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I have created a comprehensive SS2-Compatible config file for Classic Holstered Weapons (CHW)

spacefiddle

spacefiddle

Well-Known Member
Messages
691
Hello!
The original discovery of this issue, and solution, is buried in a post from somewhere back in 2019 or something.....
Here's the TL;DR:
if you use Classic Holstered Weapons, some SS2 NPCs will be walking around wearing TWO of their weapons.
I have gone through all three SS2 chapters and dug up the needed Form IDs to exclude all of them from CHW.

Edit the file
ClassicHolsteredWeaponsConfig.ini
that's found in your
F4SE/Plugins
folder.
If you've never edited it before, replace the entirety of the section labeled [ExcludedForms] with the text block I have attached.
(I have included the default info and examples, and improved the comments and explanations).
If you already have used this section, then you will know how to add these entries to it.

Cheers :)
Let me know if I missed any, and I will update this post.
MODS:
I think this is a good candidate for inclusion on the Wiki under Compatibility? I'd be happy to maintain it myself so it's up to date with all Weapons / NPCs that CHW should not process.

FEB 2026: I have deleted the old file and removed the spaces after the semicolon. Ugh. Sorry for that.
Just in case anyone else comes and finds this, the attached file below is now commented correctly.
 

Attachments

Last edited:
Update: well, nuts.
As suspected, NPC form exclusion does not work on Elias (it did not work on Jake either).
I have reached out to the CHW author, since NPC Exclude has never worked for anyone i've spoken with (therefore i doubt it's anything to do with SS2) whereas the weapon exclusion has always worked.

Lol, if all else fails and CHW never gets back to me, i suppose i could make a stupid patch that replaces Elias' generic hunting rifle with a unique copy, so it can be excluded... XD
 
Hi! My CHW was working just fine with SS2 (albeit with some doubling) for a while. Just in the past day or two it suddenly stopped working on just my player. I have been looking at every culprit. I had tried implementing your fixes and that's around when I noticed things were a problem. I've since reverted back to the original .ini but the issue persists, possibly requiring a new save file.

As a note, based on a log I read of CHW, it seems that lines you commented were done so incorrectly. If you place a space after the semicolon like you do, I believe that line isn't actually commented. All of the comments in the vanilla ini don't use spaces after their semi-colons, but yours do and in the log file I received it would tell me that those "commented out" exclusions were being applied.

Additionally, your example includes an improperly commented out line of how to exclude the player. Unfortunately, if the player is excluded at any point when CHW is first activated in a playthrough, they cannot be re-enabled. Updating the ini will not fix it. The player can only be included at the start of CHW becoming active. So when I copied your full text with it's comments, it broke things.

So! Lesson: don't put spaces after the semi-colon. Doing so stops the line from being a comment and causes it to be actually read in the ini.
 
AxeloftheKey said:
Hi! My CHW was working just fine with SS2 (albeit with some doubling) for a while. Just in the past day or two it suddenly stopped working on just my player. I have been looking at every culprit. I had tried implementing your fixes and that's around when I noticed things were a problem. I've since reverted back to the original .ini but the issue persists, possibly requiring a new save file.

As a note, based on a log I read of CHW, it seems that lines you commented were done so incorrectly. If you place a space after the semicolon like you do, I believe that line isn't actually commented. All of the comments in the vanilla ini don't use spaces after their semi-colons, but yours do and in the log file I received it would tell me that those "commented out" exclusions were being applied.

Additionally, your example includes an improperly commented out line of how to exclude the player. Unfortunately, if the player is excluded at any point when CHW is first activated in a playthrough, they cannot be re-enabled. Updating the ini will not fix it. The player can only be included at the start of CHW becoming active. So when I copied your full text with it's comments, it broke things.

So! Lesson: don't put spaces after the semi-colon. Doing so stops the line from being a comment and causes it to be actually read in the ini.
Click to expand...
so is there no way to fix this without starting a new save?
 
AxeloftheKey said:
Not sure. I just know that fixing it didn't make weapons visible on my PC in my save file at the time, but in a new save file it worked.
Click to expand...
thank you. Previously, no matter how many times we tested CHW, only the player was excluded and we couldn't figure out why, so we gave up on introducing it.
Thanks to you pointing out the error in the "commented out" I was able to fix it and can now install CHW again.

spacefiddle said:
Update: well, nuts.
As suspected, NPC form exclusion does not work on Elias (it did not work on Jake either).
I have reached out to the CHW author, since NPC Exclude has never worked for anyone i've spoken with (therefore i doubt it's anything to do with SS2) whereas the weapon exclusion has always worked.

Lol, if all else fails and CHW never gets back to me, i suppose i could make a stupid patch that replaces Elias' generic hunting rifle with a unique copy, so it can be excluded... XD
Click to expand...
I've done some testing on excluding NPC forms and would like to report on it. (I am using CHW version 1.06b.)
First, install CHW without applying any NPC exclusion settings, start the game, generate Elias with the console command "placeatme", and then save. This Elias is carrying two rifles.
Exit the game, enable the Elias exclusion settings, and then load the previous save. Yes, Elias still carries two rifles. However, if you type "placeatme" again to generate a second Elias, he will be carrying only one rifle. Yes, the exclusions worked for the newly created Elias.
Save in this state, comment out the exclusion settings, and then try loading. The first Elias is carrying two rifles, and the second Elias is carrying one rifle.
377160_44.jpg

Conclusion: NPC exclusion settings are baked into the save when they are placed in the game. If you want to exclude Elias from a game that already has CHW installed, you must do so before he appears in the game (maybe).
 
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seki5656 said:
thank you. Previously, no matter how many times we tested CHW, only the player was excluded and we couldn't figure out why, so we gave up on introducing it.
Thanks to you pointing out the error in the "commented out" I was able to fix it and can now install CHW again.


I've done some testing on excluding NPC forms and would like to report on it. (I am using CHW version 1.06b.)
First, install CHW without applying any NPC exclusion settings, start the game, generate Elias with the console command "placeatme", and then save. This Elias is carrying two rifles.
Exit the game, enable the Elias exclusion settings, and then load the previous save. Yes, Elias still carries two rifles. However, if you type "placeatme" again to generate a second Elias, he will be carrying only one rifle. Yes, the exclusions worked for the newly created Elias.
Save in this state, comment out the exclusion settings, and then try loading. The first Elias is carrying two rifles, and the second Elias is carrying one rifle.
View attachment 29137

Conclusion: NPC exclusion settings are baked into the save when they are placed in the game. If you want to exclude Elias from a game that already has CHW installed, you must do so before he appears in the game (maybe).
Click to expand...
Yeah I definitely think that this explains the player stuff too. Whatever script magic CHW is doing, it is baked onto the actual refid of the character instance when they are spawned. So you have to setup everything perfectly before starting a new game.
 
seki5656 said:
Conclusion: NPC exclusion settings are baked into the save when they are placed in the game. If you want to exclude Elias from a game that already has CHW installed, you must do so before he appears in the game (maybe).
Click to expand...
Well done, solid test and it looks like the flip side of the perma-exclusion we saw.
In the case of CHW, I believe what's going on is this (this is educated guesswork based on the nature of the errors seen, and the original issue CHW tackled):
  • If you want to see something on a character, it has to be anchored to something, of course
  • Previous games like FNV that showed a weapon had a designated "holster bone" on the player skeleton. This is what the weapon models would attach to and move with.
  • The FO4 player model has no holster bone. Ergo, early attempts to have a weapon model on the player were all kinds of janky shenanigans that just basically had a floating unattached weapon model following the player, or, less janky but clunk, you had to make "clothing item" dummy weapons to "wear" on an existing clothing slot.
  • CHW uses f4se to grab the player skeleton and designate a holster bone.
  • After the player was excluded, even installing a new custom mod-added player skeleton did not work, and I got the same error as with the vanilla skeleton when activating the positioner tool: "No valid holster bone selected."
  • Long story long,
  • It seems likely that when CHW runs and processes its .ini file, it decides then and there whether to "install" a holster bone or not, and if not, it seems to add "never touch this character" to the save file somehow, making it an exception in f4se plugins
  • The converse of this is what seki demonstrated, where it's likely that, for example, telling it to exclude after Elias already exists, fails because it has already added the holster bone, and the exclusion does not REMOVE AN EXISTING ONE.
  • Likewise removing the exclusion from the ini does not add one to characters it's "seen" before and been told to ignore already
  • I haven't really messed with switching the general NPC exclusion back and forth, but if you can, it's possibly because workshop NPCs, for example, are not truly persistent, and IIRC are destroyed every time you go away and recreated when you get near again.
The only unfortunate part about all this is that the CHW author seems long gone and so we cannot deliver this data to them. But it's been interesting to figure out 8)
 
Last edited:
spacefiddle said:
Well done, solid test and it looks like the flip side of the perma-exclusion we saw.
In the case of CHW, I believe what's going on is this (this is educated guesswork based on the nature of the errors seen, and the original issue CHW tackled):
  • If you want to see something on a character, it has to be anchored to something, of course
  • Previous games like FNV that showed a weapon had a designated "holster bone" on the player skeleton. This is what the weapon models would attach to and move with.
  • The FO4 player model has no holster bone. Ergo, early attempts to have a weapon model on the player were all kinds of janky shenanigans that just basically had a floating unattached weapon model following the player, or, less janky but clunk, you had to make "clothing item" dummy weapons to "wear" on an existing clothing slot.
  • CHW uses f4se to grab the player skeleton and designate a holster bone.
  • After the player was excluded, even installing a new custom mod-added player skeleton did not work, and I got the same error as with the vanilla skeleton when activating the positioner tool: "No valid holster bone selected."
  • Long story long,
  • It seems likely that when CHW runs and processes its .ini file, it decides then and there whether to "install" a holster bone or not, and if not, it seems to add "never touch this skeleton" to the save file somehow, making it an exception in f4se plugins
  • The converse of this is what seki demonstrated, where it's likely that, for example, telling it to exclude after Elias already exists, fails because it has already added the holster bone, and the exclusion does not REMOVE AN EXISTING ONE.
  • Likewise removing the exclusion from the ini does not add one to skeletons it's "seen" before and been told to ignore already
  • I haven't really messed with switching the general NPC exclusion back and forth, but if you can, it's possibly because workshop NPCs, for example, are not truly persistent, and IIRC are destroyed every time you go away and recreated when you get near again.
The only unfortunate part about all this is that the CHW author seems long gone and so we cannot deliver this data to them. But it's been interesting to figure out 8)
Click to expand...
Maybe the Fallout 4 New Vegas team, slowly working on the single mod I want the most, will one day revisit this and we can tell them about this if they don't already know. XD
 
Now that I understand that CHW's exclusion settings are irreversible and difficult to handle, I've changed my way of thinking.
Using Outfit Studio, I removed the rifle built into Elias' clothing file (Meshes\SS2C2\Clothes\EliasThompson\EliasM.nif) and placed it as a loose file.
The result is the center part of the image below. And on the right side of the image is Elias with CHW applied.
SS2_CHW_patchTest (2).jpg

Since the rifle has simply been removed, the belt looks a little...just a little unnatural, but I guess it's better than carrying two rifles or being permanently excluded from CHW. Since it only involves replacing the clothing mesh file, it seems like a safe solution.

It's a very simple process, but I'll share the edited file with you, so please give it a try if you're interested.
 

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Last edited:
seki5656 said:
Now that I understand that CHW's exclusion settings are irreversible and difficult to handle, I've changed my way of thinking.
Using Outfit Studio, I removed the rifle built into Elias' clothing file (Meshes\SS2C2\Clothes\EliasThompson\EliasM.nif) and placed it as a loose file.
The result is the center part of the image below. And on the right side of the image is Elias with CHW applied.
View attachment 29145

Since the rifle has simply been removed, the belt looks a little...just a little unnatural, but I guess it's better than carrying two rifles or being permanently excluded from CHW. Since it only involves replacing the clothing mesh file, it seems like a safe solution.

It's a very simple process, but I'll share the edited file with you, so please give it a try if you're interested.
Click to expand...
This will sound dumb but how do you activate the mod you gave, just install through mo2?
 
So, a new mod that allows you to display equipped items has been released. The creator of CHW also recommends switching to it.
However, as previously mentioned, there is a possibility that some CHW settings are baked into the save data, so I am hesitant to uninstall CHW while using existing save data.
 
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