Error game specific settings could not be initialised none of the supported games were detected

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Installation & Uninstallation
3. Using LOOT
   1. Initialisation
   2. The Header Bar
   3. Plugin Cards & Sidebar Items
   4. Filters
   5. Editing Plugin Metadata
   6. Editing Settings
4. Contributing & Support
5. Credits
6. License
7. Version History

Introduction

LOOT is a plugin load order optimiser for TES IV: Oblivion, TES V: Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. It is designed to assist mod users in avoiding detrimental conflicts, by automatically calculating a load order that satisfies all plugin dependencies and maximises each plugin’s impact on the user’s game.

LOOT also provides some load order error checking, including checks for requirements, incompatibilities and cyclic dependencies. In addition, it provides a large number of plugin-specific usage notes, bug warnings and Bash Tag suggestions for Wrye Bash.

While LOOT is able to calculate correct load order positions for the vast majority of plugins using only their content, it cannot do so for all plugins. As such, LOOT provides a mechanism for supplying additional plugin metadata so that it may sort them correctly. An online masterlist is provided to supply metadata for many plugins that need it, while users can make their own metadata additions, which are saved in their userlist.

LOOT is intended to make using mods easier, and mod users should still possess a working knowledge of mod load ordering. See Introduction To Load Orders for an overview.

Installation & Uninstallation

LOOT does not support Windows XP or earlier.

LOOT can be installed either using its automated installer or manually. To install LOOT manually, extract the downloaded archive to a location of your choice.

If LOOT was installed using the installer, then use the uninstaller linked to in the Start Menu to uninstall LOOT. If LOOT was installed manually:

1. Delete the files you extracted from the location you chose.
2. Delete the LOOT folder in your local application data folder, which can be accessed by entering %LOCALAPPDATA% into Windows’ File Explorer.

Using LOOT

Initialisation

When LOOT is run, it will attempt to detect which of the supported games are installed. If a default game has been set, LOOT will run for it, otherwise it will run for the same game as it last ran for. If the relevant game cannot be detected, or if there is no record of the last game LOOT ran for, it will run for the first detected game.

LOOT can also be launched with the --game=<game folder name> command line parameter to set the game to run for. If the supplied game folder name is valid, the default and last game values are ignored. The default folder names are Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout3 and FalloutNV.

If LOOT cannot detect any supported game installs, it will immediately open the Settings dialog. There you can edit LOOT’s settings to provide a path to a supported game, after which you can select it from the game menu.

Once a game has been set, LOOT will scan its plugins and load the game’s masterlist, if one is present. The plugins and any metadata they have are then listed in their current load order.

If LOOT detects that it is the first time you have run that version of LOOT, it will display a First-Time Tips dialog, which provides some information about the user interface that may not be immediately obvious.

The header bar provides access to LOOT’s main features. Most of these features get disabled while there is at least one plugin editor open, so if you’re trying to use an option that is faded out, first close any editors you have open.

Game Menu

LOOT’s active game can be changed by clicking on it in the header bar, and selecting another game from the menu that is displayed. Games that have no install detected are disabled have their menu items disabled.

Masterlist Update & Sorting

The masterlist update process updates the active game’s masterlist to the latest revision at the location given by the game’s masterlist repository settings. If the latest revision contains errors, LOOT will roll back to the latest revision that works.

By default, sorting first updates the masterlist. LOOT then calculates a load order for your plugins, using their internal data and any metadata they may have. If a cyclic interaction is detected (eg. A depends on B depends on A), then sorting will fail.

Once LOOT has calculated a load order, the plugin cards are sorted into that order. The masterlist update and sorting buttons are replaced with Apply and Cancel buttons, which apply and discard the calculated load order respectively. Changing games is disabled until the calculated load order is applied or discarded.

LOOT is able to sort plugins ghosted by Wrye Bash, and can extract Bash Tags and version numbers from plugin descriptions. Provided that they have the Filter Bash Tag present in their description, LOOT can recognise filter patches and so avoid displaying unnecessary error messages for any of their masters that may be missing.

Any errors encountered during sorting or masterlist update will be displayed on the General Information card.

Main Menu

A few items in the main menu are not self-explanatory:

• Redate Plugins is provided so that Skyrim modders may set the load order for the Creation Kit. It is only enabled for Skyrim, and changes the timestamps of the plugins in its Data folder to match their current load order. A side effect of changing the timestamps is that any Steam Workshop mods installed will be re-downloaded.
• Copy Content copies the data displayed in LOOT’s cards as YAML-formatted text.
• Refresh Content re-scans the installed plugins’ headers and regenerates the content LOOT displays. This can be useful if you have made changes to your installed plugins while LOOT was open. Refreshing content will also discard any CRCs that were previously calculated, as they may have changed.

Plugin Cards & Sidebar Items

Each plugin is displayed on its own card, which displays all the information LOOT has for that plugin, and provides access to plugin-specific functionality, including its metadata editor. Each plugin also has an item in the sidebar’s Plugins tab. The sidebar item contains the plugin’s name and icons for plugins that load BSAs or have user metadata. Clicking on a plugin’s sidebar item will jump to its card, while double-clicking will jump to its card and open its metadata editor.

The plugin card’s header holds the following information, some of which is only displayed if applicable:

1. The Active Plugin icon.
2. The plugin name.
3. The plugin’s version number, extracted from its description field.
4. The plugin’s CRC, which can be used to uniquely identify it. CRCs are only displayed after they have been calculated during conflict filtering or sorting.
5. The Master File icon.
6. The Empty Plugin icon.
7. The Loads BSA icon.
8. The Has User Metadata icon.
9. The plugin menu button, which provides access to a few plugin-specific features, including a conflict filter and access to its metadata editor. These are explained in later sections.

Bash Tag suggestions and messages are displayed below the plugin card’s header.

If LOOT suggests any Bash Tags to be added, they will be displayed in green text, while any Bash Tags to be removed will be displayed in red text. For completeness, the list of Bash Tags to add will include any Bash Tags that are already specified in the plugin’s description field. Users generally don’t need to do anything with this information, as if they’re using Wrye Bash it will automatically apply LOOT’s suggestions, and if they’re not using Wrye Bash then this information doesn’t apply.

LOOT’s plugin messages are a valuable resource, acting as a means of providing users with information that they might otherwise not obtain. It is important for a stable, healthy game that you act on any messages that require action. If you think a message suggests an unnecessary action, report it to an official LOOT thread. If you encounter a message that is non-conditional, ie. it suggests an action but is still displayed on subsequent runs of LOOT after the action has been carried out, also report it to an official LOOT thread, so that it can be made conditional.

Filters

Clicking the Filters tab in the sidebar will replace the sidebar’s plugin list with a list of filter toggles that can be applied to hide various combinations of plugins and other content. The available filter toggles are:

• Hide version numbers: Hides the version numbers displayed in blue next to those plugins that provide them.
• Hide CRCs: Hides the CRCs displayed in orange next to those plugins that provide them.
• Hide Bash Tags: Hides all Bash Tag suggestions.
• Hide notes: Hides all plugin messages that have the Note: prefix, or the equivalent text for the language selected in LOOT’s settings.
• Hide ‘Do not clean’ messages: Hides all messages that contain the text Do not clean, or the equivalent text for the language selected in LOOT’s settings.
• Hide all plugin messages: Hides all plugin messages.
• Hide inactive plugins: Hides all plugins that are inactive.
• Hide messageless plugins: Hides all plugins that have no visible messages.

There are also two other filters:

• A conflict filter that can be accessed through each plugin’s menu. This filters the plugin cards displayed so that only plugins which conflict with this plugin will be visible. If this plugin loads a BSA, other plugins that load BSAs which may contain conflicting resources are also displayed.

  Only one plugin’s conflict filter can be active at any one time, so activating a second conflict filter will deactivate the first. The plugin for which the filter is currently active has its card highlighted. Sorting with a conflict filter active will first deactivate it.

• A content filter, located at the bottom of the sidebar. This hides any plugins that don’t have the filter input value present in any of the following:
  • Filename
  • Version
  • CRC value
  • Bash Tag suggestions
  • Messages

Editing Plugin Metadata

LOOT uses metadata to supply plugins with messages and Bash Tag suggestions, and to help it sort plugins that it can’t otherwise sort correctly. Users can add to their plugins’ metadata through each plugin’s metadata editor panel, and plugins with user metadata are indicated with a Has User Metadata icon.

A plugin’s editor panel is accessed by clicking the Edit Metadata item in the plugin’s menu. Multiple plugins can have their editor panels open at once. While at least one editor panel is open, the plugin sidebar also displays any non-zero plugin priorities, to aid setting new priority values.

The editor’s header bar is similar to the header on the front of the plugin card, minus the Has User Metadata icon, and with the addition of Apply and Cancel icon buttons and a row of tabs. The Main tab contains the following inputs:

• The Enable Edits toggle must be on for LOOT to use any user-added metadata, otherwise it will be ignored.
• The Global Priority toggle controls how LOOT compares plugin priorities. If off, the plugin’s priority will only be compared against plugins that conflict, and empty plugins. If on, the plugin’s priority will be compared against all plugins.
• The Priority Value input sets the plugin’s priority value, which is used to modify plugin position relative to others. Plugins with higher priority values load after plugins with lower priority values. Plugins have a default priority of 0.

The other tabs contain metadata tables, which are detailed below. New rows can be added, and existing user-added rows can be removed, though rows containing metadata from the masterlist cannot. The Load After, Requirements and Incompatibilities tables can have rows added by dragging and dropping plugins from the sidebar into the table area.

Editing Settings

LOOT’s settings may be accessed by clicking Settings button in LOOT’s menu bar. The settings are detailed in the table below.

LOOT’s game-specific settings can be customised in the games table. New game profiles can be added, making it easy to use LOOT across multiple copies of a game, including total conversion mods. LOOT ships with settings for the Nehrim — At Fate’s Edge total conversion mod as an example. Game profiles can also be deleted, though the active game cannot have its profile deleted, and LOOT will recreate the profiles for the four base games it supports (Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas) when it is next run.

The game settings are explained in the table below.

Contributing & Support

LOOT is very much a community project, and contributions from its users are very welcome, whether they be metadata, translations, code or anything else. The best way to contribute is to make changes yourself at GitHub! It’s the fastest way to get changes you want applied, and you’ll get your name automatically immortalised in our credits.

If you encounter an issue with LOOT, check the Frequently Asked Questions wiki page in case a solution is available there.

Otherwise, general discussion and support takes place in LOOT’s official forum thread, which is linked to on LOOT’s homepage.

If you want to submit metadata, the easiest way to do so is to add the metadata to your own LOOT install, then use the Copy Metadata feature to easily get it in a form that you can then edit into a masterlist on GitHub or post in the official forum threads.

Information on dirty plugins is very welcome, but for such information to be useful we require at least the filename and the CRC of the dirty plugin. The CRC may be calculated using Wrye Bash or 7-Zip, with other sources being unverified as correct. In the case of 7-Zip, the CRC checksum for data is the one required. In addition to the CRC, the number of records removed (the ITM count) and/or undeleted (the UDR count) are also welcome.

Credits

LOOT is developed by a team on GitHub, with contributions from users. A full list of GitHub contributors may be found here. A list of team members may be viewed on the project wiki. Unless otherwise noted, team members can be contacted on the Bethesda Softworks Forums or on The Nexus Forums via the private messaging system.

LOOT’s masterlists were largely converted from BOSS’s masterlists, and so credit is due to the very large number of sources and people who have contributed to them.

In addition, the following are credited with application-related support:

• Original icon: jonwd7
• Translations:
  • Brazilian Portuguese: Kassane
  • Chinese: bluesky404
  • Finnish: 3ventic
  • French: Kaos
  • German: lpradel
  • Korean: SteamB23
  • Polish: Łukasz Niemczyk
  • Russian: Tokc.D.K.
  • Spanish: Sharlikran
• Beta testing: Too many to list, thank you all!

LOOT is written in C/C++, HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, and uses the
Alphanum,
Boost,
Jed,
Jed Gettext Parser,
libespm,
libgit2,
libloadorder,
Marked,
Polymer
RequireJS and
yaml-cpp libraries, and the Chromium Embedded Framework. Copyright license information for all these may be found here.

License

LOOT is distributed under the GNU General Public License v3.0, aside from the documentation, which is distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License v1.3. The full texts of the licenses are included with LOOT in the accompanying GNU GPL v3.txt and GNU FDL v1.3.txt files.

While the GPL license allows anyone to make derivative works of LOOT, the LOOT Team encourages those thinking of doing so to first discuss their reasoning for such an endeavour with the Team. It may be that what the derivative work would do differently is already planned for a future version of LOOT or would be happily integrated into LOOT, thus avoiding any extra effort by others.

LOOT has been specifically designed to prevent it being locked into the LOOT Team’s official masterlist repositories. Nevertheless, the LOOT Team appeals to the community to avoid the distribution of unofficial masterlists, as this would only hamper the effort to create one set of stores for load order information. Any issues with a masterlist are best brought to the attention of the LOOT Team so that they may be remedied.

GNU Free Documentation License Version 1.3 Notice:

Copyright (C) 2012—2015 WrinklyNinja
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license is included in the file named «GNU FDL v1.3.txt».

Version History

Only program history is recorded here. A full history of masterlist changes may be viewed by browsing the GitHub repositories.

0.7.0 — 20 May 2015

Fixes

• The settings.yaml included with the installer was very old.
• Inactive incompatibilities were displayed as error messages. They are now displayed as warnings.
• Masterlist entries that matched the same plugin were not being merged. Now one exact match and any number of regex matches will be merged.
• Masterlist updating failed when a fast-forward merge was not possible (eg. when remote has been rebased, or a different repository is used). Such cases are now handled by deleting the local repository and re-cloning the remote.
• Masterlist updating failed when the path to LOOT’s folder included a junction link.
• Masterlists would not ‘update’ to older revisions. This can be useful for testing, so now they can do so.
• Crashes when trying to read corrupt plugins and after masterlist update completion.
• LOOT would crash when trying to detect a game installed to a location in which the user does not have read permissions, now such games are treated as not being installed.
• Plugins with non-ASCII description text would cause codecvt to wstring errors.
• LOOT would accept any file with a .esp or .esm extension as a plugin. It now checks more thoroughly, by attempting to parse such files’ headers.
• LOOT would only detect Skyrim plugins as loading BSAs. Plugins for the other games that also load BSAs are now correctly detected as such.
• Depending on the plugins involved, sorting could produce a different load order every time it was run. Sorting now produces unchanging load orders, using existing load order position where there is no reason to move a plugin.

Additions

• Danish and Korean translations.
• If LOOT can’t detect any installed games, it now launches to the settings dialog, where the game settings can be edited to allow a game to be detected.
• A Copy Content item in the main menu, to copy the plugin list and all information it contains to the clipboard as YAML-formatted text.
• A Refresh Content item in the main menu, which re-scans plugin headers and updates LOOT’s content.
• LOOT is now built with High DPI display support.
• Masterlist updates can now be performed independently of sorting.
• A First-Time Tips dialog will be displayed on the first run of any particular version of LOOT.
• Attempting to close LOOT with an unapplied sorted load order or an open plugin editor will trigger a confirmation dialog.
• Support for GitHub Flavored Markdown in messages, minus features specific to the GitHub site, such as @mentions and emoji.
• Support for message content substitution metadata syntax in the masterlist.
• Display of LOOT’s build revision has been added to the About dialog.
• Plugin location metadata can now be added through the user interface.
• A content filter, which hides plugins that don’t have the filter text present in their filenames, versions, CRCs, Bash Tags or messages.

Changes

• New single-window HTML5-based interface and a new icon, based on Google’s Material Design.
• LOOT now parses the masterlist and plugin headers on startup, and the resulting content is displayed with the plugins in their current load order.
• Each plugin now has its own editor, and multiple editors can be opened at once.
• Drag ‘n’ drop of plugins from the sidebar into metadata editor tables no longer requires the conflicts filter to be enabled.
• CRCs are calculated during conflict filtering or sorting, so are not displayed until either process has been performed.
• The View Debug Log menu item has been replaced with a Open Debug Log Location menu item to make it easier to share the file itself.
• Debug logging control has been simplified to enable/disable, replacing the Debug Verbosity setting with an Enable Debug Logging toggle.
• Changes to game settings now take immediate effect.
• Masterlist updating now exits earlier if the masterlist is already up-to-date.
• Masterlist revisions are now displayed using the shortest unique substring that is at least 7 characters long.
• Making edits to plugin metadata before applying a calculated load order no longer causes LOOT to recalculate the load order. Instead, the displayed load order is applied, and the metadata edits will be applied the next time sorting is performed.
• All references to UDRs have been replaced by the more technically-correct Deleted References term.
• The Hide inactive plugin messages filter has been replaced by a Hide inactive plugins filter.
• Copied metadata is now wrapped in BBCode
  Показать скрытое содержание

  [code]...[/code]
  tags for easier pasting into forum posts.
• The Summary and General Messages cards have been combined into a General Information card.
• Sorting performance improvements.
• Updated Boost (1.58.0), libgit2 (0.22.2) and libloadorder dependencies.

Removals

• Messages with multiple language strings can no longer be created through the user interface. User-added multiple-language messages will be converted to single-language strings if their plugin’s editor is opened then closed using the OK button.
• The Copy Name menu item has been removed, as plugin names can now be selected and copied using Ctrl-C.
• As LOOT no longer generates reports, it doesn’t save them either.

API

• Fixed some documentation errors.
• Fixed the API creating a LOOT folder when being initialised.
• Fixed false successes for loot_create_db() when invalid paths were supplied.
• Fixed loot_load_lists() ignoring userlist paths, and accepting invalid paths.
• Fixed loot_eval_lists() accepting invalid language codes.
• Fixed loot_get_dirty_info() never outputting the loot_needs_cleaning_no code.
• Fixed loot_write_minimal_list() causing a crash when passed an invalid output path.
• Added load order sorting and application functions.
• Added masterlist update and revision checking functions.
• Added support for native Linux builds.
• Added unit testing of API functions to help ensure correctness and consistency of functionality.
• Added loot_get_build_id(), which outputs the shortened revision ID that the API was built from.

0.6.1 — 22 December 2014

• Fixed: Default Nehrim registry entry path.
• Fixed: Messages in the wrong language being selected.
• Fixed: LOOT windows opening off-screen if the screen area had been changed since last run.
• Fixed: Read-only .git folders preventing repository deletion.
• Fixed: Unnecessary plugins in cyclic dependency error messages.
• Fixed: Bash Tag suggestions displaying incorrectly.
• Fixed: The current game can no longer be deleted from the settings window.
• Fixed: Plugin metadata being lost when the settings window was exited with the «OK» button, leading to possible condition evaluation issues.
• Fixed: A blank report bug when running on systems which don’t have Internet Explorer 11 installed.
• Fixed: Reports appearing empty of all content when no global messages are to be displayed.
• Changed: Updated Boost (1.57.0), libgit2 (0.21.3), wxWidgets (3.0.2) and libloadorder (6.0.3) dependencies. This includes a critical security vulnerability fix in libgit2.
• Changed: The game menu is now updated when the settings window is exited with the «OK» button.
• Changed: Updated Russian translation.
• Changed: Updated Brazilian Portuguese translation.
• Added: German translation.
• Added: The Large Address Aware flag to the LOOT executable.

0.6.0 — 05 July 2014

Fixes

• The uninstaller not removing the Git repositories used to update the masterlists.
• Miscellaneous crashes due to uncaught exceptions.
• Plugin priorities are now temporarily «inherited» during sorting so that a plugin with a low priority that is made via metadata to load after a plugin with a high priority doesn’t cause other plugins with lower priorities to be positioned incorrectly.
• The default language is now correctly set to English.
• Defaults for the online masterlist repository used for Nehrim.
• Endless sorting loop that occurred if some user metadata was disabled.

Additions

• Display of masterlist revision date in reports.
• Report filter for inactive plugin messages.
• The number of dirty plugins, active plugins and plugins in total to the report summary.
• A find dialog to the report viewer, initiated using the Ctrl-F keyboard shortcut.
• LOOT’s windows now remember their last position and size.
• Command line parameter for selecting the game LOOT should run for.
• Finnish translation.

Removals

• Support for Windows XP.
• Support for loading BOSS masterlists using the API. This was a leftover from when LOOT was BOSSv3 and backwards compatibility was an issue.
• The ability to open reports in an external browser. This was necessitated by the changes to report generation.
• The MSVC 2013 redistributable requirement.
• The «None Specified» language option is no longer available: English is the new default.

Changes

• Unified and improved the metadata editors launched during and outside of sorting.
  • The metadata editor now resizes more appropriately.
  • The mid-sorting instance hides the requirement, incompatibility, Bash Tags, dirty info and message lists.
  • Both instances now have a conflict filter, priority display in their plugin list and drag ‘n’ drop from the plugin list into whatever metadata lists are visible.
  • The mid-sorting instance also hides the load after entry edit button, and the button to add new entries (so drag ‘n’ drop is the only available method of adding entries).
  • The metadata editor now displays plugins with user edits using a tick beside their name, rather than bolding their name text.
  • Plugins that have been edited in the current instance have their list entry text bolded.
  • Checkboxes have been added to set whether or not a priority value is «global». The UI also now displays the priority value used in comparisons (ie. with the millions and higher digits omitted).
  • A right-click menu command for clearing all user-added metadata for all plugins has been added to the metadata editor.
• Missing master/requirement and incompatibility errors are downgraded to warnings if the plugin in question is inactive.
• Masterlist update errors have been made more user-friendly.
• If an error is encountered during masterlist update, LOOT will now silently delete the repository folder and attempt the update again. If it fails again, it will then report an error.
• Masterlist update now handles repository interaction a lot more like Git itself does, so should be less error-prone.
• Cyclic dependency error messages now detail the full cycle.
• LOOT’s report now uses a static HTML file and generates a javascript file that is dynamically loaded to contain the report data. This removes the PugiXML build dependency.
• Debug log message priorities adjusted so that medium verbosity includes more useful data.
• Updated dependencies: libgit2 (v0.21.0), wxWidgets (v3.0.1), libloadorder (latest), libespm (latest).

0.5.0 — 31 March 2014

• Initial release.