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

[lued123]

In response to post #49980317. #50001302, #50005337, #50007347 are all replies on the same post.

FatherGuse wrote: .. 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.

QuantumBios wrote: I like this idea of a vanilla "masterlist". One could even add certain mods to the "masterlist if they are known to be problem free. Cool idea, hope they implement something like that!

lued123 wrote: If you're so sure that those mods are permanent fixtures in your load order, why not just install them manually and never let the manager touch them?

FreedomsFlame wrote: Because the whole point of this software is that you never have to install things manually. Not that manual installation is a problem for most, but the aforementioned option would be great for keeping things simple for the less tech-savvy users among our number.

I guess that's a use case. Anyway, Tannin responded to someone else who asked a similar question. Just have a profile titled "core" that you only enable your core mods in, and duplicate it when you want to start a new list. No need to purge... well, ever, really. Switching to your duplicated core profile will disable all the mods that aren't in it.

[SorrelKat]

In response to post #49984342. #49985262, #49989507, #49992427, #49994012, #50001227, #50007977 are all replies on the same post.

Bonechip wrote: Great update.... thank you.

Request: Can it be made so the website reflects what you have installed?

IE: If I have BadAssGunMod001 installed... when I visit the mod's page, or see it in a list, it will show "Installed".

When you have over 200 mods installed, it is sometimes easy to forget when one is trolling around looking for more.

sgtmcbiscuits wrote: That's actually a great idea! Especially when changing modlists between playthroughs and such, it can be easy to forget what all you have. Even better would be if mod authors could state which mods are incompatible with others, and if it sees that you have that mod installed, it could warn you. That one would definitely be harder to support, as it requires authors to do a little extra work rather than the site doing it automatically, but for casual users that don't understand incompatibilities and the like, that would be a lifesaver

Gribbleshnibit8 wrote: A lot of extra work that would quickly go out of date. Not really possible, no matter how convenient it'd be.

SorrelKat wrote: Do you want mod authors to devote time to developing, or to doing things like this? Choose...

ReaperTai wrote: Actually I do see a middle ground here. There is already a format for required mods popup so simply add another optional popup for incompatibilities that can be filled in like the required. If or as any arise the author has a option to display them that way.

SorrelKat wrote: Okay, not a bad solution. That will make it up to each author if and/or what they want to include, and the complaints for not doing so will be right on their mods where they have the option of banning users. Makes sense. :D

Bonechip wrote: "Do you want mod authors to devote time to developing, or to doing things like this? Choose..."

When you scan for updates in NMM, it goes to the website to see if there is a new version of the installed mod.

The program can pass what you have installed to the website and tag "installed".

@Bonechip My reply was meant toward @sgtmcbiscuits. Sorry for the confusion.

[FatherGuse]

In response to post #49980317. #50001302, #50005337, #50007347, #50009232 are all replies on the same post.

FatherGuse wrote: .. 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.

QuantumBios wrote: I like this idea of a vanilla "masterlist". One could even add certain mods to the "masterlist if they are known to be problem free. Cool idea, hope they implement something like that!

lued123 wrote: If you're so sure that those mods are permanent fixtures in your load order, why not just install them manually and never let the manager touch them?

FreedomsFlame wrote: Because the whole point of this software is that you never have to install things manually. Not that manual installation is a problem for most, but the aforementioned option would be great for keeping things simple for the less tech-savvy users among our number.

lued123 wrote: I guess that's a use case. Anyway, Tannin responded to someone else who asked a similar question. Just have a profile titled "core" that you only enable your core mods in, and duplicate it when you want to start a new list. No need to purge... well, ever, really. Switching to your duplicated core profile will disable all the mods that aren't in it.

.. great discussion .. as far as "manual installs" .. as I understand the way it works now, when you install "MOD-B" that over-writes a part of your "MOD-A" and then you later uninstall MOD-B, you lose that part of MOD-A that was over-written .. "(I Think) Tannin's "Purge" solution (by way of using the virtualisation in Vortex) this is avoided .. and keep in mind, "MOD-B" may have also over-written parts of "MOD-E", "MOD-Q", and "MOD-#234", all of which just got "compromised" and may now cause "problems" ..

.. it's the "I Think" part of my reply that lead to my questions .. I'm NOT a programmer/mod-author, I AM an "end-user" and sometimes just need to have "things" spelled out for me .. lol ..

.. I'd like to see a system set up where I can install F4SKE and the "Unofficial Patch" and never look back (worry about if they will still be there, intact, when (not "if") I have to use that "Purge" feature ..

.. my reasoning is that I have sat for hours, sometimes the better part of an entire day or two, uninstalling the entire game and re-installing it, and all of the DLCs/Add-ons, and then re-installing F4SKE (which is about as brave as I like to be when manually installing any MOD into a game), and then the Unofficial Patch .. over, and over, and over again ..

.. those are followed by the AWK-Mods, not because I like them, but because they are required by some of the other MODs that I really like .. I actually would prefer not to have a "sorting MOD" or any "naming/classifying" MOD at all .. but I get the idea and applaud the work that went into them .. but, now the original MOD Author has moved onto other things, and some other folks have picked up the torch (with sometimes mixed results), which then requires patches .. all of which take up another slot on that valued "maximum number of MODs" list .. and the patches sometimes get "tangled up" with each other .. and then crashes .. and then uninstalls .. and then, finally, uninstalling the whole works and the process starts over again .. and then there's the whole slew of "Vanilla Bugs" (like the whole power armor/pip boy thing, and the whole "you killed the BOS before the meeting" thing) .. it's frustration bottled into a game ..

I can't express my gratitude with/for Tannin and Nexus for taking the effort to create a program/system that, from the ground up, is designed to "enhance" the user-experience and make life easier for those of us who are not "program/MOD savvy" ..

.. I also REALLY enjoy the discussions and ideas that roll out as a result .. good stuff ..

[DSavage56]

In response to post #49989912. #49994582, #50000142, #50009137 are all replies on the same post.

Exchange324 wrote: Would like to see an option, when choosing between 2 textures, to visually compare them both, just 2 images opened at once, it won't be too hard to implement, but will help a lot believe me. Thx

BryanMichaelD3 wrote: I second this. That would be super helpful!

Tannin42 wrote: MO had this option and I have it on the todo list for Vortex. But it's not as trivial as it may sound because support for reading/displaying dds textures isn't as widespread as - say - jpg.
I can't guarantee we will find an appropriate library with support for it. I haven't looked into that yet though.
Plus supporting textures that are packed in bsas for example would of course require the extra step of extracting them...

urielz wrote: That's great you're considering this. It would be an awesome feature to have.

If possible this would be great. It is something I have wished for, for a long time.

@Tannin42 It is great that you give a brief why something is hard to implement. I have always liked knowing why I can't have the puppy in the window.

[FatherGuse]

In response to post #49982282.

Tannin42 wrote:

.. 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.

.. thanks .. I had not thought to use an "alt" profile for that purpose ..

.. thank you for taking the time to reply and offer a valid solution .. "knowing is half the battle" means something .. "programmer" and "trainer" too .. lol .. thanks man ..

[Faelrin]

Sounds like this is going to be a good program. I like the name too. If this is going to have a drag and drop system like MO that will be even better for me, since I really like that aspect of MO. It's a lot faster then having to enable and disable mods in NMM when I want something different (in the case of texture mods).

 

I do wonder about the file conflict detection thing though. I'm currently unaware if NMM has anything like that, and I liked how MO would have the symbols as well as the ability to check and see what was being overwritten or doing the overwriting. With NMM I have to try to remember what I installed over what in what order, where as in MO I can see that order, along with checking which files as mentioned above. Thankfully I don't use a huge amount of mods in most cases, since my poor memory would fail me if that was the case.

 

I should probably also mention the lack of a clean directory doesn't bug me too much, though it did make things easier at times. Granted I'm the sort who was used to manually modding Oblivion for years, before using mod managers.

[stormymiller]

In response to post #49982282. #50011642 is also a reply to the same post.

Tannin42 wrote:

.. 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.

FatherGuse wrote: .. thanks .. I had not thought to use an "alt" profile for that purpose ..

.. thank you for taking the time to reply and offer a valid solution .. "knowing is half the battle" means something .. "programmer" and "trainer" too .. lol .. thanks man ..

The ability to create and move between profiles like "core" or "vanilla" is a truly great feature. Will users be able to move as quickly between profiles in Vortex as in MO? I'll be delighted if they can. Also, there may be saves associated with specific profiles. MO gives access to save information in the UI which makes it fairly easy to identify a compatible save before launching the game. Will Vortex have this feature? Thank you, Tannin42, for your brilliant work!

[lued123]

In response to post #49980317. #50001302, #50005337, #50007347, #50009232, #50010517 are all replies on the same post.

FatherGuse wrote: .. 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.

QuantumBios wrote: I like this idea of a vanilla "masterlist". One could even add certain mods to the "masterlist if they are known to be problem free. Cool idea, hope they implement something like that!

lued123 wrote: If you're so sure that those mods are permanent fixtures in your load order, why not just install them manually and never let the manager touch them?

FreedomsFlame wrote: Because the whole point of this software is that you never have to install things manually. Not that manual installation is a problem for most, but the aforementioned option would be great for keeping things simple for the less tech-savvy users among our number.

lued123 wrote: I guess that's a use case. Anyway, Tannin responded to someone else who asked a similar question. Just have a profile titled "core" that you only enable your core mods in, and duplicate it when you want to start a new list. No need to purge... well, ever, really. Switching to your duplicated core profile will disable all the mods that aren't in it.

FatherGuse wrote: .. great discussion .. as far as "manual installs" .. as I understand the way it works now, when you install "MOD-B" that over-writes a part of your "MOD-A" and then you later uninstall MOD-B, you lose that part of MOD-A that was over-written .. "(I Think) Tannin's "Purge" solution (by way of using the virtualisation in Vortex) this is avoided .. and keep in mind, "MOD-B" may have also over-written parts of "MOD-E", "MOD-Q", and "MOD-#234", all of which just got "compromised" and may now cause "problems" ..

.. it's the "I Think" part of my reply that lead to my questions .. I'm NOT a programmer/mod-author, I AM an "end-user" and sometimes just need to have "things" spelled out for me .. lol ..

.. I'd like to see a system set up where I can install F4SKE and the "Unofficial Patch" and never look back (worry about if they will still be there, intact, when (not "if") I have to use that "Purge" feature ..

.. my reasoning is that I have sat for hours, sometimes the better part of an entire day or two, uninstalling the entire game and re-installing it, and all of the DLCs/Add-ons, and then re-installing F4SKE (which is about as brave as I like to be when manually installing any MOD into a game), and then the Unofficial Patch .. over, and over, and over again ..

.. those are followed by the AWK-Mods, not because I like them, but because they are required by some of the other MODs that I really like .. I actually would prefer not to have a "sorting MOD" or any "naming/classifying" MOD at all .. but I get the idea and applaud the work that went into them .. but, now the original MOD Author has moved onto other things, and some other folks have picked up the torch (with sometimes mixed results), which then requires patches .. all of which take up another slot on that valued "maximum number of MODs" list .. and the patches sometimes get "tangled up" with each other .. and then crashes .. and then uninstalls .. and then, finally, uninstalling the whole works and the process starts over again .. and then there's the whole slew of "Vanilla Bugs" (like the whole power armor/pip boy thing, and the whole "you killed the BOS before the meeting" thing) .. it's frustration bottled into a game ..

I can't express my gratitude with/for Tannin and Nexus for taking the effort to create a program/system that, from the ground up, is designed to "enhance" the user-experience and make life easier for those of us who are not "program/MOD savvy" ..

.. I also REALLY enjoy the discussions and ideas that roll out as a result .. good stuff ..

SKSE and it's variants all get installed in the main game folder, so any mod manager that touches those is not doing its job correctly.
Unofficial Patches, while they do install in the data folder, always consist of an esp, bsa, and sometimes an ini file all called "Unofficial X Patch.xyz". Any mod that overwrites those is not doing its job correctly. As long as you don't unpack the bsa, your unofficial patches are safe. Loose files that match the files in the bsa take precedence when the game runs, but the unofficial patch files still exist in the bsa, so if you purge everything else, your unofficial patch will still be fully intact and ready to go.
Because Vortex will feature virtualization via hard and symbolic links, you will never have to reinstall from scratch again, unless you decide you're done with the game and come back later. You can simply uncheck all of your mods and you'll be back to vanilla+F4SE. Then you just enable the unofficial patch again and you're ready to go. Edited May 11, 2017 by lued123

[Wadu436]

Will Vortex have different profiles and will you be able to easily reorder mods (like on the left lane of MO)?

[sopmac45]

Hi Tannin42 ... I started to play Skyrim SE like 4 months ago so I've never used MO and I am just familiar with NMM, however, I am practically a rookie to mods ( but I am not a teenager though .. lol .. ) and my question are :

1 - Will Vortex clean up files as SSEDIT does ?

2 - Will I have to use LOOT or Vortex will do the sorting ?

3 - Assuming that I want to restart the whole game again, will Vortex allow me to just deactivate/delete all the mods and most important, must I delete all Skyrim data/files and reinstall it again as I am doing now ?

If I do not make any sense, just please bear with me because I am new to mods as I said but it is a pain in the butt to go nuke and restart the whole thing again .. will be there a more practical/fast solution to this ?

Regarding the name, I did not vote for Vortex but I am ok with that name. It will be impossible to please the world. Simplicity and reliability of this new program is what it count IMHO.

Thanks so much.