Making a Patch for Your Own Mod

Post » Sun Sep 08, 2013 4:04 pm

How do you make a mod that updates and patches an existing mod of your own?

I looked into making the new esp treat the original as a master, but the threads are a bit confusing as there are multiple methods. And I don't think I want to make the original an *.esm.

I made a mod I've been using for about a year where you can craft weapons of all types with new materials. It is not released yet but I was thinking of uploading it as it works and I have some friends who would like to try it. It's about 46 MB compressed.

Basically,

Find a letter, go to the location, defeat the Boss, find a book, read it, get the hidden perk to smith weapons of one new material.

Find another letter, go to the location, defeat the Boss, find a book, read it, get another hidden perk to smith weapons of another new material.

I recently added Dawnguard to my load order so I wanted to add Crossbows and bolts to it but I have a few problems:

1. If I make a copy of _shb_MyMod.esp and re-name it _shb_MyMod_DG.esp, it is recognised as a new mod and without the original _shb_MyMod.esp, Skyrim says content is missing and I lose everything from the original mod. I can do the quest again, but I lose any items I have already made with the vanilla version.

2. If I activate both versions, the copies in _shb_MyMod_DG.esp have the same form ID except for the first two digits for the load order, it does not update my game to make the new items, but I have two mods running. If I redo the quest I get the new weapon recipes AND duplicates of the old ones at the forge. Help in the console reveals two of everything except the new items.

3. If I make _shb_MyMod_DG.esp just have the recipes etc for crossbows and bolts, all the connections to the original are lost, of course. The perks, keywords etc that are needed get replaced with UNKNOWN or INVALID in the recipe conditions when I save. If I make duplicates of the perks and conditions, they are treated as separate and part of a separate mod.

4. As the hidden perks are added to the character on reading a book, the new weapons cannot be added without reading the book again.

Any suggestions? I have never used Wryebash or anything like that, but I do use TES5Edit in a limited way to remove left over junk etc.

I could make a Dawnguard-only version, but then anyone who does not have Dawnguard can't use it.

I could make two versions, Vanilla and Dawnguard, but then that would be a 46 and a 49 MB mod to download and anyone updating will have the same problems I am having. A new start with the DG version would be essential, which is not a good thing.

I'd like to be able to make an add-on, patch type of mod so that once activated the new items are available.

Cheers!

~.~

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Tyrel
 
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