Position Placement "Cell" Records Conflicts

[tjax323]

I often see a lot of edits like this where a mod re-positions something in a cell that Update.esm, CRF.esp, or USSEP.esp files moved already. My believe is that update & USSEP are more often than not... fixing something. Most of the time mods seem to restore things back to a "vanilla" state or a non-USSEP state. Would I be correct thinking that items like this should be considered as candidates to carry forward into a patch, or would it be better to leave alone? A mod like above from Skyrim Improved Puddles... I don't think would a major issue, but a mod like say... Forgotten City... would probably not be as a good an idea??? I think this is where knowing a mod comes into play, but I'm looking to see my principle is sound first.

[TechAngel85]

Yes, they are candidates...depending on what the mod is doing. Knowing the mod is important. Most position changes from USLEEP, USSEP, and many mods are simply to fix clipping or placement issues. Mods may also move objects because they've added or disabled other objects and the move is necessary to prevent clipping or to change the aesthetics of the area (such is often the case with lighting mods moving lightbulbs and light-producing objects around).

[hishutup]

ITMs are something that you have to really look at. In the majority of cases, the CK creates them necessarily and this is why it's better to run the ITM script.

 

If there is a mod that adds a bunch of flora to a town sometimes the ITMs are correct because it just so happens that the USSEP edit moves the object to be on top of another one.

 

In the case of puddles, that really isnt an ITM and it really doesnt matter what edits you make to the position because that record is disabled("deleted").

 

In the case of something like ELFX, sometimes its best to not even to look at it as the author does go through and adopt the required changes.

[tjax323]

Thanks, again guys. I appreciate it. So I'm not off-base. That helps me trust myself and build a little more confidence. Appreciate the heads up on the light sources. ELFX will once again be my chosen lighting mod, and I've not yet made it to my "animation" section, so that information will prove useful.

 

Spending this much time on xEdit, I think I'm beginning to understand why an ITM would be an issue- especially in modding. I'm ferreting out stuff now on clean plug-ins, so I can only imagine how much harder that would be. Is this where "wild edits" come into play incidentally, or is that an entirely different topic? I don't want to confuse myself. I do better learning new things if I build a solid foundation, so I don't want to confuse two separate issues early on.

Edited January 1, 2017 by tjax323

[hishutup]

Wild edits are a chapter, its really difficult to tell what is on purpose and what is truly a wild edit.

A majority of the time it really doesnt matter.

One example is a flora mod changing the position of a rock that is outside the area the mod should affect.

This is a wild edit simply because I know that mod should not have touched that rock due to it being outside the range of where the mod should be touching stuff.

 

Another example is a mod that changes the landscape and you see that the LAND record was altered.

Lets say there is only one area that is affected. In this case you would have to get into the authors head and understand why they would even think about making the edit.

Typically, in this case I assume the author either made a mistake and/or this was intentional and I deem it outside the scope of the mod.

 

Another example is WICO and my script.

I have a few images...

1. Since all the QNAMs differ by less than 2, I assume this is a wild edit
2. The weight differs less than 0.01, I consider this a wild edit.
3. Object bounds are zeros, don't know how that happened but I believe this to be the ck being weird as I don't think he should touch object bounds
4. This one I am a little unsure of, but I don't think WICO should edit attack race. This edit is not correlated to changes in ones race,but the values always seems to be the same when this record exists in WICO, smells like a wild edit to me.
5. Just as I type that out... See, smells like a wild edit. As for the race, I am unsure id facegen is linked to this, if it is not then Im removing WICO's edits. Here is an example of stats.

[TechAngel85]

Yep, what Hishy said. In a nutshell, a "wild edit" is an edit that the author made which was unintentional. Authors are often forced to use vanilla references when building their mods because there are no other references to use. This can lead to accidental edits to whatever they're referencing and is actually a very common and easy mistake to make. Most authors will clean this type of stuff up before releasing the mod or mod update; however, there are some that don't. Possibly because they are unaware of the edits or were just sloppy and didn't care. If you find a wild edit in a mod, it's courteous to notify the author so they can fix the mistake. Those authors that actually care about releasing a proper and refined, and care about their work will likely fix it as soon as possible. Others...well, just don't care. Those are the authors you typically avoid, imo.