Fallout 4

About this mod

Full rebuild of precombined meshes and occlusion (previs) information for Fallout 4, reducing draw calls everywhere, which depending on location, should increase frames per second compared to the vanilla game, and also includes any relevant bug fixes I can find and fix not already handled by UF4OP. Requires Season Pass / All main DLC.

Requirements
Permissions and credits
Translations
Changelogs



also known as The Unofficial Fallout 4 Precombines Patch

[ PRP-Stable | PRP-Unstable | PRP-Patches (Soon) | PRP-SS2 | PRP-Vault120 (Deprecated) | PRP-XB1 ]

File size: Approximately 2.2GB total.

Baseline requirements for installation: The latest release of the Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch, Fallout 4 Game of the Year Edition 1.10.163 or newer from Steam or GOG. If you don't have the DLC or Season Pass, wait for a sale to buy it. All worldspace or interior changing Creation Club content is currently supported, with varying degrees of compatibility, weapon and armor skins aren't affected by PRP.

If you have the Fallout 4 VR version of the game, you still need the "Flat" version of the game to properly use this mod due to the VR's version having outdated master files. Installation documentation for the VR version isn't covered here, please consult reddit or a wabbajack that's tuned for VR.

Technical description and additional details past the spoiler. If you are new to modding, start with The Midnight Ride as it covers installation for this mod.

Build status:
Recommended: Branch 69
Other stable builds: Branch 65 (old), Branch 74 (new)

Spoiler:  
Show

Mods included with permission or implemented equivalently:
Collision Fixes from Scrap Everything (55), Flicker Fixer eXofixed (Original since 57, Patched since 69), Airport Transparency Fix (58, without the alternate textures, if you prefer them, download them yourself from the original mod page), Far Harbor - Cliffs Edge Hotel Wall Rest Ring Lower Fixed (58), Cliff's Edge Hotel Window Fix (58), Glitch's Fixes (58), Vault 111 Floor Guide Fix (58), Technically any mod that adds Max Height records to Nuka World, but we freshly generate it. (57), Collision and Mesh updates from Exoclyps as part of the Storywealth Collective patch (60), Underwater Glass Fix (64)

Current Translator credits:
Spanish (Spain): kittyowilder, Italian: samyesu, Brazilian Portuguese: A banned nexus user, replacements welcome, French: Oaristys and their team, Japanese: Anonymous users from 2game, Polish: Bartek3456, Simplified Chinese: Vozhuo, Russian: Slimer91 (before 2.1.5), Djezendopus (2.1.5), German: SkyHorizon3, any other languages not listed here are currently unsupported, contributions welcome!

Primary Support Discord (Collective Modding): Here.

Changelog/Bugtracker document: Here.

What is PRP?

The Previsibines Repair Pack is a full rebuild of the game's precombine meshes and occlusion information to lower draw calls, cull duplicate references, and fix placement errors that the unofficial team cannot fix without disabling them. The results of this mod typically results in increased framerate in CPU limited areas of the game's processing.

How do I install the mod?

If you are new to modding, start with The Midnight Ride so you have a well known and stable vanilla setup, including this mod.

For advanced users, PRP has three branches, two of which are on this mod page and the third in the PRP-Unstable on the link bar above.

For the options the mod asks you about, typically choose PPF and PRP after selecting your desired language, and a few of the compatibility patches if you use the appropriate dependent mods.

If you are an XB1 user, PRP Full will not fit on your console's paltry reserve space and a Lite version exists in the link bar above, click PRP-XB1. This also is a good choice if you want only the big bugfixes and don't want to bother with the patching nightmare this mod has brought to the modding scene on PC.

If you also have Sim Settlements 2 installed, there's a small compat patch intended for use with it to resolve a bug with being unable to target a location in chapter 3.

I'm getting flickering or missing pieces of buildings in places or everywhere.

Typically a load order issue or a precombine modding conflict. Precombine records are in the cell header and are a compatibility nightmare at times. Make sure PRP.esp is near or at the end of your load order for best results unless you have a patch against it. LOOT has correct sorting rules in place for most of the known mods that PRP is patched against.

I have a mod that isn't in the FOMOD or has an external patch, is it supported?

Maybe, depends on the mod. Typically worldspace changing mods would have the majority of the incompatibilities, though. Mods like the Rebuild series, the mods by Glitchfinder, tenhats, Yagisan, Pra, or if the mod page doesn't have such a patch, consult repositories like CannibalToast's PRP Patch Compendium and other places that I have yet to list.

Despite going through all that, I have an incompatibility with a mod. How do I make a patch for it?

You'll want to obtain the scripts from PJM's script page and consult the article here for more details than I need to list on this mod page.

Any mods I should avoid to minimize pain and suffering with your mod?

Reference the document here first. For texture replacement (PRP is all meshes, so any texture replacer will work as expected with it installed, these links are just the recommended go to that I test with.), the combination of Targeted Textures and Valius's HD Pack at 2K size will suit most player's needs, with 4estGimp's Repacking Scripts and/or at preference DoubleYouC's texture work as well. Vanilla upscales, though, are typically junk and aren't worth the download to get slight increases or decreases in VRAM and FPS in addition to installing PRP, anyone who is telling you otherwise is farming donation points or has no idea what they are talking about. If you are playing on a potato with low VRAM, look for a reputable 1K downscale that's not listed in the above document for best results.

Any other known incompatibilities with mods?

Currently due to mesh issues that have not been figured out yet for the Horizon mod, the full PRP mod will not build a patch with it if you are using the Enhanced Settlements addon that comes with the mod. Use the Lite builds instead for that.

Frost has it's own fork of PRP called Frost Cell Fixes by krrptd and you will end up installing that instead of this when following the recommended installation guide there.

Desperados Overhaul by Spifferino's earlier 0.2 release isn't compatible, but the 0.3 and later builds are maintained by myself and the required patches can be found on that nexus mod page.

Commonwealth Restoration Project and the Overgrowth variant from Shadowofthewind's Discord (The Black Pearl) has it's own precombine mesh set that will conflict with PRP. Any other precombine patches or repacks from that mod author are also incompatible. I do plan to refurbish Overgrowth in the future for PRP compatibility but that's it.

Boston FPS Fix is the ancestor of the PRP project, and should not be used with it at all. A partial backport exists here that I made for older mod lists, though.

Fallout 4 VR support?

Since build 65. For build 69 and later, make sure you have the Flat version of Fallout4.esm in use for best results. The one that ships with VR is older and is missing worldspace references.

I've found a bug that hasn't been reported or isn't known about!

Report it in the PRP Bugs channel first if you are in the CM discord, or use the posts feature of this mod page if you don't have access to it. I can also be reached in multiple modding discords under the Starhammer display name typically, just don't use the discord direct message feature to inform me of it. Nexus DMs are fine.

Should I clean the DLC?

PRP was built with the original ESM master files. xEdit makes unexpected record format changes (we don't know the correct way to do it) that is causing players strange effects like navmesh working oddly and such. The six DLC files that ship with the GOTY version of the game should be left as is. Any other plugins that tools like LOOT or Vortex tell you to clean plugins, should be cleaned. With that said, cleaning the master files should not do much to damage what PRP expects to find in the master files.

Also, if Wyre Bash or any automatic tools complain about any of the PRP plugins need cleaning, please report this as that would be an instance to tar and feather me to let me know I screwed up or forgot to clean the plugin.

Why does this mod need so many patches against it? (dev note: may need to rewrite this again for clarity)

PRP effectively replaces the foundation that objects are placed against in the game, so any mod that was built against the original (Bethesda) foundation needs to be either rebuilt for this new foundation, or patched. That is all mods that modify precombined item placement in the world - which is a large proportion of mods.

Precombines and previs are built as a type of cache that the game uses with one set of data. If that data changes, the cache becomes invalid. An example of this is when you add this mod's PPF.esm to your load order. PRP makes precombine/previs breaking/disabling changes to fix bugs, but also provides a full replacement data set that is improved over your existing base game set. Due to differences in mesh formats and unknowns with the previs format, we have no way to know if any of the base game files can be reused, so PRP has to be it's current full size to operate as expected and patchers can assume the provided replacement foundation is good to build off of.

This sadly also adds a spanning tree type of problem when it comes to patch generation, since the game operates on rule of one for the dataset per cluster, or to tl;dr this, the last loaded mesh/vis file is tracked and loaded. One way to improve this would be to make a tool to generate the files on the fly, but there's a significant CPU and Memory requirement for doing it through the CK and not everyone has the required 64GB of RAM. I do not personally have the programming skill to even attempt such a tool, and particularly good members of the community would have to solve this one.

Until then, we are working with what we got. Also, if you as a player are worried about the file size, keep the following in mind. Back in the old days, we could only make the full size precombine meshes. A full game generation is about 24GB without compression just for the meshes, compare that to current day, a typical PRP generation of the same cells is about 2GB and another 1.5GB or so for the visibility maps.

Also, due to size limitations, even if I somehow got PRP Full on the Beth.net mod site, it's still way too big to fit in the 2GB reserve space they are allowed. XB1 users have to suffice with the cut down PRP Lite builds as linked above as they are way more space efficient and hit the big bugfixes in the Commonwealth.

In short, there's been improvements in the last few years, but it could be better, and I have my hands full on mod development to try and push it further.