A general question about mod compatibility

chimeric

I'm thinking of trying my hand at a few little modifications - the in-game sort: put a few non-joinable NPC in an area, write up the dialogue for them, make a couple of simple quests. I have some memory of how that's done from long time ago, but what was never clear to me is how to achive compatibility for area-changing mods. There was just no clear answer. So can somebody please explain it to me? Say I'm putting an NPC in a corner of an outdoors area, and another mod puts another NPC in another corner there, and maybe a few monsters. Will the mods clash?

elminster

It depends on how you are going about doing it. If you are just editing an area file (to add this creature) in a program like Near Infinity and then having that area file copied into your override folder than its going to cause issues if its not installed before the other mod.

Generally though what you are describing can be handled just by using a command like EXTEND_BOTTOM with weidu to add to the area script or by adding the creature by using the COPY_EXISTING command in weidu (both of which should avoid the scenario I mentioned in the first paragraph).