Vortex v1.10 is being released in Beta on Monday

[insomnious]

Hey everyone!

We don't normally do a forum post every time we update but this upcoming version has a lot of cool fixes and features and has needed a lot longer than usual to test them out. Some of these are a long time coming and we are excited to finally get them out to the masses. The main updates are listed below with the full changelog at the bottom

Mod Conflicts

We've updated how we detect file conflicts and fixed the problem where conflicts were not being detected across mod types. This problem was causing the dreaded External File Changes dialog to show incorrectly.   

Collections

Improved the Version Mismatch modal so that one of the biggest reasons for collection health downvoting is more obvious that it needs fixing.

Collection endorsement and downvote user journey has now been overhauled. The 12 hour delay between installing and voting has been moved to 12 hours after install complete, instead of previously being 12 hours after install started. The voting buttons are now not shown until voting is allowed. When 'No' is pressed on the Health Rating, a modal pops up for the user with some things to try and to confirm with a checkbox before the Submit button is clicked and the downvote is registered. These should help to reduce the downvotes and thus have a more accurate health status.

Curators now have the choice to recommend installing a collection to a new profile, instead of the default only being install to current profile. Useful for the larger collections so that they work correctly more often, this is a big requested feature. We've also created a new space in the UI for future collection options, instead of relying on each individual game extension to add random entries without consistency.

UI

A fresh theme with a colour scheme that more closely matches our company branding. It's more accessible with some of the colour contrasts we've adjusted as well as layout changes to make things more usable. This is work-in-progress and we will be iterating on it in future versions.  

.NET

One of the common issues is a failed .NET install. The .NET error modal has been rewritten to remove the confusion between still needing 6 even though the user might have 7 or 8. The wording is now consistent with how Microsoft talks about the various .NET runtimes and so should help with users trying to fix their own problems. i.e. it previously just said .NET 6 whereas it now accurately says you need .NET Desktop Runtime 6

Roll on Monday morning for all those who beta test! 

Happy modding

insomnious

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Full changelog (since last stable version 1.9.12)

• Fixed hanging renderer thread when executing inter-thread actions (#15185)
• (BG3) Fixed info.json conflicts
• (Collections) Improved styles for button states
• (Collections) Improved version mismatch dialog
• (Collections) Improved collection health downvote dialog
• (Collections) Allow curator to recommend using new profile on collection install
• (Collections) 12-hour delay from installing to voting is now based on install being finished
• (Collections) Game Version displayed in health rating
• (Dependency Manager) Fixed file conflicts not being detected across modtypes
• Fixed styles on table multi row select
• Fixed sorting on Add Mods to Collection dialog
• Updated styles for modals
• (SkyVR) Fixed error when attempting to find EslEnabler
• (Xbox) Fixed crash when attempting to detect xbox manifests during game installation and/or when xbox game store did not clear the game folders correctly.
• .NET check fail has updated text to match Microsoft's naming scheme as well as more accurately reflect what is needed and why
• (Script Extender) Fixed premium download journey
• (Palworld) Game stub added
• (Gamebryo) Zlib updated to 1.3.1
• (API) Enhanced FBLO extension to maintain load order on purge 
• (Baldur's Gate 3) Fix for modfixer notification not able to be supressed  
• Updated remote URLs for announcements, extensions and changelog 
• Updated layout for dashlets
• Updated default theme colors
• Updated notification colors to increase text legibility 
• Updated uninstall feedback URL  

[Zanderat]

Sounds like a decent update.

[insomnious]

This update is now live!

[cooperbh]

After updating, Vortex freezes during boot up and remains completely unresponsive until force closed through Task Manager. Attempting to reopen results in an error message saying the app can't connect to the meta database due to the process already running. Restarting my PC clears the error message, but Vortex just locks up again on subsequent attempts to open and the cycle continues. In short, I can no longer access Vortex and play my game. Is there any way to roll back to 1.9.12 outside of this now completely broken app?

[Pickysaurus]

9 minutes ago, cooperbh said:

After updating, Vortex freezes during boot up and remains completely unresponsive until force closed through Task Manager. Attempting to reopen results in an error message saying the app can't connect to the meta database due to the process already running. Restarting my PC clears the error message, but Vortex just locks up again on subsequent attempts to open and the cycle continues. In short, I can no longer access Vortex and play my game. Is there any way to roll back to 1.9.12 outside of this now completely broken app?

This isn't likely to be caused by the update. It generally means something on your PC has corrupted the Vortex state. You can try downloading 1.9.12 from the Vortex download page, but if that doesn't work you may have to rename the %appdata%\Vortex folder to something else to stop Vortex trying to boot with bad data (this also completely resets the app). 

[cooperbh]

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Rolled back to 1.9.12 and everything works just fine again. 

Edit: I did have to reinstall and reconfigure conflict rules for about a dozen mesh/texture mods, as their files had disappeared and thus they were being reported as redundant. Guess things could have been worse on an 800 mod install. Looks like I will just have to decline all update prompts from here on out. 

Edited February 19 by cooperbh
Updated info

[cooperbh]

So, it appears those redundant mod notifications are a side effect of a much larger problem. Basically, either updating to 1.10 or reinstalling 1.9.12 reverted all my conflict overrides to default. This means the multitude of mesh and texture combinations I have been carefully mixing and matching over the course of years have been totally wiped out, and all of those countless hours of work have been for nothing. Just thinking about having to start again from scratch and all the issues it may cause with my current load order is overwhelming. I think at this point beginning from a fresh install of the game would be safer and less time consuming. Hope others somehow get a chance to read this before unknowingly subjecting their highly cultivated load orders to an unannounced beta test.

[Nagev]

Hey @cooperbh,

Really sorry you had encountered this issue, please know that we never release such a big update without thoroughly testing it - @insomnious and I, have been using the updated branch since December to ensure we detect any issues that may arise on our own environments first. A preview version of this update was also made available in January for those willing to test the new functionality before the beta, and it appeared to run smoothly for our 20+ testers.

As you probably know, this update's main feature is to enhance the conflict detection logic to work across different mod types; an issue that affected Vortex for a very long time and has been limiting the app's efficacy when attempting to support new modding patterns for new and existing games. Existing modding environments have to be scanned for existing conflicts which were previously undetected, according to my tests this incurred a ~15% delay when calculating conflicts + the deployment event itself which as you know can take a significant amount of time depending on the user's mod setup (number of mods and custom rules + LOOT's sorting mechanism, etc). The delay itself would only occur during Vortex's first run which we thought was acceptable - clearly we need to further optimize this functionality to run faster and better inform the user of what Vortex is doing.

I'm afraid that stopping Vortex mid-migration and moving back to a previous version will indeed cause unexpected behavior even when rollback is technically achievable (which it should be as long as Vortex completes its first run).

Note to anyone updating to 1.10.2 - even if Vortex appears to be stuck - it's not! Please let it finish the migration, and if needed, only rollback to 1.9.X once your plugins have finished sorting.

We're currently working on 1.10.3 which will optimize the migration and ensure this never happens again.

[Zanderat]

One thing I don't get.  It came up with my issue in another comment topic.  Why do you need to worry so much about conflict resolution between mod types?  How could an ENB conflict with a mesh replacer for example? 

[Pickysaurus]

30 minutes ago, Zanderat said:

One thing I don't get.  It came up with my issue in another comment topic.  Why do you need to worry so much about conflict resolution between mod types?  How could an ENB conflict with a mesh replacer for example? 

It's come up a few times in a few different game communities. Probably the most recent/relevant example is in Skyrim VR. The new SKSEVR plugin that allows light plugins to be loaded includes a Game.pex script which is also provided by SKSEVR itself, causing a cross-modtype conflict.