There is a conflict with Balmora Lighthouse: https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/43103/? http://village.photos/images/user/6f0e96e7-c8ec-4c36-81d3-a8d71fd304ab/2e9d0c2d-f5cb-4f77-a32b-65ba5cc922ad.jpg
In the image, it shows that is partly under the steps and partly under the planter.
I just wanted to inform you that this mod conflicts with Walled City of Balmora mod http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/42524/? and instead of being on the ground, the user playing morrowind will have to enter the console command "~" and type tcl (Toggle Collision) to get access to it though the walls of the stairs. You should move the trap door to the center of the Balmora next to the Pawnbroker, there is a lot of room that isn't alligatored to any mods there.
A nice and simple one-room house mod, fairly well constructed and with no obvious flaws that I saw. The location is near a conflict-heavy part of Balmora, but as far I can tell, the trapdoor shouldn't get in the way of anything from other mods. Overall a pretty good first-mod, ideal for new players and/or starting characters, though the glass sword (value of 16,000 gold) is a bit much for decor. Endorsed.
There are two things that could be improved though, 1) the read me file should be renamed to reflect what mod it belongs to (this is a personal annoyance of mine, I've been cataloging old Morrowind mods and far too many have read mes called "ReadMe" which of course gets overwritten by the next mod that also has a read me called "ReadMe", making it impossible to keep track of important mod information), a name such as "Hole in the Ground ReadMe.txt" would be much better. Also, you should really include your name with the readme file and/or contact information, either directly under the mod name or in a separate credits section where you list yourself as the author (again, this may seem trivial, but for cataloging purposes and keeping track of where credit goes it helps a lot to have it on file).
The second thing that should be improved is that, currently, there are two dirty references that should be cleaned from the mod. These dirty references are "ex_h_trapdoor_01" and "in_h_trapdoor_01", and they should be deleted using either TESPCD or Enchanted Editor to clean the file. One of the biggest differences from making mods for other Bethesda games (such as Skyrim) and Morrowind, is that Morrowind had a somewhat more primitive system for saving references. Whenever you hit the "save" button after changing an object's properties in the render window (like say, selecting a cell to place a door marker at), it changes EVERY reference of that object. This is, of course, different from Skyrim where you have to hit the "save" button to keep the changes made to an object's properties and it only changes the properties for that one specific object. Instead, in Morrowind, you need to hit the "cancel" button, not "save", and the changes you made will be kept for that one object instead of every reference of that object.
Anyway, to clean out the dirty references, I have a tutorial here with download links for cleaning tools such as Enchanted Editor and TESPCD: http://moddinginmorrowind.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/modding-tutorials-cleaning-mods/
If you need any help figuring out dirty references, just let me know.
Thanks and I never thought about the readme file but that is a good point. Are you sure that "ex_h_trapdoor_01" and "in_h_trapdoor_01" are dirty references? Because one is the door to get in and one is the door to get out. I have cleaned Skyrim and Fallout mods before and tried doing the same with Morrowind but after cleaning the mod was exactly the same as before cleaning. It made no changes as all.
I was extra careful with creating this mod and didn't go into any other cells or touch any object that was not a part of my mod.
The reason I put the house in the location it is in is because I had it in a different cell originally but when connecting the doors with teleport markers the Construction Set would put the marker in an adjacent cell and to move it to the correct cell would automatically make the adjacent cell a dirty edit.
Also I've never released a mod asking for credit and have always released them with the permission for others to freely use them as they wish. The glass sword isn't for selling. I haven't played Morrowind in many years but I don't think there is a merchant that has enough gold to buy it. It is a minor head start compared to other items I quickly run to get in the early part of the game such as the boots of blinding speed and saviors hide which benefit me a lot more.
The Construction Set is outdated and more difficult to work with compared to the Creation Kit. Same goes with the mod cleaners.
Ah yes, sorry I should have explained better. Normally speaking, in Fallout 3/New Vegas and Skyrim, you wouldn't need to worry about the doors having dirty references, but Morrowind is a bit different.
In Morrowind, you should never hit the "save" button in the render window for an object, and that includes doors, because this tends to create dirty references. I can understand the confusion, since the Creation Kit is the exact opposite of this. Instead, you should always hit "Cancel" even after selecting a cell for teleport, as the construction set will automatically save the changes for that particular door (whereas hitting "Save" would save the changes for every reference of that object in the game, i.e. every copy of "ex_h_trapdoor_01" and thus create a dirty reference). In any event, deleting the dirty references is fairly simple, and won't erase your door markers either.
You can use enchanted editor (download link here: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=other.detail&id=52 ) to remove the references, or TESPCD (download link: http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/3874/? ).
For Enchanted Editor, just load up the mod, select Doors as seen in the screenshot and hit Delete Marked, finally saving the file. You can also use Enchanted Editor to delete dirty references to exterior or interior cells (if you know which cells were referenced accidentally) without harming the rest of the mod.
For TESPCD, you want to first go to Operations, then Options, and probably check "report dialogue text" just to be safe. Next, select your mod from File->Choose Plugins and hit the red arrow to automatically detect all dirty references in your mod (I should mention that TESPCD doesn't detect interior/exterior dirty references). You should see something like what's in the screenshot above. Go to Operations again, hit Auto Delete Unclean (this will remove the dirty references) and then save your file. Hopefully that helps.
As for the door markers, those are quite different in the Morrowind CS compared to the Construction Kit (which pretty much does automatic door linking). In the CS, when you select a cell for the door to teleport to, you need to remember which cell you placed the door in. For example, Balmora has four exterior cells, so selecting the wrong one would put it in the wrong cell. After selecting the cell, you have to manually drag the door marker into place (a bit tedious, I'll admit). The location of the house is fine, its just close to a major conflict area. Five more feet to the left, and that trapdoor would be buried by some 100+ Balmora house mods that all use that little empty space next to the Odai River (not to mention the Illuminated Order, a popular quest mod).
I mentioned the whole credit thing because, if a clear author name isn't presented in the Read Me file, over time mods can lose their original authors. We have a lot of experience with that in the Morrowind community, so many old Morrowind mod websites have disappeared, along with all the information of who made what mods. Inevitably most mods can be restored, because chances are someone, somewhere downloaded it and re-uploaded it to Morrowind Modding History, but quite a few old authors never put their names in their Read Me files (or even had a Read Me) so a lot of these mods are doomed to have "Unknown" authors simply because we don't have the information anymore. And that's a shame, because someone who went to all the effort to make and release a mod should at least have a name and not be regulated to the unknown annals of lost history. So it's just something to consider, websites don't always last forever, so you should make the effort to put a name somewhere in your mods, just so we'll know who made what ten years from now.
I suppose the Construction Set is out of date, though personally I prefer it to the Creation Kit, but that might just be because I've been using the CS for 11 years and I'm just set in my ways. I have been curious, are there any mod cleaners for Skyrim that are similar to Enchanted Editor? I've been looking for a Skyrim utility that can list all of the cells changed by any particular mod, and also additional data such as landscaping (terrain editing), global variables and anything else that might cause a conflict with other Skyrim mods, but there's a veritable sea of Skyrim utilities so it's been difficult to find anything with what little knowledge I have of the Skyrim modding scene.
Sorry I haven't replied sooner but I've been busy with Oblivion lately. For cleaning Skyrim I use TES5Edit which is very easy to use. I am not sure if it is similar to Enchanted Editor as I only tried using a cleaner once for Morrowind.
When cleaning mods for Skyrim all I have to do is follow these 5 simple steps when using TES5Edit.
1. Select the mod and chose "Apply Filter For Cleaning". 2. Select the mod and choose "Remove Identical to Master" records. 3. When asked if you want to make changes answer yes. 4. Select the mod you are cleaning and select "Undelete and Disable References". 5. Close the program and save when asked.
I am always very careful when creating a mod not to go into other cells and look at other things to see how certain things are done. I've almost always clicked on cancel when using view teleport marker for a door. Not because I knew it was the right thing to do but I just did it out of habit and to be safe. Since I am pretty careful it usually only takes a minute to clean up the mod. It has been more confusing with Morrowind even though I used the construction set for it years ago. I first learned to mod on Morrowind.
I also tried putting my author name in when creating the mod but the construction set just crashed. I never had that problem with the Creation Kit when I tried it. The door markers are a real pain in Morrowind. I selected the right cell and everything but I am pretty sure the construction set is seeing some other door even though it is in a different cell and wants to attach the teleport to it.
Anyways thanks for all the info. I will look it over again later today probably and will put up a newer version once it is cleaned.
Edit:
I am using TESPCD which I prefer over Enchanted Editor because it does not use an executable to install and I can just run it from within a folder of my choice.
When I click on the red arrow nothing happens. I'm not sure if that is because the Morrowind.esm file is not loaded.
I've read your instructions and what is in the description for the mod but clicking on the red arrow does nothing at all. I even tried going into Operations and selecting the 4 different check functions but those don't do anything either. My mod is loaded using the chose plugin. Chose active plugin does not work and chose Master Plugin is always greyed out but that might be normal.
Edit:
I read that TESPCD will break a lot of mods and since it does not work at all I am thinking of trying tes3cmd instead which is just a simple command prompt cleaner but it is supposed to be better.
From what I understand I would probably only have to use the command "tes3cmd clean" and that would remove basic dirty edits such as with doors.
Thanks again for the tips and advice. I could not get TESPCD to work but I did more digging around and found a topic on using tes3cmd to clean the mod and it worked great. I guess it can be a little more confusing since it is a command line interface but the instructions were pretty good and when it was done cleaning it had removed the records for "ex_h_trapdoor_01" and "in_h_trapdoor_01".
The commandd prompt I used was:
tes3cmd clean --overwrite "HoleInTheGround.esp"
Edit
I uploaded the cleaned version and tested it and it seems to work fine. Well it worked fine before also. I am still surprised that there were 2 dirty edits but I am used to using the creation kit.
Huh, I'm surprised TESPCD didn't work. I've used version 0.31 on both Windows XP and Windows 7 systems without a problem, but it may be incompatible with Windows 8, I'll have to look into that and other mod cleaners and update my cleaning tutorials reflectively. I also haven't heard any complaints of TESPCD messing up mods, I've only heard that of TESTool, though some mods will make deliberate alterations to vanilla objects that can get reported by TESPCD as a dirty reference (most commonly leveled item lists) and cleaning these with TESPCD will naturally ruin the point of the mod. Also, if you change your mind about Enchanted Editor, it is a very useful tool to look at a quick snapshot of a mod and see everything it adds and alters (including what exterior cells it changes landscaping on, since any two mods that make landscaping changes in the same area will naturally conflict), though it isn't the best for just detecting dirty references.
Anyway, the new version looks good, and thanks for the tips on Skyrim mod cleaning! Hope you keep on modding!
I think I read complaints about TESPCD and TESTool but probably only under certain circumstances like you said. It would probably have worked fine on my mod if it worked. Problem was it acted like it wasn't finding the file or something because there was no activity at all.
If I do more modding with Morrowind I will probably give Enchanted Editor a try and I will probably never give up modding but am taking a long break to get back into Oblivion and Morrowind now that I have all the DLC. I might even give Daggerfall a try at some point.
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http://village.photos/images/user/6f0e96e7-c8ec-4c36-81d3-a8d71fd304ab/2e9d0c2d-f5cb-4f77-a32b-65ba5cc922ad.jpg
In the image, it shows that is partly under the steps and partly under the planter.
There are two things that could be improved though, 1) the read me file should be renamed to reflect what mod it belongs to (this is a personal annoyance of mine, I've been cataloging old Morrowind mods and far too many have read mes called "ReadMe" which of course gets overwritten by the next mod that also has a read me called "ReadMe", making it impossible to keep track of important mod information), a name such as "Hole in the Ground ReadMe.txt" would be much better. Also, you should really include your name with the readme file and/or contact information, either directly under the mod name or in a separate credits section where you list yourself as the author (again, this may seem trivial, but for cataloging purposes and keeping track of where credit goes it helps a lot to have it on file).
The second thing that should be improved is that, currently, there are two dirty references that should be cleaned from the mod. These dirty references are "ex_h_trapdoor_01" and "in_h_trapdoor_01", and they should be deleted using either TESPCD or Enchanted Editor to clean the file. One of the biggest differences from making mods for other Bethesda games (such as Skyrim) and Morrowind, is that Morrowind had a somewhat more primitive system for saving references. Whenever you hit the "save" button after changing an object's properties in the render window (like say, selecting a cell to place a door marker at), it changes EVERY reference of that object. This is, of course, different from Skyrim where you have to hit the "save" button to keep the changes made to an object's properties and it only changes the properties for that one specific object. Instead, in Morrowind, you need to hit the "cancel" button, not "save", and the changes you made will be kept for that one object instead of every reference of that object.
Anyway, to clean out the dirty references, I have a tutorial here with download links for cleaning tools such as Enchanted Editor and TESPCD: http://moddinginmorrowind.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/modding-tutorials-cleaning-mods/
If you need any help figuring out dirty references, just let me know.
I was extra careful with creating this mod and didn't go into any other cells or touch any object that was not a part of my mod.
The reason I put the house in the location it is in is because I had it in a different cell originally but when connecting the doors with teleport markers the Construction Set would put the marker in an adjacent cell and to move it to the correct cell would automatically make the adjacent cell a dirty edit.
Also I've never released a mod asking for credit and have always released them with the permission for others to freely use them as they wish. The glass sword isn't for selling. I haven't played Morrowind in many years but I don't think there is a merchant that has enough gold to buy it. It is a minor head start compared to other items I quickly run to get in the early part of the game such as the boots of blinding speed and saviors hide which benefit me a lot more.
The Construction Set is outdated and more difficult to work with compared to the Creation Kit. Same goes with the mod cleaners.
https://moddinginmorrowind.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/cs-example-doors.jpg
In Morrowind, you should never hit the "save" button in the render window for an object, and that includes doors, because this tends to create dirty references. I can understand the confusion, since the Creation Kit is the exact opposite of this. Instead, you should always hit "Cancel" even after selecting a cell for teleport, as the construction set will automatically save the changes for that particular door (whereas hitting "Save" would save the changes for every reference of that object in the game, i.e. every copy of "ex_h_trapdoor_01" and thus create a dirty reference). In any event, deleting the dirty references is fairly simple, and won't erase your door markers either.
You can use enchanted editor (download link here: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=other.detail&id=52 ) to remove the references, or TESPCD (download link: http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/3874/? ).
https://moddinginmorrowind.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/cs-example-ee.jpg
For Enchanted Editor, just load up the mod, select Doors as seen in the screenshot and hit Delete Marked, finally saving the file. You can also use Enchanted Editor to delete dirty references to exterior or interior cells (if you know which cells were referenced accidentally) without harming the rest of the mod.
https://moddinginmorrowind.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/cs-example-tespcd.jpg
For TESPCD, you want to first go to Operations, then Options, and probably check "report dialogue text" just to be safe. Next, select your mod from File->Choose Plugins and hit the red arrow to automatically detect all dirty references in your mod (I should mention that TESPCD doesn't detect interior/exterior dirty references). You should see something like what's in the screenshot above. Go to Operations again, hit Auto Delete Unclean (this will remove the dirty references) and then save your file. Hopefully that helps.
As for the door markers, those are quite different in the Morrowind CS compared to the Construction Kit (which pretty much does automatic door linking). In the CS, when you select a cell for the door to teleport to, you need to remember which cell you placed the door in. For example, Balmora has four exterior cells, so selecting the wrong one would put it in the wrong cell. After selecting the cell, you have to manually drag the door marker into place (a bit tedious, I'll admit). The location of the house is fine, its just close to a major conflict area. Five more feet to the left, and that trapdoor would be buried by some 100+ Balmora house mods that all use that little empty space next to the Odai River (not to mention the Illuminated Order, a popular quest mod).
I mentioned the whole credit thing because, if a clear author name isn't presented in the Read Me file, over time mods can lose their original authors. We have a lot of experience with that in the Morrowind community, so many old Morrowind mod websites have disappeared, along with all the information of who made what mods. Inevitably most mods can be restored, because chances are someone, somewhere downloaded it and re-uploaded it to Morrowind Modding History, but quite a few old authors never put their names in their Read Me files (or even had a Read Me) so a lot of these mods are doomed to have "Unknown" authors simply because we don't have the information anymore. And that's a shame, because someone who went to all the effort to make and release a mod should at least have a name and not be regulated to the unknown annals of lost history. So it's just something to consider, websites don't always last forever, so you should make the effort to put a name somewhere in your mods, just so we'll know who made what ten years from now.
I suppose the Construction Set is out of date, though personally I prefer it to the Creation Kit, but that might just be because I've been using the CS for 11 years and I'm just set in my ways. I have been curious, are there any mod cleaners for Skyrim that are similar to Enchanted Editor? I've been looking for a Skyrim utility that can list all of the cells changed by any particular mod, and also additional data such as landscaping (terrain editing), global variables and anything else that might cause a conflict with other Skyrim mods, but there's a veritable sea of Skyrim utilities so it's been difficult to find anything with what little knowledge I have of the Skyrim modding scene.
When cleaning mods for Skyrim all I have to do is follow these 5 simple steps when using TES5Edit.
1. Select the mod and chose "Apply Filter For Cleaning".
2. Select the mod and choose "Remove Identical to Master" records.
3. When asked if you want to make changes answer yes.
4. Select the mod you are cleaning and select "Undelete and Disable References".
5. Close the program and save when asked.
I am always very careful when creating a mod not to go into other cells and look at other things to see how certain things are done. I've almost always clicked on cancel when using view teleport marker for a door. Not because I knew it was the right thing to do but I just did it out of habit and to be safe. Since I am pretty careful it usually only takes a minute to clean up the mod. It has been more confusing with Morrowind even though I used the construction set for it years ago. I first learned to mod on Morrowind.
I also tried putting my author name in when creating the mod but the construction set just crashed. I never had that problem with the Creation Kit when I tried it. The door markers are a real pain in Morrowind. I selected the right cell and everything but I am pretty sure the construction set is seeing some other door even though it is in a different cell and wants to attach the teleport to it.
Anyways thanks for all the info. I will look it over again later today probably and will put up a newer version once it is cleaned.
Edit:
I am using TESPCD which I prefer over Enchanted Editor because it does not use an executable to install and I can just run it from within a folder of my choice.
When I click on the red arrow nothing happens. I'm not sure if that is because the Morrowind.esm file is not loaded.
I've read your instructions and what is in the description for the mod but clicking on the red arrow does nothing at all. I even tried going into Operations and selecting the 4 different check functions but those don't do anything either. My mod is loaded using the chose plugin. Chose active plugin does not work and chose Master Plugin is always greyed out but that might be normal.
Edit:
I read that TESPCD will break a lot of mods and since it does not work at all I am thinking of trying tes3cmd instead which is just a simple command prompt cleaner but it is supposed to be better.
From what I understand I would probably only have to use the command "tes3cmd clean" and that would remove basic dirty edits such as with doors.
The commandd prompt I used was:
tes3cmd clean --overwrite "HoleInTheGround.esp"
Edit
I uploaded the cleaned version and tested it and it seems to work fine. Well it worked fine before also. I am still surprised that there were 2 dirty edits but I am used to using the creation kit.
Anyway, the new version looks good, and thanks for the tips on Skyrim mod cleaning! Hope you keep on modding!
If I do more modding with Morrowind I will probably give Enchanted Editor a try and I will probably never give up modding but am taking a long break to get back into Oblivion and Morrowind now that I have all the DLC. I might even give Daggerfall a try at some point.