Some general/basic modding questions

[grifterrik]

I'm trying to make some personal customizations to get the hang of the GECK.  I've been playing with mods since Morrowind but never really did much on my own, besides manual replacements of textures and meshes and such within the data files.

 

So I've decided it would amuse me to make Sunny kind of a punk/emo chick.  I think I was inspired by her angsty SOFO dialogue.   Anyway, I managed to make MojaveDelighted an ESM and then altered the sunny companion mod to include a new appearance and made MojaveDelighted.esm a master.

 

My questions are as follows:

 

- Is there a downside to turning a mod into an ESM like that?

- I assume there is a way to add the resources (hair, skin texture paths, outfits, etc) to the esp mod and then make the mod use them that way.  Would that be a better way to do it?  And if so, why?

 

Thanks for any help!

 

 

[nyaalich]

Is MojaveDelight an esp?  To my knowledge, there isn't really a downside of something being one or the other except for load order or dependencies.  SomeGuy2000's mods have one master file that allows them to work in conjunction with one another since otherwise, they'd be unaware of the interrelated data between them.

 

If MojaveDelight is an esp, you should be able to add it as a master/dependency for your mod in FNVEdit. 

 

To add the resources, you'd need to create appropriate folders within your data folder (meshes/textures).  Take a peek into those folders, and you'll see how other mods do it.  If there's a new outfit, you'll have to create it in the GECK.

 

I'm sure that there's a decent tutorial out there that does a better job than "throw your files in the right folder, and then pick them in the GECK." 

[jaam]

Check the script 101 in the technical forum. Otherwize, once a plugin is ESMified, you need to recompile any script contained into it to check for errors.

[Guest]

- MD is pure eye candy so it shouldn't have scripts at all, ESM-ify it should be good without consequences.

- I guess it's better only if you want to detach yourself from the main mod. If you make MD as master, next time you want to use your mod (like in a new installation) you will have to reinstall it anyway, while if you make your esp independent you don't need anything else. Excluding that I guess that's much or less the same

[grifterrik]

Thanks folks!  Appreciate the input.  I was concerned one way might be more crash-prone or memory intensive or something, guess not.  Doesn't seem to be after playing, either.

 

I did find one downside.  I had previously created a character using the MD race.  In my current playthrough I'm using another race, so the esp-esm change didn't cause me any problems.  But I loaded a save from the old character and they no longer have a body.  The viewpoint is on the floor and they can't move.  When I open playerracemenu it just crashes.  Not a problem as I didn't really want to play the character anyway.

[Guest]

when the viewpoint is on the floor, usually means that Height is set to 0, even if it is the Male height and you are playing with a female char. So my guess is the records changed and your old savegame doesn't know which race are you using since the esp became an esm. If you want to use that savegame I guess you only need to do the opposite. But well this is not really a downside if you think.