TESAME question

[Kingofall32]

So when I am cleaning something, I'm confused. In the read me it says:

Static, Objects in the mod. Remove if they carry their
Activator, original ID and recreate with new (own) ID in TES CS.
Door,
Container,
Light,
Ingredient,
etc..


Does that mean If I want to put a chest or a sword or any item/container/etc in my addon, I have to make a completely new item?
I don't completely understand this thing.

[theviking]

No, it means that if you make a new chest, for example one with a mortar and pestle in it. Lets say you name it chest_apparatus. When you open up TESAME and see a whole bunch of names, you can delete them safely, all of them except chest_apparatus, because you created that. If you do remove it, it will be removed from you plugin because it wasnt with the original game. If you don't remove the other items it means that effects that you placed on those items will happen to all the same items. For example, if you resized a chest, that will happen to every chest in the game as well if you do it wrong. (this happens from time to time) Thats why we remove it with TESAME, or else every chest of the same type will be resized in the original game.

I think I made it more complicated now, but at least I tried to explain...

[Kingofall32]

So if I just placed items like chests, didnt changed them, I can leave them on the TESAME list?

[Thrignar Fraxix]

no, if you didn't change anything about an item then remove it with TESAME

[Gez]

No, no.

Let's try to be clear: there are base objects and references. A reference is an instance, or a sample, a single issue if you will, or a base object.
The base object itself is an abstract class and not seen anywhere in the game, what you see is a reference to it.

This is like, say, Morrowind. Your Morrowind CD is your own reference for the Morrowind game. If you put your Morrowind CD on a shelf, it doesn't modify the Morrowind game for everybody -- you're moving your own reference, you're not changing the base object. Is that clear?

I hope it is. So, next lesson: records and subrecords. An ESP file is organized in a rather simple way: you have a number of records (each record type has a four-symbol name, for example TES3 for the header, NPC_ for an NPC, CELL for a cell, PGRD for a pathgrid, REGN for a region, SCPT for a script, and so on), and each record has a varying number of subrecords. Subrecords are like records, it's just that they belong to a record. So you've got a somewhat hierarchical organization. An example of subrecord common to most record types is NAME, for the name of whatever object the record is attached to.

Got it? Good. Because now we're combining this knowledge:
A reference is a subrecord of a cell. References are REFR subrecords, which in turn contain their own subrecords to identify which object they refer to, what are their coordinates, and other extra data like owner, lock strength, and other elements that may or may not apply.

And finally, the last point: TESAME's main view doesn't show subrecords. Only the top-level records.

Let say I make a new interior cell, which I call "My Sucky Cell". And in that cell I place one reference to an item, let say one in_dwrv_hall01. That's all, I save. I look in TESAME and I see this:

CELL My Sucky Cell
CELL Balmora, Caius Cosades' House
STAT in_dwrv_hall01
And other stuff.

What is the only thing there should be? CELL My Sucky Cell. All others are dirty changes, which shouldn't be there.

Now let's say that I add a new chest in My Sucky Cell. I take some random chest, change its ID to My Munchkin Chest, and change its content to have a lot of daedric loot. Then I put one in My Sucky Cell. Looking at TESAME, what have I got?

CELL My Sucky Cell
CONT My Munchkin Chest

It's clean! It only contains changes that I actually made! My Munchkin Chest is a new base object, so its base object definition should be there. in_dwrv_hall01 is not a new base object, so its base object definition did not have to be there. As for the references? They're hidden inside the My Sucky Cell CELL record. They don't risk anything.

[Kingofall32]

I understand! Thanks! One last thing- in cells, when I add the exteriors for a house, I need to leave that on the list because I changed it, added something, right? Either way, on TESAME list it says exterior cells like "Cell Balmora"
and doesnt give the -2,-2 -2,-3 -3,-3 and -3,-2 cords. I only added stuff in two of the three, but I don't know which one I need to take off.

[Zalzidrax]

One thing you should not use TESAME to remove, however, is landscape textures, as that will delete all the landscape texturing from your mod. Not sure why it functions differently from the other references, but it does.

[Gez]

I understand! Thanks! One last thing- in cells, when I add the exteriors for a house, I need to leave that on the list because I changed it, added something, right? Either way, on TESAME list it says exterior cells like "Cell Balmora"
and doesnt give the -2,-2 -2,-3 -3,-3 and -3,-2 cords. I only added stuff in two of the three, but I don't know which one I need to take off.

If you click on a record in TESAME, and look at the bottom window, you'll see a partial list of its content. That should be enough, in most cases, to determine which cell is wrong.

Also note that the "Details" window of the CS can be used a bit in the same way as TESAME (though without the capacity for exporting and importing selected parts) and it does list references after the name of the cell (don't change the default list sorting mode if you want to keep it that way). Hitting the Delete key lets you toggle their "ignore" flag, which means these records won't be loaded, so if you next load and save they'll be deleted.

[Gnomey]

Nice explanation, Gez. As long as you don't get any bad ideas from that interior...

I understand! Thanks! One last thing- in cells, when I add the exteriors for a house, I need to leave that on the list because I changed it, added something, right? Either way, on TESAME list it says exterior cells like "Cell Balmora"
and doesnt give the -2,-2 -2,-3 -3,-3 and -3,-2 cords. I only added stuff in two of the three, but I don't know which one I need to take off.

First, I might as well get this out of the way: There are two sorts of cells in TES 3: those with and those without names. The ones without names are called "Wilderness". If they are part of a region, they are given that name, but not really. In TESAME they are still listed as not having a name. However, those that are given a name in the CS, like Balmora, are listed with their name in the construction set.

How that applies to your problem: When cleaning out cells without real names the best solution is to give all of the cells that you did not edit a name. The name will appear in TESAME and you will know which ones you need to delete.

Of course, it would be easier to rename the cells that you actually wanted to edit, rather than some random cells where you may have accidently moved an object, etc., but the problem with that is that as soon as a cell has a name it's hard to get rid of the name. I'm pretty sure that there is a way to do it, but I forgot what it was...

Anyway, the same applies when you have accidently edited a few cells with names, let's say two of the Sadrith Mora cells. Rename the cell that you did not want edited and then get rid of it in TESAME.

Edit: It seems I got beaten to it, but oh well. The first sentance of this post was directed at the first explanation, BTW. Though the second is also nice, of course.

[Kingofall32]

Errr...in the bottom all i get is "Value" "Data" "Offset" "Length"
I can't tell from that. And I do have one blank cell, dont know anything bout it.