Fallout 4: Mod it till it breaks. My personal guide.

[Fenris95 3]

Hey guys, spent the last week working on this guide since the others weren't current and one provided information that I didn't agree with. It's not completely final but it works in it's current state and is how I would play the game myself.

 

I've removed references to cleaning individual mods until I figure out if that's even necessary.

 

I've also split the guide into two halves as there were too many references for one page to handle.

 

https://wiki.step-project.com/User:Fenris95/FO4_-_Fenris%27_Mod_Guide_Part_1

 

https://wiki.step-project.com/User:Fenris95/FO4_-_Fenris%27_Mod_Guide_Part_2

 

Good luck on your travels through the guide and hopefully you make it out to the other side without too much issue.

 

Feel free to add the donate to step button at the top etc. I'm not technical enough to figure it out myself.

[baronaatista 28]

Just looking the guide over... you've put a lot of work into this clearly... wondering if you're doing anything to deal with pre-combined meshes in world space mods?

 

Small note, the 'glass glare fix' mod... while labeled a fix, is dubious as to the nature of the 'fix'... it may deal with the issue of glare, but it does so by completely removing reflectivity on glass, which leaves those objects looking rather odd IMO. I used to use 'better fake reflections but removed it for that reason - it was also causing said materials to pick up lighting and colors from the environment with NAC.

[Fenris95 3]

I added 'bUseCombinedObjects=0' to the .ini tweaks yesterday, that should sort out that problem, right? If not let me know if there's something else that I need to add.

 

Thanks for the info about the glass glare fix mod, I'd rather not include it if that's the 'fix' it provides. :)

[baronaatista 28]

bUseCombinedObjects=0 will disable using pre-combined meshes, which may help some of the issues that arise from using conflicting worldspace mods, but one way or another there will be issues.  If you're playing with this loadout in your game right now I'd wager you're experiencing heavy frame drops in certain areas (with that many worldspace mods, probably lots of areas), regardless of how killer your PC is, or how optimized your setup is.  In addition, there will likely be a lot of texture/object flickering, certain items (the world, buildings, doors) disappearing entirely, etc.  

 

Compatibility patches for this need to be made in the CK, but its a laborious and time-consuming process.  I'm not at all an expert on the subject, I've just done some peripheral research.  For my own LO I've opted to use as few mods that edit worldspace as humanly possible.  Sad, but I don't have the technical know-how or desire to spend the time to make it all work together, and occlusion culling (the flickering) / horrible frame rates on my beastly machine is no bueno.

 

An interesting (if dated) thread on the topic.

 

Redditt post from FadingSignal that I hadn't seen before.

 

So yeah.  I'm actually less clear on the specifics after that FadingSignal post...

[baronaatista 28]

A video tutorial on how to build pre-combined meshes with the CK by mod author Trosski.

[Fenris95 3]

Honestly I've never had that issue, or never noticed it I guess. Shadow Boost seems to help but my framerate is always staying above 40 without any dips. Doesn't matter where I am either. I also haven't noticed any objects disappearing, I just make sure there's no obvious conflicts in the mods I install and install any compatibility patches they might come with, and then there's no issue. I didn't add a 'delete everything from the world' partly for that reason.

 

I usually have a lot of issues on other games, for example Fallout 3 is just full of huge red triangles and un-UV mapped textures over every object, but Fallout 4 seems pretty stable.

[Fenris95 3]

I'll go through and get rid of a few 'excessive' mods that aren't really needed that edit world spaces, just in case. Like the Nest survival bunkers for example. :)

[RabbitB 0]

I'll go through and get rid of a few 'excessive' mods that aren't really needed that edit world spaces, just in case. Like the Nest survival bunkers for example. :)

 

I want to say thank you for your guide--I'm going through it and putting together my load order now. Honestly, it's an unpopular opinion, but New Vegas is the only game I can play unmodded. Fallout 3 and 4 require lots of modding to make them fun, and thorough packs like yours greatly reduce my time investment to get these games into a playable state.

 

All that said, instead of removing those mods, have you considered turning them optional instead, with a note about the potential issues? That way, anyone willing to take the risk, can still install them.

[geeee785 1]

Nice guide, how's it playing for you?  I only ask because there is quite a bit of mods, might have to trim some of it if I follow

[RabbitB 0]

So, I've followed the guide up to part 6, and while I was testing by just going into the game and walking around a bit, I decided to test further by getting into some combat, and I've noticed that the game will have a guaranteed crash somewhere within the first 30 seconds of combat, when fighting human enemies. There doesn't appear to be any crash when faced against animals or creatures.

 

This is on a fresh save, where I slogged through the intro yet again, so I could test without worrying if there was conflicts not related to the current mods.

[RabbitB 0]

As a followup to my last post, it appears I might have fixed it, but there are no guarantees (I tried to get into several long combat situations). I had Steam validate all the game files, of which 7 failed, and it appears to no longer crash. Immersive Main Menu was removed during the validation (Steam replaces its installed file with the original), so it could potentially (if doubtful) be the culprit, but I don't want to tempt fate, and as it's not a very important mod, I'm not going to reinstall it.

[RabbitB 0]

Just popping back in here to say that I'm still fiddling with this pack to get it working well. I appreciate the effort that went into collating all these mods, but a tremendous amount of work needs to be done, creating a manual merged patch so that these mods will work together properly. There are lots, and I mean lots of conflicts. These conflicts have led to lots of little bugs that require tracking down and fixing, and so far one bug I simply cannot figure out a fix for.

 

Codsworth is not a usable companion--once you have him follow you, you can't use 'talk' anymore, which means no conversations with him, and you don't have the ability to send him back to a settlement. Not unless you take another companion so that he gets sent back automatically. If he gets "knocked out", you also can't repair him. He glitches and you can no longer interact with him. I haven't tried it, but you might be able to recover him if you leave and wait long enough for him to just default back to Sanctuary. So far it seems that the only mod that really messes with him is Atomic Radio, but it doesn't seem to make any difference if it's activated, so I'm thoroughly stumped on this.

 

The other huge bug I encountered, but have found a fix for, is all the world object flickering. There are a lot of mods in this pack that modify the overworld, and the bUseCombinedObjects ini change causes massive LOD/rendering issues anywhere the world was changed. The fix for this was installing a pre-culling geometry remover mod and putting it as late as possible in the load order. It'll absolutely kill your performance if you don't have a monster rig, but it's the only actual fix aside from removing all the culpable mods.

[GoodDeath 0]

Hello Fenris95 and thank you for the guide and a beast of a guide it is.   Could please answer just one question? In the beginning of the guide under required dlc the high res texture pack is not mentioned. Later there are mods that [for example wetness shader fix] in the fomod you require selecting buttons that pertain to the said dlc. So my question if you havent guessed already is do we need to click these buttons if I don't use the high res dlc.  

[ATMPlays 3]

Can you answer GoodDeath?

[Gilgamesh2k5 6]

has anyone came up with some ck patches for a lot of the worldspace edits yet? Or any patches they wouldn't mind sharing? Anyone have stability while playing this setup?