A question about disabling a plugin?

[oblivionfan52]

Now this is a question for knowledge and curiosity purposes, I'm not having a problem with Vortex or my game!

 

With that out of the way here is my question. In the mods tab in Vortex when you disable a mod all of the file hardlinks and the esp hardlink are removed from the game data folder (we're talking SkyrimSE here) you can see this in real time if you have the data folder open, but when disabling an esp hardlink in the plugins tab the link still shows in the data folder, so what is happening in the background that is making that link stop functioning?

 

As you can plainly see I'm not highly technical I just push buttons until it works, trying to remember not to push the big red button (and oh boy does Vortex have buttons). I do sometimes though get curious as to why it works. I would put a scratches head emoticon here but I can't find the button to make that work?

 

 

 

 

 

[HadToRegister]

Disabling the esp in Vortex, is like unchecking it in the SkyrimLauncher.exe, or in the built in Mod Manager in the game

Check your plugins.txt

That's where you'll see a change

[oblivionfan52]

Ok I think I get you, but plugins.txt does not seem to update consistently even though the plugin is disabled and enabled in game when I disable or enable the plugin in Vortex?

[HadToRegister]

Ok I think I get you, but plugins.txt does not seem to update consistently even though the plugin is disabled and enabled in game when I disable or enable the plugin in Vortex?

 

Are you checking the plugins.txt in appdata\roaming\vortex?

[oblivionfan52]

Yes appdata\roaming\vortex\skyrimse\profiles\ubp-yuwve\ plugin.txt, and even though the plugin that I'm testing with is disabled in Vortex and in game it is still showing in plugin.txt.

 

 

Thanks for you help and any other ideas you might have on this little glitch I've stumbled on to. I'm not ruling out that the glitch may yet turn out to be sitting in front of the computer.

 

As I said I'm not really having any problems just trying to understand a little better what's going on behind the scenes.

 

Well I'll look at it again in the morning it's getting late and I've got to hit the bed.

[HadToRegister]

try checking the vortex.deployment.json file in your game data folder.

make a copy, then disable a plugin or two, then compare the copy with the original using something like "Beyond Compare" or "WinMerge to quickly compare the files side by side

I've found either utility invaluable in modding, especially for quickly finding changes in *.ini files etc.

[oblivionfan52]

Thanks but I think I have figured out the issue. It seems that the plugin.txt gets updated when you move between profiles, when I moved to a different profile and then looked at the plugin.txt for the profile we're speaking about it has been updated.

 

I'm not sure that is how it is supposed to work but it seems consistent on multiple tries. So it seems to only update on change of profile.

 

Now that I think about it updating on change of profile makes since, but you would think it would also update the profiles plugin.txt when closing Vortex but it doesn't. Maybe that is because the profile is still active in the data folder?

[Zanderat]

That might explain why I disabled a plugin but Wrye was still seeing it. I had to uninstall the whole mod to fix.

[Tannin42]

The plugins.txt file getting updated is C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Skyrim Special Edition and that should be the only file that Wrye Bash or any other tools sees and edits.

Only when you switch profiles does Vortex update the plugins file inside your profiles directories.

When you switch from profile A to profile B, you will see the plugins.txt from Appdata being copied to the profile A directory and the one from profile B being copied to appdata.