Simple manual load ordering plz

[Tannin42]

Ok, so you've been playing on a PC for less than a month. You read this in the description of Vortex

Who is this for? Should I use Vortex?

Ask yourself whether being an early adopter is right for you at this time, or whether it makes more sense for you to wait until Vortex reaches a more polished Beta or full release state. Considering we're being fully open about the fact Vortex will have bugs and is not in a feature complete state, do you really want to be using the software in this state? Are you going to get upset if it does not function properly or creates issues that mean playing your game is not possible until Vortex is updated or until you fix things manually? If so, this is NOT the right time for you to be using Vortex as your mod manager.

Are you competent enough to know how to backup your save games and modding folders, and able to rectify any issues manually or in another mod manager if Vortex doesn't work properly for you? Do you want to help us by providing constructive feedback and bug reports without getting emotional and rude? Are you patient and able to wait for fixes and functionality to be developed? Then we'd love it if you could download Vortex and give it a thorough run through, and we're looking forward to hearing from you.

And thought: Oh yes, that's me.

And then thought: Where is the documentation for this alpha software? I should go complain. And tell people who've been in this community for 8+ years how mod authors work and what they need.

Your experience getting Vortex to work for you as a new user is in fact disappointing because of course I hope Vortex is intuitive even without documentation but you have to realize that a mod author who has less than a month of experience with PC gaming and modding and is trying to work by his grandfathers instructions is not exactly the user group we thought of when we released an alpha version of a new software.

[SkunkMonkey]

 

Then I downloaded the latest Vortex version just to make sure that I had the newest "stuff". My first response when looking at it was "Where is the documentation"?

 

You need a better understanding of what alpha software is then and weigh your choices more carefully. Since Vortex is alpha software in very early development, there is little to no documentation. This is quite standard for software as new as Vortex. While NMM was technically listed as alpha software as well, AFAIK it doesn't have official documentation either. But I digress, documentation is one of the very last things done in software development, no point in documenting things that can change as much as software.

[Grestorn]

...and it looks like you make the same mistake of so many, believing that YOUR mod HAS to be at the bottom of the list of mods.

 

Since so many mod authors are claiming that THEIR mod HAS to be at the very bottom, I wonder how many bottoms you need to follow their instructions... ;)

[maverikch]

guys. i can confirm that the "autosort" or "sort now" of the plugins with the built in loot behaves the same as the stanalone loot.

firstly i encountered a diffrent behavior with standalone loot as with vortex built-in loot placing a mod always at the botton with standalone and vortex puttin it in the middle - even i did set the "dependencies" identical on both apps. and both apps downloaded the recent masterlist.yaml.

 

after diggin around, i noticed that the specific mod in question had the priority set to 81 (under metadata first tab "general") with my 77 plugins. After setting Prio to 0. both apps sorted the load order equaly - in the middle.

 

if you use 99+ mods, like me, their will be never a "safe" solution. to put a mod at the button,will lead at some point anyway to conflicts thus every mod author recommending it for HIS mod to work.

 

---

 

Now, loot is great but not superior. it didn't recognize a conflict in my case between "Improved Boston Airport.esp" and "Build High.esp"

It recommended - by some comprehensibly logic, i assume - to load Build High after Improved Boston Airport.

 

The Removed Objects by Impr. Boston Airport Mod were back. I had to set the load order the otherway round. The increased borders of build high though stayed.

 

Well, the process to find that out, i had (formerly with NMM) manually move the plugins up/down, load the game, check and quit, period until i actually found the conflicting mods. took me hours. and will take me hours, if such conflicts occure again.

 

And that's why i think many are requesting this manual ordering feature - next to obaying the mod description recommondations by mod authors.

 

it is in my openion not "easier" than moving a plugin up and down but achievable by temporary setting depencies between two mods you think are conflicting, sort, start up game, check, quit, remove the dependency if false, period.

 

---

 

And yes, i know you can check mods with FO4EDIT. But that Tool and I came to the conclusion that we don't get along. I tried thus getting more headacke and being more confused. i far more efficient with the former mentioned method.

[Deleted53237921User]

Ok, so you've been playing on a PC for less than a month. You read this in the description of Vortex

 

Who is this for? Should I use Vortex?

 

Ask yourself whether being an early adopter is right for you at this time, or whether it makes more sense for you to wait until Vortex reaches a more polished Beta or full release state. Considering we're being fully open about the fact Vortex will have bugs and is not in a feature complete state, do you really want to be using the software in this state? Are you going to get upset if it does not function properly or creates issues that mean playing your game is not possible until Vortex is updated or until you fix things manually? If so, this is NOT the right time for you to be using Vortex as your mod manager.

 

Are you competent enough to know how to backup your save games and modding folders, and able to rectify any issues manually or in another mod manager if Vortex doesn't work properly for you? Do you want to help us by providing constructive feedback and bug reports without getting emotional and rude? Are you patient and able to wait for fixes and functionality to be developed? Then we'd love it if you could download Vortex and give it a thorough run through, and we're looking forward to hearing from you.

 

And thought: Oh yes, that's me.

 

And then thought: Where is the documentation for this alpha software? I should go complain. And tell people who've been in this community for 8+ years how mod authors work and what they need.

 

Your experience getting Vortex to work for you as a new user is in fact disappointing because of course I hope Vortex is intuitive even without documentation but you have to realize that a mod author who has less than a month of experience with PC gaming and modding and is trying to work by his grandfathers instructions is not exactly the user group we thought of when we released an alpha version of a new software.

 

 

 

 

Then I downloaded the latest Vortex version just to make sure that I had the newest "stuff". My first response when looking at it was "Where is the documentation"?

 

You need a better understanding of what alpha software is then and weigh your choices more carefully. Since Vortex is alpha software in very early development, there is little to no documentation. This is quite standard for software as new as Vortex. While NMM was technically listed as alpha software as well, AFAIK it doesn't have official documentation either. But I digress, documentation is one of the very last things done in software development, no point in documenting things that can change as much as software.

 

 

 

...and it looks like you make the same mistake of so many, believing that YOUR mod HAS to be at the bottom of the list of mods.

 

Since so many mod authors are claiming that THEIR mod HAS to be at the very bottom, I wonder how many bottoms you need to follow their instructions... :wink:

 

First response; find a way to dismiss any feedback which is counter to what you want to hear. I am new to PC gaming and mod authorship, so I must not know anything.

 

Well, I have been developing software for well over a decade. A LIFO stack is not that difficult to understand and that is exactly what a load order is. A load order is LIFO stack based on a concatenation of MODs and is no different than any concatenation of executables. So assuming that I do not understand what a load order is and what I expect in the way of managing one is both dismissive and presumptive on your part.

 

Especially when I provide you the "fresh eyes" perspective you requested and constructively contrast the new tool with the older unsupported tool. You apply your assumptions about me and my knowledge and turn those "fresh eyes" in to a negative.

 

And in as much as NMM is no longer supported (it says as much right on the NMM page) I figured it was a good idea to get to know the replacement tool now. That approach seemed better advised than waiting and trying to learn a new tool after learning the simpler tool which is NMM.

 

And with that, I will heed my grandfather's advice and withdraw from further discussions. Just consider this. What valuable piece of information or data are you loosing when you summarily dismiss people and their ideas?

[Tannin42]

guys. i can confirm that the "autosort" or "sort now" of the plugins with the built in loot behaves the same as the stanalone loot.

firstly i encountered a diffrent behavior with standalone loot as with vortex built-in loot placing a mod always at the botton with standalone and vortex puttin it in the middle - even i did set the "dependencies" identical on both apps. and both apps downloaded the recent masterlist.yaml.

 

after diggin around, i noticed that the specific mod in question had the priority set to 81 (under metadata first tab "general") with my 77 plugins. After setting Prio to 0. both apps sorted the load order equaly - in the middle.

 

if you use 99+ mods, like me, their will be never a "safe" solution. to put a mod at the button,will lead at some point anyway to conflicts thus every mod author recommending it for HIS mod to work.

 

---

 

Now, loot is great but not superior. it didn't recognize a conflict in my case between "Improved Boston Airport.esp" and "Build High.esp"

It recommended - by some comprehensibly logic, i assume - to load Build High after Improved Boston Airport.

 

The Removed Objects by Impr. Boston Airport Mod were back. I had to set the load order the otherway round. The increased borders of build high though stayed.

 

Well, the process to find that out, i had (formerly with NMM) manually move the plugins up/down, load the game, check and quit, period until i actually found the conflicting mods. took me hours. and will take me hours, if such conflicts occure again.

 

And that's why i think many are requesting this manual ordering feature - next to obaying the mod description recommondations by mod authors.

 

it is in my openion not "easier" than moving a plugin up and down but achievable by temporary setting depencies between two mods you think are conflicting, sort, start up game, check, quit, remove the dependency if false, period.

 

---

 

And yes, i know you can check mods with FO4EDIT. But that Tool and I came to the conclusion that we don't get along. I tried thus getting more headacke and being more confused. i far more efficient with the former mentioned method.

 

I'm not entirely sure why this process was hour-taking. if "Improved Boston Airport" was supposed to remove objects and it you realized it didn't, wasn't it clear that the mod was somehow overridden by another mod that was loaded further down? In this case, with vortex you could just as easily use fixed mod index to do a "half interval search" for the conflicting mod (meaning you move it 50% down the list, if the conflict still exists you go another 50% of the remaining list down, if the conflict was resolved you move it to the middle between the old position and the current one and so on).

In this process each iteration will take you maybe 5 seconds with vortex and then 2 minutes to start the game and see if the problem was fixed. Yes, with drag and drop it may be only 3 seconds to d&d and then 2 minutes to start the game, but since you're spending most of the time starting up the game I don't see how it's a huge difference.

 

However, once you're done and identified the issue you could have gone to the loot page and submitted a rule to the masterlist so others don't need to go through the same process, saving others the work entirely. And with a large community as ours there is a huge chance others have saved you hours of work by putting their discoveries into the masterlist.

[Tannin42]

First response; find a way to dismiss any feedback which is counter to what you want to hear. I am new to PC gaming and mod authorship, so I must not know anything.

When you're criticising an alpha software for being alpha you're right I don't want to hear it.

We publish saying "sorry in advance, this is an alpha, there isn't any documentation yet" and you attack us for having no documentation, how do you figure this is useful?

I didn't say I don't want to hear about your experiences with Vortex, but the way you voiced your problem wasn't particularly constructive.

 

Well, I have been developing software for well over a decade. A LIFO stack is not that difficult to understand and that is exactly what a load order is. A load order is LIFO stack based on a concatenation of MODs and is no different than any concatenation of executables. So assuming that I do not understand what a load order is and what I expect in the way of managing one is both dismissive and presumptive on your part.

Umm, no, the load order is no LIFO stack. LIFO (or FIFO) would imply that the order in which items are added controls the order in which they are consumed which is not the case.

From the games perspective it's an arbitrarily ordered list. From the tools perspective the load order is a dependency tree that gets topologically sorted by the modding tool and then consumed by the game in exactly the order the modding tool said.

It's always a dependency tree: A mod can't be loaded before its masters, native plugins have to be at the root, all flagged masters have to be before all regular plugins, on games with ESLs there are various rules for those.

That's dependencies that any modding tool has to obey.

When other modding tools give you a flat list with drag&drop that's the evaluated topological order derived from the dependency tree that you can then post-edit, but the tool still

has to constraint you based on the dependencies.

Loot and Vortex simply give you a way to put your own rules directly into the dependency tree so the tree can get projected directly onto the list that the game then consumes.

 

Especially when I provide you the "fresh eyes" perspective you requested and constructively contrast the new tool with the older unsupported tool.

How was your post constructive? Have I missed something? You say "I don't like this, I like how it's in NMM". You don't make any proposals how Vortex could be simpler or

better but instead that we should drop a feature entirely (a feature many others like).

You don't explain why it took you so long to figure it out, you just state that you found NMM easier.

How is that constructive? What do you expect us to learn from that and what changes to deduce from that?

 

You apply your assumptions about me and my knowledge and turn those "fresh eyes" in to a negative.

If you actually develop software you know that the level of expertise a user has when making a complaint is absolutely critical. That has nothing to do with dismissing

certain users, it is important for knowing the language you need to apply, the assumptions you can make on his knowledge and also how to best approach their

problem. If you are in fact a new users currently learning modding, better documentation and tutorials is usually a valid solution.

An experienced mod author otoh expects to be able to use his existing knowledge - they will usually not be willing to look at tutorial videos for beginners for 30 minutes to

be able to use a new tool, so instead we need to provide ways to help those users apply their existing knowledge even when the tool has changed radically.

 

Now based on your original post I was in fact assuming you're in the latter group and that was an incorrect assumption, but tbh. you're not making this easy.

First post you claim to speak for all mod authors, next post you're a noob users just learning the ropes but now you're also a seasoned programmer.

I am in fact having a really hard time figuring out the language to talk to you. Every post you start out with a "twist" about your level of knowledge, are

you M. Night Shyamalan or something?

 

And with that, I will heed my grandfather's advice and withdraw from further discussions. Just consider this. What valuable piece of information or data are you loosing when you summarily dismiss people and their ideas?

The only idea you proposed is "make it more like NMM". The only data you provided was "I found NMM easier to learn".

That's not as valuable as you might think it is.

[SorrelKat]

*sigh* Vortex sorting and rules is fine, in my opinion and experience. I've (had?) to create only four rules so far. Two under mods, and two under plugins. The two under mods are obviously personal preference, and the two under plugins may or may not be needed. I just went with the authors instructions, but I do question the necessity of it.

 

Regardless, Vortex has been easy to learn and use, and I have no conflicts. That being said, from experience, I do realize that there are some users that exist, that don't even know the order of the letters in the alphabet. So...

[SkunkMonkey]

 

Every post you start out with a "twist" about your level of knowledge, are you M. Night Shyamalan or something?

 

:laugh: I almost spit coffee all over my monitor. Well played, well played indeed!

[passionatepilgrim]

Wow. And I thought I was overreacting to this change. Tannin, I apologize doubly now.

 

Not sure if I missed this in another post, but for anyone wanting to micromanage their load order, forget rules. Turn off auto-sort and set the load order manually. (I won't be doing that by the way.)

 

However, the suggestion that we only need rules to resolve conflicts is only partially true. It's true in the sense that we only have to resolve conflicts if we want the game to run.

 

It's not true in the sense that we often uses mods that do similar things or have some overlap and just arranging the sort order gets us the combination we are looking for without patches, etc. For many of the mods I'm using, the mod author explicitly tells us to do this. Just one example is Majestic Mountains and Realistic Water 2 for Skyrim SE. Thus, I have a rule to get them in the right order.