We have a name! And a Q&A session with Tannin regarding the new mod manager.

[Anordil87]

I'm glad that Virtualization will be the method for Vortex. I really have enjoyed Tannin's work with Mod Organizer. The profiles works great for me as a small mod maker and patch maker allowing me to create these virtual profiles to test out patches and mods before I release them on the nexus. I'm looking forward to see what Vortex will be able to do for Skyrim Legendary and Skyrim SE. :)

[NightmareRex]

havent had any problems with the old fomm manager and manual install but it looks like it has great features to protect things that could overlap so look cool to try it out.

[BeowulfSchmidt]

By gum, if Vortex doesn't do things exactly the way that both Mod Organizer and Nexus Mod Manager do, I won't be using it! And get off my lawn!

 

A couple of observations.

 

One, people who tell programmers that something isn't difficult or complex to implement will largely be ignored by actual developers unless the commenting one can definitively prove their qualifications to make such a statement. Even the people who pay me to develop software don't get to tell me that unless they can prove they're better than me.

 

Second, Tannin has no doubt learned many lessons from writing Mod Organizer, and if I don't miss my guess, he's also perused the NMM source code. The notion that he might not apply those lessons and observations to the current project is simply ludicrous. If I understand correctly, he wrote the original vfs that MO uses, so I suspect he has a rather more thorough understanding of its strengths and weaknesses than anyone else posting here. If his opinion is that it's not appropriate at the present time, I for one will believe him.

 

Fortunately, I suspect that most mod users just want software that works, is moderately simple to use, and has the features they want, whereas how it works, as long as it doesn't muck up their computer or game, will be almost completely irrelevant.

 

I've avoided using my Skyrim SE installation precisely because I've been waiting for three things: SKSE, SkyUI and what is now known as Vortex. And yes, I'm aware that some months will pass before all of those things are done, but my existing modded-out-the-wazoo-with-MO installation of Skyrim is perfectly adequate at the present moment, so I'm not all that concerned.

 

So if you need a tester, at any phase, using Windows 10 and a pristine copy of Skyrim SE, one who knows how to submit bug reports with detailed reproduction steps, screen shots, and other assorted QA like activities, I'll be on the lookout for the publication of the application.

[ozoak]

We can't invalidate people's opinions simply by assuming lack of evidence of qualification means no insight (or qualification). Sure, if people are saying (and I'm not aware of anyone actually saying this) "Yo, do Virtualisation properly, it's dead easy what's wrong with you" then that opinion merits some interrogation.

 

I want the MO virtualisation. I make no apologies for that. It works well in a multi-user environment, and that's key. My opinion is not predicated on an intimate knowledge of coding layered virtualisation, but rather on an intimate knowledge of my requirements. I'm upfront: I don't care about managing mods for non-bethsoft games, I don't care about integration with Nexus as I've maybe a handful of times, out of hundreds of mods, used MO or NMM to download for me, I don't care about future feature growth like potential 'cloud save' platforms, what I want is for multiple users on the same PC to be able to easily mod the same games and keep those mod loadouts unique to them without intruding on the ability for anyone to be able to play the game. Prior to MO I just kept multiple copies of the skyrim et al game folder and everyone had their own area to destroy or keep tidy as they wanted. However MO left the game folder pristine, so anyone playing at any time could play their own mod setup (or vanilla) without having to give a thought what other users had been up to - whilst allowing us to have just 1 copy of the game folder. That simplified things greatly.

 

Now if Vortex can provide that functionality without onerous operation and without risk of save-killing caveats/complications then it'll get a look-in. Otherwise it will be relegated to the same place NMM was: an OK solution, but definitely not workable (for us). If it ends up being compatible with maintaining multiple copies of a games folder per-windows-user then it might pass, I guess we'll see.

 

We can all bang-on all we like about which one is more popular - I think the truth is that both are popular. Look at the endorsements for each. NMM 6.7M unique DL's, 189K endorsements. MO 1M unique DL's and 143K endorsements.

Clearly both are popular. I think it's a waste of everyone's time to argue a winner.

 

I respect that Nexus and Tannin and the dev team responsible for Vortex are required to serve the interests of Nexus, and I imagine that some research has been undertaken to understand which features from either prior platform the users value. I don't think we've seen any though, which makes me wonder how insightful it will be. If Vortex is being written for Nexus rather than for Nexus Users that's one thing, but if it's being written for the users - maybe make it obvious that you have spent time analysing what users want from it (and if that time hasn't been spent, maybe take the time before branching too far down one dev path makes revision too cumbersome).

 

At the end of the day, do whatever you guys want. It'll either be awesome or not, but people generally hate being told "that's the way it is", moreso when it's a community tool of some variety, doubly so when it's a reworking of a beloved tool.

Edited May 24, 2017 by ozoak

[IvanIlyich]

I have put everything on hold waiting for this new, superior mod manager. I will wait as long as I need to for Vortex to be as good as it can possibly be. Since I built my PC at the end up summer last year, I've held off, awaiting better internet connection. Now I wait for this resource to be released so that my experience will be as great as it possibly can be. Thanks to all those working on this project

[Ethreon]

In response to post #50356777.

ozoak wrote:

We can't invalidate people's opinions simply by assuming lack of evidence of qualification means no insight (or qualification). Sure, if people are saying (and I'm not aware of anyone actually saying this) "Yo, do Virtualisation properly, it's dead easy what's wrong with you" then that opinion merits some interrogation.

 

I want the MO virtualisation. I make no apologies for that. It works well in a multi-user environment, and that's key. My opinion is not predicated on an intimate knowledge of coding layered virtualisation, but rather on an intimate knowledge of my requirements. I'm upfront: I don't care about managing mods for non-bethsoft games, I don't care about integration with Nexus as I've maybe a handful of times, out of hundreds of mods, used MO or NMM to download for me, I don't care about future feature growth like potential 'cloud save' platforms, what I want is for multiple users on the same PC to be able to easily mod the same games and keep those mod loadouts unique to them without intruding on the ability for anyone to be able to play the game. Prior to MO I just kept multiple copies of the skyrim et al game folder and everyone had their own area to destroy or keep tidy as they wanted. However MO left the game folder pristine, so anyone playing at any time could play their own mod setup (or vanilla) without having to give a thought what other users had been up to - whilst allowing us to have just 1 copy of the game folder. That simplified things greatly.

 

Now if Vortex can provide that functionality without onerous operation and without risk of save-killing caveats/complications then it'll get a look-in. Otherwise it will be relegated to the same place NMM was: an OK solution, but definitely not workable (for us). If it ends up being compatible with maintaining multiple copies of a games folder per-windows-user then it might pass, I guess we'll see.

 

We can all bang-on all we like about which one is more popular - I think the truth is that both are popular. Look at the endorsements for each. NMM 6.7M unique DL's, 189K endorsements. MO 1M unique DL's and 143K endorsements.

Clearly both are popular. I think it's a waste of everyone's time to argue a winner.

 

I respect that Nexus and Tannin and the dev team responsible for Vortex are required to serve the interests of Nexus, and I imagine that some research has been undertaken to understand which features from either prior platform the users value. I don't think we've seen any though, which makes me wonder how insightful it will be. If Vortex is being written for Nexus rather than for Nexus Users that's one thing, but if it's being written for the users - maybe make it obvious that you have spent time analysing what users want from it (and if that time hasn't been spent, maybe take the time before branching too far down one dev path makes revision too cumbersome).

 

At the end of the day, do whatever you guys want. It'll either be awesome or not, but people generally hate being told "that's the way it is", moreso when it's a community tool of some variety, doubly so when it's a reworking of a beloved tool.

Any opinion that is expressed in a manner of "dis so ez y u no do my dog can do dis" deserves to be ignored and forever gone down the garbage chute.

[ozoak]

 

In response to post #50356777.

 

 

 

ozoak wrote:

We can't invalidate people's opinions simply by assuming lack of evidence of qualification means no insight (or qualification). Sure, if people are saying (and I'm not aware of anyone actually saying this) "Yo, do Virtualisation properly, it's dead easy what's wrong with you" then that opinion merits some interrogation.

I want the MO virtualisation. I make no apologies for that. It works well in a multi-user environment, and that's key. My opinion is not predicated on an intimate knowledge of coding layered virtualisation, but rather on an intimate knowledge of my requirements. I'm upfront: I don't care about managing mods for non-bethsoft games, I don't care about integration with Nexus as I've maybe a handful of times, out of hundreds of mods, used MO or NMM to download for me, I don't care about future feature growth like potential 'cloud save' platforms, what I want is for multiple users on the same PC to be able to easily mod the same games and keep those mod loadouts unique to them without intruding on the ability for anyone to be able to play the game. Prior to MO I just kept multiple copies of the skyrim et al game folder and everyone had their own area to destroy or keep tidy as they wanted. However MO left the game folder pristine, so anyone playing at any time could play their own mod setup (or vanilla) without having to give a thought what other users had been up to - whilst allowing us to have just 1 copy of the game folder. That simplified things greatly.

Now if Vortex can provide that functionality without onerous operation and without risk of save-killing caveats/complications then it'll get a look-in. Otherwise it will be relegated to the same place NMM was: an OK solution, but definitely not workable (for us). If it ends up being compatible with maintaining multiple copies of a games folder per-windows-user then it might pass, I guess we'll see.

We can all bang-on all we like about which one is more popular - I think the truth is that both are popular. Look at the endorsements for each. NMM 6.7M unique DL's, 189K endorsements. MO 1M unique DL's and 143K endorsements.

Clearly both are popular. I think it's a waste of everyone's time to argue a winner.

I respect that Nexus and Tannin and the dev team responsible for Vortex are required to serve the interests of Nexus, and I imagine that some research has been undertaken to understand which features from either prior platform the users value. I don't think we've seen any though, which makes me wonder how insightful it will be. If Vortex is being written for Nexus rather than for Nexus Users that's one thing, but if it's being written for the users - maybe make it obvious that you have spent time analysing what users want from it (and if that time hasn't been spent, maybe take the time before branching too far down one dev path makes revision too cumbersome).

At the end of the day, do whatever you guys want. It'll either be awesome or not, but people generally hate being told "that's the way it is", moreso when it's a community tool of some variety, doubly so when it's a reworking of a beloved tool.

Any opinion that is expressed in a manner of "dis so ez y u no do my dog can do dis" deserves to be ignored and forever gone down the garbage chute.

 

 

Oh god, absolutely. And the mod authors and creatives here will understand that, intimately, more than most.

But who's saying that? Broad generalisations that dismiss mindful opinion and inane opinion alike help no-one.

And more to the point, lets be honest, posts like that should probably be ignored for the troll bait that they are.

 

Personally I know it's not "ez" but as someone who would prefer the kind of virtualisation done with MO (for the benefits it gave me, not for the difficulty of coding it would impose on Tannin) I do resent my opinions being lumped in with the trolls under a sweeping generalisation, and dismissed. Particularly if the point about asking what people want from the new software gets swept aside with it.

[Thoramyr]

I'm still confused about the difference between virtualization and vfs. Will mod files be outside the game directory? Will we be able to move the order of installed mods at any time like in Mod Organizer or will be have to uninstall->install->reinstall conflicting mods like with NMM? Also will we be able to edit mod files and meta deta without having to reinstall them?

 

If its too much like NMM I'll be sticking to MO for New Vegas and see what happens with other games.

Edited May 26, 2017 by JDM90

[Thoramyr]

In response to post #50239892. #50240062, #50244007, #50246277, #50249942, #50290947, #50294092, #50304812, #50311632 are all replies on the same post.

remlnx wrote: Not going to use this, give from day 1 the same virtualization as Mod Organizer.
60-70% of Nexus community use MO not NMM and you are prioritizing those "im unable to learn something that is not NMM and i dont even wanna try" that is probably less than 40% of the users?
That's why i started to cry when Tannin moved to work for Nexus, because of course the new Vortex manager destiny is to be more similar to NMM than MO.

Not going to renew my sub, forget it.

Dark0ne wrote: Where did you pull those stats from? Were they made up in your head, perchance?

matortheeternal wrote:

.

J.O.D. wrote: Like Nexus is Skyrim only and on Reddit, 100 % Nexus users are present...

Dark0ne wrote: Our mod manager login figures show that only 8% of user agents are from MO users. So unless people want to argue that most MO users don't download via MO/use the login mechanism, i.e. they use it in offline mode (the same argument could also be used for NMM as well), then 8% is your official figure. To clarify, this is only comparing games that MO actually supports, so I've removed the figures for games like The Witcher 3 from the NMM stats so it's a more fair representation.

I'd never use a poll of the /r/skyrimmods Reddit community as an accurate representation of the entire community. They tend to be more "tech savvy" or even "tech aware" than your average mod user and I would class it as the "enthusiast" side of the community. Hence why I can believe those figures in the poll easily for that community.

And to clarify, this does NOT mean we do not want to cater to this small side of the community as well. This is simply a correction to the over-inflated figures being thrown around about MO's usage within the entire community at this time.

lued123 wrote: I can buy the 8 percent thing, but I'd imagine that's partly because NMM has a download link on every single page of the Nexus, while MO has to be actively searched for. I think it'd be a lot closer if they had equal exposure. It's not just that MO is for advanced users, it's also that a lot of people grab NMM and are perfectly fine with it. It'll be interesting to see how this split changes when/if Vortex has both systems as options (assuming you guys can even collect that info, anyway).
At any rate, I think we can all agree that, as long as it's not completely screwed up, Vortex will be more popular than either one once it starts getting out there.

Kevin843 wrote: I want virtualization data like MO or i won't be using vortex.

LordGem wrote: Hi I've been modding my games for only the last two years, since I've been on disability and have had the time to brush the rust off my programming from the 80's. I've tried both Nexus Mod Manager and Mod Organizer, and am currently using Mod Organizer 2, out all all of them I found that the Nexus Mod Manager the most difficult to use from an ignorant point of view. Where as the format, ( not the programming ) of Mod organizer is a lot more intuitive. I have just spent the last 3 weeks modding Fallout 4 MO2 and have finally got it to work and play without conflict drawing mods from not only Nexus and Bethesda, but self created as well. For the prior 8 weeks before that I tried NMM and was unable to succeed. Now if I'm one of only 8% of your users that uses MO than how do the say 80% who don't actually do programming understand NMM and the way it works. It is possible that the sophistication of MO is just easier for me to use because of the way I think, but it is my hope that no matter what method is used to make it work that the Interface will be more similar to MO than NMM. In this I do hope that Dark0ne and Tannin listens and hears the small side of their community

Littlebigme123 wrote: I much prefer NMM. I have no programming experience at all, and it is by far the easiest to understand. I would prefer they keep it like NMM in the new one.

You don't need programming experience to use MO... I'd say MO is even easier to use than NMM because you don't have to worry about installation order and uninstalling and installing tons of different versions of mods when they get updated.

[lued123]

In response to post #50318387.

azamjad wrote:

So If I get this right, Vortex will be using a form of virtualisation, but instead of having a clean Steam folder like MO gives, it will still have files in it from the mods? But we can revert to a clean state with the press of a button? I love MO's virtualisation, but if Tannin says that virtualisation like MO gives problems and this method of virtualisation is better, then I guess I believe him. Can someone confirm?

The mod files don't technically go in the game folder. They get "attached" to it from Vortex's storage folder with hard or symbolic links. Windows will treat it as if the files actually are there, and you should see them in file explorer, but they aren't really there. You can remove all of the links at once by telling Vortex to purge, which will bring you back to a vanilla state if you've installed everything with Vortex. Links like this are a Windows feature, and behave as if the same file is in two places at once. This is being used to enable MO-like features (like quickly adjusting installation order in post) with a little more... physicality, I guess, since the files are pretty much there.
The VFS from MO could occasionally interact poorly with tools running under it, and manually forcing every new tool that comes out to work with it is not something anyone wants to do if they can satisfy people with something that doesn't require it. Basically, the VFS is high maintenance, so it's not going to be there until they can determine if it really matters when you can do all the stuff it enabled in MO without it.
Edit: Also, sorry for the long-ass post. Had a lot of hard-to-explain subjects to cover. Edited May 26, 2017 by lued123