Frequent freezes

[acidzebra]

Thank you, AcidStripedHorsey!

 

lol. Also... zebra mod. Hmmm. It's just a texture...

 

Are there ever any mismatch problems if a mod gets updated during a game-in-progress? That seemed to be the case with Steam's Civ5 mods: Change _anything_ concerning the selected mods and the game refused to continue from the last Save.

 

I can't say I have had issues with that, but it is possible (it won't refuse to load, but it might crash or do strange things). My general strategy (after messing up several in progress games by wantonly loading and removing mods) is to select a bunch of mods I think will enhance my gameplay, and stick with them for the run. But oh, the temptations... I must say I rarely upgrade unless there are known problems with a given version of the mod OR it offers significant improvements.

 

In regards to load order, how is a user with ZERO mod-tinkering ability supposed to know in what order the mods _should_ be loaded? All that I know about a mod is that, "That looks neat! It would be cool to add that feature to the game!" and that X number of people have used and like that given mod. The implication is that for that many people to Recommend the mod, it must function without causing problems.

 

The user should educate himself, of course :)

 

(and be prepared for a lot of trial-and error)

 

As for the x number of people endorsing, they will be running any combination of mods. No mod author can plan for that or any future mods. You will also most likely note any number of complaints or questions in the comment thread - I do recommend checking out the comment thread of a mod.

 

But to answer the question somewhat, this is exactly what BOSS attempts to do - automate the mod ordering process. It's not perfect, but it's a damn sight better than just adding and activating a bunch of mods. Even if you just stick with letting BOSS do its thing, it will come up with a fairly decent load order.

 

So here is what you do. You already have NMM. You already have a bunch of mods you want to run and are active in NMM. So now you install BOSS. Then run BOSS. It will run (a commandline window will open briefly and disappear), and then open a browser window with a summary. The summary will tell you "there are this many mods loaded, I know this many of them, there are X warnings and Y errors.". Unless there are warnings and errors, you don't need to do anything and you can fire up your game.

 

If there ARE warnings and errors, below the summary there are two links "recognised plugins" and "unrecognised plugins". Have a look through those. In many cases, it will tell you "you're trying to load this mod, many people are having problems with it" (which will tell you that maybe this plugin isn't entirely stable - use at your own risk). Or "this mod archive contains several alternatives, only load one" - meaning the zip or rar file you downloaded has several versions of the same mod - read the mod home page for details, decide which one you want, and remove one or more of the other files from the data folder. The warnings and errors are pretty self-explanatory.

 

Boss will order the mods it knows about, and dump the mods it doesn't know about at the bottom of the load order. Often this works out fine - but remember to check the mod homepage for any mod and see if it requires a specific load order.

Edited October 15, 2012 by acidzebra

[CaptainPatch]

You're fast becoming one of My Favorite People!

 

I'll see if I can manage to follow directions concerning BOSS and see what transpires.

 

In regard to mods in general, here is a visual demonstration of how I feel when trying to sort things out: Decisions, decisions

[CaptainPatch]

Are there ever any mismatch problems if a mod gets updated during a game-in-progress? That seemed to be the case with Steam's Civ5 mods: Change _anything_ concerning the selected mods and the game refused to continue from the last Save.

I can't say I have had issues with that, but it is possible (it won't refuse to load, but it might crash or do strange things). My general strategy (after messing up several in progress games by wantonly loading and removing mods) is to select a bunch of mods I think will enhance my gameplay, and stick with them for the run. But oh, the temptations... I must say I rarely upgrade unless there are known problems with a given version of the mod OR it offers significant improvements.

What I had feared has transpired. I removed the Crimson Tide mod, as was suggested. Thereafter, if I try to Continue the game, I get a popup window advises me that there is data missing; do I want to continue Loading anyway? If I respond "Yes", the Load grinds forward a few seconds and then a CTD occurs. The same thing happens if I try to manually Load an earlier Save.

 

In some ways, I feel like mods are like a drug dealer's "free sample" to get you hooked. Try some and things are sooooo much better! Until the Bad Things start to happen and the experience turns to crap. It seems the lesson is: Experienced modders only need apply.

 

[This is NOT aimed at you AcidZebra. Just the layman's modding experience in general.]

[acidzebra]

The difference is the modders don't suddenly start asking for money for your next fix ;)

 

(but now that you mention it - great idea! ha ha ha)

 

But seriously, these people have spent a lot of time and effort into making these mods for free (with greater or lesser skill and knowledge) and decided to publish them. Presumably, these mods work for them. Once they release them into the wild, people have various versions of skyrim with various mods loaded and in some cases are novices so they yank/install mods pretty much at random - invariably leading to unstable configurations and CTDs. Then the authors get a bunch of s*** poured over them in the comments thread. Which ticks some of the authors right off, and I can't really blame them.

 

Anyway, rant aside, I've had this same issue with crimson tide. Put the mod back in place. Load your savegame. Go to a small cell somewhere, say, breezehome (or any small cell inside of a city where there is no fighting). Just for good measure, wait for a few hours (in-game wait, not realtime) or have a good night's sleep (say, 24 hrs). Save your game and exit. Now remove the mod. Start up the game and load the savegame. Once again, wait around for a bit. Save. Exit.

 

Don't overwrite earlier saves - make new ones BTW.

 

Finally, start the game again, load your savegame and carry on.

Edited October 15, 2012 by acidzebra

[CaptainPatch]

Oh, I heartily agree! To a large extent, it is VERY much like doing QA for any PC program. There are a gajillion hardware configurations that get compounded by another gajillion configurations of installed software. Developers can only do so much testing of a variety of configurations before they pretty much declare a product "Finished" and release it to the public -- or throw in the towel and declare bankruptcy because they can't sell their product for fear that _some_ consumers WILL still experience complications. Modders, who have far fewer resources than the average software firm, simply cannot test against as wide an array of configurations. I would hazard that most test against ONE PC configuration, their own PC's setup, and will be satisfied if it runs problem-free there. TOTALLY understandable.

 

To a large extent, this whole process reminds me of the Bad Ol' Days of PC gaming when it was necessary for a user to try to optimize ONE Mb of PC memory. (That's the entirety of the CPU and RAM hardware, for the benefit of those that hadn't even been born back then.) To maximize game performance, a user was REQUIRED to educate himself enough to fiddle around with hardware and programming, or go through life not being able to play the latest-and-greatest games the industry had to offer. It's now almost three decades and that phase in my life is well past. And the sad Truth is that I really don't have that many years (months?) left to learn yet another detail-intensive Skill.

 

Bleah. I'll attempt to follow your, as always VERY helpful advice and directions and see what transpires. But I'm not even going to bother to cross my fingers and hope for the best; my fingers already ache from having done so previously!

[CaptainPatch]

Am I cursed or what? I went to NMM to reinstate the Crimson Tide mod, but at that point I was notified that there was an update for NMM was available. Naturally I installed it. But then when the update was complete, I can't start NMM! I keep getting an error message that tells me I need to report a bug and wait for repairs to be devised.

 

It's like the gods have declared, "Thou shalt not play Skyrim ever again!"

[reaper9111]

All that I know about a mod is that, "That looks neat! It would be cool to add that feature to the game!" and that X number of people have used and like that given mod. The implication is that for that many people to Recommend the mod, it must function without causing problems.

 

It's usually the case, but remember that 2 very popular mod can possibly conflict with eachother... So my best guess for you is to do the very old way that have never failed me since 7 years...

- Deactivate "one by one"* each mod and go have a play session where you know you will crash...

I usually *disable 5 mods at the time, then if i find the problem i know i have to look in those 5, it's quicker ! and give you the same result !

 

ps: Nexus has been under severe modification recently (since a few days) it might be bacause of this that you get some errors with NMM, just wait a while...

 

Best of luck

Reaper

Edited October 16, 2012 by reaper9111

[acidzebra]

Am I cursed or what? I went to NMM to reinstate the Crimson Tide mod, but at that point I was notified that there was an update for NMM was available. Naturally I installed it. But then when the update was complete, I can't start NMM! I keep getting an error message that tells me I need to report a bug and wait for repairs to be devised.

 

It's like the gods have declared, "Thou shalt not play Skyrim ever again!"

 

On the plus side, at least you have all the calamities happening now, all that's left is the joy of a corrupt savegame to complete all the things which possibly could go wrong. When you're at the bottom...

 

Don't know about NMM, have you tried the old chestnut of (a) restarting the computer and/or (b) reinstalling NMM manually?

 

If you just want to get on with playing, you can find your mods in (wherever you chose to install)\Nexus Mod Manager\Skyrim\Mods

Open the crimson tide archive, and extract to your skyrim folder, so the \data folder in the archive ends up in your \skyrim\data folder

Then perform the save fandango I outlined

At the point where you normally would use NMM to remove the mod go into the data folder again and remove all the files (and no others!) that crimson tide installed.

 

New skill aquired: manual mod installation/removal!

 

ps. my first computers were a TI99/4A followed by a C64 (love of my digital life) so I know quite a bit about going for memory optimization. Oh, the things we did in <64 Kb ;) In fact I loved that brown box so much by the time I moved to PC the first pentiums were coming to market and the days of upper/lower/extended memory and memory management were coming to and end.

Edited October 16, 2012 by acidzebra

[CaptainPatch]

"On the plus side, at least you have all the calamities happening now, all that's left is the joy of a corrupt savegame to complete all the things which possibly could go wrong. When you're at the bottom..."

 

Oh, I _have_ had those already, several times. Had to go to Steam and Verify files to get the broken ones repaired. Otherwise I was assured of a CTD.

 

My first PC access was a TRS-80, with occasional brushes with a broad spectrum of Apple II, IIe, IIgs, III, et al. Then on to the Commodore 64. [Pirates! anyone?] My first actual PC was a 386. [Pentium era joke: Q: What do you call a 386 PC? A: A doorstop.]

 

You're going to actually make me learn this stuff, aren't you? Oh well, I suppose it beats just sitting around waiting to die....

Edited October 16, 2012 by CaptainPatch

[acidzebra]

You know what they say, give a man a mod and he will mess up his skyrim, teach a man about mods and load order and he will enjoy a CTD-free game for the most part.

 

Okay, so only I say that. Just now.

 

Let us know how you get on :)