LOOT (by WrinklyNinja & Team)

[alt3rn1ty]

I think quite a lot of missunderstanding can be solved with the FAQ .. Its probably not so obvious for most ( especially Oblivion / Fallout community who do not frequent the Skyrim topics )

 

Its also not so obvious even for people on BGS forum :

 

If you go to LOOTs website https://loot.github.io/

 

Just under the Download Beta button, the FAQ is linked in light blue text https://github.com/loot/loot.github.io/wiki/LOOT-FAQs

 

And really the website, is LOOTs home, so should be the first place anyone starts looking at documentation ( which has also started to get more updates recently https://loot.github.io/docs/dev/LOOT%20Readme.html )

 

 

The authority on determining what LOOT is getting wrong ( if anything ) is xEdit ( TES5 / FONV / TES4 ) - Its the only tool which can show you all the conflicts between a couple of mods - But consider also the algorythm LOOT uses takes into consideration the following :

 

( Note I do not recall the exact order these are applied in, but this is roughly it .. )

 

Masters any plugin has to load after

 

Masterlist special case ordering

 

Masterlist and Userlist Global Prioritisation

 

Userlist "Load After" instructions ( Metadata editing )

 

Additionally - Any plugin with conflicts with other plugins, are ordered plugin with the most amount of conflicts loads first, plugins with the least amount of conflicts loads last ( damage limitation so that overhaul mods do not stomp on all other mods in your load order and smaller mods get a chance to win - The way you overide any such smaller changes on a case by case basis will be via patching / merging in whatever form that takes in future .. Bashed, Smashed, Merge Patch scripts or various Java .jar based merged blobs )

 

And lastly the alphabetical sorting is applied ( but only on mods which do not fall under any of the above categories )

Groups of such non-conflict mods can come in between other mods, where the first mod in the group has to follow another, but esps named similarly following after that mod only need to be arranged as a nicety for human readability :)

 

 

Its quite a complicated routine, and can have seemingly chaotic results - But if you check the plugins out with xEdit you will find it has indeed also looked inside the plugins records and done a pretty good job of ordering under the above set of rules.

 

 

The worst this seeming chaos can affect a game is I believe with Skyrim, unfortunately Skyrim is more important to get the load order right than any other massively modded game so far. So you need to have your mods in place, LOOT your load order and play.

 

If you then add a new mod, the complicated dominoe effect can be ordered a fair bit differently ..

.. Which could cause instability in an ongoing game

 

So what does anyone suggest would change ? - In Skyrims case its doing the best it can, if a user is frequently adding or taking away mods thats not LOOTs problem really.

You should treat your load order the same you treat your save games dependant upon your mods. If you were to take a mod away which had scripts .. You would have to start a new game. If your load order massively changes by necessity - I would suggest that also needs a new game start.

 

As for masterlist updates - It needs volunteers for the games which are heavily dependant upon such lists from the community to do that.

 

But the primary reason of LOOTs development .. Was to get rid of the necessity to have volunteers slaving away at deconflicting thousands upon thousands of mod conflicts every day in their own spare time.

 

Its still beta, Wrinkly is the only programmer working on it - Patience required.

 

 

I had one bizarre case, testing Didacts work towards helping the Unofficial patch team, he is doing a heap of vanilla armour and clothing mesh fixes, with a few edits in a plugin https://www.afkmods.com/index.php?/topic/3957-complete-armor-and-clothing-fixes-once-and-for-all/ - This plugin when added and removed from my load order has a very surprising effect of shifting the order around. Thankfully I only use it to test and then go back to a save with my "normal" load order afterwards.

 

 

I am using the latest 0.7 beta 3-100 snapshot build, and generally its doing everything perfectly for Skyrim and FONV in my case. It is also very consistent in how it orders my mods ( Didacts plugin being the exception ), so does not present a problem in a lot of cases where you may remove a mod which you know is safe to remove.

I havent used 0.6 in a long time :)

Edited January 27, 2015 by alt3rn1ty

[GrantSP]

<Wall of text> delivers +100 damage. @GrantSP takes critical hit and is stunned for 1 hour.

 

Firstly don't take my comment as an attack on LOOT. I already received my LOOT education from your goodselves after my last posting about the order it produced, that comment like this one is from amazement at the order, considering the mods in question have been sorted by BOSS/LOOT for years now and they are far from 'new kids on the block'.

 

Also note I no where said LOOT is bad, defective, a pain in the @$$, or anything like that. I use it, precisely because it is effective and helpful, if I thought otherwise I would just un-install and do things manually. Comments such as mine should be taken only as observations, not criticism. Questions are asked for clarification not justification.

 

You correctly note: "The authority on determining what LOOT is getting wrong ( if anything ) is xEdit." Exactly, that is how I noticed the odd arrangement. You must run xEdit to create a bashed patch, but you know that already. Perhaps my post caught you at the wrong end of a bad day and you just added it to a line of negative posts, I don't know. Let me reassure you that I have nothing but the highest regard to all the programmers of all the tools that are available to the modding community. The day I start 'slagging off' on some tool used by others is the day I need to slapped and told never to return.

 

Also you say: "Its still beta, Wrinkly is the only programmer working on it - Patience required." This I am fully aware of and it is because I am using the 0.7 beta version that I make observations. If I were a programmer, I would help, as would others. Observations by me are my attempt to enlarge the knowledgebase.

 

As mentioned in the post, I too am not using 0.6. The MO bundled version is 0.5 but I prefer to use the latest beta so as to see what needs attention.

 

Lastly, to cut off any comment about posting in the correct forum, I am a member of the LOOT forum but to be honest, the tenor of the comments are little to technical for my pleasure. I want to enjoy my forum reading and it feels a little too much like my university days. That may be just me, but there you have it. If would prefer me to post my comments there and not in the STEP forum, I will of course comply.

[alt3rn1ty]

<Wall of text> delivers +100 damage. @GrantSP takes critical hit and is stunned for 1 hour.

 

Firstly don't take my comment as an attack on LOOT. I already received my LOOT education from your goodselves after my last posting about the order it produced, that comment like this one is from amazement at the order, considering the mods in question have been sorted by BOSS/LOOT for years now and they are far from 'new kids on the block'.

 

Also note I no where said LOOT is bad, defective, a pain in the @$$, or anything like that. I use it, precisely because it is effective and helpful, if I thought otherwise I would just un-install and do things manually. Comments such as mine should be taken only as observations, not criticism. Questions are asked for clarification not justification.

 

You correctly note: "The authority on determining what LOOT is getting wrong ( if anything ) is xEdit." Exactly, that is how I noticed the odd arrangement. You must run xEdit to create a bashed patch, but you know that already. Perhaps my post caught you at the wrong end of a bad day and you just added it to a line of negative posts, I don't know. Let me reassure you that I have nothing but the highest regard to all the programmers of all the tools that are available to the modding community. The day I start 'slagging off' on some tool used by others is the day I need to slapped and told never to return

 

Also you say: "Its still beta, Wrinkly is the only programmer working on it - Patience required." This I am fully aware of and it is because I am using the 0.7 beta version that I make observations. If I were a programmer, I would help, as would others. Observations by me are my attempt to enlarge the knowledgebase.

 

As mentioned in the post, I too am not using 0.6. The MO bundled version is 0.5 but I prefer to use the latest beta so as to see what needs attention.

 

Lastly, to cut off any comment about posting in the correct forum, I am a member of the LOOT forum but to be honest, the tenor of the comments are little to technical for my pleasure. I want to enjoy my forum reading and it feels a little too much like my university days. That may be just me, but there you have it. If would prefer me to post my comments there and not in the STEP forum, I will of course comply.

GrantSP - All of your post is wrongly assuming I was responding to your posts personally.

 

I have read back quite a few pages and posts like #146 were in my view needing a little guidance from the links I provided. It was a very good day actually, and the post was made in an informative manner :D.

My posts are generally given as what I hope is beneficial information for anyone reading forum posts, not just individuals.

 

---------------------

 

For everyone :

 

One link I forgot to mention - Not mentioned in this topics OP :

 

At this stage of beta development, good feedback ( ie from people who have read the FAQ - See my previous post ) needs to go here ..

 

https://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1512502-rel-loot-thread-16/

 

Where Wrinkly hangs out. Please try to give more information than "the load order looks wrong"

Edited January 28, 2015 by alt3rn1ty

[junglejudas]

just a heads-up:  the link for Related Videos on

 

https://wiki.step-project.com/LOOT

 

is to an older video labeled 'outdated';

 

this one

 

appears to be the more current target.

 

 

 

...{sigh} only reports properly via IE?  i have to turn in my snob card again?!

 

 

[ETA] sorry!  forgot i could just start a Talk page...

Edited January 31, 2015 by junglejudas

[GrantSP]

I would question the first couple of steps listed in that video. Most up-to-date Windows should run LOOT out-of-the-box with no special need to get a later version of IE or the runtime. I don't use IE, I prefer Chrome, and I see no issues with getting LOOT to function. The version of IE that is on my Win7 machine seems to be fine. Having said that, GamerPoets is the official STEP video producer and he goes into a lot of research before doing them so maybe I'm just lucky.

 

On another note, I tried unsuccessfully to update that video link in the wiki several times, as the history will show, and I just can't get the new address to display, it errors out with a generic message. No idea what is happening there.

[EssArrBee]

Is the template messed up for anyone else? I updated the link, but the template looks weird.

 

I would question the first couple of steps listed in that video. Most up-to-date Windows should run LOOT out-of-the-box with no special need to get a later version of IE or the runtime. I don't use IE, I prefer Chrome, and I see no issues with getting LOOT to function. The version of IE that is on my Win7 machine seems to be fine. Having said that, GamerPoets is the official STEP video producer and he goes into a lot of research before doing them so maybe I'm just lucky.

 

On another note, I tried unsuccessfully to update that video link in the wiki several times, as the history will show, and I just can't get the new address to display, it errors out with a generic message. No idea what is happening there.

You can't edit that tab because it is used for the STEP guide. Only Z, s4n, Tech, DY, and me can alter it. I think you have access to everything else on the page.

[GrantSP]

Ahh... then that would explain it, I think. Wouldn't it be better to have a message pop up tell users that don't have clearance that they can't make edits?

 

Looking at the change you made, that is exactly what I did, it is after all basic.

 

Oh and no, it doesn't look weird.

[eberkain]

I think quite a lot of missunderstanding can be solved with the FAQ .. Its probably not so obvious for most ( especially Oblivion / Fallout community who do not frequent the Skyrim topics )

 

Its also not so obvious even for people on BGS forum :

 

If you go to LOOTs website https://loot.github.io/

 

Just under the Download Beta button, the FAQ is linked in light blue text https://github.com/loot/loot.github.io/wiki/LOOT-FAQs

 

And really the website, is LOOTs home, so should be the first place anyone starts looking at documentation ( which has also started to get more updates recently https://loot.github.io/docs/dev/LOOT%20Readme.html )

 

 

The authority on determining what LOOT is getting wrong ( if anything ) is xEdit ( TES5 / FONV / TES4 ) - Its the only tool which can show you all the conflicts between a couple of mods - But consider also the algorythm LOOT uses takes into consideration the following :

 

( Note I do not recall the exact order these are applied in, but this is roughly it .. )

 

Masters any plugin has to load after

 

Masterlist special case ordering

 

Masterlist and Userlist Global Prioritisation

 

Userlist "Load After" instructions ( Metadata editing )

 

Additionally - Any plugin with conflicts with other plugins, are ordered plugin with the most amount of conflicts loads first, plugins with the least amount of conflicts loads last ( damage limitation so that overhaul mods do not stomp on all other mods in your load order and smaller mods get a chance to win - The way you overide any such smaller changes on a case by case basis will be via patching / merging in whatever form that takes in future .. Bashed, Smashed, Merge Patch scripts or various Java .jar based merged blobs )

 

And lastly the alphabetical sorting is applied ( but only on mods which do not fall under any of the above categories )

Groups of such non-conflict mods can come in between other mods, where the first mod in the group has to follow another, but esps named similarly following after that mod only need to be arranged as a nicety for human readability :)

 

 

Its quite a complicated routine, and can have seemingly chaotic results - But if you check the plugins out with xEdit you will find it has indeed also looked inside the plugins records and done a pretty good job of ordering under the above set of rules.

 

 

The worst this seeming chaos can affect a game is I believe with Skyrim, unfortunately Skyrim is more important to get the load order right than any other massively modded game so far. So you need to have your mods in place, LOOT your load order and play.

 

If you then add a new mod, the complicated dominoe effect can be ordered a fair bit differently ..

.. Which could cause instability in an ongoing game

 

So what does anyone suggest would change ? - In Skyrims case its doing the best it can, if a user is frequently adding or taking away mods thats not LOOTs problem really.

You should treat your load order the same you treat your save games dependant upon your mods. If you were to take a mod away which had scripts .. You would have to start a new game. If your load order massively changes by necessity - I would suggest that also needs a new game start.

 

As for masterlist updates - It needs volunteers for the games which are heavily dependant upon such lists from the community to do that.

 

But the primary reason of LOOTs development .. Was to get rid of the necessity to have volunteers slaving away at deconflicting thousands upon thousands of mod conflicts every day in their own spare time.

 

Its still beta, Wrinkly is the only programmer working on it - Patience required.

 

 

I had one bizarre case, testing Didacts work towards helping the Unofficial patch team, he is doing a heap of vanilla armour and clothing mesh fixes, with a few edits in a plugin https://www.afkmods.com/index.php?/topic/3957-complete-armor-and-clothing-fixes-once-and-for-all/ - This plugin when added and removed from my load order has a very surprising effect of shifting the order around. Thankfully I only use it to test and then go back to a save with my "normal" load order afterwards.

 

 

I am using the latest 0.7 beta 3-100 snapshot build, and generally its doing everything perfectly for Skyrim and FONV in my case. It is also very consistent in how it orders my mods ( Didacts plugin being the exception ), so does not present a problem in a lot of cases where you may remove a mod which you know is safe to remove.

I havent used 0.6 in a long time :)

I want to thank you for posting this.    I was using the LOOT stable build for a while, but as my mod list grew I was having more issues that I was sure were tied to load order.  I tried the beta, but it kept sorting so badly that I couldn't even load TES5Edit, so I opted for switching over to BOSS.   I spent a day doing that and getting everything setup, and it was much better, but I was still having a couple minor bugs that I was sure were tied to load order.   After reading your post I decided to give the loot beta another shot since I still had a few more mods I wanted to activate.  I threw everything at it, and after a few hiccups with staying under the 255 cap I managed to get everything patched and done.  Booted the game, completely expecting it to crash, it did not, created a character thinking some of the mcm menus would be jacked up, could not find any problems.  Started a game as a member of the college of winterhold, and it seems like everything works perfectly fine so far.  I played for a few hours last night without any crashes, mainly testing out the functions on the new mods I added, everything seemed to work great.  Planning to get a good long session in tonight and will see if I have any major problems.  Again, thank you for posting on here and getting me to give it another shot. 

[GrantSP]

After some discussion in the LOOT forum @ BethSoft, I found out that you do really need to clear out both the installed folder that LOOT 0.6 was in AND the %AppData%\Local\LOOT\ folders of their .Git folder and masterlist.yaml, (there are separate folders for each game that contain these things) if you switch to using 0.7.

ALL of my errors were immediately fixed by doing this simple clearance first.

[eberkain]

I spent about 8 hours playing yesterday evening.  Not a single crash.   I'm really amazed by what LOOT did, I have yet to see the first obvious bug.  I have like 400 folders in MO activated, and 250 plugins, after I merged stuff.  

 

Full SRLE, Full REGS, plus these  

 

Hunterborn

Animations

Living Takes Time

Imperious Races of Skyrim

Death Alternative

Clean up your corpses

Functional Homes - DG, DB

Glowing Ore Veins - Less Glow

Dragon Combat Overhaul

Apocalypse Magic

Immersive Weapons

Scarcity

Gold Adjustment

Imaginator

Jaxonz Utilities

Familiar Faces

Perkus Maximus

[alt3rn1ty]

:) thanks eberkain, once you have a good idea of how the new LOOT does things it all falls into place and makes sense.
 
At GrantSP - Yep that was a problem I found too mentioned earlier in the topics ( I think it was probably in one of the previous topics linked in the OP - Bethsoft forum has a 200 post limit, so you may have to link back a couple of times to find it - But really, essential reading if you want to help as a beta tester and understand what has / has not been addressed beforehand ) ..
.. Also mentioned on the beta download page
 

Note: v0.7 is not backwards-compatible with earlier versions of LOOT. In particular, it produces slightly different load orders, and its settings are different. Bear in mind that changing load order mid-game can lead to instability. You can backup your settings file at %LOCALAPPDATA%\LOOT\settings.yaml before running v0.7, in case you then decide to go back to v0.6.

On occasions when I know Wrinkly has been messing with settings for a beta snapshot update ( source of info in following GitHub Issues and comments ), I will overwrite install the snapshot files, but keep the old settings for both masterlist.yaml and settings.yaml - Purely so I can highlight anything Wrinkly may have missed in the backwards compatability department. Then after testing all functions of LOOT, I will then delete those files, purge any which are not extant for a new installation ( see this post for example ), and load up LOOT generating its new settings files .. Testing onwards from there all of LOOTs functions again.

 

I uninstalled the previous version using the uninstaller which is registered in windows ( I also use regedit to check what registry settings should / should not be set ), then use the latest beta installer ( for new registry settings etc ), then manually update with snapshots overwriting individual needed files.

If there is a major version overhaul with a new installer, rinse and repeat.

Edited February 7, 2015 by alt3rn1ty

[RoyBatty]

Where can a person report load ordering problems which pertain to TTW? Discussion of any kind will result in an instant ban on the Beth forums.

[EssArrBee]

I can contribute to the masterlist.

[RoyBatty]

Should I send you a private message then?

[EssArrBee]

Sure. I used to commit quite a bit, since it's pretty easy to learn the .yaml format that they use.

 

One thing that makes it really easy is to export the metadata. Just make your rules, click the three dots next to a mod in LOOT, and it will have an option to copy it. Here is what it looks like for a USKP, but it's the same as any other mod:

[spoiler][code]name: Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp
priority: -1999000
msg:
  - type: say
    content:
      - lang: en
        str: It is highly recommended that you also use the [Unofficial Dawnguard Patch](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23491).
      - lang: ru
        str: ÐаÑтоÑтельно рекомендуетÑÑ Ñ‚Ð°ÐºÐ¶Ðµ иÑпользовать [Unofficial Dawnguard Patch](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23491).
      - lang: es
        str: Se recomienda que utilizes [Unofficial Dawnguard Patch](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23491) además de Dawnguard. Se necesita para el correcto funcionamiento de Dawnguard.
      - lang: en
        str: "[Unofficial Dawnguard Patch](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23491)ë„ ì‚¬ìš©í•˜ëŠ” ê²ƒì„ ì ê·¹ 권장합니다."
      - lang: zh_CN
        str: 强烈建议你使用[Unofficial Dawnguard Patch](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23491)。
    condition: active("Dawnguard.esm") and not file("Unofficial Dawnguard Patch.esp")
  - type: say
    content:
      - lang: en
        str: It is highly recommended that you also use the [Unofficial Hearthfire Patch](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/25127).
      - lang: ru
        str: ÐаÑтоÑтельно рекомендуетÑÑ Ñ‚Ð°ÐºÐ¶Ðµ иÑпользовать [Unofficial Hearthfire Patch](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/25127).
      - lang: es
        str: Se recomienda que utilizes [Unofficial Hearthfire Patch](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/25127) además de Hearthfire. Se necesita para el correcto funcionamiento de Hearthfire.
      - lang: en
        str: "[Unofficial Hearthfire Patch](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/25127)ë„ ì‚¬ìš©í•˜ëŠ” ê²ƒì„ ì ê·¹ 권장합니다."
      - lang: zh_CN
        str: 强烈建议你使用[Unofficial Hearthfire Patch](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/25127)。
    condition: active("Hearthfires.esm") and not file("Unofficial Hearthfire Patch.esp")
  - type: say
    content:
      - lang: en
        str: It is highly recommended that you also use the [Unofficial Dragonborn Patch](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/31083).
      - lang: ru
        str: ÐаÑтоÑтельно рекомендуетÑÑ Ñ‚Ð°ÐºÐ¶Ðµ иÑпользовать [Unofficial Dragonborn Patch](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/31083).
      - lang: es
        str: Se recomienda que utilizes [Unofficial Dragonborn Patch](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/31083) además de Dragonborn. Se necesita para el correcto funcionamiento de Dragonborn.
      - lang: en
        str: "[Unofficial Dragonborn Patch](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/31083).ë„ ì‚¬ìš©í•˜ëŠ” ê²ƒì„ ì ê·¹ 권장합니다."
      - lang: zh_CN
        str: 强烈建议你使用[Unofficial Dragonborn Patch](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/31083)。
    condition: active("Dragonborn.esm") and not file("Unofficial Dragonborn Patch.esp")
tag:
  - C.Acoustic
  - C.Climate
  - C.Encounter
  - C.ImageSpace
  - C.Light
  - C.Location
  - C.Music
  - C.Name
  - C.Owner
  - C.Water
  - Delev
  - Graphics
  - Invent
  - Names
  - Relev
  - Sound
  - Stats[/code][/spoiler]