Test http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11336. I guess it only needs a few tweaks for the ini (old stuff taken out) but seems even BAIN works, along with a Bashed Patch. I haven't tried it yet, just going by the comments.

I wish this were true.

Unfortunately Fo3 doesn't have the same popularity that Oblivion has by a Long Shot. I really wish it did as I've totally invested myself into the Fo3 game and mod-scene for the last 14 and the next 14 months, but alas I have seen the community diminish overtime from the modding-side of things. We've had a bit of a surge with the announcement of NV, but I don't think even a Wyre Bash can fix that issue.

Still it would be nice to have one! In the meant-time, all we do have for really Big mod-lists are things like Mez's Merged Patch, FOIP and Fo3Edit's MasterUpdate.

I have read all 4 pages of this post (really wish it was more about the masterupdate and not about patches, still good to know when and how to make one if needed though, so thank you) and more confused about the masterupdate than I was before.

1. Can someone clearly tell me what masterupdating is doing besides turning all of my esps into esms?

2. What sort of mods shouldn't be masterupdated (read that masterupdating some mods cause harm), meaning what changes to a mod do I look for so I know it can't be masterupdated?

3. Is it possible to select only the moods you want to be masterupdated, while it leaves the other mods that shouldn't be master updated, alone? If so, how?

Thank you

When Master Update Mode is activated, the following operations are performed without further user interaction:

-> All modules in the Data folder are assigned into 2 groups, masters and Plug-ins, based on their file extension (.esm or .esp).
-> The modules in each group are sorted by file modification date/time.
-> All module files are re-dated, first all masters, then all Plug-ins, in 1 minute intervals.
-> All active modules are then loaded, the ESM flag set in the file header if not yet present, and the ONAM sub records build if required.
-> Any temporary overriding world space record that has at least one previous version that is persistent is marked as persistent.
-> All modified modules are saved.

This process will result in a better-integrated group of mods, and will likely result in less crashes than without having run Master Update Mode.



All of the mods in your load-order are MasterUpdated at the same time, its automatic and not something where you select X or Y mod to MasterUpdate, the entire mod-list has to be processed in order for it to work. I have not experienced issues in which MasterUpdate broke mods, rather the reverse in that it makes stuff work again that may have been broken. You still need the Merged Pathces; such as Mez's merged patch and the FOIP patches are Very important (more important than MasterUpdate, but you still need both).


The entire load-order list is processed at once. The tutorial can be find via the link in my sig.

Cheers,

Miax

Thanks for the explanation, Miaximus. Phew, what a load of work. So I guess for me it'll be installing FWE+MMM+EVE+PB and all the other smaller mods I want, installing FOIP, installing Mez's merged patch, sorting the load order and then making a master update.

Absolutely agree with you - its still a load of work to get a perfectly working mod-rig with all the best stuff.

But once you get there, boy is it ever worth it! I can't even imagine playing the vanilla game anymore.

Luck,

Miax

quick comment (in a hurry to play my new dlc's so havent read the thread so apologies if this is answered)

Is the face bug still present in 1.703 ?

I just installed the game of year and im not getting the face bug i was expecting. but when i upgraded to 1.7 using my old vanilla (no game of year) version then i had the face bug in lots of mods.

Weird... is the face bug not present in the game of year edition ? (i havent master updated)

Thank you very much for taking the time to explain everything to me (and anyone else that may have wondered the same thing).

I was really put off by the fact that it turned everything into an esm and really didn't see a reason for every esp to be an esm now. As long as it isn't doing any harm to the mods itself, I suppose I can over look that issue. It does make me wonder why it would , or . Any ideas?

These are good questions, as I honestly have never seen these issues myself. I even checked outside of Raven Rock to make sure that I didn't also have the issue - I think that is honestly a problem with a specific Mod (and not one of the big ones like FWE, MMM, etc because I run those too). No rocks outside of Raven Rock that are out of the norm in my game.

As to the black-hole effect, again I think this must be isolated to a few specific, non-widely-used mods as I have not experienced that and I run 150+ mods without a hitch.

With that I will add the caveat that using Mez's Merged Patch and the FOIP patches are EXTREMELY important irregardless of whether we use MasterUpdate or not, and I wouldn't be surprised if these reported issues were the cause of a faulty mod or user-error. I could be wrong here, but I have not seen these issues widely reported by anyone, and they would have been Very widely reported if MasterUpdate caused issues with them by now.

My advice is still to use MasterUpdate / MasterRestore unless you run into specific issues, as we know for sure that it fixes some nasty bugs that no one needs to live with. To make it easy I setup 3 icons in my QuickLaunch bar, one for MasterUpdate, one for MasterRestore and one for regular FO3Edit when I need to de-conflict things. That way it's literally a single mouse-click and about 15 seconds and I'm off to the wasteland!

Cheers.

Miax

Once again Miaximus, thank you very much for your time and being very clear with explaining things

Right now I am not going to use it, until I see a real need to use it (giving myself enough time in a new game to see if I really do need it first).
All I know, right now, is that it fixes the body textures and the navmeshes. Do you happen to have a list of bugs that masterupdate fixes?

If I add a new mod to my list, do I need to first run MasterRestore and then MasterUpdate - or can I simply just run MasterUpdate? I guess the latter but I just wanted to make sure.

Just masterupdate.

Thanks!

Just a word of caution, because there is one serious danger when using MasterUpdate:

Fallout3 will normally refuse to start when you are missing a master file. That is a mechanic to protect the user, since using mods with a missing master would have hazardous results.

However if you MasterUpdate(esm-ify) your mod list it is entirely possible that Fallout will start even if you are missing master files. That's A VERY [censored] BAD thing. Like said above, running mods with missing masters can and will [censored] things up for you. So make sure your modlist starts fine without masterupdating first.