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Combining Mods

SavageRock

Active Member
Messages
148
(I THINK) I remember reading somewhere that it is possible to "Combine" like mods or something...
Is this a possibility? I am not near the limit and I'm sure my Rig can handle a lot of stuff thrown at it. But I'm currently at about 130 active and that SEEMS LIKE A LOT...ESPECIALLY coming from console(XB1) to PC.
So my ask is this:
Is there a way to combine mods? And if so what are the benefits/downfalls? Does anyone know how to do it?:pardon
 
There are, indeed, a couple of ways to combine mods. There is a script for FO4Edit that can do it, and a separate program called Merge Plugins that does something similar. In terms of benefits, the main one is reducing the number of .esp/.esm files in your load order. The downfalls, however, can be significant:
  1. You need to decompile any .ba2 files that come with the mods you want to combine into their loose components and correctly combine those loose components manually in the correct order so that the overwrites match the order in which you merged the mods (Merge Mods may do this automatically now, I haven't used it in a long time).
  2. You need to be very careful in merging mods with scripts or that require a script extender, as there may be references in the scripts that expect parts of the original mod to be present in their original forms to work.
  3. Any compatibility patches that required the original mods, and any mods that have the originals as masters, would have to be rebuilt using the new internal structure of the merged mod.
I've merged a lot of mods over the years, and these are some of the issues I encountered. It can almost be like building a mod from scratch at certain points, depending on what you are trying to merge and how you are merging them. It's a great learning experience, however, if you are interested in getting to know how the mods you use work internally.
 
THAT is a very insightful response @snarkywriter . Thank You Much! Since I'm prone to "evening refreshments" after work and the last thing I need is to bork my main file...It sounds very much like a separate profile/save file for testing is in order here...

I am definitely on board to find out more about the internal workings of the mods I use because that helps a great deal knowing the why to the why when something isn't doing what I've expected it to do.
Thank you again for the swift and thorough response. I'm going to search out some reading material and maybe try to find a couple of mods I use from the same author and see if i can get them to play nicely together. I don't think it is worth it to try differing mods from differing authors (not yet at least since this is new to me) as there is a strong possibility I'm sure from my own limited knowledge of coding that there are usually several to MANY different ways to accomplish the same tasks and merging something from different authors could easily turn into a CTD extravaganza Which I've thus far managed to avoid with LOTS of reading, asking questions, sheer luck and a jumbo roll of Gorilla tape!
 
I don't think it is worth it to try differing mods from differing authors (not yet at least since this is new to me) as there is a strong possibility I'm sure from my own limited knowledge of coding that there are usually several to MANY different ways to accomplish the same tasks and merging something from different authors could easily turn into a CTD extravaganza Which I've thus far managed to avoid with LOTS of reading, asking questions, sheer luck and a jumbo roll of Gorilla tape!

Yeah, those are always irritating weekends. (Also, Gorilla Tape is amazing. Absolutely replaced duct tape's place in my life when it came out.)
 
I was using the windows task view feature and found the path that set me on the idea of merging and tearing mods apart.
There was a mod on the console which I wasn't initially able to find that had these kickA** pillars and structural supports which I'd made a staple of my own very lore accurate settlement building on XB1.
Once I DID find it, it was bundled in this menagerie of colorful bits n bobs I wanted NOTHING to do with... the search took me further down the rabbit hole towards tearing .BA2 files apart and into an up until today unrar'd dl of Bethesda's BA-extractor program...LoL... So there are the beginnings I think of my foray into either reducing my mod count or MORE abusively using the RESTORE feature in Win10 moving forward. Either way Im gonna be learning SOMETHING!
 
**sidenote**
BECAUSE I'm a reader, I DID check your signature link and that reminds me of the Tech tree path id already started before I ran into this strange disappearing city plan issue I experienced last week.
I do in fact have the prerequisite plots and upgrades to move into the solar tower construction phases with just a few more days of repeat sleeping in my "strategically located", un-lore friendly bed, set in the front yard of my advanced industrial plot and add a few items into it's stockpile to get this nuclear arms facility upgraded to a microfusion garage ASAP.

With that said I'll save the first mod shredding steps until Friday evening when I can stay up late without stressing over honoring my alarm clock the next day. ESPECIALLY since I ALSO have to test out for my MCSA cert tomorrow and that fact in itself ALREADY means I'll have to be energized enough tomorrow morning to complete a sufficient amount of work tasks before lunch time in order to leave myself in a good place for Thursday...

(ADULTING is Hard work)
Thanks again.
 
**sidenote**
BECAUSE I'm a reader, I DID check your signature link and that reminds me of the Tech tree path id already started before I ran into this strange disappearing city plan issue I experienced last week.
I do in fact have the prerequisite plots and upgrades to move into the solar tower construction phases with just a few more days of repeat sleeping in my "strategically located", un-lore friendly bed, set in the front yard of my advanced industrial plot and add a few items into it's stockpile to get this nuclear arms facility upgraded to a microfusion garage ASAP.

With that said I'll save the first mod shredding steps until Friday evening when I can stay up late without stressing over honoring my alarm clock the next day. ESPECIALLY since I ALSO have to test out for my MCSA cert tomorrow and that fact in itself ALREADY means I'll have to be energized enough tomorrow morning to complete a sufficient amount of work tasks before lunch time in order to leave myself in a good place for Thursday...

(ADULTING is Hard work)
Thanks again.

I enjoyed your thread.

Given your intellectual time is valuable and you seem willing to try.....

You are at 130 with a 255 .esp limit so not under any pressure. If it was my time "wanting to learn the tools" I would suggest you look into converting some of your easy .esps into .esls which do not count toward the 255. + Easy to find instructions online.

I think the only reason we don't see more authors publishing more of the smaller or mature mods as .esls in the first place is often just the state NMM / user base is in right now.

Just a humble suggestion. :declare
 
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It is soooooo much easier to start slow and merge things you know are plugins you never uninstall... like small tweaks etc... Make sure any changes to those files you are adding to the pack are in the lower part of the merge so they don't overwrite each other...

You are essentially creating a mod pack... I tend to keep like minded things in the same places... mods with assets in one where I need to make a large ba2 main and texture files together so I can pack them all up into one set, and mods that are only eps tweaks by themselves etc.

I leave mods that update a lot, or are very complex or require F4se alone... Would cause way more issues then good to mess with that and or you would be constantly breaking your own merge file to update them...

KEEP BACKUPS :focus
 
Thank you for the sound advice guys. Ruined, your advice is absolutely the approach I have been planning and right in line with what Snarky suggested. I figured that based on what Snarky posted and what I've learned about heavily scripted mods up to now that, simply having them to function properly can sometimes be both a challenge and a feat in itself, so in that same vein, they'd be best left alone.
I thought I'd start with some of the utility mods such as mods which add settlement items to the menu. Since I know SS is my main staple, I think some of the smaller item mods from other non-SS authors would be prime targets for merging in order to minimize the overall count.

I think this topic would make a great sticky also. Since SS is quite literally the PREMIER Settlement mod, people searching for ways and tools to limit their load counts would find their way here to the page with a couple links to tools, a proper tutorial, and little creative tagging.:moil
 
Another kind of mod you need to be careful about are mods which use Settlement Menu Manager.

SMM menus are registered by filename, which you have to pass to the registerMenu function. If SMM doesn't find the file it was given, it will asume the mod was uninstalled and remove the menus. Or won't even put them in in the first place.
You could update the filename in the quest, of course. xEdit/zEdit are capable of doing that.

Some mods are also referring to other mods by filename in their scripts. That you probably won't be able to fix manually post-merge. I think I'm doing that in What's Your Name, but I might have actually moved it to quest properties. I definitely put these names into properties for Grave Digger and Tune The Radios.
 
Another kind of mod you need to be careful about are mods which use Settlement Menu Manager.

SMM menus are registered by filename, which you have to pass to the registerMenu function. If SMM doesn't find the file it was given, it will asume the mod was uninstalled and remove the menus. Or won't even put them in in the first place.
You could update the filename in the quest, of course. xEdit/zEdit are capable of doing that.

Some mods are also referring to other mods by filename in their scripts. That you probably won't be able to fix manually post-merge. I think I'm doing that in What's Your Name, but I might have actually moved it to quest properties. I definitely put these names into properties for Grave Digger and Tune The Radios.

This is also relevant to updating mods. For example, the mod author of We Are The Minutemen (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/6443) just updated after about a year-long absence, but as part of the update changed the name of the .esp file. This could have all the same effects pra describes above (luckily it didn't in this case, from what I can gather, which makes me happy because I really like this mod).
 
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Well, if he did a major rework of his mod this might be justifiable. I did that with Tune The Radios, where the mod changed from "a new radio object which tunes to the pip-boy when placed" to "press R) Tune to set any radio to what your pip-boy plays".

But for example, the file of Immersive Teleportation is still named YetAnotherTeleportMod.esp, because I didn't want to break compatibility.
 
Quite true. When I asked, he indicated that there weren't any major internal changes. He changed the filename because another mod come out that was using the same filename. Even recommended that users could change the name of the master file records in their patches using xEdit and they would continue to work fine (mine have thusfar).
 
For the most part there are not a great deal over changes.
Quite true. When I asked, he indicated that there weren't any major internal changes. He changed the filename because another mod come out that was using the same filename. Even recommended that users could change the name of the master file records in their patches using xEdit and they would continue to work fine (mine have thusfar).

Yea, I think you would need to make a blank eps first otherwise xedit will not even load the file... then you could change the master file name easy...
 
It was actually even easier. I loaded the original .esp and the patches in FO4Edit, manually edited the master name to the new one on each of the patches, saved them and closed, updated and replaced the old .esp with the new, then reopened the new set in FO4Edit to make sure it went ok.

Now, this only worked because I manually confirmed that there were no FormID changes between the two versions by loading both and comparing them first, only additions, so other than the name the two versions were functionally identical as far as my patches were concerned.

(Not that you don't already know that, and certainly know more about it than I do. Just wanted to share aloud for posterity's sake to avoid this: wisdom_of_the_ancients.png https://xkcd.com/979/ ).
 
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