An update on Vortex development

[Vyxenne]

via Imgflip Meme Generator

[nappilydeestructio]

I am looking forward to trying out Vortex. Good luck team. :)

[markdf]

In response to post #54947243. #54947383, #54947628 are all replies on the same post.

oooii3gg wrote: I was pretty happy with Mod Organizer, I have no idea why you decided to throw everything out and start from scratch.

lunsmann wrote: Vortex is replacing Nexus Mod Manager. Not MO.

SharraShimada wrote: Vortex ist Nexus-Mod-Manager reloaded. Mod-Organizer is a completly different thing.
And while Tannin was busy with MO2 development, what somewhat went not so well, Nexus made him the offer to make a new mod manager for them. MO is still in development by other people.

I´m sure, Tannin will take some of MO´s features to vortex, and to be honest, NMM needet someone with experience and skill very much.

Will vortex use a virtual file system like MO?

[Vanguarde2017]

In response to post #54947243. #54947383, #54947628, #54951293 are all replies on the same post.

oooii3gg wrote: I was pretty happy with Mod Organizer, I have no idea why you decided to throw everything out and start from scratch.

lunsmann wrote: Vortex is replacing Nexus Mod Manager. Not MO.

SharraShimada wrote: Vortex ist Nexus-Mod-Manager reloaded. Mod-Organizer is a completly different thing.
And while Tannin was busy with MO2 development, what somewhat went not so well, Nexus made him the offer to make a new mod manager for them. MO is still in development by other people.

I´m sure, Tannin will take some of MO´s features to vortex, and to be honest, NMM needet someone with experience and skill very much.

markdf wrote: Will vortex use a virtual file system like MO?

No

[lued123]

In response to post #54947243. #54947383, #54947628, #54951293, #54951563 are all replies on the same post.

oooii3gg wrote: I was pretty happy with Mod Organizer, I have no idea why you decided to throw everything out and start from scratch.

lunsmann wrote: Vortex is replacing Nexus Mod Manager. Not MO.

SharraShimada wrote: Vortex ist Nexus-Mod-Manager reloaded. Mod-Organizer is a completly different thing.
And while Tannin was busy with MO2 development, what somewhat went not so well, Nexus made him the offer to make a new mod manager for them. MO is still in development by other people.

I´m sure, Tannin will take some of MO´s features to vortex, and to be honest, NMM needet someone with experience and skill very much.

markdf wrote: Will vortex use a virtual file system like MO?

Vanguarde2017 wrote: No

It will have virtualization, but not like MO's.

[choochoo1]

Honestly, im excited for vortex. it would be nice to get a more modern mod manager. my only real question is will it support .ESL files?

[PeterMartyr]

In response to post #54943263. #54946513 is also a reply to the same post.

Levionte wrote: As a relatively competent mod user, I have been pretty indifferent towards the NMM vs MO debate. I recognize MO has more features built in, plus it's definitely faster and more responsive. But it wasn't enough to make me switch from NMM until I was in a position of needing to reinstall Skyrim anyway. I did make the switch a few months ago and, having used MO since then, I stand by my original assessment. It's an upgrade, but doesn't offer anything I couldn't do myself with my previous NMM setup and good modding practices.

However, as a mod creator, I've found the difference to be gigantic. When I'm making mods, I'm not following good modding practices; it's not practical. I'm dropping things into my data folder manually, then I'm constantly adding, removing, or otherwise tweaking things throughout development. When I am finally in a position to create a mod package, I have to dig through my data folder for things I've put there.

And while I try my best to keep things organized, assets are required to be separated by type. My meshes folder has base assets, face geometry stuff, and outfit stuff someone else made that I'm using. Textures are in a similar situation. Animation files, behavior files, FNIS stuff go somewhere else. Sound is split into voice, effects and music files. And don't get me started on the scripts being lumped into the same folder as every other script for the game. There's a lot of stuff to keep track of, sometimes weeks and months after putting them there. Heaven forbid I work on more than one mod at a time.

I know not all mods are so encompassing, but for some of us, having everything thrown into one folder I can change on the fly like MO does is a tremendous time-saver when it comes to development. Not to mention trying to create an environment suitable for testing the mod. With NMM, I end up having multiple "mod installations" of a release build and loose files I can still modify. Then I am constantly on the verge of forgetting a file and then having NMM uninstall it and erasing all of my changes for the old version still in the archive.

I make this long, and somewhat dramatic, rant because all I hear about is how the new mod manager can serve the average mod user. And that's fair; they're the majority. But mod creators are pretty important to the community, so it'd be nice to make some features for us, too. It's not like MO is the perfect solution. It really is inconvenient to get lip files to generate, scripts to compile, preview things in nifskope, etc.. Can we borrow just a thought or two from the "which data folder is cleanest" debate and spend it on the mod creator's experience?

lobotomy0 wrote: +1

So your looking for a Wrye Project type setup to implement into Vortex, with the ability to detect manual drops, & reverse sync from the data folder?

[anub1s15]

In response to post #54943263. #54946513, #54952193 are all replies on the same post.

Levionte wrote: As a relatively competent mod user, I have been pretty indifferent towards the NMM vs MO debate. I recognize MO has more features built in, plus it's definitely faster and more responsive. But it wasn't enough to make me switch from NMM until I was in a position of needing to reinstall Skyrim anyway. I did make the switch a few months ago and, having used MO since then, I stand by my original assessment. It's an upgrade, but doesn't offer anything I couldn't do myself with my previous NMM setup and good modding practices.

However, as a mod creator, I've found the difference to be gigantic. When I'm making mods, I'm not following good modding practices; it's not practical. I'm dropping things into my data folder manually, then I'm constantly adding, removing, or otherwise tweaking things throughout development. When I am finally in a position to create a mod package, I have to dig through my data folder for things I've put there.

And while I try my best to keep things organized, assets are required to be separated by type. My meshes folder has base assets, face geometry stuff, and outfit stuff someone else made that I'm using. Textures are in a similar situation. Animation files, behavior files, FNIS stuff go somewhere else. Sound is split into voice, effects and music files. And don't get me started on the scripts being lumped into the same folder as every other script for the game. There's a lot of stuff to keep track of, sometimes weeks and months after putting them there. Heaven forbid I work on more than one mod at a time.

I know not all mods are so encompassing, but for some of us, having everything thrown into one folder I can change on the fly like MO does is a tremendous time-saver when it comes to development. Not to mention trying to create an environment suitable for testing the mod. With NMM, I end up having multiple "mod installations" of a release build and loose files I can still modify. Then I am constantly on the verge of forgetting a file and then having NMM uninstall it and erasing all of my changes for the old version still in the archive.

I make this long, and somewhat dramatic, rant because all I hear about is how the new mod manager can serve the average mod user. And that's fair; they're the majority. But mod creators are pretty important to the community, so it'd be nice to make some features for us, too. It's not like MO is the perfect solution. It really is inconvenient to get lip files to generate, scripts to compile, preview things in nifskope, etc.. Can we borrow just a thought or two from the "which data folder is cleanest" debate and spend it on the mod creator's experience?

lobotomy0 wrote: +1

PeterMartyr wrote: So your looking for a Wrye Project type setup to implement into Vortex, with the ability to detect manual drops, & reverse sync from the data folder?

not sure if wrye can do it (Mod organizer cant but it happens to be the way it does things) but what he wants is to be able to show all files associated with a mod.

as MO keeps its mods separated at all times virtually building a folder as NMM does by defaut it means you can easely see every single file a mod has instead of NMM where it gets blended in the ocean of mods. another side effect/side feature is that you can see which individual files are conflicting and prioritise accordingly on the fly even going as far as to have a mod overwrite another but have it hide specific textures you might want from the or a overwritten mod. just allows you to quickly and easily make changes at any time while knowing what file from what mod your actually changing.

cannot wait for vortex though, been using NMM for FO4 and MO for SSE (it didn't play nice with FO4 for unknown reasons. I like both and can use both but the control and insight MO gave you in to your mod load order (as in the actual order in which mods get loaded in to MO's virtual whatdoyoucallit) makes it my favorite though NMM's categories make keeping track of how many mods you have per category much easier, I know MO can do it to but I've always been too lazy to make sure all mods have the correct categories, in MO I have had 4 lighting mods installed side by side I just lost track of 2 over time >.>

also, Mod organizer allows you to get rid of the mod's archives saving some space which when your Skyrim is 57gb (MO data + sse folder) and your fallout 4 is 114gb (fo4 folder + NMM fallout 4 folder) it makes quite a difference, in essense fallout 4 is only 52gb there's just 62gb of stuff beeing horded by NMM (and i have accidently deleted it before, NMM was not amused) size wise NMM's folder is more optimal but since it gets upset when you remove it's backup's it ends up taking more space, mo keeps all the files from the mods uncompressed, which if your stacking texture packs can result in a lot of duplicates that just sit there getting overwritten but you can get rid of the archives and if you have to much free time attempt to pick out obsolete textextures to make it smaller. but i ocd hard on keeping my mods up to date so it just takes as much space as it takes. Edited November 4, 2017 by anub1s15

[Sulhir]

In response to post #54943263. #54946513, #54952193, #54952693 are all replies on the same post.

Levionte wrote: As a relatively competent mod user, I have been pretty indifferent towards the NMM vs MO debate. I recognize MO has more features built in, plus it's definitely faster and more responsive. But it wasn't enough to make me switch from NMM until I was in a position of needing to reinstall Skyrim anyway. I did make the switch a few months ago and, having used MO since then, I stand by my original assessment. It's an upgrade, but doesn't offer anything I couldn't do myself with my previous NMM setup and good modding practices.

However, as a mod creator, I've found the difference to be gigantic. When I'm making mods, I'm not following good modding practices; it's not practical. I'm dropping things into my data folder manually, then I'm constantly adding, removing, or otherwise tweaking things throughout development. When I am finally in a position to create a mod package, I have to dig through my data folder for things I've put there.

And while I try my best to keep things organized, assets are required to be separated by type. My meshes folder has base assets, face geometry stuff, and outfit stuff someone else made that I'm using. Textures are in a similar situation. Animation files, behavior files, FNIS stuff go somewhere else. Sound is split into voice, effects and music files. And don't get me started on the scripts being lumped into the same folder as every other script for the game. There's a lot of stuff to keep track of, sometimes weeks and months after putting them there. Heaven forbid I work on more than one mod at a time.

I know not all mods are so encompassing, but for some of us, having everything thrown into one folder I can change on the fly like MO does is a tremendous time-saver when it comes to development. Not to mention trying to create an environment suitable for testing the mod. With NMM, I end up having multiple "mod installations" of a release build and loose files I can still modify. Then I am constantly on the verge of forgetting a file and then having NMM uninstall it and erasing all of my changes for the old version still in the archive.

I make this long, and somewhat dramatic, rant because all I hear about is how the new mod manager can serve the average mod user. And that's fair; they're the majority. But mod creators are pretty important to the community, so it'd be nice to make some features for us, too. It's not like MO is the perfect solution. It really is inconvenient to get lip files to generate, scripts to compile, preview things in nifskope, etc.. Can we borrow just a thought or two from the "which data folder is cleanest" debate and spend it on the mod creator's experience?

lobotomy0 wrote: +1

PeterMartyr wrote: So your looking for a Wrye Project type setup to implement into Vortex, with the ability to detect manual drops, & reverse sync from the data folder?

anub1s15 wrote: not sure if wrye can do it (Mod organizer cant but it happens to be the way it does things) but what he wants is to be able to show all files associated with a mod.

as MO keeps its mods separated at all times virtually building a folder as NMM does by defaut it means you can easely see every single file a mod has instead of NMM where it gets blended in the ocean of mods. another side effect/side feature is that you can see which individual files are conflicting and prioritise accordingly on the fly even going as far as to have a mod overwrite another but have it hide specific textures you might want from the or a overwritten mod. just allows you to quickly and easily make changes at any time while knowing what file from what mod your actually changing.

cannot wait for vortex though, been using NMM for FO4 and MO for SSE (it didn't play nice with FO4 for unknown reasons. I like both and can use both but the control and insight MO gave you in to your mod load order (as in the actual order in which mods get loaded in to MO's virtual whatdoyoucallit) makes it my favorite though NMM's categories make keeping track of how many mods you have per category much easier, I know MO can do it to but I've always been too lazy to make sure all mods have the correct categories, in MO I have had 4 lighting mods installed side by side I just lost track of 2 over time >.>

also, Mod organizer allows you to get rid of the mod's archives saving some space which when your Skyrim is 57gb (MO data + sse folder) and your fallout 4 is 114gb (fo4 folder + NMM fallout 4 folder) it makes quite a difference, in essense fallout 4 is only 52gb there's just 62gb of stuff beeing horded by NMM (and i have accidently deleted it before, NMM was not amused) size wise NMM's folder is more optimal but since it gets upset when you remove it's backup's it ends up taking more space, mo keeps all the files from the mods uncompressed, which if your stacking texture packs can result in a lot of duplicates that just sit there getting overwritten but you can get rid of the archives and if you have to much free time attempt to pick out obsolete textextures to make it smaller. but i ocd hard on keeping my mods up to date so it just takes as much space as it takes.

I dislike all mod managers for the reasons you've listed. Having multiple profiles doesn't do me any good because not only do I need different profiles - I need those different profiles to link to different installation folders.
I use three different Skyrim installs. One for testing, one for playing, and one for modding. No mod manager, or even most tools, has been able to conveniently accommodate that need.
I keep one untouched install for testing. No modifications, no alterations, no cleaning of the masterfiles, as vanilla as vanilla gets.
I keep one that I build mods with. This one suffers a lot and requires restoration from backups occasionally when somehow modifying a texture file manages to corrupt my sounds archive (I don't know how it happened, all I can say is it did).
I keep one that I play with. Clean the master files, mod, actually play the game with. Rarely any problems with that directory.
Setting up all the different tools - xEdit, NMM, everything is a pain except for the Creation Kit which seems to actually only look for the files in the directory its installed into! Who would have thought Bethesda's tool would be the only tool to behave the way I want it to with actually no set up at all!

[Sulhir]

 

In response to post #54930308. #54930478, #54930773, #54930833, #54930843, #54930848, #54930913, #54931018, #54931133, #54931298, #54931363, #54931473, #54931588, #54932243 are all replies on the same post.

 

 

 

Kevin843 wrote: Like I said before no REAL virtual data=no using Vortex, I dont want my data folder messed up and ability to reorder mods is what makes MO2 the best mod manager. I am disappointed it is highly anticipated it will not have a virtual data like MO2. Hopefully there will still be community builds of MO2 for future Bethesda games. No way I can go back to installing mods to data folder now. I wont even bother using it if it dosent have these "Essential" MO2 features.

Zora wrote: I agree, not using a virtual file system is a step-back from what could be a huge improvement to mod managers we've seen so far. I still have high hopes for Vortex and will probably use it either way.

SarahTheMascara wrote: I agree. Keeping the data folder clean is essential for me as well. I have so many different builds for Skyrim and I'm jumping back and forth between profiles regularly.

BlueGunk wrote: From the interview with Tannin, 10 May 2017:

 

Robin: I think we both know the biggest questions we've received around Vortex have been in regards to virtualisation and how Vortex will handle and store files on people's hard-drives. Is Vortex going to use virtualisation?

 

Tannin: Yes it does.

 

I know people have - often very strong - opinions on the topic so I ask that you please read my reasons before you go to the comments and vent.

 

In the initial release of Vortex, virtualisation will be implemented using links (symbolic or hard links), similar to NMM v0.6. We've left the door open so we can implement different approaches (i.e. the usvfs library from Mod Organizer) but at this point I don't think there will be a "no virtualisation" option.

Dark0ne wrote: Thanks for your feedback.

 

If you're not interested in a mod manager that doesn't use MO's functionality VFS, that's fine. But this is about Vortex, not MO.

 

I'll be deleting any more comments that follow this line of thought as it's completely irrelevant to what I've talked about in this news article.

Yggdrasil7557 wrote: There are many reasons for this, Tannin is the original developer of mod organizer, and he was one of the people who decided not to use virtual filing. the new program will feature mod managing methods similar to how mod organizer currently works, the file managing will be able to work in many the same ways that mo does, the only difference is that it will actually place the files in the correct locations, this is for the same reason that el presidente gave up on mo2, the crashes due to virtual filing, especially in 64 bit are far too complex. for more info go read all previous posts about vortex, including the post where tannin said he was discontinuing development of mo1

Valyn81 wrote:

Remember that it is not the same thing as the old NMM did, corrupting your data folder easily.

TanninOne is helping them make the new Vortex, so you know Vortex will have some aspect of MO2 in order to help minimize data folder corruption.

 

*EDIT*

Seems BlueGunk, Yggdrasil7557, and I all have the same thought at about the same time, lol.

:wub:

Here is the link to help the people with Facts about Vortex and its Virtualization:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/news/13257/?

Qrygg wrote: I'm confused... where does it say there will be no virtualization?

Dark0ne wrote:

 

They're getting confused (which is kind of telling), there is virtualisation, it's just not the same as MO's virtualisation, which is what they are actually taking issue with.

 

We already did a Q&A with Tannin where it was explained why Tannin had decided to choose a different method, so the fact this needs to be brought up in a different news article about a different topic is...odd...to say the least.

 

If not using MO's virtualisation is a "no deal" for you, I just don't really understand why you're here, posting it as a comment in a completely unrelated article about Vortex.

Ethreon wrote: You expect rando user who doesn't know what's in his data folder to remember previous discussions?

Valyn81 wrote: *Delete this comment, content moved to my first reply.*

AnyOldName3 wrote: Mod Organizer 2 doesn't seem to actually be abandoned anymore. There were commits today, for example, which doesn't suggest to me that it's abandoned.

Valyn81 wrote: They said MO1 not MO2.

 

*Replying from the forum is annoying*

ousnius wrote: A clean data folder is really not an argument for using or not using Vortex. It really isn't.

 

You're saying you're switching profiles all the time, but these are all things that are still possible (just as easily and quickly) as with NMM or MO. Just instead of doing it at runtime, the hard links are handling it within seconds. This was all explained in the previous news post already.

In Mod Organizer, if ModA and ModB both have a copy of the same file and ModB is winning, you can move ModB above ModA and now ModA is winning. In NMM on the other hand, you have to uninstall and reinstall ModA.

I just wanted to add that how the mod is packaged can eliminate that little snafu right there. That problem exclusively exists, not for NMM or MO, but for LOOSE files vs ARCHIVED files. MO may be able to compensate for mods that are packaged loose vs in an archive but a conscientious mod author can do the same from their end. A knowledgeable user can even do it in a pinch.