Been holding off and trying but done with Vortex.

[elpuertorro]

How is it that we still don't have a native way to manage different versions of Skyrim, Steam/ Gog?

I currently have both Steam and GoG was building quite a nice collection to upload, that would work on both.
Followed the "workaround" of making a separate data folder for GoG Vortex.
So set it up had both each with it's own staging folder but sharing the download.
Would act up once in a while but managed, so after the update to 1.10.8 "stable" it just went crazy.
like many times was on the GoG side testing a small pack that's abut to go live, then closed and was going to load the steam (default) Vortex, to add 2 mods i had tested on the GoG build to make sure they also worked on the Steam build.
So low and behold receive a msg about not having a staging folder, a bit odd, so I close vortex and confirm the folder is there where it has always been.
Relaunch vortex and still the same msg, so I go and to set it manually to where it should have been and see it is showing the Gog SF path even if it did not see it. so i set it back to og folder.

So what does Vortex decide to do? somehow it now reads both as 1 so when I set the folder back to where it was,  so after it was done, then ask for the deploy method so first thing was relaunch so it went back to hl deployment method, so to my surprise took the Staging Folder for GoG which btw is in a totally separate drive and just transferred all to the Steam one and eliminated the GoG  staging folder. I'm thinking it somehow mixed the files in the roaming folder from the Steam and Gog Folder, which would make no sense but hey you never know.

On top of that, completely destroyed the Steam side, mods not active extra mods that was not part of that install/profile, the profiles screwed, and now I have still have 5,106 mods total but with 1 active (rsv patch update), 1 disabled (simple dual sheath for .169 and newer), 2442 Uninstalled and 2662 Never installed, which should have been about 2k mods plus per Build.
Restoring a back up didn't work as it kept using the most recent, and if set manually it can't because of the workaround if vortex restarts it always launches the default Vortex, so can't apply the back up top try and resolve.
So in other words 4 months of hard work trying to bring something to the community that would work for ALL and not just one section, down the drain gone.


Why, Why did that have to happen? is not like the Gog build just came out, it's been already what  a year and a half? and still hasn't been taken care of, why?
Your most revenue/traffic generating game on the site and you decide to ignore part of the community for what?
I mean we know is not lack of funds to pay someone to fix/handled that.
So it's an honest question why no native support yet for this.

And please before someone goes shooting from the hip, see my perspective, 
I'm working on making collections for the different builds so the community doesn't feel left out of a collection not being available for their build because they use X or Y version of Skyrim.

So now what? I am going to have to use an external mm to put collections together then have to figure out how to pass that to a nexus collection, then re install and remake all the rules and such so the collections picks it up, since the official mm can't handle that.
Guys I really don't want to and have no clue but I'm going to have to go to wabbajack?

And the thing is i know Vortex is capable and powerful once you understand it, and no thanks to info that's out there, as some new things you find it by mistake.
like recently I noticed a new thing in the menu to fix cyclic redundancy in mods that you can assign a mod to be the last to load out of the group of conflicted mods(great btw), when before it would only let you flip the order between A and B.
No where can info about that wonderful little feature be found and things like that.

Seriously why hasn't this been taking care of?
What's the end goal by not providing the support to manage both builds in one mm with out having to change things every time you want to move from one to the other, is it at this point giving minimum support only as needed to give way for the new mm coming down the pipeline?

Lately it seems like Vortex is sabotaging itself for some odd reason.  - example - the activation of plugins lately has problems after installing and enabling mods won't enable the plugin as before they worked no problem, and then my situation above.

So again I honestly ask why hasn't this been fixed, because I really don't get it, seems Vortex is going backwards.
Not to mention 4 months of my free time, gone because not even the backups worked, be it using the ones manually made by me or using one of auto made by vortex like the hourly one it does.

PLEASE READ:
This is a rant yes, but not an ATTACK rant, I honestly would like to know so I can then decide what to do moving forward, as I don't want to have to experience that again, with the little free time I have trying to do something for the nexus community to then just loose it all again.
 

Edited March 24 by elpuertorro
Fixing typos and making sure the post reads the way I intend it and not seem like an attack.

[showler]

Short answer to your entire question:  Vortex is in the process of being retired and replaced with a new mod manager.

Slightly longer answer: GoG and Steam versions would be functionally identical if people weren't trying to stay on an outdated version.

Final thought: I'm pretty sure you can use command line switches to avoid all the fuss and bother with switching settings in Vortex to switch between GoG and Steam.  Or you can make a different Windows account to achieve the same thing.

So, basically, you are an edge case user and there are already methods to achieve what you want, so that combined with new features no longer being added to Vortex is why it hasn't been added.

[showler]

For command line information look at this thread: 

 

[elpuertorro]

If you noticed I already had everything set up with Cl and all, as I used Picky's method, matter of fact in another post we both participated in I even go further to explain how to set up individual instances of SSEEdit and such here in the very last post::

So that was not the problem, it was an out of the blue thing.
But thanks for trying to help.
 

Edited March 24 by elpuertorro
Fixing typos

[elpuertorro]

1 hour ago, showler said:

Short answer to your entire question:  Vortex is in the process of being retired and replaced with a new mod manager.

Slightly longer answer: GoG and Steam versions would be functionally identical if people weren't trying to stay on an outdated version.

Final thought: I'm pretty sure you can use command line switches to avoid all the fuss and bother with switching settings in Vortex to switch between GoG and Steam.  Or you can make a different Windows account to achieve the same thing.

So, basically, you are an edge case user and there are already methods to achieve what you want, so that combined with new features no longer being added to Vortex is why it hasn't been added.

Somehow I didn't see this before the other post
But ok let's go with your answers/ reasoning.
Let's say I take the short answer as my answer ok, but only 1 problem the development of the new one started 7 months ago, this has been going on for 1 and 1/2 years is not a new thing.

The longer answer, no not really,  hence why I was building 2 collections 1 for each build same build number on paper but some mods are build specific to steam or gog such as SKSE for example they are both 2.2.6 but not the same and the game will let you know same goes for address library and such. Btw both on latest build so that wouldn't be the issue.

In your final though all was set up the right way, and I addressed that in my  previous post, since I saw this one I'm replying to here after the other one, for some reason.

Not an edge user case as you might think, as they are many of us who got the GoG just to also have a DRM free version,  and was set up the correct way, so even if they are no more updates/new features, the existing ones shouldn't break out of the blue after the most recent update.

Since we also don't have a ETA of when the new one will be Stable ready for daily use, IMO, it still should be added a way to manage both at the same time without having to set up all the cl stuff.


 

[showler]

I have to say, if you were using CL instructions to have two entirely different appdata folders and thus two entirely different Vortex instances, I have no idea how they could have gotten mixed up like that in the first place.

Were it me, I probably would have gone for the different Windows accounts for complete separation.

[showler]

You are pretty much an edge use case, though.  Very few people will try to run both GoG and Steam versions since very few people try to curate Collections.

The problem I have in discussing this is that I don't know how much work would be needed to add this feature.  Hard to judge whether it's worthwhile without knowing that, especially since they thought there was already a usable workaround.

[elpuertorro]

Yes exactly, that's why I find it so odd as it would be "almost" impossible for that to happen.
Your suggestion for a separate Win Acct is good don't get me wrong, but that's the thing I shouldn't have to do that, when you have for example mo2 that can easily do that, but doesn't work for my case which is to make the collections for nexus.
Well I guess it will be a wait and see thing for now, at least I had one mini collection based on Heavy Burns list #24, already uploaded in draft so I guess I'll post that meanwhile after testing with a few people.

[Pickysaurus]

If you're going to be long-term testing two different game store versions of the same game you can also make an extension that handles the second game folder. Unfortunately this won't allow you to manage plugins or saves from there but it'll at least keep the mods somewhat separated. 

[elpuertorro]

Use the template? I made that one for unity that one time that you helped me with, can you give me a link of an example as i'm sure it's very different.
Yeah that's my goal that if I make a collection I make 2 versions 1 for Steam and the other for Gog. so that way at least people can enjoy it in both.
have one sort of build agnostic based on HB list # 24, only needs specific,  add lib and SKSE, so made the skse optional as most have it, and when add lib dl to do a fresh install so it picks the right build, but after that  hoping to redo the list as  all mods are already downloaded  but have to re-download all 5k of them as Vortex also lost the association, I can fix the id, but if I try to re install one already on drive gives me an error: unknown download, just now have to go again 1 by 1 and make sure all works no crashes and all that, you know the drill, but man it's going to be hell.

Thanks