Vortex fails horribly with different drives on a system

[dooferorg]

For reasons of speed and storage I have a couple of Steam libraries on some drives other than C:

 

Vortex can't seem to handle this. The reason is the reliance on symlinks and while elevated permissions usually work to make a symlink across file systems, Vortex fails at it. It'll say the mod is install when in fact it isn't. If I run Vortex as Administrator (despite the patronizing warning) I got it to work, at least until the most recent update when it says it no longer supports making symlinks across file systems. Nor apparently any other deployment method.. it just clutches its pearls and refuses to do anything useful.

 

I tried make a mod staging folder on the same drive as the steam library for the game in question (X4). That also seems to be no good.

 

So, I'll just download the mod zips manually and extract them to the mods folder. It'll be a lot easier than fighting with this mess of a program.

 

Kind of a pity since the nexus mods thing used to be good way back when I was doing a lot of Skyrim mods but it seems they're going for style over substance for this.

 

PS: Before anyone asks, yes, I'm a crunchy old programmer of many years and bad programs annoy me.

[rmm200]

Well lets see.

My first commercial programming job was in 1963, working for the MIT Civil Engineering department as a student.

I have eight or so major games spread across drives d: through I:, and close to 100 profiles.

I find Vortex works better - for me - than any other mod manager, and I have used them all.

A lot of things annoy me, but Vortex is not one of them.

You have other choices. Be happy with the one you choose.

[Guest deleted34304850]

i really dont understand why people offer detail-light critiques, showing no actual problems, just their opinion which is obviously useless when it comes to any kind of analysis, but then supplement that by telling anyone and everyone how they're this mega-programmer.

if you've got a technical background then where's your evidence of your problems and what you tried to do to fix them?

if you are what you claim then you should be ashamed of this content-free post. it helps no-one.

[dooferorg]

Ok, well sorry that it seems it's made people butthurt but it doesn't work for me. I did state what the situation was and what I had tried. Maybe if you weren't so busy shooting the messenger for their opinion you would have read that.

 

I only mention that I'm a programmer too that I find it very surprising the situation I have was not tested at all. A month or more ago I tried submitting a bug report and heard nothing.

 

If you are these Vortex fanboys you claim to be then maybe try seeing things from a new user's perspective instead.

[Pickysaurus]

If you can't create symlinks that would imply a permissions mismatch on your local PC. Either the game folder or the entire drive is locked to admin accounts and Vortex isn't allowed to write to it (unless it is also run as admin)

[Guest deleted34304850]

Ok, well sorry that it seems it's made people butthurt but it doesn't work for me. I did state what the situation was and what I had tried. Maybe if you weren't so busy shooting the messenger for their opinion you would have read that.

 

I only mention that I'm a programmer too that I find it very surprising the situation I have was not tested at all. A month or more ago I tried submitting a bug report and heard nothing.

 

If you are these Vortex fanboys you claim to be then maybe try seeing things from a new user's perspective instead.

just how do you establish that your situation has not been tested? vortex has been around for a while and simple maths should be enough to tell you that if your situation was "untested" yet pushed to tens of thousands of systems, then more users than just you would have the issue? or didn't you cover basic evidence like that in your programming career?

 

also - if you're a programmer - you'll know users submit bug reports, but, an important part of diagnosis is evidence gathering NOT replying to users. perhaps your "bug" is being diagnosed? perhaps its not a bug, but a user error? perhaps the team have triaged your issue and decided that its not as important as other things, so you're going to have to wait a bit. maybe you've not got to verifyng/recreating/triaging user "bug" reports yet either in your programming "career"?

 

this isn't me being a vortex fanboy - its just that your post offered literally nothing of use. nothing. but you did throw up your cv as if it's some sort of mark of quality....

 

you can offer up a bit more information or you can double down on your programming background nonsense. i know, if i wanted help with an issue, i'd leave my cv on the desk and concentrate on the issue offering up as much diagnostics as i could find, and not decry the fact that no-one replied to my "urgent" issue that you, and only you found in "untested" base function.

 

wanna try again with some information that's of use?

[xrayy]

i don't want and i can not criticise vortex for using symlinks while taking into account some downsides but i can confirm while using a pure virtual file system i've never experienced any comparable situation described here while using four different ssd's with one mod manager. i also never encountered instabilities while applying complex changes of the profile or load order of my managed games. it all works fast, reliable and without a hassle with the mod manager and the need to store copies of all the mods and i use the manager for about 6 years now since obivion for several games (all bethesda). That is the only reason i've never tried vortex so far. just my two cents and maybe not exactly topic related.

[rmm200]

Symlinks has never been the recommended deployment method by me.

Use hard links whenever possible. They are a Windows provided facility and are both faster and more reliable.

Only downside I can think of to hard links is that Windows will replace the hard link with an actual copy of the file if you use Windows to move the directory.

Best example of a "pure virtual file system" is MO 2, also written by Tannis. I like to think he learned a better way for Vortex.

[Zanderat]

There is a pure VFS extension for Vortex if you want to try it. https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/37

[xrayy]

There is a pure VFS extension for Vortex if you want to try it. https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/37

sounds like comparable to what mo2 does. the only problem with vortex is that this is announced as highly experimental and that i'm used to a stable mo2 which already fulfills all my needs so far for the games i am used to mod since years. the problem the most people struggle with usvfs is there is the need to run tools within the virtual environment. so far no problem for me but it is something you must get used to and it is probably true that there are compatibility restrictions for some games vortex cannot support with usvfs deployment. so far i've never experienced this for the modded games i play using mo2.

one thing i see many people complain about in vortex is the handling of the mod load order. i do not have this problem in mo2. i'm completely free to change the load order without any restrictions or any automatism overriding my personal load order decisions.