Managing the Load Order...

[acdover]

I just want to take a moment and praise what has come from Vortex. I am not an alpha user, but I do have an acquaintance who got through. One thing he is rather upset about is the fact he can't rearrange his load order.

 

However, I think that is smart on the part of the Vortex Dev Team. Yes, it is nice to be able to rearrange your load order at your own will, especially when LOOT or BOSS doesn't recognize an issue. But it seems, that an overlooked thing in LOOT is the fact that you can set rules to ensure where the "unrecognized plugin" can be sorted, and now we see it in Vortex.

 

I think it's better for long term modding as every time a load order is sorted, unrecognized plugins will be sorted away and you will have to drag them in place. But through setting rules, this will save time for the mod user for not having to go back to each unrecognized plugin every time the load order is sorted.

 

I think the solution currently in play is better, although it is different to what I think most people are used too.

[Ethreon]

Nonsense. Visually arranging the plugins offer an immediate and direct indication of how they will go. There's no ease of use added anywhere.

[ousnius]

Nonsense. Visually arranging the plugins offer an immediate and direct indication of how they will go. There's no ease of use added anywhere.

 

The counter argument is that you don't need to know where they will go, other than adding rules or merging a few you know have conflicts that LOOT doesn't detect.

But yes, Vortex needs more visual indicators.

[Arthmoor]

If this is actually true that there's no manual means of adjusting load order, Vortex will be one of the most user UNfriendly things made for modding in the last 15 years.

 

As even the LOOT developers are likely to tell you, LOOT is only the beginning of load order, not the end. Demanding that everyone write their own rules to bypass bad sorts is never going to be widely accepted.

[acdover]

User friendliness is another issue as well from what Iâve seen and from my short time playing around with it. But weâll see more when it goes public.

[ousnius]

If this is actually true that there's no manual means of adjusting load order, Vortex will be one of the most user UNfriendly things made for modding in the last 15 years.

 

As even the LOOT developers are likely to tell you, LOOT is only the beginning of load order, not the end. Demanding that everyone write their own rules to bypass bad sorts is never going to be widely accepted.

 

The same holds true for Vortex. It uses LOOT as a base to get a mostly working order for you automatically, and then you can go in and apply your own rules and priority numbers to affect or override what LOOT is doing.

It's not a drag and drop like in NMM or MO, but it nevertheless allow for the same (actually even more) amount of customization. It's different and takes getting used to of course.

[VaultBoyAM]

Vortex supports Global Priority for mods, which means you can force something to load last, first, or seventh. The only time I needed visual reordering was because merge plugins needs the plugins to load consecutively. Visual reordering could be added behind a hidden advanced mode though.

 

 

Edited February 2, 2018 by VaultBoyAM

[Deleted133263User]

If this is actually true that there's no manual means of adjusting load order, Vortex will be one of the most user UNfriendly things made for modding in the last 15 years.

 

As even the LOOT developers are likely to tell you, LOOT is only the beginning of load order, not the end. Demanding that everyone write their own rules to bypass bad sorts is never going to be widely accepted.

For now yes, Tannin said if anyone can provide a reason for not using the tools that LOOT does (masterlist, priorities, load after data), but a good reason for the need, he may reconsider.

 

 

The following is probably better placed in this topic rather than OldMansBeards topic :

 

 

 

Ooh this looks interesting, Vortex has adopted the way LOOT does things ?

 

Good news, its about time people started taking time out to understand it better, then maybe its masterlists will get a bit more audience participation in populating it where necessary, and it will get as good as BOSS used to be for specific groups of mod ordering requirements.

 

LOOT already does a pretty good job of looking at a mods records and deciding which needs to go later than others, its masterlist is slowly growing, and for personal refinement it has Priorities and Load After methods of rearranging things the same every time .. although maybe LOOT does this a little better in that you can Drag n Drop a plugin onto another plugins card ..

 

Can the same be done in Vortex ?

Yes, the plugin page for gamebryo games in vortex acts essentially as a UI for loot. Of course the workflow is slightly different, we don't have a two-column layout like loot.

But yeah, I my hope is that more users will embrace loot and work with it instead of against it.

 

Excellent, I wish I was not on night shift currently and I managed to grab a copy of the alpha ..

 

 

Maybe you could do with (when documentation is released) a few pointers to what to expect from Vortex by pointing people at ..

 

1. The relevant part of the FAQ

 

and

 

2. LOOTs sorting algorythm

 

I swear most people do not even realise how much LOOT does in the blink of an eye for them

 

And if everyone starts contributing meta data feedback like they used to on the old Bethesda forums for updating the masterlist the community will benefit massively.

 

Typically they would need to give sound technical reasons for why one plugin should follow another, which is mostly in the realm of a mod author to do, but more expert community members quite often did the same for BOSS's masterlist, and also provide things like ITMs and UDRs for cleaning notes, and any other notes pertinent to LOOT presenting the user with information on their Load Order.

 

Since it was released though and took over from BOSS, LOOT has been resisted slightly, for reasons anyone who understands it cannot figure out. Maybe its words like meta in the presentation which put people off, when really its not as complicated as they think it may be, if only they would just venture forth a little more and experience it for a while.

 

As Wrinkly says (and until the masterlist for any specific supported game starts to mature), on its own LOOT does a pretty damned good ball park sorting for the majority of people, which is the main goal. Otherwise it has tools to refine things in the form of the masterlist, priority data, and load after data which are all user adjustable.

 

 

But also note apparently autosorting can be disabled :

 

 

Before this thead turns into a mutual incomprehension fest, there is a simple solution for people who want to use Vortex and still do manual load ordering. It doesn't require any software changes at all. Interested?

 

You just launch Vortex and NMM at the same time, use Vortex to do all the installing and enabling, let it do what it likes with the load order, then drag-and-drop the plugins around in the NMM plugins tab. The changes are instant and Vortex updates its plugin window to reflect your changes.

If you're doing that, don't forget to disable autosorting in Vortex because you'll probably want to control when it does sort.

 

 

So for the average Joe, and remember this Utility being a replacement for NMM which most people just want to install mod and click Play, ought to default to a guided mode ..

 

.. Is there really an issue here ?

 

Even using the LOOT method, adjusting one mods position to "Load After" another is a two second operation, its not like writing code or anything complicated.

Edited February 2, 2018 by Guest

[kamikatze13]

Even using the LOOT method, adjusting one mods position to "Load After" another is a two second operation, its not like writing code or anything complicated.

Thing is, during debugging or patching, this is an action which comes up frequently - in my case building merged patches involves shuffling around loads of esps and then reverting the so-created load order back to normal.

 

We now have a task that used to be simple become tedious as these two seconds may add up. It's fine for a one-in-a-lifetime use-case, not for when modding is already taking more time than playing.

[Qwinn]

I never used Loot even when I was a noob at modding. Here's one reason why. If there's a way to handle this with Loot that isn't as ugly as what I have to describe, please let me know

 

When I do my load order, I like having certain categories of mods in a certain succession, for example, in Skyrim SSE:

 

NPC Replacers, then

Grass and Tree texture/mesh mods, then

Water, Mountain and Road texture/mesh mods, then

Weather and lighting mods.

 

There shouldn't be any conflicts between each of those categories, right? (Note that I do NOT have my mods sorted into *actual* categories, did not find an actual need to do this, as I can find things faster just by having all mods listed alphabetically). But I still like having the mods in given categories as the above grouped together, and it's not just for "visual" or "organizational" reasons (though I don't really get why those wouldn't be motive *enough*), it also reflects my research and conclusions from reading author suggestions about which mod types should be generally higher and which should be generally lower in the load order. Like, the general notion that weather and lighting mods should be near the bottom of the load order, and that Realistic Water Two should be near the bottom as well. When I had Loot sort a while ago in Vortex, I suppose because I installed the weather mods earlier on, it left them all near the top of my load order.

 

Anyway.... in my "NPC Replacers" mod category, I have 6 mods. I'm fine with setting up rules that order those 6 mods. The last one of those 6 happens to be a mod called "Fresh Faces". And my first mod in my group of 5 "Grass and Tree mods" is Verdant. To get these groups of mods to follow each other the way I want, I have to create a rule that says "Verdant" must come after "Fresh Faces"... which is silly. The mods have nothing to do with one another, there's no conflict, it's an artificial dependency that I have to create. And if I move Verdant lower in my Grass and Tree mods order for whatever reason, now I have to reassign my rules.

 

Hope that made sense, and if there's a more intuitive way to get these categories to sort in the load order, I'd like to hear it (I really have no experience with Loot prior to this, so yes, I'm a total noob at it. Maybe there's some fantastic way for me to order generally non-conflicting categories, but so far, I haven't seen it.).

 

EDIT: Another thing... it seems to me that if Loot finds some mods in a load order that it doesn't have any rules for, and doesn't find conflicts for, and basically just doesn't recognize, then it doesn't move them, it just leaves them where they are. This effectively means that the install order determined the load order for those mods. So, if I wind up uninstalling and reinstalling everything for whatever reason (hard drive crash, whatever), on my next install, those mods will probably be moved around. So what, you say, if Loot doesn't find a conflict or require an order? Because I simply don't want moving parts in my load order when I'm trying to recreate something - Loot isn't infallible, and maybe there was an unknown file conflict between two files, both archived in BSA's, that work in one order but not another, and I got lucky and had them wind up in the correct order the first time, leaving me with a perfectly working mod installation, I don't want to have to remember that I either have to install things in a certain order OR set up a rule sequencing EVERY SINGLE plugin in order to duplicate what I had before exactly. If I have to do all that, if I have to set up rules for every single mod in order to fix a specific load order, I'd rather use a mod manager that just lets me put them in the order I want by dragging and dropping rather than creating rules for every single mod. All I need is a text file with my previous load order, order them that way, and I've recreated my previous working installation *exactly* with minimal hassle. And recreating my working installation *exactly* gives me peace of mind.

Edited February 3, 2018 by Qwinn