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

[iiOmqClone 0]

after reading this whole post i cant find a fix

Edited July 31 by iiOmqClone

[moiza.sanzovo 0]

From my tests, there is no point in using gameconfig or lod mods. The only way to solve this problem is with some dll or .asi that forces the game to generate peds/animals/train/wagon before anything else, including before the landscape. Note that when you use mods like whyem dlc or stream files, things start to appear almost too close (pop-in) like animals and plants. I.e, the game cannot generate textures that are further away. Even with lod generation mods, wildlife or peds/wagon/trains are not generated. And if they are generated, it is with pop-in or only half (wagon without passengers).

 

 

Unfortunately the only way is to use mods that do not add new textures. And even if you want to use them, only use Stream files. However when equipping the character, I recommend using only one or two pieces of mod clothing and the others vanilla.

 

[iiOmqClone 0]

15 hours ago, moiza.sanzovo said:

From my tests, there is no point in using gameconfig or lod mods. The only way to solve this problem is with some dll or .asi that forces the game to generate peds/animals/train/wagon before anything else, including before the landscape. Note that when you use mods like whyem dlc or stream files, things start to appear almost too close (pop-in) like animals and plants. I.e, the game cannot generate textures that are further away. Even with lod generation mods, wildlife or peds/wagon/trains are not generated. And if they are generated, it is with pop-in or only half (wagon without passengers).

 

 

Unfortunately the only way is to use mods that do not add new textures. And even if you want to use them, only use Stream files. However when equipping the character, I recommend using only one or two pieces of mod clothing and the others vanilla.

 

if someone can make/find one like this it would be a lifesaveer ngl

[HarrietOrtega 9]

On 7/16/2024 at 3:10 AM, Dagger323 said:

That's exactly what I'd like to know. It seems that for a willing and knowledgeable modder this would be completely doable. Especially for train spawns, since the mod that has been linked which edits memory pools pretty much has already solved the ped and wildlife spawns. Maybe it's more complex than I realize, but I see no reason why this couldn't be resolved through a mod that specifically targets trains and controls how frequently they show up.

Spoiler

Just came back to read this thread after a couple months off. I've not gone through it all as I really should be working on one of my projects but I wanted to touch on this. I basically got rid of my texture mods one by one, testing train spawns as I went by, literally super running from one location to another at random. My favourite (yeah right) test was booting into the game, sleeping till early morning, running to some random location between stations and parking my player on the hills or grass near the tracks and waiting for an entire day until I saw the train icon pass by either greyed out, or an actual spawned train. Now I run a longer days mod, 3 game hours to one real life hour...I just left the game in the background and worked on my 3D modelling on my other monitors but it was still excruciatingly painful to do but I found it to be a truly random test for me. If I didn't hear a train approaching at all from morning till late evening, I'd change a value/remove a mod etc and do it again, sometimes in the same spot, sometimes somewhere else. On some very bizare run throughs, I've watched as the train icon has moved all across the map to my position over the hours, for it to fly past me towards the station some ways away...then when I turn around to chase it down, I'd super run past the icon to the station, hear the train horns, turn around and there's the train....so there's some serious f***ery going on with the spawns in general anyway. I did this for a week everyday whilst working...then I gave up.

 

So for me, every texture mod except upscaled vegetation, terrain textures, HDTEX and upscaled terrain 2k/4k breaks the train spawns but everything else spawns in properly with trams/passengers, wildlife, legendary spawns, random events, beggars etc (though to note, I changed all loading methods to file replacement). Nearly every part of Upscaled Textures AIO completely breaks trains for me, a small percentage breaks passengers/ambient events but the majority don't mess with other spawns. Something as small as replacing the skydome texture, a teeny teeny file size, breaks the spawns. So for me, the size of the file is irrelevant and the type of file, asi, xml, meta, ytd, ymf etc is also irrelevant. There's no discernable pattern to work out for me...I have a modified procedural.meta file where I added 1000000 new randomised entries because I've been trying to increase the grass density, the vegetation density, the amount of rocks/debris etc since I got this game. That file, one of many versions, came in at around 2-300mb in size. I had no problem loading it in, it did not break anything and it was definitely being read/replaced by the game according to the logs and because I did notice changes albeit not the ones I wanted. I did the same with vegetaionmodifiers.meta, clocking in at almost 500mb...zero problems except a couple of crashes during certain story locations due to me removing certain filter flags. Both of them together loaded fine, no issues with spawns or anything.

 

So, I took your advice and just played the game for a while. Which was nice, until today when the crap textures bugged me again. So now I'm here.

 

I wanted to comment on this specifically because I remember going on the hunt to try and find the specific scripts responsible for the train spawning and schedules and I did come acrross some files (there are hundreds upon hundreds of scripts) that had some interesting stuff in them but I don't know enough about the programming side...and even if I did, most of the game files still have hashed entries and no one in the rdr modding discord seems interested in dehashing the files/entries that would maybe shed some light on exactly what the engine is doing with the trains and spawns. I've tried to get info related to how to go about trying to brute force dehash files (I have a LOT of free time) but I can't find out how to do it. All I know is that the hashing is done with a JOAAT "Jenkins One at a Time" algorithm. The rdr programming side info is locked behind gatekeepers and discord I've found and there's no incentive, it seems, for anyone to take a crack at this issue because it's not worth it.

 

It's food for thought, the answer, or at least a partial one, is buried somewhere in those files along with, perhaps, an answer as to why increasing or decreasing any of the script, stack or heap size pools in the gameconfig.xml crashes the game at startup. I've had this bug up me that the script and stack sizes might do something but any changes to the ones that I think would matter breaks the game.

 

Spoiler

Regarding the memory pools, I'm not sure why people have had some/such success with it, I spent months pushing every significant pool to the max regarding peds, shaders, entities, drawables, vehicles, memory etc, starting with an outlandish increase of x4 the default value and reducing it until the game ran. Sometimes it would crash at startup with FFFFF, then a (painfully slow) reduction would get it into the game...which then crashed during load...anyhow, I noticed zero differance with my setup.

 

However I will say this, now this is just what I've experienced. The memory pools don't seem to matter until you exceed them, then you need to increase it. I don't want to cast aspersions and say it's a placebo effect because we all know that this game acts completely differently on each rig. For me, using the pool manager mod, I've only come across one instance where it told me a pool size had been exceeded, what one it was and by how much. It was "CGameScriptHandler" but what's interesting is, this entry was not actually in the gameconfig. I had to manually add that entry to the file to stop the crash. I wish I could remember what mod list I was running and what mod was doing it, I remember pinpointing it but I can't remember. For me, it seems the pool sizes are already set to the largest that the engine needs plus a modest safety factor and increasing them more doesn't do anything because there's no request to do so. It leads me to believe that the way it's handling data assets isn't entirely dependant, or even dependant at all, or completely parrallel to what's in the gameconfig. So for me it was a gruelling and pointless excercise.

 

So that brings me to a related point, if the engine was requesting a pool size above what was allocated to it by an entry that wasn't even listed in my gameconfig (CGameScriptHandler) ...are there other pool sizes or entries the game uses that we are not aware of because they just aren't listed in the gameconfig? Maybe because those were values the devs set in stone and did not need entries for because they would never be changed? I'm just thinking out loud now. CGameScriptHandler is a mystery to me, on every vanilla install I've never found it in the gameconfig, it should be right above "CGameScriptHandlerNetwork", line 1727, god I wish I could remember which mod needed it.

 

So that's where I'm at, getting sucked back into this again!

[HarrietOrtega 9]

On 8/1/2024 at 11:24 PM, moiza.sanzovo said:

From my tests, there is no point in using gameconfig or lod mods. The only way to solve this problem is with some dll or .asi that forces the game to generate peds/animals/train/wagon before anything else, including before the landscape. Note that when you use mods like whyem dlc or stream files, things start to appear almost too close (pop-in) like animals and plants. I.e, the game cannot generate textures that are further away. Even with lod generation mods, wildlife or peds/wagon/trains are not generated. And if they are generated, it is with pop-in or only half (wagon without passengers).

 

 

Unfortunately the only way is to use mods that do not add new textures. And even if you want to use them, only use Stream files. However when equipping the character, I recommend using only one or two pieces of mod clothing and the others vanilla.

 

I've fixed the pop in issue by increasing the LOD Scale in systemsettings.xml from it's max of 2.0 to 6.0 with it's default as 2.0, step size 0.5 alongside adding entries for:

    <lod_mult_hd>                 
    <lod_mult_orphanhd>                                           
    <lod_mult_lod>
    <lod_mult>
    <lod_mult_grass>

 

with values between 10.0 and 40.0 in "base modifier" sections at the top of the timecycle_mods_1 and 2 xmls and also removing all the following entries for the aformentioned from the file. There are entries that adjust every graphical thing in those files and the timecycle files and sometimes that is undesirable for those of us with better machines than this was developed for. Beforehand I was literally watching rocks and bushes pop into view 2 meters in front of me, two steps back...disappeared, step forward, pop in, it was ridiculous. Play around with the values and find the right combo...for me, I had to push the lod scale all the way to 5.0 to get objects to fade in properly...you'll know when you hit your limit because, well, the game will just crash.

[Derpdat 0]

10 hours ago, HarrietOrtega said:

I've fixed the pop in issue by increasing the LOD Scale in systemsettings.xml from it's max of 2.0 to 6.0 with it's default as 2.0, step size 0.5 alongside adding entries for:

    <lod_mult_hd>                 
    <lod_mult_orphanhd>                                           
    <lod_mult_lod>
    <lod_mult>
    <lod_mult_grass>

 

Where did u find thes systemsettingsfiel.xml ? i onyl found a system.xml in the documents`folder, where do i need to look to change these values?

 

[HarrietOrtega 9]

13 minutes ago, Derpdat said:

Where did u find thes systemsettingsfiel.xml ? i onyl found a system.xml in the documents`folder, where do i need to look to change these values?

 

Sorry, I forgot to mention the details. If you download the Vestigia mod, install it with LML and inside the VESTIGIA folder you will find folders named 'global' and 'strings' along with 'install.xml'. Keep these and delete the other folders. Now inside the 'global' folder will be a 'systemsettings.ymt' file. Keep that file and delete everything else. So now you should have two folders named 'global' and 'strings' inside the 'VESTIGIA' folder and inside 'Global' will be one file, 'systemsettings.ymt' and inside the 'strings' folder will be 'strings.gxt2'. Three files in total.

 

The systemsettings.ymt file changes the maximum setting of various graphical settings from High to Ultra as well as unhiding some advanced graphics options that are not in the vanilla settings. When you start up the game, the game will add these new settings to the advanced options in the graphics menu but before you do any of this, make sure you back up your save and your settings file (found in documents/rockstar games/red dead redemption/settings and profiles if you didn't already know) I'll not be held responsible if something botches your game. However it shouldn't at all. If you want to revert the changes, just delete the VESTIGIA folder and the game will revert the settings file back to vanilla.

 

Spoiler

Now for the pop in issue, if you open the systemsettings.ymt file with notepad++ and search for LODScale, you'll see three values. Minimum, Maximum and step size. Change the minimum to 2.00000, the maximum to 6.00000 and the step size to 0.500000 or 0.250000. Back the file up before you save it so you know what to revert if you have issues. Then it's as simple as loading the game and increasing the 'Geometry Level of Detail' under the advanced settings bit by bit until you find the value that stops the pop in. Word of warning though, it's a very easy setting to overdo which will utterly tank your FPS because it's also increasing the draw distance of everything else. So don't get carried away and set it to the max first time...I mean, there's a point where the game will start crashing during loading if you increase it too much but it depends on your GPU. My 4090 can get close to 5.0 before things get really precarious but my 4070 can only get up half way around 3/4. That seems to be fine for that card.

 

Also, a little tip, when you're increasing that setting, watch the VRAM notification. if you notice that the number stops increasing but starts decreasing, then increasing, etc...that's a good indicator that your getting close to the games comfort zone, so back off and decrease the setting until you find the point where the numbers start to make sense again. You might be able to push it further, sometimes the VRAM notification just gets messed up because you've put values into the file that it can't compute properly and sometimes it's a clear warning not to go any further. Hope that helps!

 

[Saber23454 2]

I think my train spawns are good, wildlife is also normal these are my mods btw.

I also have Railroad engineer, LST, Outfit Changer, Rampage, AB Scripthook, Fast walk outside camp, Auto Greet, Auto Loot and Lockdown Manager. Max Payne is that one fix that Dagger sent out

[kidcourage 0]

On 12/27/2023 at 5:08 PM, Dagger323 said:

So after modding RDR2 for about five months (I first started modding it in early August 2023), it has now come to my attention that modding essentially breaks the game engine's ability to properly spawn in NPCs, wildlife, and even trains, in the way the game was intended. Trains rarely if ever spawn in, and if they do, NPCs will be nearly or completely absent from riding as passengers on the train, and the armed guard will be gone who usually stands at the back end of the caboose (only the engineer will be driving the train, but no one else will be present).

Removed most mods, although I am having Issues post modding, such as "dummy" NPC's spawning in that have no fear at all during a shootout, or when you're pointing a firearm at them. Noticable a few hours in playtime, they just stand there, no interaction menu or nothing, just like mannequins. An additional problem iv'e noticed is that during me replaying the story. Most missions I remember clearly with little to no glitches now having huge problems with the character or AI getting stuck or getting confused on something such as a simple task of stealth attacking an O'driscoll or returning fire.

[Derpdat 0]

9 hours ago, HarrietOrtega said:

Sorry, I forgot to mention the details. If you download the Vestigia mod, install it with LML and inside the VESTIGIA folder you will find folders named 'global' and 'strings' along with 'install.xml'. Keep these and delete the other folders. Now inside the 'global' folder will be a 'systemsettings.ymt' file. Keep that file and delete everything else. So now you should have two folders named 'global' and 'strings' inside the 'VESTIGIA' folder and inside 'Global' will be one file, 'systemsettings.ymt' and inside the 'strings' folder will be 'strings.gxt2'. Three files in total.

 

The systemsettings.ymt file changes the maximum setting of various graphical settings from High to Ultra as well as unhiding some advanced graphics options that are not in the vanilla settings. When you start up the game, the game will add these new settings to the advanced options in the graphics menu but before you do any of this, make sure you back up your save and your settings file (found in documents/rockstar games/red dead redemption/settings and profiles if you didn't already know) I'll not be held responsible if something botches your game. However it shouldn't at all. If you want to revert the changes, just delete the VESTIGIA folder and the game will revert the settings file back to vanilla.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Now for the pop in issue, if you open the systemsettings.ymt file with notepad++ and search for LODScale, you'll see three values. Minimum, Maximum and step size. Change the minimum to 2.00000, the maximum to 6.00000 and the step size to 0.500000 or 0.250000. Back the file up before you save it so you know what to revert if you have issues. Then it's as simple as loading the game and increasing the 'Geometry Level of Detail' under the advanced settings bit by bit until you find the value that stops the pop in. Word of warning though, it's a very easy setting to overdo which will utterly tank your FPS because it's also increasing the draw distance of everything else. So don't get carried away and set it to the max first time...I mean, there's a point where the game will start crashing during loading if you increase it too much but it depends on your GPU. My 4090 can get close to 5.0 before things get really precarious but my 4070 can only get up half way around 3/4. That seems to be fine for that card.

 

Also, a little tip, when you're increasing that setting, watch the VRAM notification. if you notice that the number stops increasing but starts decreasing, then increasing, etc...that's a good indicator that your getting close to the games comfort zone, so back off and decrease the setting until you find the point where the numbers start to make sense again. You might be able to push it further, sometimes the VRAM notification just gets messed up because you've put values into the file that it can't compute properly and sometimes it's a clear warning not to go any further. Hope that helps!

 

oh okay thanks, i will try that out this sounds not to hard to do. Thanks for the help!

[Game0815 0]

i read alot about this issue and in this post now. Why is everyone just ignoring the multiple times posted mod? 

 

An Experimental Game Config to Help with the pop-in and spawn issue at Red Dead Redemption 2 Nexus - Mods and community (nexusmods.com)

 

Not a single bug report and hundrets of comments of people saying this fixed their issue. Only thing that isnt clear is if random train spawns are actually fully fixed. But every event / npc / encounter / animal seems to be fine with this. 

[Dagger323 29]

On 8/9/2024 at 5:26 PM, Game0815 said:

i read alot about this issue and in this post now. Why is everyone just ignoring the multiple times posted mod? 

 

An Experimental Game Config to Help with the pop-in and spawn issue at Red Dead Redemption 2 Nexus - Mods and community (nexusmods.com)

 

Not a single bug report and hundrets of comments of people saying this fixed their issue. Only thing that isnt clear is if random train spawns are actually fully fixed. But every event / npc / encounter / animal seems to be fine with this. 

Yeah multiple people have linked that after I originally did and were seemingly unaware that I had done so before. I can confirm that trains are not fixed with that mod, but it did remedy almost all my other spawning issues, so it's definitely worth installing.

[Saber23454 2]

On 8/11/2024 at 3:45 PM, Dagger323 said:

Yeah multiple people have linked that after I originally did and were seemingly unaware that I had done so before. I can confirm that trains are not fixed with that mod, but it did remedy almost all my other spawning issues, so it's definitely worth installing.

Its helped me, dk why others are installing it

[dymedef 0]

I can't believe how drastic the difference is, yet hadn't noticed it before. Towns felt lively enough that I didn't question it, and I don't actually pay much attention the the trains anyways so I never noticed that they'd basically disappeared from my game.

 

After reading through this whole thread and doing some testing myself, certain types of mods for sure are causing the issue though I can't seem to quite figure it out.

 

For example, the moment I popped in any ytd (textures) that were specifically for weapons (a very, very few didn't cause it that did have textures) or the players (also, very few worked); St. Denis would turn into a ghost town compared to when I'd take those out, and that was when I was running dozens and dozens of mods and scripts trying to see what I could "get away with".

 

In the end, spawns were getting absolutely nuked by most textures for the players and weapons, but when I would use some for random other things including a couple other peds; the spawns were correct and St Denis was full of life all up and down the streets, with passengers in trams, etc. I didn't do much testing on trains as personally it's not even something i cared much about before, and that seems to be a much deeper rooted issue than the spawning when using texture mods.

 

A few things I could recomend, is trying to get in contact with Dilapidated the person who made RDEs gameconfig and afaik was one of (maybe the major) driving forces behind the gameconfig discoveries in GTA V. If anyone isn't aware, GTA V has gameconfigs that support massively modded setups to play the story mods barring script mods don't break it themselves. This includes that RDE mod I mentioned, which adds tons of new police jurisdictions, an entire overhaul to the games wanted system on a script level, and multiple gigs of textures. I would imagine the core principles for editing the gsmeconfig are the same, it's just thay very few understand it in GTA V also.

 

Also, I haven't tried it yet, but reducing texture sizes of mods textures could help, though for some mods that's defeating the purpose. I also am not sure how to do thay as in GTA V you can extract ytds dds files in OpenIV but it doesn't seem to handle RDR2 files.

 

I'd love to get to use some of these texture mods, but because I have to test them I often just pass since virtually every other mod I've tested doesn't break spawns unless it's a broken mod to begin with or messes with spawns itself.

Edited August 14 by dymedef
Forgot to finish my thought lol

[Saber23454 2]

Might Clean Western Homburg Hat cause any problems? I would really like to use it but if it affects spawns I wont

Edited August 15 by Saber23454

[black0cs 5]

If you are experiencing issues with passenger in trams after downloading the gameconfig. You can try these values. Just open up the gameconfig with the notepad+ and press ctrl+f and find configpopulation. You can just copy the whole thing and paste over it until the last line which is Densitybased removal. If you dont want to copy the whole thing the lines that say original value is the parts I have edited. Having your own values might hurt the improvements made to passengers. So Id reccomend copying this. This essentially lowers the amount of vechiles at a given time and gives the game more memory to handle passengers as they seem the ones that are the lowest priority during ped creations. You wont actually see a difference in ambience at least I didnt personally. There is still plenty of vechiles parked and driving around. 

<ConfigPopulation>
                    <ScenarioPedsMultiplier_Base value="100"/>
                    <ScenarioPedsMultiplier value="100"/>
                    <AmbientPedsMultiplier_Base value="100"/>
                    <AmbientPedsMultiplier value="100"/>
                    <MaxTotalPeds_Base value="150"/>
                    <MaxTotalPeds value="150"/>
                    <MaxTotalPedsMP_Base value="110"/>
                    <MaxTotalPedsMP value="110"/>
                    <PedMemoryMultiplier value="1500"/> <!-- Original value of 500 -->
                    <PedsForVehicles_Base value="250"/> <!-- Original value of 100 -->
                    <PedsForVehicles value="250"/> <!-- Original value of 100 -->
                    <VehicleTimesliceMaxUpdatesPerFrame_Base value="15"/> <!-- Original value of 5 -->
                    <VehicleTimesliceMaxUpdatesPerFrame value="15"/>  <!-- Original value of 5 -->
                    <VehicleAmbientDensityMultiplier_Base value="40"/> <!-- Original value of 100 -->
                    <VehicleAmbientDensityMultiplier value="40"/> <!-- Original value of 100 -->
                    <VehicleMemoryMultiplier value="1500"/> <!-- Original value of 500 -->
                    <VehicleParkedDensityMultiplier_Base value="25"/> <!-- Original value of 100 -->
                    <VehicleParkedDensityMultiplier value="25"/> <!-- Original value of 100 -->
                    <VehicleLowPrioParkedDensityMultiplier_Base value="25"/> <!-- Original value of 100 -->
                    <VehicleLowPrioParkedDensityMultiplier value="25"/> <!-- Original value of 100 -->
                    <VehicleUpperLimit_Base value="30"/> <!-- Original value of 60 -->
                    <VehicleUpperLimit value="30"/> <!-- Original value of 60 -->
                    <VehicleUpperLimitMP value="30"/> <!-- Original value of 60 -->
                    <VehicleParkedUpperLimit_Base value="25"/>
                    <VehicleParkedUpperLimit value="25"/>
                    <VehicleKeyholeShapeInnerThickness_Base value="95"/>
                    <VehicleKeyholeShapeInnerThickness value="95"/>
                    <VehicleKeyholeShapeOuterThickness_Base value="100"/>
                    <VehicleKeyholeShapeOuterThickness value="100"/>
                    <VehicleKeyholeShapeInnerRadius_Base value="50"/>
                    <VehicleKeyholeShapeInnerRadius value="50"/>
                    <VehicleKeyholeShapeOuterRadius_Base value="145"/>
                    <VehicleKeyholeShapeOuterRadius value="145"/>
                    <VehicleKeyholeSideWallThickness_Base value="90"/>
                    <VehicleKeyholeSideWallThickness value="90"/>
                    <VehicleMaxCreationDistance_Base value="245"/>
                    <VehicleMaxCreationDistance value="245"/>
                    <VehicleMaxCreationDistanceOffscreen_Base value="50"/>
                    <VehicleMaxCreationDistanceOffscreen value="50"/>
                    <VehicleCullRange_Base value="250"/>
                    <VehicleCullRange value="250"/>
                    <VehicleCullRangeOnScreenScale_Base value="140"/>
                    <VehicleCullRangeOnScreenScale value="140"/>
                    <VehicleCullRangeOffScreen_Base value="150"/>
                    <VehicleCullRangeOffScreen value="150"/>
                    <VehicleMaxScenarioSpawned value="24"/> <!-- Original value of 32 -->
                    <MaxDeadPedsAroundPlayerInSP value="120"/>
                      <MaxDeadPedsAroundPlayerInMP value="112"/>
                      <MaxGlobalDeadPedsInSP value="130"/>
                      <MaxGlobalDeadPedsInMP value="130"/>
                    <SpawnHistoryMaxPeds value="360"/>
                    <SpawnHistoryMaxVehicles value="36"/> <!-- Original value of 48 -->
                    <DensityBasedRemovalRateScale_Base value="48"/> <!-- Original value of 36 -->
                    <DensityBasedRemovalRateScale value="48"/> <!-- Original value of 36 -->
                    <DensityBasedRemovalMaxAmbientPopulation_Base value="15"/>
                    <DensityBasedRemovalMaxAmbientPopulation value="15"/>
                    <DensityBasedRemovalTargetHeadroom_Base value="10"/>
                    <DensityBasedRemovalTargetHeadroom value="10"/>

[HarrietOrtega 9]

Found out something interesting today. Sorry if it has been mentioned or discovered before. I was doing my usual setup of waiting in a random spot for a train and alongside it, trying to get the right SSDO and screen shadow settings to fix the incredibly blurry grass and textures. I remember thinking, I don't remember having this issue a few weeks ago and I was pulling my hair out for days trying to fix it. Anyway, I was standing on the hill opposite Valentine station and I quit the game to remove a couple of mods then loaded back in to see if the trains would come. Now I'd been using Special K, sometimes alongside Reshade but when I'm testing I just load the game normally.

 

So immediately as I loaded in, there was a train with passengers pulling into the station. I quit, and fiddled with some settings in the visualsettings.dat and loaded back in to see if the train spawn was a fluke. Except this time I accidentally booted via Special K. Not an issue I thought. When I loaded in, the train was gone. So I quit etc etc and so forth.

 

After a little while of seeing the train pulling into the station, then not, then seeing it, then not...I realised that everytime I saw the train was when I was not using Special K. It was repeatable, everytime I loaded through Special K, that train was gone. Alongside that, I realised that when I was using Special K, the clouds, grass and textures were extremely blurry, without Special K, the grass, clouds and textures had lots of detail and definition. It was such an odd thing to discover.

 

A while back in this thread someone was talking about scripthook possibly being one of the issues causing the spawn bug and I'm inclined to agree because special K hooking into the game was clearly causing some strange behaviour. Also I have noticed that in my game, when using mods with scripthook and asi loader, no matter the version, was causing draw distance problems.

 

When moving forward and looking into the distance there would be a sharp cutoff where the shadows and ambient occlusion would stop , way way waaaay before the default cutoff distances set in visualsettings.dat, beyond that the terrain and models would be fully lit, or should I say unlit. As I moved forward that demarcation line would move and the shadows would render in with it. Literally watching bright unshaded green trees and grass slowly get covered in shadow as I moved forward. When I removed the files and loaded the vanilla game, that sharp and unitended shadow cutoff was gone. Terrain and models were shaded correctly into the far distance and tree imposters and billboards at the horizon were as well, the engine was rendering as intended, not with half the distance into the horizon completely unlit or unoccluded.

 

I also remember having the exact same issue in Guarma, except it was the path up to the waterfall where you meet Dutch on the cliff. At a certain distance from the waterfall, that area would be completely black, like it was covered in smog. The water was see through black untextured...it was as if you had set the SSDO and screenshadow entries to 1000. When I loaded into the save vanilla with no mods, the waterfall, cliffs and rock faces were shaded and textured normally.

 

So long story short, I can't say for definite that hooking into the game is one of the root causes of this spawn issue but in my game it is quite clearly having an effect on the way the game engine is rendering assets.

 

I'd be interested to know how many people complaining about savagely blurry textures over the years were running special K or reshade and whether those issues disappear without them.

[black0cs 5]

16 hours ago, HarrietOrtega said:

Found out something interesting today. Sorry if it has been mentioned or discovered before. I was doing my usual setup of waiting in a random spot for a train and alongside it, trying to get the right SSDO and screen shadow settings to fix the incredibly blurry grass and textures. I remember thinking, I don't remember having this issue a few weeks ago and I was pulling my hair out for days trying to fix it. Anyway, I was standing on the hill opposite Valentine station and I quit the game to remove a couple of mods then loaded back in to see if the trains would come. Now I'd been using Special K, sometimes alongside Reshade but when I'm testing I just load the game normally.

 

So immediately as I loaded in, there was a train with passengers pulling into the station. I quit, and fiddled with some settings in the visualsettings.dat and loaded back in to see if the train spawn was a fluke. Except this time I accidentally booted via Special K. Not an issue I thought. When I loaded in, the train was gone. So I quit etc etc and so forth.

 

After a little while of seeing the train pulling into the station, then not, then seeing it, then not...I realised that everytime I saw the train was when I was not using Special K. It was repeatable, everytime I loaded through Special K, that train was gone. Alongside that, I realised that when I was using Special K, the clouds, grass and textures were extremely blurry, without Special K, the grass, clouds and textures had lots of detail and definition. It was such an odd thing to discover.

 

A while back in this thread someone was talking about scripthook possibly being one of the issues causing the spawn bug and I'm inclined to agree because special K hooking into the game was clearly causing some strange behaviour. Also I have noticed that in my game, when using mods with scripthook and asi loader, no matter the version, was causing draw distance problems.

 

When moving forward and looking into the distance there would be a sharp cutoff where the shadows and ambient occlusion would stop , way way waaaay before the default cutoff distances set in visualsettings.dat, beyond that the terrain and models would be fully lit, or should I say unlit. As I moved forward that demarcation line would move and the shadows would render in with it. Literally watching bright unshaded green trees and grass slowly get covered in shadow as I moved forward. When I removed the files and loaded the vanilla game, that sharp and unitended shadow cutoff was gone. Terrain and models were shaded correctly into the far distance and tree imposters and billboards at the horizon were as well, the engine was rendering as intended, not with half the distance into the horizon completely unlit or unoccluded.

 

I also remember having the exact same issue in Guarma, except it was the path up to the waterfall where you meet Dutch on the cliff. At a certain distance from the waterfall, that area would be completely black, like it was covered in smog. The water was see through black untextured...it was as if you had set the SSDO and screenshadow entries to 1000. When I loaded into the save vanilla with no mods, the waterfall, cliffs and rock faces were shaded and textured normally.

 

So long story short, I can't say for definite that hooking into the game is one of the root causes of this spawn issue but in my game it is quite clearly having an effect on the way the game engine is rendering assets.

 

I'd be interested to know how many people complaining about savagely blurry textures over the years were running special K or reshade and whether those issues disappear without them.

Issue probably isnt hooking itself but game running out of available resources. Look at GTA 5. You have 5 essential mods. Heap, page, resource, decal and 1 more that I forget. Their single purpose is to keep the games memory adjusted where it wont lose functionality. 

[HarrietOrtega 9]

26 minutes ago, black0cs said:

Issue probably isnt hooking itself but game running out of available resources. Look at GTA 5. You have 5 essential mods. Heap, page, resource, decal and 1 more that I forget. Their single purpose is to keep the games memory adjusted where it wont lose functionality. 

I have to disagree here because these issues, at least for me, are present no matter the size of the mod. If replacing the skydome with a 3mb modded file or replacing a hundred KB or so xml causes a resource issue for the engine that breaks it's intended functionality then that is absolutely shocking. Also, the issues I mentioned happen if I clear my mod list completely but still have asi loader and scripthook in the directory, essentially doing nothing...there's nothing to load, so where would such a resource issue come from? Again, I'm not stating this as fact, but the way the game is hooked is just something to consider as one of the causes along with the others.

[black0cs 5]

3 hours ago, HarrietOrtega said:

I have to disagree here because these issues, at least for me, are present no matter the size of the mod. If replacing the skydome with a 3mb modded file or replacing a hundred KB or so xml causes a resource issue for the engine that breaks it's intended functionality then that is absolutely shocking. Also, the issues I mentioned happen if I clear my mod list completely but still have asi loader and scripthook in the directory, essentially doing nothing...there's nothing to load, so where would such a resource issue come from? Again, I'm not stating this as fact, but the way the game is hooked is just something to consider as one of the causes along with the others.

I dont have this issue personally. But then again I had no trains in chapter 3 without any mods or even modloaders etc. Then it was all fine throughout chapter 4-6 with a shit ton of mods. Then I lost tram peds and had to redo the gameconfig values to get them back. This game is all over the place right now. And its tied to how it allocates memory at any given time. It wouldnt surprise me that the save files are also linked to memory allocation as it has to check for history information. 

[Dagger323 29]

Bumping this so the thread stays at the top of the list.

[reomarsianin 2]

My experience with this issue and a possible way to fix your game.
Number 1 reason for spawn issues are .ytd files, specifically the ones, that directly affect the PLAYER character. The game will prioritize these textures over everything else.
Now, a lot of .ytd files posted on nexus (or anywhere else) for some reason are compiled of textures with a certain texture compression format (B8G8R8A8_UNORM). These textures are sometime x10times the size of the original ones.

I won't go into too much detail, but this is how you can try to fix this yourself.
1. Determine your most used PLAYER textures. For example: gun holster, gun belt, knife holster, spurs, hat, face, eyes etc.. These are the textures you want to focus on first.
2. Download CodeX 22 and check the textures compression formats inside these .ytd files (click on Details tab --> File format)
Look at file names: Albedo textures (_ab), Materials (_ma, _mb) Normalmaps (_nm).
Generally speaking they should look like this:
Albedo - BC7_UNORM_SRGB or BC1_UNORM_SRGB (half the size of BC7, almost no quality loss)
Material - BC3_UNORM
Normalmaps - BC1_UNORM
For example, If you see a normalmap being B8G8R8A8_UNORM, you want that to be BC1_UNORM to save memory.  Same goes for other types. And I see no quality loss whatsoever. No idea why 90% of textures are save 10x the size.
3. Export the textures you need to optimize and open them with an editing tool. I use Paint.net to change texture compression format. Save with ctrl+s, choose the compression format (Linear = Unorm) or RGB for albedo.

Things to note. Often, when changing Albedos from B8G8R8A8 to BC7 or BC1 I have to use levels tool in Paint.net, and change it to 0.5 to fix the brightness/lighting of it.
You can also downscale some of them (ctrl+r, change the size), until the spawns come back.
For me, the ultimate way to test spawns, is checking if the passengers spawn inside Saint Denis trams. The moment I have passengers spawn inside EVERY SINGLE TRAM, everything comes back including TRAINS, ANIMALS, VEHICLES etc.. Also, the TRAIN should always spawn outside Valentine at sunrise. Open Rampage, change time to Sunrise (wait 5-10 sec in game), teleport to Valentine Gunsmith you should hear the train and can see it for yourself.

In other words, you want to save as much memory as possible by optimizing the most used textures in your game. Which are 100% the ones, that your characters wears or has. Even if the .ytd files themselves are no higher that 2mb it is still worth checking if you can make them smaller without quality loss ( and most of the times you can).

Edited August 21 by reomarsianin

[Osoa 1]

Is there a consensus on whether .asi mods can cause this instability or if it's just LML mods?

[Dagger323 29]

11 hours ago, Osoa said:

Is there a consensus on whether .asi mods can cause this instability or if it's just LML mods?

I can only speak for myself and my own testing; I've not noticed .asi mods affect peds and wildlife much, if at all, but I have had

 .asi mods reduce trains from the world. Train spawns seem to be incredibly touchy and even light mods can cause them to disappear.

[vincemeister55 22]

Man, I never thought that I was playing the game with the spawning issue. Now that I know it's happening, I cant unsee it. I spent 2 days testing my mods. And finally I have managed to have a working game with no spawning issue, at least for me in Valentine. Im still early on Chapter 2 so I still havent gone to St.Denis, but I can confirm that the train is spawning every 6am in Valenting with 3-4 passengers in every car, with guards at the end. There's abundant of wildlife too.

 

Here is my modlist in lml in its specific order:

Model 1897 Trench Gun
Contracts
MarlboroCigarettes
Upscaled Gore (I use the replacement method)
Mike Myers
Online Alligators Unlocked for SP
Online Bears Unlocked for SP
Online Bison Unlocked for SP
Online Bucks Unlocked for SP
Online Cougars Unlocked for SP
Online Coyotes Unlocked for SP
Online Foxes Unlocked for SP
Online Panthers Unlocked for SP
Online Wild Boars Unlocked for SP
Online Wolves Unlocked for SP
Cut Content Deer Unlocked for SP
Cut Content Dogs Unlocked for SP
ColorfulWeaponsIcons
Corpse Spawn Distance
Gun_Metal_Rework
Herbalist
Hunstman
Jail_Break_Fix_Restoration
Anatomical Women Bodies Fix
NoRecoil
no auto ammo pickup
RemoveExplosionShake
Realistic Accuracy
Saving Spoon Fix
Maize Sack Fix
Remove Online Button
ColoredLoading
Elegant Gamepad Button Icon
NoPostFX
SnappyUI
ManualPickup
Green Turtle Restored
Promo Image Graphics
WhyEm's BloodCrave
ImprovementsInBlood
Timescale
Standalone Landing Screen Edition
A.R.E.P
Extended Player Animations
Vomit Fix
AMFAO
Penetration
More Perfect Animals
Restored Ped Dialogue
LAW
RWS
AB10 (the experimental gameconfig.xml that perhaps fix the spawning issue)
Improved Wildlife
Online Content Unlocker
Geometry Level of detail slider

I got WhyEm's DLC installed in lml, but currently disabled. I noticed if I enabled WhyEm's DLC, I dont get the spawning issue, but only if I dont use any of its items. I tried to apply the WhyEm's DLC Hairdos and it suddenly triggered the spawning issue. So I leave it disabled.

 

I got Vestigia mod too, but in my test, it triggered the spawning issue even with the WhyEm's DLC disabled. So I switch to Promo Image Graphics. I tried Visual Redemption but I got random crashes with it.

 

I also have a stream folder in lml with lots of texture files on it, but it doesnt affect the spawning issue. It contains character retex, horse coats, player jacket retex and among others.

 

I tried installing Upscaled Animals AIO with the replacement method and immediately triggered the spawning issue.

 

I got a lot of .asi files installed too, but it doesnt seem to affect the spawning issue. If any one wants a list of my .asi files, just ask.

 

Hope this helps in isolating the mods that may or may not affect the spawning issue.