Old Post ESL v ESP?

[diziet]

Given that quite a few city plans (including mine - eventually, ha ha!) will require add-ons for the designer's choice; what would be the best practice for specifiying where a mod has both esl and esp versions?

IDEK's logistics has both, All Settlements Extended has both and there are probably others; it is not necessarily the case that an esl can be used in place of an esp.
Maybe it's all swings and roundabout but I thought I'd ask at this relatively early stage for me (as in - other troubles seem to be forcing me nearly back to the drawing board).

 

[Yagisan]

My preference is to use an ESL version for a master where available. For example, I use the ESL version of IDEK's Logistics Station.

 

[kinggath]

I actually hadn't considered that scenario when working with mods. Unfortunately, there are no string manipulation functions in Papyrus, so I can't even have Sim Settlements check for both - it has to check for EXACTLY what you used in your city plan.

I could add a list of known mods that are available in both formats, and then double check for the other whenever one is used in a city plan. If you guys want to get me a list of any mods you're using in your plans that are available in both esl and esp I can add it to my list to test out.

 

[diziet]

I could add a list of known mods that are available in both formats, and then double check for the other whenever one is used in a city plan. If you guys want to get me a list of any mods you're using in your plans that are available in both esl and esp I can add it to my list to test out.

Is it the case that, for example, IDEK's logistics station will build with the esl installed if the designers choice was planned with the esp? I'm assuming that the answer is no but it would be useful if the answer was yes, less so if the answer is maybe.

 

[kinggath]

Right now, it will not. The system does a hard lookup on the exact file name you had used. I would need to setup a cross-reference list so that if it finds one it would need to check the other.

 

[EyeDeck]

I actually hadn't considered that scenario when working with mods. Unfortunately, there are no string manipulation functions in Papyrus, so I can't even have Sim Settlements check for both - it has to check for EXACTLY what you used in your city plan.

You could probably tweak it to append ".esp" and ".esl" onto the string in case it doesn't find anything with the unmodified string and check for those too, then tweak the documentation to mention that you can leave the extension off in case a mod has separate ESP and ESL versions. All the form IDs are identical between the two versions of my mod, and I expect any other responsible mod author would use the same convention in case they're doing the same thing.

If you're using one of my plots in your city plan, I recommend using the ESL version though; when I made it a huge pain to even get an ESP version for the first few weeks, downloads for the ESL version were like ~25x higher, and on Bethesda.net for both PC and Xbox I only upload the ESL version.