soaringcow

On the other hand, when a user asks, why doesn't your software work, " because you are an idiot" is the wrong answer.

They have their own professional beta testers, I'm sure. My comments apply to programmers who rely on users for beta testing.

It is true, I have subjected you to a couple of my radical (relative to normal programmer attitudes) unwelcome opinions. 1) software should help users do what they imagine they want to do (without unwanted consequences) rather than prevent them from doing that in the name of not disturbing your vision of what the software should do. Don't scramble my load order, don't subject me to repeated offers to "purge". 2) Users might offer their help in identifying problems with *your* software. They are helping you, rather than you helping them. Peace.

>This is like claiming that it's the job of a car repair shop to repair your car even when you didn't bring it in. We tried to tow you by asking you >relevant questions but you refused to answer. At some point everyone no matter how patient will give up and tell you to deal with your own sh*t. If you want professional grade beta testers who document everything and give explicit detail, hire a crew of professionals. They don't work for minimum wage. As for users, we offer what we have without rigor. And we get paid nothing. This is your job, and Vortex is your baby. You want it to be the best you can do, I assume. Users don't have a dog in the race. We are simply trying to use your product for as long as our patience holds out. It is not our job to convince you of anything. But a kindly woncha, whydoncha request for more information without acting like we are the numbskulls we surely are, will probably work better for you.

Ok, I do have one more bone to pick with my fellow programmers. It is not the user's job to convince you of anything, including their reliability. You, of course, will decide that, but still this is not the user's job. It is your job to take every reported problem seriously and do your best to duplicate them, with the understanding that failure to duplicate is not conclusive of anything. As a last resort, I carefully inspect the probable code in question. It can be surprising what you see. Also, stepping through the code one line at a time in a debugger will turn up things that don't otherwise show. Good luck.

Still I see no hope. Enough.

Wow. Let me get this straight. You were told by someone trying to help you that they recognize the problem and it won't be repeatable? Not what I said. I said that the answers I received here (it works for me they say) suggest that what I see will likely be hard to duplicate. What the ...? Copying files isn't a fire-and-forget operation, I know whether it was successful or not after doing it. The only way I could copy a file, ask the os if it's there and the reply is "no" is a) the file got deleted by you, the user, in which case I have to react to a file deletion not undo it b) windows has an enormous bug in which case - ummm - run for the next bomb shelter? b) Windows can prevent a file being placed on the hard drive. You must know that. It would not necessarily be a bug in Windows. That mod installs perfectly fine and there is no reason it wouldn't because it has no installer script. All Vortex does with that mod is call 7z to extract it like it does for ~90% of all mods. Considering we have hundreds of thousands of users installing millions of mods, if this problem was common we would we swamped with reports. If it was random, how come it affects you repeatedly and practically no one else (except for "the others")? I did say it would be hard to duplicate. I also said that the cure that I found for the HUDFramework problem means that other people do often get bad or partial instalations. Except that was not the solution that was suggested. I've just gone through the trouble of looking through that thread and a) the post you replied to was not regarding Crafting Highlight Fix True, I posted in the HUDF forum concerning the "HUD Framework not ready" message. I did not post anywhere about the CHF problem. or any other dll but about a swf file that gets created by an external application and for some reason people expect Vortex to magically know about new files and where they belong to. Sorry, I'm fresh out of fairy dust and my unicorn is in the shop. This isn't how it works. Yes, the problem was not with HUDF installation. It was with one of the mods that depend on it which were also installed by Vortex. I don't know which mod didn't get done right, but one of them didn't. b) The suggested solution was to reimport the swf into the staging folder, not to manually reinstall. Manually reinstalling was someones way to sidestep the issue, not a fix, much less the only or best one. Except that that manual reinstall suggestion was the one that worked, sidestep or not. c) No one afaict said that the problem wouldn't be repeatable. Right, that was my assessment of the situation. Difficult in the same sense as splitting an atom with tweezers... The post was about a swf file that gets manually patched, manually renamed, by an autopatcher manually run outside vortex and then placed back in the game directory and then somehow Vortex is expected to automatically put it into a staging folder that is _not_ the one from which the swf file originated and automatically change the install order? I'm a programmer, not Harry Potter! Hmm, that's interesting. This is not the suggested solution or situation I was referirng to. Mostly we have a history of having extremely many users of which some will sometimes do something wrong and some of those will blame us for their mistakes. Yes, that is the programmer's explanation since forever. Since I started out as a Assembly Language programmer, I have been hearing it for a long time. But I suspect other things are possible these days. NMM was forked from FOMM which was created outside our company and went through several developers to become the application you know, I am none of them. I created MO, MO2 and now Vortex. I'm impressed. So either you're suggesting that somehow working in this company or working on projects that will eventually be picked up by this company somehow leads to a brain disease that makes you do a very specific kind of mistake or you're suggesting that the NMM developers and myself make the same kind of mistakes independently. But that would mean that MO probably has it too and when the mod managers used by around 98% out of everyone who uses a mod manager have the same issue maybe there is a reason for it being the way it is? It is true. I have so far found no mod managers that reliably install mods. That is why I do it myself, including fomods. Or maybe all your theories are a bit weird? Wierdness is for the young. I'm too old for that now. You are obviously a smart guy, and I thank you for taking the time to give me this lengthy response. I think there probably is a way you could check whether a file placement actually happened, though.

>This topic has reached the end of its usefulness? Perhaps, but we can hope otherwise. I was wrong, I see. There is no hope.

>There is a history in these forums of people reporting that Vortex simply cannot handle mod X, mod Y, etc. However, over the past year I've >tested perhaps a half dozen of those claims and found them to be wanting. User error was the source of the problem, nor Vortex >inadequacy. You can click the "Mod Manager Download button" on the mod download page, or you can drag and drop a mod file into the space provided in the Vortex downloads area. Then click to install and to deploy when prompted. What is to do wrong? How did you verify that in each and every case the problem was a user error? How did you verify it in my case? And if it was user error, why did manually installing mods solve the problem? As a programmer, I am quite familiar with the " all program deficiencies are really user errors" theory and with the resultant consequences of that theory. Such as vanishing support forums, or providing a place where ignorant users can help each other. Kudos to Nexus for, so far, continuing to provide access to people who actually know something about the product. This is optional, of course. A few modders do not allow forum posting on their mod pages, or they simply choose to not respond. This topic has reached the end of its usefulness? Perhaps, but we can hope otherwise.

there is also a history of you posting absolute gubbins in this forum. that should tell you something. Your response shows a resistance to criticism. Not unlike product loyalty in many other areas. How dare you critique my favorite...

The answers that I have received from others suggests that, for many fo4 installations, the problem won't be repeatable. I did suggest that Vortex check to see that the file it attempted to place was in fact placed and give a notice if not. In my original post I did mention a specific situation where a file was not placed. Crafting Highlight Fix did not place the needed dll in the f4se\plugins directory. And HUDFramework was giving a "HUDFramework is not ready" error repeatedly in game. The solution I found in the HUDF forum was to manually reinstall all mods that depend on HUDF. So I am not the only one that has seen this problem. But I understand that it will be difficult to actually fix it. As I said a couple of posts back to a poster who claimed to never have a problem with Vortex: >There are also people who never had a problem with NMM. Also many who did, and some who decided it wasn't worth using, like me. There is a history of your products not installing mods right. That should tell you something.

In regard to HUDFramework, I had no trouble using Vortex to install both it and mods using HUDFramework in Fallout 4 with 217 mods. Nor did I subsequently receive HUDF warnings. Everything worked flawlessly. I didn't even have to use the patcher to achieve HUDF compatibility with DEF_UI. I simply let Vortex resolve the "HUDMenu.swf" conflict by creating a mod conflict rule that HUDF load after DEF_UI. As for the updating problem you mention, I had no such issue with Crafting Highlight Fix. Vortex placed the updated dll in the F4SE folder. Like you, getting mods installed correctly is what really matters to me. After a year and a half using Vortex, I'm pleased to report that Vortex has not yet let me down. There are also people who never had a problem with NMM. Also many who did, and some who decided it wasn't worth using, like me.

Well, I've got 272 mods in Skyrim SE, and 279 in Fallout 4, all installed with Vortex, with Kaspersky AV running. So, I suggest if you're serious about using Vortex, then you need to read the Knowledge Base and watch some tutorials, because the problems you're having with Vortex, aren't caused by Vortex, and are all user error so far. If that were true, then manual installation would have made no difference. The problem I attempted to solve would be unchanged. I suspect that what you say about your setup is true though. Failed installations will be hard to duplicate and be system dependent. That is why I suggest acknowledging that failure can happen and give a notice if it is detected.

Perhaps, maybe, there is some hope that the NMM/Vortex series could someday manage to reliably install mods correctly. That would be nice. It is true that Windows or even an antivirus program can interfere when a program tries to place files on a hard drive. Perhaps there could be a double check to verify that the placement succeeded with a notice if it did not.

You didn't read carefully. I did not reinstall HUDFramework. I did remove and reinstall all dependent mods. My HUDF installation was fine. I did use the patcher. It said that the target file was already patched. In most cases the patcher is not necessary.