Tannin requested our help. Quick Tip MO feature explained, ini tweaks option.

[GSDFan]

Back a few versions, Tannin introduced a feature called ini tweaks. You may have seen it when you view the information for a mod in the lower left of the of the “INI-Files†tab. Most if not all mods do not have anything listed in there. The following information is accurate as I see it and has been verified in MO v1.0.5 RC6.

 

Back then, anafuineluva, on 09 February 2013 asked this question, “Does ini tweaks apply over skyrim.ini only? Is there a way to apply them to skyrimprefs.ini too?â€

 

To which Tannin replied, â€ini tweaks do not change skyrim.ini or skyrimprefs.ini, they are used instead of them. This means that if a setting exists in ini tweaks, that setting is used over any other ini. In fact, as it stands right now, ini tweaks should even override settings from other ini files, i.e. skse plugins, but I've never tested thatâ€.

 

I have made use the ini tweaks for the settings that S.T.E.P. recommends and also for the fonts entry needed for DARNui in newvegas. I set up a mod with them and installed it, this way when I switch profiles, I just enable it and do not have to worry about editing the ini itself. Nice feature.

 

To set up a new custom tweak you can do a couple of things. With MO closed create a new empty folder in the Mods directory and restart MO. MO will now show the new folder as a greyed out mos. An easier way to do this in the current version of MO, is if you have an empty overwrite folder to double click on it open it up and right click and create a new folder, you do not need to rename it. Click close to exit the overwrite folder dialog.

 

With that done you will be able to right click on the overwrite folder and select “Create Mod†from the right click menu. Give it a name that reflects what you want, something like Custom ini Tweaks and press OK. You now have a new mod named Custom ini Tweaks.

 

In either case double click on the new mod to open the information pane and select the INI-Files tab. Click in the lower left box and right click to get the “create Tweak†fly out menu. Enter the name of the tweak in the dialog that pops up and click OK.

 

Say you want to do the fonts from Darnified Ui. Name the tweak Darn fonts and click OK. Click on the new entry and in the big box on the right copy and paste the whole section from the readme starting with the [Fonts] header. The save button will become active, click it to save the tweak and close the information pane. Re-open the information pane and the new tweak will now have a check box next to it, click it to put a check in the box to activate it.

 

Another option is if a mod needs a certain entry for the mod to function right you can just open the mod and create the tweak for it there. The iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure=XX in Skyrim Flora Overhaul by vurt comes to mind. Don’t forget the [grass] before it. This way the tweak will be enabled when the mod is.

[Nearox]

I've been doing this for a while and found it a very useful feature. You already mentioned the SFO tweak and another handy one is the [Particles]

iMaxDesired=6000 for RWT2/Skyfalls Compatibility. The nice thing is, rather obviously, that you can have INI tweaks automatically enable or disable when you turn on or off one of your mods.

 

I made a TL;DR version for easy reading:

 

1. Double click any mod in your installed mod list (e.g. your RWT2/Skyfalls Patch)

2. Open to INI-tab

3. In the bottom-left pane, right-mouse click and select Create Tweak

4. Enter a name (e.g. Particle Tweak)

5. In the right pane, type the ini tweak you want to make. E.g.

[Particles]

iMaxDesired=6000

6. Save and close

 

That's it, this ini setting will now automatically be enabled or disabled when appropriate (as long as you do not have this tweak in your 'base' ini).

 

This could be useful for guide builders as well.

[GSDFan]

Nearox, thanks for the input and the simplified way to do it. I tend to overdo it a little as I want to cover as wide an audience as possible. It is hard to balance the amount of information to get your point across when you a writing for a wide user experience base.

This information is also useful to mod authors too. They can create the necessary folder under the data folder in include the tweak as needed.

[Astakos]

............

 

That's it, this ini setting will now automatically be enabled or disabled when appropriate (as long as you do not have this tweak in your 'base' ini).

 

What I have noticed is that for commands that are already in skyrim.ini or skyrimprefs.ini and have a certain value; i.e. iMaxDesired=750 (default ini setting), using MO's "ini-tweak" of 6000 actually overwrites the initial value with that of the "ini-tweak". 750 -> 6000 and remains in the base ini (skyrimprefs.ini in our case) even if the specific mod is deactivated.

 

Is this how it is supposed to work?...because that could lead to huge errors...

[GSDFan]

Astakos, thanks for your question.

 

I have to admit that I do not fully understand of how this works. Tannin is the only one that can explain the implementation of how this works.

 

From my observation, MO will recreate a file called “initweaks.ini†whenever the game or an executable is run.

CAUTION: do not edit initweaks.ini it is not meant to be edited.

 

In theory deactivating a mod or the ini tweak in the left pane should also remove that ini tweak from initweaks.ini the next time the game is run. I have verified this is true when there is only one instance of a setting in an ini tweak.

 

If you care to see how I tested this and my conclusions, click the spoiler below.

 

 

 

 

Caution. Tested with very little sleep and not enough coffee.

 

I have run into an interesting situation in investigating this setting mentioned, iMaxDesired=XXXX, in multiple mods with different values that Tannin might be able to shed light on.

 

Starting with a clean SkyrimPrefs.ini and Skyrim.ini as set up by Nvidia GeForce experience with no [Particles] iMaxDesired=xxxx in any of them.

 

Situation one: enabling each mod one at a time and running the game.

 

Mod one Custon ini iMaxDesired=600 creates [Particles] iMaxDesired= 600 in initweaks.ini.

Mod two Custon ini iMaxDesired=300 changes initweaks.ini to 300.

Mod three Custon ini iMaxDesired=200 initweaks.ini stays at 300.

 

Situation two: again clean initweaks.ini and mods with ini tweaks disabled:

Enabling the three mods with the tweaks at once, the iMaxDesired= changes to 300, which is mod two.

 

Situation three: Set up as situation two.

Disabling mod two changed iMaxDesired= to 200, which is mod three.

 

Situation four: Set up as situation two.

Deactivating mod three left iMaxDesired= at 300.

 

Situation five: Set up as situation two.

Deactivating mod one left iMaxDesired= at 300.

 

In all of this testing, I left the mods in the order stated.

 

Situatation six: Set up as situation two.

Changing the priority of mods did not change iMaxDesired= at all, it stayed at 300.

 

Unless my method is flawed, I can conclude that using multiple ini tweaks with the same setting, but different values, does not follow the priority of the mods in the .

 

There was a flaw. Mod three was set up without any valid game data, mod was grey, in the root directory.

 

Repeated situation one, no change

Situation two, no change.

Situation three, no change.

Situatation four, no change.

Situatation five, no change.

Situatation six, mod three with one ini setting, which was given an empty directory,SKSE, to simulate a valid mod. IE mod is no longer grey. It was moved into position two, which moved mod two into place three. The fixed mod now shows a Redundant flag. I did not notice this before.

 

Situation seven. New test.

Mod one with only one tweak, iMaxDesired=200. Initweaks.ini. Creates [Particles] iMaxDesired= 200 in initweaks.ini.

Mod two withiMaxDesired=600. Mod one shows Redundant, but initweaks.ini did not update to 600.

Mod three with iMaxDesired=300 enabled now changes initweaks.ini to 300.

 

 

[Astakos]

Thanks GSDFan for your reply!

 

This is very interesting situation, but still comes from testing x number of mods with actually the same ini command but different value in every case.

 

My observation is not that exhaustive...

 

I have tested 2 mods, for example. Skyrim Flora Overhaul & SkyFalls and SkyMills - Animated Distant Waterfalls and WindMills in my SR-LE profile.

 

Both require their own ini settings, i.e. [Grass] iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure=7 for SFO and [Particle] iMaxDesired=6000 for SkyFalls.

In my base-clean inis the SFO command was not present but the SkyFalls command was there with a default value of 750.

 

After I applied the ini-tweaks to both mods, run the game, exit it, open via Ini Editor in MO my skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini i noticed that the iMaxDesired value of 6000 was actually written in skyrimprefs.ini for that profile whereas the other was not. Deactivated the SkyFalls mod (assuming that the ini-tweak would be deactivated also), run the game, exit it, opened again Ini Editor in MO and the imaxdesired value of 6000 was still present.

 

I assume that this is a bug as I cannot see the reasoning of working this way. I still cannot understand why pre-existent commands with altered values via the ini-tweak feature should be "hard-copied" into the profile's inis! maybe Tannin should shed some light here.

 

P.S. Run another test with all required ENB commands from Unreal ENB and still the same behavior. I attached the specific ini-tweaks in Unreal Data Folder, which I have as a mod, and although i deactivated it, the altered values were still there. Again, all these commands that are suitable for ENB pre-exist in skyrimprefs.ini having their default values.

[wolverine2710]

@Astakakos. Please create a ticket for it in the issue tracker. This is the best and only way to report them. Tannin can then have a look at it. You can reproduce the issue which is good. In the best case Tannin can reproduce it also and fix the issue. If not you both can figure out why it affects your system and then a fix can be created. This must work as intended otherwise the feature can/will cause problems in the future as you have stated.

[wolverine2710]

I have copied the info of GSDFan and the TL;DR version of Nearox to the MO wiki, see the advanced tab, section 'mod specific ini tweaks'. A notice mentions the issue as has been reported by Astakos.

 

I invite everyone to change the  information if they feel something is missing, to long, the format is incorrect. Everyone can edit the wiki and is encouraged to do so.

[Astakos]

@Astakakos. Please create a ticket for it in the issue tracker. This is the best and only way to report them. Tannin can then have a look at it. You can reproduce the issue which is good. In the best case Tannin can reproduce it also and fix the issue. If not you both can figure out why it affects your system and then a fix can be created. This must work as intended otherwise the feature can/will cause problems in the future as you have stated.

Thanks Wolverine. Reported it today in the issue tracker!

 

P.S. Off-topic and out of curiosity...the way you spelled my username was intentional or just a typo? Reason I am asking is (if it was intentional); do u speak Greek? :)

[wolverine2710]

Thanks for creating the 'bug report' ticket. I've updated it so it references this thread, pointed it to post #4.

 

It was a typo, don't speak greek. Can you PM with the meaning of the mispelled username?

 

 

Interesting note, Google search of Astakakos brings this very thread up as the second link.  The first being a hair salon :p

[Astakos]

Well, for sure nothing to do with "Hairs"...I can assure you of that!!! :D

 

Actually the hair saloon name is Takako's, but here is a wording in that site saying "as Takako's" and Google took it as "Astakakos" 

 

Other than that u already know what Astakakos means...!!!:P

[deathneko11]

heh, don't mind that orange text on wolverine's last post here. that was me, doing a quick little experiment for future duties around here :p

 

sorry wolverine! ;)

[DoubleYou]

Greek word kakos means 'bad' in old Greek like used in the New Testament. Don't know if it still carries that connotation in modern Greek.

[Astakos]

Kakos still means bad in modern Greek. Actually it was never changed.

 

But this word has nothing in common with the typo that Wolverine made on my username.

 

Anyway...quite off-topic here! :) :)

[phryxolydian]

If I change my settings from the Skyrim Launcher say from High to Medium, will it erase the tweaks I've made from MO's ini editor?

[deathneko11]

I don't think so.