Weird "issue"regarding [M] save file designation

[Trailbandit]

Ok, so, this is super strange, I'm kinda weirded out by this, and not even sure where to post this so sincere apologies if this isn't the proper way to do this.


I've been playing the same save game for years, I recently rebuild my entire game from version 1.10 to latest (1.17 I think) to get newer AAF running.

I had everything set up great, and then I started making some MAJOR clothing-outfit rework, just body-slide and outfit studio work. Just nif editing, possibly, MAYBE added some minor clothing mod allong the way, nothing script related, but I did edit some ESPs succesfully (not the vanilla ones, obviously).

After that when I was happy with everything, I started playing again. Today I noticed something strange:

At some, seemingly random point, my save file stopped being marked as modded (  [M]  ) and all my subsequent files are considered to be a new character with the same name, just not modded (character selection reports 3 characters:

Nora (all vanilla saves I made with the new build, before loading in my earlier save)

Nora (modded) basically all my normal saves, going forward from the one I was playing all my "life")

Nora (straight continuation from on of the Nora (modded) character, seemingly starting at a random point)

 

How, in the hell, has this happened?

I did not load any mods to mark my save as non-modded. It just happened.

the two consecutive saves, one before the issue and one after, do not report any different mods loaded, and the only difference between the two saves is I loaded a few outfits into my inventory via console (player.additem)

That's it as far as I can tell. And I'm pretty confident in that assumption as I was extremely focused on building an entirely new body with outfit studio to make all my outfits work together.

The ONLY thing I can MAYBE think of is this:

At some point I was starting the game up to check my work, and I was used to just spam enter until I got into my latest save. The mouse happened to hover over the settings menu so I ended up going in and changing the "new game difficulty" value around. then set it back up to normal, which I think was what I was using, but also don't think affects saved games anyway, and loaded my MODDED save. I do not know if that's where it all started, I did not notice it at the time unfortunately, but it's literally the only thing I can think of that MIGHT have happened at that period of time other than me messing with nifs. I don't think it's related.

I also maybe used looks menu at some point, but I am almost positive that I didn't use it between those two saves (I can somewhat recognize them by the outfits). But even if that could do it, I still have many mods! Why would it be marked as non modded?? Even then, I have used looks menu a bunch of times earlier and this never happened before (same version of looks menu. nothing changed)

This is bugging the hell out of me.

It might not be an issue at all. But Since I'm worried this is script related in some weird way, and I'm freaking terrified when it comes to messed up scripts, I thought I'd drop in and ask, since this might be something very profound I'm missing.

I apologize if this is a bit vague, I just really don't know what more to add at this point. I feel like there isn't any relevant data to add. I hardly thing a new body

 

list of mods is extensive, I think listing them all would be taxing to you, and in any case, no mod was changed before and after the issue, but I do have AAF installed and working properly.

Huge thanks to anyone that wastes the time to read all this crap, and sorry for the somewhat convoluted description.

[Preemhelio]

1 hour ago, Trailbandit said:

Ok, so, this is super strange, I'm kinda weirded out by this, and not even sure where to post this so sincere apologies if this isn't the proper way to do this.


I've been playing the same save game for years, I recently rebuild my entire game from version 1.10 to latest (1.17 I think) to get newer AAF running.

I had everything set up great, and then I started making some MAJOR clothing-outfit rework, just body-slide and outfit studio work. Just nif editing, possibly, MAYBE added some minor clothing mod allong the way, nothing script related, but I did edit some ESPs succesfully (not the vanilla ones, obviously).

After that when I was happy with everything, I started playing again. Today I noticed something strange:

At some, seemingly random point, my save file stopped being marked as modded (  [M]  ) and all my subsequent files are considered to be a new character with the same name, just not modded (character selection reports 3 characters:

Nora (all vanilla saves I made with the new build, before loading in my earlier save)

Nora (modded) basically all my normal saves, going forward from the one I was playing all my "life")

Nora (straight continuation from on of the Nora (modded) character, seemingly starting at a random point)

 

How, in the hell, has this happened?

I did not load any mods to mark my save as non-modded. It just happened.

the two consecutive saves, one before the issue and one after, do not report any different mods loaded, and the only difference between the two saves is I loaded a few outfits into my inventory via console (player.additem)

That's it as far as I can tell. And I'm pretty confident in that assumption as I was extremely focused on building an entirely new body with outfit studio to make all my outfits work together.

The ONLY thing I can MAYBE think of is this:

At some point I was starting the game up to check my work, and I was used to just spam enter until I got into my latest save. The mouse happened to hover over the settings menu so I ended up going in and changing the "new game difficulty" value around. then set it back up to normal, which I think was what I was using, but also don't think affects saved games anyway, and loaded my MODDED save. I do not know if that's where it all started, I did not notice it at the time unfortunately, but it's literally the only thing I can think of that MIGHT have happened at that period of time other than me messing with nifs. I don't think it's related.

I also maybe used looks menu at some point, but I am almost positive that I didn't use it between those two saves (I can somewhat recognize them by the outfits). But even if that could do it, I still have many mods! Why would it be marked as non modded?? Even then, I have used looks menu a bunch of times earlier and this never happened before (same version of looks menu. nothing changed)

This is bugging the hell out of me.

It might not be an issue at all. But Since I'm worried this is script related in some weird way, and I'm freaking terrified when it comes to messed up scripts, I thought I'd drop in and ask, since this might be something very profound I'm missing.

I apologize if this is a bit vague, I just really don't know what more to add at this point. I feel like there isn't any relevant data to add. I hardly thing a new body

 

list of mods is extensive, I think listing them all would be taxing to you, and in any case, no mod was changed before and after the issue, but I do have AAF installed and working properly.

Huge thanks to anyone that wastes the time to read all this crap, and sorry for the somewhat convoluted description.

 

This happened to me when I returned into playing/modding my FO4 again, well not that I'm bugged by that but yeah my save file is also heavily modded without [M] but works perfectly fine even though I recall that it should be marked as a modded one, weird I know. Dunno what changed that too but might be related to the latest F4SE not that I'm sure.

[blastikor]

Do either of you happen to have Buffout installed? It patches achievements. This would explain the (M) missing from the saves.

[Trailbandit]

2 hours ago, blastikor said:

Do either of you happen to have Buffout installed? It patches achievements. This would explain the (M) missing from the saves.

That's very interesting.

I do have buffout installed. It was in the AAF guide.

However, I have it installed like, two-three weeks now and my saves only recently started being marked as non-modded, like a couple of days. I'm 100% sure I have saves that were done with buffout installed and still came up as [M].

If it is buffout that did that then then for some bizarre reason it didn't work for quite a long time and then kicked in at some point.

I'm still trying to figure out what that something might have been.

I did sort of reconfigure the "loadmethod" in the xml that came with it because It was in the guide, but somehow it broke scene staging for me so I reverted to the stock config.
However, again that was after the issue occurred so it can't be the trigger.

I was messing with various armor mods' esps with fo4edit. Maybe at somepoint that refreshed.... something! I don't know...

this is weird.

That was a good catch though, I wouldn't have thought if it. Thanks!