AE - Animations disable menus?

[deaddeud]

I'm new to AE modding, was an oldrim player for many years, and decided to switch because of all the updates and additions to my favourite mods - so if what I'm asking is common knowledge or something I'm sorry.

 

In LE, while an animation is playing (SLAL packs, ZAP, DD struggle or furniture anims, etc...) you can press the start button on a controller or the esc key on the keyboard to pause the game and bring up the menu - saving, loading, quitting, MCM controls, etc... -- You can also press tab or the B button to bring up the inventory/spell menu, allowing for changing clothes mid-scene if the animation makes something clip wrong or sexlab stripped a piece of outfit it wasn't supposed to.

 

In AE, whenever any animation plays, from any source, both of these menus are blocked. Pressing the buttons or keys to pause or open the inventory does nothing, and if an animation hangs or falls into an endless loop I have to alt+tab out of the program and close the game, hoping that my last autosave wasn't more than 5 or so minutes ago.

Custom menus that open via hotkeys, like skyrim's built in Favorites menu, 'Unforgiving devices' debug menu, or the selector for 'Amputator framework' still open when the key is pressed, the tools and animation selector menus from 'SexlabTools' also opens and works fine, but the full inventory and pause menu refuse to open.

 

My google-fu has failed me in finding any trace of other people complaining about this behaviour, as has searching for keywords on the LL site and forums. I am also unable to find any setting in my MCM or OpenAnimationReplacer menus that could be doing this that I have not already tried toggling.

 

Has anyone else experienced this?

Is this something I screwed up in installing something or accidentally overwriting a file?

Or is this just how it is for AE and nobody mentions it because it's always been that way?

 

This is the first time I've ever modded SE/AE myself, and I have no idea what could be wrong, any help would be greatly appreciated.