Patch has different master load order

[dubiousintent]

I've had a stable LO including Project Nevada (PN) for almost 400 hours now, with "Extra Options.ESM" (EO) loading after "Rebalance.ESP". Just started to try out PushTheWinButton's "Unofficial Patch Plus" (UPP) patch for PN and found it wanted EO immediately after "Core". Thought I would simply fix it by sorting masters in xEdit, but that loaded the masters in the order required by the UPP PN Patch, ignoring the sorted order even when I included all the intermediate but unneeded masters. First time I've encountered that.

That suggests to me the patch really is dependent upon that LO, but nothing else seems to be similarly restricted. I'm not happy with the idea of reordering masters in all my other PN related files, so I'm wondering just how dependent this patch really is on that specific LO. My options for changing it seem to be loading it in GECK and seeing if I can reorder the masters there (not sure how to do that) or seeing if building a Mator Smash patch will correct things.

Last resort is to drop UPP.

Figured I would ask if anyone have any similar experience or suggestions first? (And I always work with backups.)

 

The "PN-" portion of my LO is:

Core

Equipment

Cyberware

Rebalance

Extra Options

...

Rebalance Complete

All DLC

...

UPP

...

PN-WMX

YUP-WMX-PN-PNEO Patch

UPP-Project Nevada Patch

-Dubious-

Edited April 26, 2017 by dubiousintent

[PushTheWinButton]

The load order of patch file's masters is based solely on how the "Sort Masters" command in FNVEdit chose to order them. I also use MO's built in LOOT ordering to order the PN files, as I cba to manually do it every time I enable PN in MO (I don't use PN myself, so I only enable the files when making patches and disable them again afterwards).

 

So the tl;dr is that there's no reasoning behind the master ordering - I don't believe changing them around will break anything.

[gromulos]

follow my guide, specifically ALL of step 2, appendix 1, and step 3, and it will teach you why those mods are causing your load order to be out of whack. Make sure to use appendix 1 on all orange mods if you can not get them to turn green by moving them in the load order.

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/2247404-fallout-new-vegas-beginners-guide-to-modding/

[gromulos]

 

So the tl;dr is that there's no reasoning behind the master ordering - I don't believe changing them around will break anything.

 

Um, that's not actually true. The laod order is determined by the mod authors load order when he or she made the patch / mod in the GECK or FNVEdit. If the authors load order was not correct, when the patch / mod was saved, it will save the file with the original mod authors wrong load order. Many times I've had to go through my load order and fix files SOLELY because of this oversight of the original mod author. Also, ANY AND ALL files that are orange in Wrye WILL cause crashes in game.

[PushTheWinButton]

 

So the tl;dr is that there's no reasoning behind the master ordering - I don't believe changing them around will break anything.

 

Um, that's not actually true. The laod order is determined by the mod authors load order when he or she made the patch / mod in the GECK or FNVEdit. If the authors load order was not correct, when the patch / mod was saved, it will save the file with the original mod authors wrong load order. Many times I've had to go through my load order and fix files SOLELY because of this oversight of the original mod author. Also, ANY AND ALL files that are orange in Wrye WILL cause crashes in game.

 

...

 

I am the mod author.

[gromulos]

 

 

So the tl;dr is that there's no reasoning behind the master ordering - I don't believe changing them around will break anything.

 

Um, that's not actually true. The laod order is determined by the mod authors load order when he or she made the patch / mod in the GECK or FNVEdit. If the authors load order was not correct, when the patch / mod was saved, it will save the file with the original mod authors wrong load order. Many times I've had to go through my load order and fix files SOLELY because of this oversight of the original mod author. Also, ANY AND ALL files that are orange in Wrye WILL cause crashes in game.

 

...

 

I am the mod author.

 

 

ok fine. Then the fact that your mod is asking him to change the load order of his vanilla files is exactly what I was talking about. If the vanilla game files, including all DLC the mod uses, was not in the right order then every person who downloaded your mod is going to have the same problem.

 

Here is a pic of exactly what I am talking about, below

 

 

This is the correct load order installed by steam. Any mod asking the user to change this load order simply needs to have Appendix 1 from my guide applied to it, and then it will be fixed and using the correct load order. This SHOULD also be the same load order LOOT assigns to the files.

Edited April 26, 2017 by gromulos

[dubiousintent]

@PushTheWinButton: thanks for confirming my suspicions that this was not an intentional load order requirement. So now I can focus on why the normal procedure to re-order the masters isn't working.

 

@gromulos: I've used your procedure from day one on several mods with great success. I rechecked that I hadn't missing anything, but the issue SEEMS to be that xEdit is ordering the "masters" for the plugin in question to the author's load order, and then when I "sort masters" in xEdit, if doesn't change the order of the PN masters to match my "load order". Note that the LO for the game and DLC are correct and not in question or being changed by the plugin. Only the one PN file (EO) is out of order and the usual routine failed to re-order it.

 

Steps I took:

 

* Disabled my BP.

* Re-enabled all the BP "ghosted" plugins.

* Installed UPP and "UPP-PN Patch" mods.

* LOOT sorted. The net result was the PN-related order given in my original post.

: The "game and DLC" master files were unchanged and in the order you presented above (except for minor sequence differences in the POP but they aren't involved in the plugin in question and that doesn't otherwise matter). In fact the only difference between the "before" and "after" LO was the placement of the two UPP files.

* Noticed the "orange" box on the "UPP-PN Patch" file and loaded it (and only it) into xEdit, letting xEdit load "masters" as it determined them.

* Selected the "UPP-PN Patch" file and "sorted masters", and saved the result.

* Refreshed WF, and noticed the "orange box" was still there.

* Re-ran LOOT to see if that would "fix" the LO, but it didn't.

 

At this point I determined the problem was the EO file placement in the sort, and that xEdit was loading EO in the sequence given by the "UPP-PN Patch" plugin instead of my sorted LO. "Sort Masters" was not changing this sequence to match my LO.

 

Re-ran the entire sequence of steps again, but this time also selected all the files between any PN-related files up to EO to ensure they were included when xEdit loaded. EO was still loaded out of sequence to my LO and in order of the author's "master file" sequence. Oh, and I should mention that all my tools are "up to date": WF v17.5, xEdit v3.2, LOOT v0.10.3; and the "UPP-PN Patch" file is not read-only.

 

That's where I am stuck. Now that I know the author used "Mod Organizer" (MO) to sort his LO (which I am not; using LOOT (separately)/WF exclusively), and that the LO is not otherwise intentional as far as the patch is concerned, I have to wonder if this is an xEdit / MO interaction quirk. I'll conduct some experiments to see if it can be resolved with another tool. Then we'll see if it's something to report as a bug.

 

Thank you both for the responses.

 

-Dubious-

Edited April 26, 2017 by dubiousintent

[gromulos]

I never have liked MO and most likely never will. For me personally it has caused FAR too many problems for me in the past. Besides, if you use LOOT, WRYE, and XEDIT, you really do not need NMM or MO. Wrye becomes your Mod Organizing program by default. Of course this means you have to manually install mods, which is how I've always done it for myself.

 

It does sound like it's a glitch of some kind between MO and Xedit.

 

1 thing you should note is when you sort master it won't change your load order like you stated above, unless I am misunderstanding. What it does do is change the load order for just that 1 file you sorted masters for. Also, make sure you are saving the changes when you close Xedit otherwise the change won't be permanent.

[gromulos]

 

* Refreshed WF, and noticed the "orange box" was still there.

 

the ornage box won't change till you re run Wrye and check it in there, THEN it should be green

 

WAIT

 

I just noticed something you said. You can NOT run Wrye and Xedit and have BOTH of them open at the same time. You can only do that with Wrye and NMM. There is something about Wrye and Xedit where they don't communicate with each other, whereas NMM and Wrye do.

 

when you run Xedit, ALL other programs should be closed, even MO. Xedit can still make the changes needed with out MO being open and MO may very well be interfering with the change.

Edited April 26, 2017 by gromulos

[dubiousintent]

Didn't mean to imply I thought xEdit would affect the "load order" itself. Understand that it is only affecting the order of the masters of the plugin selected.

 

I did check the "File Header" listing of masters both before and after the "sort masters". Unchanged, which I attribute to the fact that xEdit is loading the plugin masters in the sequence of the plugin initially (Core immediately followed by EO), so it doesn't actually have a reason to change and thus nothing to save. I missed that the first time around. That seems to the the crux of the problem: xEdit is in this instance ignoring my sorted game "load order" sequence. The "UPP-PN Patch" is the only file with EO immediately after Core. "Rebalance Complete" calls for EO to be placed after "Rebalance.esp". EO is not a master for any of the other PN or UPP files.

 

Edit: I had not been paying attention to closing WF before opening xEdit, but now that you point it out I re-ran the test with WF closed and xEdit is still loading in the plugin's master sequence instead of mine. And I'm not using MO so it's not an issue on this end. Good catch, but not the solution in this instance.

 

-Dubious-

Edited April 26, 2017 by dubiousintent