Helpful notes on using Mod Organizer with TTW

Post by **Groucho14E** » Sun May 04, 2014 7:36 am

I've just spent a few hours hunting down the cause of a crash in my TTW profile in Mod Organizer. I want to make sure to share my experience for anyone who might be having the same sort of problem.

My problem looked like this:

"If using particular combinations of mods, when I run the exe (through FNV4GB), a little window which says "Loading Game" and contains a green progress bar pops up in the middle of my monitor, and then it vanishes once the bar gets about 1/4 of the way across. At that same moment, FalloutNV.exe disappears from the Task Manager. This all takes three seconds.

"What normally happens at this point is that, after the "loading game" window disappears, a little black window appears in the upper left corner of my monitor, expands to full-screen, and then the Copyrights/Bethesda/Obsidian/Please Stand By -> Main Menu slideshow happens." (this was going to be a post asking for help)

The particular combination of mods was TTWInteriors and/or JIP Companions Command & Control plus any of the following: Interior Lighting Overhaul, Flashlight NVSE, and Vault 22 Flora Overhaul. Deactivating one of them solved the problem. This was confusing as because FNVEdit didn't show any conflicts among them.

The source of the problem seems to be in Mod Organizer v1.1.2's handling of Fallout BSA's. My solution was:

Deselecting ALL BSA's which were not official New Vegas files under the "Archives" tab. Even the Fallout 3 ones.

Moving Flaslight NVSE from FOMM to Mod Organizer. I had mods which were part of the Unified HUD project installed through FOMM. I was able to keep JIP CC&C in FOMM.

Unpacking Flashlight NVSE's BSA (might not be necessary if you do my fourth step third).

Making the file override priority of the mods match the load order of their plugins.

I don't know why this was necessary with TTW but not with regular New Vegas. I also don't know why this is an issue with Fallout but not with Skyrim. It might also be fixed in a newer/future version of Mod Organizer. But now I can have companion commands AND a flashlight, which is enough for me.

Groucho

Post by **plumjuice** » Sun May 04, 2014 8:21 am

Isnt this to do with UI mods and MO in general?

I am also very skeptical of this being a TTW specific issue.

Anyone else use MO?

DISCLAIMER I dont use MO.

Post by **KeltecRFB** » Sun May 04, 2014 11:44 am

Actually this is the first time I have heard/read anyone else use something else than FOMM or NMM.

Post by TJ » Sun May 04, 2014 12:33 pm

I've used MO with TTW. Flashlight NVSE is a HUD mod. MO doesn't handle HUD mods properly. Your problem is in the way you installed your HUD mods, and you should use FOMM to fix it even if you're gonna use MO with TTW.

Post by **manos** » Sun May 04, 2014 1:01 pm

Yep!

I'm using MO and i just had the same issue and guess what: with the same mods!

English is not my native language so tell me if I misspelled.

Fore those you don't know Mod Organizer at all, otherwise ignore the first part:

Mod Organizer doesn't install the mod in the "Data" folder. It create a virtual "Data" folder to install your mods.

With MO, you can create several profiles with specifics "ini settings", mods construction.

You can also give priority to your mods without reinstall them every time.

Example: "NMC's textures pack" and "Poco Bueno". Let's say you want Poco Bueno to overwrite NMC's textures pack.

With Nexus Mod Manager or Fallout Mod Manager you will have to install NMC's first and Poco Bueno after it.

But if you want to switch to another texture pack or if you rather the NMC's textures pack over Poco Bueno, you'll have to remove them all and reinstall them again, right?

With MO, you just have to move your textures pack like you would do it for a plugin in your load order.

MO recreate the virtual "Data" folder every time you give a priority to a mod or another. With MO, the real "Data" folder stay untouched, just like a fresh install.

With NMM or FOMM, to install a mod over another one, you have to be sure because remove them and reinstall them again take times.

With MO, you only have to move a mod before or after another one just like for the load order, it's "much much much faster"

More information here: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/1334/? (MO Nexus page)

Here: http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Mod_Organizer (MO guide from STEP)

And here: http://wiki.step-project.com/User:EssArrBee/FalloutNewVegas (specific FNV guide, Last Update: 2 May 2014)

Now let's talk about your problem.

Obviously, those who are not familiar with MO, will still have some troubles to understand ;)

I suppose that you know essentials things like how to mod FNV, what is and how to handle your load order, etc..

I'm not sure about what could be the problem but i had this issue since i tried to add "JiP-CC&C".

JiP-CC&C work only with NVSE 4.2b4 so i installed it with this mod, i was using NVSE 3.2b4 before that and everything was fine. So i believed it was something about NVSE but i saw a weird thing with MO.

If you installed "Project Nevada", "oHUD" or any mod that modify the "hud_main_menu.xml" with MO (without FOMM), this important file just disappear from the "MO's mods folder".

It shouldn't but when you run "uHUD" (with FOMM through MO), it use this files to merge all of the "UI or HUD mods" : uHUD (FOMM through MO) doesn't make a copy of "hud_main_menu.xml", it just use it to create new files including of the "UI or HUD mods".

So what? The first time you will run "uHUD" with FOMM through MO it will works... (create a mod with the "overwrite" folder which contains the new UI / HUD files, created by "uHUD") ...but if you add more "UI or HUD mods" after you will have to run it again.

The second time you will run it, "uHUD" won't find all of the needed files because they being used the first time. (Project Nevada is the perfect example, if you want to recreate this)

Now if you install ALL of those mods with FOMM through MO, it will create a "new mod" in the "overwrite folder" with all of the needed files. (a fresh install)

You can't install those mods directly with MO, you really have to install them with FOMM through MO.

[quote="Groucho14E"] The particular combination of mods was TTWInteriors and/or JIP Companions Command & Control plus any of the following: Interior Lighting Overhaul, Flashlight NVSE, and Vault 22 Flora Overhaul. Deactivating one of them solved the problem. This was confusing as because FNVEdit didn't show any conflicts among them.[/quote]

To me everything was fine before adding "JiP-CC&C" but even after removed it I wasn't able to use Interior Lightning, Vault22 flora and TTW interior project together but no problem with Flashlight NVSE.

I tried several combinations by giving them much or less priority but no success. I think it's something related to MO, the way mods are install with it.

You can try to reinstall completely MO, backup your mods folder or ini setting is maybe not a good idea in this case. It would be better to reinstall your mods once again just like a fresh install.

Also, I'm not sure it's a good idea to extract all of the BSA (MO ask for it every time) when using TWW.

If you read all of this, i hope your eyes aren't to painful... ;)

Post by **Groucho14E** » Mon May 05, 2014 1:34 am

Plumjuice: I don't know enough to say that the problem is TTW-specific, just that the problem only occurs for me when TTW is installed. It's most likely a problem with Mod Organizer which TTW is bringing out. My experience with Mod Organizer has been that for every two big problems it solves, it adds one small problem.

TJ: I don't think that whatever was happening was as simple as incorrect installation of UI mods. I had all my UI mods installed through FOMM into the Data directory, independent of Mod Organizer, and I had no problems when TTW wasn't active in Mod Organizer. I could play normal New Vegas with JIP CC&C, FlashlightNVSE, and NVInteriors, but as soon as I included TTW, boom - crash. Even now, after implementing my solution from the first post, if I mark any BSA that isn't vanilla New Vegas or super-simple asset overrides, FalloutNV.exe crashes immediately. It is incredibly odd to me that giving Mod Organizer archive-priority control over, say, CaliberX.bsa causes a crash if and only if JIP Companions, TTW, and a mod which modifies interiors are also active.

Manos: Thank you for commenting. It's good to know that the problem is reproducible and not just one person screwing something up.

Groucho

P.S. I only extracted Flashlight NVSE's BSA for troubleshooting purposes. I don't normally do that.

Post by **manos** » Mon May 05, 2014 3:12 pm

I don't know if there is a limit to the amount of BSA that the engine can load maybe it's something about this...

I was looking for someone with a similar problem and i saw your post with the exact same mods so i had to answer :)

I know it won't help you that much but at least now we know there is something!

Question: do you always leave BSA alone when you install a mod?

Post by TJ » Mon May 05, 2014 8:40 pm

I've talked to Tannin about BSA loading. It's worth noting that Mod Organizer loads BSA's slightly differently than Vanilla/ other mod managers. It will load the declared BSAs (the ones listed in the inis,) then load Mod added BSAs in the order of the plugin (based on your load order, even if it's different than what's listed in the BSAs tab,) then it'll load loose files, then it'll load BSAs with no plugin attached in the order they are in on the BSAs tab.

Post by **Groucho14E** » Mon May 05, 2014 9:39 pm

Manos, I leave BSA's alone except when I want something out of one for my own private modding or when I am isolating a problem. I've heard that Bethesda games load loose files faster than archived files. I've also heard that the difference isn't big enough to be noticeable. Someone with more knowledge than me might have a more definitive answer for you.

TJ: I didn't know some of those details, so thank you!

Post by TJ » Mon May 05, 2014 9:58 pm

[quote=Groucho14E]I've heard that Bethesda games load loose files faster than archived files.[/quote]

Here's another tip: An uncompressed BSA loads at about the same speed as loose files, but takes up more space. A compressed BSA takes up less space, but is slower to load due to being uncompressed on the fly. There are roughly 10 levels of compression you can use, depending on your BSA program. Speed and size varies accordingly.