Finding a Broken Mod
Let the manager narrow down which mod crashes the game or causes a bug, a few launches at a time
Finding a Broken Mod
When the game crashes or something looks wrong and you don't know which mod is responsible, Find a broken mod works it out for you. Each round, the manager turns some of your mods off, you launch Deadlock and check, and your answer rules out a large share of the remaining mods. With 12 mods it takes at most 6 launches; with 100 mods, at most 9.
Nothing is deleted or downloaded again. Turning a mod off only moves its files aside, and when you finish, every mod goes back on in its original load order with the same variants selected.
Start a search
- Open Mods Library and turn on the mods you were using when the problem happened.
- Open the ⋮ menu at the top of the page and choose Find a broken mod. The first time, a short walkthrough explains how it works; you can open it again with How it works.
- Uncheck any mods you're sure are fine. They stay on during the search, and fewer mods means fewer launches. The dialog shows how many launches to expect.
- Choose Start.
You can also start from a crash: the Did Deadlock just crash? dialog has a Not sure which mod? Find it button, and the crash notification has Find the mod.
Maps and mods that replace core game files are left out and kept as they are, because they can't be switched on and off automatically. The dialog lists them.
Each round
A bar under the title bar guides you through the search:
- Launch Deadlock from the bar, or from Steam. The first round turns every mod you picked off, to rule out the game itself.
- Play until you'd normally see the problem, then close the game.
- Answer Is the problem still there? with Still broken, Works now, or Not sure if you couldn't check. Not sure counts as working, so the search keeps going.
If the crash check is on and Deadlock crashes, the manager answers Still broken for you. The crash check's own dialog doesn't appear while a search is running.
If you gave the wrong answer, Undo last answer (the arrow in the bar) sets the previous round up again.
The result
When the search ends, the manager shows one of three results:
- Found it: one mod causes the problem. Check for an update or report it to the author; mods often break after a Deadlock patch.
- These mods break together: each mod works alone, but the problem appears when they're all on. Try changing their order in Change Mods Order, or keep only one of them.
- Your mods aren't the cause: the problem happened with every tested mod off. Look at the game files, your autoexec, or your launch options instead.
Choose Turn it off and restore the rest to keep the culprit disabled, or Restore everything to put every mod back as it was.
To end a search early, choose Stop in the bar. Your mods go back to how they were before you started.
If something gets in the way
The search is saved as you go, so it survives closing the manager or a crash. If the manager closed while it was switching mods, the bar shows Continue, or Put them back if it was restoring; choose it to finish the step.
If you turn a mod on or off by hand during a round, your answer wouldn't be reliable. The manager sets the round up again and asks you to launch once more.
Mods can't be switched while Deadlock is open, so close the game before you start a search or answer a round.
You can't switch profiles during a search, because the mods are restored into the profile the search started in. Finish or stop the search first.
How it narrows down
The manager assumes that turning more mods on never fixes the problem. Each answer tells it whether the culprit is among the mods that were on, so the list of suspects shrinks every round. When two mods only break the game together, it finds the first, keeps it on, and searches for its partner.