Cleaning ITMs Loot found in Enhanced Lighting and FX mod

[Naoko]

Hey again :)

 

So, I've finally installed most of the mods I'm going to be using (yay). I just ran LOOT via Mod Organizer for the first time after adding about 2 dozen graphical and gameplay changing mods to make sure everything is correct, and thankfully it only discovered 2 dirty plugins, both from the Enhanced Lighting and FX mod and its optional ELFX - Exteriors aspect (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27043/?). As the screenshot shows, the main mod has 12 ITMs and the Exteriors has 6 ITMs - I did a bit of research with google but couldn't find much mention of whether this one is safe to clean (remove ITMs) or not. It's also not mentioned anywhere by the author on the main mod page that the dirty areas of the plugin are intentional, so I'm guessing it IS pretty safe to clean. But, I just want to make sure before I do it so as not to break anything.

 

Does anyone have any experience with this one?

 

(I know it was mentioned by zilav and Kesta in my other post that cleaning is basically safe, but I'm a bit paranoid after reading this page's TES5Edit section, haha: https://steamcommunity.com/app/72850/discussions/0/619573787397876592/)

[zilav]

The chances for cleaning to affect anything in game are very low for any mod. They could be only caused by bugs in the current version of xEdit, and I don't know of any atm.

[Kesta]

The guide isn't bad but lack some objectivity...

 

The example which illustrate the so-called need for ITM with CH basically says : To properly work, mod A absolutely need some records to be vanilla, so it generate ITM to make sure no other mods will overwrite it :

1) For one, it's stupid, because this only is effective if the mod with the ITM is loaded after the mod it's trying to override the change. So it need a LOOT Rule to make sure it is loaded after it in any cases. So it need to specifically identify mods conflicting on this records. So this could be resolved by a compatibility patch instead, since the biggest part (identifying conflicting mods) is done.

2) Plus... it's just breaking the other mod changes for this one to apply, which kinda break what compatibility is about. Compatibility is about having multiple mods working completely together, not having one of them disabling part of others to do his thing because he is more popular.

3) As explained by Zilav in your previous thread, if the modder have the knowledge to identify real need for ITM, he should also know that it's possible to trick xEdit by modifying the EditorID so it won't be considered as ITM, without other impacts in the game. 

 

 

 

For the specific question about ELFX : I'm scratching my head... Hopefully zilav will also drop by, it seems that location references are considered as ITM if the master doesn't specify any... (which is almost what all of those specified ITMs are), and are cleaned by the remove ITM function. And there is also this mysterious LNAM edit which is undocumented... (might just be a CK-specific data though). And compression state is also recognized as ITM... so much stuff I don't know enough about :/ I had my ELFX plugins cleaned for a while so never noticed this, but now I'm curious...

Edited August 10, 2015 by Kesta

[hishutup]

 

For the specific question about ELFX : I'm scratching my head... Hopefully zilav will also drop by, it seems that location references are considered as ITM if the master doesn't specify any... (which is almost what all of those specified ITMs are), and are cleaned by the remove ITM function. And there is also this mysterious LNAM edit which is undocumented... (might just be a CK-specific data though). And compression state is also recognized as ITM... so much stuff I don't know enough about :/ I had my ELFX plugins cleaned for a while so never noticed this, but now I'm curious...

Off Topic but if someone know how Location Data is different, please share because I am actually dealing with them in a script and I dont really know what they are.

[Kesta]

Ok, after a bit of reading / documentation browsing :

 

Location was initally not part of .esm for references, it was only indicated in the cell's data. After CK 1.8 update, it started to save the location information in every reference present in the CELL. Still no idea about the "why", but it somehow explain why xEdit see it as an ITM. So yu can most likely clean ELFX plugins without worries. 

My guess is that location is either re-attributed at runtime, or always checked from the parent cell instead of the reference instead. But that's just assumptions :/

Edited August 10, 2015 by Kesta

[zilav]

Arthmoor asked to treat added locations as ITM because the game is fine without them (they are not in Skyrim.esm and it still works) and they bloated USKP. Note that this counts only for added locations to the references, not when it is changed or removed.

Compression flag doesn't count as conflict since it is a way of data storage, not the actual data that affects anything in the game.

[Naoko]

*nod, nod* Hmm, interesting! So it's a bit more complex than I thought.

 

Would you say they're ok to clean, in that case? I did read about another person who cleaned them, in the comments section for the mod back in 2014 and it seemed to work fine for them. I don't really have enough experience with the utilities to fully understand what everything specifically means in this case. Would it gimp anything to just run the "Remove ITM" function over them?

[Naoko]

(super late reply) Thanks a bunch! I ended up cleaning it and everything (at least, in terms of ingame lighting and the mod itself) works beautifully.