Kelmych

I've also been using it for a while and like it.

In the game I started after the initial version of the guide I didn't have any CTDs until I was roughly level 15, by the way. Even then I haven't had many. I had a few earlier, but in each case I realized I was going places I shouldn't, and I reverted to a slightly earlier save game.

Until Skyrim the plugin modification date/time was the only way the Bethesda game engines did plugin ordering . The CK/GECK still use it :facepalm: . I was only wondering about using the initial fINIp3 run instead of copying the default INI file. The rest of INI tweaking would happen later.

Using COC is dangerous in any Bethesda game. That doesn't mean it isn't useful but a lot of care is needed if it is used because it can break game scripts and potentially cause CTDs. Before going to a particular cell you need to make sure it is one of the ones that is "safe" for using with COC. I don't know why you picked Arlington Library or Rivet City, but those wouldn't be places I would use for COC and maybe even fast travel, at least until the player had been to these areas legitimately. Even then there are possible CTDs in these areas. Arlington Library is at the edge of a Talon Company group, a bunch of raiders, and some Supermutants. The game engine can be fairly challenged there because of this. I had to get to it by going to south of the library and then carefully going north while avoiding Talon Company. You might look at Jefferson - Rivet city crash fix to see if it fixes the bug when you are in the outdoor Rivet City cell; I haven't been able to check this. If I walked too close to the the Supermutie camp early in the game I often got CTDs. In my game I avoided the Supermutant camp near Rivet City until I was at high enough level to survive them; by then some of them were already dead. By the way, those are two of the worst areas in the game for stability. I managed to go to them without a CTD, but I had to be careful. I didn't find many areas with stability problems in the game, by the way.

All the comments in this thread have been addressed in a guide update except the pre-installation checklist comment. Would it make sense to run fINIp3 early vs. the steps you suggest (in which case the order of when it is run it will be changed), or are the steps you suggest also needed for Windows 10? The creating bashed patch section you don't like has been in the process of a larger change for a while; the plan is to move a lot of that section to a new page and add a table (3 columns) of plugins and recommended tags. I haven't had time to build the page with a table yet. Yes, it takes experience with the game to decide which bash tags are appropriate (this is true for all games that used these). In general the problem are the small mods that add items or modify stats since many of them don't use values or item models that are compatible with the main mods in the game. I mentioned some example in other threads a few months ago. The Puce Moose mods are another example of these; some (but not all) of its tags need to be removed since the object values aren't always consistent with FWE. One paragraph in that section is about lock times. Fallout 3 game engine uses these for plugin order; MO hides most of this. The Skyrim game engine uses the newer method of setting plugin order. Users have asked about these for FO3. File time values are unfortunately important whenever the Creation Kit (TES) or GECK (Fallout) are used, even in Skyrim. Wrye Bash/Flash are used to modify these so CK or GECK can be used. Even if you are not creating new plugins, the CK/GECK is needed when merging plugins if two or more plugins include Navmesh objects. That paragraph will eventually be moved. For fose you want the Current beta version: v1.3 b2. The file that is then downloaded is fose_v1_3_beta2.7z.

MO itself doesn't load the files, it provides pointers to the game engine for the files. I would expect hidden files would not be loaded by the game engine. Edit: Ninja'd; GrantSP won.

It is useful to do but I don't think it is critical. The usefulness depends in part on whether you want to get some VRAM reduction by reducing some of the texture sizes, particularly the normal maps for exterior textures. The procedure can be the one in the SR:LE guide or the one in the DDSopt Quick Start guide; the Quick Start procedure allows more selectivity in selecting which texture types are reduced in size or use a different format but it involves more steps.

It might be fairly easy to update the patch to 2.3, although the version you mention would be better for the tracer glitch.

The CPD guide doesn't include very many mods so merges shouldn't be necessary, unlike most of the modded Skyrim games.

These indicate that an object has a record or subrecord with an invalid value. It doesn't always cause problems, but I don't know how to tell this unless I see a problem in the game or while running game utilities that seems to be associated with this. For example, when running DynDOLOD for Skyrim a mod I use had some unresolvable errors and it caused DynDOLOD to fail. Sometimes the record/subrecord can be deleted to solve the problem, and sometimes it can be ignored. When possible I try to determine what the proper value should be and insert it with xEdit.

Yes. There are always places in Bethesda RPG games, including FO3, that are "locked" until some sequence of events happens. If you COC into these areas it breaks the associated game scripts that create/open the lock. Fast travel is a little safer, but once in a while it can also sometimes break game scripts. I know users like to use COC to test a game, but it isn't recommended since it can cause problems. It doesn't always cause problems but it's hard to know. However, it's always a bad idea to COC to an area that is "locked".

There are other retexture packs in the guide that include the 11 textures that Acoraito retextured, so it can be left out. Do other users have similar problems? I haven't seen this myself. Have you looked in FO3Edit at the differences between having a bashed patch vs. not having it? By the way, any transfer into the Rivet City shop area before using the dialogues in the game to allow access will cause significant problems. I've tried it before. For example, when choosing the science lab at Rivet City as the starting point (as I did in one playthrough) the shops area is not available. If this start point is used you need to go away from the rivet city area for a while and then come back later. Teleporting into that area before it was properly opened in the game caused CTDs for me. As mentioned previously, using COCs can cause significant game problems unless they are used temporarily and the game isn't saved after doing this. Even then there can be problems. I ended up choosing the Robot HQ start site in my recent playthrough which I found more stable and more interesting. I've been looking at a recent small fix mod on Nexus which eliminates one of the Supermutants near Rivet City. The mod claims to fix a CTD problem. I've have seen this CTD if I get too close to these Supermutants.

Thanks for doing this. When it's finished you might want to look into posting on Nexus . I noticed that Earache42 is intermittently active there. By the way, what is the more recent version of eXcalibr.; I though the one in the guide was the most recent. If there is one that is more recent it should also be added to the guide. The guide doesn't include the xCalibr Universe mod. Earache42 pulled it off Nexus years ago since one of the forum users became particularly abusive. It's still available on Moddb but that version isn't very easy to get and setup.

I found that by waiting until a little later in the game to go to those places I didn't get a CTD.

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I've seen occasional CTDs near Rivet City and Arlington Library. They did not happen in a repeatable way when I saw then so I was never able to determine whether it was caused by a particular set of mods or by the game engine. I have seen CTDs near Rivet City, especially early in the game, even when only a few mods were used. A few additional comments: If you are using MMM or are playing at a fairly challenging difficulty levels, both of these areas are one that require a fair amount of experience before traveling there.Using COC and fast travel can cause problems with the not-terribly-stable game engine. These errors seem to accumulate, and as time progresses the game becomes increasingly less stable.There is a known engine problem near Rivet City with the adjacent supermutants that shows up sometimes.

I'm sorry you don't like the current version of the Create a Bashed Patch section. It has evolved based on user comments, questions, and fairly widespread misunderstandings of bashed patches. I think you will find portions of the presented information is hard to find in the official documentation or isn't available. This section is intended as a reference section that intentionally provides more detail than some other sections that are minimalistic installation instructions. It still won't answer all the questions, even in conjunction with the official documentation, but is intended to address some of the ones that are frequently asked.It is intended to be used along with the official documentation; I'll make that more clear.

Since 20th century weapons is optional the guide will be changed to make using the patch optional, used only when 20th century weapons is used. Thanks for noticing this error.

The eXcalibr ammo mod is still one of the most popular mods. It provides alternate weapon rounds that are used by many mods. I would suggest using it even if 20th century weapons isn't used.

There aren't any replacements for these. Just leave them out of your installation until they return somewhere.

Do you want to add this to the Nexus or another site so others can use it? Some words about this problem will be added to the guide.

Sorry. I thought the guide had already been fixed already. As noted by mcshame, MO should handle the mod without any problems.

I agree. I also like the engraved versions since they suggest that more effort was used to create the weapon and the smith felt it was worth adding engraving.

The high rate texture pack is very useful. The mod you reference is an optimized version of the high res texture pack. You can that mod, or the one mentioned in the STEP guide , to get the optimized high res textures. If you use the one in the STEP guide you also need the high res texture pack from Bethesda since some of the textures don't need optimization. So the high res textures are good, and the optimized versions are better.