TESPCD The Elder Scrolls - Morrowind Plugin Conflict Detector by Ely VanReen Soto
***This software is not created by the makers of Morrowind***
This software is provided "as is" with no expressed or implied warranty.
The author accepts no liability for any damage/loss of business/enjoyment that
this product may cause.
There are two modes of Checking Available: Single Versus All and Full Check.
Single Versus All Mode is used to check 1 plugin against another group of plugins. Only Conflicts between
your Chosen plugin and the other plugins will be reported. This may assist a plugin maker to verify
compatibility with another group of plugins. To select your single plugin select the File menu and
then select 'Choose Master'. You may then Select the rest of the plugins by selecting 'Choose Plugins'.
Full Check Mode reports conflicts between all the plugins.
After Selecting your plugins you may begin the Check Operation by selecting 'Check Conflicts' under the
Operations menu or by clicking the Red Right Arrow button on the toolbar.
The 'Extract Data' option under the Operations menu can be used to select and load a few groups of plugins at a time
before actually running the conflict check.
The Options Dialog allows you to choose which Conflict types you want reported when you run the Check.
This dialog can be reached from the Operations menu under 'Options' or by clicking the yellow 'OP' button on the toolbar.
Once your check has been run you can view the conflicting entries in more detail by Double Left Clicking either
of the FileNames in either Grid. This can allow you to compare what changes have been made to those entries and let you make
a decision of whether to delete it or attempt to merge them.
There are two modes the Viewer can take, Hex View and Grid View.
The Hex Viewer is a Hex Dump of the entry with the 'conflicting' differences highlighted in red. It is a Read Only Viewer.
The Grid Viewer is a formatted Viewer that displays the data in three modes, Hex, Decimal, and Ascii. You may uncheck
the readonly checkbox to enable Write mode so that you can edit the entry and save it to your esp. This can allow you
to copy changes from the other conflicting entry in an attempt to make them not conflict. Once your Changes are finished you
can click 'Write to Esp' to save your changes. A backup is created with the extension .OLD or a user defined one if it already
exists. Note: If you make changes to a field, the data must match the type field in format or unpredictable results will occur.
For example:
'Ascii' Mode must contain data in ascii (letters, numbers, and a few other characters)
'Hex' Mode must be in Hexadecimal notation with two characters in the range of 0 to 9 or A to F corresponding to a Byte.
'Dec' Mode must be numeric and must fall within the range of the Byte field. Ex: Byte = 1, then Max Data Number is 255.
'Fixed' Mode is simply Ascii that has a fixed Size. You may not enter more characters than the Byte Count.
'Mixed' Mode contains both Decimal and Ascii Data seperated by a '-' character.
The program will do validity checking in all of these cases to try and make sure your data is valid and appropriate.
If you decide to delete a particular entry you simply select the filename and press DELETE on your keyboard or
click the 'Delete Entry' button within the pop-up.
A backup will be created with the extension .OLD by default. If this backup already exists it will prompt you to overwrite
or to save a new backup.
When you run a conflict check you can occasionally encounter 'Marked as Deleted' Entries in the Warning Grid. These are often
mistakes left in an unclean plugin. If you look at the entry and decide that this was not supposed to be deleted
then you can Delete the 'Marked as Deleted' Entry.
TESPCD may also report Unclean entries in the Warning Grid. These are safe to delete and will minimize conflicts with
other mods. The AutoClean Feature simply automatically deletes all the Unclean Entries that you could delete manually.
Let me state the Objective:
To Get Only 1 Entry that has all the data you want, or Multiple Entries that are Identical, or
have the plugin with the entry you want used to be Overriding the Other.
(The last case is done by simply loading up the plugin that you want to be overriding in the
TES Construction Set and Saving. This Makes this Plugin have the most recent Save Date.)
I will address the other two objectives now.
First I can scan the Sub-Entries and find that Sris_Alchemy has added a new item (random_ogrim_flesh_SA) to the ogrim's loot.
This conflict seems to be easy to correct because this is the only difference between the two entries.
I have few options on what I can do now.
1. I can delete the Morrowind Additions.esp Entry because the Sris_Alchemy_Trib Entry has everything
in the other Entry and More. I can then go about my merry way.
2. I can Copy the New Line to the Morrowind Additions.esp Entry and then Click 'Write to ESP'
Let me go into more detail
1. For the first Option:
I can open up the Morrowind Additions Entry and click 'Delete Entry'. I can do this and be comfortable because I know that the Sris_Alchemy_Trib Entry is Identical to the Morrowind Additions Entry with the exception of adding a new loot item. (Most cases will likely have additions and differences in each one. You would then have to choose which changes to peice together and keep.
eg. If NPDT was changed in Morrowind Additions that would mean that some of the Ogrim's strengths, HP, etc were changed. If you wanted to keep that change you would want to copy over the NPDT, Data Section over to the Sris_Alchemy_Trib Entry and overwrite its NPDT, Data. One case of this happening is if you had
MW_Adv_pass_wildlife.exp which changes the orgrim's strengths, and thus its NPDT Data)
2. For the second Option:
I can copy the new NPCO line over to the Morrowind Additions Entry. First I select
the row right after the Existing NPCO line and click 'Insert Row' to add a new Blank Row below the Existing NPCO row. Next I go to the Sris_Alchemy Entry and Copy the New NPCO entry (The bottom-most NPCO entry in this case) by selecting the entire line and Hitting Ctrl+C. I then go Back to the Morrowind Additions Entry and Select the entire new blank Row and press Ctrl+V. My two entries now look absolutely Identical. I now can Click the 'Write to Esp' in the Morrowind Additions to save my change.
(Note: when Adding new Entries, try to keep the order like the other Entry, there may be a cases where
the order matters?!?)
---Frequenty Asked Questions---
Q. How do I know which entry is being used in game now?
A. The Overriding Entry Filename is displayed in the Column named 'Overriding Esp File'. This file has the
latest Last Modified Date.
Q. I have some great monster plugins but not all the monsters are showing up. What do I do?
A. Download and run the the Leveled List Merger Program by 'Horatio'.
If you run it everytime you add a new plugin you can ignore all your LEVI and LEVC conflicts.
Q. I keep getting these Dialog warning messages. How do I fix them?
A. One solution is locating the two mods which have the conflicting Dialogs and combining them
using the TES Construction Set. It would also be a good idea to delete and/or merge any conflicting entries
before combining them.
Q. How do I safely merge two plugins?
A. Check for Conflicts using the detector and delete any entries that you deem unecessary. Then combine
any entries that you think are important by choosing a master plugin and adding the changes to its entries from
the other plugin. Once you are done there, select the two plugins in the TES Construction Set and make sure the
master plugin with your changes is the Active one. Once loaded you can select 'Combine Plugins' from the TES
Construction Set's menu.
Q. Example: I have two files dog.esp and cat.esp, with dog.esp overiding, that
show a conflict because they each reference Animal_chest_02. I decide to keep
Animal_chest_02 from Dog.esp and delete the reference from Cat.esp. Does
Cat.esp then use Animal_chest_02 from Dog.esp or does that item no
longer exist in the Cat.esp mod? Further If I instead leave Dog.esp as
overiding and delete Animal_chest_02 from it will it use Animal_chest_02
from Cat.esp or does Cat.esp need to be set as the overiding mod?
A. Morrowind loads each and every plugin into memory, discarding entries, which
have been overridden. After it has done that, it begins to 'Initialize the
Data' and locate all the entries that are referenced. If Animal_chest_02
has been deleted from either of the plugins then it will use the instance
loaded from the other plugin or from the Master *.esm files if it exists
there. You can run into problems deleting entries if you start to change
your mind about what plugins you want loaded. For example, If you decide to
not use the plugin dog.esp that contains Animal_chest_02 and decide to keep
cat.esp loaded which has had Animal_chest_02 deleted, and the main game
files *.esm don't have that entry, you will have an error. It is marginally
'safer' to delete entries that also have an instance in the default game
files because it can default back to them.
Q. A couple mods show some dialogs as being marked as deleted but this
area does not seem to indicate why this happens. Is there anyway to tell
why this happens as to correct it?
A. Some Mod makers accidentally delete entries from the default game files. I
can detect when this happens and report it to you. These occurances are
almost always mistakes but they can also be intentional. Take for example
the WeaponsandArmorBalancing.esp Mod that renames many of the standard game
weapons to other strange names.
Ex. Dai-Katana to Nodachi or something like that.
Within the esp the original is marked as Deleted and a new weapon entry is
created in its place. In this case the Deletion was intended, but I must
warn you that in this particular case many problems can arise from renaming
the standard weapon entries because there is no telling what will happen
when, inevitably, a plugin tries to reference the default weapons.
Q. I deleted a bunch of entries why doesn't my plugin work anymore?
A. Before you delete an entry look at its details within the viewer and/or the
TES Construction Set to make sure its not a vital entry or change.
Q. I have a good idea about how this program could work better. What do I do?
A. Email Me at elyvsoto@hotmail.com.
---Features---
Morrowind plugin (ESP) files contain entries of new or changed objects that the plugin adds to the game.
These entries are identified by an 'ID' and a 'Name' by Morrowind. If any two plugins are loaded that contain
the same ID-Name combination then Morrowind will only use the plugin file with the most recent 'Last Modified'
date. Those entries that are ommited can cause problems for the plugin they were intended for.
These problems can be minor, such as a weapon doing less or more damage than it intended, or it can
be major, such as a Script not running when intended.
This program 'TESPCD' detects these conflicting ID-Name combinations and reports them to the user.
The user can then see the entries that conflict by double-left clicking the filenames in the graph in
both a Hex and Grid type format.
With this information Mod makers/users can either modify their plugins to avoid the conflicts or the
users can manually choose to delete or combine the entries to allow the plugins to function together.
Occasionally Plugins have entries that are identical to entries present in the original game. While it may not hurt
this particular plugin, there may be another plugin that is overriden because of these unnecessary entries.
This program can detect these unnecessary entries and let you delete them. The program can also AutoClean the
plugin for you.
1. Locates Conflicting entries for the following Objects:
2. Ability to View Conflicting Entry Data if you double click
on the filenames in the Grid.
3. Reports Entries that are marked as Deleted in a seperate Grid. These should be monitored
closely since these are often mistakes.
4. Ability to Delete Reported Entries if you select a particular filename
and press DELETE. It will Backup your esp with the extension .OLD or your own specified
filename if .OLD filename already exists.
5. Ability to edit and modify entries.
6. Detection of Unclean Entries and an Automatic Plugin Cleaner
---Proposed Features---
1. Viewing and modifying an entire Esp File
2. Comparing Containers and Doors and other Global Objects
against master file to see if globally modified
3. Optional Reporting of Cell Object Deletions.
(Someone puts a house and decides to delete a npc that was standing there)
---Version Details---
V0.26 Beta Fixed Bugs with AutoCleaner
V0.25 Beta Added Unclean Entry Detection
Added an Unclean Entry AutoCleaner (You can manually inspect and delete as well)
Added Viewing of Original Entries to allow you to compare to original data
Added Viewing of Item and Spell Data in Ascii Mode for Creatures and NPCs
Fixed Printing and Clipboard Commands on Warning Grid
Fixed Memory Leak while Deleting
V0.201 Beta (Common)Fixed Writing Entry Data Under Windows 95/98/ME
Reenabled Clipboard commands on Main Grid
(Rare)Fixed a Major Bug where Plugin Data would not Extract Correctly and not all Conflicts would be reported.
V0.20 Beta All New Entry Dialog to Ease Entry Viewing
Ability to Edit Entries and Save them to your Plugin
(This allows you to Copy and Paste Across Plugins to Ease Plugin Compatibility)
Updated Backup Code to be less annoying
Option Settings Now Saved in ini File
Various Minor Bug Fixes
V0.19 Beta The Plugin Entry that is Overriding will be displayed in the First Column with the name 'Overriding Esp File'
Entry Deletion Reporting in a Warning Grid.
Deletion of any Reported Entry - Press Delete while a particular Filename in a grid entry is selected
Backup Code for Deletion Sanity
GUI Touchups
Misc. Bug Fixes
V0.181 Alpha Quick Addition to Hex Viewer showing changes between the entries in Red
V0.18 Alpha Added Options Dialog to choose which Conficts to Display
Added Hex Viewer to see Entries if you Double-Left-Click on the
Conflicting Filenames
Added Right-Click Context Menus to Tree File View to Remove and
Add Plugins more easily
Added Ability to do new checks without restarting the application
Fixed a bug that froze the Operations
Fixed other misc. bugs
V0.17 Alpha Improved Accuracy of Conflict Detection *Much More Accurate Now*
This is done by a byte by byte comparison of all the data
in the conflicting entries
Added Detection for a few more entries
V0.16 Alpha Optimized Data Extraction Functions
Added Detection for many more entries
Added Single Versus All Mode of Detection for Mod Makers
Fixed Could not select more than 1000 characters in filenames
in Open Dialog
V0.15 Alpha -Reworked GUI-
Enabled Print/Print Preview
Added Ability to Sort GRID (Click on Fixed Grid Row to Sort)
Added Easier File Addition
Added Progress Bar
V0.10 Alpha Initial Release
---Issues---
1. DIAL - Dialog Detection Disabled
To correct Dialog entries warning errors you can combine the conflicting plugins.
---Not Supported in Near Future---
1. Ability to Check Overlapping Objects on the Map
