ADAM Reborn Defaced NCR armor crash

[skullsridge]

Greetings all, I'm encountering an issue in which the Defaced NCR armor, located in the Lucky 38, crashes upon equipping. I can wear the helmet just fine, and I can pick up and carry the armor in my inventory, but upon equipping, the game hard crashes before it is displayed on my character. I'm fully convinced this has something to do with the ADAM Reborn mod, but toggling archive invalidation did nothing to resolve the issue, and FNVEdit shows no conflicts with the defaced armor textures, so I'm at a loss as to how to resolve the issue, other than reinstall the mod, which I hesitate to do, but am not opposed to trying. The reason this concerns me is because this could indicate that other NCR armors affected by the mod may also be bugged in the same manner, but I'm unsure of that, as I haven't encountered other said armor, aside from the standard NCR ranger armor.

 

Any advice as to how I can resolve this bug would be greatly appreciated. If you would like to see my load order, let me know, and I'll post it here.

 

Thanks all.

[dubiousintent]

Have you seen the mod "ADAM Reborn Fix"?

If you select the "Complete" plugin when downloading ADAM Reborn, it will include Exeter Improved meshes. Unfortunately, this will lead to the Elite Riot Gear Shroud Textures behaving strangely indoors. This has been fixed. I used Exeter Better Lonesome Road meshes and ADAM Reborn textures.

-Dubious-

[skullsridge]

The fix says it's for the elite riot gear, while my problem is with the defaced armor. I'll still probably download it if I encounter this bug with the elite armor once I find it, but that's not the current issue I'm having.

 

Also, I just picked up the outcast ranger gear (which, like defaced, is also custom to the mod). That armor doesn't crash, thankfully, but the armor isn't using the right textures. Archive invalidation, once again, does nothing. It would seem something went wrong with the installation. Would it be worth just reinstalling ADAM Reborn from NMM?

[dubiousintent]

The fix suggests there is a problem with how the mesh and texture were built in the first place. A problem with the "elite riot gear" might indicate a similar problem with the "defaced NCR armor".

 

I would suggest looking at your problem armor in NifSkope to trace the path to both the mesh and texture files. If the path is "absolute" instead of "relative" it could cause the problem. See the wiki article "How to fix hard-coded texture paths in NIF files" for the procedure to locate the texture file entry within NifSkope.

 

-Dubious-

[skullsridge]

I think I found the problem: the texture pathing for the defaced armor was done incorrectly. Instead of setting the textures normally, all BSSTexturePaths are set to the gore textures. I have no idea how this happened, and I'm a little inexperienced to handle this. Some advice on how to restore the proper textures would be greatly appreciated.

[dubiousintent]

This is not something I have personally done, but in theory it's very straightforward.

* First, make a backup of the current mesh and texture in case you need to revert.

* Second make sure the texture you want to use is in the appropriate location. This might require you to extract it from the vanilla BSA file, as you can't point into a BSA directly and have to be able to point to a physical "loose" file. As long as the path is the same as in the BSA, you can remove the loose extracted file afterwards and the game will then use the BSA version instead.

* Third, using the wiki article "How to fix hard-coded texture paths in NIF files" for the procedure to locate the texture file entry within NifSkope, edit that path to now point to the correct texture file, make sure it is a "relative path" (no drive letter and from the "Textures" folder on down only), and save it.

* Test.

 

[Edit: If that doesn't work, then suggest you take a look at some of the tutorials under the 'Armor & Clothes' section of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article. The "Programs and Tools" section lists various tools including several for BSA file extraction. Heed the warning posted there.]

 

-Dubious-

 

[skullsridge]

Alright, I'll attempt your proposed solution sometime tomorrow or later, and then let you know how it goes. It's too minor of an issue to attempt file surgery on, at least for right now, when it's only one armor causing the crash thus far.

[skullsridge]

Okay, so I decided that I'm not going to bother with the defaced armor crash. Since it's only one armor, and after looking at its stats and textures on GECK, I decided that it wasn't worth equipping anyway. Having said that, that brings me to another issue that I'm having with this mod: I still haven't been able to fix the outcast ranger armor texture bug, and what's going on with it is very bizarre. I've been trying to sort out the bug through GECK, and what I've found is that the upperbody alternate texture hasn't been placed in its slot. I tired placing the correct texture manually, and it does apply, until I save and close GECK. After I launch the game, the outcast texture isn't applied, and when I reopen GECK, the outcast armor shows that it hasn't been applied, instead a duplicate of the regular ranger armor is made without alternate textures and with zero users. I'm setting the correct file to active (that being ADAM Merge, which contains the custom armor), and I turned off read-only on both the regular combatranger folder, and the ADAM-outcast folder, yet still I encounter this issue. Is there some hidden step to saving texture changes in GECK that I'm unfamiliar with?

 

Edit: Yup, it got set back to read-only. I know that moving the files out of Program Files (x86) prevents this from occurring, but I don't know how to go about doing that without messing up mod pathing to the steam version of FNV.

Edited April 19, 2018 by skullsridge

[dubiousintent]

Indeed, if you installed Steam to the default "C:\Program Files" folder tree, the OS will keep resetting files back to "read only". It's futile to fight this as even if you do manage it, the very next Windows Update will reset it back. This is a "security feature".

 

Please see the wiki "Installing Games on Windows Vista+" article for why the original default Steam behavior of installing games to the "C:\Program Files" folder tree was bad (they learned better, and don't do that any more); and why "disabling UAC and running as Administrator" is NOT sufficient, with instructions how to move it. This is the single most important thing you can do to fix and protect yourself against problems in the future. As much of a PITA as that is, it's never going to be any easier than now. Please see the 'Restoring to "Vanilla"' section of the wiki "FNV General Mod Use Advice" article as well.

 

-Dubious-

[skullsridge]

I can safely say that I'm feeling a PITA already after just reading the wiki page you linked. Damn, that is frustrating, and annoying that I have to create an entirely new folder from Steam itself, then move everything there manually, and reinstall mod tools while I'm at it. I'll look into it, but I can't promise that I'll actually do it at this juncture. I'm not installing any more mods for FNV, since I got everything that I wanted to change in the game, and the only reason I would have to go through so much trouble would be so I can swap out a texture. That would be the beginning and end of it, and that is simply not a sufficient enough reason to justify that.

 

I will remember this suggestion if there's ever another older game that I want to mod (like Fallout 3, for example, or I guess Fallout 4, if that game also has the same issue), but right now, the bug I'm running in to right now is too insignificant for such a grand task.

 

Thank you Dubious for your continued support, I do appreciate your efforts and wisdom.