Kelmych

I'm starting to test Mator Smash with Fallout 3; as with the other Bethesda games it certainly seems to have the potential to greatly simplify patching. Following an example in the Video Tutorial I made a New Setting and then selected Build and Build from plugins. When I do this I get an invalid pointer operation. There are 15 record types underneath Records added after hitting OK when receiving this error.

A number of the ingestibles require a manual patch loading after the bashed patch because there is no bash tag for Effects records. I haven't looked at this particular load order to see which is the proper order. Eventually we will have some automated patching that properly handles this - Mator Smash looks quite promising.

The Mator Smash utility will be added to the guide very soon for experienced users to start testing with FO3. It's still in alpha, isn't completely trouble free yet for FO3 (but I've seen only a few problems), and requires a good level of understanding of Fallout data records. Once we create and test some settings for FO3 it certainly looks like it will replace Wrye Flash, providing more extensive patching than the FO3 Wrye Flash. This will take a while, of course.

Users of the Clear and Present Danger guide for Fallout 3 have sometimes reported the same problems when following the guide section on cleaning vanilla esm files, by the way. The cleaning section of the guide was taken from the Skyrim guide and edited. I'm not sure what the differences in system setup were for the users who received the different behavior.

I don't what happens when "saveini" is used when running Mod Organizer. The safest way to change the bindings (or any other INI parameter) when using MO would be to change the reference in the INI file using the MO INI Editor for the current profile.

What xEdit means with this statement is that it includes all mods that are "masters" for the plugin you checked; these are the plugins that are the originators for any object modified by the plugin you checked. It doesn't include any mods that also change the same records. If you want to see all the mods that affect the same records you would need to use some of the conflict filtering that is described in this reference for xEdit (it happens to be an FNVEdit manual but is also relevant to all of xEdit)

STEP already includes most of these. I think some of the mods in the STEP list fix some of the other issues mentioned by Arthmoor, but I'll have to check. This list was discussed a long time ago on the forums.

Unfortunately there isn't much if any good tutorial information with a lot of good examples; there are a few documents on Wrye Bash/Flash and the bashed patch but they are for users with intermediate level background. There are videos on Wrye Bash/Flash and xEdit, but these are mostly on how to do a specific task and not on providing a good overview. I'l provide some short answers to some of the questions. If you add a lot of mods to a Bethesda game you need a bashed patch if the mods being added are trying to replace parts of the content provided in vanilla game or provided by another mod. If you add mods that are self contained and don't use a lot of the content in the vanilla game you don't typically need a bashed patch. A Merge Patch uses the data from the last loading plugin for the object type. The two major situations for which a bashed patch is needed are: if you have an object (e.g., a new weapon) from a mod and another mod wants to change a few characteristics (e.g., the damage caused) then you need a bashed patch unless the second mod duplicated all the data from the first mod and replaced only the damage caused. This isn't common; usually the second mod provides incomplete data about the object. Without the bashed patch the game uses only the incomplete data from the second mod. This is the typical behavior when using the Merged Patch.If you have an object (e.g., a new weapon) and you want it distributed to vendors, to NPCs for their use, and in loot from containers then you often need a bashed patch to properly add the object to the lists maintained in the game so the object is actually given randomly to some NPCs, is added to the inventory of each relevant individual vendor, and is randomly found in containers.The bashed patch provides this function for some object types, but not all, and some properties of an object, but not all. The boxes I suggested not checking are because they don't don't typically do anything when checked. You can check them but they generally won't do anything; the Tweak Names works but mot users don't like the simplistic way it works.

You should get the full picture if you load all the plugins into FO3Edit. I was surprised with the screenshot picture you posted since you had eliminated mods. The only time I eliminate any mods when loading FO3Edit is when I'm cleaning a mod or using the Merge script with a few mods. There are a few mods that are merged into the bashed patch and deactivated by Wrye Flash, but if you want to see them in FO3Edit activate them before running it.

Did you try loading the DALCO patches early in the load order and using the Names bash tag to see whether Wrye Flash picks up the revised names?

I don't remember the Merged Plugin doing any kind of sophisticated editing; I thought it picked the most recent entry for each object in the set of objects across the included plugins much like the game engine. Edit: ninjaed

Personally I have taken the same approach as Kryptopyr. Several years ago I looked at multiple mods that changed movement speeds and built my own version which is at least somewhat different than any of the available ones; I found parts of all the available ones that I didn't like. One approach might be to provide a file, probably a spreadsheet, with the information about speeds or build a simple UI tool that helps users select a set of movement speeds.

Perhaps there are several mechanisms for setting key bindings. I know that at least some of the key bindings can be done in the xml files for the UI mods; you can find some of this in the DarN UI xml files. When using Mod Organizer it's a lot better to avoid dynamic editing of the INI files. fINIp 3 is used to setup the initial base set of INI files, comparable to the default INI files created by Bethesda. Once that is done it isn't used any further.

The way I view the difference between xEdit Merge and Wrye Bash/Flash is that the former merges based on some straightforward general purpose rules, while the latter allows user-created tags on individual plugin record types/categories to selectively alter the choices made at a record level when the merge is done. Isn't this the same as the difference between Mator Merge and Mator Smash? I also thought there was a lot of common code between the two Mator tools, but having common code doesn't always mean that two programs should be integrated. Perhaps these could be integrated, but the json files for each tag seem to have a fair amount of code specific to each tag type, so the programs might be better remaining separate. Or perhaps I'm also confused.

A better example is WaterPurified, FormID 000151A3. Here FWE changes the effects of water, and these changes are shown in all 4 of the plugins you mention which load after Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch.esm. However, the changes are in Effects records and, as noted in some recent posts in this forum, the FWE changes present in these 4 different plugins are not included in the bashed patch. A manual patch that loads after the bashed patch is needed to fix this. It's a limitation of the bashed patch process, not a user error.

No, in addition to removing some settings that don't do anything fINIp 3 also sets the game parameters at reasonable values; some of the defaults are not always reasonable. It doesn't disable anything I'm aware of. I'm not aware of any changes in key bindings done through the INI files. The ones I am aware of are done in the various xml files for the user interface.

I don't understand the FO3Edit display. When I look at Beer in FO3Edit I see columns for Fallout3.esm, Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch.esm, FO3 Wanderers Edition - Main File.esm, FO3 Wanderers Edition - Main File.esp, UUF3P - FWE Patch.esp, and Blackened FWE + MMM + EVE + Project Beauty.esp. Where are these plugins in your FO3Edit? Did you disable these plugins or is there a problem with your Mod Organizer and/or FO3Edit? By the way, I see no Bashed Patch entry for this in my game, which is not surprising since the differences are in Effects and there are no bash tags for Effects. If Wrye Flash is run when only the plugins you show are active then it's possible the bashed patch might have an entry for Beer because of the bashed patch rules for handling a record when only one plugin changes values.

I don't understand what you mean by saving the INI files in the game. fINIp 3 changes Fallout.ini and FalloutPrefs.ini in <yourname>\Documents\My Games\Fallout3, and after this is done copy these INI files to the Mod Organizer profiles you use (as described in the guide). Any further editing of these files needs to be done in Mod Organizer with the INI editor or the Configurator; this changes only the versions of the INI files in the folder for the active profile. Mod Organizer uses the INI files in the profile folder(s), not the ones in <yourname>\Documents\My Games\Fallout3.

The Pipboy replacer recommended in the CPD Fallout 3 guide doesn't change the Pipboy model so it doesn't cause issues like this; the Pipboy Readius makes more extensive changes.

If you are using SR:LE then the STEP Vanilla Textures aren't directly relevant unless you also use all of the mods in STEP:Core. You can also try using Optimized Vanilla Textures instead of using DDSopt to do the optimization yourself; these work with SR:LE. These are just the vanilla Skyrim textures. You will need to optimize mod textures like Falskaar yourself, assuming they need optimization. Most mods don't need additional texture optimization unless you are trying to reduce texture resolution and VRAM use vs. just improving texture quality.

There are no default mod groups. You have to create them. xEdit supports them once created. The two url references in the guide I mentioned are for articles about them.

Go for it!

The Merging Plugins guide has short versions of some of the information relevant to merging; it does need a little updating fbut is generally fine. It includes some pointers to information on ModGroups.

You need to hit the green/white "Special BBcode" icon, third from the left on the menu bar. Click it and select Spoiler.

I agree that the basic version is more appropriate for STEP; I will continue with the full version since it is closer to what I want.