LordArek Posted February 3, 2019 Posted February 3, 2019 First of all, idk if this is the right place, but since this question are only about modded skyrim, I think it is. Pardon me if it isn't. So, I use NMM since forever and never had a problem with it, which is why I've never felt the urge to try MO. (Which, honestly, is also because I have hundreds of mods and don't want to switch everything manually without a drastic problem that forces me to do that). But now that I've started to play on multiple profiles, one for my "adult skyrim" and one for my story and companion quest mods only, I have a rather annoying issue, namely the ultra long load times while switching profiles. I have fairly large mods on both profiles, and switching takes almost 15 minutes. Is this a NMM problem? Let me take the risk and overestimate my computer and say "my computer is good enough to not be the problem", and that's where my question comes: Will the load times significantly decrease with MO? Or does switching between profiles with big mods take long regardless because it's a computer issue rather than a mod manager related thing? Edit: I've really tried to find answers for this, and all I found was people masturbating over the superiority of MO, which is not helpful at all. I really beg anyone who answers this to spare me that and just try to answer the question.
davisev5225 Posted February 3, 2019 Posted February 3, 2019 Yes, this is a NMM problem. NMM has to physically move the files into the install directory, and relies on a complex set of lists to determine the order in which files are installed. When you change profiles, it has to uninstall them in reverse order (in an attempt to prevent corruption), replacing overwritten files as it uninstalls mods, then install the new set of mods in specific order. This is the biggest problem that Mod Organizer solved with its virtually directory structure system, and it's why you should invest the effort to convert. Mod Organizer writes the files to its own directory OUTSIDE of the game folder, then uses file system trickery to "fool" the game into thinking all the mods are actually there. As a result, your game directory remains untouched, and profile switching is ridiculously fast because all Mod Organizer has to do is switch to a different config file.
kostia11 Posted February 3, 2019 Posted February 3, 2019 I tried to get back modding Skyrim from a long period of having it uninstalled (mainly due to my apathy after a dissaster in my modding ambitions) and I find the tools have changed, there is now Vortex and the MO2, which I never have used (i used the NMM but now is abandoned). So my question is which is better? there any guide to put me up to date?
sila Posted February 3, 2019 Posted February 3, 2019 I would really strongly recommend mod organizer. It is *infinitely* better than NMM ever was, though I am not sure what features Vortex has since I have not tried that. Mod organizer lets you put an entire mod in a folder by itself, do that for all of your mods. Then MO creates a virtual data folder and combines all of the seperate mod folders into one. This leaves your real skyrim data folder completely empty, and removes the worry about overwriting the wrong file and breaking some other mod that happened to need it.
davisev5225 Posted February 4, 2019 Posted February 4, 2019 3 hours ago, kostia11 said: I tried to get back modding Skyrim from a long period of having it uninstalled (mainly due to my apathy after a dissaster in my modding ambitions) and I find the tools have changed, there is now Vortex and the MO2, which I never have used (i used the NMM but now is abandoned). So my question is which is better? there any guide to put me up to date? Mod Organizer: Skyrim Legendary Edition (32bit) Mod Organizer 2: Skyrim Special Edition (64bit), Fallout 4 Vortex: Nexus Mod Manager with a new skin, still uses the same faulty method of copying files into the actual install directory - don't use it!
Guest Posted February 4, 2019 Posted February 4, 2019 5 hours ago, davisev5225 said: Mod Organizer: Skyrim Legendary Edition (32bit) Mod Organizer 2: Skyrim Special Edition (64bit), Fallout 4 Vortex: Nexus Mod Manager with a new skin, still uses the same faulty method of copying files into the actual install directory - don't use it! Also MO2 works fine for SLE but the main difference is that it doesn't include the archive management feature. Still, MO2 at least receives updates and blazes through the FNIS process in seconds so depending on how much you like that and instances, you might want to use it for SLE instead.
Darkpig Posted February 5, 2019 Posted February 5, 2019 On 2/3/2019 at 1:23 AM, davisev5225 said: This is the biggest problem that Mod Organizer solved with its virtually directory structure system, and it's why you should invest the effort to convert. Mod Organizer writes the files to its own directory OUTSIDE of the game folder, then uses file system trickery to "fool" the game into thinking all the mods are actually there. As a result, your game directory remains untouched, and profile switching is ridiculously fast because all Mod Organizer has to do is switch to a different config file. I heard that the virtual directory dohicky slows down your game when playing Skyrim. So what does the virtual directory do exactly? This is a serious question probably :3
karlpaws Posted February 5, 2019 Posted February 5, 2019 43 minutes ago, Darkpig said: I heard that the virtual directory dohicky slows down your game when playing Skyrim. So what does the virtual directory do exactly? This is a serious question probably :3 https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Mod_Organizer_Advanced Essentially MO keeps a list of folders and what order they are in, and uses a technique called hooking to fool Windows into thinking that the contents of the folders are in the Skyrim\Data folder instead of all of the various folders they might be in. The hooking process might be what some people think slows down MO but I wouldn't think it should be all that much, if any. This is superior to NMM's "install and make backups when things are overwritten" (I think that's what it does) because no files are actually replaced. If you install a mod in MO and don't like it / the new version has a bug / it conflicts with something you already have, you just uncheck it from the list and re-launch Skyrim, and it just doesn't show the contents of that folder. That might mean it uses the mesh for an armor from an earlier mod in the list or just doesn't load the new mod's contents but your Data folder is clean and good. MO also supports profiles, which essentially is a list of mods and what order they're in, so you can have a survivalist build, a LoversLab build, a bare bones near vanilla build, and optionally only see the saves created with that profile, so no loading a save missing 100 mods. I sometimes have to wait 20 seconds when I launch MO for it to show the list of mods and have everything ready, but I haven't had the OMG MO Sucks! No one should ever use it! kind of problems that others must have to hate it so.
Darkpig Posted February 5, 2019 Posted February 5, 2019 28 minutes ago, karlpaws said: https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Mod_Organizer_Advanced Essentially MO keeps a list of folders and what order they are in, and uses a technique called hooking to fool Windows into thinking that the contents of the folders are in the Skyrim\Data folder instead of all of the various folders they might be in. The hooking process might be what some people think slows down MO but I wouldn't think it should be all that much, if any. Easy there tiger. I only wanted to know about the virtual directory. So this hooking process, is it done before the game starts or during gameplay?
karlpaws Posted February 5, 2019 Posted February 5, 2019 20 minutes ago, Darkpig said: Easy there tiger. I only wanted to know about the virtual directory. So this hooking process, is it done before the game starts or during gameplay? before the game starts. You'd launch MO, make any changes to anything you'd want or just click the button to launch any Exe you have configured. One of the downsides to the complexity of what MO does is that you have to "install" any utility you want to use... FNIS, SKSE, etc need to be setup within MO so they work correctly. The STEP wiki does have a list of directions on how to do that.
Darkpig Posted February 5, 2019 Posted February 5, 2019 10 minutes ago, karlpaws said: before the game starts. You'd launch MO, make any changes to anything you'd want or just click the button to launch any Exe you have configured. One of the downsides to the complexity of what MO does is that you have to "install" any utility you want to use... FNIS, SKSE, etc need to be setup within MO so they work correctly. The STEP wiki does have a list of directions on how to do that. I see. Thanks for the information.
Nazzzgul666 Posted February 5, 2019 Posted February 5, 2019 16 hours ago, Darkpig said: I see. Thanks for the information. Upside is that it's the same procedure for all of them, so if you install SKSE, FNIS, Loot, Bodyslide and TESVedit and check out how it works for one of them you shouldn't have any problems getting the others working. The only other thing that you really need to remember is that MO won't ask you if you want to overwrite anything like NMM does - you can change the installation order later by drag and drop just like the load order, but you actually have to do it.^^ It will show you if something is overwritten, though, and with a double click which files exactly. So as long as you remember that for example xpmse shouldn't be overwritten (except maybe if you know exactly what you do), green = good and red = bad. That i'm able to change the install order at any time really fast is the main advantage for me. I often just download a couple of mods and install them some time later when i already forgot what the description said, so i fuck up things on a regular basis but MO allows me to fix that quite fast.
Grey Cloud Posted February 5, 2019 Posted February 5, 2019 On 2/3/2019 at 11:51 PM, sila said: Mod organizer lets you put an entire mod in a folder by itself, do that for all of your mods. Then MO creates a virtual data folder and combines all of the seperate mod folders into one. This leaves your real skyrim data folder completely empty, and removes the worry about overwriting the wrong file and breaking some other mod that happened to need it. So it's good for holding the hand of people like you.
sila Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 11 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said: So it's good for holding the hand of people like you. .... What? It makes life easier, period. What exactly do you mean by "people like you"?
davisev5225 Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 5 hours ago, Grey Cloud said: So it's good for holding the hand of people like you. "I only use terminal environments because GUI is too mainstream." ?
SkyAddiction Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 5 hours ago, Grey Cloud said: So it's good for holding the hand of people like you. MO is good for players with a huge number of mods, players who know what they're doing and want to make rapid changes to their build, and players who test a lot of mods. NMM/Vortex is good for players with a large number of entrenched mods and/or memorized load orders, players with "short" builds, and mod makers. I use both. I use MO to play and swap profiles. I have an NMM build I swap with my MO build for working on or picking apart mods. The one thing MO is absolute shit at is running the CK.
kostia11 Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 On 2/3/2019 at 9:21 PM, davisev5225 said: Mod Organizer: Skyrim Legendary Edition (32bit) Mod Organizer 2: Skyrim Special Edition (64bit), Fallout 4 Vortex: Nexus Mod Manager with a new skin, still uses the same faulty method of copying files into the actual install directory - don't use it! wait, I mod the legendary edition (32bit), so I should only use the first Mod Organizer?
worik Posted February 6, 2019 Posted February 6, 2019 23 minutes ago, kostia11 said: wait, I mod the legendary edition (32bit), so I should only use the first Mod Organizer? Basically,you should "only" use one(1) mod manager, because they tend to get into each others ways. For older MO2 versions, I would have said YES. Use MO1 for Skyrim LE and MO2 for Skyrim SSE. BUT: The upcoming version is told to have made dramatic improvements (hear saysing). So If you feel adventurous, use MO2. If not, use MO1 (but if you download it from nexus, use the version from the MO2 page's alternate files, it is newer) If you only care for Skyrim LE (like me), I suggest MO1. If MO2 is rocksolid one day, it is quite easy to migrate. I did it in the past twice for the fun of it.
Guest Posted February 7, 2019 Posted February 7, 2019 17 hours ago, kostia11 said: wait, I mod the legendary edition (32bit), so I should only use the first Mod Organizer? MO2 and SLE work just fine together, it just depends how much you like instances (MO2) or the archive management feature (MO1).
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