How does Vortex deal with pre-existing files that have been installed outside of Vortex?

[lavarob]

Figured out I could try to overwrite a manually installed mod by installing it through Vortex and then uninstall to remove it completely... but that doesn't seem to work. Any idea why though? Is there any way to go around this "feature".

 

(Vortex seems to create some sort of ".vortex_backup" file of those files that are already in the game folder - my main question here is that is there any way to make vortex just dump the files in the game folder without hanging on to the previous files)

Edited August 6, 2020 by lavarob

[Tannin42]

It is in fact a feature, Vortex tries its damnedest to not affect the game in any way that can't be repaired - e.g. by replacing files where we don't know where they came from or if/how you would recover them.

Imaging it's your own mod you're working on and didn't realize another mod you're installing would overwrite the file you had been working on.

Vortex's job is to add mods to your game and cleanly revert the changes it made if you want to get rid of them. It's not intended to clean up stuff you've added manually or with other tools.

 

What Vortex does is this: if it _would_ replace an existing file, it will rename the file to <whatever it was called before>.vortex_backup. On purging its own files it restores those .vortex_backup files.

 

If you actually want to remove it, you can just search for .vortex_backup files and then batch-delete them. (a good file explorer - i use Directory Opus (https://www.gpsoft.com.au/) - will have the option to find files in all subdirectories or you can write a command line script or something)

[lavarob]

It is in fact a feature, Vortex tries its damnedest to not affect the game in any way that can't be repaired - e.g. by replacing files where we don't know where they came from or if/how you would recover them.

Imaging it's your own mod you're working on and didn't realize another mod you're installing would overwrite the file you had been working on.

Vortex's job is to add mods to your game and cleanly revert the changes it made if you want to get rid of them. It's not intended to clean up stuff you've added manually or with other tools.

 

What Vortex does is this: if it _would_ replace an existing file, it will rename the file to <whatever it was called before>.vortex_backup. On purging its own files it restores those .vortex_backup files.

 

If you actually want to remove it, you can just search for .vortex_backup files and then batch-delete them. (a good file explorer - i use Directory Opus (https://www.gpsoft.com.au/) - will have the option to find files in all subdirectories or you can write a command line script or something)

 

Thanks. It worked out with the file manager.