Made a plugin preset that totally borked VaM

[Metix]

Started having some very strange things happing in VaM a few days ago until I realized it had something to do with my personal plugin preset that I had recently added a few plugins to.

The behavior I was seeing, after loading this preset, was as follows: If I changed the appearance preset on a character, they would load in fine but if they moved at all there was a sort of ghost version of the previous appearance I was using when I loaded the plugins. The newly loaded appearance was completely static except their eyes and all of their hair, including eyelashes were somehow bound to this invisible ghost version of the previous appearance. Things got even more bizarre if I loaded a new scene. The skin of the character would be completely invisible, with only the hair and eyes visible. There was still a skeleton to interact with.

Anyhow, I've been a dev most of my life so I figured I'd do a solid QA on this plugin list. Went through each one, disabling them one by one and checking to see if the behavior stopped after removing a specific plugin. Maybe I could give a heads up to the author. Only problem was I had to relaunch VaM for each plugin attempt, since nothing I was able to do would clear the problem in-engine.

Well, I got through the entire list of plugins and the problem was still happening. Anyhow, all my search attempts came up blank on any issues like this. The only thing I can think of is that I saved this preset when VaM was in an unstable state or something, and the settings were somehow captured, bad enough to affect the entire application.

This isn't really a 'I need help with this now!' thing. I am not stuck. As long as I never load that preset (going to delete it right after this) everything works as expected.

Just thought I'd drop this here in case anyone might have some insight or if someone else happens to find themselves in a similar situation.

 

[Metix]

Soooo... Actually there is a bigger problem here. I might have been too optimistic.

Now, even after deleting the offending preset, whenever I load any plugin preset it loads all of the plugins from the offending one... which I deleted.

I've spent more time on this than I would like and am considering running a fresh download from the launcher. My concern now is about what stuff from my previous install should I be wary of copying over to the new install? I'm sure the addons folder should be fine, this seems to me like a custom settings issue, but I have loads of personal scenes, presets, WiP stuff, etc... I don't mind creating new plugin presets, but does anyone have an inkling of what might be actually happening here?

Thanks

 

[atani]

Does the problem only happen when you load plugin presets? What's in those presets anyway?
And what kind of session plugins do you use?

 

[Metix]

Does the problem only happen when you load plugin presets? What's in those presets anyway?
And what kind of session plugins do you use?

I ended up building a new VaM instance.

Most of the plugins in the preset I had been using with no problems for months. I had just duplicated the list and added a few new plugins to experiment with in the last couple of days.

Not sure what happened exactly to cause the issues I was having. I did notice I had loaded a plugin into a person preset that was meant to be used as a session plugin. It errored out, letting me know it should be in session, but I have found that sometimes when plugins fail they can break certain VaM systems requiring a hard reset. The only new plugins I had recently added were from a newish contributor called 14mhz. Mouth flutter, gens flutter, tongue collision, I believe.

In this case it seems to have completely broken the plugin preset system. I'm hesitant to try and isolate the plugin or reproduce the problem, but there's no way to know if it actually caused the problem I was having. There also might have been some conflicts between different plugins, creating an unstable state. It feels like the plugin preset itself caused the corruption.

Anyhow, I just wanted to document this strange state/behavior for my VaM instance. Maybe someone else will have a similar problem and be able to provide more insight.

 

[Metix]

Does the problem only happen when you load plugin presets? What's in those presets anyway?
And what kind of session plugins do you use?

Also, no changed were made to my session plugin list.

 

[atani]

I've rarely used plugin presets, so no weird experiences with those.
It doesn't make much sense though that the core VaM would break unless the plugins changed any core files, which normally don't. When considering no changed files, then also not using the preset would not show those problems, but they did anyway?
Btw, in vam_updater.exe there's a core check option. If you still have the old VaM around you could run it to see if the core files were corrupted.

Anyway, you have a new VaM and I guess you'll be moving your VARs from the old to the new (except the preset)? Let me know if the problem happens again.

 

[Metix]

Yeah, I'm all sorted now. I've now fully transferred everything important to the the new instance, so I'm in the clear now. I did run a Core Check on the old instance and it came up clean, so who knows?

A number of times I have seen some plugins go really bad if they break in certain ways and screw up the entire session, requiring a hard reset. The truth is that I might have been doing something that I didn't even realize I was doing, maybe setting defaults for something, who knows, that contributed to the problem.

For example, just the other night, even after a few years of tinkering with VaM, I found my camera could not move up or down at all. Had no idea what was going on, was throwing a fit trying to see if it was a new plugin or something. Then I found out about the hidden 'Vertical Lock' button that I must have accidentally clicked somehow.

Anyhow, thanks for your interest it trying to help out.

 

[Metix]

I've rarely used plugin presets, so no weird experiences with those.

So, aside from my problems, I'm surprised you don't use plugin presets. Do you have a different way of managing sets of plugins for different purposes? I've got presets for 'appearance' and passive behavior, and sets for more active stuff like gaze, moan, etc... and then lists for testing new setups, new plugins to experiment with and the like.

 

[atani]

If I'm using someone else's scene, I don't really add any plugins, let alone plugin presets. Sometimes I add Divining Rod or Naturalis if needed, that's just adding a plugin. If I'm making a completely new scene it's from scratch usually.
By presets for appearance, do you mean appearance presets of plugins that affect appearances? Like what?

 

[Metix]

Oh, all sorts of stuff. Mostly a collection of things that enhance visuals and/or immersion, at least for me. Things like Cloth Skin, and some of the CheesyFX suite to accompany it, AutoGenitals, RealFakeLabia, ThighCompression, EyelidBehavior, AutoPupil, SubsurfaceScattering... A list like this generally never interferes with someone else's scene, so no conflicts.

Then I have another list with plugins that might conflict, depending on the scene, but either can't store personalized settings or I use for certain features instead of very common plugins. Things like VamMoan, or RT_LipSync (which I prefer to VamMoan's autojaw).

And then other lists for learning how to work with new complex plugins. Set a base of plugins to work with and adjust as needed. I don't mind adding a specific plugin when necessary, but the 'favorites' system is super laggy loadtime for me as VaM reads through the 200GB of addons just to even see my favorites.

I dunno, there might be better ways of handling this stuff, but up until now the presets have been working great for uses.

 

[atani]

There was a issue with RT_lipsync I've seen several times, in which if you had local files of the plugin (not the VAR) it would freeze the person but you could still see the nodes of the person moving. I didn't read your description of the problem as this one, but maybe it could be anothet one not as common.
This may be the smoking gun.

 

[Metix]

Oh, interesting. That actually really closely describes the issue I was having. I've been using RT_LipSync for a while and have seen this before, so I must have recreated the conditions that can trigger the bug. One oddity about it was that the issue would occur only after changing character appearance, and then the nodes would move but the mesh wouldn't, except for the eyes and hair; But, if I changed appearance back to the original then everything worked like normal.

I'll do some digging about the bug. Maybe I could assist the author with at least some more info about it.

Thanks