NMM2 - Update and recruitment

[Tannin42]

In response to post #47703375.

Kayomn wrote: I dunno, the fact you guys are using Electron is nightmare fuel to me. It's so bloated and has a huge memory footprint. Furthermore I don't get why it having support for web tools is at all a good thing, considering how awful anything to do with web implementation is.

I wouldn't worry too much about the memory footprint, the memory usage you see in the Task Manager is quite misleading. A smart application will use as much memory as it can reasonably use, for caches and such. It's not a design goal for modern PC software to avoid memory usage. But that doesn't mean that memory is unavailable to other applications: If you're running a game and uses most of your physical memory, windows will, quite efficiently, swap out the memory of idle background applications (like NMM) first. A demanding foreground application will be able to utilize almost all of your physical memory no matter what you're running in the background.

The reasons to use electron are various:
For one thing it gives us more power to style and theme the UI than any "regular" ui toolkit.
It is platform independent so we can support Linux and MacOS (not making a promise here, just saying from a technical standpoint we haven't burned any bridges).
It's using a widely known, simple programming language and free tools making it the best option when hoping for user contributions.
The v8 engine is the fastest (or close to) of any scripted language interpreter, several times faster than, say, python.
Electron and related tools are well supported and actively developed, giving us the trust that they won't be obsolete in two years.

We did consider many alternatives but problems/limitations with each. Feel free to suggest other UI toolkits, I'm fairly confident I can justify why electron is better for our use case for anything you can come up with.

[Kayomn]

In response to post #47703375. #47712475 is also a reply to the same post.

Kayomn wrote: I dunno, the fact you guys are using Electron is nightmare fuel to me. It's so bloated and has a huge memory footprint. Furthermore I don't get why it having support for web tools is at all a good thing, considering how awful anything to do with web implementation is.

Tannin42 wrote: I wouldn't worry too much about the memory footprint, the memory usage you see in the Task Manager is quite misleading. A smart application will use as much memory as it can reasonably use, for caches and such. It's not a design goal for modern PC software to avoid memory usage. But that doesn't mean that memory is unavailable to other applications: If you're running a game and uses most of your physical memory, windows will, quite efficiently, swap out the memory of idle background applications (like NMM) first. A demanding foreground application will be able to utilize almost all of your physical memory no matter what you're running in the background.

The reasons to use electron are various:
For one thing it gives us more power to style and theme the UI than any "regular" ui toolkit.
It is platform independent so we can support Linux and MacOS (not making a promise here, just saying from a technical standpoint we haven't burned any bridges).
It's using a widely known, simple programming language and free tools making it the best option when hoping for user contributions.
The v8 engine is the fastest (or close to) of any scripted language interpreter, several times faster than, say, python.
Electron and related tools are well supported and actively developed, giving us the trust that they won't be obsolete in two years.

We did consider many alternatives but problems/limitations with each. Feel free to suggest other UI toolkits, I'm fairly confident I can justify why electron is better for our use case for anything you can come up with.

Fair enough. Having seen your work on Mod Organizer and your rather thought out response I think you've got it handled.

If NMM2 is anything like MO I'll be interested to see just how much mileage you guys can get out of JS, or whatever implementation of it that Electron uses.

[Athralsatar]

In response to post #47703375. #47712475, #47744850 are all replies on the same post.

Kayomn wrote: I dunno, the fact you guys are using Electron is nightmare fuel to me. It's so bloated and has a huge memory footprint. Furthermore I don't get why it having support for web tools is at all a good thing, considering how awful anything to do with web implementation is.

Tannin42 wrote: I wouldn't worry too much about the memory footprint, the memory usage you see in the Task Manager is quite misleading. A smart application will use as much memory as it can reasonably use, for caches and such. It's not a design goal for modern PC software to avoid memory usage. But that doesn't mean that memory is unavailable to other applications: If you're running a game and uses most of your physical memory, windows will, quite efficiently, swap out the memory of idle background applications (like NMM) first. A demanding foreground application will be able to utilize almost all of your physical memory no matter what you're running in the background.

The reasons to use electron are various:
For one thing it gives us more power to style and theme the UI than any "regular" ui toolkit.
It is platform independent so we can support Linux and MacOS (not making a promise here, just saying from a technical standpoint we haven't burned any bridges).
It's using a widely known, simple programming language and free tools making it the best option when hoping for user contributions.
The v8 engine is the fastest (or close to) of any scripted language interpreter, several times faster than, say, python.
Electron and related tools are well supported and actively developed, giving us the trust that they won't be obsolete in two years.

We did consider many alternatives but problems/limitations with each. Feel free to suggest other UI toolkits, I'm fairly confident I can justify why electron is better for our use case for anything you can come up with.

Kayomn wrote: Fair enough. Having seen your work on Mod Organizer and your rather thought out response I think you've got it handled.

If NMM2 is anything like MO I'll be interested to see just how much mileage you guys can get out of JS, or whatever implementation of it that Electron uses.

Thank you for the explanation, Tannin. I wasn't sure about Electron. I've not heard anything strongly good or bad about it other than open source, which is more than most non developers hear I suspect. I also like the idea of this theme thing..

Does this mean we might be able to have user created themes to this new mod manager do you think?

[mcdanielskh]

In response to post #47600045.

kriekit wrote: NMO - Nexus Mod Organizer, as a nod to Tannin's fantastic work.

In my opinion NMO is the only name that accurately describes what I hope is being developed :)

[mcdanielskh]

In response to post #47428125. #47428205, #47431185, #47432280, #47433255, #47441410, #47442305, #47450560, #47452285, #47456050, #47457055, #47466255, #47477830 are all replies on the same post.

ozoak wrote:

How about Hiring someone that won't force useless virtualized installation on everyone. You know, like MO and NMM does now...

 

I understand (2nd hand, of course, simply reading the NMM feedback threads) that virtualised folders in NMM haven't worked too well, but it's absolutely one of the core aspects of MO that makes it, from my experience, a preferred mod manager tool (and something that has rarely, if ever broken).

 

I know you guys aren't look for suggestions in the comments section, but for the love of goodness, please make a "dark" option. That has never been implemented and the long hours people spend modding, it would just be better for our eyes.

 

We hope that it's being skimmed though, I suppose :)

And +1 for a 'dark' theme, a 'night' mode!

 

 

 

In response to post #47378955. #47379635, #47380245, #47380310, #47380615, #47380650, #47380665, #47380780, #47381010, #47381020, #47381085 are all replies on the same post.

ShmooZ wrote: I say name it Nexus Mod Organizer!

Elianora wrote: +1

ThatDirtyShisno wrote: +1

TacticalAce wrote: NMO sounds like MMO when spoken, just saying..

nappilydeestructio wrote: +2

lued123 wrote: +1 because we can call it NeMO.

azraal wrote: Nah, the most important feature of mod organizer, the virtual file system, won't be here anyway, or so i read somewhere.
So it can't really qualify to be called in a similar way... :smile:

So instead, to make sure that even if Tannin is in the team, people don't get the wrong idea, how about NNMO which means NNMO is Not ModOrganizer (what? At least some of you will understand the joke. And maybe the joke inside the joke. But this one is common knowledge now).

lued123 wrote: I don't think we've heard anything about whether it will have a variation of MO's file system. I imagine it will, at least as an option. The whole point of this merger is to take the best bits of both, not to dumb down MO by removing its main advantage.

opusGlass wrote: +1 the community has already been calling it this anyway

And yeah I definitely expect a virtual file system, they did hire MO's developer to make it after all...

Dark0ne wrote: Just to nip this one in the bud so we don't get spammed with +1s, we won't be calling it Nexus Mod Organizer.

Mainly because I simply don't like the name "Mod Organizer". Nothing against Tannin at all!

So, consider that name vetoed.

opusGlass wrote: Darn okay. Any confirmation for/against a virtual file system, Dark0ne?

As far as I know, and don't quote me on this, we plan to allow you to pick how you want the file management to work from a number of options, but some might not be done by launch.

Similarly, we're making the software as open source and as easily extendible/extensible as possible, so if we don't do something, some devs could. Modding the mod manager, in essence. Modception.

 

 

And finally, please. If anything from MO gets retained, the virtual folders at very least as an option would be appreciated.

And so it doesn't just sound like a whingey 'that's the way I like, so don't change' kind of request, there's a really practical reason:

multiple-users

 

Not everyone in the house has a gaming PC, but everyone in the house has a login on my gaming rig.

End result: everyone plays Skyrim (or FO4, etc etc) on my PC at some point.

Virtualising the mods and keeping the installed game folder 'vanilla' has been an absolute god-send. I dread to think what 3 people, all modding with their own idea of what mods should be installed, would end up doing to a single folder otherwise.

 

I'd suggest that for quite a number of people (I'm looking at the older crew, I guess, those with kids - who look with envy at the parental units gaming rigs, and those in share houses, or siblings sharing a PC) fencing off individual user (at an OS level) modding makes life so much easier, it does for me.

TzeHuen wrote: +1 for virtual folders

xXBalthorXx wrote: +2 for virtual folders

Ravenscar wrote: +666 for virtual folders, NMM is useless without it.

corprall wrote: +1 for virtual folders if for no other reason than to help avoid things breaking when adding and removing mods

adkins462 wrote: yes, this!

BlueGunk wrote: Absolutely agree on virtualised folders. Keeping that game pristine means life is SO much more easy. It's the professional way to do it and not doing it is like taking 100 arrows to each knee. Given Tannin ran it comfortably on MO for ages, it should be a given that it is the base line on which the new Organizer is built.

Aryell wrote: For god sake, maintain my data folder pristine! And let me use several profiles.

TwoArmedMan15 wrote: The fact that they are using web dev technology and emphasized the need to be multi-platform in the article leads me to believe that there won't be MO-esque virtualized directories.

jonboy wrote: +yet another for virtual folders, makes everything so much easier to install, move around, and fix when it goes bad. Understand this may not work for everything (looking at you Morrowind), but is just about necessary in my mind to mod the later Bethesda games.

head213 wrote: +another one for virtual folders here. I can't imagine that reading these comments supporting virtual folders after stating otherwise would be very moralizing, nor will I make any mean spirited or "will not use/support statements" here. But the virtual folder architecture that MO utilizes is SO IMPORTANT to the more "advanced" users of this community. 3 to 4 years ago it was common to see a "we do not support MO users" warning on several mod pages here, but now (to my knowledge at least, and I may be wrong here) it is just a few mods that continue to state this warning. I am not trying to criticize NMM2 in any way (or even NMM1 for that matter), and I have no idea how it will look and work, what will be implemented, etc, and I realize that the effort going into creating such a beast of a program must be absolutely daunting. No matter what NMM2 ends up to be or how it works I will absolutely be trying it out, if nothing else but for the respect I have for the Nexus community as well as for Tannin's work. I just felt it relevant to share this. But then again it was Tannin42 who created MO, maybe there is more creative genius behind NMM2. And after all, it is ONLY my opinion I share here, and we all know what those are like and how fast they can change ;-)

BlueGunk wrote: Well said, head213.

Mistame wrote: While I'm not really a fan of Node.js apps, if the new manager functions well without hogging resources (as many of those types of apps do) and doesn't force font smoothing (looks horrible on some monitors), well, whatever works. :p

As far as the UI goes, as long as it's modern and relatively simple to use and also implements the advanced features that MO does (hiding files, alternate urls, etc).

And I'll have to add to the +virtualization votes. A lack of virtualization is a deal-breaker. I'd rather not play the games at all than have mods without their own installation directories.

Without virtual folders, I will no longer be playing or modding Skyrim. It's just a mess any other way.

[Tannin42]

In response to post #47703375. #47712475, #47744850, #47787250 are all replies on the same post.

Kayomn wrote: I dunno, the fact you guys are using Electron is nightmare fuel to me. It's so bloated and has a huge memory footprint. Furthermore I don't get why it having support for web tools is at all a good thing, considering how awful anything to do with web implementation is.

Tannin42 wrote: I wouldn't worry too much about the memory footprint, the memory usage you see in the Task Manager is quite misleading. A smart application will use as much memory as it can reasonably use, for caches and such. It's not a design goal for modern PC software to avoid memory usage. But that doesn't mean that memory is unavailable to other applications: If you're running a game and uses most of your physical memory, windows will, quite efficiently, swap out the memory of idle background applications (like NMM) first. A demanding foreground application will be able to utilize almost all of your physical memory no matter what you're running in the background.

The reasons to use electron are various:
For one thing it gives us more power to style and theme the UI than any "regular" ui toolkit.
It is platform independent so we can support Linux and MacOS (not making a promise here, just saying from a technical standpoint we haven't burned any bridges).
It's using a widely known, simple programming language and free tools making it the best option when hoping for user contributions.
The v8 engine is the fastest (or close to) of any scripted language interpreter, several times faster than, say, python.
Electron and related tools are well supported and actively developed, giving us the trust that they won't be obsolete in two years.

We did consider many alternatives but problems/limitations with each. Feel free to suggest other UI toolkits, I'm fairly confident I can justify why electron is better for our use case for anything you can come up with.

Kayomn wrote: Fair enough. Having seen your work on Mod Organizer and your rather thought out response I think you've got it handled.

If NMM2 is anything like MO I'll be interested to see just how much mileage you guys can get out of JS, or whatever implementation of it that Electron uses.

Athralsatar wrote: Thank you for the explanation, Tannin. I wasn't sure about Electron. I've not heard anything strongly good or bad about it other than open source, which is more than most non developers hear I suspect. I also like the idea of this theme thing..

Does this mean we might be able to have user created themes to this new mod manager do you think?

Yes, user-created themes are certainly a possibility. They will require css-knowledge to create though and, at least in the first releases, installing a new theme may be more along the lines of "get this file and put it in that directory" instead of a comfortable user interface.
Priorities and such...

[lued123]

In response to post #47703375. #47712475, #47744850, #47787250, #47808640 are all replies on the same post.

Kayomn wrote: I dunno, the fact you guys are using Electron is nightmare fuel to me. It's so bloated and has a huge memory footprint. Furthermore I don't get why it having support for web tools is at all a good thing, considering how awful anything to do with web implementation is.

Tannin42 wrote: I wouldn't worry too much about the memory footprint, the memory usage you see in the Task Manager is quite misleading. A smart application will use as much memory as it can reasonably use, for caches and such. It's not a design goal for modern PC software to avoid memory usage. But that doesn't mean that memory is unavailable to other applications: If you're running a game and uses most of your physical memory, windows will, quite efficiently, swap out the memory of idle background applications (like NMM) first. A demanding foreground application will be able to utilize almost all of your physical memory no matter what you're running in the background.

The reasons to use electron are various:
For one thing it gives us more power to style and theme the UI than any "regular" ui toolkit.
It is platform independent so we can support Linux and MacOS (not making a promise here, just saying from a technical standpoint we haven't burned any bridges).
It's using a widely known, simple programming language and free tools making it the best option when hoping for user contributions.
The v8 engine is the fastest (or close to) of any scripted language interpreter, several times faster than, say, python.
Electron and related tools are well supported and actively developed, giving us the trust that they won't be obsolete in two years.

We did consider many alternatives but problems/limitations with each. Feel free to suggest other UI toolkits, I'm fairly confident I can justify why electron is better for our use case for anything you can come up with.

Kayomn wrote: Fair enough. Having seen your work on Mod Organizer and your rather thought out response I think you've got it handled.

If NMM2 is anything like MO I'll be interested to see just how much mileage you guys can get out of JS, or whatever implementation of it that Electron uses.

Athralsatar wrote: Thank you for the explanation, Tannin. I wasn't sure about Electron. I've not heard anything strongly good or bad about it other than open source, which is more than most non developers hear I suspect. I also like the idea of this theme thing..

Does this mean we might be able to have user created themes to this new mod manager do you think?

Tannin42 wrote: Yes, user-created themes are certainly a possibility. They will require css-knowledge to create though and, at least in the first releases, installing a new theme may be more along the lines of "get this file and put it in that directory" instead of a comfortable user interface.
Priorities and such...

"Put X file in Y directory," is what we always did in MO. Hell, even Steam makes you do that for new themes. It doesn't need a fancy, elegant interface with previews or anything like that. As long as it can be switched to a simple dark mode (or defaults to one?), that's enough for everyone to at least be comfortable. More extensive and easy customization can come later.

[matortheeternal]

In response to post #47703375. #47712475, #47744850, #47787250, #47808640, #47816360 are all replies on the same post.

Kayomn wrote: I dunno, the fact you guys are using Electron is nightmare fuel to me. It's so bloated and has a huge memory footprint. Furthermore I don't get why it having support for web tools is at all a good thing, considering how awful anything to do with web implementation is.

Tannin42 wrote: I wouldn't worry too much about the memory footprint, the memory usage you see in the Task Manager is quite misleading. A smart application will use as much memory as it can reasonably use, for caches and such. It's not a design goal for modern PC software to avoid memory usage. But that doesn't mean that memory is unavailable to other applications: If you're running a game and uses most of your physical memory, windows will, quite efficiently, swap out the memory of idle background applications (like NMM) first. A demanding foreground application will be able to utilize almost all of your physical memory no matter what you're running in the background.

The reasons to use electron are various:
For one thing it gives us more power to style and theme the UI than any "regular" ui toolkit.
It is platform independent so we can support Linux and MacOS (not making a promise here, just saying from a technical standpoint we haven't burned any bridges).
It's using a widely known, simple programming language and free tools making it the best option when hoping for user contributions.
The v8 engine is the fastest (or close to) of any scripted language interpreter, several times faster than, say, python.
Electron and related tools are well supported and actively developed, giving us the trust that they won't be obsolete in two years.

We did consider many alternatives but problems/limitations with each. Feel free to suggest other UI toolkits, I'm fairly confident I can justify why electron is better for our use case for anything you can come up with.

Kayomn wrote: Fair enough. Having seen your work on Mod Organizer and your rather thought out response I think you've got it handled.

If NMM2 is anything like MO I'll be interested to see just how much mileage you guys can get out of JS, or whatever implementation of it that Electron uses.

Athralsatar wrote: Thank you for the explanation, Tannin. I wasn't sure about Electron. I've not heard anything strongly good or bad about it other than open source, which is more than most non developers hear I suspect. I also like the idea of this theme thing..

Does this mean we might be able to have user created themes to this new mod manager do you think?

Tannin42 wrote: Yes, user-created themes are certainly a possibility. They will require css-knowledge to create though and, at least in the first releases, installing a new theme may be more along the lines of "get this file and put it in that directory" instead of a comfortable user interface.
Priorities and such...

lued123 wrote: "Put X file in Y directory," is what we always did in MO. Hell, even Steam makes you do that for new themes. It doesn't need a fancy, elegant interface with previews or anything like that. As long as it can be switched to a simple dark mode (or defaults to one?), that's enough for everyone to at least be comfortable. More extensive and easy customization can come later.

> More extensive and easy customization can come later.

That doesn't work very well with programming. :P

The way Electron works makes user themes pretty trivial. They'll do it, and it'll be awesome. :)

[Limbic2Node]

In response to post #47493580. #47500655, #47507910, #47533300, #47538495, #47549365, #47581735, #47582835, #47686910, #47688185 are all replies on the same post.

Farvahar wrote: What I want to be able to do: have a person save their Skyrim configuration in toto and share it with other users as a file; the mod manager would then recreate that experience on my machine without all the hassle that goes with this currently. The manager would download the mods, set them up etc etc so as to create the same Skyrim experience as a mod master would be able to put together.

Their are guides that explain how to recreate an "ideal" Skyrim configuration, but they require far too much attention for novices and more casual players. For folks with little time to play around with all that, it deters from playing the game.

bubinga64 wrote: Im not saying it's impossible, but I wonder just how useful that feature would be unless it was only mods from this site and said configuration didn't have older mods that are now hidden or removed. Also keep in mind that many people tweak mods so you may not get the intended effect.

piperman123 wrote: I can't second this enough, making it so we can share modded games without depriving modders of their downloads would be sweet AF! Would also be a tremendous help with troubleshooting I imagine. Letting more experienced modders or mod authors tweak certain things or quickly produce patches, reproduce and narrow down user issues etc. As for people using tweaked esps, no reason why after the manager downloads that mod it can't copy (or the users can manually share) the tweaked versions or direct each other to mods downloaded from elsewhere which is probably far fewer than those used from here anyway.

Plus I spend weeks messing with mods and it would be great to be able to share some of my 'ultra modded' setups with friends who aren't as experienced or willing to put the time into learning or setting things up but have seen my version of Skyrim and would like to play it too or even help troubleshoot and test things as they play more than I do or while I continue to play about with modding further.

+1 for sure!

vogues wrote: game changer

phellen wrote: I could see automation like this working for mods using the simple "click the NMM button to install" but not for mods that require separate plugins, patches, mod requirements, ini edits, manual downloads, etc. Probably would end up creating more problems for people than it would solve. Then there is the issue of bypassing page views, and the advertisement and support that nexus, and potentially mod authors get (through donations) with those page views.

The only way I can imagine this working is if Nexus set up a file sharing system like dropbox that can also connect to the Skyrim data folders and the nexus mod manager, allowing players to share data/ save game files via the cloud. Interesting concept for sure, but sharing data like that could also mean monthly subscription charges to pay for storing all the data on the cloud.

tajetaje wrote: So one thing Most of the modding community (probably) and I would absolutely love/need in NMM2 would be some sort of import from MO2/NMM1 and a virtual file system.
P.S. love te work you guys do here, very much hyped for NMM2.

tajetaje wrote: bubinga64 it's called a backup. But what would be cool is having an exportable/importable mod list that auto downloads, if still on the nexus.

lued123 wrote: Taje, Nexus can't keep backups of old mods if the original authors don't allow it. The guy who made Wyrmstooth left because he wanted to completely erase his online presence. Nexus keeping a backup of that would have been in direct conflict with what he was trying to do, and probably insulting besides.
At any rate, modlists that make use of mods that no longer exist can just become obsolete like many mods themselves eventually do, so I don't think that's a huge problem. You could create a list in ModPicker or find one on the Nexus site and then feed that list into the mod manager and have it create that modlist as closely as possible, then notify you of what's missing.
The actual problem here is what Phellen said: bypassing page views and ad impressions, as well as the Nexus simply having to handle the traffic. The closest thing to a solution that I can think of would be restricting the feature to premium members, who don't contribute ad revenue anyway, and already paid for access to better servers.
In any case, I think the Nexus staff probably want to focus on the basic features of the new manager and the site redesign before moving on to hypothetical features like one-click overhauls.

tajetaje wrote: what I meant was very similar to what you just described, but the feature would not be hard at all to implement, and even easier with electron. The feature would basically have a .txt file that NMM2/vortex could read with the mod name, file version, and nexus ID. Of course this wouldn't work with manual downloads or old/deleted files, but that is the trade-off.

Kirk777 wrote: Yes please.

I'm the kind of player that like to experiment mods and different environments, and this'll let me switch from my desktop PC to my laptop much much easier.

And as OP said, it'll give mod authors a way to give players the experience they want to share, especially for ENB authors.

I have several follower mods that I've edited visually and altered their esp. , unless the creator/author looks under the hood, I doubt they would recognize their own creation.
I;m willing to bet these mod creators would not be happy with me if I made their altered followers available, neither would the folks running The Nexus. So, even if it was practical to implement, I would suspect mod "ownership" would be enough of a reason to reflect upon, throw in the other wise points discussed above and that makes it a no go.
Having said that, +1 for a pretty good idea. Edited February 23, 2017 by Limbic2Node

[Limbic2Node]

Sometimes the comments are more entertaining then the article. I don't mind that NMM2.0 is not going to be named NEMO or NMO or BOB or NOB etc. Well the latter two have not been vetoed so....

MO has over 3M DL's, not sure how many current users, personally I can't imagine using another utility because MO speaks to my "logic' in a way NMM does not. After the leaning curve with MO is done, I don't have to think about how the mods are going to be handled or will interact with each other,seeing the conflict on screen right down to what individual file is conflicting/overwriting is important in the decision making process when I'm organizing my mod list.

The NMM choices of 'yes to all-yes to folder- yes to mod-yes-no to all-no to folder-no to mod-no" have always made me feel like I'm guessing and perhaps losing out on all the mod's features. Those choices against "Merge-Replace-Rename-Cancel", these are clear concise actions. So maybe language is partially why I choose MO, and the virtual folder, and the on screen info windows...I could go on.

 

This is one of the few times I trust the devs, because of their past work, who they are and most importantly because they are a big part of the community.