How to make Mods recognize merges?

[Kryona]

So the title may seem a bit confusing but ill try to explain the problem as best as i can

 

Lets say you have 2 mods, Mod A and Mod B. Theyre compatible with eachother and if you have both installed, Mod B will add some more features to Mod A.

 

Now you merge Mod A into a Merge with Mod C and Mod D. The merged esp will have a different name than Mod A's original esp. This means that, despite Mod A still being present in your game, Mod B no longer recognizes Mod A, thinks its missing, says so in its MCM and the features Mod B gives Mod A stop working.

 

Which brings me to the question, is there an easy way to simply change the name of Mod A's esp in Mod B's files so that Mod B looks for the correct name again? 

[bnub345]

18 minutes ago, Kryona said:

So the title may seem a bit confusing but ill try to explain the problem as best as i can

 

Lets say you have 2 mods, Mod A and Mod B. Theyre compatible with eachother and if you have both installed, Mod B will add some more features to Mod A.

 

Now you merge Mod A into a Merge with Mod C and Mod D. The merged esp will have a different name than Mod A's original esp. This means that, despite Mod A still being present in your game, Mod B no longer recognizes Mod A, thinks its missing, says so in its MCM and the features Mod B gives Mod A stop working.

 

Which brings me to the question, is there an easy way to simply change the name of Mod A's esp in Mod B's files so that Mod B looks for the correct name again? 

 

Most likely you would need to change this in the scripts of mod B and recompile them. Although it is probably easier to rename your merged esp to whatever mod name is being searched. 

[Seijin8]

1 hour ago, bnub345 said:

Although it is probably easier to rename your merged esp to whatever mod name is being searched.

 

Yeah, no.  If it is referencing a mod by name, it is possibly also looking for a formID which will not be the same in the merge.

 

2 hours ago, Kryona said:

Which brings me to the question, is there an easy way to simply change the name of Mod A's esp in Mod B's files so that Mod B looks for the correct name again?

 

Would need to know how it is failing to find the mod in the first place.  There's more than one way with more than one answer to how to fix it.

 

At best, it is a "false" error and safely ignored.  At worst... CTD either now or the next time it needs to access that variable, which might seem to be a "random" crash.

[Kryona]

58 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

 

 

Would need to know how it is failing to find the mod in the first place.  There's more than one way with more than one answer to how to fix it.

 

At best, it is a "false" error and safely ignored.  At worst... CTD either now or the next time it needs to access that variable, which might seem to be a "random" crash.

Im not sure, i think its looking for the esp name which isnt active anymore due to the merge.

 

Mod B has a compability check in its MCM where Mod A (among others) is listed. With both mods enabled with no merge mod A shows up as found by mod B in Mod B's MCM and everything works. But when Mod A is merged with other mods Mod B claims Mod A isnt installed even though Mod A is still working perfectly fine after the merge. So since the only difference is Mod A having a different esp name due to the merge im assuming its related to that.

 

CTDs seem unlikely as i've had it like this in my game since starting the save (I've only noticed it today) and both mods have been working fine on their own except that the features that mod B gives mod A dont work because mod B is unable to find mod A and i'd like to fix that without causing additonal problems.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Kryona

[bnub345]

So like I said, rename the merge esp to the same name as mod A. Worst case it doesn't work, which leaves you at the same place you are now. I think it is a soft dependency check, which means it will just not activate those features without the mod master. If it is a hard dependency, it might crash trying to access info like Seijin said.

 

The way to truly fix it is to go through the source scripts of the mod, find where it is calling the esp name and possibly formID lists, and change them to the new names from the merged esp, then recompile them.

[Monoman1]

Ugh. Please don't do this. Merge other mods that don't rely on others. Too many things that can go wrong. You're just asking for trouble.

 

If not for yourself then for the mod authors you'll inevitably go to when things go wrong...

Edited July 22, 2022 by Monoman1

[Kryona]

3 hours ago, Monoman1 said:

Ugh. Please don't do this. Merge other mods that don't rely on others. Too many things that can go wrong. You're just asking for trouble.

 

If not for yourself then for the mod authors you'll inevitably go to when things go wrong...

I understand its a terrible idea to merge mods that are hard requirements for other mods but in this case neither of the mods rely on eachother in the sense that they NEED the other mod as a hard requirement to function, they work just fine without eachother its just that theyre compatible and provide extra functionality to eachother if both are active. Is it still a bad idea in that case?

 

Like there is no critical downside if i only have one of the 2 mods active, its just a soft dependency.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Kryona

[Monoman1]

3 hours ago, Kryona said:

I understand its a terrible idea to merge mods that are hard requirements for other mods but in this case neither of the mods rely on eachother in the sense that they NEED the other mod as a hard requirement to function, they work just fine without eachother its just that theyre compatible and provide extra functionality to eachother if both are active. Is it still a bad idea in that case?

 

Like there is no critical downside if i only have one of the 2 mods active, its just a soft dependency.

If you're fine with losing the functionality between the mods it would probably be fine. Don't rename the esp to the original mod - This will likely only cause problems. 

 

If you want to maintain functionality then you're back to my original answer. The problem is that merging mods will (depending on the order they're merged) jumble up the formids. The first form created in a mod is numbered 0xD64. Most mods probably have this number form. So they need to be changed to be merged. You can't have two forms with the same number in the same esp.

 

Soft dependency requires a form to work on. Either to retrieve the form directly or a script attached to the form. If I want to get the main quest in SLS I have to:

 

Game.GetFormFromFile(0xD64, "SL Survival.esp")

 

If the number is different after merging then you'll need to go through each script and redirect all references to the new form number. And that's just that one reference. There may be more. Many more. SLS is a big mod but there are 1445 instances of 'GetFormFromFile' in 335 files in SLS. 

 

Then you need to ask yourself: If there's an update for any mod within the merge are you prepared to go all the way back and start going through scripts again because there's no guarantee that the numbers will be the same again after merging. If the first mod to be merged added a form then quite likely all the subsequent forms are now offset by 1. 

Edited July 22, 2022 by Monoman1

[bnub345]

I was thinking that renaming the esp would solve your lookup problem and be easier than editing the scripts, but it's practically guaranteed that the mod is also trying to get forms from the esp. So as others have pointed out, renaming the plugin is not a good idea. 

[Kryona]

Fair enough, i think i will just do without their functionality for the time being then, thanks everyone!