There must be some big projects out there that involve multiple people. Other than sending the esp over and waiting for someone else to contribute before getting it back, how do you guys collaborate on the same project?

I heard about TESsnip. I downloaded it from http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=2114. However, when I run it, there's this on the title bar "TESsnip (Oblivion Version)" and when I load my esp file, I get an unhandled exception (TESsnip.TESParserException: Subrecord block did not match the size specified in the record header)

So, two questions. Is TESsnip the only option worth considering? And, is this the correct version of TESsnip I should be using? I couldn't find other links by googling.

Is there a way to Merge Mods in the CK like in past editors?

Perhaps the project can be broken up into pieces, one works on interiors, one works on exteriors, one works in one Hold or town, one works on one dungeon that kind of thing. Then, if the Merge feature works, these mods can be merged together.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm going to look for a way to merge them in the CK.

I jumped the gun on TESsnip though. I realized that TESsnip was part of FOMM, the one that comes with it opens the esp successfully. The one that is returned by searching for TESsnip on google doesn't seem to work with Skyrim.

The idea was that, one does some interiors, other does other interiors, maybe another contributor does the characters and so on, so hopefully, these can be easily identified and merged with TESsnip or the CK.

If anyone can share their experience doing this, I'd be grateful!

This is TesVSnip for Skyrim:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=5064

MERP has almost 40 people on developer rank, and right now I guess about 10 people work actively on plugin data. You need to use one or more ESM files as the base mod (containing the worldspace), and let your developers make ESP's off that and later merge these to one or more ESM's. Whenever a batch of ESP's are merged you redistribute the updated ESM files to the team.

In general this means that you don't let devs work on the same area at the same time. Several developers in MERP right now have their own town/city to make, others are generating new regions, and yet again others are detailing existing regions (placing mountain meshes and designing rivers). A few others are working on dungeons.

ESP files can be merged to ESM files using the CK's Version Control, which can be enabled by modifying the CK INI files. I don't think there is a complete guide on Version Control right now...


What kind of project is yours? If you give some details I can advice you on choosing a workflow.

I believe the CK includes an entire set of tools for that very purpose under Version Control. It requires some network setup to get it working correctly and it needs to be enabled in the .ini. I have seen it discussed, but it has been some time and I do not recall which forum it was on. Look for the topic Version Control on this forum and on Nexus.

Oops, didn't refresh when I came back from the kitchen. Maegfaer beet me to it.

Source Control ->
Haven't enabled this yet, but from the menu options it's pretty obvious that it uses perforce.
http://www.perforce.com/downloads/latest-features

Which is free for less than 20 users. Great for small production teams or mods. I use this at work and have been using it for my mod, though i haven't yet enabled the in-editor source control options.

P4Win all the way baby!

NOTE: Source control really shines with scripts. Where two people can work on one script at the same time and you just merge the two revisions later

Outside of the CK, there's also some very important tools modders for big projects can use to keep things on track.

The first is, look into an SNV/version control system, especially if your mod involves loose files outside of the normal ESP (such as texture, audio, models, etc.). This is less nessicary to do, and probably detrimental if you are just working on an ESP.

For http://www.mechlivinglegends.net, we use TourtoiseSVN ( http://tortoisesvn.net/ ), which is open source and free to use. Of course, someone would need to rent out or pay for a server to put the SVN on, but other than that it's free. Basically how it works is this: you have the SVN server, which holds the main mod files. Every person who has access to this main server has a repository on their own computer that mirrors the server's contents. Whenever someone makes a change or adds something to the server, mod team members can do an "SVN Update" right in windows, where they download the "update" to their computer. Or they can do an "SVN Commit", where they basically upload changes to the master server that other people will download when they update. This might be tricky when working on one ESP, which is where it would be useful to split your ESP up into each "area" that gets worked on by different people (i.e. an ESP for interiors, for code/scripts, etc). Then at the end of the week, you could have a team lead merge all changes to these seperate ESP files, and upload the master ESP.

SVN's are VERY nice because they directly track every change made, which is very useful for debugging or reverting any accidently screw ups. Most SVN's (including Tortoise) have extensive backup abilities that last for a long time. If I wanted to, and I was a mod lead, I could revert the whole mod (or just a specific part of it) to changes that were done for a year ago, and then back again. This makes it really easy to fix broken things - just revert. Or if you accidently delete your file, you'll always have a backup on the main server.

We also use Trac, which is a free project management system: http://trac.edgewall.org/

Trac basically lets you keep track of your projects by clearly laying out bug reports, feature lists, timelines for the project, and being able to create "tickets" (tasks, either for a bug or a feature) and assign them to people with varying priority levels. It's very useful for keeping everyone on the same.. "trac"

I'm pretty sure both of these things require a server to run them on, so you'll either need to rent out a small one or hook up your own. I don't think they need to be particularly powerful, though the SVN can put a big strain on a server if it's a rather low end one and you've got all the fancy features unlocked and it's used heavily.

Version Control in the CK works without using PerForce as well, at least the merging and such works. It'll simply give a message that it can't find PerForce but it'll function.

I didn't know that PerForce was for free for 20 people. I'm going to check it out, see if our project can make some use of it (although we are bigger than 20). Thanks for that info.




I considered that for MERP, but it turned out that it remembered every previous version of every file (like you said) and I couldn't figure out how to turn that off. When Checking Out from scratch it started downloading the earliest version of every file first, and then downloads the next file version and overwrites the previous, and then the next, etc etc. MERP's core ESM file is 250 MB big, and our LOD files together are super large as well. This means that although the latest release is perhaps 600 MB total, if there are 10 previous releases a Check Out from scratch will require you to download almost 6 GB of data! Binary files don't diff well, especially not if they are encrypted.

I am sure there is some way to turn the tracking of earlier versions off for specific files and folders, but I couldn't figure it out. Any pointers towards this would be appreciated.

If I recall correctly, P4 was only used for Papyrus source files. All plugin-related version control ops are managed by the in-house system.

Thank you for all the input!

I should have mentioned that, by multiple people, I meant 2 to 4, at most. We'll start with TESslip (thanks for the correct link btw) which should be the easiest method to get into. Because we're not experienced modders, all the other suggestions would require a big time investment for us to get comfortable with.


It's a new town on the main Tamriel worldspace. Here's the http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1358757-wip-valton-the-new-hold/. Of course, any other suggestions are welcome