and two, If you have more than 2. 3, or, if you're lucky in your choices, 4 mods making changes to the same form xEdit can't figure out which esp to take what info from. This can give black face, mess up weapon and armor stats, etc. It also doesn't patch everything you might need to.

 

The two things it seems to always get right are factions and containers, which is why I still use it on LE. However, if you don't use anything that changes vanilla forms, particularly npcs, or are certain there's only a couple making changes then xEdit's merge patch works very well, particularly with recent sexlab mods. Mod authors have been removing most form edits other than containers and factions for some time now.

 

For SE, well, I made my last merge patch with about 250 mods installed and manually added faction or container changes to that merge patch from then on. Like indolu, I sure would prefer to run that xedit merge though.

 

So, maybe someone who knows xedit plugin coding can take the following and modify it for factions and containers. It used to be part of lexy's lotd guide for zEdit because, like the xEdit merge patch, zEdit can't handle more than 254 plugins. What it does is create an empty esp that has, as masters, every plugin that has an npc in it (among some other things like water forms). Currently it loads just over 200 of my 400+ mods and patches, which is a number xEdit's merge patch could handle. I'd like that

 

 

 

000LexyLoader.pas

[Pinute]

All the following is pointless. Corsayr informed me that xEdit won't merge esl flagged plugins and he's right. I tested on factions which never fail. So, since I make heavy use of esl flagged plugins it's back to manual patching for me. I really thought I had a simple solution for you that worked. Oh well.

 

After writing the above I remembered another script used to pull masters for zEdit patching; it's much simpler so even I could figure out how to easily customize it for use with the merge patch.

 

Add_Masters_CONT_FACT_NPC__ARMO_WEAP_MGEF_ITEM_RACE.pas

 

The above script's intent is to create an esp that has, as masters, only the plugins that contain form types that xEdit will merge. Those masters will be a subset of your load order and, if that subset is less than 254 plugins, voila! Your merge patch will work. If not, read on because there is a solution.

 

I want to be clear that I'm not positive that the above form types are the only forms (other than leveled lists) that are merged. My LE build is very simple with suitable patches so for me xEdit doesn't touch all of those types. The types are what I could harvest while running different test versions of this script on my SE load order. That list does pretty much match my memory of when I lived by the merge patch, but I won't be surprised if I missed a couple or more, it's been years, and since my SE build is fairly well patched xEdit may be skipping some of mine. I've put out a request for people on SL survival to look at their merge patches on LE and compare lists. I don't know if you have an LE build but if you do could you check yours?

 

To use, place the script file in %xEdit%\Edit Scripts and start xEdit on your complete load order, less any other generated plugins (dual sheath, DynDLOD, zPatch, bash patch, etc.) Apply the script, save the generated esp and exit xEdit. Restart xEdit, disable all plugins, then enable only the plugin you just generated (which will enable all its masters), then continue to load into xEdit and try generating the merge patch. If you're lucky (less than 254 masters) the merge will complete and you're done, except of course for the necessary cleanup of the merge patch. Delete the leveled lists, correct any merge errors, and trash the script generated esp.

 

For those of us that aren't lucky we simply break up the merge types into smaller groups and, as you did, run xEdit multiple times. For me there were three useful breaks - CONT & FACT, NPC_, then all the rest as the third group. I simply made three copies of of the above script and altered line 22 in each from

 

    SignatureList.CommaText := 'CONT, FACT, NPC_, ARMO, WEAP, MGEF, ITEM, RACE';

 

to

 

   SignatureList.CommaText := 'CONT, FACT';
   SignatureList.CommaText := 'NPC_';
   SignatureList.CommaText := 'ARMO, WEAP, MGEF, ITEM, RACE';

 

named the scripts appropriately, moved them to the Edit Scripts folder and then ran the above process 3 times, making sure to delete every form type other than the ones selected for each run. That is, for example, on the NPC_ run I deleted every form type but NPCs. I ended up with three esps that were functionally the merge patch.

Add_Masters_CONT_FACT_NPC__ARMO_WEAP_MGEF_ITEM_RACE.pas

[onen]

Clothing and non scripted followers are the first to get merged for me in a SEEdit merge script.

My current build has 468 mods with 303 esp's, 46 esl's and I can get that down to 0xFC esp's from merging just clothing and followers.

I convert with CK anything I'm merging to form 44 first because why merge two different esp forms.  Don't know if it matters but I don't care to find out.

When merging followers, the merge script often changes the form ids which causes black face since the facegen data filenames are no longer in the merged esp, so in CK I export the merged esp's facegen data for each follower.

 

Are they all essential mods, of course not.  But the challenge of getting it all to work on a 11yo PC is where the fun is.  Playing the game with them is just a bonus.

 

[indolu]

1 hour ago, onen said:

Clothing and non scripted followers are the first to get merged for me in a SEEdit merge script.

My current build has 468 mods with 303 esp's, 46 esl's and I can get that down to 0xFC esp's from merging just clothing and followers.

I convert with CK anything I'm merging to form 44 first because why merge two different esp forms.  Don't know if it matters but I don't care to find out.

When merging followers, the merge script often changes the form ids which causes black face since the facegen data filenames are no longer in the merged esp, so in CK I export the merged esp's facegen data for each follower.

 

Are they all essential mods, of course not.  But the challenge of getting it all to work on a 11yo PC is where the fun is.  Playing the game with them is just a bonus.

 

You do know that this is about a merged patch and not about merging different plugins into one right?

[chasm]

Wow.  So glad I found this!  A was about to do something similar, but with writing down the mods that need to be patched.  I didn't think to use xedit's master detection!
Sorry to necro the post, but you just saved me a lot of time!

[Varithina]

On 3/12/2021 at 2:58 AM, onen said:

Clothing and non scripted followers are the first to get merged for me in a SEEdit merge script.

My current build has 468 mods with 303 esp's, 46 esl's and I can get that down to 0xFC esp's from merging just clothing and followers.

I convert with CK anything I'm merging to form 44 first because why merge two different esp forms.  Don't know if it matters but I don't care to find out.

When merging followers, the merge script often changes the form ids which causes black face since the facegen data filenames are no longer in the merged esp, so in CK I export the merged esp's facegen data for each follower.

 

Are they all essential mods, of course not.  But the challenge of getting it all to work on a 11yo PC is where the fun is.  Playing the game with them is just a bonus.

 

 

Different thing, what he is talking about is a conflict resolution patch, and yes the naming conventions for both things suck, as it leads to major confusion between people when reading it.

 

Even then you would still want to manually go through all the created esp and check to make sure that they are doing what you want them to, rather than what the scripts doing this think you want.

Edited December 4, 2023 by Varithina