| To meet our site's higher standard of quality, this article or section may require cleanup. The user who placed this here had the following concern: See "Edit Needed" section for details To leave a message about the cleanup for this article, please add it to this article's talk page. |
Edit NeededEdit
- Expand this a bit.
- Beginning a name with an underscore is undesirable because it messes up some scripts.
- Cover factions, other stuff as well.
- Maybe cover safety of renaming. Else cover in "Refactoring Mods".
- Cover other naming standards. (Pull from Wrye Notes, etc.)
ObjectsEdit
When creating a mod, the most common thing you do is to copy an existing object and give it a new name in order to make it unique. In order for your item not to conflict with another mod the user might have running, the name must be unique. There are a few ways to ensure your name is unique using the following naming conventions and suggestions:
- Start your names with a string unique to yourself, such as your initials or name. This will give you your own indepedent namespace, apart from any other mod designer's objects.
- Include your mod name (or a short form), in the second part of your item name, preventing you from making duplicate names in different mods.
- Include a short form of the item's location next. Most people seem to like using two characters for the city/district name and another 2 or 3 for the actual 'zone'.
- Starting item names with an underscore help so that they sort to the top of the list, making finding your items a bit faster. Unfortunately, scripts cannot start with an underscore.
An example using this syntax:
dvh_shad_scpt_chest01 _dvh_shad_armr_table02
Both names use my hopefully unique name (DVH), the mod name (short for Shadow). The first name represents a script for some chest01. The second is a table in an Ald'ruhn (AR) Manor (MR). This syntax can create long names very quickly which can yield to some difficulties in choosing them in some drop-down lists (which cut off everything past 20 characters or so). Suggestions on improving this format are welcome, but in the long run it makes managing a large number of names in multiple mods easier.
It should be noted that if you plan to reference an object in a script then it you should NOT use a leading underscore. Leading underscores will cause problems in the script. See here in Scripting Pitfalls Scripting Pitfalls