modding HUGE Problem with Modding RDR2 That No One is Talking About

[kris33 0]

So how do you actually fix this issue? I confirmed I have this bug, I mostly use texture mods (I have a 49' Samsung G9 right in my face, so it's a necessity). The bug went away when I disabled all my mods.

 

I'm quite technical, I just need to know how to identify which textures are problematic and why, and how to fix them (using which tools).

[IWannaBangAnastasia 0]

You can fix this issue by increasing the amount of RAM and VRAM the engine is allowed to allocate via config.xml mods like this one:
 

A Modest Memory Pool Booster for LML - Anti-Stutter Performance Booster at Red Dead Redemption 2 Nexus - Mods and community
 

I use it + several other mods (mostly minor gameplay rebalance/rework stuff and fixes that aren't too texture-heavy or script-heavy) and I'm able to get trains full of passengers to spawn just fine, no problem. You probably should still avoid stuff that heavily increases memory usage though such as 4k retextures and euphoria mods etc...

The only memory-heavy mod that I use is Enhanced Entity and World Persistence by PixieV because it improves the game far too much, but after a particularly large amount of dead bodies piles up in a single region, new NPCs of all kinds (including new police waves) refuse to spawn until I leave the area.

Edited March 14 by IWannaBangAnastasia

[TheAlmightyZugs 0]

  On 2/15/2024 at 2:24 PM, Jrw174 said:

Whats the name of the mod? I'm a programmer and can take a look. No promises though

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Did you ever make a script? 

[TheAlmightyZugs 0]

  On 11/5/2024 at 12:05 AM, deadwoodd said:

My fault, I missed the trams part of your comment.

 

Here's a general guide for the newcomers to the thread.

Since streaming textures seems to be the primary cause of the issue, we want to look for our texture mods that use streaming and see if we can make them use the replacement method instead. This takes place in the install.xml files of the mods.

 

Luckily for us, there is a powershell script you can run which will essentially turn the mod's streaming method into the replacement method. The script can be found here.

 

Let's take a look at the mod Characters Overhaul as an example.

 

When we look at the mod's install.xml, we can see this:

 

Now if we use the powershell script to change this into the replacement method, we now see this:

 

(cropped for the sake of the forums)

 

You can see that instead of streaming the entire folder, we are using each individual texture instead as a file replacement.

 

Obviously this can be done one by one, but given the amount of textures some of these mods have, that would be a painstaking process, which is where the powershell script comes into play.

 

We can also see that the script calls for a source_paths.txt file. This text file should include the exact directories of the files you wish to replace. This can be achieved by using OpenIV to find the directories. All of them must be included. Here's an example of a source_paths.txt file.

 

This works with any texture mod that uses the streaming method. Here are a list of mods that I am currently using with no problems.

 

1. Crime & Law Rebalance
2. Better Camera
3. No Kill Cam Filter
4. Flo
5. Characters Overhaul
6. Upscaled Vegetation
7. Terrain Textures Overhaul
8. Blackwater Terrain Textures Overhaul
9. Best TAA & Visual Effects (slightly modified and combined with the Darker Nights mod)

I am also using the gameconfig provided by werwolf969 which you can find on this post.

 

All in all, I have zero issues with any spawns whatsoever. Not sure if worth mentioning, but I am running at 1440p at 1.5x resolution scale with a 3080 Ti and a 12700k.

 

When it comes to WhyEm's, I've had no luck getting this to work properly using the replacement method (meaning regardless of the method used, trains do not spawn with WhyEm's). Werewolf might have addressed this in this post  but I have not had the time to test it (and quite frankly, I'm okay with not using WhyEm's mods at the moment).

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What about for Complete Horse Overhaul? I see there used to be files for fixing it, but they are not available anymore. 

I was able to dig up the instal.xml file for Complete Horse Overhaul and followed the directions correctly from werewolf (I think) but restructuring the mod and putting it in lml doesn't seemingly work. 

Edited Thursday at 03:02 AM by TheAlmightyZugs

[TheAlmightyZugs 0]

  On 3/14/2025 at 2:32 AM, IWannaBangAnastasia said:

You can fix this issue by increasing the amount of RAM and VRAM the engine is allowed to allocate via config.xml mods like this one:
 

A Modest Memory Pool Booster for LML - Anti-Stutter Performance Booster at Red Dead Redemption 2 Nexus - Mods and community
 

I use it + several other mods (mostly minor gameplay rebalance/rework stuff and fixes that aren't too texture-heavy or script-heavy) and I'm able to get trains full of passengers to spawn just fine, no problem. You probably should still avoid stuff that heavily increases memory usage though such as 4k retextures and euphoria mods etc...

The only memory-heavy mod that I use is Enhanced Entity and World Persistence by PixieV because it improves the game far too much, but after a particularly large amount of dead bodies piles up in a single region, new NPCs of all kinds (including new police waves) refuse to spawn until I leave the area.

Expand  

Can confirm that this doesn't work through testing in terms of fixing the spawning issue. 
 

Edited yesterday at 08:26 AM by TheAlmightyZugs

[TheAlmightyZugs 0]

Also, I've done some extensive testing myself, started fresh and added mods one at a time, used the files shared here etc for some of the mods and when I initially tested some times it seems to work and others it stops working. Initially I was just looking for trains and then I moved to the Railroad Engineer mod and then later now the "Chicken method" a youtuber laid out among other things. Keep in mind this is when I still believed trains to be a good indicator, but in my opinion it only really is an indicator if no trains spawn at all. They can still spawn, but the issue can still present itself. That's not even mentioning actually checking for peds on trains etc which is another issue. 

 

For those tests, I would do circuits of 10 game launches between mod changes. 5 launches where I would load in and immediately try to find train spawns. If I found one I would try to find another. Depending on the mods I used, I may see one train but as soon as I would move to the next - all trains would despawn and I'd notice a lot less "life" in the world. Little things where when the trains would spawn in, there were also more peds doing things vs just sitting down etc. Peds freezing in motion etc and then continuing about their business, no passengers on wagons etc. But I also noticed that even when a game launches and I'd find a train or indicators that spawning was working, if I made no changes to the files and then relaunched that same train would now not show up. So not consistent. Then 5 launches where I would leave the game running for 10 minutes, and then proceed to look. These 5 usually resulted in failure every time.

 

But even when I removed the majority of mods one by one, spawning would still be an issue. Obviously removed stream and any texture mods, ytd's etc. Even when I removed the lml folder completely leaving only for example the Train Engineer mod in some tests - I could find two trains at times but never more than that and as soon as I would try for a third, the other two trains would be despawned and not show up. Sometimes not even the first one. This is on top of other things I noticed regarding ped behavior, numbers etc.

So I'm currently trying to see consistency in my launches and that has been difficult. A lot of false positives.

Have we made progress on an actual fix for this akin to what exists for GTA 5? Do we know of anyone working on a fix? I'd be willing to take a crack at it and even possibly commission someone or a group of people (even if the cost may be steepish for what we're talking about). I just fear this will never get fixed and when the next GTA game releases, a lot of people may just move to that game.