Is it safe to remove all GMST's and Evil GMST's from all mods? I'm an experienced modder and mod user with Oblivion, but OB has Identical to Master, Wild Edits (which I'm sure Morrowind has, as well), and unnecessary references. I'm not as familiar with the Evil GMST's and GMST's of Morrowind. Looking at the mods in "escog.exe", some of these edits seem necessary. Are they?

The only bad gmst are the involuntary ones created when a mod is saved in the Construction Set without the expansions loaded. They're pretty easy to recognize, as there's 72 of them and they all appear at the same time. Also, it's all stuff related to the expansions like werewolf, fabricant, etc.

The rest is usually voluntary changes done by the modder. When in doubt, consult the Morrowind Mod Maker Manual and check the gmst list to see what it does. Hope that helps.

That helps immensely. I'll be sure to download the manual and check the bad GMST's.

Now, what exactly are "Evil" GMST's? And is there a tool to locate only the bad GMST's. escog seems to pick out all GMST's, which, if I understand you correctly, are not necessarily bad, and are most probably needed for the mod to function as the author intended.

So, I know about escog.exe and TESTool.exe...but, I've read mixed reviews about TESTool. Are there any more reliable tools out there?

The Evil GMST are the 72 related to the expansions I mentioned in my post. That's the common way to refer to them.
As for a tool, I can recommend you my personal favorite: TESAME. Simple and efficient. Select unwanted parts of the mod, press space to highlight, then delete, save and done. Just remember, be sure the entry you're deleting really is unwanted. Oh, and don't let TESAME rename everyone of your mods with "clean" in front. It's annoying in the long run when all your mods are named "clean something".

Malonn-

Hi

I more or less putz occasionally with Morrowind and really never play it.

Though in my research I found that the bestest, fastest way to clean mods is to use the .bat method as described in http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1184424-q-cleaning-mods-with-tespcd/. It takes a bit of time to set up but once done is much faster than using the tools or tes4edit is for Oblivion.

my http://abot-morrowind.tk/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=53&catid=45&Itemid=10, basically tes3cmd + TESTool

abot-

all that makes my head spin.

if using testool scares you, this should be enough
tes3cmd.exe clean --replace --hide-backups "mymodname.esp"

I'll look into TESAME, but from what I've read thus far, tes3cmd is the tool of choice for mod cleaning. So, I think I'll see how things go with that before I mess with any other utility. Thanks.



That's awesome, psymon. I'll make a runthrough with tes3cmd and the linked-to .BAT file. See how Morrowind plays. One problem I've seen (even though I've never been past Balmora in my play sessions) with my texture/animation/sounds/meshes replacers (i.e. MG&S Overhaul), is my framerate. I get 30's on a mid to high end system (i7 2600K, GTX580's SLI - heavily O/C'd). Hopefully with proper cleaning tools and practice, the framerates will jump up. That's my hope, anyway.



You too recommend tes3cmd. But I kinda agree with psymon: you go through a lot to play Morrowind. Reminds me of what I go through to play Oblivion, x2.

Seems I'm a little late on this part of the discussion, can't hurt to comment can it?. SmartMerger is also capable of removing GMST's (And full records if you wanted that); If you found a method that makes sense to you, stick with it.

And good luck with your mods and game.

I use the GMST inoculation method.

Make an empty plugin and save it. If you have the expansions install (but not loaded in the Construction Set) it will automatically add the "Evil GMSTs" to the plugin. You can see them by clicking the "details" button. That's your list. Save this plugin as "GMST inoculation".

Then, when you go to edit a different plugin, click to load your GMST inoculation file. The game will think that the GMSTs are already present, so it won't add them to the plugin you are editing. Since most published plugins are clean of "Evil GMSTs" when they're distributed, this should keep you mostly GMST free.

Hope that helps, and good luck.

+1

TESAME is my favorite too.

It is really interesting to have a bug this big in CS. Archive invalidation is more nuts though. (missing month bug is the biggest one! How can you miss a whole month from the calender? :teehee: )