Modded Beth Games that Run Fine One Day, But NOT Later

[KoolHndLuke]

Skyrim, FO3/FNV, Oblivion- I can have these games running perfectly (no crash, ctds, few glitches) with mods installed. I leave them for a few months or maybe even a year at a time and come back to play them WITH NO CHANGES and they crash or ctd. WTF is going on? Why would my modded Beth games run perfect one month and not several months later when I haven't made any fuckin' changes to them? Is it updates to the win 10 os? I don't have this problem with FO4 and Skyrim SE.

[Yinkle]

3 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

Is it updates to the win 10 os?

Could be this or a multitude of other things, steam updates, driver updates, registry issues, mod organizer updates, who knows! I've just come to expect my computer to work sometimes and not other times, a bit like my own brain/body!

[KoolHndLuke]

15 minutes ago, Yinkle said:

Could be this or a multitude of other things, steam updates, driver updates, registry issues, mod organizer updates, who knows! I've just come to expect my computer to work sometimes and not other times, a bit like my own brain/body!

It makes for some damn frustrating modding experiences- you sit down to play a game you haven't played in awhile that you have already put so much work into and.......crash. Fuck, that sucks balls! I got so frustrated with Oblivion just now that I nuked everything- including some mods I had been working on. Tried to play FNV last week to do some modding- same thing.

[Yinkle]

8 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

It makes for some damn frustrating modding experiences- you sit down to play a game you haven't played in awhile that you have already put so much work into and.......crash. Fuck, that sucks balls! I got so frustrated with Oblivion just now that I nuked everything- including some mods I had been working on. Tried to play FNV last week to do some modding- same thing.

Man I feel your pain...

[KoolHndLuke]

3 minutes ago, Yinkle said:

Man I feel your pain...

Thanks. I'm starting to wonder if it's worth it. I love my modded games and making mods, but rebuilding a modded game every 6 months or so *just because* is feeling like an exercise in futility. 

[Yinkle]

I tend to stick to 1 or 2 modded games that require a lot of disk space at any time and have them plus mods on my SSD. I just back up my mod directory for other games in case I feel like playing them again at some point. The thing is that after a year for example if I wanted to play something I used to play, the mods available would have changed so much I might as well make a new load order anyway.

 

Having said that, you are right and I can understand your frustration that it should just work as before.

[KoolHndLuke]

12 minutes ago, Yinkle said:

I tend to stick to 1 or 2 modded games that require a lot of disk space at any time and have them plus mods on my SSD. I just back up my mod directory for other games in case I feel like playing them again at some point. The thing is that after a year for example if I wanted to play something I used to play, the mods available would have changed so much I might as well make a new load order anyway.

 

Having said that, you are right and I can understand your frustration that it should just work as before.

Coding- I just don't get it. Sometimes I wonder how programmers sleep at night, lol- knowing they will just have to fix something the next day that was working fine the day before. Someone please turn the *dynamic* feature off for older games.

[Heroine HoneyCrotch]

My go to when things dont work right for no reason is to go into steam and "Clear dl cache", which is not recommended by me if you use steamworkshop mods

[Fotogen]

Its .ini settings. From time to time they stop "working". If you let game engine reset them back to default, it starts working again.

 

No idea why, but it works for me.

 

[KoolHndLuke]

Looking at the bright side of this, I did have several mods that I wanted to trim from my game and reinstalling gives me a second look at mods that I tried to see If I can find something better/different. I hadn't put that much work into Oblivion. FNV (TTW), on the other hand, will be a pain and I'll never get back some of those mods since so many things have changed. Lucky I can still work on my mod regardless.

 

A note to anybody reading this- be wary of "complete" overhauls- especially ones that are heavily scripted.

[KoolHndLuke]

4 minutes ago, Fotogen said:

Its .ini settings. From time to time they stop "working". If you let game engine reset them back to default, it starts working again.

 

No idea why, but it works for me.

 

Never heard that. Will have to try and see.

[landess]

Windows tends to keep recently used programs referenced in a place for easier access. I notice this with Sims 3 saves. As long as I run a certain save, I notice it loads pretty quick. If I choose an old save I haven't played in months, it takes much longer even if the save is actually smaller in size. If I continue to use that 'older' save, it will load faster in the future.

 

As far as Bethesda games/mods, it could be the same thing. Just like web sites load faster if you don't clear the cache/cookies/history - Windows operational features are likely to store things in a way that allow faster loading by keeping certain information readily accessible instead of making the system search for each and every file while trying to keep the 'loaded' files from 'hitting the ground' before everything is in place and attached to each other.

 

I'm sure the old days of fragmented drives taking much longer to load a program can be somewhat equated to this. My Skyrim is a fat, over weight beast which is very unstable until I play only it for a while, then for the most part it runs okay. Most crashes seem to happen when using fast travel since the system is trying to hold this chubby bitch up with one hand while searching for files with the other.