Why does anyone trust BethINI?

[Guest]

So, against my better judgement, i gave the much recommended BethINI a try (backuping my INIs first, obviously). Why "against my better judgement"? Well, because i don't change INI-settings, without doing the research and RTFM first - and since i'm a dev myself, i understand the technical backgrounds, so given the right information, i know what i'm doing. So with that in mind: What could a tool like BethINI do better, than my own brain and homework? I never tried it before for that reason, discounting it as a tool for "noobs" (which isn't a bad thing per se: For those who want more control than the ingame settings, yet aren't technical experts, such a tool would have it's purpose.)

 

Still, today i gave it a try just out of curiousity... and my prejudices weren't just confirmed, but exceeded: BethINI is outrightly malicious.

 

Why? You know how there's a lot of INI-settings, that don't actually do anything? And there's settings that can break stuff, if you don't know what you're doing? Beth-INI does not distinguish between the two. In a nutshell: Any setting the bethINI-author does not like, he will simply claim that it does nothing, and remove it from your config! You heard correctly: BethINI is pure dogmatism - if the author doesn't like something, you're not permitted to have it in your ini. You're not even asked about removal.

 

One really trivial example of this is fNearDistance, which sets the near-clipping plane - but if set too low, it can also cause flickering in the distance. BethINI will just remove it from your config without asking, and claim that it "has been confirmed to do nothing", even though it's trivial for anyone using freecam in sexlab scenes to see this is a blatant lie: The setting is fully functional, and works exactly as defined in the STEP-wiki. It's just some people set it absurdly low, and then complain about flickering, so instead of educating the user, BethINI just lies the setting does nothing and removes it without the users consent. And i've seen exactly the same approach with over a dozen other perfectly functional yet dangerous settings: BethINI will simply delete them without asking, and claim they do nothing.

 

No wonder comments are disabled on the mod-page. We can't have people telling the author he's full of shit.

[foreveraloneguy]

The way I read his code, that setting should only be deleted if you run it against fallout 3 or fallout new vegas. Also, there's a setting on the setup tab "auto-detect invalid settings". It defaults to on. Disabling that should stop that behavior for any game.

[Guest]

7 hours ago, foreveraloneguy said:

The way I read his code, that setting should only be deleted if you run it against fallout 3 or fallout new vegas. Also, there's a setting on the setup tab "auto-detect invalid settings". It defaults to on. Disabling that should stop that behavior for any game.

If it did run in fallout-mode, i have to ask why: It never asked me what game is to be managed, just where the ini's are. One option was to link it to MO2, which i did (but started it with MO2 closed, as advised), since MO2 stores the inis in a seperate path. Secondly, from a developer's POV, it's not hard to detect what game you're playing: It's called freaking "skyrim.ini" for a reason, and the ini-file itself (which it parses) also is full of skyrim-references. I could understand it mistaking SSE for skyrim, but i don't see how it would mistake SSE for fallout - i never even had the later installed: There's no registry-keys or anything.

[foreveraloneguy]

The program supports multiple games. If you have more than one of them installed, then how would the dev know which game's ini files you want checked? There's a drop down to select the game. Yes, the dev could prompt. But the docs also say very clearly that you should select the game you want optimized from the list.

 

And if you ran it against Fallout, then it should not have changed your skyrim ini files. If it did, that's a bug and you should report it.

 

In ee hoo.... I'm also a dev. I like this util for the simple reason that the step guys have done their homework, and this is the basis of the utility. So I trust it and I've never been screwed over by it, as long as I used it in the manner in which it was intended. I don't have time to do all the research, and have little enough time for games as it is. I definitely don't want to spend that little bit of time researching the arcania of ini settings.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, foreveraloneguy said:

The program supports multiple games. If you have more than one of them installed, then how would the dev know which game's ini files you want checked?

As i wrote already, i never had fallout installed. It asked me which ini, and i told it which ini. So you're saying i gave it skyrim.ini, and it mistook it for fallout? My apologies for expecting even just a minimum of program-intelligence. I could write better code than this in 10 seconds, because it takes literarily just a single line of code to compare a string. This is "Hello World"-stuff FFS.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, dontknowdontcaredontask said:

No, I'd say this is simply a miscommunication with foreveraloneguy. At the very least, I don't know why he mentions FO in his comments. BethINI has a list of games, select the right one and done. If you don't have that list (usually appears only at first run) you can change the game to manage under Setup tab. Its not that hard.

I could be wrong - can't check anymore now, since i'm not gonna touch this thing again - but i'm 95% certain it on launch offered me a list of options to pick the ini-file - either a game-specific one, or a modmanager-profile. Since MO2 manages my inis, i told it modman and gave it the path. Then it asked me which modman-profile, even though i have just one (SSE is the only bethesda-game on this PC). Whatever, so i selected my skirim-SE profile.

 

That's the scenario here: Modman/profiles/skyrim.ini - that's what bethINI got, but apparently was unable to make sense of. Besides, properly designed programs have such a thing as sanity-checks. Even if bethINI is too retarded to figure out the meaning of "skyrim.ini" and picked the wrong-mode, sanity-checks should've told it something is wrong.

 

Either way, i'm done here. If anyone wants to defend incompetently developed programs, go all out - i don't care.

 

[phillout]

BethINI is a tool for dummies, far too many people mindlessly copy/paste a lot of "ini tweaks" they find on intarwebs with zero research and no understanding wtf are they doing. I mean - really broken "tweaks" fiddling with Papyrus memory and stacks and so on.

 

The resulting files from BethINI at least won't crash your game every 10 minutes.

 

If you think you can make better ini files yourself - more power to you.

[johnny2by4]

bethini is a starting point.

[Bluegunk]

On 9/15/2019 at 6:21 PM, lynak said:

So, against my better judgement, i gave the much recommended BethINI a try (backuping my INIs first, obviously). Why "against my better judgement"? Well, because i don't change INI-settings, without doing the research and RTFM first - and since i'm a dev myself, i understand the technical backgrounds, so given the right information, i know what i'm doing. So with that in mind: What could a tool like BethINI do better, than my own brain and homework? I never tried it before for that reason, discounting it as a tool for "noobs" (which isn't a bad thing per se: For those who want more control than the ingame settings, yet aren't technical experts, such a tool would have it's purpose.)

 

Still, today i gave it a try just out of curiousity... and my prejudices weren't just confirmed, but exceeded: BethINI is outrightly malicious.

 

Why? You know how there's a lot of INI-settings, that don't actually do anything? And there's settings that can break stuff, if you don't know what you're doing? Beth-INI does not distinguish between the two. In a nutshell: Any setting the bethINI-author does not like, he will simply claim that it does nothing, and remove it from your config! You heard correctly: BethINI is pure dogmatism - if the author doesn't like something, you're not permitted to have it in your ini. You're not even asked about removal.

 

One really trivial example of this is fNearDistance, which sets the near-clipping plane - but if set too low, it can also cause flickering in the distance. BethINI will just remove it from your config without asking, and claim that it "has been confirmed to do nothing", even though it's trivial for anyone using freecam in sexlab scenes to see this is a blatant lie: The setting is fully functional, and works exactly as defined in the STEP-wiki. It's just some people set it absurdly low, and then complain about flickering, so instead of educating the user, BethINI just lies the setting does nothing and removes it without the users consent. And i've seen exactly the same approach with over a dozen other perfectly functional yet dangerous settings: BethINI will simply delete them without asking, and claim they do nothing.

 

No wonder comments are disabled on the mod-page. We can't have people telling the author he's full of shit.

 

I've tried BethINI several times. Each time felt I had lost control of what I wanted to happen. I now consider it a waste of time. Far better to know what each setting does and work with it directly than let someone's coding seize control of your game. Glad to see your opinion. Glad to support it. 

[greenmango12]

 I now tweaking (for my necessary) to adjust best value for camera to enjjoy sex scene, so I think you say good point about fNearDistance.

 

At same time,, I do not think,  Beth.ini remove it..  maybe your choose option overwrite and trun-default (or beath ini recoomend one),, I feel.

 

But I feel same problem about Beath.ini or these ini , config  tweak managers, they are  not well documented.. about saving process.(which file will be saved as preset etc,, and when it overwrite real  file which will be used.  (real file path,, prefset fiel path etc,,)

 

Beath ini  say,, do not keep  opening MO2 ,, but there seems no meaning, we need to close MO2 window.   without we run beath ini from MO2.

I usually make 4 or 5 profiles,, so I need to know which ini of profiles I hope to change.  but I often forget the profile name.  As MO2 user,, I really hope to run Beath ini, from MO2,

then it pick ini from currently using profiles.  or I need to change path everytime when launch Beath ini.

 

Those config setting  tool often just discribe "how to generate" , and setting way, yes it is easy edit.   but it make user dfficult to check file when they get problem.

because they do not claer, discribe how they manage files (save and load)  for their preset system.  Author of course know clear,, but it is not so clear for user.

 

(I see same difficulity about some ENB manager,, they do not clear tell me,, which file will be overwritten with each options, so it sometimes make me more difficult

to check the files. 

 

 

[bigmouthpricc]

BethINI is fine, you act like the tool is malicious and will destroy your PC, you're exaggerating.

BethINI delete certain settings ? you can add it again in custom tab, you still have full control of your INI settings

Silently delete your INI settings ? You simply using the old version of BethINI, the newest one have a notification if setting is not recognized by game

Also BethINI sort the settings by name so it's easy to find certain settings you want to tweak.

[Tortex]

It's okay, not great, but okay. I kind of lost interest in STEP and all related shenanigans when they claimed the [VERLET] section of Skyrim.ini is related to mounted combat. (Hint: It's Harkon's cape, and only Harkon's cape.)

 

Anyways didn't BethIni come with a buttcoin miner a year or two ago that was quickly axed?

 

[Wolfstorm321]

I dont. Ini settings should always be changed manually. Its not something to mess with.

 

[Lekver]

Hello..I don't trust the program exactly..Maybe at first when i didn't know much.Later i changed some values i didn't want and kept the others that i did not mind to be there.

So far it is a useful tool and i don;t know any other program for the same job.Bethesda Launcher doesn't have Vysnc on/off for example so i have to edit the ini myself.not difficult  but i prefer a handy tool to do the job 

[Mertz]

I'm not a huge fan of BethINI but it does serve a purpose for people that are new to modding and don't feel comfortable with a basic text editor.  I've seen some people get their shit completely wrecked by it, then again you can wreck your shit with Notepad if you don't know what you're doing.

11 hours ago, Lekver said:

So far it is a useful tool and i don;t know any other program for the same job.

The Bash INI Tab technically can do the same thing, it just doesn't because it is conservatively targeted for the base game and like everything else in Bash expects you to know what you're doing.  It can be extended to do pretty much everything BethINI does however if you have the know-how.

 

Let me mull this over. I may have an idea.

[Guest]

On 12/7/2019 at 1:59 AM, Lekver said:

Hello..I don't trust the program exactly..Maybe at first when i didn't know much.Later i changed some values i didn't want and kept the others that i did not mind to be there.

So far it is a useful tool and i don;t know any other program for the same job.Bethesda Launcher doesn't have Vysnc on/off for example so i have to edit the ini myself.not difficult  but i prefer a handy tool to do the job 

Like i said in the intial post: In theory bethINI would be a useful tool, if only to keep things easier to understand and better organized, than raw ini-edits.  The problem is, it completely incompatible with people knowing what they're doing, so you're either a noob using bethINI, or you're a poweruser avoiding it like the plague.

 

And the reason for that is destructive and nonconsensual behavior: BethINI doesn't play along with your own edits and comments. It demands to be in charge of what is permissible and what is not, so you're either a master writing your own rules, or you're a slave following BethINIs ruleset. It has no support for "cooperation" of both worlds. This is identical to many other "frontends", that claim to make things easy. For example, there's another tool to manage CBPConfigs (i forgot it's name), and that other tool also nukes your INIs and comments without asking for permission.

 

Speaking of which: There was some clown in this thread who got upvoted, for argueing BethINI isn't malicious, since yes it destroys your data, but you can "restore it" by re-entering your (destroyed) data: You're a fucking sophist, who doesn't understand the meaning of "malice", "destructive edits", or even just the concept of "mutual consent". Go ahead and ban me for this statement, but that guy is a literal apologist for malware-behavior, and i stand by this judgement.

 

A better question would instead be: Why does this happen? Why is it a common behavior-pattern, for programs that try to be frontends for complex settings? And the answer to that question is: LAZYNESS. If you ever wrote a hello-world program, you know programming is the easiest, when everything is perfectly predictable. That's programming 101: Computer-programs can't deal with unexpected events, so the easiest way to make sure your program doesn't crash is: Don't allow unexpected events. In short: Total egomania: Only your law counts, and everything else is discarded. That's how you write a robust program dealing with complex decisions, while spending minimal effort on... programming. BethINI works the way it does, because it's easy and cheap for the author.

 

Are there ways to write programs, that continue working even if they encounter unexpected data? Yes, there are standard-behaviors for this, but it's harder than just writing a frontend, that promises the sky for cheap.

[gaohama]

the problem is values add by this tools without asking

you can test it your self by compare the old and new files , even i didn't check recommanded settings and only change values , it add some stange lines

i get so many issue with these lines like my char become invisible in interrior , but when re-back my ini files i get less to zero drops and scripts lag

[Player80]

The only time I ever tried it, it broke my settings. Never used again, I search forums for useful settings but that's it.

[SlitherHence]

The problem with research is just as much of what you find that way is also dogma. Not defending BethINI. Just saying it takes more than research and being a developer yourself to find the truth about this stuff. It takes actually testing it yourself. Which makes the whole endeavor of INI tweaking an exercise in tedium and frustration. I've reached the point I simply don't bother.

[asfddfasfads]

Never had any problems because of BethINI or because I didn't use it either.

[jennievm]

Works just fine for me. No issues. If people want to manually sit for hours changing their ini's good for them. But bethini is working perfectly fine.

[Oyhuria]

used bethini for a while until i felt uncomfortable with it when i tried to remove it completely no matter how, it would just break the game.
Bethini basically makes the older files dependent of their files and its really frustrating try to  remove it, i did a full clean on my game and now i need to rebuild my bashed patch not really sure if it will fix my issues with bethini
it is way easier to just change the files manually for yourself than using it, if you make a mess it wont be all that fucked up to undo your stuff

[retrosnivy]

i dont trust bethini it give me all purple textures in my skyrim special edition i check the option bethini preset reccommended tweaks enabled and autodetect invalid settings enabled save it and launched game now my game is broken and everything has purple textures then game crashes shortly after