Big changes for the Nexus Mod Manager and the introduction of Tannin42, our new head of NMM development

[Ethreon]

In response to post #43378980. #43381095 is also a reply to the same post.

tanyferan wrote: NEXUS MOD DOWNLOADER

NMD

You need to be lossing the words organizer and manager and replace it with something similar as above.

Thanks.

Regards to you all.

Cheezyeggs wrote: What's the justification for that, if I may ask? No existing mod manager is necessary for downloading mods from nexus, nor are they necessary for installing mods. Their function truly is in assisting in organization and management of mods, hence the name.

Dropping the manager words from what is literally a mod manager. Sound logic. Edited October 19, 2016 by Ethreon

[Firuu]

I believe in you Tannin! I'm looking forward to this!

[GrumpGamey91]

Congratulations to all involved.

 

Just a couple of comments about new development desires I have.

 

My hope is that any change to NMM includes the UI.

Specifically the column names and dragging the edge to reveal them. Today if not in full screen, the columns if dragged snap back to reduced view. If I drag a column to resize it I want the column to stay where I drag it. This way I can use NMM in non-fullscreen and do other stuff.

 

Another nit pick hope, please always indicate what is happening with NMM.

Sometimes if I install or deinstall a large mod, I have no idea if NMM has crashed without looking at the task manager and CPU percentage. Please, please somehow show that NMM is processing something and best guess show a percentage until completion, preferably showing the current mod being touched.

 

Last hope, desire would be that how NMM saves is changed a bit.

The problem I have is that any changes to the Plugins tab, immediately saves.

I would like NMM to present the option to wait on making any saves until I manually ask NMM to save them.

 

Good luck folks and happy developing...

[wolverine2710]

In response to post #43379595. #43383080 is also a reply to the same post.

wolverine2710 wrote: Just read the news. Absolutely totally positively news. I'm ONLY hoping Tannin won't be abandoning his Virtual Filing System system. Its a stroke of brilliance. Can't wait to find what the Nexus Mod Organizer (NMO) will look like. Tannin has performed in his spare time with MO. Imagine what he can do now he is getting paid for it and can devote all his time on it - together with the other two devs at Nexus.

Note: Did not read the posts. NMO has already been often mentioned.....

ssuamier wrote: I absolutely adore MO and it's Virtual File System, a great invention for a mod manager. For me however I'd prefer to have this as an option (from the beginning of course) as I very often (re)search inside the data folder to get a better understanding about skyrim modding and to know which files are actually changed. In such a case I don't need to know the exact mod name.

Its possible to research the VFS by starting for example free commander (not the default windows explorer) from MO. You can then go the Skyrim/FO directory and see the contents of it with all mods/files in it.

[hati39]

Great decision! However, what makes me a little nervous is: will there be a more or less functional product in just a week? A lot of authors wil be fast in porting their mods (if at all necessary). And sure most users are even faster trying out SSE. But no matter how good or even fantastic Bethesda will have done the job: everybody with a heavy modded game will miss "his" character, his tools, his immersion, whatever. For MO users it will be hard to move back to old style modding. A lot of new hard drives will be sold to manage all the backups ;)

 

Any idea or perhaps a timeline from the devs about what period we are talking about? Days? Weeks? Months? Years?

[shizitmonkey]

Before I buy a game I see if it has files on NMM.. no files no sale.. the other game developers besides Bethesda should take note..

I am 60years old, love video games and don't know squat about modding. That's why I love NMM..

Also thank you all you talented smarties for making such awesome mods...

[louiethelooper]

In response to post #43389245.

shizitmonkey wrote: Before I buy a game I see if it has files on NMM.. no files no sale.. the other game developers besides Bethesda should take note..
I am 60years old, love video games and don't know squat about modding. That's why I love NMM..
Also thank you all you talented smarties for making such awesome mods...

i would like to ditto to shizitmonkey- am also 60,thank god i was feeling lonely here. and also dont know jack of modding and depend on this site for this type of gaming exp.We might the exception to the rule but keep us in mind and thank you for this awesome site.

[Ct3mMajorKonig]

Congratulations!! I'm glad you guys are doing well!! I really appreciate all you guys do! I'm excited for the future of modding!

[tanyferan]

In response to post #43389245. #43391895 is also a reply to the same post.

shizitmonkey wrote: Before I buy a game I see if it has files on NMM.. no files no sale.. the other game developers besides Bethesda should take note..
I am 60years old, love video games and don't know squat about modding. That's why I love NMM..
Also thank you all you talented smarties for making such awesome mods...

louiethelooper wrote: i would like to ditto to shizitmonkey- am also 60,thank god i was feeling lonely here. and also dont know jack of modding and depend on this site for this type of gaming exp.We might the exception to the rule but keep us in mind and thank you for this awesome site.

ditto im 64 and agree with the above comments

[Tannin42]

In response to post #43342675. #43344250, #43364545, #43367080, #43368835, #43373130, #43380110, #43382975 are all replies on the same post.

Whocares65 wrote: Wonderful news for the Nexus community! Tannin42 is an extremely accomplished developer, and with him at the helm, I expect great things from the new mod manager.

It's a disappointment to know that the development team is already at work and not see the code, though. It would benefit both the team and the community to put the code up on GitHub so others can view it, comment on it, and contribute with bug reports, pull requests, etc. Given that the dev team is small (only 3 people), getting extra work out of the community would be a real help.

And I do mean GitHub, as opposed to other code-hosting sites. GitHub is a popular site where many developers already have accounts, so putting code there (vs. BitBucket, etc.) will maximize the opportunity for others to participate.

It would also be a good idea to use more open-source technologies (Java, Python, etc.) rather than a Microsoft stack (VC++, C#, etc.). The tooling, libraries, etc. around Microsoft technologies heightens the barrier of entry for the community to participate.

ssuamier wrote: Actually I disagree, go for C++ / C# / Java / Python / QML / HTML5 or whatever you feel is right. Most important is the framework not the language (I prefer Qt, GTK is great too, Java to me looks always a bit lagging behind except for Apps, but no MFC stuff please :) )

HadToRegister wrote: Actually Tannin mentioned that the UI would be HTML based

SkyrimCliff wrote: Meh, I'm a die-hard LUA fan. It's the new gold-standard.

Whocares65 wrote: I don't think that VC++/C# adds any value to the project, but definitely creates barriers to broader participation. Of course the decision is ultimate down to the dev team (and at this point they've already picked a technology, obviously), but such choices should be made with the community in mind.

Tannin42 wrote: We use typescript (javascript superset) with electron/node for the base application with "native" modules (c++ or c#) where performance is important or for certain features.

Community participation is a big factor in this decision. We want the tool to be modular so users can extend / change it to fit their needs. C++ or C# as the base application would have been too big a hurdle imho, there are far more developers who have at least a base knowledge of JS and it's easier to learn, and harder to write crap code in.

There have been a lot of considerations on the tech, if you have a concrete proposal I can probably tell you why we decided against it. QML? Too obscure, there's practically no devs around that have existing knowledge. Python? quite slow and has no own UI kit so we'd be back at PyQt with QML. Java? Odd looking UIs and requires users to install a vm. from oracle. That tries to trick you into installing adware.

Regarding publishing the source code: If we were to release the code now, one of two things would happen: Either no one cares and so we gained nothing or we'd end up receiving tons of pull requests that conflict with each other and are incompatible because progress is fast and we have no fixed apis yet so we as the actual development team would end up spending way too much time managing the project instead of developing it.

We want to involve the community. But managing an open source project with an unknown number of independent contributors who each may make a single contribution or commit daily changes and who may require tutoring and up-to-date documentation of everything at all times requires completely different organization than a small team of 3 full-time devs who all have a good idea what the others are doing and work in their own corner.

Once we have stable extension apis you will get your chance to contribute.

Tyfighter77 wrote: That's cool I was just going to suggest Electron. That's exciting.

ssuamier wrote: Thanks for answering personally, Tannin42. Your plan sounds good to me (I'd let in some a few more developers to the "base team" if I knew them well enough).

I use QML professionally and know about > 200 developers who use it too, but have not researched how many people are using it for their mobile (open source) apps (at least I'd suspected a higher number due to the age of Qt Quick / QML).

I have no bad experiences at all with Python (after all the modules get precompiled), but I can understand people not liking the language (and there is even a native variant named CPython). It would be nice however if you could offer a plugin for python scripts at least.

Javascript on the other hand requires a really good and fast engine. A lot of shopping and other large sites are at times extremely slowing down my not-so-slow computers (part of the problem is myself however) due to excessive javascript ad code (nexus alone has 19 trackers on this page). I hope the mod manager will have a much more simple architecture to avoid such problems.

I'd wish I had the time to contribute regulary to your project, that would be a lot of fun, but I already have another large private project.

Good luck on the future of your <insert favourite name here> mod manager!

ssuamier: electron uses node.js which in turn is based on googles v8. This is one of the fastest interpreters of any interpreted language. It is in most use cases several times faster than the default python interpreter (cpython). Pypy closes the gap a bit but thats not what most users use and it's not up-to-date with the language standard.
And don't get me started on the desaster around standards in python (2 vs 3).