Vortex - Kingdom Come Deliverance

[Arcanant]

Any plans to add support for that game in Vortex? That would be cool ^_^

[LawrenceFB]

Any plans to add support for that game in Vortex? That would be cool ^_^

 

Change log says 'Basic' support has been added :smile:

 

Quote:

 

Changelog for 0.13.2

• added basic support for Kingdom Come: Deliverance

[Arcanant]

Oh I haven't downloaded the newer version of vortex, I thought that it was updating automaticly ( I set update settings on Stable so maybe thats why)

We just need to wait for modders to fix their buttons now ^_^

[Tannin42]

Future versions of Vortex should install automatically, though we will upload them as "Beta" first and then upgrade them to "Stable" when testing goes well. (even though we're still in alpha)

 

For Kingdom Come you should be able to download, install and activate mods. For some games that's all that's required.

 

It would be great if those who mod the game could post if/what other features are required for proper modding.

[kamikatze13]

Future versions of Vortex should install automatically, though we will upload them as "Beta" first and then upgrade them to "Stable" when testing goes well. (even though we're still in alpha)

 

For Kingdom Come you should be able to download, install and activate mods. For some games that's all that's required.

 

It would be great if those who mod the game could post if/what other features are required for proper modding.

 

the way i see it there currently are

 

1) ini tweaks - which consist of adding parameters into a cfg and load it via launch arguments and

2) proper mods which modify assets and are packed in a zip-compressed file

 

the first category should be manageable with a proper text editor which supports diff/file comparison. unsure if VO should even treat them as mods. the second one is more interesting:

 

since it's compressed files, no file-system-based overwrite/conflict detection will work and i'm unsure if `loose files` is a thing in KCD (can somebody elaborate?). and conflict detection is IMHO starting to get important: i have 5 mods installed and was about to install an additional one, but went on to check the .pak's contents and - surprise - it modifies the same assets as another mod i have already installed.

 

let's go a level deeper: a lot of mods change game configurations, which are stored in as xml inside the pak-archive. what if two mods do different things but modify the same file? again, a proper text editor should be enough to resolve those or even be used to ensure compatibility, but basic-level conflict detection would help tremendously, to even become aware two mods are actually in conflict.

 

 

no idea how to realize this, though, besides extracting each .pak, keep them extracted and check those extracted cache files for conflicts, which would be incredibly space-inefficient.

[Tannin42]

Vortex supports something like ini tweaks for bethesda games where a mod can contain snippets of ini files and they get merged into the main file during deployment.

If you could point me at a mod that requires this with maybe installation instructions I will see if it can be implemented easily.

 

Regarding the paks: From what I read these are simple zip (?) archives with encrypted files in them. So getting a list of files in a pak to determine file conflict should be possible

but what can a user do to resolve a conflict? Is there a way to control load order?

Maybe if they really are zips we could just create a copy of the paks, remove the files that should be overwritten (according to mod dependency rules) and then deploy the copies. This way

you could manage load order in Vortex even if the game doesn't support the concept.

[kamikatze13]

Vortex supports something like ini tweaks for bethesda games where a mod can contain snippets of ini files and they get merged into the main file during deployment.

If you could point me at a mod that requires this with maybe installation instructions I will see if it can be implemented easily.

 

VSYNC toggle oneliner, Volumetric Fog oneliner, and some texture streaming improvements. I dunno if it's worth the hassle, though.

 

Regarding the paks: From what I read these are simple zip (?) archives with encrypted files in them. So getting a list of files in a pak to determine file conflict should be possible

but what can a user do to resolve a conflict? Is there a way to control load order?

Maybe if they really are zips we could just create a copy of the paks, remove the files that should be overwritten (according to mod dependency rules) and then deploy the copies. This way

you could manage load order in Vortex even if the game doesn't support the concept.

 

well, the magic number is 504b 0304 for both the original paks as well as for the mods', so i think those really are just plain zip archives.

 

I'll poke around today and maybe i'll find something out about the order in which the paks are loaded and whether loose assets get loaded or not. hell, it might even be loading the paks alphanumerically, since modded paks tend to start with zzz_*.

 

EDIT: loose assets don't get loaded, load order seems to be alphanumeric indeed (according to comments in a mod, havent tested it yet). repacking assets as zip and changing the file ending works.

 

a thought crossed my mind about conflict resolution, if we were to go the route of modifying the paks which the mods consist of, maybe we could just throw all the correct assets into one big archive? But now that i'm typing this it seems like a bad idea after all, management would become much more difficult.

[Tannin42]

This is something we have to do for some games anyway, Dragons Dogma for example we have to pack everything into one archive.

It happens all under the hood though, when Vortex deploys it generates a new archive and links that to the game directory. Inside Vortex you still manage individual mods and you can enable/disable/remove them or set dependencies as with every other game.

Packing everything into one single pak would be the easiest solution I think but it could be confusing to users that their game directory contains none of the mod files but instead one big "all_your_mods.pak".

 

If the load order is alphanumerical we can of course just add a name prefix to the link, so zzz_mymod.pak would be deployed as 003_zzz_mymod.pak for example if it's the third mod in the load order.

[kamikatze13]

This is something we have to do for some games anyway, Dragons Dogma for example we have to pack everything into one archive.

It happens all under the hood though, when Vortex deploys it generates a new archive and links that to the game directory. Inside Vortex you still manage individual mods and you can enable/disable/remove them or set dependencies as with every other game.

Packing everything into one single pak would be the easiest solution

 

agreed, it should be the easiest one. If the system has to be developed for a game anyways, it might be deployed for KCD as well - it should work just fine.

 

If the load order is alphanumerical we can of course just add a name prefix to the link, so zzz_mymod.pak would be deployed as 003_zzz_mymod.pak for example if it's the third mod in the load order.

 

Just gave it a shot, it's alphabetical only - putting a leading integer into the filename makes the original archives overwrite the mod.

 

one archive at the bottom - zzz_all_my_mods.pak - seems the most effective solution

 

ADDENDUM: there are mods which put archives not only into /../data/ but also into /../localization/ - here's an example. This should be taken into account on the next iteration of the KCD plugin.

[Tannin42]

Oh yeah, I guess the original files are also loaded alphabetically so it would have to be something like zzz_003_mymod.pak instead.

Thanks for the example mods.