Really Weird New Vegas Bug

[Morty]

Like it says in the title: I ran across a bizarre bug in Fallout: New Vegas. The Escape menu flat-out stopped working. The buttons are dimmed, and they light up momentarily when I click, but they don't respond. The only thing that works is the button for the Mod Configuration Menu. At first I thought the menu mod is to blame, but when I re-installed it, nothing changed. Has anyone heard of anything like that?

[Maxios]

Something like that happened to me once in Fallout 3, but with more issues (such as being unable to jump or draw my weapon). I solved it by rebooting my PC. Maybe it'll work for you too?

[Sharoth]

when in doubt, reboot. Fallout - New Vegas is VERY, VERY buggy. The only reason why I still play it is because it is such a good game. OTOH it would not be Fallout - New Vegas if it did not make you want to throw your controller against the wall three times a day in frustration because of all the bugs.

[Morty]

The bug has persisted for a week now. I suppose I could try to re-install it, although I'm not sure how it would affect the mods I have installed.

[AdmiralCheez]

If you have New Vegas installed through Steam, you could try verifying the game cache. That sometimes helps with bugs. It's worked for me a few times in other games.

Actually, I never finished New Vegas because of the bugs. It got to the point where every few minutes, it would crash and lock up the entire computer; the only way to fix it was to hit the power switch. It was a shame, too, because when it wasn't crashing, I was enjoying it. I just didn't want to risk any permanent damage to my system from hard-booting it every few minutes.

[Morty]

Verifying the cache did nothing, I'm afraid. I looked it up and apparently people had problems with the escape menu that were caused by the Project Nevada mod, and fixed them by re-installing it. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me either.

[AdmiralCheez]

Hmm... Have you tried playing around with the mod load order? Maybe parts of one mod are overwriting/interfering with another and causing this? If you don't already have it, BOSS (http://boss-developers.github.io/) can help sort your mods and look for conflicts. Other than that, I can't think of much else to try. Also, is it just on this save, or does it happen when starting a new game too? If it's all fine on a fresh character, you might just have a corrupted save file.

Last resort would be to back up all saves, write down the mods, what the current load order is, and then just re-install the whole thing. That may or may not help depending on what the actual issue is though, so no guarantees.

[Morty]

Interestingly enough, when I loaded a save I'd made quite a while ago, the escape menu worked properly. No idea why that would be. BOSS doesn't seem to show any conflicts.

[Gnoman]

It is possible that Steam updated/verified it and overwrote some mod files. I know my body replacer was causing very bad problems last time I picked the game back up because the textures and config had been zapped.

[Triaxx]

When you verify your cache, it's usually best to remove all your mods first. And yes. I'm aware that's an absolute pain. Though perhaps not as much for other people as it is for me due to sheer number of mods.

As much as I love New Vegas, I'm more surprised when bugs don't happen. Of course it's all worth it.

[AdmiralCheez]

I had no idea that verifying the cache could mess with mods, so I apologize if my earlier advice caused any problems. I've done it several times on other games, and never had any issues. It actually helped solve a few, in fact.

[Morty]

It doesn't look like verifying my cache made anything worse, so no worried here. I suppose I could remove all the mods and try again. Again, what puzzles me is that when I load an earlier save - made way back when I'd just got to Primm - the escape menu works properly. And I was running all the same mods back then.

[Choyrt]

There are a lot of entertaining bugs. These are two of my favorites:

http://assets.vg247.com/current//2010/10/falloutdog.jpg

FREEEEAAAAAKY


And of course this one:

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/vodQHlOB_GI/hqdefault.jpg

That second one was super freaky. The body of an NPC would suddenly stand as if in a model editor and the GIBLETS would walk out of it, in their proper places, and walk around and talk. I saw it in Fallout 3, but it was so crazy I had to share.

[Morty]

Reinstalling New Vegas and reactivating all the mods didn't fix the bug. I'm officially at a loss. Looks like I might have to struggle with it until I finish the game. :smallannoyed:

[Keris]

You could try disabling all mods (or at least all the mods that your character isn't directly dependant on, like if you're using a new race), loading up your bugged save and seeing if you can use the menu then. If so, make a new save, then load up all your mods again.

Another long shot is throwing EnablePlayerControls into the console. I don't think DisablePlayerControls can usually take away the Esc menu, but it can't hurt to try it.

[Triaxx]

Do you have Unified Hud installed? If so, try getting another copy, and making sure it's the next to last thing you install. (Weapon Mod Menu always comes last.)

Then rebuild your Merge/Bashed Patch.

[Morty]

No, I do not have this mod installed. I'm not sure what you mean by Merge/Bashed Patch either.

[GungHo]

He means WyreBash. A lot of folks who use a lot of mods build "bashed" mod patches to help make them play together a little more nicely. If you're not using a lot of mods or you're not using mods that do a lot of the same thing, you're probably okay not fiddling with WyreBash. But, if you are using a lot of mods that do the same kind of things (such as distributing equipment in leveled lists), you might want to consider creating a bashed patch for them.

[Lighturtle]

My favorite bug was when the ending rolled out, then as the slides were playing a dude in enclave armor started moonwalking around the camera while staring at it the whole time.

[Mando Knight]

He means WyreBash. A lot of folks who use a lot of mods build "bashed" mod patches to help make them play together a little more nicely. If you're not using a lot of mods or you're not using mods that do a lot of the same thing, you're probably okay not fiddling with WyreBash. But, if you are using a lot of mods that do the same kind of things (such as distributing equipment in leveled lists), you might want to consider creating a bashed patch for them.

In New Vegas, I've mostly seen NVEdit to be the preferred merge/bash patch creator... or at least the one most commonly cited.

[Triaxx]

FNVEdit has a couple of other tricks up it's sleeve. I use it to diagnose certain load order issues. For example, when the game won't load because of a missing master, FNVEdit will do the same, but it'll actually tell you what master is missing and for what mod. I had a problem when I removed World of Pain and had missed the WMX patch for it. FNV wouldn't start and I couldn't see what I'd missed, but FNV pointed it out no problem.

Plus it has the ability to clean the mods you have installed, removing identical to master records, (so if two mods overwrite something and one doesn't actually change it but comes lower in the order, it'll overwrite whatever the other change was.), or undeleting and disabling references, which is the preferred method for removing objects, instead of deleting them.