Greetings,

So, my situation is this:

I have been tinkering with the "Fighter's Stronghold" DLC pretty much since Beth released it, and recently I decided that I had made such a huge number of changes, in a direction I had not initially intended, that it might be worth releasing. However, this presented me with two problems.

Being as I started said tinkering a long time ago, on a small scale, and for my own use, I directly modified the .esp, so in the last couple of days I have been looking into ways of "de-isolating" the mod. The method I came up with was to use Tes4Gecko to add the original BLC as a master, and then use Tes4Edit to remove what would become essentially duplicate records. The method seems to have worked fine, except for a crash associated with the Xmarkers in the private quarters (that I was able to fix), but I now get an error after the CS has finished loading:

"Some of the bad forms encountered during load could not be removed from the file".

This is not an error I have ever encounted before, so it's obviously related to jiggery pokery I have attempted in the last 24 hours.

Does anyone know anything about this how to fix it, if it even is a real error?

Thanks in advance.

Yup, trash the ESP. It seems like the format was tweaked in a bad way. You could also try to find the bad structure and fix it. Maybe you deleted a reference or something. You should have just converted the original into an ESM (with TES4Gecko) or esmified it (with Wrye Bash) and worked on your patch with out an issue. (You have to remember to convert the DLC back to an ESM and then update your patch's master list to point to the ESP version again, or simply espify the DLC again, depending upon which route you chose.)

In any case, you can't release it. Beth doesn't allow it, unless you completely rebuilt the entire thing from scratch.

Well, yes, I know how to do that now, but it wasn't my oringal intention to release it (I started by tinkering with a few insignifacant things, and it became this monstrous construction.



Really? I was under the impression that so long as it was a patch to the original DLC it was ok, such mods have been released before, and at least one of them is very well known.

Oh, if it's a patch then thats fine.

Doesn't TES4Gecko have a function where you give it a modified file and the original and it makes a patch out of the differential?

Make sure the patch is only a patch. If you use one of the two methods I mentioned, then the only changes that should end up in the plugin should be modifications or new records. You should use TES4Edit to clean it afterward to make sure that that is the case. This includes remembering to check the dialog branch because TESCS automatically saves certain records when you modify certain other records (i.e., certain dialog groups when you modify races.)

Edit: Meant to post this earlier, too many tabs open... There is a difference between making a patch and duplicating the plugin. 99.99% of mods modify the Oblivion.esm; hence, Oblivion.esm is the master for 99.99% of mods. Patches are not the problem.

Ah, I had forgotten what it was like to be the Newbie (or look like one, at least).

Let me try to explain the situation a little better:

this all started about six months after the DLC was first released with a few tweaks, namely opening up a couple of the towers as places to stick companions, etc. Gradually, over the course of several years this evolved into a complete rebuild of the castle. By rebuild I mean I basically trashed the internal architechture, and fit everything inside the exterior, added curtain walls, a town....

You get the idea.

I showed what I had done to some friends, and the uniform response was, "you really should look at releasing this".

So I thought, "OK, lets fix the problems and see about subjecting it to scrutiny.

Having hit the CS wiki I realised I had three major problems, of varying difficulty:

1. Dirty/wild edits (about three year's worth).

Some work with Tes4edit and some ruthlessness dealt with this provisionally, and I can do it again now without any trouble.

2. An inappropriate .esm dependancy.

Labourious work, but not a major problem, just time consuming.

3. It isn't a patch.

This is the problem I have come up against. I need to retroactively make my copy of the .esp into a patch for the original. My first thought was to use Bash (not Gecko, sorry) to esmify the original and then add it to the modified .esp's master list, then "cleaning" the new patch of dirty edits. It seems to have basically worked, except for these "bad forms".

So, is there any way to find these bad forms; will they, for example, always cause a crash?

If not, I may have to copy all the interior cells, modified scripts etc. and then gut my .esp and rebuild it as a proper patch.

First off, what you describe is perfectly acceptable. Your intended end-result is a new ESP dependent on the Fighter's Guild ESP. Nothing wrong or unacceptable or EULA-breaking there.

The CS contains an option to create a differential ESP based on two existing ESPs. Showler thinks Gecko does too. I don't recall whether I've ever used this, I think I might have done once in the CS, but I'm not certain.

Anyway, this probably won't produce what you want, as what you want requires dependency on the Fighter's Guild ESP to work, and I really doubt the CS contains a function that accommodates this.

Personally, I believe what you already attempted is probably the best way to attempt this. Add the original DLC ESP as a master to your edited version, use TES4Edit to clean out duplicates, and that should be it. With no further adjustments, you ought now to have a working ESP containing your changes, dependent on the DLC ESP which does not contain any of your edits.

I suggest you start again; take your edited ESP and again attempt to add the DLC as master.

I have tried this twice already, and something is clearly stopping it working properly. The "bad forms" error was never present before, so I'm inclined to think that maybe the CS is confused (I have trouble seeing how a form can be "made" bad by adding a master.

As I said, it seems to have worked fine in the CS, but I still get the error, so something is obviously going on there.

Here's a thought: is there a tool that will compare two mods and strip everything related to one from the other, even things that aren't perfect duplicates?

As far as I can see most of the current edits are to the world or interior cells, I could delete those and then try adding the master again.

If I prune out every duplicate form from my .esp I can add the original as a master using the CS. I'm thinking that if the two files don't directly interact before the Master is add (as would be the case normally) I should avoid the screwy behaviour.

It sounds like it might be easier for you to just start with the TES4Edit patch. You can use your current plugin as a base (by loading it in TES4Edit and copying the changes you have made in that plugin, with "copy as override".) Then you get all of the changes, just the changes, if TES4Edit can load it...

What I'd do:

• Change the original Fighter's Stronghold to a .esm.
  
• Open the CS, and create a completely new mod with that .esm as a master.
  
• Save that completely empty new mod, and change F.S. back to .esp. You now have a de-isolated shell.
  
• Open TES4Edit and load the original, your mod, and your new shell.
  
• Copy any new records directly from your existing mod to the shell.
  
• Copy any override records from the original F.S., then hand-edit them to match your mod.

A little tedious but should be fail-safe, and of course that last step is made far easier by being able to look at all the records side-by-side!

Oh, TES4Edit can load it, so can BASH, the CS, the game...

It just has a duff record in it, allegedly.



That sounds like a good idea, but I think it might just be worth me removing everything from the original DLC, and then adding said DLC as a master, then I can use my current mod to work out what I changed in the DLC and make edits in the CS.

I think I've run afoul of trying to be too clever, here.

Thanks guys, this has been enlightening.

I think what tejon suggests would probably be quicker, with the same end-result.

Maybe, but most of the major conflict-inducing stuff is in the interiors, so I could just duplicate all those cells, the activators for the secret passages, and the scripted reciepts for the upgrades. Given that I've basically junked the original design, and fitted the entire building into a 3 x7 floor plan with four levels, that's actually less hassle than disabling huge amounts of architechure.

Then it would just be a case of places the NPC's again, and a few items like the banners, and I'd be basically where I was before.

It might take a bit more time, but it avoids any manual editing of the.esp, which has caused the current problems.

Incidently, I'm wondering if the "bad forms" in question are actually un-deleted statics that were deleted by the original DLC.

No, un-deleting is considered cleaning, and that is not something TESCS chokes on. I still do not see why the quickest way is not to simply load the original ESP and your plugin into TES4Edit, and copy all of your changes as overrides into a new plugin.

I meant that the original DLC deletes statics that my (cleaned) esp then un-deletes and disables. As far as copying everything, let me put it this way: my esp is around 1150kb after cleaning, the original DLC is 662 kb, i.e. there is twice as much information in my version.

In any case, I found the problem, it's in my copy of the original DLC.

I'm going to a backup now...

Update:

I finally got it to work, it required saving the original DLC in the CS before esmifying it, that was all. After that it loaded properly.