Update on site work and NMM 0.50 around the corner

[manoqueen]

The new features of NMM will be similar to the main feature of Mod Organizer, which is another (less-known) mod manager. Mod Organizer is at the moment much more powerful than NMM. However, there are some problems with the "profile" features which you guys may not have taken into account.

 

First of all, there are executables. Mod Organizer allows you to use executables from within the program. You open MO and from MO you run, for instance, TES5Edit. Now, any edits you make to an esm/esp file will be done to the file in the currently applied Profile in Mod Organizer. If you now change profiles from A to B, this edit won't follow you to B. This is a good thing because it recognizes that you may want to fix different things on different profiles. In profile A you may want to make a patch for mod X and Z, while this isn't necessary in profile B, because you didn't install either.

 

How will you sort this out? This should be taken into account for many programs, like Wrye Bash (with bashed patch - which is incredibly important), Boss Userlist Manager, ENB Manager and of course TES5Edit which I already mentioned. You also need to take this into account for a wholy bunch of other widely used mod alteration software. The problem appears when you switch mods and all the changes you've made are simply GONE. It would beat the purpose of the new feature.

 

Next we have executable .jar files which generate .esp files for mods such as Dual Sheath Redux and Automatic Variants. FNIS and T3nd0s Skyrim Redone also generate mod files with an exectuable. This is a problem that MO is struggling really bad with. Why? Because when you install a mod in profile A, this mod gets moved into the "Mods" folder of Mod Organizer. Now, when you're trying to run this .jar file (or whatever else it might be) you'll get all kinds of errors. This is because the .jar file you're running is in a completely wrong location and the files on which it relies aren't where they are supposed to be. Moreover, the files don't get recognized properly by MO. When you start Skyrim all the files from "Mods" get moved into Skyrim's folder, but not the ones it doesn't recognize. And it's a little too late then, to run your precious .jar file. Basically, you have to do some manual workarounds before you even install the mod into MO.

 

There is really a lot you guys need to take into account before you start running head first into the difficult areas of mod organizing. I know NMM's main goal isn't to become the most powerful mod manager. To most people it is the springboard from which you GET to powerful mod managers. -- It's an easy to use, hard to fail mod manager. That is until you start pushing 200 .esp files and you need a bashed patch for 20 of your mods. When you learn that mods that are low in the load order and didn't continue on a fix made by Unofficial Skyrim Patches, you will want to move onto Wrye Bash or Mod Organizer.

 

I really wish you the best of luck because this could actually make NMM a worthy mod manager to use even for those with bigger needs, like me. I hope you'll read my post not as criticism to your new changes but as a suggestion to really look into how Mod Organizer sorts files and exectuables. I think you will learn a lot and that your chances of success are far higher :)

 

TL;DR: I'm rambling

[Triumfall665]

Excellent work :) Edited September 11, 2013 by Triumfall665

[Dark0ne]

This new version is compatible with BOSS and FNIS. We want to be compatible with everything we were compatible with before this version. I'm wary of people coming along and saying "WTF, it's not compatible with software X" when NMM was NEVER compatible with software X to begin with. You're talking about jar files and stuff, I've no idea if these things are already working with the current version of NMM or not. Do you know?

 

As bashed patches are normally just merged .esp files that have been put in the data folder there's no reason why it shouldn't work with this new version of NMM.

 

This new system simply uses shortcut files for anything that is within NMM. So you could have half your Skyrim data folder with mod content from Steam Workshop/Wyre/Mod Organizer/etc. and half of it from NMM. All NMM will do is create a shortcut in the data folder directory (for Skyrim) and say "yeah, that .esp/data file you're looking for is actually in this folder". As far as the game is concerned, once it's loaded, everything is in the data folder. Except it's not.

[eigh]

Profiles with the nexus mod manager = best idea you've had yet. Make it happen!

 

(oh... and thanks!)

[Menoliir]

@Dark0one: two questions:

* What DB do you use? I ask so I can avoid it in future ;)

* So, marketing aside, what NMM will setup in game's folder? Will it be shortcuts or symlinks? You know, on windows those are two different things.

[Gratus]

Search and DDS overwrite Preview ? Edited September 11, 2013 by Gratus

[zangetsu568]

they all sound good! keep up the good work!

[kmarkec]

I'm too lazy to read. Can someone sum up what it's all about? Thanks.

[SalazarDrago]

Thanks for the update, and man that is an awesome feature for nmm, I have never used it and only install manually but that looks like a game changer to me. Thanks for all your hard work

 

Best Regards

[manoqueen]

In response to post #9101291.

It's great that NMM is compatible with BOSS and FNIS. These are softwares/mods which are absolutely essential for modding and a safe modding environment.

I'm not saying I would like to point out that NMM should be compatible with mod A and B and I'm not ranting that it's not. My point, actually, is that it is much harder to make it compatible once you start moving files back and forth. I know it's an important aspect of NMM to be easy to use, which is why I'm bringing these things up.

Before I begin with my examples to make you understand the problematics: Yes, NMM DOES natively support everything I talked about before. Automatic Variants, Dual Sheath Redux, SkyReProccer, etc.. This it does because the files it generates are put into the folder Skyrim\data. It simply generates files IN ADDITION to the files which you added with an archive.

Take FNIS. You download the mod (1).
You install the mod (2).
And then you enter the folder where FNIS' executable is and execute FNIS (3).
Now you have a mod (archive) installed in NMM which moved files V, W, and Q from FNIS.7z to Skyrim\data. You also have FNIS' exectuable which is file Q. When you execute file Q, you generate files X, Y and Z and they are put in Skyrim\data.

Now you have the files V, W, Q, X, Y and Z. Okay. So you change profile from High Elf Berserker to Orc Power-Puff Wizard. Then you change back because you figured that orc sucks.

What will happen? Will files X, Y and Z have been moved into the archive (e.g. .7z) where V, W and Q were? Most likely not, this would be too complicated. And this is where the difficult part is. Ensuring compatibility when moving mods is much harder than ensuring compatibility with stationary mods. If I never moved all my archives from my Skyrim\data folder to begin with, it wouldn't matter if my mods had generated files because the files I relied on were always there.

So with your new NMM my Automatic Variants.jar file produces K, L and M files, they will STAY in Skyrim\data. If I switch profiles, they still STAY there, because they weren't part of the Automatic Variants.7z which I installed in NMM and NMM placed in [CustomLocation\Data]. This means that if I now use Automatic Variants in my second profile those files are already there.

If you guys made NMM work with a 100% complete Skyrim folder with the subfolders for EACH modding profile, this wouldn't be a problem. Because I could generate the files inside of that specific modding profile. When I switched, the files would be moved back to NMM's profile folder. My suggestion is to, every time you switch profiles, generate a .7z archive with all the files that were not installed with a mod. So every time you switched profiles, all the files you had previously generated would still be there. You could call the archive "Non-native mod files" or something.

If you made NMM use a fully customizable, complete Skyrim folder I think you would actually be the most useful mod manager. This would make profiles work exactly like they were intended to in Mod Organizer, WHILST defeating all the problems with executables.

Not here to be a dingbag, I'm only trying to help you figure out what some of the difficulties are with multi-profile mod managers! :) Edited September 11, 2013 by manoqueen