Ran Vanilla Launcher to change water setting and now entire game has red markers

[RangerShark5]

So, I was playing with all my mods and life was dandy for a few days playing. Then, I noticed some water was glitching a bit. So, I went and looked around for how to fix it. I then went and loaded the Vanilla launcher and turned off Water Displacement to fix the water bug. Then, when I loaded back up, my entire game was just filled with the red exclamation points. Like even Novac's dinosaur was just straight up missing and literally 5 mins earlier it was fine.

 

I have no idea what happened? Anyone have an idea on wtf happened? I tried turning off some mods and nothing.... :(

[dubiousintent]

When you run the Launcher, it rebuilds your Fallout "INI" files in the "Users\Documents" folder. (Please see the 'Game INI files' section of the wiki "FNV General Mod Use Advice" article.) If you have made previous changes to them, they will have been lost so you will need to go through and set everything again.

 

If you ran "local file validation", you may need to re-install mods.

 

Because "Texture/Mesh" replacement mods replace vanilla versions of those files, you absolutely have to toggle "ArchiveInvalidation (AI)" off-and-then-on again after installing or removing one of them so it recognizes that there are loose files (added by the mod) which have to be used in place of the vanilla files in the BSA files or are no longer there and the BSA files should be used instead. That failure to toggle is the most common reason behind most "texture problems". This is usually evidenced by red "!" icon for missing meshes, and solid colors for missing textures, or "messed up" textures. This "ArchiveInvalidation" mechanism is incorporated in all the currently used mod managers, so there is no need to (and problems arise if you do) install older mods to provide that capability. ONLY USE ONE METHOD of AI, especially if you have multiple mod managers installed. Otherwise they will conflict, as they use their own "arbitrarily chosen" names for the AI BSA files. (There is not a standardized name used among them all.) Please see the 'ArchiveInvalidation (by Manager)' section and also see the 'Checklist Item #15 & 16' entries in the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide.

-Dubious-

[RangerShark5]

So, I was playing with all my mods and life was dandy for a few days playing. Then, I noticed some water was glitching a bit. So, I went and looked around for how to fix it. I then went and loaded the Vanilla launcher and turned off Water Displacement to fix the water bug. Then, when I loaded back up, my entire game was just filled with the red exclamation points. Like even Novac's dinosaur was just straight up missing and literally 5 mins earlier it was fine.

 

I have no idea what happened? Anyone have an idea on wtf happened? I tried turning off some mods and nothing.... :sad:

 

When you run the Launcher, it rebuilds your Fallout "INI" files in the "Users\Documents" folder. (Please see the 'Game INI files' section of the wiki "FNV General Mod Use Advice" article.) If you have made previous changes to them, they will have been lost so you will need to go through and set everything again.

 

If you ran "local file validation", you may need to re-install mods.

 

Because "Texture/Mesh" replacement mods replace vanilla versions of those files, you absolutely have to toggle "ArchiveInvalidation (AI)" off-and-then-on again after installing or removing one of them so it recognizes that there are loose files (added by the mod) which have to be used in place of the vanilla files in the BSA files or are no longer there and the BSA files should be used instead. That failure to toggle is the most common reason behind most "texture problems". This is usually evidenced by red "!" icon for missing meshes, and solid colors for missing textures, or "messed up" textures. This "ArchiveInvalidation" mechanism is incorporated in all the currently used mod managers, so there is no need to (and problems arise if you do) install older mods to provide that capability. ONLY USE ONE METHOD of AI, especially if you have multiple mod managers installed. Otherwise they will conflict, as they use their own "arbitrarily chosen" names for the AI BSA files. (There is not a standardized name used among them all.) Please see the 'ArchiveInvalidation (by Manager)' section and also see the 'Checklist Item #15 & 16' entries in the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide.

 

-Dubious-

 

I did both of these options and nothing changed. I tried editing the bsa cause I figured it was missing AI! and other bsa needed in Archive. Now, my game doesn't run at all. I have used BSA compressor so idk if that affects it or not. I'm real worried I'll need to reinstall and start all over again which I really really don't want to again.

[dubiousintent]

"ArchiveInvalidation" (AI) is something used by a mod manager. It does not directly touch the game BSA files. (I'm curious as to what led you to think that. It's something that needs clarification to prevent that misunderstanding.) If AI is not working in your mod manager, then you need to read up on how that manager implements it. Typically this is by (automatically) making an edit to the "sArchiveList=" entry in the "Fallout.INI" file in the "Users\Documents" game folder, but not always. If it isn't working then consider it a problem with the manager configuration rather than the game.

 

BSA files are already compressed archives. There are differences of opinion regarding whether decompressing the BSA files will speed things up or not. As processors and file access speeds increase, the supposed speed benefits tend to shrink. (A compressed file is read from disk more quickly than an uncompressed one, and decompressed in memory even more quickly than it is read. But SSDs alter the comparative math of it a bit.) It is much more important to get a stable game than a "faster" one. Crashing faster is not an "improvement".

 

If you attempted to "edit" a BSA file (there are more than one and they are "archives"), then most likely it has become "corrupted". (The folder path to a file is just as important as the filename.) You will need to either restore it from a backup or run "verify local files" from "Steam" or the equivalent from GOG Galaxy. "Verify" has the potential to cause other mods to need to be re-installed as well if they overwrote/replaced vanilla files, as "verify" is restoring things to the vanilla state. Such will typically turn up in game as red "graphic error" marks. (See the 'Solutions to Mesh (Red "!" icon) or Texture (solid color) problems' section of the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" article on how to identify which mod is the source of object with a graphic error.)

If you toggled AI off-and-on-again, and you still have the red "!" graphic error marks, then it is more likely that you do not have texture files where they are expected than that AI suddenly isn't working where it had previously. If you have been tinkering with the BSAs using a tool like BSA Compressor, then it becomes even more likely they have become corrupted. If you did so between the times you looked at the results in game, it becomes almost certain.

 

-Dubious-