About Vortex (Suggestion)

[Thn444]

I just started using it around a week ago I believe, since I got back into fallout and mods but I think there's an issue with it.

It doesn't need to be fixed but it needs an update itself. I wanted to see if any of the mods I had installed needed any updates and vortex calculated 5 of them, one that I knew already needed an update which I had sorted out and the last four I am unsure of because vortex doesn't list them. There is no "More" or "Show" option to check which mod is of need of an update.

I thought that by checking for mod updates it would automatically update those mods, which it doesn't and that's okay but it doesn't list the mods.

If I am entirely wrong about this, I apologise. In which case someone please educate me. :tongue:

[HadToRegister]

Nah, it has to do with the Versioning problem on Nexus, and how people can put anything they want into the Version number, which basically messes up Vortex because it can't find the proper metadata that's expected.
An update to the forum software license is required in order to implement all of those features.

[Thn444]

Ah right, well that's a shame.

Thanks for telling me.

[HeyYou]

Nah, it has to do with the Versioning problem on Nexus, and how people can put anything they want into the Version number, which basically messes up Vortex because it can't find the proper metadata that's expected.

An update to the forum software license is required in order to implement all of those features.

 

 

 

 

Shouldn't it be able to differentiate by upload date?

[Tannin42]

You downloaded this mod 13. November 2015: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/5804

Which of those 5 different main files is the correct update for the mod you got back then?

 

Part of the problem is that many modders put both information about the "revision" (as in: the how manyeth update is it) and the "variant" into the same field and we'd need that information separated so that Vortex can go "ok, I have the "paper" variant of mod 5804 at version 8.9, which file is the latest release of the paper variant of mod 5804?"

But Nexus Mods doesn't currently _have_ a field dedicated to the mod variant.

[Guest deleted34304850]

@tannin42 - a hypothetical question for you - if you can't answer it, it's fine.

 

lets say i upload a mod - it is by default v1r1m0 or 1.0.0 as its the first version.

 

a time later i upload another version of the mod and i call it v1r0m1 or 1.0.1. So far, its all okay.

 

But then i upload another version of the mod later still, and i call it v2 for no reason at all. this breaks my previous versioning and I assume it would play havoc with Vortex's semantic versioning.

 

is there a possibility - perhaps at the back end - where each upload allows me to call it whatever i like - BUT - on the back end, based on any other criteria (backend/nexusmods specific) there is a version value generated and stored somewhere that vortex could read, and use to tell an end user that they have version 'x' of a mod irrespective of whatever nonsense i use in my own versioning?

 

that could also work with semantic versioning as the value from the backend would be used to indicate if its the latest version, or if an update is available?

[Tannin42]

The way Vortex currently works is it ignores the version field completely, it's just not useful for us.

 

When you upload a mod, the site allows you to check a box that says "this is an update to an older version" and if you check it you can select the previous version from a dropdown.

If the author does that, Vortex uses the information to find the update so it starts at the file the user has and follows the chain of "x is an update of y" until the chain ends. That way you can even have multiple variants of mods on the same page and updating still works correctly.

Only shame imho is that users can't see this information on the site, nor can mod authors update/fix it retroactively.

 

If the mod author didn't set this information, Vortex will simply look whether the file you currently have is now in the "old files" section (or archived or deleted) and if so and if it was a "main" file and if there is only a single main file now it will consider that the latest version and update to it.

 

Otherwise, if your current file is no longer "main" or "optional" or "update" but there are multiple files now, Vortex won't update automatically but ask the user to select the file manually.

[Guest deleted34304850]

is there a way to programmatically force a semantic version regardless of what the mod author uses? i would suppose this would contravene some level of mod author right?

[Tannin42]

Not completely without user input.

There was an idea at some point where we'd only ask the mod author "is this a bugfix or did you introduce new features? If new features, does this break compatibility with previous release?" and based on that increment the corresponding number in the semantic version number.

 

But we'd always need the user to tell us what they changed.

 

And it would be quite confusing if every mod had two versions, one generated by us, one entered by the author.

[Guest deleted34304850]

thanks mate, appreciate the insight into what appears to be a pretty thankless area of mod upkeep both for you and the mod author.