Information of Service - Mods Conflict (Patreon)

This is more an informative post. 

I don't know how many people know what really a mod conflict is about, so...

This is Loot:

Load Order Optimisation Tool for Skyrim and other games.

If you played the game in the past, you know that you don't just download mods and drop them in the mod folder of that game, because if you do, the game becomes unstable. you use Loot, or Nexus manager, to tell the game what order you want it to load your mods.

For example, the Unofficial Skyrim Patch always goes on top, this way, if another mod inside the folder needs to override one file that's present in the patch, it will be able to do it without problems. What can happen if you don't take this step, is that one time you load the game and the patch modifications gets applied, the other time, the game loads the mod that has the same files inside and its modifications work. And the mod will not work correctly in the first case. Another example is textures. I can have two mods replacing the same textures in game, like one that replaces all the textures and one that replaces only the rocks texture, if the one that replaces them all loads before the other one, that way, all the textures will belong to the first mod the game loads, but the rocks one. 

Now you're thinking "good thing The Sims 4 doesn't have this stuff"... except it does...

A conflict between two mods is when they modify the same resource from the game:

I don't really know if the Sims, like Skyrim, loads mods the way it likes basing on how it feels that day. you're in fact causing a conflict every time you drop a mod in the folder that overrides a game resource, because the resource configuration file tells the game that the mod folder id an high priority folder and what's inside must override resources from the game. but that's all it tells the game. I don't know if there is a tool like Loot for the Sim able to generate a file to tell the game in what order you want it to load the files, or if the game would even support it, but if I put both files above in my mod folder, only the modifications in one of the two will get applied, because you can't partially override a file this way.

That's what a conflict is about and this is the way it makes the game unstable.

Now, we may not have Loot but we can have Coolspear's resource config and the overrides folder (needs registration). That would be a folder with an even higher priority, 

So, if you suspect a conflict between a mod and another, the fasted way to find out is... Put one of the two in the overrides folder. If the mod suddenly starts working, then you have a conflict. 

In such case, there is no need to do a 50/50 method, you can just start opening them up in Sims 4 Studio and look which ones have the same files inside.