So after modding RDR2 for about five months (I first started modding it in early August 2023), it has now come to my attention that modding essentially breaks the game engine's ability to properly spawn in NPCs, wildlife, and even trains, in the way the game was intended. Trains rarely if ever spawn in, and if they do, NPCs will be nearly or completely absent from riding as passengers on the train, and the armed guard will be gone who usually stands at the back end of the caboose (only the engineer will be driving the train, but no one else will be present). NPCs will also essentially never be found riding as passengers in stagecoaches or in the back of wagons or riding shotgun next to the driver (only the driver will spawn in). In general, there will be less NPCs seen standing or sitting at train stops like Emerald Station or Wallace Station, or at various locations throughout the world. Further, wildlife is drastically reduced, with only a few birds and deer and whatnot scattered sparsely throughout the surrounding area, perhaps at about a 20 percent (or less) amount of the densely populated wildlife that is typically found in the vanilla game.

 

The only way to fix these issues is seemingly to uninstall most if not all mods to put less strain on the game engine and allow it to render in NPCs, trains, and wildlife correctly. I have had numerous mods installed from both rdr2mods as well as nexusmods, from modded quarter horse breeds/coats, to environment texture overhaul/upscales, to the Arthur Morgan Upscale Project, 4K Story and Side Characters, realistic gun metals and wickedhorseman's Firearm Cosmetics, euphoria ragdoll mods such as C.E.R.R, A.E.M and W.E.R.O, as well as PDO and fixes to decrease ped accuracy, and several others. All the mods I use regularly only require lml, scripthook and dinput8.dll, and none require version.dll or any online content unlocker, but it doesn't seem to make a difference either way - more than just a couple mods being installed at once still breaks the open world's NPCs, trains, and wildlife from spawning properly. I have had to remove almost all my horse mods, gun mods, texture mods, and combat mods like PDO in order to get the open world populated correctly again. Basically I have next to no mods that I downloaded that I can use at this point. This comes as quite a huge letdown for me, as I was really enjoying getting into modding the game how I wanted it to be. But diminishing the open world into a mere shell of what it is supposed to be is simply too immersion breaking for me to be able to ignore.

 

I don't know why more people aren't talking about this, because it is a huge problem in my eyes, but I've basically found no information about this anywhere. Who out there that is into RDR2 modding has noticed these issues? Is there any solution to this that anyone knows of? I really don't want to have to delete all my mods, but at this point, it looks like that's the only way I can get the full intended single player experience of the game without watering down the open world and sacrificing immersion.

Edited April 23, 20251 yr by Dagger323

Made a little video comparison for anyone interested

RDR2 Modding || NPC / Ambience spawning issue

Once again, though, I must reiterate to others what I've said before about testing for TRAINS, not just peds and wildlife. It seems many newcomers to this thread are focusing too heavily on everything else and not troubleshooting the train spawning nearly enough, particularly in the manner that I clearly laid out a couple pages back in this thread. Train spawning breaks quicker than other spawning does and must be tested the most thoroughly out of everything. I encourage people to go back and read what I've said about train spawns previously before assuming their game is fixed or in an acceptable state just because they're seeing mostly normal amounts of peds and animals.

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, 20241 yr by vincemeister55

Okay, here's my take on compressing WhyEm DLC textures. Also, I re-made install.xml with few files that could be replaced instead of streaming them.

UPDATE:

Since I got explicit prohibition to share my edit from WhyEm, I removed download link. It is what it is, I guess.

I attaching to this message two install.xml files with names for obvious variant you use. But other than that I could not help, sorry.

install.xml_rdo install.xml_standard

Edited October 24, 20241 yr by werwolf969

4 hours ago, werwolf969 said:

Well, I guess that now I can only share the install.xml files with you. I attached them to the initial message with an edit. But, since WhyEm prohibits sharing my edits, the download link for the archive is no longer available.

 

Im sorry but, Im a lawyer, WhyEm has no authority to tell you that you can or cannot share something that he has no rights to. His pack contains plenty of stuff made by Rockstar, in fact; after further inspection, every single model in "his" pack was made by Rockstar, he just did some editing and is now claiming rights to stolen property. Thats like stealing someones car, painting it and saying it's yours now. That's not how that works. Did he ask Rockstar if he can edit or share these files? I dont think so.

 

RDR 2 is not like Skyrim where modding is "allowed" by the creator company. Every single mod made for this game can be taken down by Rockstar at any time they wish. WhyEm is the same as any other modder here(except script mods) and "his" files or rather, Rockstars files, are not free game but are shared until someone gets a cease and desist or a lawsuit from Rockstar only.

 

The fact that you edited (compressed) those files is the same as what he did to Rockstars files, in fact; what he did is much much worse. He basically stole from Rockstar, made some edits and is presenting those files as if he created them from 0 and distributing them under false pretenses as if they were made by himself. WhyEM is just a power tripper and you definitely shouldnt listen to someone like that. There are no permissions to be given by someone who doesnt have any rights to those files since they were obtained in bad faith.

Edited October 24, 20241 yr by HelloImCrimson

16 minutes ago, werwolf969 said:

Guys, with all respects, let's not divert this topic to a discussion about the decisions of mod authors. On the Nexus page, there is a very clear paragraph about sharing edited WhyEm DLC files and there is a prohibition to do so without the author's permission. I asked for permission - I didn't get any - so I removed the link from that post. This is how it works in any modding community: honesty, respect for author work and trust between community members.

 

On our topic, I still haven't found a way to split and load texture dictionaries properly to get them within the possible size limit. If anyone knows where to find information about how the game interacts with texture dictionaries and how and where they are mapped in game config files for different types of textures, please let me know. 

 

 

 

Im just telling you how it actually works, it's your choice to do whatever you want. Nexus rules dont apply to other sites, I don't know why you think they're relevant here. And it's a bit bold to say "honesty, respect for author work and trust between community members."; when WhyEm is dishonest, has no respect for others and is obsessive with anyone that even remotely touches "his" mod which arent really his in the first place.

 

No more off topic from me, you guys wanna be dominated by some low life, that's your choice.

On 11/7/2024 at 10:52 PM, Edegon said:

Anyway I'm just going to continue as I did until now since this thread is too long and, while it's good for discussion, it's very bad to find the solutions and all the important stuff (like that script you mentioned). (Also the file in the link has been deleted).

I think someone should make a separate thing with all the important info and resources like the scripts, so everyone can find it easy and the thread doesn't fill up with anymore questions that already have a (buried) answer.

I repeat that we need to make a separate thing (or, if it can be done here, a pinned comment) with all the findinings and fixes/workarounds that have been found and the resources like the scripts. This would:

• Make every important information and resource easily accessible, this would in turn:
• Stop the thread being filled with "dumb" questions like "does this mod work?" or "how do I do this thing that has already been explained about a few hundreds of times but that I didn't read because rightfully I don't want to spend hours reading a thread searching for the answer?".
• Make the whole problem and workarounds more easily sharable (on top of accessible) so that it could become more noticed and known, in turn the modders would probably start paying attention to this and stop using streaming so much, but most importantly it increases the chances that a person that is able and willing fix this problem stumbles upon it, because no sane person would decide to read this whole thread just because.

In short: the thread has become too long, so if someone stumbles upon it it's not going to read it unless they have a lot of free time and interest, this also causes the thread to get filled with questions that don't help the discussion. I think we need some sort of board with a summary and the resources so that it's easier for everyone to get informed and involved, the discussion can continue and possibly a solution gets finally found.

I don't know how to do this and don't even have the knowledge to make the summary, not to mention I don't have the time that it would require me to do it by myself. I think it needs to be created in group, maybe by communicating on Discord (of course the main discussion about this topic will be kept here on this thread available to everyone).

The people that seemed to me the most knowledgeable in this thread are: @Dagger323, @Cratthorax, @HarrietOrtega, @riley5737, @Gunter Severloh, @kaozzz777, @RLTYProds, @Chirag3004, @black0cs, @vincemeister55 and @werwolf969. DominatorGT would be nice to have too.
I offer myself to help doing this as well if I can.

Hey lovely people,

 

I wanted to shill my video on the topic here, hope its OK. I offer up a very good way of measuring the level if ''fuckiness'' your game is at currently with mods.

Please watch it on 1.5 or 1.75 speed if you are interested in the topic because its incredibly BORING! you have been warned.

Next part will be a modding guide for beginners and not-so beginners

 

 

 

Unfortunately it seems that a lot of people are falling for the misinformation being spread by the "RDR2 Spawn Fix" mod. This is not a viable solution to the spawning issue. Since the mod author has been consistently deleting comments that are meant to inform the public about the issues this mod creates, misinformation like this starts spreading wildly.

 

There have been a few of us that have proven to syyyke that his mod does indeed break many aspects of the game. What this mod does is give you the visual satisfaction of seeing chickens and passengers. This does not fix the inherent issue that creates spawning issues, which is the utilization of incorrect/improper texture compression formats. We have tested this and know its the case because you can take mods such as WhyEm's DLC or EEE, properly compress their textures, and then have a perfectly working game.

 

If you are forcing low priority spawns to become a higher priority, this does not change the fact that the engine is still starved for resources. If the game does not have enough resources and you are forcing these spawns to happen, it's going to take resources from other aspects of this game. This can result in massive amounts of culling, broken ped behavior, broken ambient spawns, broken random encounters, broken dialogue trees, and broken scene animations/vignettes. Actually, the problems this mod creates are so severe that most of it is easy to replicate.

 

You can't brute force spawns and not expect there to be any additional problems. The engine is preventing those spawns for a reason. What do you think is going to happen by forcing spawns that the game already had trouble handling? It's now going to have trouble handling a whole lot more.

 

Chuck's analogy is absolutely 100% correct. Do you think a room is clean if you sweep all the garbage under the table? Obviously not. And that is what this mod does.

 

There is absolutely ZERO evidence that the streaming method is what causes these issues. However, what there IS evidence of, is texture compression being a primary culprit.

 

Take a broken mod, change it's install.xml to use filereplacement - the mod is still broken.

Take that same mod, re-compress its textures - the mod is fixed. Whether you use streaming or file replacement.

TTO is a great example of this. It's a 20gb texture mod. Go ahead and use the streaming method, and I guarantee you will not have any issues. If you do have issues, its because of another mod. This is because the mod author actually compressed his textures (using BC7, which is not even the best compression format, but it still works because all of the textures are compressed.

 

Let's use this mod as an example. A 300mb hat retexture. This will almost always create spawning issues. Change it to utilize file replacement - spawns are still broken. If we properly compress both textures using basically ANY OTHER FORMAT (including BC7), the spawning issues disappear.

 

This is because during the time where most of these mods were first created, the spawning issue was not well known, so modders were using the fastest/easiest form of compression. No fault on the OG mod authors, as no one really knew anything.

 

Also, a gameconfig will NOT fix your issues. No matter what. Period. RDR2's gameconfig does not work the same way as GTA 5's. Actually, a majority of the values you can change in GTA 5 have zero affect on RDR2. You can raise resource pools all you want, but the issue will still ALWAYS be present.

Edited January 4, 20251 yr by deadwoodd

On 3/27/2025 at 2:11 AM, TheAlmightyZugs said:

Can confirm that this doesn't work through testing in terms of fixing the spawning issue. 
 

Trains spawn just fine for me and, like I said, I use several mods. Here's me in a train full of passengers and clearly using mods:

Edited April 1, 20251 yr by IWannaBangAnastasia