With most populated servers nowadays being modded, I’ve tried getting the mods to be able to join some of them.
However, even in spite of the fact that these mods CLEARLY WORK (else no one would be able to join the servers), whenever I install the mods for a server, even with a blank slate with all associated files cleaned out or even with a fresh reinstall of the game, I get stuck in an infinite loading screen after the intro cinematic plays. In fact, I can’t even tab into the game TO watch (or skip) the cinematic. It plays in the background, but it has me stuck on my desktop as though it weren’t open.
Worse still, this issue happens even if the mods aren’t enabled. Just downloading the mod files is enough to cause my game to become permanently unresponsive, and the only fix thus far is uninstalling the mods again.
Basically, I can’t have more than like five mods installed. Anything more and inevitably something breaks and my game doesn’t load. Even if I download ONLY the mods for one specific server (which again, are obviously functional or else the server would not have players) the game will become unresponsive.
This is just based on my personal experience, so take it with a grain of salt, but what works for me is to make sure that I load the mods in the exact same order the server does, and only have those mods installed.
If you want to play on different servers that have different mods installed this could become a pain in the neck, constantly swapping mods in and out. But when I have gotten stuck in an endless loop like yours, the only thing that has worked for me is to make sure that I exactly match the mods for that server, and only those mods.
Like you said, simply having other mods installed can lead to this problem, so for me installing & uninstalling mods as needed has been the only thing that worked for me.
Hopefully someone else has insight into a better solution, this is just what I ended up doing.
The problem is that the game crashes if I even install them in the first place. As far as I know the order in the launcher doesn’t matter, but I can’t order them in game because it locks up even if the installed mods aren’t active.
I’ll try to order and activate them in the launcher to see if that works, but I’m not going to hedge my bets. Thank you for the help though!
Edit: Meticulously ordered every mod for one of the servers I’m trying to join in the launcher. Double checked they were correct. Game is still stuck in infinite loading screen. I honestly have no idea what’s happening at this point.
a) Place shortcut to the modlist.txt file on my Desktop;
b) Place copies of whatever the modlists of the servers I want to play on the Desktop as well;
c) When finished playing on one server, wait for game to completely wind down on Server A and copy/paste from the respective modlist txt file to your modlist.txt file.
d) Play game
You need to obviously have all mods for all of the different servers subscribed to and up to date.
Here’s what I would try (if it was me, I would be very picky about doing these steps exactly as listed, skipping any of them could cause you to overlook something).
Make sure you’re not in the game, shut it down before beginning.
Delete your modlist.txt file.
If you’re on Steam, unsubscribe to all mods (or if you’re not on Steam uninstall them using whatever installer you’ve used).
Verify/reinstall
See if you can play using the local/solo option.
See if you can log into an unmodded server, preferably an official one.
Install one mod, test if you can play using the local/solo option.
7a) repeat with your next mod.
7b) Keep doing this, one at a time, until you have exactly the mods you want to have installed, in exactly the order you want them.
Try logging into the server that is your goal.
Somewhere in that process you should either be able to identify something that’s causing your problem, or by removing and cleaning everything up it may let you return to playing as normal.
I create a .bat script for each server, that renames the corresponding file to modlist.txt, overriding the current one → the game will then load that list on startup, I only have to make a shortcut for each script, and run that once, before launching the game.
[the code for this script is really simple:
“copy server.txt modlist.txt” ]
As for the game taking a while to close down, you can just kill it in task manager to save A LOT of time. The client has some kind of leak when playing with mods.
@Dinoman9877
There is no issue with having a billion mods installed for different servers per se, since you only load the ones you actually use. But of course if you have more mods than your pc can handle (or bad ones) it can take forever or not even load at all. Also a corrupted modlist.txt file will make the game fail to start. You can always delete that file (in …\ConanSandbox\Mods) and let the game recreate it on next startup.
After a bit more work. The game finally, FINALLY loaded in with the mods needed to get into a server.
After twenty minutes of just letting it sit in the background to load. I don’t even need to wait 20 minutes for Rimworld to load even when I drown it in mods. That’s insanity.
If this is gonna be a consistent thing for load times whenever I start the game, I dunno about playing in a server long term. At any rate, thank you all so much for the help in getting this working!
The size and quality of the mods and the performance of your PC all matter. I hope you have the game installed on a SSD for starters, but the CPU/RAM matters a LOT too (for decompression once the data has been read from the disk).
Out of curiosity, could you share the modlist for that server? I would guess it’s massive and filled with non-essential and non optimized things (not your fault, it’s the server admins’ job)
I’ve tried joining the biggest three so far just cuz they’re the most populated; Chains of Hyboria, Mortal Memories, and The Veil of Souls (not sure if I’d even play on them, “certain” aspects of these servers aren’t for me but seems all the populated unofficial ones lean that way)
Veil of Souls has something like 70 mods, Chains of Hyboria has 50. The only one I can actually load into a tthis point is Mortal Memories. The game is finally actually loading fine even with a large number of mods installed, now the new issue is trying to connect to server with large amounts of mods is causing the connection to time out before I can even join.
Yeaaa no wonder then. Those mod lists are almost the size of the game itself, and not always compressed/optimized properly.
I have not played there so can’t say how good or bad those servers are but with such an insane number of mods it will take a LONG time to load, and the performance will be terrible (hopefully they do turn based combat). Even when playing on a server with a very reasonable amount like TW, you’re adding a few mins to initial load time for the client, and it uses quite a bit more RAM too.
Yikes! Yeah, in agreement with @biglouis - 70, or even 50 mods is a huge set of mods. You’d better have a high-end PC, max RAM, max wired-internet (unless your wireless is blindingly fast). Just looking at the VEILED Server Mods list shows why you’re taking so long to get into game - if you’re using all those (fyi the IMMERSE RP : Buildings & Placeables Decor mod by TeCh has not been updated in a while and will cause Fatal crashes)
Good luck. As long as you can play, however long it’s taking, I guess that’s worth it.
Well after some further fiddling, the ultimate answer is…I simply am not allowed to join modded servers.
I literally cannot join the 50+ mod servers, the connection just refuses to establish. I thought this might have had something to do with being on an external SSD, and the external has a habit of randomly disconnecting in the middle of playing anyway, so I tried installing on the internal SSD.
That didn’t work either; the internal SSD is only 250 GB, and a third of that is locked up in holding the Windows files, and the game is 100 GB by itself. There’s not enough space for the game and getting workshop files installed and I quite simply don’t have the know how or patience for getting Windows moved to my hard drive.
Ultimately it might not be a bad thing that I can’t play on these mod bloated servers anyway, but I don’t get a chance to figure that out for myself.
I appreciate everyone’s attempts to help at least, but it seems I’m relegated to low pop unmodded servers or singleplayer until I get a new machine with enough storage space on an SSD.
Me = on a small, old laptop with 230GB HD with 7.89 GB usable RAM and running with 25 mods. Works mainly with graphics on medium. UK servers and fast wired connection. Occasional crashes, but not enough to make unplayable.
(certainly wish I had my ol’ pc, but that’s what happens if you do not have complete surge protection and there be bolts from the sky…) lol - insure your PCs peeps, insure!
Depending on the manufacture, even 1 TB ssd’s aren’t too expensive now.
I understand the setbacks when trying to upgrade when money is tight and you have bills/debts that have to be paid.
