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

[Olivir2019]

In response to post #50976092. #50976292 is also a reply to the same post.

RavenMind wrote:

I hope this hasn't been asked/answered before. I couldn't find it using the forum search. Will Vortex be able to do things like merge esp's into something like a bashed patch they way Wrye Bash does, or have some sort of similar feature to reduce the number of esp's?

 

Thanks for your hard work on this!

Ethreon wrote: Really hope not. That is not the job of a mod manager. And you can already do that with proper, dedicated tools.

That would be a waste of developers' time, IMO. There are tools for that. Vortex must not be a Swiss army knife. You know, if you do everything, you are not doing it well.

[RavenMind]

In response to post #50976092. #50976292, #50979777 are all replies on the same post.

RavenMind wrote:

I hope this hasn't been asked/answered before. I couldn't find it using the forum search. Will Vortex be able to do things like merge esp's into something like a bashed patch they way Wrye Bash does, or have some sort of similar feature to reduce the number of esp's?

 

Thanks for your hard work on this!

Ethreon wrote: Really hope not. That is not the job of a mod manager. And you can already do that with proper, dedicated tools.

J.O.D. wrote: That would be a waste of developers' time, IMO. There are tools for that. Vortex must not be a Swiss army knife. You know, if you do everything, you are not doing it well.

Hmm, good points. It's also been my experience that all-in-ones rarely do everything well. Looks like I'll still be using Wrye Bash in tandem with a mod manager. Or just WB like I'm doing now. Still will have to try the new mod manager though. Can't wait to see what the team comes up with!

[Target1213]

Sending out supportive and inspirational vibes! Looking forward to trying it out! Keep pushing and thanks!

[SilverSie]

I didn't expect talk of an alpha so soon! That is really exciting news!

[wysiwyg]

I hope in addition to migrations from NMM that there's the general ability to export what you need to either completely reinstall or move to a new computer.

 

Before I had to make a backup of my downloaded mods to a folder and copy that to the new system. Then, for NMM with the multiple "add mod from file" functionality I'd select all of them. Unfortunately NMM didn't even try to match to Nexus mod ID's and pages. With MO2 I was able to copy all of the mods to the download queue and add them there and it tried, with some success, to parse the file names to match to Nexus; I didn't start with MO2 though since I downloaded with NMM so maybe if I had the data would exist with the mods already.

 

For Vortex it'd be great if there was a metadata file saved for each download which you could backup and restore along with the mod files and a way to add them back from the file system. Even if Vortex doesn't handle backing up mods themselves, which is probably out of scope, having the metadata with the files so they could be backed up and restored together would be helpful.

[Darkarhon]

Looking forward to this :)

[IvanIlyich]

I am fully hyped at this point. There are many games that I look forward to modding when this arrives. We will see.

[BoneTongue]

Sounds great

[RajunKajun59]

If, I am reading this correctly, we can expect mod links like NMM .6 in the game folder, but installation order managment like MO?

[ermodk]

I've been using MO (oldrim) and NMM (TW3) for a few years now and have come to appreciate both. I've also studied Comp.Sci. and modded a few games for fun, so I do know my arse from my elbow when it comes to programming, even though I'm not employed as a software developer.

 

@Tannin42:

 

One thing that struck me when thinking about the vfs (imaginary filesystem from the game .exe's point of view) vs. virtualization (hard/symbolic links instead of files), is that maybe the overall best approach is actually to adopt something akin to what Plan 9 out of Bell Labs did:

 

Turn the problem on its head and think of the original game as a 'file store' or 'source' instead of as a 'target', and link files from said 'file store' into a new, unique 'profile', which acts as a 'world view' and can 'bind' files from both the 'file store' and the various 'mod stores'. This allows you to keep the original install location *completely pristine* like MO does, yet still reap the benefits provided by symbolic/hard links like NMM 0.6x does.

 

The only thing you might need here is some registry magic, where you trick the game .exe into believing you when you tell it that the game is installed in the 'profile' location. But since every game accesses the registry through a similar Windows API, this *might* not be such a big deal?

 

==

EXAMPLE

 

This outlines the case where we have a single game profile configuration called 'my_profile' (there could be an arbitray number of these):

 

- Game was originally installed to D:\Steam\SteamApps\common\Fallout 4 <- %FILE_STORE% (shared between profiles)

- Mod archives are downloaded to D:\Vortex\FO4\downloads\ <- %MOD_DOWNLOAD_DIR% (shared between profiles)

- Mod archives are unpacked to subfolders under D:\Vortex\FO4\unpacked\ <- %MOD_STORE% (shared between profiles)

- Mod profiles live in subfolders under D:\Vortex\FO4\profiles\ <- %GAME_PROFILE_DIR% (each profile is unique)

 

Now, each mod profile would be initialized with hardlinks of every single original game file (assuming that hardlinks are indistinguishable from the original files) placed into the %GAME_PROFILE_DIR%\my_profile\ folder.

 

After that, Vortex would populate the %GAME_PROFILE_DIR%\my_profile\ folder with symbolic links from the %MOD_STORE% folder according to the user's vishes per GUI checkboxes and whatnot, making it easy to distinquish between which files are from the %FILE_STORE% and which are from the %MOD_STORE%. You could potentially allow 'normal' override files as well.

 

When a modder develops his mod, he creates a 'my_mod_environment' profile and then creates his mod as %MOD_STORE%\my_mod and asks Vortex to add it to his %GAME_PROFILE_DIR%\my_mod_environment\ folder.

 

Each time he makes a change in %MOD_STORE%\my_mod, he asks Vortex to re-populate %GAME_PROFILE_DIR%\my_mod_environment (this is the DevOps way -- you reset state every time you deploy for consistency's sake) and does the rinse-repeat dance until he's satisfied that he can cut a release of my_mod.

 

This way, both the user and the developer get the freedom they need and absolutely NOTHING is changed in the original install location.

 

END EXAMPLE

==

 

Thoughts?

Edited June 24, 2017 by ermodk