vortex.deployment json must be deleted/

[jstevoj]

What is the purpose of this file? I've recently tried out Vortex for the first time on 2 different games with fresh installs and in both cases the mods didn't work unless I deleted the vortex.deployment json file found within the game's respective mods folders.

 

Those games are TES 4 Oblivion, and Kingdom come deliverance.

 

I read in an old post that the file is needed for Vortex to keep track of which mods it had installed etc, however under no circumstance have I been able to get a single simple mod to load without deleting that file every single time I install a mod, I don't get any errors, I've installed Vortex properly and managed it's folders so that the download/mods folder aren't in the same folder as the mod manager it's self, they're on the same drive as the games I'm trying to mod and so on, I have no trouble using any other given mod manager such as NMM and I've even created mods for both Oblivion and Skyrim + Battlefront 2 but that's unrelated.

 

I know other people suffer from the same issue too as I've seen them post in the steam discussions about why their vortex mods don't work and I instructed them to delete said file and every time that has solved their issue.

 

 

Which leads me to this point, if we're not intended to delete that file then what the heck is going wrong with Vortex for this to be an issue with so many people including advanced users? Does anyone know of a solution besides deleting said file? Any developer inclination as to what's going wrong?

 

 

 

I'm running version 1.1.5 with no other apparent issues besides this and the solution seems an easy one, simply delete the aforementioned file that causes grief.

 

PS: Thinking that perhaps my Original install was messed up because I used the custom install location version I uninstalled Vortex with the provided uninstall application and uninstalled/reinstalled Oblivion including the documents folder from scratch and decided I would try to use the default Vortex installer to install it onto my :C drive instead, download/mod staging folders are all set up on my other drive that has Oblivion on it and I attempted to install a simple mod (Just HGEC body) once again and no cigar, no errors or anything but the mod isn't working.

 

PPS: So this is fun, after re-installing from scratch like I said before, and again deleting the appdata stuff just to make sure it's perfectly clean now the mods don't work with or without the vortex.deployment json file being present. So I'm actually worse off now than I was before... Again no errors, the files ARE being placed in the correct location yet they're not actually working and that's with Archive invalidation..

Edited January 17, 2020 by jstevoj

[Pickysaurus]

Before I answer your questions I need to clarify that vortex_deployment.json should never be deleted by the user.

 

The deployment JSON is how Vortex knows which files in your mods folder it currently manages. Removing it will mean Vortex can no longer uninstall any files it deployed to your mods folder.

 

What is it that implies the mods "don't work"?

 

i have Oblivion installed so I can try and reproduce it if you can tell me which mods you're installing.

 

A possible problem with TES4 is that it existed before mod managers were really a thing so some mods are packed incorrectly.

[jstevoj]

So right now I'm trying to get to a point where I can reproduce my first results.

 

Initially the mods wouldn't work unless I deleted said file, the mod in question is simply HGEC using either the installer or manual version in which I simply packed the wanted meshes/texture folders into a folder and compiled it into a .rar before throwing it into Vortex, however the installer version worked fine the first time after I deleted the json file.

 

The problem now is that after a fresh install of both the game and Vortex in an attempt to solve the issue I can't even get the old solution to work and now no matter what I do the mod refuses to enable which is strange since I can actually see the files in the game folder how they're supposed to be.

[jstevoj]

So I started from scratch again, this time I decided to keep everything on C: drive to keep it as simple as possible, all folders should be handled by default and appear to be correct, Oblivion installed via steam is on the C: drive (I deleted the documents data too) and once again no mods are working despite the files being put in the correct locations, Archive invalidation workaround enabled and so on... I even completely disabled my Anti-Virus throughout the entire process including install just to make sure that wasn't the cause, it wasn't..

 

Again, no errors in Vortex what so ever. I'm on the latest stable build of Vortex on the most recent version of Windows 10.

Edited January 17, 2020 by jstevoj

[jstevoj]

Well It's late so I just cleaned everything, uninstalled Vortex completely and instead opted for Wryebash and manually created a .rar, put it in the install folder and simply enabled it in Wryebash and it works perfectly fine, more steps than I needed with NMM before it was converted to Vortex but at least Wryebash works. I have no idea why Vortex couldn't enable the mods even when it clearly put the files in the right location but I can attest that it isn't worth the hassle.

 

I'm still willing to do some more troubleshooting just for the sake of helping to fix Vortex (and if we really can get it working smoothly I may yet opt for it over Wryebash since I always preferred NMM and had no issues with it) but for now I need some sleep.

 

PS: I've seen the previous posts where it turns into this debate where it doesn't work for someone and then officials say "Well you're using it wrong" and I took the side of the people who said they were using it wrong but now it's very clear to me that something isn't working right on everyone's rigs, I'd like to help with that by providing as much info as I can.

Edited January 17, 2020 by jstevoj

[Pickysaurus]

Can you provide examples of the Oblivion mods you're having issues with?

[Pickysaurus]

Ok I looked into it using "HG EyeCandy Body" (I reverse engineered that from you acronym so I hope it's right).

 

These is indeed an issue. The BSAs for the Steam version of the game have a last modified date which is fairly recent. So we need to reset it to 01.01.2006, which we currently do for other games but it wasn't required in Oblivion until now. So thanks for helping us track it down!

[jstevoj]

^ That's the one, so to be clear should we expect an update to Vortex to handle this automatically at some time in the future, and in the meantime would it be easier to manually edit the BSAs and hope that every time Vortex deploys a mod it doesn't reset somehow or should we just use Wryebash until Vortex is updated?

 

I'm glad you found the root cause of the issue though, that was driving me nuts. Well done sir.

Edited January 17, 2020 by jstevoj

[mohawk32]

So... If I remove the vortex.deployment.json before a purge, I don't lose the 1.08TB of content I created before my PC died and I had to recover it?  Please tell me that's what I read up there, and if it's true, Thank GOD!