Left 4 Dead 2 Addons Loading Forever

[Frida Kosofsky]

Sobasically my issue is that when I walk into my settlement (Not fast travel) the objects in the settlement don't load in right away. I'm not talking about the low res textures that are a problem in the game but like whole objects will fade back into existence after a little while (And grass won't load in at all unless a save and then load said save). I'm assuming it's either an issue with my hardware (My game not being installed on an SSD) or engine limitations with the game not being able to load in large settlements without a loading screen. Either way I'd really appreciate someone offering some advice on how I can fix this issue because it annoys me like crazy.

If this is something that's fixable, I'm all ears to anyone's suggestions. But I'm certain it's just normal game/hardware performance limitations. I've recently been through my settlements to reduce the draws etc. and can notice the difference. (I have my game on an old style HDD too.) For one example, I use a mod that puts tons of clutter in vendor stalls, especially the tier 3 ones, and it takes an incredible amount of draws. (One stall makes a huge difference in the build limit bar.) I scrapped most of them and replaced the remaining tier 3's with tier 2's and, along with some other streamlining, I could notice the difference in how fast objects loaded. I also stored a lot of my workbenches, especially ones that have a lot of clutter like the Armorsmith one from Armorsmith Extended. If I need it, I just create it temporarily then store it again. I left Sanctuary as is, and it's built-up to the nines and takes forever to load. I pretty much only fast travel there, even if I'm close by, just to avoid the aggro of the slow loading. Generally speaking, this is the precise reason I don't build mega-settlements anymore. The aggro of waiting for stuff to load just isn't worth it.

The game engine has its natural limitations. If you reach them, everything becomes weird. And yes, objects appearing at a slow rate is one of this issues. If you travel, and approach a large settlement, the engine cant handle this properly. I sure scales with the hardware, but at some point thats it. In survival, without quicktravel, this will be an issue much more often. While quicktravelling the engines caches are purged (to a certain point), and then you move on from there.

Couple weeks late, but it struck me that I forgot to mention another way to help object loading times. Well, to the extent you use mods that affect objects in your settlements that use loose file textures. And that's to convert those mods into ba2 files. I actually first noticed this when I switched from the various loose file modules in the Vivid environment series (roads, trees, rocks, bridges etc) to the all-in-one pack that uses the ba2 format. Could really notice the difference in areas of the game that used to suffer from delays in loading grass and other objects. In fact, I've converted a couple older weapon mods that used loose file textures into ba2 format and there's a lot less delay when I switch to that weapon via hotkey. Different application, but the same idea. (I actually converted the meshes/materials/etc. in those mods as well. They go into a separate "main" ba2.)

Depends on what mods you use and what kind of textures those mods use in turn. You have to keep in mind that as of game version 1.3 or 1.4 Bethesda reverted to an in-game streaming function instead of direct rendering of objects and environment, which makes that the load is progressive instead of instant. They did this to alleviate strain on GPU and CPU and RAM. The logic consequence is that, the larger the textures you use, the slower things will get.

Problem is that the streaming isn't glitch-free and sometimes cops out with the rendering getting stuck halfway through and/or the RAM buffer getting full which slows down everything and doesn't even show the neat 4k upgrade you've installed but instead gives a seriously murky texture where exquisite detail should have been visible...

Yeah, unlike Skyrim or previous FO's, I tend to actually avoid really hi-rez stuff. The vivid series doesn't use very big textures and the weapon mods I packed into ba2 used 2k. In any event, the increase in performance (i.e. decrease in object loading time) was quite significant. And not just for the objects directly affected. Since those rendered faster, everything else sped up as well. Oddly enough, the most drastic noticeable difference was pulling into the Far Harbour dock. It used to take 4 or 5 seconds for all the lights etc to render, and even for my companion to show up on the boat. Now, it's almost instant. Anyways, from what I've been able to gather (and imo), no matter what size textures that are in play, packing them into ba2's will result in better performance than with loose files.

When TB recently updated from 78.14.0 (64 bit) to 91.2.0 (64bit), all my extensions did not load. I reviewed and verified they are compatible with 91. Toggling the enable/disable in add-ons manager did nothing although some mysteriously did get disabled. Restarting TB from scratch had no impact. (I note that closing TB tends to cause a crash.)

The issue remains that if I close TB, all my add-ons go into limbo when I bring TB back up. They say they are enabled but they do not operate. It doesn't matter if it is one add-on or the whole suite that I'm using. As an example, just loading CardBook, it works until you reboot TB. To get it to work again you have to delete it, reboot TB and then load it again.

The complete list of add-ons I'm using are:CardBookConfirm-AddressDKIM-VerifierFiltaQuillaFull Address ColumnMessage PreviewProvider for CalDAV & CardDAVquickFiltersQuickFoldersRemove Duplicate MessagesSimple Mail RedirectionTbSync

I don't know why your add-ons disappear between restarts, but I've never seen this issue before. Perhaps create a new profile from Help/More Troubleshooting, about:profiles, add an account, install an add-on of the correct version, then restart TB. If it still disappears, it would indicate to me there's some external app acting on TB's settings. Running OS X in safe mode might test this notion.

Per your suggestion I restarted TB, created a new profile with a new account from the startup dialog. I got a crash message, however it appeared that TB had actually restarted and proceeded into the configuration dialog.

In the new profile I added one current version add-on (CardBook) from the official repository, and verified it was working. I restarted TB using the new profile and the add-on was still installed and remained working. There was no crash when I stopped TB.

I restarted using the new profile and then added my whole suite of current version add-ons from scratch from the official repository, verified they were present, configured, and working. I restarted TB, and the add-ons remained installed and appeared to be working.

I am sure you will likely suggest using a new profile and starting from scratch. However my default profile reflects the accumulation of about 8+ years of TB usage starting with a migration from Eudora to Eudora/OSE. I now have about 14 accounts, hundreds of filters, addresses, messages, folders etc. as well as migrations through many TB versions since the original OSE migration.

I would believe it is entirely possible that the profile has cruft that is causing strange behavior. To start from scratch is a non-starter however without some migration strategy. AFAIK TB removed all migration tools some time ago and there is no simple migration strategy aside from directory copies which simply duplicates the cruft.

Yeah, .... all spread out over the entire community. Not helpful. Especially aggravating when one shouldn't have to be doing it to start with. Sorry but migrating 8+ years of data is difficult and yes I have tried it. It was a CF.

Since it seems that the standard pat answer to many questions is "refresh your profile" there really ought to be a guide as to how to do that instead of trying to piece it together from all the different queries/FAQs/posts etc. Not to mention that the rules seem to change with each version.

It's hardly a 'pat answer' to suggest creating a new profile. It is highly recommended with each major release, whether you think it's necessary or not. There is a standard article that describes it, although somewhat out of date. The time and effort to do it is often far less than trying to fix a damaged profile.

In your case, you could try deleting the contents of the extensions subfolder of the old profile, and deleting or renaming extension-preferences.json and extensions.json in the profile. Then restart TB, install an add-on, and see if it is retained.

The "standard article" for saving/transferring profiles referenced by sfhows was pretty much useless as every tool mentioned in the article is either no longer supported or just plain gone from the Internet. Stripping all that away leaves you with a procedure that starts with a new empty profile and suggests copying various stuff from your old profile into the new profile. Unfortunately that didn't work, even when I kept the transfer to a minimum. This was kind of a bottom up approach where you try to salvage all your configurations by copying them into the profile directories.

It is true that the profile I was using had evolved through many TB version upgrades (10 years+) and likely had any number of dead end settings left around by sloppy migration strategies. But doing the TB78-91 migration was a very big deal. I would say it was very difficult and could have been disastrous. I strongly recommend that the TB team consider reviving migration tools before they pull this stunt again.

This week has been email hell recovering from this debacle. I run TB on two different machines with essentially the same profile and one is still at TB 78. Unfortunately, it downloaded the TB 91 update and next restart it will boot and replay the same debacle. I'm trying to find out how I can disable the auto upgrade after it has already downloaded the update.

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