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A few tips from the focus group


Thallassa

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Yeah, I did the same thing (grouping based on functionality) but I always kept an eye on file conflicts. The main reason I did it was because once your mod directory count is in the thousands (no, I'm not kidding) remembering the name of mod that did something in particular is difficult . But when you group them you know in what group to look for it.

 

This brings me to my next point and a feature request: letting the user tag their mods with keywords. For example I might tag RaceMenu with tags such as UI, Character Creation, Morph etc. etc.and something that adds overlay (tattoos, warpaints etc.) to the RaceMenu with RaceMenu, Character Creation, Overlay.

 

I know you have the highlights where you can pick an icon and a color and there's also the customizable categories (you can only assign one) but tags would make searching through your mod list more intuitive and faster. Alternative to this is the user adding the tags to the mods names but that's a bit messy.

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Several reasons: - Manual mod ordering was massively abused by the majority of MO users to put mods into a visual order, so instead of solving file conflicts they turned it into a second "category" by grouping together similar mods. There is no point adding a feature when you know 90% of the community (at the very least) don't understand it. With vortex it will be easy to add a new column for visual ordering if people want that, but that is then completely distinct from mod ordering - This system clarifies that load ordering is a local thing, you don't have to specify an install order when two mods don't have a conflict, it's just pointless. But with manual ordering you implicitly order everything - The rule system solves more problems than just ordering. Dependencies can express required mods and incompatible mods. Eventually we will hopefully reach a point where when you install a mod, all it's dependencies can be downloaded installed automatically as well. - We can publish rules, similar to how loot has a public masterlist. Eventually we will be able to have a server hosting the rules based on compatibility tests by the community or mod authors and apply them automatically for new users. At that point you will only ever have to touch install order when you _know_ you want something changed, you don't have to look into every file conflict.

I mean, Vortex literally has an optional Advanced tab for more experienced users, so why not just put manual mod ordering behind that? Mod Organizer made managing hundreds of mesh and texture mods a breeze, instead of having to uninstall and reinstall everything in order, you could just drag the items into any order you pleased.

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I mean, Vortex literally has an optional Advanced tab for more experienced users, so why not just put manual mod ordering behind that? Mod Organizer made managing hundreds of mesh and texture mods a breeze, instead of having to uninstall and reinstall everything in order, you could just drag the items into any order you pleased.

 

You don't have to install or uninstall things to get them in the right order, as you can resolve conflicts in Vortex, turn on the dependancy column in the mod display, and click the red lightning bolt beside the mod and you will get this

X6oGvcC.png

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I mean, Vortex literally has an optional Advanced tab for more experienced users, so why not just put manual mod ordering behind that? Mod Organizer made managing hundreds of mesh and texture mods a breeze, instead of having to uninstall and reinstall everything in order, you could just drag the items into any order you pleased.

 

You don't have to install or uninstall things to get them in the right order, as you can resolve conflicts in Vortex, turn on the dependancy column in the mod display, and click the red lightning bolt beside the mod and you will get this

X6oGvcC.png

 

 

 

So my question with this is, how do you do this with say mod a which is at the top of the load order, and mod b which is in the middle and mod c which is at the end. c depends on b which depends on a. when you have 200+ mods and it wont allow you to scroll up or down when you are trying to link dependencies this is an issue.

 

My next question is what about merge patches or bash patches? How does one keep those at the bottom of the load order? Do you make it depend on every mod either (merge patch) every mod that the merge covers (think VIS patches all combined into 1 merged VIS patch) or on the other hand with a bash patch it would cover every mod in your list, do you then make it dependent on every mod in the list? and if so please tell me how to scroll and do so? (Edit: So possible way to fix these both, under the plugins tab there is a priority column, however the numbering there makes no mathematical sense as -110 would not be above -120 if you are going from what appears to be a range of -127 to 127. Global and local priority im not sure about which is which but they have differing effects on the load order. So in theory for say my esm's that loot and vortex refuse to put at the top under the actual game files, I could presumably set the priority to such a level that they are forced to that position. Same with ESL's and same with things like merge patches and bash patches, and a few mods that for reasons cause issues if they are not last in the load order. More experimenting and learning)

 

I honestly love Vortex and what it can and will do for modding. We all know BGS games are a bit special when it comes to modding them. Thank you to those who have worked so hard on this, and to those who have been putting out info like the above quoted to help those of us just getting in on the alpha.

Edited by Fen1xMonk3y
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