Enabling "apply_dbmods 1" in Black Parade - what can break? - by Erwin_the_German
Erwin_the_German on 25/2/2026 at 04:01
Hi all,
I recently downloaded The Black Parade and wanted to keep the handy lantern mod that someone made a few years back. I have the full version of TFix and read that I'd need to set "apply_dbmods" to 1 in the fm.cfg file in order to get the lantern mod working.
However, I've read in a thread on Reddit that this is risky and that "certain things might break," but no specifics were offered. So, my question is: what breaks, exactly? Does anyone have experience with this firsthand? Secondly, is it easy enough to simply set the setting back to 0 in order to circumvent said issues? (even if that means I'd be missing out on my lovely lantern lol)
I've already made my way through a good bit of mission one, but I suppose I wouldn't be against downgrading to TFix lite in order to avoid any issues.
Thanks in advance for any insight you might offer!
voodoo47 on 25/2/2026 at 09:51
yes, I myself would like to see the certain things that are supposed to break. that said, pokemodding (gotta catch them all) indeed can cause odd behavior as way too many mechanics changing mods can interact with one another in unpredictable ways, or might make the visuals look inconsistent if too many texture packs are loaded.
either way, one mod is fine, and if you want to be on the safe side you can disable/pause all the integrated TFix mods in the modmanager, including the RESBASE - that will set the system into fan mission super-compatibility mode.
Erwin_the_German on 25/2/2026 at 12:53
Quote Posted by voodoo47
yes, I myself would like to see the certain things that are supposed to break. that said, pokemodding (gotta catch them all) indeed can cause odd behavior as way too many mechanics changing mods can interact with one another in unpredictable ways, or might make the visuals look inconsistent if too many texture packs are loaded.
either way, one mod is fine, and if you want to be on the safe side you can disable/pause all the integrated TFix mods in the modmanager, including the RESBASE - that will set the system into fan mission super-compatibility mode.
I've really only got the suite that comes with TFix - Carry Body, T2 Skies, Water, Textures, AI Meshes, Candles, EP, FMdml, and RESBASE.
voodoo47 on 25/2/2026 at 13:03
I don't think any of those could cause real issues, but something I have learned in this line of business is to never say 100%. would probably disable/pause water/skies, I'm guessing the fan mission has its own which probably are superior. textures and AIs should matter very little, candles and carrybody only activate for original missions, EP and RESBASE only replace vanilla lowres objects, very little could go wrong there.
but as mentioned, it's easy to disable/pause everything in the modmanager if you are feeling paranoid.
Erwin_the_German on 25/2/2026 at 14:19
Quote Posted by voodoo47
I don't think any of those could cause real issues, but something I have learned in this line of business is to never say 100%. would probably disable/pause water/skies, I'm guessing the fan mission has its own which probably are superior. textures and AIs should matter very little, candles and carrybody only activate for original missions, EP and RESBASE only replace vanilla lowres objects, very little could go wrong there.
but as mentioned, it's easy to disable/pause everything in the modmanager if you are feeling paranoid.
Got it. I'll take a wait and see approach for now. Thanks for the insight :)
Others are welcome to chime in as well!
HavvicGames on 27/2/2026 at 13:01
TBP ran out of archetype IDs and had to make heavy gamesys modifications that make DML mods risky. One example from development (though I'm unsure if this issue would exist in the released version) is that the Murus archetype is removed and it's ID reallocated to something else which caused some common DML mod (possibly one of the TFix ones, though I don't remember for sure) to break instances of that new archetype. Other types of mod are mostly ok.
voodoo47 on 27/2/2026 at 17:57
nope, all archetypes are targeted by a name. so if "Murus" does not exist, nothing will get applied.
HavvicGames on 27/2/2026 at 21:38
While this is the case for the TFix DMLs now, it wasn't at the time of TBPs release. The latest TFix version at the time was 1.27 (not b, or c), which had a completely unfingerprinted gamesys.dml that applied archetype props by ID rather than by name, including Murus (with ID -1517) which had frobbing disabled. So fresh tfix based installs nowadays would be fine, but when TBP released disabling DB mods was required and turning them back on would cause problems.
The general warning of "enabling dml mods on TBP can cause issues" still stands if they're ID targeted.
voodoo47 on 27/2/2026 at 22:02
well yes, I of course, am talking about the last TFix build - the moment a new build is out, anything older than that should be considered unsupported/not to be used anymore.
sure would have been nice if I were you know, notified about the potential issue at that time (especially because this is/was literally a 5 minute fix/change), but oh well. either way yeah, when in doubt, disable/pause all mods. zero chance of something unexpected happening always beats a non-zero chance.
