Fallout 4 on GOG

[RabidGears]

Fallout 4 GOTY just got released on GOG at 75% off:

https://www.gog.com/en/game/fallout_4_game_of_the_year_edition

 

[Kool Kevin]

Thanks for the information!

[Arthmoor]

One thing I think people should be aware of with this release. It doesn't have separated folders for your saves and load order.

The SSE release on GOG has a fully separate folders under My Games and AppData. The Fallout 4 release does not:

What this means is that you can have a full separation between Steam and GoG for SSE and mod managers such as Wrye Bash and Vortex will be able to handle them without issue.

Not so on the FO4 side. The folder sharing means your mod manager can't see the difference between your Steam save and your GOG save. GOG is going to see your Steam save if you have that version installed.

The problem arises from the GAME folders being separate. So you will have your normal Steam based FO4 with all your mods and CC DLCs and such, and your GOG install of FO4 with nothing but the GOTY files. Not even the CC files you've paid for since the GOG copy can't access the CC Store (or the official mods site either).

What this ends up meaning is that you can easily bork your saves if you try to bring them over, and you'll likely end up screwing up your other install because the mod managers will see it as a blank slate and clear the plugins.txt file. Which leads to the other problem...

AppData/Local ALSO has no separation between games so your established load order can be easily disrupted too.

I am normally a staunch advocate for buying games on GOG, especially BGS games, but in this instance I can't recommend it unless Bethesda corrects the mistake here. If you're a mod author, obviously you'll need the CK, and that's only available on Steam. So you'd have no real reason to want to go this route either.

[RabidGears]

Is the CC issue only relevant if you actually have any CC content? I never bothered with it.

16 hours ago, Arthmoor said:

I am normally a staunch advocate for buying games on GOG, especially BGS games, but in this instance I can't recommend it unless Bethesda corrects the mistake here. If you're a mod author, obviously you'll need the CK, and that's only available on Steam. So you'd have no real reason to want to go this route either.

I like to have all the games on both platforms. If you're already a mod author then you would have the game on Steam and would have access to the CK anyway. It would be a problem for a new player who only had the game on GOG and then wanted to start making mods later. I still think that's it's worth getting on GOG for a DRM free copy, you just need to be careful.

Having said that, it would be good if this issue was fixed.

[Arthmoor]

It's not just the CC content that's a problem. Any mods you have installed are also going to be "forgotten" if you fire up on the GOG side. That's because unlike the data folders, the GAME folders ARE separate. Which means you have 2 distinct copies of the game, with their own Data folder to put mods in.

[M00nP1e]

Edit .. Sorry but my question is included in the spoiler .. something weird happened and included what I wanted to ask in the spoiler box aswell, and when editing I cant copy the questions text out of the box, weird, anyway please read on :

@Arthmoor - The website for GOG FO4 says it has ..

 

Fallout 4: Game of the Year Edition includes the base game and all the following add-ons:
 

• Far Harbor - A new case from Valentine’s Detective Agency leads you on a search for a young woman and a secret colony of synths. Travel off the coast of Maine to the mysterious island of Far Harbor, where higher levels of radiation have created a more feral world.
• Automatron - The mysterious Mechanist has unleashed a horde of evil robots into the Commonwealth, including the devious Robobrain. Hunt them down and harvest their parts to build and mod your own custom robot companions.
• Nuka-World - Take a trip to Nuka-World, a vast amusement park now a lawless city of Raiders. Explore an all-new region with an open wasteland and park zones like Safari Adventure, Dry Rock Gulch, Kiddie Kingdom, and the Galactic Zone.
• Wasteland Workshop - With the Wasteland Workshop, design and set cages to capture live creatures – from raiders to Deathclaws! Tame them or have them face off in battle, even against your fellow settlers.
• Contraptions Workshop - Machines that sort! Machines that build! Machines that combine! With Fallout 4 Contraptions, use conveyer belts, scaffolding kits, track kits, even logic gates to construct crazy and complex gadgets to improve your Wasteland settlements.
• Vault-Tec Workshop - Build a brighter future underground with the all-new Vault-Tec Workshop. Create a massive Vault and attract new Dwellers using pre-war industrial kits complete with retro-nostalgic furniture, lighting, and art.

.. Are those what you mean by CC content?

And in any case, if we do not have Steam or any games from Steam, but just GOG and the FO4 game from GOG, then none of the concerns you raise are a problem?

I do not wish to use any Mod Managers, I will install the game with Galaxy (or manually, I haven't decided yet), and any mods will be installed manually.

Only intend to use the Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch, and CBBE, so I think I should be ok unless this CC content is at all required.

Edited October 28, 2023 by M00nP1e

[Arthmoor]

That's just Fallout 4 with the original 6 DLCs.

CC is Creation Club, which is a whole other set of smaller DLCs. Some made by Bethesda, others made by community members who contracted with them for it.

The unofficial patch only requires the base game and original 6 DLCs. Which is conveniently what's bundled as "Game of the Year Edition".

If you don't intend to make mods of your own, then in theory you should be fine with just the GoG version. Manually installing mods can be a huge pain, so my advice would be to stick to things that have proper BA2 archives to contain their assets.

[M00nP1e]

Thanks Arthmoor.

Well the UFO4P is just an .esp and a couple of BA2 archives

And CBBE is an .esp and a progressive logical overwrite of meshes and textures, so to uninstall just means delete the .esp / meshes folder / textures folder which contain the loose files.

I do not intend installing anything else so its not so complicated, but I understand where you are coming from, if there are multiple overwrites of loose files.

Otherwise all I need to do is clean the Games DLC .esp's with FO4EditQuickAutoClean.exe, and check with LOOT for the cleaned CRCs and load ordering.

And edit Fallout4Custom.ini to include ..

[Archive]
bInvalidateOlderFiles=1
sResourceDataDirsFinal=

For CBBE to work correctly.

After that I think I'm good - Did a lot of research before coming here

If things get more complicated I may well opt for Wrye Bash as a mod manager, but dont need it yet.

Edited October 28, 2023 by M00nP1e

[M00nP1e]

All seems to be working fine. After getting to Concord and killing a female raider, taking all of her gear left her naked as expected with the Curvy CBBE body (that was the simplest/quickest method I could think of to prove the plugins are working correctly).

Unofficial patch plugin is Load Ordered just after the games DLCs, and before CBBE.

I don't think I will be wanting any Creation Club content, just the basic game for its fun and the many fixes UFO4P does for the game. That will keep me off the streets for a while

[Arthmoor]

I'd advise against cleaning the official DLCs. The practice has fallen out of favor in the last couple of years.

[M00nP1e]

I used FO4EditQuickAutoClean.exe (Which comes with FO4Edit by Elminster on NexusMods) which did not give any errors while cleaning each one.

Prior to cleaning LOOT was warning me about each one needing to be cleaned.

LOOT now reports the CRCs of all the DLC plugins are correct?

[Arthmoor]

As I said, the practice fell out of favor. That doesn't mean LOOT has caught up to the current state of things. There's no need to clean the files.

[M00nP1e]

Ok well a quick file verify should sort that out.

Edit: Hmm, going to need to start a new game after the original plugins are re-installed.

I am seeing so many legacy references to this cleaning of the DLCs though, I became convinced it was necessary.

Do you have any links to conversations disproving its necessity?

Edited October 29, 2023 by M00nP1e

[lmstearn]

Here's a conversation for SSE.

Even given that game updates have correct versioning, there's no reason why mod authors would want to include references to deleted references (removed or not) in the first place, and ITM's aren't relevant after running LOOT for mods.

TesEdit is a third party program that can modify the DLC files after cleaning, and there's a very high chance it won't do any damage to the game, it just won't make any difference to the end result. Run it, for zero net gain in the game masters, run it for positive results from mods.

Edited October 29, 2023 by lmstearn

[M00nP1e]

@lmstearn Thank you for the link to that, I think I sort of get the reasoning behind it now although I don't quite get versioning of records.

Putting it down to technically quite complicated and sort of covered by the non-technical term "Out of favour"

Many thanks for finding that.

@Arthmoor LOOT apparently has caught up, and there is a filter to supress DLC warnings. LOOT team have kept the warnings around for people who still have a use for cleaning the DLCs, but they agree cleaning is not needed.

 

[Arthmoor]

Good to know. I haven't kept a close eye on LOOT development since I don't personally use it.

[M00nP1e]

Recommendation for anyone reading :

Dont turn on "Weapon Debris" - It crashes the game.

I have been playing around with the advanced options in the Launcher, pretty much have Ultra or High in most cases, and the games visuals / performance are really good

[Arthmoor]

That weapon debris thing is an nVidia-only feature and as far as anyone knows, it never worked past one of their old driver updates. Bethesda should have responded by removing the feature once it became clear nVidia won't fix what they broke.

[M00nP1e]

On 11/2/2023 at 2:29 AM, Arthmoor said:

That weapon debris thing is an nVidia-only feature and as far as anyone knows, it never worked past one of their old driver updates. Bethesda should have responded by removing the feature once it became clear nVidia won't fix what they broke.

This Weapon Debris Crash Fix Makes Weapon Debris work flawlessly. Not sure NVidia was responsible if the base game can be fixed to make it work with modern NVidia drivers.

Same guy who did High FPS Physics Fix, which solves a lot of issues with the game, the most annoying being the slow load times the game has out of the box.

Thank heavens for the clever modding community.

[Arthmoor]

That debris fix effectively disables exactly what nVidia broke, so it's no surprise it ended up working.

The High FPS Physics Fix has load and loads of people saying it either doesn't work or actively causes problems so I'm not so sure I'd be singing its praises either

[M00nP1e]

I think those loads of people need to have a good study of the HFPSPF ini file, especially if they are using things like enb.

Using its default settings it was tryng to melt my machine, but using the various cap FPS settings brought it under control and the machine is running cool again.

The game has been very stable for me since using it, in the last week I have had a lot of time off so have spent about 6 hours per day doing everything I can in the game. Its as smooth and trouble free as anyone could wish for out of an old game on new hardware.

Probably machine specification dependant too for the users experience, but its made me happy, GOG Fallout 4 GOTY was a nightmare on loading screens out of the box.