Multiple Skyrim setups without "profiles"

[Lord Garon]

@bben,

 

I know its not NMM, that's why I qualified my comment with, "Nexus ... naming conventions". Its no BIG deal, really. I'm used to setting aside time now-and-then to check mod updates. I just want it all, and I want it right now. :cool:

 

But, with 1.83 zillion mods, any help is welcome. I've forgotten what frustrated me last time, so I'll stick NMM back in and take the update "hints".

 

Thanks for the info.

Edited October 29, 2014 by Lord Garon

[Lord Garon]

(BEGIN Wall-o-Text Six)

 

For OCD types like me, utilities are the boon, and bane, of modding Skyrim. They do indispensable things, but do them in their own ways and that's usually not how I want (need) them done.

 

Consider Loot. An undeniable boon to the modding community; its a mandatory modding utility. But it doesn't, by itself, keep track of multiple game setups. Its nice to have the old Loot report on-hand and its more-than-nice to have individual setup metadata (custom load order sorting information) available. So, back to the symlinks. Loot keeps it state info in an AppData folder (NOT in two places as I previously mentioned; the report.html file I glommed onto originally was pointed out to me to be just a template) %LOCALAPPDATA%\Loot\Skyrim. I simply linked that to a sub-folder of the %LOCALAPPDATA%\Skyrim folder, ie, %LOCALAPPDATA%\Skyrim\Skyrim. Now Loot switches automatically when I do a setup switch.

 

TES5Edit - Yay! The most useful modding tool does not need to remember much; it just scans for needed data each time you run it and it simply does its thing. TES5Edit recognizes the symlinked spider web as a normal game and works within the current setup framework. The things it creates (patched or new plugins and needed backups) are created/saved within current setup locations.

 

Mod Managers - Ultimately, I've decided that I don't know enough about other mod managers to discuss them in this context. I use BASH, for many reasons. One of those reasons is the bash.ini configuration file; you can tell BASH where to put things and, conversely, the default ini file tells me a lot about what BASH is doing. I keep mods and mod info in a sub-folder of SteamApps\common\Skyrim; they switch when the SETUP switches.

 

<rant> Most programs try to hide implementation details from the user; an epic disservice to users originally promoted by Microsoft. Microsoft, et al, wants to "let" users do things, by way of their costly programs, rather than encourage users to program their own ultimately configurable machine; a programmable computer. Three decades, a whole generation, into the personal computing revolution and the majority of users know less about computing now than they did when the revolution started. The digital revolution was squashed, much to the detriment of mankind in general. Whoops, I'm ranting. Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine. </rant>

 

Just a few hints, and I'm done. 7-Zip can be a major modding tool. For instance, the S.T.E.P. project has a set of core mods which really improve the look and feel of Skyrim. Dozens of core mods. Instead of having dozens (and dozens) of individual core mod archives, I 7-Zip them up. You can add and delete mods from an archive, only archive certain files or folders, and do all sorts of stuff to make mod ARCHIVE management easier. Besides STEP, I have a set of "difficulty" mods I 7-Zip up. And a set of optimized textures I keep 7-zipped up. All mod managers recognize a zip file, if not 7z and other formats as well. Creating a new game SETUP can be as easy as simply extracting a TES5Edit cleaned vanilla+DLC game 7z backup archive. EVERYONE has a vanilla install backup/archive, which makes this easy.

 

Loose files. Interesting NPC's, one of my favorite mods, has over 40,000 loose files. Many mod authors seem to "force" their changes upon players by packaging their data as loose files. I have no idea why. To be quite frank, loose data files defeat the intent of Skyrim load order and cause more problems than they solve. There are NO loose files in a vanilla game. Bethesda uses bsa files for a reason. Besides mod load order issues, we now have a gazillion issues with mod INSTALL order. If several mods use loose files and they happen to change the same mesh or texture, load order has NO effect on which loose file is used. Its the INSTALLATION order, the order in which the mod archives were extracted, which determines loose file priority. IF all mod data files were provided as bsa files, there would be NO install order issues. Load order would determine it all. And, instead of deleting and re-installing mods in the correct installation order, you would simply change the load order of a plugin (esp or esm) to resolve data conflicts. I have no loose files in my "packed" games. I pack ALL loose files in mods into a bsa file using Archive.exe before I install them. If there is no mod plugin, I just copy and rename a HighResTexturePack esp (they're "empty") to the bsa name in order to load it. And, you can put many loose file only mods into one bsa using one plugin to load them, even an existing plugin. If you want some HD textures to override everything else, pack em in a bsa and load it last. Packing loose files into a bsa might be seen as more difficult than re-installing loose file mods in the correct order. Might be true. Until you add or change your mods. Note that Skyrim has an issue with large (>2GB) bsa files. I had to split the Interesting NPC voice files into two bsa's to fix some missing voice issues. No problemo. There is, simply, no good reason to have loose files in a Skyrim mod setup. IMHO, of course.

 

Scripts. Making batch files (or cscript/wscript, hta, Powershell, Python, PERL, Lua, Ruby, etc, etc, etc, scripts) is a great way to learn your computer, save time, reduce typing mistakes, and customize your computer. Geeks, nerds, and system administrators use scripts for many things. There's a reason for that. Give it a shot; you may find that you don't NEED a multi-profile capable mod manager or utility program to do things for you.

 

(END Wall-o-Text SIX)

[yudhi108]

Ok, I read every thing you wrote there. Must've taken you forever. For sure, I would've had a headache as well after writing that much. Just reading and trying to understand it all gave me a head ache lol. Thanks so much for all your efforts!

 

I'm going to have to read it all a few more times over the next month or so to understand it all, but since I did read it all once (and reread several parts a few times), I hope you don't mind me asking something.

 

Currently my understanding is that backing up the 3 main file locations (common/skyrim, appdata/local/skyrim, and Documents/My Games/Skyrim) is sufficient. Now I think I've understood that loot also stores it's info in it's own install directory. There's 2 ways I can think of that I can easily get around this. One is simply back up the Programfiles(86)/Loot folder and change it when I change the other 3 locations. The other is installing LOOT directly to the Skyrim directory.

 

I think I will try to simply uninstall loot, then reinstall it in the Skyrim directory. Hopefully then I can just switch the 3 main folders as mentioned and all will work well.

[Lord Garon]

Ok, I read every thing you wrote there. Must've taken you forever. For sure, I would've had a headache as well after writing that much. Just reading and trying to understand it all gave me a head ache lol. Thanks so much for all your efforts!

 

I'm going to have to read it all a few more times over the next month or so to understand it all, but since I did read it all once (and reread several parts a few times), I hope you don't mind me asking something.

 

Currently my understanding is that backing up the 3 main file locations (common/skyrim, appdata/local/skyrim, and Documents/My Games/Skyrim) is sufficient. Now I think I've understood that loot also stores it's info in it's own install directory. There's 2 ways I can think of that I can easily get around this. One is simply back up the Programfiles(86)/Loot folder and change it when I change the other 3 locations. The other is installing LOOT directly to the Skyrim directory.

 

I think I will try to simply uninstall loot, then reinstall it in the Skyrim directory. Hopefully then I can just switch the 3 main folders as mentioned and all will work well.

 

Moving the Loot install location to the Skyrim game directory won't help. Loot's "memory" is in the %LOCALAPPDATA%\Loot\Skyrim folder.

 

Remembering that %LOCALAPPDATA%\Skyrim is one of the three main Skyrim locations that we switch when we change setups, what I did was:

 

1. Copied the %LOCALAPPDATA%\Loot\Skyrim folder to each of the %LOCALAPPDATA%\SETUPN folders. That gives us a %LOCALAPPDATA%\SETUPN\Skyrim folder to hold Loot state info (Loot's memory).

 

2. Deleted the original %LOCALAPPDATA%\Loot\Skyrim folder and replaced it with a directory symlink (mklink /d) to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Skyrim\Skyrim.

 

Now Loot runs from its original install location and the Loot "memory" folder just follows the active setup.

 

If you just want to do the copy/rename process on two game setups, you can just copy-rename one additional Skyrim folder:

 

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Loot\Skyrim.

 

I'm assuming you are familiar with environment variables. You can find the actual PATHNAMES (for the mklink commands) by opening a command prompt (cmd.exe) and typing in:

 

echo %LOCALAPPDATA%

 

On my machine (Win7 Home Premium 64bit), it expands to: C:\Users\Gary\AppData\Local

 

Your machine may give different results, but all recent versions of Windows have a similar location where local application profile information is kept.

Edited November 4, 2014 by Lord Garon

[ManleySteele]

Just a thought on auto-updating mods. If you have a mod that does what you want, manually download a copy of the mod. I do this because sometimes there are mod updates that I don't care for. Some Mod authors retain the older versions on the Nexus. Some only leave the very newest exposed. NMM will happily store all the versions of a particular mod. Eventually though, the mod list gets kind of long and disorganized. I find that a better solution is to store a copy of any mod I love locally. This also gets around the problem of mod authors leaving the Nexus after removing all their mods. I just feel better having a local copy of any mod I don't want to do without.

[Lord Garon]

Just a thought on auto-updating mods. If you have a mod that does what you want, manually download a copy of the mod. I do this because sometimes there are mod updates that I don't care for. Some Mod authors retain the older versions on the Nexus. Some only leave the very newest exposed. NMM will happily store all the versions of a particular mod. Eventually though, the mod list gets kind of long and disorganized. I find that a better solution is to store a copy of any mod I love locally. This also gets around the problem of mod authors leaving the Nexus after removing all their mods. I just feel better having a local copy of any mod I don't want to do without.

 

I don't actually "auto-update" for fear of breaking something, I just try to keep up with things. I do have original copies of all my current mods cause I usually rearrange, clean, patch, and pack them before a permanent game install. I'll break something fairly often, so the copies are mandatory for me.

 

Thanks for the input.

[yudhi108]

Loot seems like a pretty independent program. Couldn't you just uninstall and reinstall loot and count on it to be able to read your load order and figure it out from scratch, or just make it run your load order without un/reinstalling? I don't change my game SETUP very often. I've been using all the info I've gathered here more as a foolproof back up system for now. I seem to have finally perfected a SETUP my current GPU can handle though, so I may start experimenting with multiple setups now.

 

I will setup another char and start to have 3-4 SETUP's. I like the idea of having a couple for testing (as you mentioned), before adding mods to my primary setups. And a couple for different style playthroughs with different chars and mods to go along with said chars. Thanks for this guide ^^

 

EDIT: I've backed up my appdata/loot and appdata/skryim to perfect my backup process. I should probably create a readme document with my backup files describing exactly where loot, wrye bash, and NMM are installed. FNIS, SKSE, bodyslide, and all the .jar programs should already be installed and functioning just by keeping their respective files intact within my skyrim install folder, and tes5edit and creation kit should be independent enough to be installed separately and run on any SETUP at anytime. That's my understanding thus far anyways. I feel good about this. It's nice being able to do back up all the hard work it takes to getting my "perfect" setups for my perfect playthoughs.

[Deleted5770650User]

I don't see the need to include the LOOT folder unless you are editing the metadata and doing a poor job. By poor job I mean if you edit for one mod list and those edits can not work with a second mod list. A good edit would allow for any mod list.

Edited November 5, 2014 by Guest

[Lord Garon]

I don't see the need to include the LOOT folder unless you are editing the metadata and doing a poor job. By poor job I mean if you edit for one mod list and those edits can not work with a second mod list. A good edit would allow for any mod list.

 

In general, you're right. You actually don't NEED to switch Loot, it will simply sort what it sees each time it runs.

 

I run into problems mainly because I pack loose file mods into bsa's, then add an empty esp to load them. Loot looks at what the plugins change, then checks a Masterlist for exceptions when sorting. Many of my esp's are "empty", which doesn't give Loot a lot to work with, and they have names I give them so they're not in any Masterlist. Many loose file only mods are replacers and need to be installed in a particular order. If you pack them, then they have to be in a particular load order, which neither Loot nor BOSS gets correct 100% of the time. I have different Loot metadata in each of my setups because each setup has different mod loads. You could do it in a single metadata change, but I initially wanted Loot, and all utilities, to "see" a normal game when they run. I sorta stuck with that idea.

 

Normal people won't have most of these issues. :blush:

Edited November 5, 2014 by Lord Garon

[Lord Garon]

Loot seems like a pretty independent program. Couldn't you just uninstall and reinstall loot and count on it to be able to read your load order and figure it out from scratch, or just make it run your load order without un/reinstalling? I don't change my game SETUP very often. I've been using all the info I've gathered here more as a foolproof back up system for now. I seem to have finally perfected a SETUP my current GPU can handle though, so I may start experimenting with multiple setups now.

 

I will setup another char and start to have 3-4 SETUP's. I like the idea of having a couple for testing (as you mentioned), before adding mods to my primary setups. And a couple for different style playthroughs with different chars and mods to go along with said chars. Thanks for this guide ^^

 

EDIT: I've backed up my appdata/loot and appdata/skryim to perfect my backup process. I should probably create a readme document with my backup files describing exactly where loot, wrye bash, and NMM are installed. FNIS, SKSE, bodyslide, and all the .jar programs should already be installed and functioning just by keeping their respective files intact within my skyrim install folder, and tes5edit and creation kit should be independent enough to be installed separately and run on any SETUP at anytime. That's my understanding thus far anyways. I feel good about this. It's nice being able to do back up all the hard work it takes to getting my "perfect" setups for my perfect playthoughs.

 

Loot will sort anything you give it, and do a pretty good job. Its probably the least "worrisome" utility. TES5Edit works with the standard directories and install locations; it has no problems that I'm aware of. Utilities added as mods, like Bodyslide, also work fine because they are switched with the Skyrim game folder. The only downside is that each setup has its own copy of these utilities; a little wasteful of disk space, but not a problem. There is another layer to all this which I've purposely left out; switching the Data directory (mods only) instead of the Skyrim game folder. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

 

Windows, itself, does this kind of folder re-direction all the time. Its not a new or novel idea, just takes a little planning to make work. I started doing this in Oblivion, so I've just got an "idea" of what I want before I start and I'm aware of some problems because I've already had them happen to me. I'm also "stuck" in doing things the way I've done them before; there's certainly improvements to be made to this spider-web approach. One such improvement, I have to keep saying, is MO profiles. Another is different user accounts for different characters. And on and on. Don't get "stuck" in my little world; MAKE your machine do what you want it to in the way you feel most comfortable with. There's ALWAYS a better way to do it. Just, when you find it, let us know so we can do it, too.

Edited November 6, 2014 by Lord Garon