Fallout Mod Manager Fomm
Chamar Riche
This is the first in a series of tutorials on how to use the Package Manager and the FOMOD format in Fallout Mod Manager (FOMM). The first part of the series centers on the basics, and is written with the mod user in mind. Before you start, make sure that you have installed the latest version of FOMM, at time of writing 0.9.15.
You will need to know the location of your Fallout 3 folder. The default location is C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Fallout 3. FOMM will be installed to the fomm folder in your Fallout 3 folder, and FOMOD files will be placed in the Fallout 3/fomm/mods folder.
For mod users the main advantage of the Package Manager is ease of install and uninstall. This is not as easy as it sounds. Some mods override the in-game textures and meshes (these are often called replacers). The only way to uninstall these mods is to delete every single file they added. Other mods need to change Fallout3.ini settings which is easy to forget when uninstalling. With the Package Manager, these mods can be installed and uninstalled with a mouse click. This allow you to keep a mean and clean data folder, with a much more efficient and stable game as a result.
A fomod file can be seen as an installer that can be used directly by FOMMs Package Manager, and can be recognized by the file extension .fomod. When you download a fomod, it will usually be in a compressed format, such as rar, zip or 7z. Open the archive by double clicking it. If it contains a .fomod file, extract it to your Fallout 3/fomm/mods folder, and open the Package Manager as shown above. If it comes with a readme, please open and read the readme before continuing as it may contain important information.
In the dialogue, browse to the archive and double click it. This will create a fomod, that is saved in your Fallout 3/fomm/mods folder. The mod can be activated by pressing the Activate button as above.
This is somewhat more challenging, but you would have to go through these steps to install a generic mod anyway. The first step is to open the archive, find and inspect the readme. Particularly, you need to review the install and uninstall sections. These will tell you how to perform a manual installation, and which files to use, depending on your preferences.
After installing a new mod, you may need to adjust your load order. Many mods have comments on where they should be placed in the load order. The load order can be adjusted in the main window of FOMM (not the Package Manager) by drag-and-drop.
This warning comes when plugin files are placed in subdirectories. Usually this happens when modders place optional esps in subdirectories. In this case you should extract the mod to a temporary location and read the readme. After reviewing your options, adjust the contents of the mod to your liking and try again.
This error happens when you have installed Fallout 3 to the default location, and FOMM does not run with Administrator privileges. The problem is that Vista & W7 protects the contents of your Program Files folder from potentially dangerous interference, by designating the installed program to be the only program that is allowed to edit its folder. So, when FOMM tries to get the permissions needed, Windows assume that it is a virus. There are a number of fixes. The quick fix is to run FOMM as administrator: Rightclick fomm.exe and choose Run As Administrator in W7 (in Vista you may have to open properties). The better fix (particularly if you plan on using and making mods), is to uninstall FO3 and install it to somewhere outside of the Program Files folder, such as C:\Games\Fallout3. It will save you a lot of trouble in the future. A more in depth description of the problem can be found here.
When im try to activate my mode at package manager i cant, there a massage show cannot install mod,see script exception for more detail.
I already install .net framework v4, but its still the same.please help me
If that does not help (and this is your own mod), please paste the script into a post here, so I can take a look at it. If it is not your own mod, you can contact the mod author with a bug report or ask at the sourceforge forum or the comments tab in Fallout 3 Nexus.
Nice overview of FOMM, I have used this program for a few months now and does a nice job, but to really have things work well with all the various fun mods out there you need to look into using FO3Edit.
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This helps find the resource duplicates and other such fun errors and remove them. Then FOMM handles the rest really well.
As such, you can place them wereever you want, but I suggest somewhere outside of your Program Files folder. I think that the C:\Users\username\My Documents\My Games\Fallout 3 folder would be a good idea. Alternatively, wherever you store your mods is also convenient.
A manual installation should work fine, but you loose the advantages of the package manager, i.e. easy install/uninstall/upgrade and custom install scripts. I have not played Fallout: New Vegas, so I have little knowledge on how FOMM for NV works, but I would take a look at the FOMM settings for NV, e.g. is it configured to use the correct paths, does it have write access to those paths? You could also ask at the nv nexus page, but it seems that no one is answering questions there. Also, you could ask at the release thread on the official forums, but I have no idea how active the community is.
i got fomm and installed mods and today when i was useing fomm under the tab thing that says web version it said error on most of my mods and fallout nv would start but chrash when it got to the game menu HELP SOS plz
The error message implies that Ed installed New Vegas at the default location, which is a bit of a problem as the contents of the Program Files folder is protected by Windows. Check out the last paragraph of the tutorial to see a number of possible solutions.
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at Fomm.PackageManager.ModInstallLog.InstallLog.InitMods()
at Fomm.PackageManager.ModInstallLog.InstallLog.Load()
at Fomm.PackageManager.ModInstallLog.InstallLog..ctor()
at Fomm.Program.Main(String[] args)
Yeah, that is a pretty common problem. Check out the second last paragraph in the post:
[quote]This error happens when you have installed Fallout 3 to the default location, and FOMM does not run with Administrator privileges. The problem is that Vista & W7 protects the contents of your Program Files folder from potentially dangerous interference, by designating the installed program to be the only program that is allowed to edit its folder. So, when FOMM tries to get the permissions needed, Windows assume that it is a virus. There are a number of fixes. The quick fix is to run FOMM as administrator: Rightclick fomm.exe and choose Run As Administrator in W7 (in Vista you may have to open properties). The better fix (particularly if you plan on using and making mods), is to uninstall FO3 and install it to somewhere outside of the Program Files folder, such as C:\Games\Fallout3. It will save you a lot of trouble in the future. A more in depth description of the problem can be found here.[/quote]
Uninstalling FO3 will delete all files added when you installed FO3. If you have added mods or other files, they will not be deleted from the old FO3 installation folder, so you will have to delete them yourself. The game also adds some ini files and save game data to the My Documents\My Games folder that (as far as I remember) do not get deleted when uninstalling.
There are a number of possibilities that could be the cause, depending on the mod in question.
1) The mod contains a number of esp/esm files and you did not uncheck all of them.
2) You are using a bashed patch or a master patch, and forgot to rebuild them after unchecking the mods.
3) The mod contains both graphic replacers and other game changes, you only unchecked the game changes and you continue to see the changed graphics. In this case, you will need to remove the graphic files added by the mod. If the mod was installed using the Package Manager, please uninstall the mod with the Package Manager.
4) As I remember it, if you have an esp active that rely on an (inactive) esm, the Fallout 3 engine will activate the esm, which can be the cause of the issue you are seeing.
So, i seem to have skipped the important step of deactivating my mods before wiping and now I need to manually kill what ever list has survived the purge of the programs. Can anyone tell me how to clean in manually?
2) Fallout New Vegas saves a list of installed mods in C:\Users\\AppData\Local\FalloutNV (on Windows 7), so open the folder and take a look at the two text files and make sure they match your list of installed mods. NOTE: Make a backup of the files before editing them.
All installed mod files are copied to the folder where you installed the game. So if your game is installed to C:\Games\FO3, the installed mod files are in that folder. The vast majority of mod files actually only live in the data folder inside the installation folder, i.e. C:\Games\FO3\data.
Additionally, both FOMM and NMM create a folder where they store a copy of the zipped mod that you loaded with the plugin manager. In my venerable version of NNM (0.53.7). you can see the path to the mod location by pressing Settings and selecting the tab that has the name of the game you are looking for. If you are using FOMM, you can try open the folder of the game or where you installed FOMM and search for zip files.
So, to answer your question: Deleting files from your desktop will not cause the mod to go missing from your game, and it should be possible to uninstall and reinstall from the package manager. I usually copy the mods to a hard drive and delete the downloaded files partly to make sure that I can always nuke my installation and start over, partly because some mods require manual modifications before loading them into FOMM/NMM and I might want to use other options next time.
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