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Kuldebar

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OK, who is using these together and what's the word?

 

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LOOT is the spiritual successor to BOSS, and was originally planned for release as BOSS v3. However, because it operates in a very different way to BOSS, it was decided to instead release it as a separate utility.

 

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same "problem"?, it change that entire order and i dont know if that its good or bad :(

I went back and ran LOOT (after backing up my BOSS load order list) and ran the game...CTD'd before the game even loaded.

 

The LOOT Team has something good going here...reading each esp/esm file details as a means to sort the mod lists...but they don't explain it very well nor do I have any idea how to intelligently/manually place mods in such a system or impose any overrides because I'm flying blind.

 

LOOT is a black box, I can't peek into it see how it works...unlike BOSS which used human input and error checking by sampling trends.

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I went back and ran LOOT (after backing up my BOSS load order list) and ran the game...CTD'd before the game even loaded.

 

The LOOT Team has something good going here...reading each esp/esm file details as a means to sort the mod lists...but they don't explain it very well nor do I have any idea how to intelligently/manually place mods in such a system or impose any overrides because I'm flying blind.

 

LOOT is a black box, I can't peek into it see how it works...unlike BOSS which used human input and error checking by sampling trends.

As I've reported earlier I made the switch from BOSS to LOOT without problems. If you use a bashed patch.esp and skyproc its best to rebuild them. Regarding CTD's. Did you use the same sets of active esp's? Have a clean overwrite directory? I recently made a new profile for testing, with nothing active but the official DLC's (are in the regular

 

I agree with the 'black box'. Afaik they haven't explained how the algorithm works, but I haven't checked ALL older thread on the LOOT forum. Why not ask them if they can shed some light on it, this would benefit us all and make it less of black box and users can try to check the load order to see if it all works as intended. Most of the stuff is done by a black box algorithm but if you look at the masterlist.yaml file you notice some things are placed at a certain point, mainly bashed patch.esp, skyproc stuff and pre and post reproccer esp stuff and a few esp's which needed some special placing. So far I made a few requests/questions and so far they were very helpful. Just my 2 eurocent.

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I agree with the 'black box'. Afaik they haven't explained how the algorithm works, but I haven't checked ALL older thread on the LOOT forum. Why not ask them if they can shed some light on it, this would benefit us all and make it less of black box and users can try to check the load order to see if it all works as intended. Most of the stuff is done by a black box algorithm but if you look at the masterlist.yaml file you notice some things are placed at a certain point, mainly bashed patch.esp, skyproc stuff and pre and post reproccer esp stuff and a few esp's which needed some special placing. So far I made a few requests/questions and so far they were very helpful. Just my 2 eurocent.

 

I have no issues with LOOT either, but then again I always check with tes5edit for overwrites anyways. +1 to asking for more detail on algorithm.

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As I've reported earlier I made the switch from BOSS to LOOT without problems. If you use a bashed patch.esp and skyproc its best to rebuild them. Regarding CTD's. Did you use the same sets of active esp's? Have a clean overwrite directory? I recently made a new profile for testing, with nothing active but the official DLC's (are in the regular <skyrim/data directory) and to myself surprise Skyrim ctd'ed also. Still don't know what that could be causing it.

 

I agree with the 'black box'. Afaik they haven't explained how the algorithm works, but I haven't checked ALL older thread on the LOOT forum. Why not ask them if they can shed some light on it, this would benefit us all and make it less of black box and users can try to check the load order to see if it all works as intended. Most of the stuff is done by a black box algorithm but if you look at the masterlist.yaml file you notice some things are placed at a certain point, mainly bashed patch.esp, skyproc stuff and pre and post reproccer esp stuff and a few esp's which needed some special placing. So far I made a few requests/questions and so far they were very helpful. Just my 2 eurocent.

Great points. There's better brains than mine interacting with the hard working crew of LOOT, most of my issues with LOOT involve my own ignorance of it and how it works and based on the forum threads I have read, they have enough confused people chiming in over there; some of them with very bad attitudes. I have no doubts that as LOOT becomes further refined much of my ignorance will either become irrelevant or turned into a working knowledge. I have enough sense to not say, "LOOT" doesn't work, because I know that it will and can work...I just don't know enough to tell the difference when it needs a helping hand or other input from me. :)

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I have successfully torture tested the early releases of LOOT with a custom FNV and TTW load order. I was pleasantly surprised with the results. I only had to specify the FO3 masters to be in the proper load order.

 

One observation is that when I run Wrye I see a lot of mods with masters have been reordered message. I wait until I am finished modding and go through them and sort the masters. If I don't and add more mods then I seem to have to do it all over again if the new mods change the order a lot.

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What about running Dual Sheath Redux with LOOT? Has anyone done this?

When I run DSR fresh it asks me to direct it to BOSS.exe. Could I use LOOT instead?

I already know there will be conflicts if I have a DSR patch made with BOSS at the bottom of my list sorted by LOOT.

 

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

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Just add -noboss when running DSR or any of the patchers if you are using loot. Works fine for me.

 

300+ mods and have now exclusively converted over to loot. Works better than boss for me.

Edited by Garfink
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LOOT does seem to have ill effects on the STEP Extended Patch. It doesn't place it at the bottom, and even if I place it at the bottom manually it still shows red when I go to make a bashed batch. WB shows most of the masters in red even though they are definitely there.

Edited by Vulgar1
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LOOT does seem to have ill effects on the STEP Extended Patch. It doesn't place it at the bottom, and even if I place it at the bottom manually it still shows red when I go to make a bashed batch. WB shows most of the masters in red even though they are definitely there.

 

I have step extended, and yes LOOT puts the patch in an odd location, but its no issue to fix. Red is missing masters right? I never had that with step extended and LOOT. I only had to sort masters via tes5edit.

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Loot looks very promising but I am with Kuldebar here. Gonna wait until some time has passed and the community widely accepted the tool. I also fear that BOSS will become outdated over time. There are some mods that have not seen any inclusion in the current boss masterlist although they have been released several months ago (mostly patches or special optional versions of a mod).

 

Anyway, BOSS 2.2 works just fine for me so I'll continue using that until it becomes outdated.

Edited by blattgeist
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My brain explodes when I read this kind of paranoia.

 

In the simplest terms, LOOT creates dynamic load orders and BOSS applies static load orders.

 

See, BOSS used curated masterlists, or rather rulesets, that were created by volunteers who, we hope, tested mods thoroughly in various orders to determine a subjectively ideal load order. These masterlists literally told BOSS to "put a mod named A.esp before a mod named B.esp." These rules were fixed. A.esp would always be ordered before B.esp no matter what. And if B.esp happened to be the same mod as A.esp with a different name, BOSS didn't care about that either. For all its sophistication at the time, BOSS' sorting method was rather crude.

 

Now, LOOT has a "masterlist," but its masterlist is metadata. It is not a ruleset. LOOT analyzes your mods, looks inside them, and determines as close to a mathematically perfect load order as possible. Think of LOOT's sorting mechanism as an automated TES5Edit that identifies conflicts and moves mods around until you have the least number of conflicts. Since the sorting algorithm can't do everything though, LOOT also takes metadata into account to adjust for special cases.

 

And unlike BOSS, filenames don't really matter. LOOT uses CRC hashes to identify mods. Every file on your computer has a CRC hash. When you change a file, its CRC hash also changes. Therefore, if LOOT notifies you that a mod needs to be cleaned and you clean that mod, LOOT won't notify you about that issue the next time you run the program.

 

Your load order will, and should, look dramatically different from what BOSS has been giving you. That's a good thing! BOSS was not giving you the best load order. That's what LOOT does. If you add another mod, LOOT will take that mod's characteristics into account and generate a new load order that best fits your new collection of mods.

 

The byproduct of LOOT, however, is that because Bethesda's plugin file format uses fixed orders for masters—which it does so that records can reliably refer to data, internally, in other files—the first few times you use LOOT, you'll see more than a few mods in Wrye Bash that have "out-of-order masters." That's because the masters, and the order of those masters, are embedded in the plugin. They are not automatically reordered. I asked for an automatic reordering feature, by the way, but according to the developer of LOOT, who is the same developer of BOSS, out-of-order masters are actually not a problem. But if it really bothers you that Wrye Bash lights those mods up—and it really bothers me!—open those highlighted plugins in TES5Edit, right-click on each one, and click Sort Masters.

 

Finally, LOOT is the ideal solution for modders. While Skyrim no longer loads plugins by their modified date, the Creation Kit still does! This is why the load order of your mods is always so screwed up in the Creation Kit. It's also why some modders release mods, usually on the Workshop, with universally out-of-order masters. I asked the developer of LOOT to implement a "redate plugins" feature awhile ago and he did. You can use LOOT to sort your mods and then redate your plugins, so that you can load and find them in their correct order in the Creation Kit.

 

If you're desperately clinging onto BOSS—that last vestige of a bygone era—let go and don't look back.

 

Its time is over. Its masterlist is no longer updated.

 

And LOOT is superior to BOSS in every way.

Edited by fireundubh
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