MSFD Cleaning up your mod

 

 

When you work on your mod, you will probably want to look up other things as reference or simply to cut and copy things for your own purposes. The problem is that the TESCS will remember you looked at the things if you moved them the slightest bit in the game world, or if you ever hit an “OK” button, even if you did not change anything. Before you release your mod you should check it for such unwanted references and remove them.

In the File Menu select Data Files. Then select your mod like you normally would and hit the Details button. Look at the list of features here: this is a list of everything your mod changed or added. Look for things that you did not want to change, and select them.

Select a single item with Left Click.

You can select multiple items using Ctrl + Left Mouse Button.

If you click on an item and then use Shift + Left Click on another item, everything in between will be selected.

You don’t have to select everything you want to remove at once, you can do it in multiple deletes.

To remove items, hit [del] on your keyboard. This marks the feature as ignored. Loading and resaving the mod will remove these ignored features from the mod.

An alternative, and much easier to use is the utility TESAME (TES advanced mod editor), available from various sites, e.g.:

http://theseventhrealm.com/portal/tools.html

A more recent tool that has become indispensable to me is the Morrowind Enchanted Editor, available at:

http://tfo.rh.rit.edu/esforum/secretmasters/EnchantedSetup0.91c.exe.

It's not very well documented, but offers a much nicer user interface than TESAME and is immensely powerful.

 

For scripts, try to remove any unused global variables or whole scripts you may have made in the course of developing your script. It bloats your .esp filesize, it probably wastes memory, or at the very least it looks bad.

 

This is a list of the change indicators found in the details tab of TESAME:

DIAL – A new or changed topic

INFO – A dialogue response, or journal entry

REFR – a reference of an object that was put into the game world, while MISC, CONT etc. describe the actual Object (even if there is no instance of it placed in the world)

SOUN – A Sound

NPC_ - A new type of NPC, or a changed NPC

CREA – A new creature or a change to a creature

LIGH – A new or changed Light

LTEX – An application of a landscape texture

PGRD – A change to the AI grid

CELL – obvious, signifies a changed cell either indoors or outdoors – in case your mod had nothing to do with that cell you should get rid of it. This affects all changes in that cell automatically, I think automatically

SCRPT – A Script – lots of people leave superfluous "test scripts" in their mods – that's bad style, I think.

MISC – A new or changed miscellaneous object – check names, delete if the change is unrelated to your plugin

ACTI – An activator – see above

CONT – A container – very critical: make sure you only change a new ID (copy of a container), not the original container – or they will all be changed.

STAT – A static object – see above