For v2.1.1, why not just keep it loose file rather than generic archive with no compression? Although the dummy esl doesn't comsume load order, it still counts towards the archive limit. I believe the game only loads the first 255 plugins' archives.
FO4 can only load 255 plugins' archives. For example, if each plugin averagely has 2 archives, then the game would load 510 archives. Thanks to intro of esl, now we can have thousands of plugins in each load order, otherwise the archive limit would never be a problem.
@szandor81 For your current play through you have no choice but to extract this .BA2 - but you still will have the same issue for subsequent play through you start in the future.
For the future it sounds like you need to do a combination of 3 things: a) Look to "trim the fat" - i.e. have a complete look at your mod list and reassess if your really need X or Y mod - and remove any you don't think you need anymore. Especially looking at mods that have "redundant" features. b) Look for a mod that combines the features of several of your current mods into a single mod - and replace them with that. or c) Look to merge like mods you do have into a single .ESP/.BA2 combination. Weapons and Armor mods are the prime candidates here since once they get their initial update they rarely if ever get updated again.
@fraquar: I couldn't explained it better. Thank you very much for writing this. Kudos #14 is on the house. Especially point c) applies to all kind of paint jobs from the Creation Club, I merged them into a single archive and trimmed my archive count a lot that way. The same with texture replacer mods, all of them are merged into one big archive in my load order to don't hit the archive limit.
Nonetheless I will still upload my mods in packed form for the aforementioned reasons and it's up to each user what to do if they hit the archive limit. If I would provide loose files for them, the same users would run into the limit with the next mod they download.
Yea, as long as the files are archived in proper form, there's no need to keep them loose-file. My original point only applied to v2.1.1, where loose files could benefit more due to the archive limit. BTW downsizing BA2 number isn't hard, can be way simpler than fraquar suggested, bcuz plugins are sharing the active archives.
That's fine and all, but having mods in both formats makes it easier for collections and being able to reference them without the extra hassle of unpacking or re-packing and so on... When mods update, whatever you had packed in a bundle will have to get refactored and that's just an annoying process altogether as well. That's why having either option from the original source is necessary. Also 24MB is a bit small for a ba2, but not nearly as bad as some I've seen :)
When you booted the game, open the console in the main menu and type in: coc player.moveto 2134d4 This will warp you into the General Atomics building where I stumbled this bug the first time. It should look like this:
See the green and purple lines between the cat painting and the couch where the light effect fades? That's exactly what this mod fixes. When you look around the room, you'll notice there's more of those green/purple pixels all over the place, especially on the floor.
If you use mods that modifies interior lighting like Enhanced Lights and Effects or Interior Lighting Overhaul those bugged gobo textures jumps right in your face because the background appears darker.
Has anyone run into an issue near Greentech Genetics with the update? My game locks up with a black screen or hangs with the Buffout warning: "A call to ID3D11Device::CreateTexture2D failed with error code 0x80070057. This will crash the game."
I rolled back to version 2.0.2 of this mod and everything is fine. As soon as I install 2.1.1 and go towards the area where Greentech Genetics is located from any direction, instant black screen freeze or freeze with the Buffout warning.
The game don't crash for me there and I didn't get the error message from Buffout. I fast travelled to the map marker and wandered around a bit and was going inside the Greentech Genetics building. Nothing unusual.
Could you please redownload the mod and install it again just to make sure? That error shouldn't trigger with those textures because I use a preset in Photoshop to save them with DXT7 compresson and if anything would be faulty (for example a wrong resolution like 1019x533) the program would warn me and won't save the texture. I used the same methods to edit, save and pack the files like I always do so I have no clue what's wrong.
Got the same crashing too, but when arriving at Nuka World using the monorail. Narrowed it down to this mod, as disabling it eliminates the crash and enabling it again returns the crashes at the same spot.
EDIT: there's really something wrong with the textures, as I enabled the plugin but without the textures BA2 file and the game didn't crashed. As soon as I put back the textures BA2 file in my data folder, the game crashes at the same spot, near the Nuka World station. So there's some texture used there that may be with some issue.
Hey amd64gamer and AmadeusOnagro, I've uploaded a hotfix. It would be very helpful if you could give it a try and get back to me if the game runs stable again. Thank you for reporting the problem, your valueable feedback was key to solve this issue. As per tradition, have a Kudos.
@Ogerilla: I was running around at Somerville Place for quite a while and couldn't trigger a crash. Then I looked into your download history and according to the Nexus you haven't downloaded the hotfix version 2.1.1. Please do so and look if the crash still occures.
Its weird you had to pack as a general. how did they add gobos to the base game 5 or 6 texture ba2 files? I seen in main ba2's you can add sound without compression. What happens if it is a dds ba2 with files added without compression? or.. that cant be done?
I guess it doesn't matter much as long as it all works. Just trying to learn.
For those wondering why it happens in the first place: Circles and green artifacts are the results of older DDS compression formats such as DXT1-3-5. So naturally, because FO4's engine fully supports newer and better formats like BC7 and ATI2, Bethesda decided to KEEP using DXT1 for all non-transparent textures, DXT5 for all transparent textures, not use BC7 at all, and use ATI2 only for normal and specular maps.
I spend an obscene amount of time dealing with this because I'm mostly a FNV modder. The only way to use DXT1-3-5 without getting those artifacts is to use Nvidia's Texture Tools Exporter on the higher compression quality settings. Although, for any DDS compression type, NTT is the best option. Using DXT1 is somewhat excusable because it's half the size of BC7/DXT5/DXT3, but there are ZERO reasons to use DXT3-5 in FO4.
nognow, did you remove your mods? clearly you know what your talking about but here you hve no mods? understandable tho. Its interesting info, but it also means I need photoshop, right?
So now with version 2.1.1 textures are packaged as main generic archive (used for meshes for example) instead of texture archive, would this have any side effects?
That was intentional to get the game running stable again. The only real downside is the bigger file size. In theory the game loads the included textures a bit slower if they're packed into a main archive but that is absolutely neglectable given the small texture sizes.
I stumbled upon this method for storing textures when I wondered why lookup tables (LUTs) which are used by weather and lighting mods won't load if they're saved into a texture archive. Only if they're not compressed (only possible with generic main archives) the game will actually use them. This little trick I learned back in the day helped me to solve the current crashes introduced with version 2.1.
To the modders from the future reading this and struggles to get archived textures to work (like gradients, LUTs, gobos, palettes or other similar small stuff used for some kind of effect), store them uncompressed in a main archive. If nothing else, this will work.
I was wondering, those textures load fine if they are stored in vanilla ba2 files but fail to load properly if put in other texture archives by official or unofficial tools, this is interesting, there must be a reason for this happening.
I had random CTDs and narrowed it down to this mod, which I really didn't expect at all.
To explain, I just recently started a new playthrough after several years away from the game and downloaded the latest version of the mod. I had used a previous version before with no problems so this mod was almost the last on the list of possible culprits.
I want to make something crystal clear to people who might read this. I think the mod is solid but in my particular load order of mods it seems I created some bad interaction with this mod. This can happen. There are literally millions of different combinations of mods that can be made so having a previously unseen incompatibility is always a possibility.
But it is this mod in my case. By disabling it or re-enabling it I can trigger a CTD at will. I'm posting this so the author can know what's up because I am mystified about how this mod can be the problem. As I said, it's probably something specific to my load order that is interacting badly with it. Strange.
To the mod author, Ablaze666, I hate to report anything that may be negative about your mod. I appreciate the work you've done. If I can uncover any other data about what might be contributing to the problem I will post it. Thanks.
I could reproduce the CTD and working on a hotfix right now. The crashes didn't happened with textures as loose files so it's something with the BA2 archive. Has nothing to do with your load order. The fix will be uploaded ASAP. Sorry for the inconvinience.
Adamndirtyape, no need be so shy with reporting problems related to a mod. Without feedback like yours I don't know when I would have noticed that something is wrong with this mod and by then it would have annoyed way to many people. So yeah, thanks for your comment. Here, have a Kudos.
Give Feedback
136 comments
Although the dummy esl doesn't comsume load order, it still counts towards the archive limit. I believe the game only loads the first 255 plugins' archives.
For your current play through you have no choice but to extract this .BA2 - but you still will have the same issue for subsequent play through you start in the future.
For the future it sounds like you need to do a combination of 3 things:
a) Look to "trim the fat" - i.e. have a complete look at your mod list and reassess if your really need X or Y mod - and remove any you don't think you need anymore. Especially looking at mods that have "redundant" features.
b) Look for a mod that combines the features of several of your current mods into a single mod - and replace them with that.
or
c) Look to merge like mods you do have into a single .ESP/.BA2 combination. Weapons and Armor mods are the prime candidates here since once they get their initial update they rarely if ever get updated again.
I couldn't explained it better. Thank you very much for writing this. Kudos #14 is on the house.
Especially point c) applies to all kind of paint jobs from the Creation Club, I merged them into a single archive and trimmed my archive count a lot that way. The same with texture replacer mods, all of them are merged into one big archive in my load order to don't hit the archive limit.
Nonetheless I will still upload my mods in packed form for the aforementioned reasons and it's up to each user what to do if they hit the archive limit. If I would provide loose files for them, the same users would run into the limit with the next mod they download.
coc player.moveto 2134d4This will warp you into the General Atomics building where I stumbled this bug the first time. It should look like this:
See the green and purple lines between the cat painting and the couch where the light effect fades? That's exactly what this mod fixes. When you look around the room, you'll notice there's more of those green/purple pixels all over the place, especially on the floor.
If you use mods that modifies interior lighting like Enhanced Lights and Effects or Interior Lighting Overhaul those bugged gobo textures jumps right in your face because the background appears darker.
I rolled back to version 2.0.2 of this mod and everything is fine. As soon as I install 2.1.1 and go towards the area where Greentech Genetics is located from any direction, instant black screen freeze or freeze with the Buffout warning.
Could you please redownload the mod and install it again just to make sure? That error shouldn't trigger with those textures because I use a preset in Photoshop to save them with DXT7 compresson and if anything would be faulty (for example a wrong resolution like 1019x533) the program would warn me and won't save the texture. I used the same methods to edit, save and pack the files like I always do so I have no clue what's wrong.
EDIT: there's really something wrong with the textures, as I enabled the plugin but without the textures BA2 file and the game didn't crashed. As soon as I put back the textures BA2 file in my data folder, the game crashes at the same spot, near the Nuka World station. So there's some texture used there that may be with some issue.
I was running around at Somerville Place for quite a while and couldn't trigger a crash. Then I looked into your download history and according to the Nexus you haven't downloaded the hotfix version 2.1.1. Please do so and look if the crash still occures.
I guess it doesn't matter much as long as it all works. Just trying to learn.
Did you use official tool to pack the textures?
I stumbled upon this method for storing textures when I wondered why lookup tables (LUTs) which are used by weather and lighting mods won't load if they're saved into a texture archive. Only if they're not compressed (only possible with generic main archives) the game will actually use them. This little trick I learned back in the day helped me to solve the current crashes introduced with version 2.1.
To the modders from the future reading this and struggles to get archived textures to work (like gradients, LUTs, gobos, palettes or other similar small stuff used for some kind of effect), store them uncompressed in a main archive. If nothing else, this will work.
I was wondering, those textures load fine if they are stored in vanilla ba2 files but fail to load properly if put in other texture archives by official or unofficial tools, this is interesting, there must be a reason for this happening.
Anyway thank you for quick update.
To explain, I just recently started a new playthrough after several years away from the game and downloaded the latest version of the mod. I had used a previous version before with no problems so this mod was almost the last on the list of possible culprits.
I want to make something crystal clear to people who might read this. I think the mod is solid but in my particular load order of mods it seems I created some bad interaction with this mod. This can happen. There are literally millions of different combinations of mods that can be made so having a previously unseen incompatibility is always a possibility.
But it is this mod in my case. By disabling it or re-enabling it I can trigger a CTD at will. I'm posting this so the author can know what's up because I am mystified about how this mod can be the problem. As I said, it's probably something specific to my load order that is interacting badly with it. Strange.
To the mod author, Ablaze666, I hate to report anything that may be negative about your mod. I appreciate the work you've done. If I can uncover any other data about what might be contributing to the problem I will post it. Thanks.