Managing the Load Order...

[HadToRegister]

OK, I installed

 

HAIA With Crafting.esp

Hangman's Alley Optimized.esp
Hangman's Alley Optimized - HAIA With Crafting - Patch.esp

 

 

I double clicked on "Hangman's Alley Optimized - HAIA With Crafting - Patch.esp" and see that the MASTERS for it, are HAIA With Crafting.esp, and Hangman's Alley Optimized.esp
Vortex will NEVER try and put a plugin before it's master, it will complain about cyclic rules, so, there's no way "Hangman's ALley Optimized - HAIA With Crafting - Patch.esp" can end up anywhere except BELOW HAIA with Craft.esp and Hangman's Alley Optimized.esp

When I first installed them Hangman's Alley Optimized,esp went above HAIA with Crafting.esp so I simply dragged the icon to the other and set a rule for "Hangman's Alley Optimized.esp LOAD AFTER HAIA With Crafting.esp, and everything is in it's place, Vortex even automatically stuck "Hangman's ALley Optimized - HAIA With Crafting - Patch.esp" below the other two.

Then I checked the Plugins.txt and loadorder.txt and they look fine.

So then I hit SORT NOW a few dozen times, and checked the plugins.txt and loadorder.txt, bother were unchanged.

 

 

Another super easy way, albeit a 'brute force' method to make it so Vortex will always sort them the correct way, is to open up your load order in FO4Edit, and make HAIA With Crafting.esp a MASTER of Hangman's Alley Optimized.esp

Just takes a right click on the "Hangmans Alley Optimized.esp" in the list in FO4Edit, picking "ADD MASTER", then picking the "HAIA With Crafting.esp" as the Master.

[jpitner]

Please read my initial post. I never said the patch loaded before the dependencies. 1. I installed HAIA With Crafting 2. I installed Hangman's Alley Optimized and set rule to load after HAIA With Crafting 3. I installed Hangman's Alley Optimized - HAIA With Crafting - Patch and set rule to load after Hangman's Alley Optimized. Everything worked fine for awhile. Added a few more mods days later then went to Hangman's Alley and build area was reduced. Checked rules, still okay, looked at load order, now Hangman's Alley Optimized is loading before HAIA With Crafting. Rechecked rules and rule still is Hangman's Alley Optimized to load after HAIA, redid a sort and still wrong. Got out of Vortex and manually changed order. Did not open Vortex for a couple more days, played my game then decided to test a home I was working on. Open Vortex, installed the mod, did a sort then went into game. Later I went back to Hangman's Alley and the build area once again was reduced, checked my loadorder.txt and the mods were once again out of order. I also installed the mods exactly as you did. Before anything else is said I will let you know, I run 3 different drives with 3 different operating systems, one is a vanilla setup I use for CK work, one is for my main games, the other is for my testing work where I have my games with about 100+ mods installed and this is where Vortex was installed so my CK work and a 200+ modded game were not located on this drive and have nothing to do with the error. Vortex was also used only to mod FO4 on that drive as I kept NMM for SSE.

 

Making HAIA as a master is a great idea if I was only dealing with 2 mods. In SSE I use 3 different "appearance" mods that change NPC appearances plus 2 that I made. These have to be installed and loaded in an exact order or I will get the "black face" bug. Using NMM and LOOT these can get knocked out of order but with NMM it is easy to just drag and drop the plugins to the correct order. My concerns are that I will experience the same issues using Vortex to manage SSE that I had with Hangman's Alley.

 

The only reason I was here today reading is because I am thinking of doing clean installs of FO4 and SSE on my main drive and using Vortex to manage my mods but I have my concerns about load order manipulation.

[jpitner]

 

I created them by "load after" rules. I am just hoping I am missing something here because I actually liked Vortex.

 

Try group assignments instead and see if you get better results. That has worked well for me.

 

Thank you, when and if I try Vortex again I will look into that.

[jpitner]

HadToRegister - I would like to add that I appreciate the fact that you are trying to replicate the error I had. Sometimes my words can sound like I am a bit short with someone, well sometimes I am. In this case I am just a bit frustrated with Vortex so I do appreciate your effort.

[HadToRegister]

Please read my initial post. I never said the patch loaded before the dependencies. 1. I installed HAIA With Crafting 2. I installed Hangman's Alley Optimized and set rule to load after HAIA With Crafting 3. I installed Hangman's Alley Optimized - HAIA With Crafting - Patch and set rule to load after Hangman's Alley Optimized. Everything worked fine for awhile. Added a few more mods days later then went to Hangman's Alley and build area was reduced. Checked rules, still okay, looked at load order, now Hangman's Alley Optimized is loading before HAIA With Crafting. Rechecked rules and rule still is Hangman's Alley Optimized to load after HAIA, redid a sort and still wrong. Got out of Vortex and manually changed order. Did not open Vortex for a couple more days, played my game then decided to test a home I was working on. Open Vortex, installed the mod, did a sort then went into game. Later I went back to Hangman's Alley and the build area once again was reduced, checked my loadorder.txt and the mods were once again out of order. I also installed the mods exactly as you did. Before anything else is said I will let you know, I run 3 different drives with 3 different operating systems, one is a vanilla setup I use for CK work, one is for my main games, the other is for my testing work where I have my games with about 100+ mods installed and this is where Vortex was installed so my CK work and a 200+ modded game were not located on this drive and have nothing to do with the error. Vortex was also used only to mod FO4 on that drive as I kept NMM for SSE.

 

Making HAIA as a master is a great idea if I was only dealing with 2 mods. In SSE I use 3 different "appearance" mods that change NPC appearances plus 2 that I made. These have to be installed and loaded in an exact order or I will get the "black face" bug. Using NMM and LOOT these can get knocked out of order but with NMM it is easy to just drag and drop the plugins to the correct order. My concerns are that I will experience the same issues using Vortex to manage SSE that I had with Hangman's Alley.

 

The only reason I was here today reading is because I am thinking of doing clean installs of FO4 and SSE on my main drive and using Vortex to manage my mods but I have my concerns about load order manipulation.

 

 

My suggestion of making HAIA a master, should fix the problem with those particular 3 mods, despite you having many more, it's a "Micro Fix" in a "Macro List", kind of the same as putting them all into one group.

 

Black Face bug has to do with the Game Engine (Especially if you tend to reload over and over), also, there's a mod called "Rusty Face Fix" you should try out if you're not using it already.

One of the causes of the Black face bug is using different sized textures on a face, such as known with "THBrows", the texture sizes don't match other mods texture sizes so it causes the brown face "bug"

All the texture sizes need to be the same

One fix is to use THBrows 1.2, but unfortunately, the Mod Author took it down when they uploaded 1.3, and hasn't been active for a long time.

 

I would tell you to stop worrying about micromanaging your load order and insisting that it needs to be set "one way only" in order for your mods to work.

Built in loot does a fine job of that with Skyrim SE.

 

I'm using Vortex for Fallout 4 (262 mods), Fallout 3 (112 mods), Fallout News Vegas (127 mods), and Skyrim SE (225 mods), and have only had to manage the load order of about 6 mods between the 4 games.

You have to break that bad abit that NMM ingrains on everybody that you need to micromanage your PLUGIN Load ORder.

 

THe important load order that Vortex lets you manage is the load order of Meshes, Textures, BA2s, BSAs etc.

[jpitner]

Actually that is partially incorrect, most Black Face bugs are user generated. Example: I make a mod that gives Jordis a makerover, let us call it MyJordis.esp. I create the mod, create the facegendata, and then create an archive of the mod using the facegendata from MyJordis.esp (000a2c8f.nif). Then I send it to you, you install it and find that your Jordis has a black face. The reason why is that I used custom head data so in the facegen nif head part DynamicTriShapes are given a name in the nif (ex: JP_JordisFemaleHead). The problem is the game engine is looking for those named headparts in the Skyrim.esm 000a2c8f.nif facegendata folder (not the MyJordis.esp folder) that the MyJordis.esp said were there. Simply copying the nif from the facegendata folder MyJordis.esp to the Skyrim.esm folder fixes the issue.

 

Why this and load order is important: You make a mod called YourHousecarls.esp and create the facegendata for the housecarls. Then SkyrimGoddess makes a mod that changes Iona called HerIona.esp and creates the facegendata. I then make a mod called MyJordis.esp and create the facegendata. So installation order and load order are extremely important here so the last esp loaded correctly matches the DynamicTriShapes naming for that nif or in this case YourHousecarls.esp must be installed before the other two and loaded before the other two otherwise Iona and Jordis will have black faces.

 

I know this for fact because I spent many hours figuring out the correct installation and load order so I can use Pandorable's NPCs, Pandorable's Dawnguard, all 3 of BJIN's mods, Guild Member Overhaul, Migal's Iona, my Dawnguard changes, and my Jordis makeover so I can have the NPC appearances that I want without having to create a bunch of patches. I have no Black Face bugs and everything works like a dream.

 

When the game engine encounters an incorrect or missing texture, incorrect or missing mesh, or an incorrect DynamicTriShape name in the facegendata nif file it reverts back to the NPC's default race head data and removes textures giving you the Black Face bug. So yes, load order is important so the last loaded esp corresponds to the correct facegendata mesh.

[HadToRegister]

Actually that is partially incorrect, most Black Face bugs are user generated. Example: I make a mod that gives Jordis a makerover, let us call it MyJordis.esp. I create the mod, create the facegendata, and then create an archive of the mod using the facegendata from MyJordis.esp (000a2c8f.nif). Then I send it to you, you install it and find that your Jordis has a black face. The reason why is that I used custom head data so in the facegen nif head part DynamicTriShapes are given a name in the nif (ex: JP_JordisFemaleHead). The problem is the game engine is looking for those named headparts in the Skyrim.esm 000a2c8f.nif facegendata folder (not the MyJordis.esp folder) that the MyJordis.esp said were there. Simply copying the nif from the facegendata folder MyJordis.esp to the Skyrim.esm folder fixes the issue.

 

Why this and load order is important: You make a mod called YourHousecarls.esp and create the facegendata for the housecarls. Then SkyrimGoddess makes a mod that changes Iona called HerIona.esp and creates the facegendata. I then make a mod called MyJordis.esp and create the facegendata. So installation order and load order are extremely important here so the last esp loaded correctly matches the DynamicTriShapes naming for that nif or in this case YourHousecarls.esp must be installed before the other two and loaded before the other two otherwise Iona and Jordis will have black faces.

 

I know this for fact because I spent many hours figuring out the correct installation and load order so I can use Pandorable's NPCs, Pandorable's Dawnguard, all 3 of BJIN's mods, Guild Member Overhaul, Migal's Iona, my Dawnguard changes, and my Jordis makeover so I can have the NPC appearances that I want without having to create a bunch of patches. I have no Black Face bugs and everything works like a dream.

 

When the game engine encounters an incorrect or missing texture, incorrect or missing mesh, or an incorrect DynamicTriShape name in the facegendata nif file it reverts back to the NPC's default race head data and removes textures giving you the Black Face bug. So yes, load order is important so the last loaded esp corresponds to the correct facegendata mesh.

 

 

I was talking about Fallout 4, and it's well documented.

 

I use Bijins among other and never experienced the black face bug and I didn't have to spend hours with Vortex doing it.

 

It was a simple LOAD BEFORE or LOAD AFTER, and I was able to move on

[jpitner]

Sorry, I have never had an issue with Black Face in FO4 but since I intend to use Vortex with both SSE and FO4, reasoning for managing load order is important.

[jpitner]

I just re-read your your posts and I am starting to feel you are a bit condescending. I may not have as many mods uploaded to Nexus as you, wait, I do, and I believe you have commented on one or two. I may not have as many hours gaming as you but I think 5000+ hours gaming and as many in CK does give my a small amount of knowledge. I used Mod Organizer for my SkyrimLE modding successfully for a couple years with very few issues. So Vortex should be a fine piece of software down the road once developers start listening to users instead of telling them they are wrong.

 

You are sounding like a used car salesman. I test drive your car and bring it back saying the clutch is a bit loose and it won't go into 3rd gear. Your reply would be that the car is fine and I just don't know how to drive a standard transmission even though I have been driving stick for years.

 

Bottom line: I had a problem with Vortex, I identified the problem, I gave examples of the problem then professionalism went out the window. As with every other comment on this topic there seems to be no true discussion. There is a pro Vortex camp and an anti Vortex camp with very minimum solutions or suggestions, just a bunch of egos requiring stroking or self validation.

[HadToRegister]

I just re-read your your posts and I am starting to feel you are a bit condescending. I may not have as many mods uploaded to Nexus as you, wait, I do, and I believe you have commented on one or two. I may not have as many hours gaming as you but I think 5000+ hours gaming and as many in CK does give my a small amount of knowledge. I used Mod Organizer for my SkyrimLE modding successfully for a couple years with very few issues. So Vortex should be a fine piece of software down the road once developers start listening to users instead of telling them they are wrong.

 

You are sounding like a used car salesman. I test drive your car and bring it back saying the clutch is a bit loose and it won't go into 3rd gear. Your reply would be that the car is fine and I just don't know how to drive a standard transmission even though I have been driving stick for years.

 

Bottom line: I had a problem with Vortex, I identified the problem, I gave examples of the problem then professionalism went out the window. As with every other comment on this topic there seems to be no true discussion. There is a pro Vortex camp and an anti Vortex camp with very minimum solutions or suggestions, just a bunch of egos requiring stroking or self validation.

 

Wow, whatever.

I haven't been condescending, you're reading far too much into what I am saying, while completely ignoring my advice at the same time.

I've tried to explain the virtues of Vortex, and that the micromanagement of the load order is something that doesn't need to be done anymore.

Instead I get called a "Salesman" and then told my "civility went out the window"

 

The only civility that went out the window is yours in your last post.

FFS.

 

I suggest that you stick with NMM as you can force whatever load order you want on it, because what you want to do is use Vortex like NMM, and you're just going to end up fighting AGAINST Vortex instead of working WITH Vortex.

 

Anyway, stick with NMM, I'm out, I've just been trying to help and instead I get insulted and attacked

Good luck.