CSList is a web tool that displays the raw game data for Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. It was created to be a tool for UESP editors and patrollers to use as part of improving and maintaining UESPWiki. It is not intended to be a user-friendly way to learn about the Elder Scrolls games -- that's what UESPWiki is for. CSList is only intended for use by people who are willing to dig through raw information and piece together facts on their own. This page provides the only documentation of the tool.
General InfoEdit
All of the information in cslist is based on records, which are the basic unit in the game data files to represent, well, anything -- items, NPCs, spells, levelled lists, effect shaders, etc. Every record has a type, which is a four letter code such as WEAP, NPC_, SPEL, LEVI, or EFSH. The main page presents a list of all these record types, as does the sidebar. To decode these types, see Oblivion Mod:Mod File Format for Oblivion or Skyrim Mod:Mod File Format for Skyrim.
There are three special types of record: ACHR, ACRE, and REFR. These are for placed items, or referenced items. Basically, if you take an NPC such as Oblivion:Rohssan, her RefID points to an ACHR record, whereas her BaseID points to an NPC_ record.
When looking at the details of an individual record, it's probably best to just focus on the information that's recognizable -- "value", "weight", "damage", etc. If it's data you haven't seen displayed on the wiki, it's probably getting into obscure details. And some of the values might not be properly understood by anyone (well, except the Bethesda folks who created them).
HistoryEdit
The bottom of every cslist page shows 1-2 lines indicating when the database was last updated. This history information is specific to each game. The second line of information only displays if you're on a page for a specific record type, in which case it shows when that specific record type was last updated. Clicking on either line will take you to a page providing more detailed information about the history of updates to the database.
If the history information is in dark red and says that the database is "currently being updated" then cslist is actively re-reading one or more record types. You can still use cslist while it's doing an update, but the records that are in the middle of being read are likely to be incomplete, and it's possible some strange error messages may appear on those records.
For some details about changes see the change history.
Bad DataEdit
For the first pass at processing Skyrim data, cslist is going to decode the data using a long list of arbitrary assumptions about records, subrecords, and their formats. The majority of these assumptions are probably wrong, but at least a few are likely to be correct. cslist will display all of this data. However, any variables whose format have not yet been checked will be displayed in red italics.
I've made it so that I can easily update the list of checked variables, so hopefully any good data will be changed from red to black fairly quickly. Those with server access should be able to do this by adding to the file srchecked.txt.
SearchEdit
The search box will search formIDs, editor IDs, and record names for matches. FormIDs will only be searched if the search text starts with "0x". Otherwise, editor IDs and record names will be searched; the currently selected record type will be searched first. If a single matching record is found, search will take you straight to that record. Otherwise a list of matching records will be displayed.
FormIDsEdit
For Oblivion and Skyrim mods, instead of using a formID that starts with 'xx', cslist fills the first two letters of the formID with a two-letter code specific to the mod. For example, items added by the Knights of the Nine start with 'KN'; the Beating Heart from Mehrunes Razor is '0xMR001AF2', and the Dawnguard NPC Serana's RefID is DG002B74.
Record TypesEdit
The main page for each individual record type provides a list of all the records (items) in that record type. The specific columns displayed depend upon the record type. Generally columns have been selected that are useful in identifying or filtering the items.
Note that for REFR record types, only REFRs with a non-blank editor ID or non-blank name are displayed. Otherwise just sorting the hundreds of thousands of REFR records to select the 100 being printed can overload the database. The other REFR records are all present in the database, and can be accessed (via the search function) if you know the specific formID you're looking for.
FiltersEdit
Most record types provide several filters that can be used to limit the displayed records. Filters can be combined so, for example, you can filter the weapon (WEAP) records to only dispay bows, or to only display enchanted bows.
Some of the filters are likely to be dysfunctional with initial Skyrim data. For example, when trying to filter weapons by type, the dropdown might not show any available types. Furthermore, choosing some filters might result in an ugly error message. If you encounter problems with a filter, just don't select it for now -- the problems will automatically get fixed as the data decoding is improved.
Other FormatsEdit
For any record type page, you can also select the data in csv format (e.g., for importing into Excel) or in wiki format. Although the same records are shown in the csv/wiki format as the html format (i.e., the same filters are applied, the same 100-record subset is selected), the columns shown for those records frequently differ from those shown in the html format. In particular, the wiki format has been tweaked to try to make the table format and displayed columns match the format that is needed for the corresponding wiki article. It should be possible to just cut and paste the wiki format directly into the wiki -- especially for first drafts of Skyrim pages.
If using the wiki format data to fill UESP articles, there are a couple of issues to be aware of:
- Any unchecked data (i.e., any columns displayed in red italics) will automatically be dropped from the wiki-format data. If the dropped data is indeed valid and you'd to have it included in the wiki table, let me know and I can quickly flag the data as OK.
- The data is likely to include multiple items with the same name. This is most likely to happen with levelled items. (The levelled items filter should remove these, but the filter not might be working initially).
- Test items and items that don't appear in the game will be included in the data
Record StatisticsEdit
Selecting 'See record statistics' on any record type page shows two tables summarizing the contents of the record type and its format. The first table is a list of all the subrecords and some basic statistics about those subrecords -- this information is collected and displayed regardless of whether the subrecord is actually being read/processed.
The second table lists format information, but only for those subrecords that are being read/processed. Variables with unchecked formats are shown in red italics. The format information isn't quite as comprehensive as what's eventually going to be needed for the Mod File Format pages (and it doesn't include some of the more nitpicky details used by cslist in decoding the data). However it's a good starting point for seeing what assumptions cslist is making when extracting the data.
Individual RecordsEdit
When viewing an individual record (individual item), cslist displays all of the data for that record that is in the database. This isn't necessarily all of the data for that record, since cslist doesn't decode all of the record contents.