gfreeman1

I am not a mod author, so I can't comment on whether or not Vortex is awesome or terrible when it comes to creating mods. I just want to share my experience with and opinions on using Vortex as a mod user. First, ignore my post count - I've never been very vocal on the forums, but I've been around this site and modding since it was TESSource and I discovered Morrowind. I've used all of the most popular mod managers and tools for Gamebryo and Non-Gamebryo games. I've used both manual and tool assisted load order management. I've learned what does and does not work when modding, quite often the hard way. I've spent days tracking down CTD issues, as well as done the whole "spend a week modding instead of playing" thing. I've created custom tools for my own use that parse plugin and save game files in C++ and C# and even made contributions to NMM. I've made countless merged / bashed / smashed patches. I'm definitely not a novice when it comes to modding. I've been using Vortex since the alpha release, version 0.13.1 I believe, and have never thought about switching back to another manager. I found the workflow so similar to that of MO / MO2, even NMM, that I was able to jump in without watching any tutorial videos. It does what I need a mod manager need to do, and does so quickly and efficiently. The automatic load order sorting hasn't failed me yet, nor have I needed to define any custom rules / groups. This is with currently 168 plugins in Skyrim SE and 88 plugins in Fallout 4. If load order issues were to arise, its nice knowing that there are tools I can use to "correct" the automatic load order. I really don't miss manual, drag-and-drop plugin load ordering. I used to spend hours trying to get the "correct" load order, but I simply haven't cared since I started using Vortex. As for how Vortex installs mods, I personally feel the hardlink deployment is superior to the alternatives. It has the flexibility and power of the VFS from MO / MO2, without requiring you to run games and tools through Vortex or leave Vortex running. It's also really fast when it comes to deploying / purging. Want to change which files overwrite each other? Swap the order and redeploy - done in seconds. Decide you don't like that mod you just installed, but want to keep it around for a future character / playthrough? Deactivate it and redeploy - done in seconds. Have a couple of huge texture mods that you just can't seem to decide between? Activate one, deactivate the other, deploy and play - done in seconds. The only time you may need to reinstall a mod is if you chose the wrong options when installing, or need to choose a different set of options. While MO / MO2 have effectively the same benefit, their disadvantage, to me, is that your modded game directory doesn't actually exist anywhere. It is dynamically created and only exists (in memory, not on disk) while MO / MO2 is running. You need to run the game and all tools through MO / MO2, which I found to sometimes cause issues and crashes. TLDR; Vortex is awesome, the 1.0 release is well deserved (already installed it), looking forward to the features to come!

Just wanted to say that I've been using Vortex Testing since it was announced and have grown to really like it. Currently, I'm using it to manage Fallout 4, No Man's Sky and Skyrim SE. I have a relatively small amount of mods: FO4 - 64 mods, 10.3 GBNMS - 18 mods, 7.7 MBSSE - 77 mods, 18.7 GBWith the above, I have not encountered any game breaking, showstopper bugs with how it manages things. It is also very quick to deploy the mods - 24,794 files only took a minute or so to deploy for FO4. I had a case where the game crashed immediately upon startup, so I reverted to a clean install folder by disabling all mods, deploying and then disabling remaining plugins. This took a whole 2 minutes, and allowed me to boot the game and start figuring out which mod was the culprit. Sure, there have been some UI annoyances, but things seem to get better and/or fixed with each new release. Unless there is some major issue that breaks everything with my mod configurations, I will be sticking with Vortex. Thanks and keep up the great work!

One more confirmation that uninstalling GeForce Experience fixed the problem. I usually keep that piece of garbage uninstalled, but forgot to uncheck it when upgrading to the latest driver :(

Thanks. I figured you were probably busy and just forgot to update the source, so no big deal.

Any idea when the source code repository will be updated to match the release? I ask because I run NMM built from the source code and the repository usually matches the releases. I'm also in the process of adding my load order export/import additions and would like to use the latest source code rather than merging it in later.

I'm really looking forward to checking this out. I have used OBMM and FOMM for Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout NV. Can't wait to start using this for Skyrim when it comes out. A few technical questions: Is this built upon OBMM/FOMM source or was it written from scratch? If it was written from scratch, what language is it being developed in? What .NET Framework version does this make use of? Is it still using Windows Forms or does it now make use of WPF? Does it still make use of SevenZipSharp to handle reading/writing the actual fomod files? Will XML scripts use the same format/schema?