SSE General modding question

[TQWorld]

Hi all,

 

Question regarding general modding principles for graphics and armor packs. For foundation, I use Mod Organizer 2.

 

I'll start with my graphics question first.

 

Like many of us, I've got a lot of graphics mods. Many of which touch different aspects of the game but some may overlap on a few pieces, so we place them in the load order accordingly to suit what we want to see in the game. I'll make up some fake mod names for my example: LANDSCAPES contains meshes/textures for grass, trees and bushes. FLORALS contains meshes/textures for grass. I place LANDSCAPES first in my load order to get the trees and bushes meshes/textures and then put FLORALS lower so that it 'overwrite' the grass meshes/textures from LANDSCAPES. This is where my question comes in: For efficiency, since FLORALS is 'overwriting' the grass meshes/textures provided by LANDSCAPES, would there be any benefit or problem with me physically deleting the grass meshes/textures files from the LANDSCAPES mod? For straight mesh/textures mods with no ESP files, I'm confident this would be perfectly fine, but for graphics mods with ESP files...I'm not sure if that would cause any issues since the files being referenced in the ESP file were deleted. Also, would there be any true benefit to gain from doing this? I'm just trying to milk every % of performance I can from anywhere I can, no matter how small. Plus it seems a bit "cleaner."

 

Armor question (very similar).

 

Let's say I install THE_BIG_ARMOR_PACK which contains 50 original, self-contained armors but I only like 10 of them. Very similar question as above: Would there be any harm or benefit in me deleting the files for those armors I don't want. I've done this somewhat already and haven't seen any impact but it may have been a unique situation. I had installed an armor pack and when I would mouse-over the armor to view or equip it - immediate CTD. So I went in and deleted the meshes/textures for the armor which was causing the game to crash. Curious if that was fine or if I just got lucky.

 

I appreciate any input on this.

[IsharaMeradin]

Regarding the landscape / floral concern:

The way MO2 works, it only lets the game see the version of the file with priority. Meaning, you can have multiple files with the same name and directory structure within multiple mods and only the latest one gets shown to the game. With MO2 it may be better to HIDE the files in question rather than deleting them. That way should you ever remove a mod that does 'overwrite', you can easily restore the file(s) without having to fully re-install the mod.

 

Regarding the armors:

If you do not want certain mod armors in your game, you'll need to edit the plugin and remove any trace of those items. If they can only be obtained by crafting, you could add a condition to the COBJ record (recipe) that requires the player to be at level zero. Since the player can never be level zero, those items won't show up at the crafting tables. But if the items are available for pick up out in the world, those instances will have to be tracked down and removed.

[TQWorld]

Regarding the landscape / floral concern:

The way MO2 works, it only lets the game see the version of the file with priority. Meaning, you can have multiple files with the same name and directory structure within multiple mods and only the latest one gets shown to the game. With MO2 it may be better to HIDE the files in question rather than deleting them. That way should you ever remove a mod that does 'overwrite', you can easily restore the file(s) without having to fully re-install the mod.

 

Regarding the armors:

If you do not want certain mod armors in your game, you'll need to edit the plugin and remove any trace of those items. If they can only be obtained by crafting, you could add a condition to the COBJ record (recipe) that requires the player to be at level zero. Since the player can never be level zero, those items won't show up at the crafting tables. But if the items are available for pick up out in the world, those instances will have to be tracked down and removed.

Thanks for the response. Hiding vs deleting was my actual intention for the same reasons you outlined, so thank you for confirming my thought process. So what you're saying is that MO2 handles everything initially and once the game has loaded, the game does not even "see" the 'overwritten' files/references? If so, would hiding the files (from MO2) aid in reducing the initial launch time of the game?

 

 

I'm not familiar - or comfortable enough - with editing a plugin. But even if I did adjust the plugin file, wouldn't the MO2 still load all of the mesh/texture files associated with the mod? I'm not sure how it works: Does the game/MO2 only load a base set of files necessary for what's required in the game/map at the time and then reference the files as they are called for.....or does it load all parts of the mods at launch? I did notice adding huge armor packs did impact my launch time. Would that be because MO2 is loading all of the textures/meshes into memory or is it just processing all of the entries/references and that is what is taking the time?

 

I do appreciate the tips/explanations.

Edited July 19, 2020 by TQWorld

[IsharaMeradin]

MO2 pulls the various files from the mod folders in their priority order and presents that to the game. How that impacts game start I do not know.

 

All active plugins are loaded at game start. This is why the game can CTD before getting to the main menu when there are missing master files for a given plugin. The assets (textures, meshes, etc) are only called upon when they are needed. Yet they will remain in memory and / or the save file. This is why removing mods mid-game is problematic and not recommended.

 

It is "safe" to have files not used within the data folder (virtual or otherwise). But will there be an impact with a lot of such files, possibly. Mostly because it might require additional seeking on the disk platter to pass unused files to get to the needed files.

[TQWorld]

Great info, thank you!