Is merging esm/esps still a thing for SSE?

[kubikiri]

If I'm about to install bunch of equipment mods with quite simple esm/esps, or mods come only with esps (like those adding new house to the game), can I merge them to reduce the mod count? If so, how? The meger plugin script and standalone program haven't been updated for several years now. Or should I just flag them as esl?

[FauxFurry]

It would be better to use Light Plug-ins (esp-fe) or Light Masters (ESL) where one can to reduce used load order space as one can add roughly 4098 total of them without issue.

[traison]

Personally I do it myself with xEdit, but a lot of people use "bashed patches". I assume they're refering to this thing. What kind of extra catution one must take when using it, I'm not sure. To me it seems like a bad idea to run a mod manager from within a mod manager (in the case of MO2), but perhaps if you can only use the "bashed patch" feature of it then it would be fine.

[kubikiri]

4 hours ago, traison said:

Personally I do it myself with xEdit, but a lot of people use "bashed patches". I assume they're refering to this thing. What kind of extra catution one must take when using it, I'm not sure. To me it seems like a bad idea to run a mod manager from within a mod manager (in the case of MO2), but perhaps if you can only use the "bashed patch" feature of it then it would be fine.

Did you do it with xEdit by hands/manually, or is there a script which will do it automatically for this cause?     

Bashed patch, from my understanding, is like a merged patch created by xEdit (for resolving confliction), but with more control over which part of which mod is included in the patch.

[Just Don't]

4 hours ago, traison said:

Personally I do it myself with xEdit, but a lot of people use "bashed patches". I assume they're refering to this thing. What kind of extra catution one must take when using it, I'm not sure. To me it seems like a bad idea to run a mod manager from within a mod manager (in the case of MO2), but perhaps if you can only use the "bashed patch" feature of it then it would be fine.

You can use it along MO2 as another tool, using it to install mods or arrange a loadorder would be totally unnecessary and not recommended. Personally I don't use it at all, and only recommend to use it to patch leveled list for items, anything else is very prone to break mods instead of fixing things, since it tends to forwards records and data that isn't needed by the mod winning the conflict (if you have a good loadorder with proper patches).

 

I prefer the ESL method. It's way easier to maintain and a lot of times you don't need to do anything at all (authors already ESLify their mods nowadays). The moment you merge a plugin it's on you to keep it updated if the mod is updated or changes through the release of optional plugins. Then there are the patches relying on the original plugin and not your merges and so on. Only good candidates for merges would be abandoned/very old mods that likely won't change ever and that are not a framework for other mods.

[traison]

33 minutes ago, kubikiri said:

Did you do it with xEdit by hands/manually, or is there a script which will do it automatically for this cause?

 

If there's ever a mod I need that makes some minor change - change the weight of an item, add a chest somewhere, fix a door, remove a tree... - I grab that mod from the Nexus (or make it myself if its not available) and drag-n-drop the changes needed over to my "patch" plugin. This is not a maintenance-less thing obviously, you'd ideally not want to have temporary things in a manually merged plugin as getting all the bits out later is going to be harder than putting them in. Another thing is, like Just Don't said, you take responsibility for keeping things compatible and running, but since that's something I'm already doing for various other reasons, it's a non-issue for me.

 

I am currently not doing list merges, meaning if I have 2 mods altering the same vendor container I deal with that by deleting the record changes from the "less important" mod. There's no real reason for this I suppose, I'm just trying to avoid having hundereds of patch plugins for all combinations. I like removing unused mods depending on what kind of a playthrough I'm doing. This means I'd need more patch plugins than someone that just keeps everything loaded at all times. This is where a bashed patch would make sense, but so far I've gotten away with finding/creating alternative paths.

 

As for scripts, I wouldn't be surprised if it had a script for it. Tools like DynDOLOD (Edit: which runs on xEdit) probably have to do this as they need to know what the final state of a record is, before they start processing game data for their purposes.

Edited November 13, 2023 by traison

[CrysisWar1234]

I personally use zMerge for outfits and creatures then esl the entire .esp to tidy up my loadorder. 

[kubikiri]

10 hours ago, CrysisWar1234 said:

I personally use zMerge for outfits and creatures then esl the entire .esp to tidy up my loadorder. 

I've heard of zEdit. Are they the same thing?     

11 hours ago, traison said:

 

If there's ever a mod I need that makes some minor change - change the weight of an item, add a chest somewhere, fix a door, remove a tree... - I grab that mod from the Nexus (or make it myself if its not available) and drag-n-drop the changes needed over to my "patch" plugin. This is not a maintenance-less thing obviously, you'd ideally not want to have temporary things in a manually merged plugin as getting all the bits out later is going to be harder than putting them in. Another thing is, like Just Don't said, you take responsibility for keeping things compatible and running, but since that's something I'm already doing for various other reasons, it's a non-issue for me.

 

I am currently not doing list merges, meaning if I have 2 mods altering the same vendor container I deal with that by deleting the record changes from the "less important" mod. There's no real reason for this I suppose, I'm just trying to avoid having hundereds of patch plugins for all combinations. I like removing unused mods depending on what kind of a playthrough I'm doing. This means I'd need more patch plugins than someone that just keeps everything loaded at all times. This is where a bashed patch would make sense, but so far I've gotten away with finding/creating alternative paths.

 

As for scripts, I wouldn't be surprised if it had a script for it. Tools like DynDOLOD (Edit: which runs on xEdit) probably have to do this as they need to know what the final state of a record is, before they start processing game data for their purposes.

Speaking of DynDOLOD, how is it different from xLODGen? Should I use it if I prefer simplicity and performance?

[traison]

7 hours ago, kubikiri said:

I've heard of zEdit. Are they the same thing?

 

Googling would have answered that question easily:

 

zMerge

 

zEdit/xEdit comparison

 

If zEdit (never used it) is better than xEdit, the comparison page doesn't really make it obvious. Probably should try it out to see what the changes mean in practice. The table at the bottom pretty much just states it uses 25-50% more ram; probably because its a website basically (built with html/css/js), just (presumably) without the server bit. Using more ram isn't a bad thing on its own; contrary to popular belief the optimal situation is to actually have your ram memory completely used up. The issues begin when you got nothing to show for it, or it can't be freed up for new important applications.

 

Spoiler

Having a program like zEdit use up as much ram as an entire operating system did 15 years ago is a bit silly, but that's just me. New applications being bloated and resource wasteful is nothing new, this is just history repeating itself. Just like the assembly programmers back in the 80's were cursing c programmers for wasting resources, the "old-school" c# programmers probably hate on the nodejs kids today.

 

7 hours ago, kubikiri said:

how is it different from xLODGen

 

Never used it. Try both to see which one you prefer. Keeping their output nicely contained (for easy removal) is simple in MO2. I imagine Vortex can do it too.