Tes4Mod:Tes4View

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This is a general "how to" for using ElminsterEU's very powerful Tes4View/Edit/Trans facility.

For additional usage information, see also Tes4View/Release Notes.

Contents 1 Activating Edit and Translation Modes 2 Basic Usage 3 Choosing Mods to Compare 4 Compare Two Versions of a Mod 5 Remove a Master Dependency

[edit] Activating Edit and Translation Modes

Tes4View downloads as a single binary, but this single binary can operate in two alterate modes: Tes4Edit (for general editing) and Tes4Trans (for translating mods).

• To activate Tes4Edit, either rename the binary to "Tes4Edit.exe" and launch as usual or start Tes4View from the command line with the "-edit" argument (e.g. "Tes4View -edit").
• To activate Tes4Trans, either rename the binary to "Tes4Trans.exe" and launch as usual or start Tes4View from the command line with the "-translate" argument (e.g. "Tes4View -translate").

[edit] Basic Usage

Hide No Conflict Rows

• When comparing mods you can use this option to show only the rows of data that conflict.
• Usage: Right click in view pane and select "Hide No Conflict Rows".

[edit] Choosing Mods to Compare

By default TES4View will choose your active mods. You can click to add/remove mods on startup. There is also a context menu on the list (and all other lists displayed in this type of dialog) which allows you to select all, select none or invert your selection. If you have any modules selected which depend on masters that are available but not selected then these masters will be implicitly selected and loaded after you close the dialog.

Command Line Parameter: Another option for loading specific mods in TES4View is by creating a text file that lists the filenames of the modules you want to load and call TES4View with that filename as parameter. An easy way to do this is:

• Create a file called name.tes4modules
• Edit that file and list the modules you want to load. Each on a separate line.
• Try to open that file, for the first time you should get a dialog "Windows cannot open this file:"
  • "Select the program from a list" -> OK
  • "Browse"
  • Select TES4View.exe (or TES4Edit.exe)
  • OK
• This should start TES4View with exactly the modules you listed in the file preselected

You can create as many such files as you wish. After going through the "Windows cannot open this file:" dialog once opening any .tes4modules file will always start TES4View directly.

Wrye Bash: You can also use Wrye Bash in a couple of ways to select your active mods:

• If you de-activate "Oblivion.esm" in Wrye Bash, you'll deactivate all of the mods that depend on it as well. Which is to say every other mod. You can then select the mod/mods you want to compare.
• You can do the same thing by right clicking on the mods column header and choosing Load: None.
• If you're repeatedly comparing a large set of mods you also memorize that list of mods in Wrye Bash:
  • Activate the mod set you want to compare.
  • Right click on mods column header and select Load: Save List... and pick the name to save the list under.
  • Afterwards, you'll be able to choose Load:[Name of List] to reload that set of mods.

[edit] Compare Two Versions of a Mod

Start Tes4XXX with the original version of the mod loaded. After it's loaded, right click on the mod file name in the tree view and select the "Compare to" menu item. Then, in the file dialog, select the tweaked version. This will load the tweaked version alongside the original version.

Note that this is superior to loading both versions in the usual way, since when using the "Compare to" command will load the tweaked with the same Load Order ID as the original version. This makes it possible to directly compare records which are newly introduced in both the original and the tweaked version.

[edit] Remove a Master Dependency

In Tes4Edit... Right click on the filename of the tweaked version in the treeview on the left and select "Clean Masters". This will remove all masters listed in the file header which are not referenced (either by definition of an overriden record or by any record containing a reference to any record defined in the master) in this file. You can check that by having a look at the File Header of the file under "Master Files". If the original master has been removed by "Clean Masters" you've done everything right. If not then you've still got references to that master somewhere in the tweaked file.

Note however that Tes4Gecko's "Edit Master List" command to remove a master, it will tell you which records are blocking removal of a given master and give you the option to remove that record.