Jump to content

Technical Fixes:Seperating the Facts from Fiction

Dan3345

By Dan3345
in Mod Troubleshooting

 Share

Recommended Posts

Dan3345 Mentor

Dan3345

Posted
Posted (edited)

A relatively quick guide to help new modders.

 

Possible fiction: Saving your game, then reloading, and killing yourself then saving again and reloading will fix your save and remove the corruption. I have seen this posted twice now, and I don't believe it to be true. Corruptions are created (my understanding) when a game is saved and the game crashes while saving, a mod is deactivated and the game is save (raises the potential for corruption), two or more mods are incompatible and are left unfixed, a mod is not in the proper load order and left unfixed.

 

Fact:Using FNVEdit (found here) can be used to create a merged patch which is essentially a simple compatibility patch between multiple active mods. This is not better than using an official compatibility patch provided by the mods author or approved by the mods author. A very well made tutorial for FNVedit can be found here.

 

Possible Fiction: Unmodded games cannot be corrupted. As stated above if the game crashes/stops working/CTD's, then you have the potential for a corrupt save.

 

Fact: In my experience with modding Oblivion and the Fallout series there are a few warning signs to consider when modding. If your game is crashing often and at random or at a specific location these are the most obvious warning signs of a problem. These can be caused by anything from a mod out of order, or incompatibility or to a corrupt save. Usually in the case of random crashing it is a corrupt save. In a loading screen when you watch the little roulette ball spin if it stutters a lot your game could be corrupt. Alternatively if you have many mods it could just mean your game has a lot to load. To fix the first problem of the random crashing you can do several things. You can one make a master-update which requires FNVedit. A master update flags all plugins as master files. They still rely on FalloutNV.esm to be loaded first as always. However master files tend to be much more stable and resilient to conflicts then plugins.

 

Be warned though that some authors recommend you do not use a master update specifically with their mod because flagging some plugins as masters changes things in a way that is not desired.

 

The other issue I have with master updates is that for each one you do it creates a backup of every plugin that is active. If you have any number of mods this can get annoying because it clutters your data folder with a possible infinite (one for every master-update) number of full-sized mods. All useless, and they waste a lot of space.

 

The next thing you can do if a master-update doesn't work, is you can do a master-restore (also uses FNVedit). This will "restore" all active plugins to their original state. So if you did a master-update, and some mods didn't like it, you would do a master-restore and the mod would go back to being an average plugin instead of a fake master file.

 

The last thing I want to touch upon is FOMM (Fallout Mod Manager).

This is probably the single most important tool you can use. You can toggle archive invalidation without installing it, you can run an older version of BOSS (Not recommended will explain below), you can move manually each plugin and master in you load order as needed, set graphics without loading the game through steam. For those of us with .ini tweaks this can be a real pain because when you load through steam it resets the .ini. So FOMM allowing graphical tweaks through its interface is a god-send. FOMM can be found here It is self installing. Just extract and let it work. A great thing about FOMM is if you are having trouble with your load order and are crashing/corrupt saves etc etc, then you can open FOMM and click on "Load Order" and then press "Copy To Clipboard", now just come into this board and describe your problem in as much detail as possible, tell us your machines information if you know, and then paste the load order into the message. Easy as that.

 

For example of what it will look like when you copy and paste, here is my load order.

 

FalloutNV.esm

DeadMoney.esm

HonestHearts.esm

OldWorldBlues.esm

CINEMATECH.esm

drgNV - Melissa Companion.esm

NSkies URWLified.esm

NVR-Strip.esm

Project Nevada - Core.esm

Project Nevada - Equipment.esm

Weapon Mod Expansion.esm

WME - Dead Money.esm

WME - Honest Hearts.esm

WME - Old World Blues.esm

wsex.esm

iHUD.esm

Lings.esm

DarNifiedUINV.esp

CASM.esp

Readius_NV.esp

The Mod Configuration Menu.esp

NVR-NPCs.esp

LowPopulatedFreeside.esp

NVFR-Version_2.esp

NVR-Version_10.esp

Project Nevada - Cyberware.esp

Project Nevada - Dead Money.esp

Project Nevada - Honest Hearts.esp

Continue After End.esp

wsexInnuendoAnims.esp

wsexInnuendoNPCs.esp

dressup.esp

EMR-StealthSuitMkII.esp

EMR-StealthSuitMkII - Project Nevada GRB.esp

sexysleepwear.esp

AllCompanionsEssential 2.0b.esp

drgNV - Melissa Companion (Lings Hairstyle Add-On).esp

Companion Sandbox Mode.esp

Follower Home Marker.esp

NVWillow.esp

Project Nevada - Rebalance.esp

Weapon Mod Expansion.esp

Project Nevada - WME.esp

WME - Dead Money.esp

WME - Honest Hearts.esp

WME - Old World Blues.esp

WME - Arenovalis.esp

EVE FNV.esp

WMEVE.esp

NSkies URWLifiedOWB.esp

NSkies URWLifiedHH.esp

NSkies URWLifiedDM.esp

DYNAVISION 2 - Dynamic Lens Effect.esp

ELECTRO-CITY - Imaginator.esp

Directors Chair.esp

tkEyelashesFNV.esp

Solar's Goodsprings Home.esp

Project Nevada - EVE.esp

Project Nevada - Old World Blues.esp

mergedpatch.esp

 

Total active plugins: 60

Total plugins: 62

 

 

Texture problems:

If you are having texture problems where the texture doesn't display properly (so you can see the mesh but the texture doesn't display properly) you need archive invalidation. If you have FOMM you can just open it up and click on "Tools" from there click on "archive invalidation" and then just click on "Apply archive invalidation." Now that it's installed you should see a check mark next to "Archive Invalidation" under "Tools" in FOMM. Textures in game should now display properly. Archive invalidation works by putting a blank dummy texture over vanilla textures so that they can be modified. Not certain on that last part. :P

 

The next thing you should have installed into you''re games directory is NVSE, or New Vegas Script Extender. It can be downloaded from here. Most large scale mods, or mods that require advanced scripting require this. It is a low footprint tool, shouldn't cause any performance hiccups unless your machine is comparable in power to a 1956 IBM machine.

 

The path to install NVSE is (Steam users only) C:/Program Filesx86:/Steam:/SteamApps:/Common:/Fallout New Vegas Now you are in your games directory. The Data folder should be visible. Just drop the contents of NVSE in here. Do not place SRC from NVSE into the directory unless you plan to be scripting mods for yourself, it is a developer tool and nothing else.

 

Last thing I can think of is BOSS. BOSS is a tool that was first created for Oblivion which sorts mods for you. It connects to an online database and retrieves a mod order based on where authors say their mods should go relative to others. FOMM comes with a version of BOSS installed however I don't recommend it be used because it is not working on the most up-to-date version, and thus many mods are sorted incorrectly and even more are not recognized at all, and are not even sorted. The newest version of BOSS can be found here. To install just drop the contents into the data folder (For steam users: C:/Program Filesx86:/Steam:/SteamApps:/Common:/Fallout New Vegas:/Data). Then activate by double clicking on BOSS. Now you should be sorted. I should add that this will open up your primary web browser and show you how many mods you have, how many are active, how many were recognized (and thus sorted) and how many weren't recognized. If you scroll down the page you can see which mods by name were recognized, what order they are in, and which ones were unrecognized. Unrecognized mods are always going to be at the bottom of your load order. If you followed the instructions in Gophers FNVedit tutorial video (linked above) then you should have made a "mergedpatch." This will be unrecognized by BOSS. That is normal, and the mergedpatch should always be at the very bottom of your load order anyways.

 

 

Hope this helps everyone. If you have more to add, or I got something wrong Please post.

Edited by Dan3345
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Azrael120782 Rising Star

Azrael120782

Posted
Posted (edited)

Another thing...

 

 

It is known that FNV with all 4 Preorder packs,the Caravan,Classic,Merc,and Tribal that running all 4 can and will cause problems. This can only be done if you *ahem* 'acquired' FNV thru a non retail source. Sorry to say it,but if you have those in your load order,most people wont even bother helping you.

 

 

IT IS A WELL KNOWN FACT THAT ALL 4 PREORDER PACKS CAN AND WILL CAUSE PROBLEMS IF YOU RUN ALL 4 OF THEM AT ONCE!

 

I made it caps in hope someone listens to that advice

 

We can only do so much to help you,but if you have all 4 packs all we can really do is shake our heads and :facepalm: It really is shunned and a bad thing here. Dont do it.

Edited by Azrael120782
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Dan3345 Mentor

Dan3345

Posted
  • Author
Posted
Because they will patch it before hand... But currently it is not supported and leads to conflicts. The only way to get all four packs is to have bought the game four times or to have pirated the copies.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...