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ovinnik

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Posts posted by ovinnik

  1. another question i have - if you remove the mod page completely - that's the mod page gone.

    however are you also removing (ie removing off the disk it resides on) the mod components? i have seen the word archive liberally posted around, but delete is not so liberally mentioned and while removing a mod page is fine and dandy, that doesn't equate to mod files being physically removed.

    They mark such mods as "DELETED" during the archiving/removal process -- by renaming them, it looks like. I suppose we ought to make of that what we will.

  2. It's worth considering that they will likely continue to look into ways to 1) enhance Premium benefits and/or 2) worsen the non-Premium experience.

    Think of the extra hoops non-Premium users now have to jump through in order to download stuff. Who knows what else may follow at this point.

  3. This thread sickens me. I've enjoyed Skyrim more because of mods. Now mod authors are claiming Art and Intellectual Property rights that likely do not exist. You might as well have released these to the public domain.

     

    Art? When you get a wall at the DMA you let me know. IP? Mods are glorified mix tapes. Good luck selling that in court.

     

    As far as Nexusmods goes, I suspect they are within their rights to make sure mods remain accessible. Twitter? Yeah, they own your tweets. Facebook? Yup, they own your posts. Do not expect Nexusmods to self-immolate to assuage your fragile egos.

    If only one could have mods without those pesky authors getting in the way, ruining everyone's fun.

  4.  

     

    I think this is the best approach. Don't delete. Redirect. Post a text file as a "new version" informing users (who get a notification) of the new location.

     

    This won't work in every case and situation

     

    I find it exceedingly hard to believe that they won't invent some new rule against "nonsensical" updates if enough authors start doing this.

  5.  

     

    I feel like this new system will only widen the knowledge gap between user and creator

    I would say that I do not think it can get any worse, but I have been proven wrong on that before...

     

    Considering that Premium users won't even need to be aware of individual mods featured in a collection, yes, I'd say it can get infinitely worse.

  6. Yes. But modding is a hobby, for fun. You would think the powers to be would be a bit more chill and allow an opt in or opt out. I honestly think that if this option were available from the beginning, most mod authors would have opted in. But alas, now we will never know.

    It's a hobby for us. For them it's business. That's where the discrepancy stems from.

     

    An opt-out would solve exactly nothing, because we still wouldn't be able to properly retire our own content.

  7.  

     

    The point being, Collections will require regular upkeep and evaluation of user feedback to be (and stay) in any way reliable. Nexus Mods' approach (and subsequent treatment of authors) does not constitute some inherent utopia for end users, much as some would apparently like to believe that. ...This is in reference to someone's post about "reliability" above; I should've quoted that one.

     

     

    No. Once a list is published it will stay as it is. The creator can create an updated version of the list and users will have the choice of using the original or the updated one. That is reliability. The choice will be up to the user.

     

    Let me get this straight. Collections are being implemented for the sake of accessibility. (Ostensibly. Yes, there's also the $$$ aspect.) They're targeted at people who are maybe not tech-savvy, likely short on time, whatever. These same people, who are probably not overly interested in the inner workings of the mods they install, are then encouraged to use outdated but conveniently static content, all in the spirit of engaging even less with the particularities of the stuff they put into their games.

     

    That's not reliability; it's errant complacency.

  8.  

    What reason is there to assume that some cobbled together list of mods is in any way reliable, be it on Steam or here? Will these so-called "curators" provide their own compatibility patches? If not, then simply pointing to outdated and quite possibly bugged versions of mods they've had no hand in making seems like a laughably poor approach to "reliability".

    It's my understanding, that the list maker, will also be able to include things like a 'bashed patch', etc. In order for things to play nice.

     

    Of course, just like mods, there are going to be lists that have issues, and lists that are really good. And everything in between. It will be up to users to police which are which. As always, read the comments/bug reports before downloading. :D

     

    The point being, Collections will require regular upkeep and evaluation of user feedback to be (and stay) in any way reliable. Nexus Mods' approach (and subsequent treatment of authors) does not constitute some inherent utopia for end users, much as some would apparently like to believe that. ...This is in reference to someone's post about "reliability" above; I should've quoted that one.

  9. What reason is there to assume that some cobbled together list of mods is in any way reliable, be it on Steam or here? Will these so-called "curators" provide their own compatibility patches? If not, then simply pointing to outdated and quite possibly bugged versions of mods they've had no hand in making seems like a laughably poor approach to "reliability".

  10. this thread is so sad, because it was all so f*****g avoidable.

    Was it really? It looks like this has been cooking for nigh on two years, and they're obviously not interested in compromise (or discourse, for that matter). At this point, I'm not sure this could have ended any other way.

     

    On topic, authors who leave now, especially non-Bethesda modders, are more or less bound to scatter to the winds. Their profiles are definitely the best place to check up on them, but many (myself included) will probably just stop sharing content altogether. At least for a while.

  11. Honestly, if you deleted all your mods in a fit of nerd rage, what did you expect? Life has choices and consequences.

    Ah, yes. Obviously, this is just a particularly riveting chapter in the life of us narcissistic hobbyists slash raging nerds who just so happen to produce the free creative content this site and its user base so very much detest to rely on. It not like we've been given an honest-to-goodness ultimatum with a deadline. That would be quite absurd.

  12. On the off chance that anyone's still reading this:

    I've been cudgelling both my brains and Frosty Editor in hopes of figuring out how to trigger War Table operations.

    The only ops with easily accessible plot flags are those further down some quest chains. They can be triggered using a flag found in the AfterActionReportActions of their preceding op. Even so, not all consequtive ops seem to be triggered this way; sometimes their preceding ops don't provide any.

    Unsurprisingly, initial War Table ops (the first ones in a chain of quests) and standalone ops (those not part of any chain) are even more of a mystery. I've tried various approaches, ranging from questionable edits to WarTableAssets to scouting for potential plot flags in JournalSystem.ebx/.xml. So far, no dice.

    I've also thought about replacing an existing op with the one I'd like to trigger. That would obviously come with multiple caveats, so I'm not too keen on this.

    The (likely) bug that sent me down this path is Ser Barris' missing War Table quest chain and subsequent promotion when the player disbands the templars. The related dialogue assets look fine: There are flags for whether one has allied with or disbanded the templars, and for whether or not Barris lives and becomes an agent. These all seem to be set correctly and should work.

    Maybe I'm missing something obvious. In fact, that would be awesome.

  13. @Tannin42

    I'm not asking for Vortex to be made compatible with every conceivable form of mod. I'm fully aware that this would be an impossible (and rather unnecessary) task. What I'm worried about is essentially communication. Vortex is said to support games it doesn't -- or apparently doesn't fully -- support. See, for example, the .override file format for DA:O.


    Your answer is to tell mod authors to repackage their mods to fit your tool. My concern is with reviewing the way it's being advertised as fully compatible. That's it. So no, this isn't about blaming you, or anyone. I have no stake in this other than hoping for fewer frustrated posts by people dealing with incompatibilities and user error. Though I guess that there will always be that.


    @Zanderat

    As an aside, No friendly Fire involves recompiling various combat-related base game scripts. It's completely incompatible not fully compatible with Dain's Fixes. And you definitely don't need ZDF alongside Qwinn's Fixpack.

  14. That's ... something? Then at least a portion of those attempting to use it for unsupported games will be stopped in their tracks. Doesn't keep some from trying, apparently, and doesn't keep all bad advice at bay. But yeah. It's something.

     

    Let me rephrase this, then: It looks like titles that shouldn't be are in its compatibility list. DA: Origins is definitely one. The Witcher 3 is listed and doesn't seem to be fully compatible either. I thought one or two ME games were included as well, but it's a good thing they're not.

  15. Why does Vortex allow for the "management" of games it obviously does not support?

    I frequently see bug reports, complaints and nonsensical advice all leading back to this very issue. People try to install mods for games Vortex doesn't work for, then leave frustrated comments for frustrated authors to sift through. Even worse, sometimes users instruct other users to use Vortex for said unsupported games, because apparently the tool is falsely peddled as the gold standard for everything.

    The titles I'm primarily talking about are the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, because they're what I'm familiar with. I've no doubt, however, that there are many more such cases. I realise that mod authors can remove the "Mod Manager Download" button from their files, and it helps. If they think of doing this at all -- many don't. But it's, quite frankly, a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

    Please: Stop Vortex from trying to manage games it wasn't built for.

  16. Sadly, the Shale retexture by Dalishious is gone. I was looking for it too a few days ago.

     

    Edit, to contribute some actually working links:

     

    Desire Demon HD and Ogre HD by Catachrism (the author of Lady of The Forest HD, linked above)

     

    Noble Dress Overhaul by yixura

     

    That said, I also recommend just browsing the Models and Textures category. DA:O isn't Skyrim; there aren't that many mods out for this game, and you're bound to stumble upon something of interest to you that no one has thought of linking here.

  17. @theskymoves You know, more and more do I get the feeling that somewhere, you've probably stashed away a completely new version of the game, rebuilt from the ground up.

     

    ...After having re-read the OP and actually taken a look at the textures, I feel like discussing tints and MAOs is overcomplicating things. If we're talking about just retexturing the base diffuse (and other) maps, there should be no issue. It's pretty much what yixura did here for the female versions, and quite successfully at that. Granted, they did also edit three TNT files along with a bunch of textures. If you don't want to mess with TNTs at all for fear of explosions breaking unrelated clothing, you should be able to edit the tint map of the textures so that tints affect them less, or not at all. So what I said above about the various texture maps still applies; at least so far as my limited knowledge ain't failing me.

  18. Depending on how the mesh-side of those noble outfits is set up, you should be able to assign different diffuse textures to them by editing their MAOs. Notepad++ works just fine for that. I'm unable to check right now, however, so this is really just off the top of my head.

     

    If you create somewhat extensive retextures with different fabric, visible skin and such, you'll likely need to make new normal and tint maps, or at least edit the existing ones. The specular map will probably look fine as is, unless it's the culprit behind the plastic-y vanilla look of those clothes.

     

    I've no clue how to create normal maps for DAO from scratch. There's a nice resource around for Photoshop users, but sadly that won't work with GIMP...

     

    Oh, and since I use GIMP as well, I can confirm that the invisible-without-disabled-alpha thing exists. Why? Who knows.

  19. I use an ancient version of Photoshop with the Nvidia DDS plugin, though I assume that any image editing program that can create DDS files can be used.

     

    The Bioware icons for the game are either 42x42px or 56x56px, and I've seen icons in mods that are as large as 64x64px. I usually make my icons 56x56px, FWTW.

     

    The export settings I use are

     

    X.8.8.8 XRGB 32 bpp | unsigned

    2D Texture

    No MIP maps

     

    which is one of the recommendations on the DA Toolset wiki.

    Has anyone ever determined working export settings for GIMP or Paint.NET?

     

    nvdxt.exe is reliable enough, but it's not exactly the most convenient way of going about things...

     

    Edit: To answer my own question regarding GIMP, exporting with the settings Compression: None, Format: RGBA8 and no mipmaps seems to at least not crash the game.

  20. Two thoughts:

     

    1. The 5-second-timer is gone. If they want to throw us a bone, I'd rather have the timer back and instead be spared having to click through and reload a download page just to get past the premium ad.

     

    2. If the premium ad is here to stay, it's extremely tacky that non-premium mod authors see the thing. Up the requirements if you must, make it 10k unique downloads or 20k, but don't taunt the very people who give this site its purpose. I myself wouldn't reach that new number of unique downloads, but at least I'd know there was a line.

  21. Nexus Mods is an enormously expensive enterprise. Advertising its services is essential to staying in business. Instead of complaining, would it not be more helpful to offer some constructive suggestions about how the site should advertise its subscription services while not annoying sensibilities and compromising its revenue stream?

     

    The banner at the top of every single download page seemed to get the job of advertising done just fine.

  22. Honestly, I felt the little banners were fine. I have been a premium member in the past when I could afford to do so. But now these little time limits and asking for donations makes it seem like my money did nothing. These are nag tactics to try and force more people to subscribe.

    Agreed, the banner was perfectly fine. These new gimmicks, however, feel obnoxious and rather tasteless.

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