Oblivion ESL

Oblivion ESL

Skyrim SE style light plugin (ESL) system. Finally, more than 255 plugins.

Requirements

xOBSE

OBL Mod Limit Fix (for large load orders)

Cell Lookup Robustness (for ESLs that touch cell records)

Description

Oblivion ESL is an OBSE plugin that remaps ESL flagged mods into the 0xFE load order spot, effectively raising the amount of loaded plugins possible for Oblivion.  This essentially works by loading all ESL flagged mods (more on that later) in a separate list than standard mods and remapping the FormIDs to the 0xFE slot while retaining load order position.

This means:

• []You have to compact any mod you want to make an ESL. This renumbers and compacts the FormIDs into the appropriate record space (0x800 to 0xFFF) and adds an unused flag in the header that has been repurposed for an ESL flag. The xEdit devs have been gracious enough to make a custom verison of TES4Edit with FromID compacting for Oblivion. This is in the optional files. Requires an existing xEdit installation, this file just contains the custom executable. Also note that compacting FormIDs on an existing save will be as if you removed the compacted mod, so a new game is recommended.

  []You cannot use a regular mod in the 0xFE (255th) slot. It will break everything. So 254 regular files, 4096 ESL flagged files.

  []Each ESL flagged plugin can have a max of 2048 new records.

  []Don't compact plugins that reference FormIDs explicitly by number

  Compacting a plugin renumbers its records. A record that was 0x00ABCDEF becomes something in the 0x800–0xFFF range. Most references update automatically, but anything that writes a FormID out as a literal number does not, it keeps pointing at the old number, which now refers to nothing or to a different record.

  Three places this comes up.

  Scripts: Normal script references are updated by the compactor. The exception is the OBSE function

  GetFormFromMod, which takes a mod name and a FormID as text, for example GetFormFromMod "MyMod.esp" "ABCDEF". TES4Edit cannot see inside that string, so it can't update it. Only mods that require OBSE can use this, and most don't, but if a mod does, compacting it will break those references.

  Base Object Swapper/Spell Faction Item Distributor/similar mod config files: BOS and SFID look up information using .ini files, and those files identify objects by FormID, like 0x00ABCDEF~MyMod.esp. If you compact MyMod.esp, every such line pointing at it needs updating to the new number. This also applies if a mod ships an .ini file with an explicit FormID reference.

  Voiced Dialogue Mods: Voice files also rely on a specific FormID for lines. Changing that FormID will make the game unable to find the voice file its looking for, resulting in voiced dialogue becoming silent.

  How to tell whether a mod is affected: If it ships .ini files for Base Object Swapper or Spell Faction Item Distributor or a similar mod, check them for FormIDs belonging to the mod you want to compact. If it's an OBSE mod, search its scripts for GetFormFromMod. If it's a mod that ships a general .ini file check the .ini for any FormIDs that are from the mod you want to compact. If it might contain voiced dialogue, check if it contains files under Data\Sound\Voice\MyMod.esp. If none of these apply, compacting is safe from this particular problem.

  []Wrye Bash will need an update to allow selecting more than 255 plugins. To get around this you can manually edit Plugins.txt but lose out on bashed patch support. Mod Organizer 2 should work.

  []TES4LODGEN also does not handle more than 255 plugins, I'm not sure if slowLODGen has the same limitation.[/]

How To Compact

To turn an existing ESP into an ESL-flagged ESP, open the plugin (and all dependents) with the TES4Edit Custom Build from the Optional Files.

First, right-click the plugin and select Compact FormIDs for ESL from the context menu to compact the records of the currently opened plugin.

Then, go to 'File Header → Record Header → Record Flags', right-click and select 'Edit'. In the 'Edit Value' window, check 'ESL', then save the plugin.

Basically, it's just like doing