By skynet424. The NMM importer showed no errors -- can I assume everything is OK?

[wolverine2710]

Originally Nexus user skynet424 posted this in the Nexus MO forum. So that this discussion will not get buried on the nexus forums I created the question here and will respond to it here.

 

Just downloaded, imported all mods from me NMM all good, and what I love about this is the exclamation mark informing you if it belongs to another ESM or esp... inactive esp's just select and drag and drop at the bottom of the load order. Fantastic work....Kudos gladly given.

I was very hesistant to write this but I think it needed to be written so as to not give you a false positive feeling. If the NMM importer does not give an error during the import that unfortunately is NOT a guarantee that the import has been successful. I have torture tested the NMM import three times now and imho it is NOT ready for general use. It took me about 5-6 effective working days to do the tests. I've tested the NMM importer with 100 mods, some tiny, others medium sized and some real big ones. I choose them so that I knew for sure they have assets which override each other. After every test I have created/update the issue tracker with my findings. After that Tannin used the report(s) to improve the importer. Tannin because he is extremely busy did not have time to look into the issues I have reported in the third test report. Hence the issues I mentioned do exist in the current 1.07 (RC8) version of MO.

 

My conclusion so far. It imports all 100 mods without a problem. The priority given in MO is not the order in which the mods were activated in NMM. Though you can very easily change that with MO. The problem comes with mods which have assets (like textures, meshes) which are overwritten when you have installed them with NMM . Those overwritten assets are not copied to the MO correctly.  For more details see Bug report ticket #435 in the issue tracker. Please DO read the summary there and have a look at the detailed test reports (attached there). If you don't have ANY overwritten assets you probably are fine.

 

Signs that something is not correctly imported.

• You have one or mods in MO which have a red warning sign stating 'no valid game data'
• You don't have any 'conflicts' flag set in MO. For a description of the flags see the Plugins tab of the MO wiki.

What I do recommend is the following:

 

0) Look up everything I describe below in the MO wiki and read it carefully.

1) Create a new instance of MO.

2) Copy the download directory of NMM to the downloads directory of  MO.

3) Perform a query info on every file in the downloads tab in the right pane.

4) If you want to know the order in which they were installed in NMM (so you can set priority correct in MO) do the following. Start NMM, select the 'Open Folder' button and select 'Open NMM's Install Info Folder'. Open the installog.xml file.  Goto the tag.  Each .. represent an installed mod. The first signifies the first mod you installed. The second is the second mod you installed. In that order.

 

You do have to reinstall the mods in MO but you can do that in phases. Post #1545 of the Nexus MO forum describes this. It actually contains an error because then I did NOT about the fact that the actual order in which mods are installed in NMM can be found in the the file installog.xml (see below).

 

To check if you there were assets overwritten during the install with NMM do the following. Goto the tag. Below is for every asset you have installed a ... tag. If you a entry which has TWO or more entries you know that that asset was overwritten. See below example.

 

 

If you want to know to which mod(s) that file belongs you have to lookup the entries. These represent a value which corresponds to the name of the mod you have installed. Go to the top of the file and look first for szpyotfk and later for pdxusflc. In my case this results in

 

2.0

Bethesda Hi-Res DLC Optimized

7-9-2013 16:21:47

 

and

 

1.7

Bellyaches Animal and Creature Pack

7-9-2013 17:47:23

 

Note: I tried to be factual, being objective and tell you what MY personal experiences with the NMM importer are. I was NOT trying to discredit the incredible and excellent work Tannin has done so far with MO. I was merely trying to warn you that the NMM import might not be as successful as you think.

[Uhuru]

Best Advice is forget Nexus Importer forget NMM (Nexus Mod Manager). Use the opportunity to have a fresh start and learn the MO (Mod Organizer) way from scratch.

 

If you are trying to hold on to a savegame that you have built up over a long time of trying mods installing and uninstalling many mods, again the best advice is start over.

 

If you insist on keeping that savegame be aware it gets more and more corrupted the more you change things. While it is possible to switch it to MO from NMM it is never easy.

The bigger the Mod list is and the older the savegame is, the more difficult it is to switch. Attention to detail is absolutely essential, the slightest error by the user can make it impossible to suceed.

No matter how careful you are it still may not work, something may go wrong, beyond anyones ability to fix it.

 

The facility is provided due to demand for it, not because it's the best way to proceed. The NMM Importer does the best it can but MO and NMM work in entirely different ways.

 

We will help in any way we can and do our best to support your switch, but it may be more time consuming than you think with no guarantees it will work in the end. Often the damage is irreversable before you ask for help.

 

As you may tell I do not agree with this process. Why? Users who try this don't know MO well enough, obvious, as they are new users. They make some mistake through inexperience.

Whatever the actual reason is for the error the NMM Importer is blamed and by association MO. Users thus start with the attitude of MO has failed before it's even got going. It usually is not MO at fault.

No real information exists for when NMM Importing works, but it is blaimed for all the failures. A bad impression is made, regardless of the actual reason.

 

So do this if you must but don't assume MO is to blame if it does not work, it's more likely some other cause.