Skyrim Launcher - View Distance Sliders stuck! MO2 User

[Bluegunk]

As an experienced mod user, this question is the dumbest I've asked!

 

When launching the Skyrim Special Edition Launcher to generate some fresh INI files, I came to set the basic settings and find the View Distance Sliders are welded into place.

I can't move them. Now can I move them in game menu either.

 

I switched off Engine Fixes, Display Tweaks and Dyndolod in case they were causing the problem. The INIs are not Read Only.

 

Please can someone (once they've stopped laughing) enlighten me as to what's going on?

 

Thanks!

 

[t.ara]

1 hour ago, Bluegunk said:

As an experienced mod user, this question is the dumbest I've asked!

 

When launching the Skyrim Special Edition Launcher to generate some fresh INI files, I came to set the basic settings and find the View Distance Sliders are welded into place.

I can't move them. Now can I move them in game menu either.

 

I switched off Engine Fixes, Display Tweaks and Dyndolod in case they were causing the problem. The INIs are not Read Only.

 

Please can someone (once they've stopped laughing) enlighten me as to what's going on?

 

Thanks!

 

Why laughing?....

This window I only see one time when I have newly installed the game(s) SLE/SSE.

And after I start the games by using the SKSE loader, this windows never are shown up again.

And all those parameters are part of the skyrimprefs.ini , once set up to the maximum officially set-able parameters at the first start.

The windw-mode is making the game more darker and seemed to me never really to become serious for gameplay.

The game has massive problems with windowing or/and putting it into background or playing aside other tasks...maybe the engine is simply not respecting that in a serious way.

 

I would ONLY start the game by using SKSE-launcher and do the settings inside of the mentioned ini-file.

If that is not working somehow, maybe you can check skyrim by using steam´s check-support.

But be careful not to let steam update or change your game´s setting/mod configurations.

Steam may have some advantages about game-support, but I personally do not let steam to touch my game-editions after I have installed their games.

 

If you start skyrim without SKSE, you will probably have access to the OPTION windows again, after you let steam check up your game intigration (steam can check the installation of a game as mentioned and repair that)

You can make the skyrim-folder to become a nearby copy and let steam reinstall the game and later you bring your modded version back in by using the mod-manager again...with wyre bash, you can exactly add afterwords the set-up as close it has been like you left it when this error happened.

 

You also can check if the game needs a sort of window´s net.framework-versions, or if suddenly something inside of your system got screwed up by another app. This is an alternative aspect, perhaps.

 

[Bluegunk]

Hi @t.ara

 

Very many thanks for your detailed reply.

 

The situation I am at is starting my 1,000th replay.  I noticed in game that the Settings - Display sliders would not move from their maximum position.

I decided to discard the INI files, and refresh them with a clean new set by Verifying the files through Steam.

To try and start as cleanly as possible, I also chose to use the Skyrim Special Edition Launcher to see if I could set the View Distance sliders at that point. They refused to move.

 

I duplicated the process on a clean new game, and also found the same problem.

 

What I am trying to discover is what could be blocking those sliders.  

 

 

 

[traison]

Technically any injected dll could do this. That includes skse plugins, enb, mo2's uvfs and any overlay or other 3rd party app that may have global hooks. Obviously the steam overlay, or the rbg components of your keyboard won't have an interest in breaking lod sliders on skyrim, that's why I said technically. Considering skse is not loaded here, that sort of only leaves enb as a potential candidate.

 

Also when you say you can't move them. Does that mean you can drag them and they move, but when you let go they snap back to where they were?

[traison]

I had a look at this dialog in the disassembler and from what I can tell there's no direct events bound to controls on the Advanced Options property sheet. At this point I would assume one of:

1. External interference.
2. Some system issue with PropertySheetW, exported from comctl32.dll, defined in prsht.h.
3. Incompatibility or bug in SkyrimSELauncher.exe. Edit: As in, SkyrimSELauncher.exe disables these elements after the dialog has loaded.

The callback function passed to the PropertySheetW in the PROPSHEETHEADER.pfnCallback field only adjusts dialog items with index 0 and 1, where 1 is deleted. I assume these to be the OK and (invisible to us at runtime) Cancel buttons. This would indicate that the values of these dialog elements (sliders, checkboxes, ...) is checked later, after the OK button is pressed. Which would mean the problem may be more significant than simply reading/writing to an ini file failing or something along these lines.

 

If you can track down a program called spyxx you may be able to get more information about the ui elements you're having trouble with, however I'm not sure if this is going to help any. I mean even if you did find out the elements were disabled (and thus unable to be interacted with) that would still almost certainly place the problem in comctl32.dll which is a system file.

 

Edit: Wrong dll name. Fixed.

 

Edit again: There appears to be a kind of wndproc associated with property sheets. I'll see if I can find it.

 

Edit again: I found the wndproc (or more specifically dlgproc) and followed the code after changing the object fade slider. There is nothing in here that I can see that would conditionally fail. If the slider truly is not moving, then the SendMessage calls that updates the slider visuals are failing and we're again back to the same 3 issues listed above. The slider value is written to memory and the function promptly returns:

0000000140004A5F | 0F57C0                   | xorps xmm0,xmm0                         | This is the object fade slider.
0000000140004A62 | 8BC6                     | mov eax,esi                             |
0000000140004A64 | B9 40040000              | mov ecx,440                             |
0000000140004A69 | F348:0F2AC0              | cvtsi2ss xmm0,rax                       | Long to float.
0000000140004A6E | F3:0F5E05 E2330100       | divss xmm0,dword ptr ds:[140017E58]     | Slider value manipulation.
0000000140004A76 | F3:0F1105 C6920100       | movss dword ptr ds:[14001DD44],xmm0     | Slider value written to memory.
0000000140004A7E | F348:0F2CD8              | cvttss2si rbx,xmm0                      | Float to long.
0000000140004A83 | E8 68FCFFFF              | call skyrimselauncher.1400046F0         | Index to handle, GetDlgItem
0000000140004A88 | 48:8BC8                  | mov rcx,rax                             |
0000000140004A8B | 8BD3                     | mov edx,ebx                             |
0000000140004A8D | E8 2E180000              | call skyrimselauncher.1400062C0         | itow SetWindowTextW
0000000140004A92 | 33C0                     | xor eax,eax                             | Clear eax
0000000140004A94 | 48:8B5C24 30             | mov rbx,qword ptr ss:[rsp+30]           |
0000000140004A99 | 48:8B7424 38             | mov rsi,qword ptr ss:[rsp+38]           |
0000000140004A9E | 48:83C4 20               | add rsp,20                              |
0000000140004AA2 | 5F                       | pop rdi                                 |
0000000140004AA3 | C3                       | ret                                     |

 

Edited April 4, 2023 by traison

[Bluegunk]

@Traison....I don't know what to say but grateful thanks for the amount of work you put into this. I'm amazed.

 

In fact I'm returning to report the problem resolved. It seems that MO2 may have had a problem with the MO2 Plugin called INI Baker. That little Baker had been tinkering with all sorts of INI entries in the My Documents area, which of course MO2 should not use.  There were 'Baked' INI files all over the place.

 

So I deleted all the small Baker INI jobbies and started the game. It was like flushing a toilet. All the broken settings popped up on screen briefly, and then disappeared, leaving me in full control once more and with adjustable sliders.

 

I have no idea what INI Baker had been doing, but I disabled it.

 

MO2 offer virtually no information on INI Baker. I guess it is supposed to have a function, other than buggering up Skyrim. 

 

So....SOLVED.

 

If any MO2 user has a similar issue, try checking the My Documents area and see if Mr Baker has been at work.

 

 

Edited April 5, 2023 by Bluegunk

[Just Don't]

The ini baker should only be in use if you use profile specific ini files, in which case MO will use files inside each profile folder and not the ones in your documents. So it's one or the other, if you've been enabling and disabling profile specific ini files I can see how some files from MO can get into the default path in your documents (if you chose to restore/keep said files?), but that is not the intended effect for that setting. (edit: actually I can't replicate this behavior with the current MO release).

Edited April 6, 2023 by Just Don't

[traison]

Just out of curiosity though, could you answer my previous question about what you meant by them being stuck. Did they not react to mouse input at all, no motion, not even temporarily? Or was it perhaps that they did move but snapped back to their default values at some point, like when you released the mouse or when you reopened the dialog? There's some significant differences from a code perspective here.

[Bluegunk]

14 hours ago, traison said:

Just out of curiosity though, could you answer my previous question about what you meant by them being stuck. Did they not react to mouse input at all, no motion, not even temporarily? Or was it perhaps that they did move but snapped back to their default values at some point, like when you released the mouse or when you reopened the dialog? There's some significant differences from a code perspective here.

In game I could adjust the sliders, pop out of the menu where it says "saving" as usual. Go back into the menu and the sliders had returned to the original position (all maxxed to the right).

 

In the Skyrim Special Edition Launcher, they were all to the left and nothing would touch them. It was as if they were greyed out, not an object under focus, etc.

 

I don't know what the INI Baker is in the MO2 Plugins, the Github page was vague and didn't give me much sense, nor did Mr Google show anything useful.  I got the impression that the Plugin had been active and caused my current MO2 profile to be looking at an read-only image of another INI setup.  Once I cleared all those INIs, it was like a lot of stuff readjusted in the game (rendering, LOD, polygons, shaders, grass, etc) for about 5 seconds before it settled down and everything started working.

 

I suppose I ought to go onto Discord and talk to the MO2 team. Something is weird about that Bakery thing.

 

Thanks for your interest!

Edited April 6, 2023 by Bluegunk

[traison]

Since it's part of mo2 it could explain why I wasn't seeing anything in assembly. It might have disabled those slider controls, which would explain all the weird behavior (no movement, no focus). I have that plugin as well, so it's a part of the default mo2 install. Maybe I have the same problem if I were to run the default launcher through mo2. I do all my settings editing directly in the ini file these days so it's been years since I was in the default launcher doing anything. When I had it in the debugger (and disassembler) it was outside of mo2.

[Bluegunk]

I adjust my own INI files, and I don't trust BethINI to do it either.  I have now placed a question on MO2's Discord to learn more about this bakery thing.

What frustrated me most was how little information seems to be available to the regular user on the plugin.

Or maybe I'm stupid and missed four A4 pages of facts and demonstrations or something... ?