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

[Blutoblutarsky]

Vortex?

 

Not bad,

 

Would have been better if it was something sexual. Sex and drugs sell.

[Lo2k]

So site will be renamed vortexmods.com ?

joking but yeah, it seems "game manager" and site bringing it (and mods to go along ! ) are not linked so strongly anymore.

Edited May 10, 2017 by Lo2k

[Kesta]

"Rely on NMM-like vfs": So, one more question. Sorry to play the MO fanboy (especially since there is a lot more people who are much more fanatics than I am).

 

Let's say I'm a mod author, or tinkerer, who don't only edit already existing files, but need to add new ones to a mod's "folder".

If I do this with NMM's current way of handling things, this is extremely cumbersome, as I have to create the file while modding (with the "target mod" installed), then copy-paste said file back in the NMM mod's folder (which I have to guess since those are just IDs, but I already expect Vortex to be more convenient in that regard), then uninstall the mod through NMM and re-install it again so the software properly recognize that my new file belong to this mod and is properly linked with the one already in the game folder when it'll come to future updates, uninstallation, or profile change.

 

Are we going to see a convenient alternative to this awful behavior ?

Edited May 10, 2017 by Kesta

[yzerman19]

Good luck on your creation...

[decopauge123]

Thank you for the update, Robin and Tannin! I like 'Vortex' as the name of the Nexus mod manager under development, and look forward to using it. MO is my current mod manager, but I've also used NMM and Wrye Bash. Your vision for Vortex is exciting!

 

For what it is worth, I volunteer to be an early alpha test user.

[Tannin42]

 

In response to post #49977347. #49977612, #49977627, #49977747, #49977772, #49978322, #49978412, #49978502, #49978607, #49978752, #49978832, #49978967, #49979042, #49980232 are all replies on the same post.

 

Is it layered out more like NMM or MO?

Personally I dislike the NMM UI a lot because of how it differentiates unistalled and installed mods and the white background and really like how MO solves categories and have everything in one tab rather then constantly switching between load order and mods.

My point exactly is MO is more 'Organized' and clean

 

 

The UI is still work in progress but if I'm honest I would say it's closer to NMM than to MO.

Problem with MOs UI is that having everything on one screen can be very intimidating for a new user and with a UI like MO, as the client gets more features you can't just cram more and more stuff onto the single main page so you have to split it up.

[AbdullahNF]

That was a good read. Tannin is a smart individual and i'm thankful he's a part of the modding community

[Tannin42]

.. that was/is one of the flat-out best "press releases" ever .. right to the point with very good (simple) explanations and examples .. well done, said, and presented .. I am REALLY looking forward to this next step .. so let me ask a couple of simple (I hope) questions .. well. one question broken down into two questions/scenarios ..

 

Question: If I have a game (Fallout 4, for example) heavily modded and "something" breaks (and I get recurring CTDs), will I be able to "Purge" all of the MODs and return to a Vanilla Game without having to delete and reinstall the game itself?

 

Question: Will the "Purge" Feature allow me to remove only certain MODs and keep "Core" MODs (like the Unofficial Patch and F4SKE, for example). It would seem like, with all the "inter-linking" of "Required MODs" between some of these MODs (authors) it would be much easier to "nuke" (pun intended) everything except "Core MODs" (for lack of a better term) and just re-build your game/MOD selection (rather than trying to keep track of who's MOD needs who's MOD). this would be at the "User" level and not something for the software/program to decide .. like little "Check Boxes" under a Purge Menu to select specific files to purge, or designated "Core Mods" to save .. or both.

 

.. okay .. not so simple, and not so short questions .. my apologies.

 

Problem is that Vortex can't know which mods are "core" (in your perspective) and which aren't.

 

With the virtualisation we use you can always simply disable the last mods and the setup will be exactly as it was before those mods were installed.

The purge feature is designed to remove all mods that were installed through Vortex.

If you want to go back to "core" mods you can create a separate "core" profile where you enable only those mods. switch to that profile and all mods that aren't "core" get removed. easy peasy.

[Tannin42]

So, does this mean Vortex is going to retain copies of mods we download? So for example, getting a new version of say SMIM from Skyrim is a massive influx of data. Is it going to be able to handle those large files without issue? And can it properly dump them when I want them removed, either because of an upgrade, or because I no longer want the mod?

 

Not sure I understand the question. When you install a mod you basically have 3 steps:

- download the mod

- install the mod (into a separate directory)

- enable the mod

 

At this point you have the original archive from nexus which you are free to delete to free up space or not.

You have the installed mod. If there was an installer, this is only the selected options. No files here get deleted or replaced by other mods

Finally, you have a bunch of links to the files in the game directory.

 

You can disable the mod and it will remove the links and of course you can remove the mod altogether.

I'm not aware of any problems with large files, SMIM didn't cause any trouble in my testing.

[Tannin42]

Hi Tannin,

 

Great news and thanks for the update. One question: Will we be able to hide mod files in an easy, non-destructive way from deployment as we do in MO? To me, this is invaluable.

 

Thanks!

 

I put it on our ToDo-List.