Re-Order Mods for Stardew Valley

[yarrowtea]

Recently, SMAPI for Stardew Valley had an update.

 

The way mods are ordered in the Stardew Valley Vortex are by when they were downloaded. This is a massive issue when in order to update a mod, you need to completely uninstall and reinstall it. SMAPI needs to be at the top of the load order, but in order to make that happen, I would have to get rid of all of my mods and then reinstall them in the exact same order as I had them when it worked.

 

There is no Plugins tab in Vortex for Stardew Valley, which is how I've seen people online explain how to redo load order.

 

Is there any way around completely wiping and redownloading all of the mods I have in order to get the game to even launch again, or do I just have to suck it up and do it?

Edited December 26, 2020 by yarrowtea

[Pickysaurus]

Can you give an example of an issue this causes that I can try to replicate?

 

I'm pretty sure you're misunderstanding.

 

Anything that overwrites SMAPI, you can use the File Conflicts screen (that you probably haven't even seen yet) to mark SMAPI as "Load before".

 

However I don't think there are any mods that directly conflict with SMAPI, making this a moot point.

[yarrowtea]

Can you give an example of an issue this causes that I can try to replicate?

 

I'm pretty sure you're misunderstanding.

 

Anything that overwrites SMAPI, you can use the File Conflicts screen (that you probably haven't even seen yet) to mark SMAPI as "Load before".

 

However I don't think there are any mods that directly conflict with SMAPI, making this a moot point.

I don't know how to access File Conflicts, and I don't know if it would help if the issue isn't with SMAPI, but with Vortex itself.

 

Before redownloading SMAPI, it at the top of the load order and everything worked just fine. However, now that it's at the bottom, the game won't even launch. I need to get it back to the top of the load order, but the only way that I know how to do that without the Plugins tab is to uninstall and reinstall all the mods I already have.

 

I'm wondering if there is another way to change the load order besides that.

[Pickysaurus]

 

Can you give an example of an issue this causes that I can try to replicate?

 

I'm pretty sure you're misunderstanding.

 

Anything that overwrites SMAPI, you can use the File Conflicts screen (that you probably haven't even seen yet) to mark SMAPI as "Load before".

 

However I don't think there are any mods that directly conflict with SMAPI, making this a moot point.

I don't know how to access File Conflicts, and I don't know if it would help if the issue isn't with SMAPI, but with Vortex itself.

 

Before redownloading SMAPI, it at the top of the load order and everything worked just fine. However, now that it's at the bottom, the game won't even launch. I need to get it back to the top of the load order, but the only way that I know how to do that without the Plugins tab is to uninstall and reinstall all the mods I already have.

 

I'm wondering if there is another way to change the load order besides that.

 

 

As before, can you give me some specific mods you're using to replicate it.

 

The position in the mods list is largely irrelevant (or at least, it should be).

 

My thinking is you're using a mod that isn't compatible with SDV 1.5 which is causing the launch to fail. Are you also able to provide your SMAPI log from a crashed session? There should be a button on the mods toolbar to generate/share it.

[Molligru]

Hi, I'm reupping this thread for informational purposes because I had a similar issue.

The way SMAPI handles dependencies is through the mods themselves.  The only way to affect load order (other than literally renaming the mod folders to change their sorting order, which is obviously not ideal) is to edit the dependent mod's manifest.json file to add a false dependency on the other mod:

{
	"Name": "Mod Name",
	"Author": "Mod Author",
	"Version": "1.0.0",
	"Description": "Description of the mod.",
	"UniqueID": "ModAuthor.SecondMod",
	"MinimumApiVersion": "3.0.0",
	"UpdateKeys": [ "ModDrop:1073357"],
	"ContentPackFor": {
		"UniqueID": "Pathoschild.ContentPatcher",
		"MinimumVersion": "1.19.0"
	    },
	"Dependencies": [
		{
			"UniqueID": "ModAuthor.ModName",
			"IsRequired": false,
		},
	]
}

As I understand it, Vortex doesn't have the ability to manage adding false dependencies for you, so it can't really resolve this sort of conflict.  Maybe some day Vortex's Stardew Valley extension will support this, but it'd have to resolve some questions first (e.g., Does it take ownership of manifest.json files entirely?  Record its changes separately and reformat them while retaining external changes?  Just plonk the changes in with comment markup?  What happens if someone changes a manifest.json in a way Vortex doesn't expect?).

Hopefully this helps someone else out there if they do a search for a similar issue!  If not, thanks for indulging me while I worked through this "out loud", so to speak.  And if I'm wrong about any of this, please feel free to correct me in the replies!

---

References:

1. https://stardewmodding.wiki.gg/wiki/Tutorial:_How_to_Add_a_False_Dependency_for_Load_Orders
2. https://stardewmodding.wiki.gg/wiki/Load_Order