Difference between revisions of "TES4Edit/Mod cleaning tutorial with TES4Edit"

First, I made an special (fake) mod ESP which contains random records copied from Oblivion.esm. This serves the purpose of demonstrate how to use the program and to allow me to take pictures of the working process without using anyone's mod as a guinea pig.  

First thing first, you'll ''need'' TES4Edit. Get the last version from the location below, which is:  1.2.43 (at the time I wrote this at least)

*[http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11536 TES4View by ElminsterEU]

In order to use it, you need to place the files contained in the archive you just downloaded in the Oblivion directory (*not* Data directory, but the directory in which is located the Oblivion.exe)

 

#Copy and then Paste a new TES4View.exe on the same directory, and rename it to TES4Edit.exe, or

#Create a shortcut to TESView and start it specifying the parameter -edit when you launch it.

 

In any case, always the best option is to create a new shortcut to it, just select the executable (TES4View or TES4Edit) on the explorer and right-click. Then in the context menu which appears, select Create Shortcut, which will create a new "Shortcut to <whatever>" within the current directory. After that, right-click on it (on the new shortcut), and again, on the popup click on 'Properties', and in the window that opens, edit the box called Target to have this text:

 

<path to where Oblivion.exe is located>\TES4View.exe -edit -fixupPGRD

 

If you just created the new TES4Edit.exe by renaming a copy of TES4View, and prefer to use it leaving TES4View for readonly operations only, then put in Target this text:

<path to where Oblivion.exe is located>\TES4Edit.exe -fixupPGRD

[[Image:Pic010-Shortcut to TES4Edit.png|shortcut to TES4Edit|300px]]

= The clean process =

In order of use this tool to clean, you should load only one mod: the one you want to clean ''(there is a technique which allow to load several and clean one by one, but more on this later)'' The tool will also load Oblivion.esm, since all master plugins are also loaded, and every mod depends on it.  

Lastly, go and search for the mod you want to clean ''(you already copied it to the Data folder, right? If you didn't, then this is a good time to do so ... and restart TES4View in order to be able to see it in the list)''

After that, let the program load the stuff it need to be loaded, and when it's done, it would say so. So don't bother it until it shows "Background Loader: terminated" on the Message tab.

After you're done, select OK and the filtering process will start. The program will change their window caption to show the filtering progress as it goes. It could take from seconds to several minutes, depending on how large is the mod and on the speed of your computer.  

The point of filtering is to instruct the program to show only the things that we want to focus on, so, with that settings it will show only the records which are identical to the corresponding master record, i.e. records whose presence is not needed in the current mod, since they aren't changing anything useful. The mod only got them because the CS put them without the modder wanting to do so.  

After the filtering process is done, the program will show the content shown (select the root of the tree and press the '*' which is located on the numeric keypad in order to expand all levels):  

As you can see in the image, the mod does in fact have some dirty records. They are shown colored in GREEN background and DARK GRAY text. Mainly they are landscape and some placed objects which got transferred to the mod since the CS though that they had been touched.  

Ok, we're approaching to the end of the process.  

After you click "Yes, I’m absolutely sure" (because you do, right? Never lie to a program!), the removing process will be executed. After it finishes, you will notice that the modified mod turned to 'bold' as a signal that it has been modified.  

That way, in case something goes wrong (maybe you delete a group record forgetting that within it was some important edit,) then, as soon as you notice it, you can roll back to the previous save file, or open it as a new mod and copy the editions back. Thus, is important to stress this point: save often, and only do edits in chunks and save every one separately. In that way, you can go back to any point as you may wish.