Assistance needed with general ESM & ESP modding

[mezzoforte]

Hi, I've got a few general questions regarding modding ESP's and ESM's; and a problem with quest triggers in one particular mod I'm working on at the moment.

 

I like tweaking existing mods and have rudimentary(?) competency with the Creation Kit (i.e. toggling appearance, translating text, modifying spells/armor/etc.)

 

From what I've experienced so far:

 

an ESP can change the content of an ESM; example an Aela Custom.exp can change Aela's appearance from the Skyrim.esm

 

an ESP(2) can add additional content unto existing content of another ESP(1) but not modify the other ESP(1)'s contents; such as the Estrus spells. It adds spells that makes use of the original zzEstrus.esp effects, but does not modify them.

 

when you use a new ESP(2) to modify the contents of another ESP(1) ; ESP(2) doesn't actually overwrite and change the contents of ESP(1) once ingame but instead creates duplicates of them.

 

 

My Objective

I've have several ESP mods which are, according to the authors still in development (beta), that I want to customize. Mainly the NPC appearances, outfits, and the dialogue, names and descriptions involved with the mod.

 

I didn't want to modify the original ESP since when a new version comes out, I'll have to manually reapply all the changes I did into their newer released ESP.

 

I'm trying to create a separate ESP that changes the stuff I want from the original mod, but treats it as a master so even if the author updates their original mod, I can just load my customized ESP after theirs to get the aesthetic changes I want.

 

 

The Problem

Since I can't seem to make an ESP modify another ESP I used WyreBash to ESMify the original mod.

 

Works well so far, my custom ESP's are successfully changing the aesthetics I wanted; however I seem to have encountered some problem or general slowdown with quest triggers from the original mod.

 

To be precise

• I've esmifyed the animal mansion mod
• Created a custom esp to modify the appearances of the NPC's Thaena, and the Companions (Aela and co.) to match the changes I did to my vanilla Companions (Aela and co.) 
• The aesthetic changes work and the game doesn't CTD
• Half of the quests trigger just fine, albeit sometimes they don't (I need to resetai the questgiver NPC)
• The other quests don't trigger despite the dialogue options being available
• Note: at this point I've only changed armor, and appearances of the NPC's I haven't touched any of the quest dialogue yet.

 

Hoping someone more familiar with modding can assist or have suggestions of an easier way to go about what I'm trying to accomplish.

 

Thanks

 

[Androktone]

Don't esmify. If you want to modify an ESP (let's call it "X"), open it in TES5Edit, go to a record of X you would like to modify, rightclick it and choose "Copy as override into...". Choose "new file". Type a name (like "X patch"). Confirm adding a master or masters. Repeat override-copy with every record you need -- this time choosing "X patch". Don't touch dialogues and quests if it's not really necessary. Go to "X patch", modify records, exit, save. Load "X patch" after "X" -- use a userlist if necessary.

[mezzoforte]

Oooh interesting!

 

I wasn't aware that TESVEdit could do that. I thought that referring/overiding an ESP with another ESP was impossible outside of scripting. Thank you, will give it a shot over the weekend.

 

This helps me a lot as I think what breaks the quest is the load order. esmifying the esp, moves it so far back that one of the other 100+ mods is interfering with the quest.

 

 

Also new problem encountered, not sure if it's better I make a new thread for this, but for some reason an NPC I modified isn't using the updated tintmasks generated by CTrl+F4 or Skyrim NPC Editor.