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

[emo cat boy 15]

12 minutes ago, emo cat boy said:

do ytrs effect spawning in anyones testing or is it just ytds?

ydr*

[vincemeister55 28]

4 hours ago, rechoungpa said:

VINCEMEISTER55: For your list of installed mods, do you have Lenny's Mod Loader and Script Hook?

yes, of course.

[elias350 0]

23 hours ago, Dagger323 said:

What resolution are you playing in?

1980x1080

[Dagger323 34]

1 hour ago, elias350 said:

1980x1080

Yeah... your low resolution itself is probably preventing the spawning issues from occurring.

[elias350 0]

19 hours ago, Dagger323 said:

Yeah... your low resolution itself is probably preventing the spawning issues from occurring.

Well so that means that i can use any mod without any ped issue

[Dagger323 34]

21 minutes ago, elias350 said:

Well so that means that i can use any mod without any ped issue

Not necessarily. I guarantee there are still certain mods that will break the spawns that use large enough textures. Your low resolution just enables you to use more of them without noticing it. But it's still not worth the trade off for me in visuals coming from 4K.

[vincemeister55 28]

I made an update on my WhyEm DLC textures edit. In my first edit, I change the original B8G8 format of WhyEm textures to BC3 DXT5. It turned out not okay as it messed up the textures, especially the dark textures to have some kind of shade of green.

 

This time, I changed the method to BC1 DXT1 SRGB, and edited the normalmap textures too. The textures are normal in colors now, and the biggest thing is I can use all the textures in WhyEm DLC and still have no despawning issue. If you guys remember, in the first edit, I reported that it didnt fix the despawning issue completely. But, so far this time with my new edit, it is well-optimized now.

 

Im doing this new method for my other texture mods to further optimize it. I just finished editing the AI Upscaled Gore from Improvements of Blood mod, Firearm Cosmetics, Rugged Arthur, Model 1897 Trench Gun, and other big texture mods. I can now use it all together with WhyEm DLC with no despawning issue, unlike before.

 

 

[roybreaker 0]

2 hours ago, vincemeister55 said:

I made an update on my WhyEm DLC textures edit. In my first edit, I change the original B8G8 format of WhyEm textures to BC3 DXT5. It turned out not okay as it messed up the textures, especially the dark textures to have some kind of shade of green.

 

This time, I changed the method to BC1 DXT1 SRGB, and edited the normalmap textures too. The textures are normal in colors now, and the biggest thing is I can use all the textures in WhyEm DLC and still have no despawning issue. If you guys remember, in the first edit, I reported that it didnt fix the despawning issue completely. But, so far this time with my new edit, it is well-optimized now.

 

Im doing this new method for my other texture mods to further optimize it. I just finished editing the AI Upscaled Gore from Improvements of Blood mod, Firearm Cosmetics, Rugged Arthur, Model 1897 Trench Gun, and other big texture mods. I can now use it all together with WhyEm DLC with no despawning issue, unlike before.

 

 

Hey man, could you redirect me somewhere where i can learn to do this for myself too? I've never done this but I have no problem giving it a go. thanks

[vincemeister55 28]

1 hour ago, roybreaker said:

Hey man, could you redirect me somewhere where i can learn to do this for myself too? I've never done this but I have no problem giving it a go. thanks

Sure, man! But I really cant direct you to a certain place. Ive learned only by practicing, trial and error. All you have to do is familiarize yourself with these tools Im about to write below;

 

1. Install OpenIV - this app can open and export RDR2 texture files. The downside is you cant import back those edited textures of yours, so you need another program.

 

2. CodeX (recommended but it's a paid program. I happened to snag a copy when somebody uploaded it to Nexus last week), or RDR2 Texture Tool (free and available on Nexus) - any of these tools are what you need to import and create new ytds for RDR2. CodeX is recommended because it can import SRGB format, whereas RDR2 Texture cannot.

 

3. And lastly, any photo editing software. I use paint.net because its free.

 

 

P.S - If you can get the CodeX program, then you dont need OpenIV. OpenIV is only needed if you use RDR2 Texture Tool.

[emo cat boy 15]

7 hours ago, vincemeister55 said:

Sure, man! But I really cant direct you to a certain place. Ive learned only by practicing, trial and error. All you have to do is familiarize yourself with these tools Im about to write below;

 

1. Install OpenIV - this app can open and export RDR2 texture files. The downside is you cant import back those edited textures of yours, so you need another program.

 

2. CodeX (recommended but it's a paid program. I happened to snag a copy when somebody uploaded it to Nexus last week), or RDR2 Texture Tool (free and available on Nexus) - any of these tools are what you need to import and create new ytds for RDR2. CodeX is recommended because it can import SRGB format, whereas RDR2 Texture cannot.

 

3. And lastly, any photo editing software. I use paint.net because its free.

 

 

P.S - If you can get the CodeX program, then you dont need OpenIV. OpenIV is only needed if you use RDR2 Texture Tool.

will you post these here aswell like u did with the whyems? thanks

[vincemeister55 28]

You mean the CodeX program?

[emo cat boy 15]

6 hours ago, vincemeister55 said:

You mean the CodeX program?

sorry should have been more clear i mean the edited mods like the whyems with the new texture format

[UncleISRED 2]

vincemeister55 is the goat for uploading those to nexus, they are gone now but managed to grab em n test em, makes a big difference, some visual issues with deeper black colors but the specific clothing item can just be replaced with the original if it bothers that much but it defo helps!!

[emo cat boy 15]

1 hour ago, UncleISRED said:

vincemeister55 is the goat for uploading those to nexus, they are gone now but managed to grab em n test em, makes a big difference, some visual issues with deeper black colors but the specific clothing item can just be replaced with the original if it bothers that much but it defo helps!!

Could u post the file here please?

[emo cat boy 15]

1 hour ago, UncleISRED said:

vincemeister55 is the goat for uploading those to nexus, they are gone now but managed to grab em n test em, makes a big difference, some visual issues with deeper black colors but the specific clothing item can just be replaced with the original if it bothers that much but it defo helps!!

And Yh he’s definitely the goat he pretty much solved this issue.

[vincemeister55 28]

Hey, I dont know about me solving the issue. But thanks for all your kind words. Anyway, here is my new and updated edit of WhyEm textures. The texture discoloration has been fixed, and I think its much more optimized than my previous edit.

 

https://www.mediafire.com/file/dc3w6bz5qrt1u01/WhyEm_DLC_edited_textures_by_vincemeister55.rar/file

 

Enjoy fellers!

Edited October 12 by vincemeister55

[emo cat boy 15]

3 minutes ago, vincemeister55 said:

Hey, I dont know about me solving the issue. But thanks for all your kind words. Anyway, here is my new and updated edit of WhyEm textures. The texture discoloration has been fixed, and I think its much more optimized than my previous edit.

 

https://www.mediafire.com/file/dc3w6bz5qrt1u01/WhyEm_DLC_edited_textures_by_vincemeister55.rar/file

 

Enjoy fellers!

Thanks

[UncleISRED 2]

absolute legend! excited to try this out, it really does make a difference!!

[roybreaker 0]

2 hours ago, vincemeister55 said:

Hey, I dont know about me solving the issue. But thanks for all your kind words. Anyway, here is my new and updated edit of WhyEm textures. The texture discoloration has been fixed, and I think its much more optimized than my previous edit.

 

https://www.mediafire.com/file/dc3w6bz5qrt1u01/WhyEm_DLC_edited_textures_by_vincemeister55.rar/file

 

Enjoy fellers!

I'm gonna give this a go now too, thank you a lot vincemeister!

[werwolf969 32]

Hi all. As Vincemeister55 and others have already mentioned, we can re-compress textures using optimal and native compression methods for the Rage engine without any noticeable loss in quality, freeing up some resources in the game engine, so it can give them for game logic again instead of drawing fancy graphics. However, with large texture mods with many files, such as WhyEM DLC and EEE, it can be very tedious to manually open each DDS file and re-save it using the proper BC method.

Therefore, I have created a basic PowerShell script that utilizes the MS tool called Texconv.exe (https://github.com/microsoft/DirectXTex). The script will re-code DDS files in a specified path and subfolders, and output the results to a different folder while preserving the source folder structure.

You must edit the paths for Texconv.exe and the source and output folders in the script before running it.

 

Link to script with comments: https://pastebin.com/9fAcGUCi

 

Unfortunately, I cannot automate the export and import of DDS files from and to YTDs, so you will need to prepare a workspace yourself before running the script. For example, the folder structure could be:

 

Somefolder
  texconv.exe
  lml
    Modname
      *folder with texturedictionaryfilename.ytd*
        *DDS textures from this ytd*
  ouput_folder_for_script

 

The script itself checks for input in DDS format and skips any texture files that do not have a B8G8R8A8_UNORM header. I chose this format only because all the large textures from big mods that I use personally are in this format. This is the most resource-intensive format for the engine, and this check is done to not process correctly compressed textures from YTDs. Also, the script will compress material textures to BC3_UNORM and other textures to BC1_UNORM.

As for exporting DDS from YTD and packing them back, as specified by Vincemeister55 and others:

To extract DDS textures from YTDs - use OpenIV

To pack DDS textures back into YTDs - use RDR2 Texture Toolkit (and RedM, as required)

OR

Simply use CodeX (patreon supporters access only).

 

Feel free to edit the script to your liking.

Edited October 12 by werwolf969

[unseeingeye 1]

On 10/12/2024 at 11:32 AM, vincemeister55 said:

Hey, I dont know about me solving the issue. But thanks for all your kind words. Anyway, here is my new and updated edit of WhyEm textures. The texture discoloration has been fixed, and I think its much more optimized than my previous edit.

 

https://www.mediafire.com/file/dc3w6bz5qrt1u01/WhyEm_DLC_edited_textures_by_vincemeister55.rar/file

 

Enjoy fellers!

I made an account just to thank you, this is so sincerely appreciated!

 

The mods I use are WhyEm's DLC, Rampage Trainer and a mod that unlocks the preorder content and noticed that I was having the issue with trains not spawning and missing passengers in stagecoaches and such. I suppose I am fortunate in that I don't believe I was having any problems with wildlife and the towns and city population were always significant, but there is no question that I was not seeing trains or passengers.

 

Using this file you've shared to replace the folders in WhyEm's along with the gameconfig mod recommended earlier in this thread, I loaded up a my latest save file (in Epilogue 2) and tested it by first using minimal parts of the mod. So I went to Valentine and stripped all of my guns that had any of WhyEm's carvings or varnishes, deleted all of my saved outfits and made a new outfit for John using the classic hat but I kept his hairstyle provided by WhyEm's along with the Cowboy gloves, and I believe those are the only mod-added items on screen or saved on my horse. I don't really use the horse related items so that wasn't involved at all.

 

And sure enough, there was a train leaving Valentine station as I approached from the gun shop. I turned around and went to the saloon to eat, then rented a room to skip time to the following morning, and rode out into the Heartlands and when I was over by the ruins of Cornwall's Kerosene and Tar I heard a train moving and saw the smoke way up in the distance and chased after it. After going through the tunnel I caught up to it and there was a guard in the back, and in the passenger cars each one had several people in it! I took a photo which I've attached to this post to show it. I went on to encounter freight trains and passenger trains several times in different parts of the map, and passed countless stagecoaches some of which had up to three passengers besides the driver.

 

As I tried adding a few more items of clothing from the mod everything still seemed to be working properly, so I wanted to let you know that at least for one person your efforts appear to have made a significant difference. I have yet to really push the boundaries or try it without the gameconfig mod active, but I intend to soon and will share the results afterwards. One issue I did have which I assume should be related to the gameconfig mod is that after about an hour or so of playing I was beginning to get frame rate drops down to 30 FPS and even lower whenever heavy snow or rain appeared, whereas I had gotten everything running at 60 FPS months ago, and this never happened before. I play it on a laptop with a 1660ti attached to a 2550x1440 monitor but with the resolution in-game set to 1980x1080 to maintain the frame rate, so it is not a super powerful setup but certainly can handle the game by putting certain settings at medium. 

 

Another thing, probably not nearly as many people would be interested if they come across this post, but I have the exact same modded setup installed on my Steam Deck and often go back and forth between it and my computer and I also will be trying this out there, and will share my results after. But basically if I can fix the frame rate issue, the other issue will for me be as good as fixed.

[werwolf969 32]

I managed to fully repack the Complete Horse Overhaul mod, using recommended baseline texture compression methods, and remade the install.xml file so that mod data was not streamed but rather replaced in memory. In an already broken save file where no trains spawned and horses partially did not get streamed textures, this helped to load mod data correctly. I wrote to the author asking him to update his mod on Nexus with information about the issue. Hope he will respond.

Thanks to all the information from this incredible community, we can create guideline to ensure that mods are optimised and will probably cause fewer issues when used simultaneously.

My 2c:

1. Avoid using stream folder inside LML

This along cause many issues and in all guides for modding previous games for this engine this folder considered only for testing purposes, not for usage by published mods. Issues came from data being loaded in chunks, rather then fully placed in memory, so streaming process with many files in stream folder cause game engine allocate way more resources for this process only and stop process game logic, that considered not essential for overall game process by game engine.

2. Use compression methods for textures.

This technology exists for a reason. All game textures use Block Compression methods, so the game engine is optimized to work with them. This applies to APIs (DirectX or Vulkan) regardless.

Recommendations for different BC methods for each texture type:

Albedo (ab) - BC1_UNORM_SRGB or BC1_UNORM

Materials (m, ma, mb, ct, eg) - B3_UNORM
Normal maps (nm) - BC1_UNORM 

This is how textures are packed in game archives. There is no noticeable difference in quality between BC7 and BC1 textures, so there is no reason to stress the game engine with heavy texture files or create potential game logic errors.

3. Pack mods well for usage with LML

LML is a wonderful tool that gives us the opportunity to modify game files using different methods. However, with many mods, there is a need to optimally configure the install.xml file. We should avoid streaming files as much as possible and instead replace them in memory. To do this, we must use the following code structure:

<Resource name="">
			<FileReplacement>
				<GamePath></GamePath>
				<FilePath></FilePath>
			</FileReplacement>
</Resource>

 

With this structure, we ensure that files we are modifying will be replaced in memory upon loading, so the game engine processes them from memory instead of streaming them partially from your drive during the game in chunks. Personally, I think that any replaced file should be replaced directly by this method, regardless of whether it is a texture dictionary, a configuration, or any other type. However, texture dictionary files (YTD) must definitely be replaced using this method, since it greatly helps with the game engine's data overflow problem.

As for the replacement folder, it's simply about overall mod management consistency. Therefore, place your files in your mod folder and not to the "replace" folder in LML.

I don't know if we can somehow avoid streaming newer added files that are not in the game archives. With the actions above, we are at least moving away from running out of the game engine's resource pool.

The game engine still has limited internal resources. By following these guidelines, we try to fit in as much additional modded content as possible. However, there is no guarantee that we won't cause the game engine to overload with data again.

So, choose your mods carefully and spread the word about optimisation in the modding community. Let's hope that one day, all the cool mods will be intact, with all the recommendations the community has found, and we will play an awesome game with hundreds of GB of mods!

 

Edited October 14 by werwolf969

[unseeingeye 1]

Another update, I can confirm that just using vincemeister55's version of WhyEm's DLC textures folders without the gameconfig mod is working for me on Steam Deck; had a whole bunch of stagecoaches with passengers and just saw a train northeast of Strawberry loaded with people.

I first tried using these folders with the gameconfig mod and everything was working, however the moment I heard a train whistle the game froze and I couldn't get it to resume. It didn't hard freeze my Steam Deck so I was still able to manually abort the game without restarting it, but that wasn't a good sign (and considering it is made for PCs expected to be using heavy texture replacement mods, I figured it would cause such a problem). But the important thing is that after removing it, I loaded the game back up and immediately had a train and after riding a few minutes saw multiple stagecoaches, so I would imagine the gameconfig mod is not necessary if the only mod used adding textures is WhyEm's.

 

I don't have access to my computer at home to try it out, but given the success on Steam Deck I would imagine it should perform similarly or better. Thanks again vincemeister!! At this point I don't even care about 99% of the mod, I just cannot play John without his early game long hair and those gloves are the shit, haha. I'm so relieved that I can enjoy this mod and resume seeing trains and more varied traffic, it really does diminish the atmosphere and immersion without them.

 

Editing to add that I used to use the no scope mod for the ability to attach and remove scopes from the sniper rifles and to be able switch between aiming down sights and scopes, particularly for the Carcano, but it caused issues with WhyEm's so I ended up manually editing WhyEm's version of the weapons.ymt file to achieve the same without using another mod.

Edited October 14 by unseeingeye

[Sweetwater 2]

I have been following this thread since it got made and even though I play at 1920x1080p (which means I have less chance of facing the issue as someone said above), I found some mods that cause problems even for me. Here is the testing process - I would always go at 5 am just out of Horseshoe outlook camp and check the train for passengers. Then I would increase the time to somewhere around 12 pm using Rampage and teleport to San Dennis and roam around for about sometime to check the spawning of passengers in trams and those passenger carts. I checked for multiple types of them that I won't be listing here. Then around 12.30 pm to 1pm, a train would pass through San Dennis, I would check it again for passengers. There is also a parked cargo train there. I would also check it. I sometimes found that some mod would cause the passenger train to appear with passengers but the parked cargo train to not appear. Then I would go out of San Dennis, towards South. There is a spot where about 4-5 Rosebill or something like that name of a bird appears and on an small island few Tricoloured and Blue coloured Herons appear. I would check for their presence and in their presence, I would check for the dip in numbers. Some mod caused one or two dip in numbers. I won't be listing them below. I am okay with it. I then went Northwards and checked for the presence of Whooping Cranes and Sandbill Cranes. I also checked North of Horseshoe Outlook multiple times to check the spawning of Wild Bay and Grullo Dun mustang. The tests were performed with Rampage, Snappy UI, Legal Screen Skip, Rainroad mod and Scripthook v2 and Online Content Unlocker installed. I checked it for all of the mods one by one or in a bunch of 4-5 mods installed.

 

I have a hunch that trains does not spawn with passengers during rainy and stormy weathers. Someone test this.

 

Here are the mods that caused disappearance in passengers or disappearance of passenger carts, trains or cargo train or of wildlife -

 

Improved Wildlife

Penetration

Realistic Gun Metals (Metals update)

Rowboat animations

Dismember everyone

Less Meat - Hunting

Automatic greet replies

Any horse Pre order mods caused problems for me. I tried about 3 of them, I guess 2 from nexus and one from this site.

 

 

 

Here are the mods that I have installed right now and I am playing with. NOTE - My stream and replace folder is empty.

These are the mods that did not cause issues to me or was too less to actually affect the gameplay.

 

Rampage

Legal Screen Skip

Scripthook v2

Online Content Unlocker

Snappy UI

Duels

Auto gold medals

So you lost your hat

Non Sticky hats

Performed armed executions in non combat stance

Disable Combat Stance

Optional Duel wield

Ingame world sounds only

Remove screen effects (both main file)

Collyrium Redone

No deadeye reload and glow

No auto ammo pickup

Just quit trolling already

Flo

Longer Horse Names

Corn sack fix

No auto horse holstering

realistic loot rebalance

less money

Banking

Realistic reload

Corpse spawn distance

Higher resolution content

Horse Loadout

Rifle Holster (thin one)

Improvements in Blood

LLRO

Just bleed already

PED accuracy fix

Horse Persistance

Kill Children

Quick Outfit customisation

Auto Challenges

Zen

Seats

Serenity

Smoking Complete

Bottoms Up

No stamina drain while running fix

Manual Pickup

Portable Dynamite Plunger

No Health Regen in Combat

Bounties Rebalance

Vegetation Tricks

No Time Slow wheel

Economy Rebalance by Maybelle

Ambient Gangs

Bandit Hideouts

 

I have everything working right now and the spawns including animal ones are good. After testing I added the experimental game config too to stay on the safe side. I also play tested the game for about 30 hours. I have deleted my save though and starting again afresh now without changing the mods ever again. I have got about 533 hours of gameplay but have not even played it lol.

 

Here are the mods that I don't have installed but while testing alone I did not find any issues. You can use these unless mentioned otherwise -

 

Bounty Hunting - Expanded and Enhanced ( I had turned all of the extra features off while testing)

No forced scope with no Spread and  no sway by IMaverick

Shop Horses Unlocker

Just Shut up already

Serving Spoon fix

Timer message bugfix

No auto horse equip

Extra Difficulty settings

Buel Seam fix

Deputy fix

Irregular Lawman fix

NPC dualwield mod (The testing listed above was successful but I noticed that it does not do what it sets out to do. Without this mod, the men with dual holster appeared but while using this mod they did not appear for me. I was testing in Van Horn. I think it does not work well with Scripthook v2)

Unlock Bonus Cores

Injuries Overhaul

Immersive Faction Interaction tweaks

No out of Bounds Sniper (I tested the one by WesternandCo on Nexus)

Horse Shine Fix

LAW

Real Guns

Cowgirls Revisioned

Lost Treasures of New Austin

 

Happy Gamingg!!!

 

 

 

EDIT  - I forgot to mention my graphics settings - Almost everything is set to Ultra for me. I also play at 1920x1080

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 26 by Sweetwater

[jman9988 0]

On 10/13/2024 at 2:02 AM, vincemeister55 said:

Hey, I dont know about me solving the issue. But thanks for all your kind words. Anyway, here is my new and updated edit of WhyEm textures. The texture discoloration has been fixed, and I think its much more optimized than my previous edit.

 

https://www.mediafire.com/file/dc3w6bz5qrt1u01/WhyEm_DLC_edited_textures_by_vincemeister55.rar/file

 

Enjoy fellers!

Seems the file has been removed, any chance someone can upload it again? Thanks.