Mod order help for GFO please help

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Moonlight

I'm sorry to correct you RR but the bigger better protractors does not touch the menu_1024_768.ini file.
I'm using it with FOTRS at the moment and there are no conflicts at all, here is the readme from the said mod.

I stand corrected. The principle still stands. But Moonlight gave you instructions to modify your own game, and I'm in favor of importing this change into FOTRS Ultimate too.

It all depends on whether this works for lower resolutions. And lower resolutions won't benefit as much from larger tools. If there's a problem then it will become a plugin because it sure is hard to read those little protractors on a higher resolution screen!

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Webster

the thing to remember is even though you uninstalled the game, any "changed/modded" files will still be left behind and they instantly corrupt the game as you reinstall the game. what you have to do is uninstall the game and then go into your computer files and manually delete the leftover files. its a PITA to do this every time your game gets corrupted but you get used to doing it after a while.

uninstalling the game ONLY removes the original unmodified files so any file that was changed by adding a mod stays there until you go find it and delete it yourself, uninstallers are useless and don't work on those files. also if you forget to uninstall all mods before doing an uninstall and reinstall it can leave a huge number of files left behind

You know, Webster, I haven't looked at your Mod Soup Fix. Wonder how similar it is to my video (look at the second, although it still depends on doing the operations in the first video).

[drakkhen20]

yes ive uninstalled the game and went in manually and deleted the "SH4" file under "My Documents" and as well i keep all my Ubisoft games in one folder out of "Program Files and Program Files(x86)" so i go in there and delete the whole file as well. i still got the problem. im going to try one more thing as stated before. going through them one by one and seeing which or what is going on but before i do that im going the try the stock game first and make sure i see all the eyes. i did not do this before as i havent had a problem with it before.

[Rockin Robbins]

Okay, Webster's mod soup fix relies on JSGME to properly uninstall all your mods. You then move your mods folder to another location and run JSGME to create a new MODS folder. Then you redownload and reinstall your mods.

This is a good partial solution that will solve a minority of mod soup problems. However, it is by no means a complete solution. In our 3.6 Gigabyte Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate Project, we've found that in dealing with thousands (almost 9,000 in FOTRSU) of files JSGME just can't be relied on.

If you have mod soup, after uninstalling all your mods with JSGME you STILL can't play the stock game. You still have mod soup because remnants of long forgotten mods live as hidden zombies in your stock game files and there is no way you will ever find them all. Without draconian measures, mod soup is chronic and sometimes fatal.

A more detailed procedure than Webster's is necessary. I've made a thread with two videos showing how to initially set up the game to allow for future restorations without reinstalling the game (ever! video #1) and then step by step instructions on what to do if disaster strikes (video #2).

I need to make another video on what to do if the mods themselves in your MODS folder are the problem. This is very rare as all JSGME does is read them. It never writes to those files, therefore it is very unlikely that they will be corrupted. Nonetheless, I should make a video of testing the mods in that folder one by one and replacing them if necessary. Again, the possibility that you find the problem there is very remote.

A quick overview of my procedure, which starts with initial game installation. Install the game in a non-system protected directory, \wolves of the pacific by default. Copy that entire directory into a parallel directory \sh4 pristeen. Then write protect all directories and files within that folder, including the folder itself. It's your lockbox of stock game files that cannot be played. Write protecting guarantees that they cannot be played. My videos show how to put JSGME, MultiSH4 and Large Address Aware into the \sh4 pristeen installation.

Suppose you want to play TMO. Make yourself another parallel directory \sh4tmo. Copy all the contents of \sh4 pristeen into \sh4tmo. Write enable all files and directories in \sh4tmo. Run MultiSH4 to make a \TMO directory for savegame files in your \documents folder. Run Large Address Aware to let SH4 access more than 2 GB. Then run JSGME to make your MODS folder, and especially so you can take a game files snapshot. This is your mod soup survival tool. Because you can't trust JSGME to keep all your files straight (this is a Windows problem, not a JSGME problem) but you CAN trust JSGME to compare all your game files with the originals and tell you if any are different.

Install your mods in the MODS folder and install them with JSGME. Play. Now let's say you have weird stuff going on. You need to check to see if mod soup is the issue. Run JSGME and uninstall all mods. Your files should now be stock files--but ARE THEY? Do JSGME's compare to original game files function. If you have files that are changed, you have mod soup all right!

Don't worry about diagnosing what went wrong. We're going to fix it and we'll never know. It's like rebooting your computer. Why analyze for hours when you can be up and running with all problems fixed (whatever they are!) in ten minutes?

First, delete everything from your \sh4tmo directory except for your MODS folder. Then copy everything from your \sh4 pristeen folder into your \sh4tmo directory. You'll then write enable the whole \sh4tmo shebang: directories and files. Run MultiSH4 to tell the game to use your \TMO savegame directory. Run Large Address Aware on the new SH4.exe. Run JSGME to reinstall your mods. Now all your savegames are restored and you can begin playing your present campaign as if nothing had ever happened.

What could go wrong:

• If your savegame is corrupt you might have to start a new career or mission.
• If your files in the MODS folder are corrupt you'll have to test them one by one and replace the bad ones. This is VERY unlikely.
• If you run your game from desktop or menu bar shortcuts, those shortcuts need to point to the appropriate sh4.exe files NOT gu.exe, which bungles large mod installations and causes other game malfunctions.

That's about it. It's much more comprehensive than Webster's mod soup fix. The videos incorporate the use of MultiSH4 to have multiple game installation. They incorporate instructions on how to use Large Address Aware. They incorporate instructions on how to use JSGME to compare your files to detect mod soup.


Actually, if the thread were stickied I'd add Webster's instructions to it in a third video. The entire comprehensive process hasn't been clearly explained so far, and probably can't be outside of instructional videos.

actually my method says to DELETE the existing mod folder, then re-download your mods and install them back into jsgme from fresh download or saved zip file download somewhere to avoid any issues with the mods themselves being where the corruption lies.

that's a very important clarification, because just "moving" the jsgme MODS folder and transferring the mods to the newly created jsgme MODS folder can and often WILL put the corruption back.

one further note is to ask if by chance this might be a very old computer running a very old video card? when this "eyes" issue was around, there was so many different situations it occurs that it was very hard to say if it was a video driver or video card issue but it seamed to be caused by a video card related problem and that's why the mod was made to correct a "trigger" with the game that caused it

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Webster

actually my method says to DELETE the existing mod folder, then re-download your mods and install them back into jsgme from fresh download or saved zip file download somewhere to avoid any issues with the mods themselves being where the corruption lies.

The corruption is almost never in the mods in the MODS directory. Those are only read by JSGME, never written to. Mod soup is a corruption of the stock game files themselves and nothing you can do with the MODS directory will fix it. This corruption is caused because sometimes when you uninstall a mod JSGME does not properly replace the modified file with the stock file every time. My best estimate of the error rate is about 1/100 of a percent. That means one out of ten times you uninstall FOTRSU you will be left with corrupted stock game files. Your procedure leaves the mod soup entirely untouched. Believe me we were thoroughly burned by that discovery and spent weeks fixing it.

That came to light in our development of FOTRSU and is independently confirmed by many people. It's also confirmed that the procedure we developed is the only one that fixes it every time. It takes ten minutes, preserves your savegames and settings. When you're done, you resume playing as if nothing had ever happened. It's a true fix. It's one of the two most important things we found when making a huge supermod.

If you'll sticky it I'll add a third video about identifying and fixing problems with the MODS folder.

I'll bet your last observation about older video cards is dead on target for the eyes issue!

[drakkhen20]

no i am running an up to date system. GTX 980 overclocked and all the dressings with it on Windows 10. sorry it takes so long as ive been working 12 to 16 hours a day lately with the holidays coming up. so its been a i come home and get on SH4 for about and hour and bounce back and forth between you all and actually testing the suggestions. so on that note, while i was digging around google and these old posts for the eye patches and all that it pointed me in a direction to look at some files. i discovered that when activating one of the mods (havent had time to figure out which one) it places a duplicate "EyeBallsPS" file in the "Skinning" folder. i also renamed the file to "XEyeBallsPS" and now i have eyeballs on top and below decks. they still follow me though and creep me out but at least we have eyes now. so thanks guys for all the help and responses. hope this will help someone else one day as you all did for me today.

Originally Posted by drakkhen20

no i am running an up to date system. GTX 980 overclocked and all the dressings with it on Windows 10. sorry it takes so long as ive been working 12 to 16 hours a day lately with the holidays coming up. so its been a i come home and get on SH4 for about and hour and bounce back and forth between you all and actually testing the suggestions. so on that note, while i was digging around google and these old posts for the eye patches and all that it pointed me in a direction to look at some files. i discovered that when activating one of the mods (havent had time to figure out which one) it places a duplicate "EyeBallsPS" file in the "Skinning" folder. i also renamed the file to "XEyeBallsPS" and now i have eyeballs on top and below decks. they still follow me though and creep me out but at least we have eyes now. so thanks guys for all the help and responses. hope this will help someone else one day as you all did for me today.

that's an example of one of those leftover files I was talking about earlier that you need to manually remove and cant be done with the uninstaller.

jsgme sometimes gets lost and "loses track" of changed files and how to restore them so that's another point where corruptions can happen.

you found the image file causing the problem and now to stop the "following eyes" I think that would be controlled by a dat file you need to find and it will have had some sort of a a name change just like the
eyeballs file had

I too don't get much time here anymore so it can sometimes be days before I check back in

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

The corruption is almost never in the mods in the MODS directory. Those are only read by JSGME, never written to. Mod soup is a corruption of the stock game files themselves and nothing you can do with the MODS directory will fix it. This corruption is caused because sometimes when you uninstall a mod JSGME does not properly replace the modified file with the stock file every time. My best estimate of the error rate is about 1/100 of a percent. That means one out of ten times you uninstall FOTRSU you will be left with corrupted stock game files. Your procedure leaves the mod soup entirely untouched. Believe me we were thoroughly burned by that discovery and spent weeks fixing it.

That came to light in our development of FOTRSU and is independently confirmed by many people. It's also confirmed that the procedure we developed is the only one that fixes it every time. It takes ten minutes, preserves your savegames and settings. When you're done, you resume playing as if nothing had ever happened. It's a true fix. It's one of the two most important things we found when making a huge supermod.

If you'll sticky it I'll add a third video about identifying and fixing problems with the MODS folder.

I'll bet your last observation about older video cards is dead on target for the eyes issue!

no that is not true, there are "hidden" files in jsgme that you normally cant see but those are where the file changes are controlled and where corruptions of files "can be" saved as such.

to see them, in windows 7, you open the jsgme MODS folder then select at windows top tool bar "organize/folder and search options/view" and select to "show hidden files" and then those files are visible.

these "hidden files" are where all the changes are controlled and they are really the only files you should "need" to delete to solve most corruptions but there is always a chance that one of the actual mod files is corrupted so to eliminate ANY chance its best to tell people to just delete the entire MODS folder and start over new with all "virgin" mod download files

[drakkhen20]

ok so i use Winrar to do my zip files for the Mod downloads. so what your saying is even though i completely manually delete the files in my directory folder for SH4 and the saved files in my documents and restart my pc and all that stuff that there are files still left over? im familiar with hidden files so thats what is or could be left over even though you delete eveything. then each mod that you use just go through them and zip them back into a new Mod folder after deleting the old MOD folder?

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Webster

no that is not true, there are "hidden" files in jsgme that you normally cant see but those are where the file changes are controlled and where corruptions of files "can be" saved as such.

to see them, in windows 7, you open the jsgme MODS folder then select at windows top tool bar "organize/folder and search options/view" and select to "show hidden files" and then those files are visible.

these "hidden files" are where all the changes are controlled and they are really the only files you should "need" to delete to solve most corruptions but there is always a chance that one of the actual mod files is corrupted so to eliminate ANY chance its best to tell people to just delete the entire MODS folder and start over new with all "virgin" mod download files

Webster, I have show hidden files on by default and don't treat them any differently than any others. You can eliminate all those files you want. Most mod soup, and this is verified by independent research by four of us on the FOTRSU team, is in the stock game files themselves. After you remove all mods from the game with JSGME and then do a file compare, there are changes left in those stock game files.

In fact, that is the definition of mod soup. It is the root cause of mod soup. You can do anything you want with JSGME and its hidden files and the mod soup is totally untouched. Until you delete everything, hidden or not, from \Wolves of the Pacific except for the MODS directory, including deleting JSGME, Large Address Aware and MultiSH4 and replace them from the lockbox (shown and coached in the videos), then write enable everything in the \Wolves of the Pacific directory, run Large Address Aware, MultiSH4 and JSGME (all of which are brand new), you cannot solve the vast majority of mod soup situations.

JSGME alone does not have the ability to fix mod soup. Mod soup is corruption of the stock game files with remnants of mods which were previously installed by JSGME but not properly removed by JSGME. You can delete hidden files until the cows come home and the mod soup remains completely untouched.

My videos prove this and then fix it. The state of knowledge has changed and we now have a COMPLETE solution for mod soup, not just a solution that works in a minority of cases.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by drakkhen20

ok so i use Winrar to do my zip files for the Mod downloads. so what your saying is even though i completely manually delete the files in my directory folder for SH4 and the saved files in my documents and restart my pc and all that stuff that there are files still left over? im familiar with hidden files so thats what is or could be left over even though you delete eveything. then each mod that you use just go through them and zip them back into a new Mod folder after deleting the old MOD folder?

First, I'd check out what Webster said about older graphics cards having the eyes issue. If that is the cause then fixing mod soup isn't going to help.

I'd set up Explorer to always show hidden files and to give you the extensions of all files. Then you don't care and mostly pay no attention to whether a file is hidden or not.

Okay, what is mod soup. Mod soup happens when you install a mod with JSGME and later uninstall it. Because of an error with Windows or JSGME, sometimes not all the original files are restored when uninstalling a mod. So JSGME says "no mods installed, dude" and your game isn't stock any more. This sometimes doesn't kill the game. There are changes but you might not be aware of it. But sooner or later you uninstall a mod with a ROSTER directory containing non-stock ships. You're playing the stock game, there's that non-stock ship out there, you fire a torpedo and the instant the torpedo touches the ship you crash to desktop.

Now lets do what Webster says. Delete the MODS folder, run JSGME to make a new MODS folder, unzip all your mods into the new MODS folder and reinstall. Lets just do that but not install any mods. Have you fixed the mod soup?

NO! You have not touched the mod soup. Mod soup lives in the corrupted stock game files. You have done nothing to fix them, therefore you still have mod soup. Try it. We did. The FOTRS team wrestled with this thing for two weeks before we finally figured out that we had been working with the wrong definition of mod soup for ten years.

If you have mod soup visit my thread on making an SH4 Lockbox and never having to reinstall the game again. The videos are much better than any written instructions and they are self-validating--they prove I'm right and Webster is wrong. I actually do a file compare on an installation with mod soup when no mods are installed and prove that mod soup is game files which are supposed to be original stock game files as supplied by Ubi, but which have been changed and remain changed when JSGME says no mods are installed.

At that point, what are you going to do with JSGME to fix it? Of course, there is NOTHING JSGME is equipped to do about it. You must have a lockbox with guaranteed uncontaminated stock game files. You must delete all files from your game directory and replace them with guaranteed stock files. Then, working with a new copy of JSGME you can do a file compare and see definitively that without doing the Webster thing at all, mod soup is ENTIRELY CORRECTED. This is clearly and unambiguously shown in my videos. I'm not making stuff up. I'm not jumping to conclusions. I have the ONLY fix for mod soup.

Now I really don't care if you or any given individual chooses to ignore hard evidence and use a witch doctor or maybe a lucky rock to attack mod soup. But for the benefit of those who will check it out for themselves, it's child's play to prove that I am correct here. It's child's play to prove that if you have mod soup, going through Webster's procedure doesn't touch it.

Mod soup lives in the game files, not the mod files in the MODS directory. Only a tenth of one percent of the time (I'm 10 times too high on that number) will a corrupted mod file in the MODS directory be at fault.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't check it out. It does mean that you should cover the higher probabilities first and only chase after the MODS directory if that leaves you unfixed. Most people will be struck by lightning before that happens unless your actual Windows installation is corrupted.

I don't make assertions on my own "authority." My videos establish the truth, prove the truth and give you the tools to prove it for yourself. You are prefectly free to deny hard evidence. But you are not free to avoid the consequences of that. Much of the time, and I am understating the truth here, you will still have mod soup. Mod soup lives in the game files, not in the MODS folder, not in JSGME's scratchpads, although if JSGME makes a mistake the scratchpad will say "that's an original file" and it won't be. Fixing the scratchpad and replacing the MODS folder don't do a thing to fix the corrupted game files. Playing with things that are not mod soup cannot remove mod soup.

It's like saying that the malaria is caused by a mosquito, so all you have to do to cure malaria is to find the mosquito that gave it to you and kill it. Even if that were possible and you killed it guess what? You would still have malaria.

[propbeanie]

... and the "Eye" issue was originally from the days when AGP was fading, and PCIe was coming in, and nVidia was "cheating" on their "Benchmark Scores" to get higher FPS by not doing the AA all the way. In a stickie in the 'regular' section here:

Nvidia tweaks to SH3/SH4

Surely they've fixed the issue with their driver by now... ??

[Rockin Robbins]

Proof. Don't take my word for it. Prove it to yourself. This video starts off showing what mod soup is and that it exists even when JSGME has no mods installed:

[drakkhen20]

so when you activate a mod, what exactly happens ? does it replace the original file with what is being activated or does it add to the file? im trying to understand it more.