So i found out the hard way, that if you so much as sneeze while viewing content in any cell, it will create an edit in your active esp, regardless if you wanted it or not.


after making a new cell, i randomly decided to open up my esp in tessnip just to see.

it turned out i had about 40 edited cells in both world and interiors, even though i only physically meant to edit about 3 in total.


one of the causes of this is by having grid or angle snap on, and double clicking on any non-snapped object in the rendering window to view its properties, it can sometimes snap it into the grid, and thus unknowingly making a world edit that will show up in your new esp.

another way to make sure this isnt happening, just make sure after you are done viewing a cell you dont want to edit (just viewing for reference and comparison or whatever) check in the editor window next to the name of the cell it should not have an asterisk * nest to it. if it has this symbol that means it wrote an entry to edit it in your esp.


this is probably a noob issue, but anyway, i just thought i would give a heads up.

Yeah, yesterday i realized I unintentionally modified a bunch of cells, just by checking various places, looking for references on how to make different things.
You can also check what your esp modifies by clicking on it in the load window (Data) and clicking the "Details" button.
Unfortunately, being a noob myself, i can't quite understand every modifications listed; some are pretty obvious, but most are vague for a beginner.

Anyway, except avoiding grid/angle snap when checking objects, are there any other unfortunate ways of modifying stuff unintentionally ?
Thanks.

Your ESP can be polluted by just looking at actor values records, even if you cancel out of the windows.
you can easily fix by opening in SkyEdit or TESsnip and cleaning them out. I try to keep track of all the editor ids that I'm playing with to make sure nothing creeps in

Thanks for the warning.

As I'm paranoid thanks to the Ob CS, I'm always watchful for the ever so evil * and when I check stuck, I'm sure to forget the right click button lol.

There's no telling what the hell else the CK is doing that we don't know about ~_~.

So say you do this, how do you fix it?

One thing that I do that will hopefully cut down on dirty edits is to make myself a "junk" plugin that I am never going to use for anything but poking around and learning stuff. Set your SkyrimEditor.ini file to allow for multiple instances if the CK to be open (see below), and use the junk plugin to poke around while you have your real plugin open in another CK window. Check what you need to check in the junk plugin and edit accordingly in the real one.

Open the SkyrimEditor.ini file and change the line "bAllowMultipleEditors=0" to "bAllowMultipleEditors=1".

thats a great tip. thanks, i'll be doing this from now on

It was the same with the CS, but it seems even worse with this kit.

I'm not sure if I did or if it was just due to editing something, but if I slightly moved something in a cell I didn't intend to edit, could that potentially cause the mostly original but slightly edited cell to load instead of someone else's mod if the wrong load order is selected?

This used to happen in GECK as well, it was always worth checking your mod in tessnip, with GECK it would think you had edited any race you had gone into while making a new race. For example if you went to Hispanic, clicked copy and renamed your custom race, tessnip and GECK would think you had edited almost all default races. You need to use Tessnip to delete any entries you know you didn't edit.

Maybe a new problem for the TES game, but Fallout 3 and NV modders will be familar with this problem

Can't you toggle the ignore flag in the details list of your plugn to fix this?

That's pretty close, but what actually loads is the edited object IN the cell. It loads any changes your plugin makes. The real problems arise if someone else edits that particular object that you edit. Then the mod lowest in the load order will over ride the one above it.

Oh, so this still means someone could get an object appearing in their edited mod where they removed it just because I looked at it, or only if I actually changed something?

There are a few things that Skyedit does better than the CK. One such thing is the option to clean a record. It sets the record back to the one in the master file. Why don't we have that option in ghe CK? Seems easy to do. Oh and Skyedit hilights any changed records in bright green. Another simple thing that makes modding easier .

How do I clean a record/cell please?

Actually, from TESAME to Skyedit, the modder-made tools were always essential to cleaning up your plugins. gamesas doesn't really care whether our plugins are clean or not, with the Steam workshop and the promised one-click-mod-release we will soon see an unprecedented flood of unclean mods.


The hard way: use the Details button in the File/Data menu.

Easier: use Skyedit, Wrye Mash or TESVSnip.

What loads after, wins. So if yours is loading after, your accid-edit(accidental edit) cell is what will replace theirs.


(going in depth here, this can be overridden in the same fashion if someone, say made a "fix mod" with the corrected object placement, and loaded it after yours).

Correct me if I'm wrong here.

And yes, SkyEdit is a good way to check for accidental edits, cause of the highlighting.

Well, you can't clean a cell in Skyedit as it doesn't support cells yet, but in practice it wouldn't be hard for Beth to implement such a feature in the CK. You can clean any supported record in Skyedit (And it supports a lot of them.) by right clicking on the record then clicking clean. As far as fixing cells, you could do this. (It's risky, you'd have to be careful and make sure you back up your esp.)

Get TESVsnip.from skyrimnexus
Open up TESVsnip.
Open up your esp in TESVsnip
Delete all the cell records you didn't mean to edit
Then you have to edit the count for the cell records or else the CK will scream at you and close when you try to open the esp in the future. I think that data is in the... header of the esp. I'd check with someone else on that, however.

That's all I got.

"The hard way: use the Details button in the File/Data menu."

Using the ignore flag? (pressing Delete)

For example I copied some stuff out of the Riften player house into my custom cell and the Riften House Cell is shown as edited in the Cell List. How do I fix that?

Thanks for your time btw.

nvm

LOL! now this is what I call an accidental edit.

INSTEAD of DELETING everything a cell i duplicated, I instead DUPLICATED EVERYTHING I selected.

XDDDDDDD Well good thing it was in the duplicated cell.

I'm wondering, what's the harm in all of this if you're not actually moving anything around?

You need to find the cell and press DEL to ignore every reference up to the next cell enty.

The entries will not be deleted at once, they will just be ignored upon loading, so you can test your mod ingame or check it with the CK. The next time you save the mod, the deleted entries will be gone for good.

Say Mod A adds a forge to a cell in riverwood, and Mod B adds a Barn to the same cell.
If Mod A loads first and Mod B second then you'll only see the Barn in game.
If Mod B loads first and Mod A second then you'll only see the forge in game.
Only one instance of an edited record will be used by the game. The last instance loaded is the one that is used.
That is the Rule of One. *Thunder Cracks in the Distance*

dirty esp's are no harm to you individually, it's just incredibly inconsiderate to other modders. because your unintentionally edited item could potentially override theirs if they edited the same thing intentionally.