TES3 Edit (Tool)

Not about OpenMW? Just about Morrowind in general? Have some random babble? Kindly direct it here.

TES3Edit for Morrowind?

Yes
7
64%
Really, picking no doesn't help the progression of the Morrowind modding community... (But this would be "No")
2
18%
Later, OpenMW isn't ready for a TES3Edit yet
2
18%
 
Total votes: 11

NekoSan
Posts: 3
Joined: 04 Aug 2018, 01:37

TES3 Edit (Tool)

Post by NekoSan »

Hello,

If you're familiar with modding recent TES and Fallout games, you're probably aware of a tool called TES5Edit/SSEEdit/FO4Edit (or more commonly called "xEdit" (Maintained by Zilav) because it's used for every Elder Scrolls and Fallout game since Oblivion and Fallout 3.

Morrowind has never had the pleasure to be blessed with this VERY handy tool that's become somewhat of "use it or you're in trouble" tool because of how useful it is in helping make mods more compatible.
Given that a user tinker with it for a while and explained its basic uses, it's not too-too hard to pick up on at a basic level.

For those that don't know:
Its capable of executing scripts to perform a task; execute LODgen; and allow the user to create new plugins as a compatibility patch, from scratch, to make sure records don't unintentionally get buried from one mod because of another mod that either reverts a something back to vanilla or for some other reason, with detailed precision. It's difficult to mess up in xEdit because data is layed out like a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

--------------------------

With that said, there's somone named Mator that's currently in the process of making a new application to replace xEdit that he calls "zEdit" and he's doing things that are going to help modders and users alike make Bethesda games more stable.
(i.e. "zSmash, zMerge, UPF [Unified Patching Framework]", and potentially more).

zEdit is built off the framework of xEdit and xEdit was originally intended for Bethesda games after Morrowind, so zEdit only supports said games. Given the TES3 could make a comeback thanks to the OpenMW team's efforts, I would like to propose the development of a TES3Edit so that the future of the Morrowind community can benefit from this tool and so that Mator may look into working with the team, on this level, to incorporate TES3Edit into zEdit so that zEdit can be a one-stop-shop and Morrowind can finally join the family!

(Mator has has a Discord link at the bottom of the zEdit github page that I linked, if you are from the team and wish to contact him about this.
Zilav is also there too, if you would like to speak to him.)
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Thunderforge
Posts: 503
Joined: 06 Jun 2017, 05:57

Re: TES3 Edit (Tool)

Post by Thunderforge »

Moving topic from "Organization and Planning" forum to "Off Topic" forum because it's not directly related to OpenMW development.
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DestinedToDie
Posts: 1181
Joined: 29 Jun 2015, 09:08

Re: TES3 Edit (Tool)

Post by DestinedToDie »

We have a tool called OpenMW-CS that is made for editing our files. While it's still unfinished, the idea is to use it for future features of the OpenMW engine. I'm not sure if zEdit would go down that line? Or if zEdit is more developed than OpenMW-CS already is.
NekoSan
Posts: 3
Joined: 04 Aug 2018, 01:37

Re: TES3 Edit (Tool)

Post by NekoSan »

zEdit is still in development, since the newer xEdit framework is newer than Morrowind is (made for more recent entries) there are some aspects of it that aren't compatible.

So, for zEdit to ever be used for Morrowind, the changes OpenMW-CS makes with how records/IDs are handled would need to be integrated with xEdit's framework somehow (or follow xEdit's lead) so that they can work similarly so that a way to integrate it into zEdit can be found.

xEdit, which zEdit is based off of, was originally made to be a community-made counterpart to the official Creation Kit (Construction Set) but its job was to perform task at a precise level that edited data in a kind of table-like way.

As long as the CS has a set way for how these things are handled, a TES3Edit shouldn't be too-too hard. As it stands without a TES3Edit module, zEdit can't be used with Morrowind because TES3 plugins are structured differently than later TES games. As long as the TES3Edit developed by the team is kept up to date, those changes should be able to be amended for zEdit.
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AnyOldName3
Posts: 2666
Joined: 26 Nov 2015, 03:25

Re: TES3 Edit (Tool)

Post by AnyOldName3 »

While we're discussing xEdit and friends, does anyone have any knowledge of whether it's ever going to support a loadout of more than 255 plugins? When ESLs were a new thing for Fallout 4 and SSE I saw something saying it would be completely impossible forever, but if there's a fork incrementing a letter, I imagine that there are a wider range of new features coming.
TheForgotten
Posts: 3
Joined: 28 May 2016, 11:54
Location: Lyon

Re: TES3 Edit (Tool)

Post by TheForgotten »

AnyOldName3 wrote: 04 Aug 2018, 22:00 While we're discussing xEdit and friends, does anyone have any knowledge of whether it's ever going to support a loadout of more than 255 plugins? When ESLs were a new thing for Fallout 4 and SSE I saw something saying it would be completely impossible forever, but if there's a fork incrementing a letter, I imagine that there are a wider range of new features coming.
I think you'll be happy with the new experimental release they made.
https://github.com/TES5Edit/TES5Edit/re ... it-2d3ece8
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Okulo
Posts: 672
Joined: 05 Feb 2012, 16:11

Re: TES3 Edit (Tool)

Post by Okulo »

Considering that the original engines are very related to one another and OpenMW is a different engine that happens to read the same content files, "zEdit for Morrowind" may well have dick all to do with OpenMW. When it comes to tools, I'd rather the OpenMW team does not try to incorporate other tools and go their own way depending on what is necessary, not depending on what other projects are doing. Ideas are fine and all, but trying to stay in step with other software adds complexity that is only worth it in very select cases (eg. that script extender). So nah.

Also, a poll that (1) does not actually ask a question (2) gives closed answers, (3) one of which is leading, to get stats (5) that will be used by nobody? I mean, why even bother with the poll? The OP was sufficient.
zelazko
Posts: 25
Joined: 07 Aug 2019, 18:01

Re: TES3 Edit (Tool)

Post by zelazko »

Too much nostalgia noobish nonesense going on in this thread how unique TES III is structure-wise. It's not. It's still the same engine as other TES IV and TES V/SSE just with few changes hardcoded in.
TES3Edit would be indispensable tool for Morrowind OpenMW or vanilla engine alike.
Anyone who had contact with TES4Edit or xEdit knows how valuable it is. No more blunders that can sneak in into your plugin and ruin it/make it dirty cause deleted references - especially when it comes to cell view editing. TESEdit is far more superior to shaky and wonky Construction Set. It allows beginner players to make simple patches that otherwise may not be possible with tes3cmd. The best feature of all make TESEdit gives player pristine look at what exactly plugin does. TESEdit hands to you on the silver platter every change with simple drop down view of the records changed or new records added.
While we're discussing xEdit and friends, does anyone have any knowledge of whether it's ever going to support a loadout of more than 255 plugins? When ESLs were a new thing for Fallout 4 and SSE I saw something saying it would be completely impossible forever, but if there's a fork incrementing a letter, I imagine that there are a wider range of new features coming.
Yes SSEdit alrteady supports ESL plugins or ESP plugins flagged with ESL header. Experimental Wrye Bash too. ESL cap is put on 4098 plugins.
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AnyOldName3
Posts: 2666
Joined: 26 Nov 2015, 03:25

Re: TES3 Edit (Tool)

Post by AnyOldName3 »

You're being really brash for someone who's just come into a thread with no posts in the last year. In that year, there have been some major changes to the situation. I'll start by summing up what was and wasn't true a year ago.
Too much nostalgia noobish nonesense going on in this thread how unique TES III is structure-wise. It's not. It's still the same engine as other TES IV and TES V/SSE just with few changes hardcoded in.
The ESM/ESP format for TES3 and later games is wildly different. There's no arguing that. Morrowind used strings to access everything, whereas the later games used FormIDs, and xEdit was fairly reliant on things that make sense with FormIDs, but don't work with strings.
Anyone who had contact with TES4Edit or xEdit knows how valuable it is. No more blunders that can sneak in into your plugin and ruin it/make it dirty cause deleted references - especially when it comes to cell view editing. TESEdit is far more superior to shaky and wonky Construction Set. It allows beginner players to make simple patches that otherwise may not be possible with tes3cmd. The best feature of all make TESEdit gives player pristine look at what exactly plugin does. TESEdit hands to you on the silver platter every change with simple drop down view of the records changed or new records added.
First, I'm going to nitpick when you say TES4Edit or xEdit and point out that TES4Edit and xEdit are exactly the same thing. TES4Edit, TES5Edit, FO3Edit, FNVEdit, and FO4Edit are all the same program, and are collectively known as xEdit. If you rename the executable, it changes which mode it starts in and that determines which game it works on. However, there's another tool called ZEdit, which is more-or-less a different UI on top of xEdit, which might be what. I hope that's eliminated any confusion.

Anyway, the main reason I've quoted this paragraph is that saying something's really useful to have doesn't stop it being really hard to make. It would be really useful to have a teleporter, but if you go to an internet forum that talks about engineering and called them noobish for saying it would be a lot of work to make one, I expect that you realise they're not the ones who look bad.
While we're discussing xEdit and friends, does anyone have any knowledge of whether it's ever going to support a loadout of more than 255 plugins? When ESLs were a new thing for Fallout 4 and SSE I saw something saying it would be completely impossible forever, but if there's a fork incrementing a letter, I imagine that there are a wider range of new features coming.
Yes SSEdit alrteady supports ESL plugins or ESP plugins flagged with ESL header. Experimental Wrye Bash too. ESL cap is put on 4098 plugins.
When I asked this, xEdit had no support for ESLs at all, and at least one of its developers had said it might never come. This is one of the things about them relying on how FormIDs worked, and ESLs threw a wrench in how FormIDs worked.




In the last year, lots of work has gone into xEdit. The key thing is that the handling of FormIDs has been made more flexible. This has meant that ESL support could be added, and that's happened. Also, ElminsterAU has been working on TES3Edit, which now mostly works. This wasn't just a case of him showing up, changing a few values and pressing compile, but took a lot of work re-engineering how xEdit handled records so they don't have to work like FormIDs any more.
LoneWolf
Posts: 138
Joined: 26 Sep 2017, 19:13

Re: TES3 Edit (Tool)

Post by LoneWolf »

I downloaded the sourcecode at https://github.com/TES5Edit/TES5Edit/ar ... 0.2.tar.gz and took a quick peek inside.

Looking at the files in the archive hinted at some pascal version .
Checking TES5Edit.dproj gave references to borland , delphi and VCL .

This suggests the code is written in Object Pascal and uses proprietary stuff (VCL) from the Delphi IDE.

A good open source object pascal implementation is Free Pascal (FPC) .
It can use the Lazarus Component Library (LCL) , which is often seen as the opensource library that comes closest to replacing the proprietary VCL.

IF TES5EDIT / xEdit sourcecode can be compiled with Free Pascal / Lazarus , then it could be used on linux.

It does seem however devs focus on windows for now.

Code: Select all

           <Platforms>
                <Platform value="Linux64">False</Platform>
                <Platform value="Win32">True</Platform>
                <Platform value="Win64">True</Platform>
            </Platforms>
My choice in the poll :

4. Later, TES3EDIT is not ready for OpenMW
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