Does Vortex log external changes?

[piperman123]

Vortex started throwing a bunch of messages about external changes and they all seemed irrelevant, I'd written it off to something adding loads of delete_if_empty files or something. There was hundreds of file changes and skimming through that's all I saw. Turns out it wasn't and I've accidentally told Vortex to delete a bunch of stuff. No idea why it kept detecting all those changes or why it would delete some random esps, maybe I was purging and re-deploying too quickly (I was in a rush).

 

So anyway, my question is; does Vortex log what mods/files were changed somewhere? I checked the log files and all I can see is "event=settings-changed, count=1" not sure if that's referring to what I'm talking about or just the application settings. I can't see anything that seems relevant at any rate.

 

Any tips for how I can find which folders have been affected if Vortex doesn't log this information somewhere?

 

And if Vortex doesn't log the information, this is a feature request, as such info would be pretty handy to have. Maybe even a setting to have Vortex backup changes, somewhere down the line?

[Tannin42]

Vortex only detects changes to files it manages itself, e.g. when you use xedit to change an esp or when you delete a file with an external application.

It will then tell you there was a change and offer you to apply or undo the change under the assumption that the files in the vortex mods directory are the originals and the files in data are the changed state. So if you delete skyrim/data/somemod.esp the external change dialog will pop up and if you say "apply" that means "yes, I want that file deleted" so vortex will delete it in the mod as well, so that in the future, when the mod is deployed, the file remains gone.

 

I'll check if it's possible this external change detection can get triggered while purging but it shouldn't.

[piperman123]

Thanks for the reply, yeah I get how it's detecting changes. The only thing I can think of is that during the purge I enabled a new mod with the setting to automatically deploy newly enabled mods. I can only assume this tricked Vortex into seeing leftover files in the data folder that are linked to it's mods but being half purged it saw the missing files and asked to make the change permanent? Or it did crash at some point, maybe that confused everything.

 

I take it there is no record of what those changes were then, no log or anything I can use to track down the affected mods? I've sorted my mod folder by date modified and copied up to the last mod that has been emptied of files ready to overwrite them with some old backups/reinstall them. Am I right in thinking Vortex would have affected the file times this way or would simply loading them in Vortex make windows think they were modified?

 

Nothing else had modified those files btw, Vortex left the entire file tree intact but removed all files, only some hiccup in Vortex could have made the change. I can post my logs if they'd help any?

[Tannin42]

Yeah, I think you managed to deploy at a bad time where the purge had already deleted files but hadn't updated the file manifest so the deploy thought the files should still be there.

This won't be possible in the next version.

 

No, unfortunately there is no log of the affected files, but some mods have tens of thousands of files. My (medium sized) Skyrim mod setup (with no bsas extracted) contains 160000 files, creating a log entry for each of those during deployment or purge would create roughly 32MB of logs. That would be completely impractical to read through manually and our feedback server wouldn't accept it as a report so it would be a bit pointless.

[piperman123]

Had my fingers crossed in vain hope there but, yeah, I expected as much. Thanks for confirming though, glad it will be resolved in the next version.

 

I can see what you mean with individual files but would it not be feasible to have it log the affected mods as apposed to the individual files, that's all I was thinking of. Maybe make it log any altered esps and bsas and then what sub folder? That way you could see the main things and go as far as knowing if it was textures or meshes for example, narrows it down pretty substantially without logging tons of text. Even go as far as to have an option to tell Vortex to not log changes to certain mods? Such as your FNIS output folder for example? That way Vortex would only have to log the name of the mods it displays in the confirmation box. And I was thinking having it output into a separate log to the normal Vortex one, which would obviously make more sense for numerous reasons. That would be enough to keep track of most things, I assume users would usually know what contents have likely changed if they know what mod has been affected?

 

It would just be handy to know what changes have been made so that if something is done by mistake it can be rectified. Also, makes it much easier to keep track of edits/modifications.

 

While were on the topic though, the reason that happened with the purge was Vortex has become pretty sluggish, not sure if it's because it's managing so many mods now (I have 500 odd mods, 50 odd GB and just under 100k files in the mod folder)? I would have thought only the enabled mods would affect how fast Vortex was, or does the overall affect it? This is all despite it being on an SSD btw, so no normal HDD seeks or fragmentation affecting it.

 

Perhaps you'd consider adding some sort of icon to distinguish mods that have been altered since install? I can see a number of use cases for that. if the above idea seems feasible perhaps you could have it so you could right click a mod and have it show what contents have been modded? Such as 'main.esp' or 'Textures/' something along those lines?

[rmm200]

I would really like a little "modified" ICon on mods Vortex has modified. It would make reinstalling those mods a heck of a lot easier.

[Waiter]

I have a related problem, it seems.

 

I have made some settings in F4 Configuration Tool and BethINI but every time I deploy mods in Vortex those settings are reversed. A few times I got the message about external changes, but even if I select Apply on all changes, they are still reversed when the game starts.

 

The weird thing is that it is reducing my resolution settings and setting it to windowed mode, but those are settings that I have never made myself before.

Any ideas?

//Edit:

 

Nevermind, found a solution. Shut down Vortex and delete [GAME]Prefs.ini.baked and [GAME]Prefs.ini.base from the MyGames/[GAME] folder.

 

(source)

[Tannin42]

Nevermind, found a solution. Shut down Vortex and delete [GAME]Prefs.ini.baked and [GAME]Prefs.ini.base from the MyGames/[GAME] folder.

Baaaaad idea.

 

If anything you want to delete [GAME]Prefs.ini.baked and [GAME]Prefs.ini

and then rename [GAME]Prefs.ini.base to [GAME]Prefs.ini.