With the latest version, it's just too broken on my end to use.

[gr3nadier351]

Let me start off by saying that I used to love Vortex and used it for multiple games with little to no hassle, but with the new updates, something appears to be completely and utterly f*cked.

 

 

So, I did a new OS install for my NVMe drive. Brand new, out of the box, and the only bit of data that was carried over was a theme from the Vortex root folder. I installed it, set my download folder on my second drive and my staging folder on the root drive, and then spent a few hours downloading mods. It got late, so I shut everything down and went to bed. When I began to work on it the next day is when everything began to go downhill. LOOT parsing errors started popping out of nowhere, but it still loaded and enabled what I selected. I started the game and was greeted with nothing but an infinite loading screen when starting a new game. This continued to happen regardless of the modlist until I disabled all of the installed mods. I went to the root game directory and everything was fine; F4SE was installed and up-to-date, folder structure seemed fine, but there was a problem. For whatever reason, Vortex was copying over the raw files of the enabled mods while keeping them in the deployment folder. Not hardlink or syslink files, but the full mods themselves. This meant that 10 GB of mods required over 20 GB of space. Even when purging the modlist, it still failed to fully clean up and would leave behind folders for VIS, MCM, etc. I double-checked the deployment method, tried toggling the method between app restarts, all to no avail. So, I copied over the theme folder, deleted the app folder and settings, and reinstalled it. The problem is that I was told that I was running the app as admin when attempting to reinstall. No admin or compatibility enabled on the download, it wasn't blocked, and there was no prompt for the app launch. I continued anyways and re-selected my download folder for mod downloads, only to be told that the folder has to be empty. At this point, I just gave up.

 

This may not seem like a lot to some, but when you're managing around 170 mods <at the moment> with the exact same setup as before and suddenly it just starts failing all over the place, it becomes more trouble than what it's worth. Windows 7, Fallout 4, same privilege scheme, same drive scheme, same library installs, even the same modlist as my last install, and yet between revisions something just went horribly wrong. What happened? Did a library update that causes it to screw up on Win7 now? Did Fallout 4 have an update that just collides with current tools to a degree? In my last install, everything was fine; no LOOT errors after over 15 hours of modding, proper hardlink deployment, no issues with managing multiple games (everything from Fallout 4 to The Witcher 3), nothing. I'm more frustrated and confused than anything.

 

For the moment, NMM appears to work. The interface is a bit laggy, but it's lighter overall and just has a much more straightforward design. For the moment, regrettably, it's the solution.

[Tannin42]

> LOOT parsing errors started popping out of nowhere

 

What parsing errors?

 

> Vortex was copying over the raw files of the enabled mods while keeping them in the deployment folder. Not hardlink or syslink files, but the full mods themselves

 

How did you verify that? Your mention of LOOT means you're using a bethesda game so it has to be hardlinks and the Windows GUI gives no indication whether a file is a hardlink. Vortex never copies the mod files, it creates links or (with the experimental move deployment) it moves them but never copies.

 

> The problem is that I was told that I was running the app as admin when attempting to reinstall. No admin or compatibility enabled on the download, it wasn't blocked, and there was no prompt for the app launch.

 

I don't understand this line. Did you get a warning about admin mode or not? The installer has to be run as admin, that's normal. The application itself does not.

 

> I continued anyways and re-selected my download folder for mod downloads, only to be told that the folder has to be empty. At this point, I just gave up.

Nothing unusual here.

 

> This may not seem like a lot to some

 

It doesn't look like not a lot, it looks like nothing.

 

As far as I can tell all that happened is that you assumed hard links would be recognizable when they are not (you need special software to tell a hardlink from a regular file) and then you panicked for absolutely no reason, deleted Vortex data and now are surprised that the data you deleted is gone.

Your panic reaction is what caused the actual problems, the only thing that might be an issue is the LOOT parsing errors but since "parsing errors" is super generic there is no way to tell.

[gr3nadier351]

> LOOT parsing errors started popping out of nowhere

 

What parsing errors?

 

> Vortex was copying over the raw files of the enabled mods while keeping them in the deployment folder. Not hardlink or syslink files, but the full mods themselves

 

How did you verify that? Your mention of LOOT means you're using a bethesda game so it has to be hardlinks and the Windows GUI gives no indication whether a file is a hardlink. Vortex never copies the mod files, it creates links or (with the experimental move deployment) it moves them but never copies.

 

> The problem is that I was told that I was running the app as admin when attempting to reinstall. No admin or compatibility enabled on the download, it wasn't blocked, and there was no prompt for the app launch.

 

I don't understand this line. Did you get a warning about admin mode or not? The installer has to be run as admin, that's normal. The application itself does not.

 

> I continued anyways and re-selected my download folder for mod downloads, only to be told that the folder has to be empty. At this point, I just gave up.

Nothing unusual here.

 

> This may not seem like a lot to some

 

It doesn't look like not a lot, it looks like nothing.

 

As far as I can tell all that happened is that you assumed hard links would be recognizable when they are not (you need special software to tell a hardlink from a regular file) and then you panicked for absolutely no reason, deleted Vortex data and now are surprised that the data you deleted is gone.

Your panic reaction is what caused the actual problems, the only thing that might be an issue is the LOOT parsing errors but since "parsing errors" is super generic there is no way to tell.

 

Then allow me to help your lack of understanding.

 

 

>I should have copied the parsing errors, but it said simply that it failed to parse plugins followed by a code line reference. Still enabled the mods, just random error messages.

 

>How did I verify that? Well, unless they changed how things work, Windows used to recognize an unknown filetype if you enabled file extensions for the OS, and the files themselves would only be a few kilobytes in size; an entire deployment of 200 mods would be megabytes in the game folder. Not to mention, a simple comparison using both the properties tab and selection details will show the file size. It was copying over the mods themselves in Hardlink, and properly moving them in Move. Ironically, it was only in Move Deployment that everything worked fine, where the game ran with no infinite loading screen.

 

>I do not understand this line. Yes, the warning was there, no, the app wasn't run as admin, and yet it said that the app was being run as admin despite confirmation that no such options were enabled.

 

>Nothing unusual for Vortex, but when it requires an empty downloads folder despite other applications in this very niche working just fine with such folders, it becomes just another nuisance.

 

>This line is all sorts of confusion. "Panicked" is hilariously inaccurate; when you create a fresh install and things go wrong, do you sit there and tinker with it when you have limited options for doing so, or do you try reinstalling it because maybe something went wrong? "Surprised that my data was deleted"?? Seriously, where did you come up with that? The issue is confusion as to how, between two different revisions, a program seemingly ceases to properly function on my end, not that X data went missing (which it didn't and I never stated that it did).

 

I could understand the """panicked""" dismissal of my exposition if there were a reason for it, but there really isn't. I simply wanted to post my experience and see if anyone had any legitimate ideas as to potential solutions. If there is no help to be found here, then I'll go look elsewhere. Simple.

[Tannin42]

>How did I verify that? Well, unless they changed how things work, Windows used to recognize an unknown filetype if you enabled file extensions for the OS, and the files themselves would only be a few kilobytes in size; an entire deployment of 200 mods would be megabytes in the game folder.

It has never worked like this.

As I suspected you confuse hard links with symlinks or shortcuts.

Hard links are more like aliases: a second name for the same blob of data, implemented in the filesystem itself.

The "link" is indistinguishable from the "original" and thus any tool will show the "link" as using up the same amount of space on disk as the original file.

But despite the fact tools show you two files (original and link) of size - say 100MB - that's the same 100MB so it's 100MB in total not 100MB twice.

[HadToRegister]

 

For whatever reason, Vortex was copying over the raw files of the enabled mods while keeping them in the deployment folder. Not hardlink or syslink files, but the full mods themselves. This meant that 10 GB of mods required over 20 GB of space.

 

For the moment, NMM appears to work. The interface is a bit laggy, but it's lighter overall and just has a much more straightforward design. For the moment, regrettably, it's the solution.

 

 

Do me a favor, go look at your "Virtual Install" Folder for NMM, now see all of those mods all extracted with all their files?

Now go look in your game DATA folder, now see that all of the same Files are there too?

 

What you're incorrectly complaining about Vortex (doubling the hard drive space needed, and physically copying over the mods to your game folder) is the SAME thing you're praising NMM of doing.

 

Here's how it works

 

 

NMM---->Mod Download Folder-------->You install the mod---------->Mod is extracted to the VIRTUAL INSTALL folder------->Hard links from Virtual Install Folder are put in the Game\DATA folder, making it look like the mod files have been doubled.

 

 

Vortex---->Mod Download Folder-------->You install the mod---------->Mod is extracted to the MOD STAGING folder------->Hard links from MOD STAGING Folder are put in the Game\DATA folder, making it look like the mod files have been doubled.

 

THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE between Vortex and MM in that aspect, but for some reason you believe NMM is doing it right, and Vortex is doing it wrong.

 

[Tannin42]

There is a slight difference between NMM and Vortex:

 

Vortex makes you decide strictly between hardlinks and symlinks, with symlinks being disabled for the bethesda games because those - for inexplicable reasons - don't load esp/esm files via symlinks.

 

NMM will allow you to select symlinks even for bethesda games and to work around the problem with es* files it copies those files to the data directory.

 

So it's possible that the OP was using symlinks in NMM, which are recognizable as such in windows explorer but in that case the es* files were real copies.

[HadToRegister]

There is a slight difference between NMM and Vortex:

 

Vortex makes you decide strictly between hardlinks and symlinks, with symlinks being disabled for the bethesda games because those - for inexplicable reasons - don't load esp/esm files via symlinks.

 

NMM will allow you to select symlinks even for bethesda games and to work around the problem with es* files it copies those files to the data directory.

 

So it's possible that the OP was using symlinks in NMM, which are recognizable as such in windows explorer but in that case the es* files were real copies.

 

 

Interesting, so of the two it's NMM that actually physically copies some files to the Game\Data folder when it comes to Bethesda games.