Fallout: New Vegas - Fall 2010

maverickz wrote:

I have a couple of mods installed through Nexus. High res textures, weapons reskin, and the flora mod. Oh and the character revamps. Nothing ridiculous though. I did some research and turned off the autosave feature. We'll see how that works out.

I'm trying to avoid mods and fixes that require other launchers just because I just don't have the energy to make a holy war out of this.

NVSE is really easy to install. It's certainly worth it for CASM if you're turning off the default autosave, because you risk having to replay a lot if you don't save on your own as often as you should. Since you're using several mods, it'd be a good idea to use Mod Organizer to install them, and BOSS to sort their order so you don't get crashes due to a wrong load order. The Mod Organizer link is for the version on the Skyrim Nexus, but it's just an updated version of the one on the New Vegas Nexus, and works with FO:NV.

Stengah wrote:
maverickz wrote:

I have a couple of mods installed through Nexus. High res textures, weapons reskin, and the flora mod. Oh and the character revamps. Nothing ridiculous though. I did some research and turned off the autosave feature. We'll see how that works out.

I'm trying to avoid mods and fixes that require other launchers just because I just don't have the energy to make a holy war out of this.

NVSE is really easy to install. It's certainly worth it for CASM if you're turning off the default autosave, because you risk having to replay a lot if you don't save on your own as often as you should. Since you're using several mods, it'd be a good idea to use Mod Organizer to install them, and BOSS to sort their order so you don't get crashes due to a wrong load order. The Mod Organizer link is for the version on the Skyrim Nexus, but it's just an updated version of the one on the New Vegas Nexus, and works with FO:NV.

Yeah that's all the stuff I was hoping to avoid. I guess I don't have a choice though. I don't understand why, Skyrim runs just fine with mods and Nexus.

New Vegas is just buggy. It will crash on you. It will also corrupt savegames if you save over old ones, so you never ever want to do that... the combination of disabling all autosaves and using CASM will avoid the problem completely. CASM can also handle quicksaving for you, but it needs another mod, one that actually modifies the game DLL slightly so that it can intercept keystrokes before the main Fallout engine sees them. (I forget what that name is, but I can figure it out if you need it.) I also installed a mod that makes Fallout Large Address Aware, so that it has a lot more memory to work with: this improves stability a bunch.

That said, if it's crashing all the time, perhaps you installed your mods in the wrong order? I used Nexus Mod Manager the last time I played it, and running a half-dozen or so mods of various sorts, had a pretty good playthrough, with no more crashing than the vanilla game. (Although, I gotta say, I used one of the highest-rated big content mods, and I wasn't terribly impressed at the quality: you can tell it's amateur work.) Honestly, I think it ended up being more solid for me than the base game did, and I finally explored a lot of the content in NV that I'd never seen before.

I hadn't realized just how much stuff there is, tucked away off the main quest line... you can explore NV a lot longer than you can regular FO3. I'm sure some of it was added mod content that I wasn't aware was modded, but there's a great deal of stuff even in the base game.

OK OK OK... Fine! I really want to wander the Nevada wasteland, much more so than my own home turf from FO3. So I'll play your little games with the bosses and dlls and things that drive. But I won't like it!

So, what that really means is I need serious help getting all that running. I have Nexus and have my mods installed and activated. Do I need to get rid of nexus now in place of BOSS or ModOrganizer? And does this mean I no longer launch new Vegas from steam?

How do play gaems?

I've disabled Save on functions in the Settings. But I quicksave like a nut, is that bad? I regular save regularly but only before and after major happenings.

maverickz wrote:
Stengah wrote:
maverickz wrote:

I have a couple of mods installed through Nexus. High res textures, weapons reskin, and the flora mod. Oh and the character revamps. Nothing ridiculous though. I did some research and turned off the autosave feature. We'll see how that works out.

I'm trying to avoid mods and fixes that require other launchers just because I just don't have the energy to make a holy war out of this.

NVSE is really easy to install. It's certainly worth it for CASM if you're turning off the default autosave, because you risk having to replay a lot if you don't save on your own as often as you should. Since you're using several mods, it'd be a good idea to use Mod Organizer to install them, and BOSS to sort their order so you don't get crashes due to a wrong load order. The Mod Organizer link is for the version on the Skyrim Nexus, but it's just an updated version of the one on the New Vegas Nexus, and works with FO:NV.

Yeah that's all the stuff I was hoping to avoid. I guess I don't have a choice though. I don't understand why, Skyrim runs just fine with mods and Nexus.

It really depends on what mods you're using and the order you installed them in. I'm sure you could get your mods working smoothly without using BOSS, but installing and running BOSS is a lot simpler than manually futzing with the load order. NVSE is only required for certain mods (usually ones that come with in-game configuration menus). The Mod Organizer helps make sure everything gets where it needs to go and makes it harder to screw up your diretory structure. It's not necessary at all to use it, it's just easier. Skyrim's also a lot more stable than FONV's ever been, so that helps too.

Malor wrote:

CASM can also handle quicksaving for you, but it needs another mod, one that actually modifies the game DLL slightly so that it can intercept keystrokes before the main Fallout engine sees them. (I forget what that name is, but I can figure it out if you need it.)

CASM only requires New Vegas Script Extender, which is probably what you're thinking of.

I double post for F.E.V.

Argh, I just deleted my modded install of NV, so I can't tell you exactly how I had it set up. If only you'd asked two weeks ago. It was pretty involved, getting it going... I spent several hours futzing with it.

And does this mean I no longer launch new Vegas from steam?

With the patches I was using, I had to launch from the desktop. I'm pretty sure that was because of the Large Address thing... the desktop icon would patch the exe or something. I don't quite remember now. I set it all up months ago, I didn't take notes, and things just do not stick in memory like they used to.

I've disabled Save on functions in the Settings. But I quicksave like a nut, is that bad? I regular save regularly but only before and after major happenings.

You don't want to use the game's built-in quicksave. NVSE is the mod I was trying to remember: it can capture keystrokes before the Fallout main engine sees them, and redirect them to interested mods. This lets you give the quicksave function to CASM, which uses multiple rolling files (maybe ten?). It always writes a fresh file, and deletes the oldest quicksave as a separate (hidden) step. This avoids the corruption bug completely.

From there, I used a weather overhaul mod, which I then configured to mostly just do sunny weather, because it's ridiculously over-the-top about how often weather events happen.... as a side effect, the weather mod improves visibility a ton, which I really like. I did a huge rebalance mod, which makes the early game very difficult, and the later game still challenging... I think I actually ended up setting some of the stuff back to base values, like carry weights. I installed a mod that regularly scans for and releases unused memory, which was a HUGE improvement in stability. And then I added a mod with neat effects for energy weapons, just because.

Okay, you can't tell, but I just spent about ten minutes searching: this is the guide I followed. I didn't do everything he suggested, but I did do many of them, more than I had remembered. This, no doubt, is why it took a few hours to get the game running in the first place.

But it really was a lot better afterward.

Oh, another note: before you embark on the mighty mod quest, first make sure all your drivers are up to date. If you do all that modding, and then the game still doesn't run well, you'll be annoyed... so cover your basics first.

Malor wrote:

Argh, I just deleted my modded install of NV, so I can't tell you exactly how I had it set up. If only you'd asked two weeks ago. It was pretty involved, getting it going... I spent several hours futzing with it.

I was busy playing Dishonored wrong at the time.

Thanks for your post, I'm going to read yours and Stengah's input much closer tonight when I'm sitting in front of my pc.

I played without any mods nor any crashes for like 70 hours or so. And then I started adding mods without knowing the advice above, and crashing started. I took something like the advice above...and crashing stopped. So...follow advice?

That's probably what I would do, if the re-download wouldn't be too painful.

So would it be best to uninstall everything including the base game and start over? Or can I just uninstall the mods through nexus?

Malor wrote:

That's probably what I would do, if the re-download wouldn't be too painful.

Would it save my current save games?

So before removing mods you should do a clean save first. That is you save in a small world space like a house that has nothing from the mod in it. Then you start the game and advance time I believe 3 days. This will trigger a purge that will get rid of stuff. You then save again.

Lets say mod A adds clown bandits. You remove mod A. You then go and play the game. If your save file has a reference to clown bandits the game will crash because it will not know what to do with that clown bandit. Doing a clean save will purge all references to the clown bandit so your game doesn't crash.

Another reason a game might crash is because mod A will delete a object and mod B will handle that same object in some way. As soon as you enter a space where that object should be the game will crash. Its fixable but a little beyond me to explain it.

Personally I played without mods on my first play without any crashes. I think that is the way to go.

maverickz wrote:

So would it be best to uninstall everything including the base game and start over? Or can I just uninstall the mods through nexus?

Assuming you're using the Nexus Mod Manager, probably not. Running BOSS would sort out the load order problems. Adding NVSE and CASM wouldn't require a fresh install either. From the sound of the mods you've said you are using, they're mostly cosmetic stuff. If you had mods that altered or added game mechanics, a fresh slate would probably be best for that.

If you really want to do a fresh start, this is what I'd do:
1. Deactivate all the mods via NMM. Go to the New Vegas folder in the directory you installed NMM to and copy the zipped mods to a folder on your desktop. Uninstall NMM.
2. Go through the New Vegas data folder and delete any files that don't look like they belong (the entire folders for meshes and textures, .esp's and .bsa's leftover from mods). If you're not sure, delete it. Verify the integrity of the files through Steam, and it will redownload anything you deleted that you shouldn't have. Open the launcher for New Vegas, but don't go into the game (verifying the integrity of the files wipes out the registry files and running the launcher recreates them).
3. Download and install NVSE, BOSS, and MO.
4. Open the folder you installed MO to, and go to the "Downloads" folder. Drop the zipped mod files you saved from NMM in there. Download any other mods you plan to add. I haven't had MO sync up with the Nexus sites very well, so downloading the files manually then putting them in the Download folder will probably be your best bet.
5. Open MO and add BOSS to the list of executables you can run. Run BOSS via MO. Because of how MO works to keep your New Vegas install folder clean, you have to run outside programs through MO. It's pretty easy to add them to MO, and it's got an option to create shortcuts that will automatically run the desired program through MO. Once BOSS has finished running, your load order will be automatically sorted.
6. If I remember correctly, the large address aware "mod" is just a modified version of the New Vegas exe, so you can just replace the original one with that.
7. Use MO to launch NVSE (I'd recommend using MO to put a shortcut on your desktop that does this without having to load up MO every time you want to play).

Your save games are stored in a completely different directory than the one the game files are in, so they'd be fine. The only problem you might have is if you don't add back in a mod you've been using. It's not likely to be game-breaking though, depending on the mod. If it was a texture or weapon/armor mod, the texture would go back to normal and any items added by the mod would disappear. If your save was done in a location added by a mod, that would cause some problems, as the cell the game would try to load no longer exists.

Another thing to note for stability: Bethesda games do not like Steam being installed in the Program Files directory. Modded Bethesda games especially don't like it.

Ok I tried to use BOSS and Mod Organizer but I still experienced a crash. But I think I've finally nailed it down to the NPC model and hair mod. Will keep trying.

EDIT: I can confirm now that it was the Fallout Character Overhaul 1.1 mod that was causing me so much grief. I had deactivated it and have been playing without any problems for several hours.

Ok, so I can see why things like CASM exist. I have had several saves corrupt on me for no good reason. I save often, so I haven't had to backtrack, but the corruption is just often enough to be annoying and give me a sense of doubt about whether I'll be able to reload. I don't know how the "normal" corruption manifests itself, but for me it becomes an endless loading screen with constantly switching backgrounds.

maverickz wrote:

Ok, so I can see why things like CASM exist. I have had several saves corrupt on me for no good reason. I save often, so I haven't had to backtrack, but the corruption is just often enough to be annoying and give me a sense of doubt about whether I'll be able to reload. I don't know how the "normal" corruption manifests itself, but for me it becomes an endless loading screen with constantly switching backgrounds.

I don't know if that's a corrupted save. I've had the infinite loading screens happen many times, and quitting the game and restarting it is all I had to do to get it to load most times (If it happened when loading into a new area, the autosave would get made, but it wouldn't load the game world). Sometimes I'd have to load an older save just to get into the world, but then loading the offending save file would work fine.
Switching to CASM did help with that, but it didn't eliminate it entirely.

Just though I'd share my favorite fan made NV mod:

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mo...?

New Vegas Bounties, really nice little story line and voice work.

IMAGE(http://static1.nexusmods.com/15/mods/130/images/37310-5-1289699318.jpg)

Edit: I just saw that it's top 3 on most endorsed of all time. LOL. I played it when it was fairly new and unknown.

I have had several saves corrupt on me for no good reason. I save often, so I haven't had to backtrack, but the corruption is just often enough to be annoying and give me a sense of doubt about whether I'll be able to reload.

Well, the way I've seen it is subtle; the game just starts breaking in mysterious ways, because bits are getting flipped somewhere that shouldn't be. It looks like it's working fine, but then quests start going weird on you. Like, in early playthrough, the residents of Primm just suddenly went hostile on me, and it wasn't because of the armor I was wearing. Just, suddenly, they hated my guts, after I'd saved their deputy sheriff. (I assume that was from save corruption, though I can't be certain.) And in a lategame playthrough, Veronica's BOS quests got hosed, and I got stuck partway through them, and couldn't resolve them properly.

When I used CASM with NVSE, I didn't really have any trouble. Everything worked the way it was supposed to.

I think you might be having a different problem. The savegame corruption bug only happens when you *overwrite* saves, and you know about that, so it shouldn't be happening.

Interesting. I'll try to load a "corrupted" file tonight after loading up the game from a known functioning file and see what happens. I do tend to use new saves as much as possible, except for the quicksave obviously, which I realize is problematic. But it's not always the quicksave that causes infinite loading screen. I did start loading the game from Steam rather than NVSE after I found the game no longer crashing when I unloaded the Character mod. Maybe I'll have to go back to that.

I heard the game was buggy, I didn't think it would happen to me.

maverickz wrote:

Interesting. I'll try to load a "corrupted" file tonight after loading up the game from a known functioning file and see what happens. I do tend to use new saves as much as possible, except for the quicksave obviously, which I realize is problematic. But it's not always the quicksave that causes infinite loading screen. I did start loading the game from Steam rather than NVSE after I found the game no longer crashing when I unloaded the Character mod. Maybe I'll have to go back to that.

I heard the game was buggy, I didn't think it would happen to me.

I still really recommend using CASM and NVSE. I can't guarantee it'll help, but it most likely will. I know that once I got over my own obstinateness about using CASM I liked it a lot. The only time I lost more than 5 minutes of gameplay is if I'd spent a lot of time in the menus and crashed before I left them.

I perhaps made the mistake of playing Red Dead Redemption recently. I'd never played it before. I received it from my wife for Christmas. I say "mistake" because I am less a gamer per se than a player of modern Fallout games with a very-occasional straying into other games. Fallout New Vegas holds the particular charm of its desert landscape; I lived in New Mexico for a couple of years and have yearned to permanently return since I left. FONV provided a cheap virtualization of such land and I've devoured most of it.

Then I started RDR. To say it is better is to say...well, very little. It is an astoundingly better-built geography. Rockstar's cacti and desert shrubs are far more believable than Obsidian's Joshua trees. Rockstar's desert paths look and feel organically created. The sun lenses through the clouds, and rises and sets beautifully, casting shadows on boulders and mountains. And the weather! Rain pelts you as lightning flashes illuminate the cloud-darkened desert while you prod your horse to a steady gallop. The buildings are open, there are no load screens between you and their interiors. There are other relative improvements having nothing to do with the geography, notably the voice acting and maybe even the codified body language, but it's the geography that wins me most.

I did some searching and it appears RDR and the modern Fallouts have roughly equivalently sized worlds. I suppose the latter are more densely peppered with locations and such, even allowing for RDR's procedural campsites and such, so there's that. But I can't shake the idea that Bethesda (and Obsidian, and whomever else works on Fallout henceforth) are stuck with an engine, or maybe a design philosophy, that handicaps them so formidably. I don't know the budgets involved in these games but assume they're comparable. Is there so much to Fallout's more varied, branching narratives that it sucks development resources away from the worldbuilding to this degree, or is it just a matter of the Creation Engine's limitations, or both, or something else entirely?

It'll be hard to go back to FONV and finish up the DLC, unless the DLC has other compelling qualities. It might be hard to go to whatever Fallout 4 is, even though it seems unlikely it'll be in a comparable environment. When you've seen a really engaging open world it's hard to be swept away by a shallower implementation.

Of course, the fact that there's little branching in RDR detracts some from its overall appeal. When I enter the Sherrif's office to see what's up and then have no choice but to join his posse, it kills some o' the mojo. And mojo there is, in spades.

Maybe I've just played too much Fallout lately. I will be playing some of Puce Moose's mods, first and foremost the Puce Moose Tweak and Balance Center. Especially the Deadlier Combat component. Here's the exciting part:

Combat is frequently vicious and brief, and having to pump round after round of ammunition into an unarmored raider happens far less frequently. Most people, the player included, will kick the bucket after eating from one to three bullets. Getting in the first shot is more crucual than ever.

Who knows, maybe Fallout's moddability will get me where I want to be. But imagine being able to mod a Fallout world rendered as beautifully as RDR. Here's hoping.

muraii wrote:

I don't know the budgets involved in these games but assume they're comparable.

Heh. Assuming Obsidian is in the same ballpark as Rockstar when it comes to budgets and development time is hilarious.

Alien Love Gardener wrote:
muraii wrote:

I don't know the budgets involved in these games but assume they're comparable.

Heh. Assuming Obsidian is in the same ballpark as Rockstar when it comes to budgets and development time is hilarious.

I am noted for my quick wit.

More to the point, assuming Bethesda is development the next installment, at least they should have some money. Not that money solves all ills. Ultimately, I just hope Bethesda learns from the rest of the industry. I haven't played Skyrim, but having played Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and stomached some of Obsidian, the trajectory considering what I've watched of Skyrim footage doesn't bode well. I skimmed a video of Skyrim again yesterday, and the erstwhile "wilderness" paths look much less organically worn than do those in RDR.

That said, maybe some o' the texture mods will help alleviate this graphical ennui.

I thought the Fallouts were in Gamebryo, weren't they?

I'm pretty sure RDR's engine is an iteration of the custom, in-house codebase that Rockstar has been developing for so long. They built it, so they can make it do whatever they want, assuming they want to invest the manpower. Having total control over the engine like that gives them a great deal of flexibility. It probably also means they're prone to scope creep and overspending on titles, though with the amount of money they make, it probably doesn't matter much.

Whatever the Fallouts are running on, Gamebryo or no, I'm pretty sure it's not in-house, so Bethesda and Obsidian were fairly sharply limited in terms of what they could do. I suspect that's part of why NV is buggier than FO3 was... Obsidian was pushing the boundaries of the engine as hard as they could, and, well, it's fragile out there on the edges.

I thought Skyrim was lovely, although I wasn't looking at it for hyper-realism. Measuring the quality of a game by the authenticity of its terrain handling is pretty unusual. You're absolutely right in your observations, but I don't think most of us were looking that closely.

Malor wrote:

I thought the Fallouts were in Gamebryo, weren't they?

I'm pretty sure RDR's engine is an iteration of the custom, in-house codebase that Rockstar has been developing for so long. They built it, so they can make it do whatever they want, assuming they want to invest the manpower. Having total control over the engine like that gives them a great deal of flexibility. It probably also means they're prone to scope creep and overspending on titles, though with the amount of money they make, it probably doesn't matter much.

You're right. I conflated Gamebryo with Creation Engine, but the latter came after FONV. The Creation Engine is based on Gamebryo, is an extension of it with some components apparently rewritten by Bethesda. That was the source of my confusion.

Whatever the Fallouts are running on, Gamebryo or no, I'm pretty sure it's not in-house, so Bethesda and Obsidian were fairly sharply limited in terms of what they could do. I suspect that's part of why NV is buggier than FO3 was... Obsidian was pushing the boundaries of the engine as hard as they could, and, well, it's fragile out there on the edges.

Excellent point, though I'm not too concerned with the bugs at this point. I likely would've seen/will see them more on PC than on PS3, where I've played these games exclusively. Not to say I didn't get stuck in the mountain geometry just outside Goodsprings in my first or second session with FONV. i just persevered.

I thought Skyrim was lovely, although I wasn't looking at it for hyper-realism. Measuring the quality of a game by the authenticity of its terrain handling is pretty unusual. You're absolutely right in your observations, but I don't think most of us were looking that closely.

I wasn't either. I've been more than happy with the modern Fallouts, though I'm tiring on FONV of late. That's probably because I've exhausted most of the exploration, wandering around for over 200 hours on one playthrough, moving the main story along relatively infrequently. I was particularly disappointed with Honest Hearts' geological structure. Then I played RDR and was amazed at the verisimilitude, of the land and of the overall package. It's a pretty convincing implementation, and made me wonder what Bethesda could do with Fallout in such an engine.

I'm hearing from this discussion that Rockstar's in another fiscal league, and own their own technology, so we'll just have to see what Bethesda can eek out of the Creation Engine, which I assume they'll use on their future ES/FO games. I definitely consider the whole game in the estimation of the game, e.g., I'm spoiled by Fallout's branching when I expect to have greater substantive choice in RDR. I was specifically talking about the environments, and it doesn't seem too odd to compare the quality of various games' environments.

With Id Software also a part of Zenimax now, one could reasonably hope that Bethesda will eventually get a bit of help on the engine front.

Other than the streaming textures thing, RAGE is a pretty darn nice engine. If they could fix that nonsense, it might be a very good platform for Bethesda.

I imagine this is largely a past-tense discussion at this point. Surely they've already chosen the engine and built their systems and have lots of assets in place. I hope.

RAGE looked gorgeous in the video content I watched. Dinna play, though.