TESTING Pandora Behavior Engine+

[Pro-Worx]

Thanks for the reply. I have tried so many iterations of letting it just run, hitting the 'launch' button so many times, click on/off for base/xpmse, heck even tried to drag stuff to it... nothing.

I have been thinking of swapping to M02 for a while now as the thing seems to be forever running out of memory and crashing or threatening to crash. But to be honest, M02 scares me a bit as Vortex is 'pretty' and really easy to use and looks professional, while M02 - to me - looks sloppy, outdated, complicated and a 'lot of moving bits'.

But I know I should bite the bullet and go to it.... what is interesting is that at the very start I did download M02 but never used it. Last week I was freeing up space on my comp and came across it, and low and behold, somehow some way, every mod I have downloaded from Nexus to Vortex has downloaded to M02  as well!!... so it may not be as much of a choir .... but how to turn off one and go to another without losing what I have is a scary thought.

I just don't know if Pandora is worth all the hassle of swapping 'just to test' ...

I'll think on it... thanks again for hte excellent reply/dialogue

[ButchDiavolo]

1 hour ago, Pro-Worx said:

Thanks for the reply. I have tried so many iterations of letting it just run, hitting the 'launch' button so many times, click on/off for base/xpmse, heck even tried to drag stuff to it... nothing.

I have been thinking of swapping to M02 for a while now as the thing seems to be forever running out of memory and crashing or threatening to crash. But to be honest, M02 scares me a bit as Vortex is 'pretty' and really easy to use and looks professional, while M02 - to me - looks sloppy, outdated, complicated and a 'lot of moving bits'.

But I know I should bite the bullet and go to it.... what is interesting is that at the very start I did download M02 but never used it. Last week I was freeing up space on my comp and came across it, and low and behold, somehow some way, every mod I have downloaded from Nexus to Vortex has downloaded to M02  as well!!... so it may not be as much of a choir .... but how to turn off one and go to another without losing what I have is a scary thought.

I just don't know if Pandora is worth all the hassle of swapping 'just to test' ...

I'll think on it... thanks again for hte excellent reply/dialogue

Do it. Talos compels you! Um, I mean... You could always try it.

I am severely biased towards MO2 (see previous encounter with Vortex), so I will always encourage people to switch over to MO2. Vortex does look slick and such, but I find MO2 much easier to use. Oddly enough Vortex and MO (the original) were created by the same person. Yes, I am old enough to remember. *stares into the distance and remembers Morrowind*

Seriously though, no single mod is worth switching mod programs. A much better reason would be the easy of use and control over how things are sorted, etc. There is a good article about how MO2 works and what to expect attached to the STEP guide. So you can always read up on it and then decide if it is worth it or not.

If you do decide to try it, be aware that it is a massive undertaking, involving uninstalling everything Vortex related and then installing everything MO2 related. Which can include re-downloading all mods. I don't know if Vortex saves downloaded mods, but if it does, you could make a copy of that and use that to install mods from. I recently (still) did (doing) that after I cleverly managed to delete MO2 somehow. I blame lack of coffee. But doing it that way isn't easy and finicky.

Anyway, only you can decide if it is worth the hassle. If Vortex works well for you and Pandora is the only issue, just stick with it and keep using FNIS or Nemesis. If you ever want/ need to reinstall Skyrim/ Steam, then you can always decide to try it, right?

And.. MO2 also downloading mods while not actually using it is, once again, odd. Did you install it and forget about it? That would kind of explain it. Maybe that is somehow also the reason why Pandora won't work either? Just a thought.

[Pro-Worx]

Well Monitor144hz contacted me and I got Pandora working through Vortex. I hadn't done anything wrong, there is something wrong with Vortex that creates an intermediate folder when using the normal tool. What needs to be done is to extract ALL the contents directly into the games Data folder.... BINGO then it works... phew. And for the record it is FAR FAR FAR superior to FNIS and Nemesis put together for speed.... just have to give it a full test to make sure it works with all animations as it should

Thanks for patience and a kind ear.

[ButchDiavolo]

3 hours ago, Pro-Worx said:

Well Monitor144hz contacted me and I got Pandora working through Vortex. I hadn't done anything wrong, there is something wrong with Vortex that creates an intermediate folder when using the normal tool. What needs to be done is to extract ALL the contents directly into the games Data folder.... BINGO then it works... phew. And for the record it is FAR FAR FAR superior to FNIS and Nemesis put together for speed.... just have to give it a full test to make sure it works with all animations as it should

Thanks for patience and a kind ear.

WOOT! That is great to hear! Glad you got it working. Did you... blink... when it was generating?

[z929669]

9 hours ago, ButchDiavolo said:

If you do decide to try it, be aware that it is a massive undertaking, involving uninstalling everything Vortex related and then installing everything MO2 related. Which can include re-downloading all mods. I don't know if Vortex saves downloaded mods, but if it does, you could make a copy of that and use that to install mods from. I recently (still) did (doing) that after I cleverly managed to delete MO2 somehow. I blame lack of coffee. But doing it that way isn't easy and finicky.

This is OT, but switching to MO may well resolve the issue. At the very least we could better support this issue.

No need to redownload all mods again if switching to MO from Vortex.

Vortex stores downloaded mods in:

%APPDATA%\Vortex\downloads\{GameName}\

Installed mods are stored in:

%APPDATA%\Vortex\{GameName}\mods\

Profiles are in:

%APPDATA%\Vortex\{GameName}\profiles\{UniqueProfileHash}\

Assuming MO will be installed in instanced mode as we advise in the SSG, it's just a matter of copying files from the above paths into:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\ModOrganizer\{InstanceName}\downloads\

%LOCALAPPDATA%\ModOrganizer\{InstanceName}\mods\

%LOCALAPPDATA%\ModOrganizer\{InstanceName}\profiles\{ProfileName}\

... , respectively.

Then in MO, you would just query the data in the Downloads tab for any file with the warning triangle (assuming you let MO associate with your Nexus profile). I think this can be done for all Downloads if they are selected using CTRL/SHIFT):

From that data, you can add the Nexus modID into the mod Information and refresh the mods using F5:

Or just reinstall the mods from the Downloads (if you remember all the options).

 

I think the MO UI and 'toolbox' are vastly superior to those of Vortex. MO has many themes to choose from, and it economizes space much better than Vortex, IMO. It's also MUCH easier to use. Vortex is built like a mobile app, obfuscating all of the underlying utilities, and thus assuming it's user base are helpless (like many other apps).

[FoxOf96]

So, just to make sure I'm understanding this right... this is supposed to be a replacement for FNIS and Nemesis? If so, how do I make it work with existing FNIS mods?

[ButchDiavolo]

8 hours ago, FoxOf96 said:

So, just to make sure I'm understanding this right... this is supposed to be a replacement for FNIS and Nemesis? If so, how do I make it work with existing FNIS mods?

It supports all animation mods, FNIS or Nemesis. You don't have to do anything to/with your installed animation mods. Just make sure you disable FNIS and/ or Nemesis. Then install Pandora, create an empty output folder (like for FNIS), direct Pandora to put the output into that, run Pandora and that should be it.

I wrote a install/ use "guide" a few posts back.

[ButchDiavolo]

On 3/9/2024 at 8:41 PM, Pro-Worx said:

Well Monitor144hz contacted me and I got Pandora working through Vortex. I hadn't done anything wrong, there is something wrong with Vortex that creates an intermediate folder when using the normal tool. What needs to be done is to extract ALL the contents directly into the games Data folder.... BINGO then it works... phew. And for the record it is FAR FAR FAR superior to FNIS and Nemesis put together for speed.... just have to give it a full test to make sure it works with all animations as it should

Thanks for patience and a kind ear.

Hey again, I have put this information into the post I made earlier. I just want to make sure I am giving the correct information in case people come across it with Google or something.

When you say "extract all the contents directly into the games data folder", I am assuming you mean to extract the Pandora installation mod into the Data folder? Or do you mean this intermediate folder? If so, where can people find this intermediate folder?

And, how is the animation testing going? Ran into any problems?

[FoxOf96]

So, for making sure pandora has access to my animation mods, do I just unzip the files in the same folder where I put the files for Pandora?

[ButchDiavolo]

7 hours ago, FoxOf96 said:

So, for making sure pandora has access to my animation mods, do I just unzip the files in the same folder where I put the files for Pandora?

That depends on if you use Vortex or not. With MO, you install it as a regular mod. With Vortex you install it into the game data folder (I am assuming "\Vortex\{GameName}\mods\?)

Make sure the fnis.esp from Pandora is activated in your mod list! Then open Pandora, tick both "mods" and run it. If it is in the correct folder, you will see it processing animation mods in the UI of Pandora. So no need to set up animations mods differently than usual.

To make it extra clear: animation mods are installed just like before. Pandora will find them automatically when it is setup correctly.

[Hydro]

Hello, 

I had the exactly same problem and now I'm having another similar.

After that, I reinstalled Pandora with the new 1.2.2 from yesterday. Now I'm seeing some mods, but not all. 

I'm using MO2 and Skyrim VR. My modlist is almost finished, just missing pandora and dyndolod steps.

Installed Pandora as a regular mod > Created empty mod called "Pandora Output"> Added executable from file, "Start in>MODS\mods\Pandora_Behaviour_Engine_v1.2.2 alpha" also tried Nemesis_Engine and Pandora_Engine folders here (Start in). Nothing on arguments.

Force load libraries checked. Create files in mod instead of overwrite (*) > Pandora Output.

 

When I run Pandora, I can only see some of my animation mods, but not all of them, and some that I dont have installed. Can someone help me please? I've been working on my modlist during a lot of time and I'm stucking at this...

[Hydro]

Sorry for the double post, I can't edit the older one.

As ButchDiavolo said, I ran Pandora, checked XPMSE patch for Pandora and Pandora Base options and ran it.

(No idea of what the Blink < Optional is, I didnt saw that).

It created output on the Pandora output folder, but when I run Pandora again, I see the same mods.

[Greg]

Blink is just a joke. He's saying Pandora runs so quickly that you miss it running if you blink.

[FoxOf96]

9 hours ago, ButchDiavolo said:

That depends on if you use Vortex or not. With MO, you install it as a regular mod. With Vortex you install it into the game data folder (I am assuming "\Vortex\{GameName}\mods\?)

Make sure the fnis.esp from Pandora is activated in your mod list! Then open Pandora, tick both "mods" and run it. If it is in the correct folder, you will see it processing animation mods in the UI of Pandora. So no need to set up animations mods differently than usual.

To make it extra clear: animation mods are installed just like before. Pandora will find them automatically when it is setup correctly.

Alrighty. Thank you. It was confusing at first, but once I got it working, it was definitely worth it. 

[Hydro]

3 hours ago, Greg said:

Blink is just a joke. He's saying Pandora runs so quickly that you miss it running if you blink.

Oh ok  so, can someone help me please?