29 minutes ago, worik said:

One more thing for MO2 and merged mods:

 

In MO1, you had full archive management functionality.

That meant, that you could merge mods, keep their bsa files as they are and simply activate them in the archive management tab.

 

Tannin dropped that feature in MO2 (which is very sad and a bad decision in my opinion ).

So, your merges won't work the old way. You will need to extract all BSA files from the to-be-merged mods into loose files.

 

It's still an ongoing task for me to convert my 25 merges from bundled BSAs to loose files. But hey, I can tidy them up a bit, while I'm on it. ? (remove unused stuff)

 

That might be connected to that same issue, if you merge with the option to keep the BSAs intact. ?

thing is I could not even setup the MergePlugins in MO2. Some "OK" button stayed greyed out. But I cant remember the details anymore. 

6 minutes ago, Nymra said:

thing is I could not even setup the MergePlugins in MO2. Some "OK" button stayed greyed out. But I cant remember the details anymore. 

I'm planning to rebuild some of my merges. Probably monday or tuesday.

It will be my first merge after I moved from MO1 to MO2.... will take notes and post my outcome here afterwards

I've got to do some merging myself this week as I'm up to 250 plug-ins. (Followers as you might guess ?)

I did a handful a few months back and Merge Plugins is not the same with Vortex as it was with NMM.

Just now, Grey Cloud said:

I've got to do some merging myself this week as I'm up to 250 plug-ins. (Followers as you might guess ?)

how can you
I m already annoyed by one misbehaving NPC slut  

3 minutes ago, Nymra said:

how can you
I m already annoyed by one misbehaving NPC slut  

Once you get above about 6 followers they actually get less annoying as you can ignore them most of the time and let them do what they want.

Once I get to 20 or more then I can just walk about and if anything attacks I let them deal with it. I do all the heavy lifting of the loot.

19 hours ago, Nymra said:

could not even setup the MergePlugins in MO2

19 hours ago, worik said:

I'm planning to rebuild some of my merges. Probably monday or tuesday.

Ok then,  pretty annoying but I guess I figured it out.

Mators old Merge Plugins in MO2

1. Setup MO2

Install as usual MP as usual, register it as a tool in MO2, like you did with MO1

2. Setup MP

Do as you did previously, but

Options symbol => Merging TAB

• manually set your merge destination directory ( "D:\mods\Skyrim LE" in my case )
• tick "extract BSAs" because, unlike MO1, MO2 isn't able to handle them anymore (rant: fucking stupid decision ! )

Options symbol => Integration TAB

• IF you tick MO, 
  • manually set all paths, the MO2 binary won't be detected automatically ?‍♀️
  • but if you have a MO1 install, you can simply point the path to the MO1
  • the correct load order of your ESPs is not carried from MO2 to MP and gets ruined ❌
  • I assume the load order is ruined, because MP reads the wrong loadorder file from the MO1 path
  • will test that further and try to fool it, perhaps I can find out how it decides that the given MO directory is valid
• IF you don't tick MO,
  • it uses the correct load order from MO2 right pane ✅
  • if fails to copy the general assets ❌
• manually set Papyrus Compiler Path
• manually set BSAOpt path and options

3. Exit MP

4. Start it again and use it

Update:

Indeed, MP is looking for ModOrganizer.ini which has been moved away from the MO installation directory.

It's reading the "Selected_profile" from there and moves on to grab all else from $MOPATH/profiles/$selected_profile

So far, I've found "modlist.txt" in MPs source code, which makes sense.

OK! That means, the goal is to fool all checks and point MP to the correct modlist.txt!

idea1: set a link to the new ModOrganizer.ini

note1: remember that you probably have to set a link to the correct profiles directory if you have moved that, too

idea2: batch copy the stupid files, before starting MP

@worik

Criticising MO2? You'll get yourself excommunicated. ?

"Burn the witch" ?

36 minutes ago, worik said:

Update:

Indeed, MP is looking for ModOrganizer.ini which has been moved away from the MO installation directory.

It's reading the "Selected_profile" from there and moves on to grab all else from $MOPATH/profiles/$selected_profile

So far, I've found "modlist.txt" in MPs source code, which makes sense.

 

OK! That means, the goal is to fool all checks and point MP to the correct modlist.txt!

 

idea1: set a link to the new ModOrganizer.ini

note1: remember that you probably have to set a link to the correct profiles directory if you have moved that, too

 

idea2: batch copy the stupid files, before starting MP

I just wonder if its really worth the trouble to go back to MergePlugin from xEdit just because of the BSA?
I noticed I unpacked almost all of them anyway because I modify almost all mods...

In other words: is there an advantage of Merged Plugins over xEdit apart from the BSA handling? 

46 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Criticising MO2? You'll get yourself excommunicated. ?

I'm not that religious 

(except when it comes to the holy eternal fire and their witch hunters )

And one of the major feature of MO1 was indeed the archive management.

I emphasize my statement again: Dumping such a key feature is plain STUPID

23 minutes ago, Nymra said:

is there an advantage of Merged Plugins over xEdit apart from the BSA handling?

MP is the successor of the xedit scripts. ? And they were know to have open issues, which were fixed with MP.

If it's only item mods, you probably won't notice too much.

But the "fixed" list was long.

It's too late for me today. But tomorrow, I will try to fool MP around to accept MO2 as a valid ModManager

I'll try to write up a cooking recipe like above. Just tell me if it makes sense for everybody. Sometimes, I fail to get the right meaning across when I write in english.

1 hour ago, worik said:

I'm not that religious

Heathens such as DTMT and myself wont say anything but that @Nymra is one of the faithful . . .

1 hour ago, worik said:

I will try to fool MP around to accept MO2 as a valid ModManager

I thought about starting my merging today but remembered my golden rule - "Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow". (It's a man thing ).

MP doesn't have an option for Vortex either.

2 hours ago, worik said:

MP is the successor of the xedit scripts. ? And they were know to have open issues, which were fixed with MP.

If it's only item mods, you probably won't notice too much.

But the "fixed" list was long.

 

It's too late for me today. But tomorrow, I will try to fool MP around to accept MO2 as a valid ModManager

 

I'll try to write up a cooking recipe like above. Just tell me if it makes sense for everybody. Sometimes, I fail to get the right meaning across when I write in english.

wait... I thought Merge Plugin is outdated and no longer maintained while its creator is now making ... oh wait, I meant zEdit! LoL not xEdit. What a mess... I am using zEdit not xEdit for Pluginmerge. 

 

23 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Heathens such as DTMT and myself wont say anything but that @Nymra is one of the faithful . . .

I am absolutly inept in general with programs and have a very low tolerance before I want to smash PC screens.
MO2 solved this for me because it is basically doing what it should while the other organizers (or having none) did not

its FNIS which is the headache here because for some reason it decided to be the opposite of logical and I had to develop my own creative solution for making it work flawless with MO2. But I blame FNIS for that, not MO2. 
Cant wait for Nemesis to take over... 

So I am a faithful because I drank from the holy grail

I am also not very fond of supporting other mod organizers because it sometimes feels like simple things are complex there or ppl dont know what they do. So MO2 is using Windows PC. Nexus and all the rest is Mac users and not having an Organizer is Linux Users

33 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

MP doesn't have an option for Vortex either.

?I think I have read a guide today .. but forget to take note

11 minutes ago, Nymra said:

zEdit

Yes, that's the new project. But it's still advertised as alpha on github so I'm not bothering with that until it has gained stability or is unavoidable.

16 minutes ago, Nymra said:

its FNIS which is the headache here

It worked straight out of the box when I moved from MO1 to MO2. Not a single issue, neither FNIS 7.5 when I migrated nor 7.6 that I run now. I've read about problems but I couldn't find any.

13 minutes ago, Nymra said:

not having an Organizer is Linux Users

*cough*

24 minutes ago, worik said:

It worked straight out of the box when I moved from MO1 to MO2. Not a single issue, neither FNIS 7.5 when I migrated nor 7.6 that I run now. I've read about problems but I couldn't find any.

It "works", yeah. But I never could get it to be reliably isolated for each profile. 
So having FNIS XXL 7.6 forexample only installed ONCE and then just rerun with MO file redirection. 
I was so annoyed because out of the blue this stopped working sometimes and so I went back to installing 1 FNIS clone for each profile I have (need only like a handfull anyway).  
Now destroy me

24 minutes ago, worik said:

*cough*

Shots fired! 

8 hours ago, Nymra said:

and so I went back to installing 1 FNIS clone for each profile I have (need only like a handfull anyway).  

? We have usually 4 different profiles here.

Another note to myself: I will post our FNIS/MO2 setup tomorrow. It might have something to do with the way how we did that.

Perhaps it gives others an inspiration

13 hours ago, worik said:

But tomorrow, I will try to fool MP around to accept MO2 as a valid ModManager

? Fooled that stupid thing!

Using Mators old MergePlugins in MO2

1. Setup MO2

1.1 register MP as a usual tool in MO2, like you did with MO1

1.2 IF you have moved your profiles folder, create a symlink in the MO2 installation folder and point it to your real profiles folder

• you need the the "run as administrator" cmd shell
• mklink /d fake_MOprofilesFolder real_MOprofilesFolder

1.4 create a symlink in the MO2 installation folder and point it to your real ModOganizer.ini file in your $User\AppDate\Local\ModOrganizer\Skyrim folder

• you need the the "run as administrator" cmd shell
• mklink fake_MO.ini real_MO.ini

2. Setup MP

Do as you did previously, but

Options symbol => Merging TAB

• manually set your merge destination directory ( "D:\mods\Skyrim LE" in my case )
• tick "extract BSAs" because, unlike MO1, MO2 isn't able to handle them anymore (rant: fucking stupid decision ! )

Options symbol => Integration TAB

• tick MO as usual
• fill the Mod manager path manually with your MO2 installation path
• fill the Mod manager mods path manually ( "D:\mods\Skyrim LE" in my case )
• manually set Papyrus Compiler Path
• manually set BSAOpt path and options

Edit: https://www.loverslab.com/blogs/entry/12013-patchwork-enabling-mators-mergeplugins-in-modorganizer2/

Thanks for the guide! It could be interesting to have some examples of "valid" (though it depends on your load order) SexLab/DD/related mods, if any.

15 hours ago, ExodusTransonicMercury said:

valid

What s that ? What is a "valid" mod?

5 hours ago, worik said:

What s that ? What is a "valid" mod?

Sorry, I must have phased out while writing, forgot the key word.

To rephrase it and go further :

It could be interesting to have some examples of combinations of plugins from mods from LL or required (SexLab, Estrus, DD, Bikini, and the myriad of mods) that can work (in most load orders) as merged plugins (if such exist).

Similarly, examples of LL mods that can't fit together can be interesting.

There are many guidelines across the Internet, but examples are lacking, and I have read of theoretically-possible (only considering their types, or according to some guidelines) merges that don't work out, along with a lot of contradiction on what actually works. In the end, some comments even go to the point of stating "stick to merging followers, weapons and armor" (which is pretty limiting).

I'm of course not talking about inventorying the possible and not possible merge plugins, that would defeat the purpose of examples, which is to give a basis for users to learn and test on their own what works and what doesn't.

I must have have spent a good two or three couple of hours yesterday of testing with odd but eventually working results, especially in my "Windhelm racism and outskirts" that includes both NPCs and locations, but I ended tinkering it, with "Gray Quarter Overhaul" and "Windhelm Better Pathways to Docks" out of the merged plugin and "Windhelm Shrine 2 Dibella" mod enabled but its esp disabled, while "Generic Racism in Windhelm", "More Generic Racism in Windhelm", "Windhelm Apartheid", and "Windhelm Bridge" are seemingly fully integrated in the merged plugin with their mods disabled.

I'm unsure how to understand those results, but my take on the problem would be that "Shrine 2 Dibella need the esp for custom assets (physical/visual elements, as some elements of vanilla Skyrim still appeared in the shrine while using the merged plugin without the esp on the load order, but not much: none of the custom statues, walls, etc. of the chapel, but the strongbox and the shrine item were there) while the others mods probably don't (adding dialogues or using more of vanilla dialogues, adding NPCs, using vanilla textures, etc.). There was also possibly some conflicts between "Better Pathways to Docks" and "Windhelm Bridge" (though I believe that neither touched the bridge at that section). I removed Gray Quarter more for good measure (and other unrelated reasons) than to actually resolve a confirmed problem.

I deviated a bit from my subject: It could interesting to know a couple of devious mods merged plugins that can be possible, if any (the answer would be as useful both ways). Anyway, thanks for the guide! (part 02 was particularly useful to me, found a lot of stuff I was missing for too long)

(on that last parenthesis, I also merged GagsFX four parts into a single plugin to made some room in the first place, but I have no idea so far if the results are there, will tell as soon as I know).

7 hours ago, ExodusTransonicMercury said:

I also merged GagsFX four parts into a single plugin to made some room in the first place

Hi! I try to create a wall of text too =D

Yes it's possible to merge all parts of GagFX. I have them always merged. Test is easy by gag a follower and have some sexy time.

7 hours ago, ExodusTransonicMercury said:

It could interesting to know a couple of devious mods merged plugins that can be possible

Usually I leave devious mods alone, means I don't merge them (most of them). This is mainly because they are so interconnected on my setups that merging them would be risky or needs individual testing to see if they glitch out. In addition don't forget the regular updates of newer devious mods.

Also don't underestimate the right MCM settings. A LO full of devious mods can quickly become unplayable (clusterfucks, too many events get triggered in a short time, difficulty, polling, script lag, incompatible or redundant settings, fine tuning).

There are so many good mods on LL now that it isn't possible to have them all in one LO anymore without creating chaos. So a specialized LO is more fun than one that will create frustrating situations, because too many mods want to run events on the PC.

I guess what I want to say is, merge save to merge mods like followers/armors/weapons/spells/equipment/small vanilla addon mods/nexus quest mods/replacer/patches and keep free esp slots that way instead of merging interconnected LL mods.

Or I'm just lazy and scared to break devious mods with merging only to find that out after hours of game time.?

7 hours ago, ExodusTransonicMercury said:

It could be interesting to have some examples of combinations of plugins from mods from LL or required (SexLab, Estrus, DD, Bikini, and the myriad of mods) that can work (in most load orders)

Working on that for a while now, but always get sidetracked by trying out new mods ^^

I just take a break from that and trying out my latest creation. Testing takes a while, because it's time consuming. (an LO that looks good in the first 40 hours can bug out after 100 hours, because REASONS (mostly things that get only triggered in high lvls or mods you just never came around to trigger unless you tested them first on a minimal LO, which is great to see if that mod works at all, but can be bugged to hell in Main LO because conflicts/lag/ingame clusterfucks).

The issue is that everyone has individual ideas how the setup will work/effect the gameplay, so I would see anything I post more like a source for inspiration and not as the last word in setup building.

My Idea is to have many devious mods in LO that create a synergy, while being able to create a sandbox style game (less devious quest mods, but mods that create devious situations), while also still being able to play either vanilla quests or installed custom quests.

Another important thing for me is continuous gameplay: possible glitches should have a workaround that helps to rescue clusterfuck situations. Also situational CTD should be rare and the game should be stable for many hours (usually 4 hours).

My idea is to create "themed mod combos" and an example LO here LOL (danger: old and multiple times overworked now)

An example for themed mod combos is my "Biohazard" collection - which I wouldn't dare to merge - would look like this atm (for the blog I would write it in the style as above, I just drop this as example):

That would be all mods installed

this would be the optimal LO

And from this I would create a "module" Estrus.

Means those mods stay together and can be moved up or down in LO.

In this case there are optionals possible too and synergies:

> Micro Hunters is a summon creature mod for chaurus hunters => Estrus causes chaurus spit attacks to trigger tentacles => with that summons you have a chance to trigger an estrus attack on (female hostiles!). Same goes for Devious Arachnophobia attacks that change Spider spit attacks. Any summon or creature or combat mod needs to be above Estrus in LO to get the effect (and/or use a smash patch)

> Estrus Spider for example would conflict with Devious Arachnophobia for spit attacks, so only one spit attack can be used. It would be still possible to use the EstrusSpider egg impregnation after spider sex tho without the spit attack activated. In my case I replace EstrusSpider with the effects from Sexlab-Parasites, which also adds effects after sex with spiders (eggs, plugs, removal mechanics). Another reason to replace EstrusSpider with Sexlab Parasites is that EstrusSpider has some not so nice sideeffects that I can circumvent with Sexlab Parasites without loosing any Spider sex effects.

> zzEstrus esp active is optional. If active it adds the missing tentacles from Estrus+, but also causes glitches with crowd gathering (the crowds seem to come from zzEstrus even if crowds are deactivated in zzEstrus MCM => wouldn't be a problem, but the NPC stay in crowd animation for quite a while even if no estrus scenes is running anymore. Luckily this stops after fast traveling away or after a few days(?).

> from my experiance dD enchanted chests is LO sensitive, means you can get glitches (or worse) if it's in the wrong spot related to zzEstrus and Estrus+

7 hours ago, ExodusTransonicMercury said:

(which is pretty limiting)

Yes and no, because even if you could merge 50 devious mods into your LO, it doesn't mean it would be useful in your game.

Not very helpful LO example, because you can only see esp, but it could give you an idea what devious mods go well together

This Setup has close to 600 mods installed and about 500 esp. What you see is the stuff I didn't dare to merge (either because Merge Plugins warned about errors, or bad experience).

I'm sure there can be merged more, but it a bit of a hassle to find out which mod will still work later ingame after being merged.

I reduced already devious mods a bit, because too many don't make the game better.

For example if you have too many helpful mods that help you out of DDs without any drawback DDs get too easy to escape and make will make them boring.

Than there are the enslave mods like SD, DFC, sLola. If you run them all at the same time in one party you would be constantly busy with their events without being able to enjoy any of them, because you would be more busy with trying to avoid conflicts or clusterfucks or you can't do much else. Add Pet Project and POP to the mix and you get odd situations where multiple Doms want you to do something, while you get dragged to the Prison. At some point something will break.

What I mean, it's not just "get as much devious mods into LO as you can" but "get as much conflict-less devious mods into your LO as you can"

Also there are a lot of various alternatives of many mods on LL.

For example: Devious followers will help you out of DDs, Devious Lore does that too, having both in LO makes not much sense (unless you want to make sure you escape DD to 100%). Devious Lore adds new locations and renames DDs and more, if you only want something that helps you escape Devious Followers might be enough already (Devious Lore rocks!).

Don't forget there are many more mods that add escapes options to Blacksmiths for example. So to keep the escape options low limit mods that do exactly the same.

What I wanted to say is, my posted LO is one example for a good mod combo, but you can remove and add similar mods to get a compare able effect.

We might need a "merge LL" special topic to find out what works and above all how.

Wait, this is the blog merging page and I talk about "don't merge everything"? ^^

Oh well, we need to create a collection of successful merged LL mods and I'm bad in merging those ?

You've definitively beaten me at creating a proper wall of text.

I'm in the exact same situation, so let's stick to "scared" (and call it "cautious").

I concur on the MCM tailoring, on the selection of what mods (a lot of my changes in recent times are removing stuff like redundant -or contradictory- dialogues, concurrent debuffs or event), merging is not my first choice (I intended to stay out of it, but multiple little esp for patches accumulated). I ended up almost giving up DCL or SSurvival for such reasons (but both have so many little things that make them great mods).

In the end, I don't want to play without devious stuff, but I've toned it down a lot, as I want to slay monsters, explore ruins, and occasionally rescue (or rape) a damsel in distress, not an endless uninterrupted trail of devices removal and adding, and sex, with little classic adventures (and ending up in an unplayable save due to problems emerging only after a certain time of game). My next challenge would be to tailor Arousal/Beeing Female/Inflation stuff to make it smoother as well.

Thanks for your answer, there's a lot of stuff to dig in (but it confirms me on what I'm going with my LO and MCM currently).

?update

• Just a quick update about extracting scripts.rar
  • don't be like DTMT (while following his own blog) and extract it to the correct folders o.o

13 hours ago, donttouchmethere said:

?update

• Just a quick update about extracting scripts.rar
  • don't be like DTMT (while following his own blog) and extract it to the correct folders o.o

?

Quote

In Skyrim/data find Scripts.rar

• extract scripts.rar
  • make sure it installs into skyrim/data/scripts
    • if the files got extracted to the wrong place MP won't be able to find Papyrus flags

Sounds correct to me....

did you extract into skyrim/data/scripts/scripts .... ?

Theoretically, it might be, perhaps, that I might know someone, who might have been that outrageously stupid and wasted hours of precious lifetime on the question why this stupid compiler didn't compile this idiotic persons first "Hello Skyrim". Purely theoretical, of course