Since I recently noticed that SM Plugin Refurbish - ThievesDen.esp has shown up on the BOSS list indicating it should be cleaned, and it's posted above, I thought I should point out I asked about cleaning this mod in SM's thread last year:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1066588-relz-sm-mod-collection/

SM's reply was that this mod should *not* be cleaned and that the edits were intentional. I am under the impression that cleaning dialogue could potentially lead to other issues down the line as well. In light of the author's statement on this matter I suggest removing this mod from the list of mods to be cleaned.

Cleaning dialogue is perfectly safe. I'm pretty sure I also cleaned SM Refurb without issue. Keep in mind that in its case when it identifies as ITM, it will be ITM with the DLC loaded as well meaning that NO change was actually made to the record. If it isn't the same as the DLC, it won't show up as an ITM.

@Trademark: Mods added to clean list. Thank you.

@Nero_Blackfire: Mod added to dirty list. Thank you.

@povuholo: Will be watching for that update, and the lists will be updated as soon as it comes along.

@Stromgarde: I recall having a similar conversation with Vorians over dirty dialogue edits occasionally being needed. The problem stemmed from Glarthir's dialogue for his quest being broken when BBC opened Skingrad. The only way to resolve this was to include every dialogue option available for that quest inside the BBC plugins themselves, and obviously those would be flagged as "Identical to Master" and deleted by TES4Edit because they are, in fact, identical to master. The trouble is, they are needed, so they should not be cleaned. However, Vorians did advocate for the sake of tidiness to make minuscule edits to those dialogue entries so that TES4Edit would not flag them as ITM and remove them. If that is indeed the case and why that happened, I will move the mod to the "Do not clean" list.

As usual, all changes here are mirrored on the CS Wiki lists, as well.

For obvious reasons, OCR/OCC modifies the dialogue record for the same quest in Skingrad. I include only the modified INFO record necessary to make Glarthir use the right dialogue branch. It has not produced any issues to date, and I did just redo the first few stages of that quest the other day when someone reported it was broken.

@Thomas Kaira - I believe that may have been where I saw the potential issue about cleaning dialogue. I can't say for sure that cleaning or not cleaning SM's mod will cause an issue, particularly in light of Arthmoor's comment, but since I specifically asked SM about it I thought I should mention it.

Based on my own internal list of mods that do need to be cleaned, here are some more that I believe you can add to the list as requiring cleaning:

BHC_Expanded.esp
Castle_Seaview.esp
DarknessHollows.esp
FightersGuildContracts.esp
NNWAREAyleidDungeons_Series1EV.esp
NNWARE06-RhyeliaEmeroEV.esp
The Imperial Water - BETTER CITIES.esp
TheOubliette.esp
Shadowcrest_Vineyard_COBL.esp
WOTFH_1.3.esp (error when undeleting records is OK)

Also, the following should *not* be cleaned (author has confirmed that cleaning it will break the mod):

Personality Idles - Modified version.esp

Finally, as a point of discussion, the guide says not to clean bg's mods. However, bgIntegration.esp does have a record that can be undeleted/disabled and I've been under the impression that deleted records are pretty much always bad because of the potential for CTDs. I did undelete that record (but avoided removing ITMs) and haven't had a problem.

Thank you for those, they have been added to the lists appropriately.

I have not added bgIntegration.esp to the dirty mods list in light of that revelation, but I have made note of it in the bg2408 entry in the "should not be cleaned" list, as you are correct about no deleted reference ever being good.

As usual, updates are mirrored on the CS Wiki (though this is common practice for me so I will not remind you further of this).

Under the sign of the Dragon "Fort Akatosh Redux" , "Guards of Cyrodiil Redux" and the required "Tamriel Resource Pack" are clean...

That's not entirely accurate, and I can specifically refer to the Glarthir dialogue you mentioned in a follow-up post after the one I'm quoting as my own evidence that cleaning dialogue is risky, as explained by Thomas Kaira.

I had to add additional dialogue records which BC did not need to edit, to get the quest to play correctly, otherwise the game simply skipped the earlier unedited dialogue records entirely, which also caused the game to skip the ones I'd edited. Now if I'd added them unedited (as I should do since I don't need to edit them), that makes them ITM, thus cleaning would remove them. So to avoid that, I edited the records to force them to remain in the ESP. But how many other modders who have discovered they need to include records they didn't need to edit, are actually going to know that they need to ensure they have not just included them in their ESP, they also need to edit them? Only those with good cleaning experience will know, so there is some small risk with dialogue-cleaning.

Well I see a possibly important difference in the method you used in BC vs how the edits took in OC.

In yours, http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/5218/bcms38edit.jpg. I see also where you added the additional record, but I can't see the reasoning. None of the edits you've made have linkage data in them.

In mine, http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/4858/ocms38edit.jpg. Including the top one which links back to what I presume to be the previous untouched record.

I have found over the course of many many dialogue editing sessions that removing those linkage records is BAD BAD BAD. Even if you have a mod adding response chains to an existing topic, you should NEVER undo the information the CS is putting there. Perhaps that's why it broke for you, because you would have had to remove those linkages by hand since the CS forces them.

I can guarantee you that all of the greeting responses in the MS38 chain work perfectly well and always have for as long as OC has been touching these INFO records.

Looking in the CS..... http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/9628/bcms38cs.jpg http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/4894/ocms38cs.jpg

It should be somewhat obvious that the BC response chain has been altered and is now out of order. That may well be why it's not happy without that extra edit of yours.

So I stand by what I said. It's perfectly safe, with a qualifier: That someone hasn't gone to the trouble to manually remove CS generated data from the INFO records. I don't see this being an issue considering how few people dare to venture into using tes4edit on dialogue.

Well as your own first screenshot shows, no previous INFO record link was removed, as it did not exist in the first place. Oblivion.esm does not have a Previous INFO record entry for the dialogue records, and BC retained that since it was a direct copy using TES4Edit and then edited as needed. Thomas Kaira already explained the reasoning for the additional records, and you will see the reasoning by playing BC in-game if you remove them again. Without those additional records, the quest cannot be played.

You may have found one way to make the quest work for OC, but since you and I don't work together on our separate projects I was not aware of what you might have had to do, and I found another way for it to work in OBC. Both methods worked.

Yes, I'm well aware that oblivion.esm doesn't contain those records. The point was that the CS adds the information to the response chains and removing those entries is probably what broke things. I didn't do anything special to the records for MS38 - in fact those are still original content from the OC mod at the point I took over the project. They're the result of nothing more than natural editing.

The point I'm making here is that with OC, any dirty edits that may have been there have long ago been cleaned and MS38 is completeable without any special editing needed to fix it. It was never broken to begin with. I don't even remember if there even were any dirty dialogue edits. Any other mod that changes conditions through natural editing will also be perfectly safe to handle in the same manner.

Whatever it is you did with BC is what caused your problem and therefore made the situation requiring you to take extra step to fix it. What you did shouldn't even have logically worked, but it did. I'm convinced the reason it fails once you remove the extra edit you added is because you also removed those linkage records after the response chain was altered. I don't' know why the response chain was altered as there was no reason to modify the order.

What the CS is doing in this case with adding those PNAM subrecords is not a wild edit, it's not a dirty edit, it's a necessary component that should NEVER be removed. It's being added for a reason and without it the game has no means to resolve the response chains properly after they've been edited.

So again, I cleaned SM Refurb, the game behaves properly for the thieves den quest, and nothing is broken. The dirty edit is not necessary. It won't hurt to leave it in place but it doesn't need to stay there.

@onra: Added to clean mods list, thank you.

On the topic of SM Plugin Refurbish, I am moving it to the "do not clean" list for two reasons:

• Author says not to clean (and they know their mods best).
  
  
• As Vorians has made very clear, automatic cleaning of DIAL records is not a good idea, and I agree with him on that.

I don't think any such thing has been made clear at all.

ImpeREAL Empire - Unique Forts.esp included with the latest version of that mod (2.4) is clean so should be added to the appropriate list. (If memory serves, earlier versions needed cleaning.)

-Decrepit-

It was fixed on the 2.01 update, from memory.

You neglected to pay attention to the fact that I did NOT use the bugged CS to edit the dialogue records, I used TES4Edit. Please stop telling me I broke things by removing edits added by the CS which were needed, when I already stated that I didn't USE the CS to edit the dialogue, I used TES4Edit, so once again, I did NOT remove the links to previous records as they didn't exist in the original Oblivion.esm to BE removed, as shown by your first screenshot where Oblivion.esm lacks the entry for a previous record.
What I did works not because I broke anything (I didn't) but because I gave the game what it needed, which was all the related dialogue records in the same ESP, as the game was only looking at the ESP for the records, and ignoring the ESM. Now if I'd done this the clean way, I would have copied as override those additional records but not edited them as I didn't need to, which would then mean that cleaning the ESP would remove the records again. By knowing that cleaning the ESP would removed them, I was aware that I needed to make bland edits to keep them from being identified as ITM records, and this is what other modders may not be aware of, and thus this is why it is not entirely accurate to state that cleaning dialogue records is perfectly safe. Most of the time it is, but not every time.

Blaa ;snip
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Blaa ;snip

I love how you two argue. It teaches us all. Argue some more, please.
You two are good at it.

...Brain...Meltdown...

I cannot decide if that was serious or sarcastic. Damn the internets! I'll assume it was serious, since they are talking about stuff I wouldn't otherwise know about...

Ok, Let me make it simple.

Delete everything. Make a esp named well, Delete Everything.esp.
Run it, see what happens. Haha of course, the obvious.

Then make another.. A CLEAN esp.
name it clean. empty. Run Vanilla with it. see what happens. The obvious. Vanilla.

Now make another esp. This one takes a little effort. Not much but a little.
Delete everything you don't like in the game, or anyone elses mods, patches, laughingly sarcastic posts, or otherwise imperfect edits.
And place that esp after everything. Even the bashed patch. Problem solved.

The real problem starts before all of this.

Place your dirty mod #1. Does it run?
Now place it Last? Does it run?

If it doesn't like to run in the middle, what does that mean...?

CTD can't be avoided in oblivion. Everyone will learn about it.
The only difference is how you learn.
And What you consider dirty? Hence the do not modify list.
They consider dirty deleting anything from the Vanilla.
Well, I am dirty.... I delete what I don't like. It overrides everything.

Tho I strive to release my mods "clean".

Bugged? No, sorry, but in this instance the CS is doing the right thing in linking the records it needs. You're doing things in a non-standard way and this is why your results break.

Every record included with OC has a specific reason for being there. They all have conditions for use which have been changed to allow Glarthir to use the right responses. No responses were moved out of order as the CS shot from BC proves you did at some point. The difference, once again, is that I am not required to add additional hack records to fix what was never broken to start with.

Anyone editing dialogue naturally via the CS will produce the same results I have. Dialogue is far too sensitive to be doing those kinds of edits in tes4edit. The results are, as you found out, not desirable.

PNAM subrecords are REQUIRED to be present in the ESP for proper response chain resolution. It's as simple as that.

@Metallicow: I can't tell if you're being serious either. Nobody is deleting dialogue here so your rant about deleting things makes no sense. Deleting vanilla dialogue is one of the worst things you could do because no amount of fixing can resolve the break in the response chains that would produce.

You appear to not be grasping what is meant by a deleted record. Or to be grasping what happens when the game tries to reference that deleted record with another mod later in the order that attempts to utilize it. I suggest before you try and berate people for "deleting vanilla" that you understand what's going on first.

I would not use TES4Edit to edit dialog records any more than I would use it to edit scripts... Dialog needs to be "compiled" just like scripts do - TES4Edit can not do that for you. TES4Edit is very good at removing unnecessary edits - even to dialog, but there are some edits that are best done in the CS.

Don't worry, we will do. We disagree on pretty much everything.




So now you're trying to tell me that the CS is not bugged? Of course the CS is bugged, this is why we need to clean mods. Every ITM which TES4Edit removes from an ESP is clear evidence that the CS is bugged. Every crash the CS joyfully produces for us shows that it is bugged. All those land records and pathgrid records which get edited in cells close to the ones you actually edit reveals that the CS is bugged. You're putting words in my mouth which I did not say, as I said I used TES4Edit because the CS is bugged, I did not say that the PNAM record edits from the CS is bug-related, merely that the CS s bugged generally, and thus I use TES4Edit more than the CS. You want to discourage people from using TES4Edit for modding, and to only ever use the CS (see I can put words in your mouth too).

Every record included with BC has a specific reason for being there. Without those records, the quest is unplayable, thus they have a specific reason for being there as they make the quest playable again. Try removing them and you'll find the quest breaks and cannot be completed, thus those additional hack records fix what was broken not by me, but simply by the way in which the game fails to reference the original ESM for those dialogue records.

Oh, you can at that, and fabulously so, even while cloaking it behind sanctimonious rhetoric that had nothing to do with what I ACTUALLY SAID.

Which was that in this instance meaning dialogue editing, the CS is properly adding information that is necessary for the response chain to stay intact.

Since you're editing dialogue in a non-standard way, things broke. Yes, I said it, you broke it. What part of this is demonstrably false? Evidence you broke it is pretty clear since you had to hack the records around it to get it unbroken.

Also, did you even look at the two CS shots I linked? The one where the OC one has the INFO records still in the correct order in the dialogue interface and BC does not? The fact that they're out of order in your mod indicates you've done something else that wasn't proper.

So yes, since you ARE driving my curiosity here, I'll set up a quick test (oh boy, who knew I'd be using my own alt-start mod for so much testing) and go prod Glarthir with your mod loaded. And then I'll do it again with your hack record removed, and then AGAIN after repairing the out of order response chain and let the CS do what it does PROPERLY in this case.

I'm certainly not advocating that nobody use tes4edit for editing. I'm advocating that it be used properly. While it may seem like I'm being hostile I'm simply trying to point out to anyone who cares that you're not using it properly for this purpose. There are some things the CS gets phenomenally wrong (even with CSE's help) and there are other things it gets fabulously correct. Dialogue editing is one of those things it gets fabulously correct.

Well this is pointless, since you don't seem to pay heed to what I say, and instead just send this round in circles. And there's no need to test whether what you say works works, as I never at any point suggested that what you said works does not work. In fact at least twice I said that we got the same working results by doing different things. However since you're just going to continue to be aggressive, I shall stop talking about this subject, and let this thread get back to what it was originally started for.

I was paying attention to what you said. You weren't paying attention to what I said. I wasn't trying to be aggressive or anything, just trying to make my point. Something isn't getting across though and I don't know what, so I guess it's probably a good idea to bow out.