Initial Problems, Observations, Questions

[Qwinn]

The below is all regarding Skyrim Special Edition, installed to a C:\Steam folder.

 

1. The bit in the description that says installing Vortex will not mess with an existing NMM install is not accurate. I installed Vortex, told it to manage the game, then shut it down without installing any mods. When I went into NMM, all my plugins had been disabled and reordered. I tried to switch to another profile in NMM as suggested, but this hung for so long without any movement in the progress bar that I wound up canceling it and wiping both Vortex and NMM off my system and reinstalling the game from scratch, then reinstalling Vortex. So, sorry, won't be able to test the Import From NMM feature.

 

2. In the "Let's Get You Set Up" starter widget, there's an option called "View Advanced Settings". Clicking on it displays only a blank screen. I do have "Enable Advanced Mode" on in Settings -> Interface, but the only option I've been able to tell that it adds is "Purge Mods" under the Mods menu. I am truly hoping that the "Advanced Settings" screen is *supposed* to contain the options that resolve at least some of the following issues:

 

3. The button on the top left that lets you launch the game appears to not be configurable. I see no way to get it to run skse64_loader.exe. (EDIT: I see that you can at least tell what file it's running from the "Tools" section, but again, not configurable, can't change "Target" from SkyrimSE.exe to anything else. A browse for an executable would make sense there, and hopefully a more intuitive way to modify this, like right click on the upper-left launch button.) Running that .exe directly from the operating system does seem to work okay... as in, you don't need to run the game from Vortex. But that would make sense, given the next issue...

 

4. I read the bit in the description that says some things like backup programs will see the hard links as the original file. Does this include Windows Explorer? Because looking in the directory, it looks just like NMM did after installing... I installed USSEP, for example, and I see a .bsa, .esp and .ini file in the Data directory. The BSA file is 562,889k. Is that a link that just *looks* like the entire file? If it's not the entire file, I don't see how it is distinguishable. Under Settings -> Mods, there is a dropdown for "Hardlink Deployment" but that is the only option under it... I was expecting a "Symbolic Link" or similar option. The Apply button next to that dropdown cannot be enabled in any way I can see, since there's no way to change the option from "Hardlink Deployment" to anything else. And... again... in standard Windows Explorer, they don't look like links at all, they look like the entire files.

 

5. I created a new profile and told it to maintain its own .ini files and save settings. When looking in the Vortex "Profiles" folder, the folder names are gibberish and I cannot tell which is my default profile and which is my new "Alpha Test" profile. An option to edit the .ini files from the Profiles section would be very helpful... as it is, not sure how to modify them beyond guessing which folder has the profile I want and just editing/overwriting the .ini files manually. I presume BethINI will hopefully, eventually release an update that allows it to work directly with Vortex profile inis the way it can with MO profile inis, and I realize that's not something you can do, but at least an "Open in File Manager" function from a specific profile so we can at least tell which gibberish-named folder the profile works with would really help.

 

6. In the Mods screen, the various filters at the top of the page don't have a "Clear filter" option. For example, after installing a few mods, under the "Version" column, I selected "Update Available". All my mods disappeared. I was finally able to get them to display again by clicking inside the filter box and hitting the Delete button. This is... not intuitive.

 

 

Those are the big issues so far. I like the UI and stuff, but have yet to see something in it that truly differentiates it from NMM, except that handling individual file overwrites appears to be more difficult than in NMM. I know, it's an Alpha, that's why I'm here, hoping the functionality I was expecting is just hard to find :smile: A *little* annoyed that it did in fact bork my NMM install, but I've reinstalled it so many times in the last few weeks that I could recreate it in my sleep now. Still, not going to do that until/if I decide for whatever reason that Vortex isn't for me.

Edited February 1, 2018 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Regarding point #3, I tried adding a new "Tool" that would be SKSE64. After each key press in the "Target" field, I got a ton of red notification errors. It's as if you were hitting "Apply" with every keystroke, and since the filename wasn't complete, error. Once finished it does seem to work. Edited February 1, 2018 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

In case this is relevant: I did all my mod installs with "Install from File", I'm not using "Handle Nexus Links" or anything like that.

[KarebuS]

For #3: I found out if you add SKSE64 as a tool in the dashboard then you set "Make primary", the top bar launcher will launch it.

[Qwinn]

Just a bump here to hopefully catch someone's attention as I unfortunately did not get a chance to post these issues via the Feedback method (too many issues to create one feedback at a time, so decided to post them all in one shot here). I will attempt to do the individual Feedback reports for each issue later tonight.

[Qwinn]

Okay, so re: issue #4, I read up on hard links and realized that, yes, even Explorer will interpret the links as being the original files, and it is virtually impossible to actually tell that they are links without running commands from a command prompt. With testing, I discovered that enabling a mod (and thus creating a link) will even increase the apparent size of the Data directory in its Properties by the full size of the file being linked to. BUT, enabling and creating the link does NOT increase the Used size of the C: drive as a whole.

 

From Tannin's interview published in the news in May, Tannin's promises were that this system would be superior to NMM in 3 ways:

 

1) Takes up less room on your hard drive - verified, though you'll only be able to see this on a global drive level. Which is fine.

2) Enable/disable mods faster - not verified by me yet, but makes complete sense that it would be a whole lot faster, especially with BSA mods.

3) Eliminates the need for manifests - makes sense, and his explanation in the interview about how manifests are more error prone also makes sense.

 

So, you can remove my #4 from the list. I'm content that that portion is working as advertised, and yes, I agree those advantages are considerable.

 

I *am* curious what advantages/disadvantages there will be in switching from hard links to symbolic links (whenever that functionality gets released).

[aleksi134]

Can confirm aswell, its affected my NMM.

[Qwinn]

On point #5... after a TON of testing, it turns out the profile specific INI thing doesn't work like it does in MO/MO2, where the profile specific INIs are saved to their own folders (at least, that's how I thought it worked). When you switch from one profile to another, it actually replaces the INI's in the standard Documents/My Games folder. That does have the benefit that you can use BethINI or whatever to tweak-modify the INI's as usual in their normal location, and it will only affect that profile's INIs.

 

What I'm finding weird about that is that the Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPref.ini that are stored in the gibberish folders under Vortex do NOT seem to be the ones that are getting put into the Documents/My Games folder when you switch to that profile. I don't know where they're coming from, but it doesn't seem to be there, cause if I overwrite what's in the gibberish folder of a profile with a different version (or edit them), it doesn't change what gets put in Documents/My Games when I switch to that profile. Weird.

 

Still... I like the implementation. It appears I don't *have* to know where or how the INIs are being stored/handled, I can just make my changes in the INI in the normal place keeping in mind that those INIs will be replaced if I switch to another profile. Yeah, it works. I like it. You can scratch #5 too. (Glad I didn't file these through feedback yet!)

Edited February 2, 2018 by Qwinn