keithinhanoi

Since I use lazygecko's Immersive Sounds - Aural Assortment mod, and it was also just updated, I can report that it and also his Immersive Sounds - Compendium mod contain new sounds for all the soul gem records. I know none of the IS - sound mods are in the STEP guides, but it's important to know that if either IS - Aural Assortment or IS - Compendium load after Soul Gems Differ, a compatibility patch would be needed in order to bring forward the names (if the sorted naming option is chosen) as well as the SGD custom mesh file locations. Also... I took a peek inside / at the new FOMOD installer by the way, and would like to say you guys have done a fantastic job with that - the images are extremely helpful, of course! It's also great that you're able to do a all-in-one BAIN / FOMOD installer. I now have intimate understanding of the intricacies of making that happen, after working with alt3rn1ty to make a BAIN wizard to work with the AOS 2 FOMOD package.

I've been testing the newest MO beta, v1.2.2 as of writing this, and because I didn't want to install over my current MO v1.1.2 folder, I thought it would be okay just to rename it to ModOrganizerOLD - but still keeping it in the .../Skyrim directory - temporarily while testing the 1.2.2 beta. After I was finished with the testing, I renamed my original MO folder back to ModOrganizer, as it it was before. Somehow, all of my custom-added mod categories have been reset to defaults, and all the mods to which I had assigned custom categories now have no categories assigned to them. I assume there's no way to fix this, but to avoid this in future, can anyone tell me where MO stores the custom category data so that I can back it up before I do any further testing of or upgrade to newer versions of MO? Thanks in advance!

No, sorry, not yet - I've been extremely slow on that "project" - but thanks for reminding me, and lighting the fire under my bottom again!

I already explained that in my earlier reply to your question: But, I believe any errors existing in plugins that TES5Edit find while loading them will show up in the messages. The thing is you are talking about removing a master after loading everything, and my recommendation is to do an immediate check for errors. Why waste time finding out things are borked in the game? Well, if you're playing "god" and manually adding a master to a plugin that is implicit (ie., TES5Edit didn't add it automatically,) and you haven't changed the order of the masters or added any records that added more masters to the list yet, then yes, this does work. I've done it a number of times. But always check for errors immediately after, of course!!!

It would also be nice to have some hand placed in some homes / shops that initially can only be stolen, and are only available for the player to take freely after they've become "friendly" enough with the occupants / owners of the homes / shops.

First thing I did was halved the resolution of the normals in DDSopt. I asked in the comments thread whether the new smelter textures will be included in the "half-size" option the next time the full FOMOD installer is updated. No answer, but I would expect it.

It seems you don't have much company in this thread, Daniel, which is a shame as you're asking for feedback. Everything you've suggested on this page of posts seems entirely sound in its logic, though since vendor's stocks get refreshed fairly frequently, the only thing I'd suggest is considering even lower chances of the vendors having any of these books. I also really like the idea of the non-tracked quest / hunts for certain books. Maybe I've missed it while skimming through this thread, but what about books placed in locations which have a library of one sort or another?

Oh dear. Yes, there are different versions of AOS.esp - four to be exact, to cover all possible combinations of Skyrim, DG and DB. The AOS.esp I opened up for my screenshots is the Skyrim + DG + DB variant, so I'll try checking the patches with the other three. Thanks for pointing out that possible snafu. EDIT: I was so worried about it, I was a "bad boy" and have stayed up past my bedtime to check into this. I checked all four variants of AOS.esp found in the AOS 2.1 installer archive, and in every case the GDO, WAF & RWT patch plugins load up fine, with no unresolved references. So at this point, kryptopyr, I think it must either be a corrupted file, or possibly somehow the copy of AOS.esp is from an outdated version of the mod. I will say that I've noticed what seems like a fairly high number of people posting about problems with the AOS 2.1 installer that were only resolved after they re-downloaded the .rar archive.

Ah, okay. But in that case, I could just replace the Soul Gems Differ - E.esp plugin, and not have to go through the whole install process?

krypto - those screen are a bit small, but I see that in the first two screenshots, the column for AOS.esp is missing!! So, that explains why you're seeing unresolved references - they're all meant to point to FormIDs in AOS. I have no idea why that would be happening for you, because now that I'm looking at the patches from AOS 2.1 as downloaded from Nexus, both the GDO and WAF patches do have AOS.esp listed as a master, and it all comes up fine in TES5Edit for me when I load the exact same set of plugins as you have: Perhaps your download of AOS 2.1 is bad and the AOS.esp is corrupted? I honestly have no idea how it wouldn't be recognized as a master otherwise. There should be some kind of error message in TES5Edit's Messages tab, though - you could check there. As for the last case of "errors" - that slight difference in the Attenuation BNAM Value was noticed by a user by the name of Shurah, and it was determined that TES5Edit changes that particular value from 9.69 to 9.68 when doing a copy override of the Sound Descriptor into another plugin. There was some concern about this being a bug in TES5Edit, so I asked the developers and they explained it's just the way the the program does rounding of floating point numbers, and the change is so small that it won't affect anything. You can read about it in the [WIPz] TES5Edit thread on the AFK Mods forum here. Long story short that difference in the value is nothing to worry about. All the other records show conflict because the AOS+RWT patch changes values in RWT back to the ones provided by AOS 2. Please note that if you change AOS.esp to load after RWT, then you don't need that patch at all. I think that's mentioned in the included read me file for the patch. Sorry that I was only able to help with one of the two issues you're seeing. But, let me know what you find out about AOS.esp not actually being recognized as a master for the GDO & WAF patch plugins - that is very strange indeed.

True, dat.

So, with the update - if I'm running Skyrim in English, and I'm happy with my gem color / glow / etc. selections, is there any reason to download and install it other than to marvel in the deliciously logical FOMOD xml code craftsmanship?

Ah well, as I said, I haven't been using the 1.2.x beta(s) until now, so I wasn't aware of the priority 0 bug. Funny thing about Distant Decal Fix - as a rebellious "partial-STEP user", my install of Distant Decal Fix was completely overridden by Vivid Landscapes - Imperial Forts and Project Parallax Remastered (both of which incorporates SP's distant decal mesh fixes). I gleefully leave DDF in my mod list because it deserves the cool silver lightning bolt icon, and reminds me of Sparrow Prince's great contribution. Nevertheless, to bring my ramblings back to the topic at hand, I'll stick it in as the priority 0, and "pretend" it's not there to continue my testing of MO 1.2.2 from the view of an intrepid new user...

Oh dear - I'm sorry! I forgot to mention the trick to getting the remove option in the contextual menu is to click in the blank spot above the name of the master you want to get rid of, as seen here: I hope that helps!

Hi lazygecko, and welcome! Thanks a bunch for addressing some of the concerns about the supposed "conflicts" between your IS mods and AOS, and explaining some of the differences between the approaches between them. As you might now, I've gotten involved in helping LoRd KoRn out with the new all-in-one FOMOD-based installer, and by going through most of the more popular compatibility patches to make sure they would work correctly with the latest release (v2.1). I also actually use IS - Aural Assortment, and have tried out IS - Footsteps, and have had a good look at those in TES5Edit to see how they work, and how they interact with AOS 2's changes. So I'd really like to say right now that I have a lot of respect for all the things that you've created and done in your mods. That said, there really is no accounting for taste - in other words, everybody has varying preferences with different kinds of sounds - so, I hope that some of the improvements found in IS - Compendium work their way back into your separate IS mods. This is because regardless of whether AOS is used, the renamed sound file scheme of IS - Compendium leads to something of an "all or nothing" choice with regards to the sounds provided by the mod. With AOS, a nice side-effect of maintaining the sound file names for any "vanilla" records is that the user can remove the AOS supplied sound file if they prefer the vanilla sound, or replace the AOS sound with one from another mod that they prefer more. This as you know may lead to sounds that don't quite work correctly with LoRd KoRn's "soundscape" changes made by AOS, but I note that most comments on the mod's thread have to do with not liking a particular sound or a few sounds, and to a lesser extent certain sounds being too loud / quiet. Now changing the sound sound files referenced by IS - Compendium wouldn't be a problem for me, with some changes in TES5Edit to the filename of the sound records in question, but most people seem to be scared off by the program. So, I suppose what I'm saying is that I hope that you will continue to maintain the your separate IS mods, thus allowing the flexibility of mixing-and-matching with other mods and the various tastes of users. Either way, I really appreciate the work you've done with this, and it's also great that you've incorporated AOS compatibility.

I can't recall exactly which ones without looking through them all, but some of the patches did not have the respective mod listed as a master in the header, and so if you just select those patches to open in TES5Edit's load plugin menu, it won't automatically load the other mods, and the references will show up as unresolved. After working on updating all of the patches for the AOS 2.1 FOMOD installer I created for LoRd KoRn, I realized that there would be a number of issues caused by not including implicit masters - especially for people using LOOT. With GDO / WAF in particular there's also the bit about the injected keywords that they both share, and TES5Edit (and I presume Skyrim) would consider whichever of those two loads first to be the originating master, even though the keywords are injected into Skyrim.esm - and a missing master situation for a plugin with injected keywords is identified by TES5Edit with italicised text for the records in question. So, I've already updated all of the AOS 2 patches to include both explicit and implicit masters, to go along with a new FOMOD and BAIN installer, which LoRd KoRn has had for some weeks, but he just hasn't had time to upload to the Nexus page and update all the description text. I can PM him, and ask whether it's okay to post a link to all the patches here, but it would be at the user's discretion to install the correct variants of the patches which have more than one option. Either way - try loading up the patches, but make sure that the corresponding mods are also ticked when you pick what to load in TES5Edit, and see if that fixes things.

There are two ways, one that is safe but may involve a few more clicks, and an another method that is potentially "unsafe": 1. Right-click on the name of the plugin in the left-hand pane of TES5Edit, and choose Clean Masters. This of course removes all masters from the plugin's header that are not referenced in any of the plugin's records. After doing that, you will need to manually add back all the desired implicit masters (ones that the patch provides compatibility for, even though there are no records referencing that master) - again by right-clicking on the plugin and choosing Add Masters... 2. If your implicit masters are listed at the end of the list in the plugin's header, you should theoretically be able to manually remove them one-by-one by right clicking on them while viewing the plugin's header record, and choosing Remove. The potential danger here is that there might actually still be records in the plugin referencing to that master, and by removing it from the header, they become invalid references. So, after manually removing masters, a check for should be done by right-clicking on the plugin name in the left-hand pane, and selecting Check for Errors. If no errors are found. then it's safe to save the plugin. Otherwise, you'll have to use option 1 above, and/or hunt down the records referencing the master that you want to remove. Absolutely it does help, and with all of the Audio Overhaul for Skyrim 2 patch plugins included with the new FOMOD installer, I've made sure to add masters even if TES5Edit didn't automatically add them. This needs to become standard practice for anyone creating compatibility patches, in the new "age of LOOT" load order sorting.

It is very likely providing support for the Nernie's City and Village Expansion food items that are found in REGS - Cities.esp, because CJ merged NCaVE into REGS - Cities.esp. Basically, every time your load your save, iNeed runs a script that checks for all of the plugins it provides compatibility with, and will add the appropriate food items, etc. if it find you're using that plugin. When using REGS with prior versions of iNeed, the script didn't find NerniesCityandVillageExpansion.esp, and so those food items weren't added to the list of things that provide nourishment in iNeed. Now, it seems that has been fixed - yay! Also really cool is the new addition of food spoilage, with hooks to wet & cold so food spoils more slowly in cold weather.

I decided to try installing 1.2.2 as a "new" user. TEST RUN #1 I moved my MO 1.1.2 install directory out of /Skyrim, and dropped the MO 1.2.2 folder from the .7z install archive right inside my /Skyrim install directory. It recognized the 3 DLCs, added them to the mod priority list in the correct order (DG, HF, then DB -- I don't have the HR-DLC installed). However, the plugins were not enabled - and they were listed in the wrong order (DG, DB, then HF). Nevertheless, I enabled the plugins in the Plugin tab. Also, in the Archives tab, Dawnguard.bsa was listed under data, while the HearthFires and Dragonborn BSAs were listed under their own separate headings. I thought this might be happening because this new version of MO adds the DG pseudo-mod with priority 0, and to check on this theory, I tried moving HF up above DG in the left-hand mod priority pane, but this only resulted in HF being assigned priority 0 as well as DG. After this happened, I clicked Refresh in the Data tab of the right-hand pane, and immediately the warning icon lit up. The warning listed was PMOP with a recommendation to "Move HearthFires after Dragonborn". I did not try using the beta "Fix" feature. Checking back in the Archives tab, I found that now it did not match the mod priority of 0 assigned to both DG & HF. So my theory might be wrong, but it seems that since MO associates priority 0 with /data in the Archives tab, perhaps the new DLC pseudo-mod feature should assign them starting with a Priority value of 1 for DG? Just to see what would happen, I manually moved HF below DB in the left-hand mod priority pane, and clicked Refresh in the Data tab. HF remained in place with priority 0, still above DB, but DB now had a priority value of 2! Even stranger, in the Archives tab, only DG was still listed under data, while then HF and DB were under separate headings (in that order.) So it appears the priority value assignment and ordering isn't working quite right yet. Then I deleted the MO 1.2.2 folder entirely, and started over again to test plugin sorting (since as mentioned above, they started off in the incorrect order). TEST RUN #2 Again the DLCs were recognized, added as priority 0, 1, 2 for DG, HF, DB but with the plugin load order as DG, DB, HF (all 3 disabled). So I enabled them as in test #1. When I clicked Sort under the Plugins tab, MO downloaded the LOOT masterlist, etc., fine, and the built-in browser window popped up with the LOOT Report. Checking in the Details tab of the report, it listed the DLC plugins in the expected correct load order of Skyrim.esm, Update.esm, DG, HF, and then DB. But then when I closed the LOOT report window, the load order in the Plugins tab remained unchanged (Skyrim, Update, DG, DB and then HF). I'm afraid that since I haven't used either of the MO 1.2.x betas before this 1.2.2 test, I'm not sure if I've missed a step to get LOOT to order things correctly - but nonetheless, in the "new" user context, this is what I'm seeing, and it would be unexpected behavior. I also noted that after using the built-in LOOT Sort feature, the warning icon lit up, this time with a log-based error, as follows: Looking through the Settings menu, I noticed that a "Display mods installed outside MO" option has been added, but when I disabled this option, all the DLCS remained listed in the mod priority pane, and with no changes in the Archives tab. So, it seems that option hasn't been implemented yet. At this point I'm stopping, because with the idiosyncrasies with the Priority value assignment to just the 3 DLCs, it doesn't make any sense to see what happens if I install the Unofficial Patch mods and try to order them between the DLCs. I've posted up the two MO debug level log files for my two test runs on pastebin.com here (#1) and here (#2). Please let me know if you want me to try any further tests. PS., Shouldn't we start a new thread for test reporting on this MO 1.2.2 beta????

I'll check tomorrow, as it's way too late here already!

krypto - are you looking at the patches that the AOS v2.1 fomod installer supplies, and if yes, which ones have unresolved references?

As far as I am concerned, I'm never switching back, so you can pry these replacement windows from my cold dead fingers. But then I'm no STEP purist - so what do I know?

Hi, since I use AOS and have helped out in updating / making patches for AOS 2, I can tell you that since the patch names were changed to "AOS2_...", BOSS won't recognize any of them. But what Kuldebar said is generally true. Most recent mods / patches have not been added to BOSS' masterlist via user submission, and so it doesn't "know" where to put them in your load order. Even if you use LOOT, with some of the AOS patches you may still need to add to LOOT's metadata for them (similar to adding a user rule for mods in BOSS) to make sure they load after AOS and the other mod. This can happen when a patch doesn't have both mods its patching listed as "masters" in the patch plugin's header. To see how to edit metadata for a plugin in LOOT, check out Gopher's introductory video about LOOT.

Please understand that LOOT does not "discover" dirty edits (ITM, UDR and deleted navmesh records). It uses exactly the same system for identifying dirty edits as BOSS: Through file CRC check matched to user contributed reports. Have you read the LOOT read me? If you haven't - you really should! But to save time, here's the relevant text from the section regarding LOOT's CRC check for mods that are user-reported as having dirty edits (my emphasis added in bold): So, the ONLY way that you will see LOOT reporting a plugin has dirty edits is that They have been reported by users and added to LOOT's masterlist that gets downloaded when you run it The CRC of the plugin file reported matches the CRC of your plugin on your machineSo, bottom line, if you get a dirty edit report, it means that LOOT has not seen your cleaned plugin, because it's not in the correct place. The SR (original, not LE, but I think LE also) method of cleaning the "official" Update.esm & DLC .esm plugins is to use the TES5Edit "backup" feature after cleaning each one, so you can add the cleaned .esm as a mod in MO, and return the backups to the real <Skyrim>/Data directory, and then renaming back to their original names. This method results in MO seeing the cleaned "official" .esm plugins as overwriting the one in the real <Skyrim>/Data directory, and so as long as you are running LOOT through MO (either installed in its executables list if using MO 1.1.2, or the built in LOOT sort feature if using the latest beta) then it will see the cleaned "official" .esm plugins as having different CRC values from the originals, and you won't get the dirty edits reporting. The second advantage of this method is that it leaves the original "official" content files intact in the real <Skyrim>/Data directory, so Steam won't see them as missing, and it's less likely you will have to bother with re-installing Skyrim from scratch if something goes wrong. As for the differences of dirty edits reporting between BOSS and LOOT - keep in mind that LOOT is getting more attention now in terms of user-submitted reports of mods with dirty edits. So, in many cases, it's more accurate - or more importantly, it's more up-to-date that BOSS in reporting mods with dirty edits.

Hmm, so would "a mod that affects Morthal in addition to the quest mod ORS Morthal Pain" include ETaC for example? I ask because when I went through Morthal about a week and a half ago, I saw that very dremora stuck in the pond. I haven't been back since then, so I'm curious if that's something you (or somebody else) fixed in the newest ETaC - ORS patch? No patience to make tutorials??? You've just made one here - and I think it's a great primer! Thanks for this, and some of the important tips to make it all work correctly! I think I'm inspired to start looking at some navmesh areas needing help.