Removing a game from Vortex

[tesnexus8]

I need to remove a game from Vortex and go back to NMM / manual management for it. I realise that's an odd position to be in, but because I'm a mod *developer* Vortex's nature means it overwrites my in-progress work without warning, which is kind of a problem when it means hours of work are suddenly (and SILENTLY) wiped out... :/

 

I'm having a couple of problems with this though. First, there doesn't seem to be a way to actually DO that. I've tried clicking and right-clicking in various places, looking through the menus, and the online KB, and so on, and I've come up empty on all of them. This isn't a "cosmetic" thing - this is "I need Vortex to absolutely never touch this game again" - I can't have it trash my WIP just because the game is in the dashboard and I click on it by mistake.

("Hide" isn't enough, and doesn't work well enough for this case anyway: it does remove it from the Managed pane, but it still leaves it on the Dashboard page where a single click will bring it back to life).

 

The second problem is that Purge basically "doesn't work" on a PERMANENT basis. I can Purge that game (SSE) and get the Data dir "cleaned up" of all the Vortex backup files etc - but as soon as I then change to a different game, Vortex re-deploys everything in the Purged game before switching, with (again, AFAICT) no way to stop it from doing so.

 

Any help would be appreciated. If this sort of control over the behavior isn't in the app but can (or has to) be done by hacking up an ini file or etc, I'm fine with that, if someone could tell me where it is. (Assuming it's in a sane text format rather than a blob).

 

Thanks.

[AugustaCalidia]

@tesnexus8

 

 

but because I'm a mod *developer* Vortex's nature means it overwrites my in-progress work without warning, which is kind of a problem when it means hours of work are suddenly (and SILENTLY) wiped out... :/

That is not a part of Vortex's "nature" but a problem with your installation.

 

When you raised the same issue in the Vortex Support Forum, Tannin42 replied:

 

tesnexus8: If this is the case then that would be a bug. I'd be very surprised though.

Vortex does not silently overwrite files in data.

Any file it deployed it will show an "External Changes" dialog if the file was modified.

Any file not managed by Vortex will be renamed to <original name>.vortex_backup before the Vortex file gets deployed.

 

If however you modified a mod and then update that mod you should not be surprised that that modification gets overwritten, I don't think any mod manager maintains modifications across a mod update, how would that even work?

 

As for your primary concern, I've never removed a game from Vortex. However, if I were to try, I would uninstall all the game's mods, purge (to be safe), delete the game's profiles, close Vortex, make sure the game data folder is squeaky clean, and remove and/or rename all of the game's Vortex folders in AppData (or wherever you have them) and in My Games. Maybe that would work.

[tesnexus8]

 

As for your primary concern, I've never removed a game from Vortex. However, if I were to try, I would uninstall all the game's mods, purge (to be safe), delete the game's profiles, close Vortex, make sure the game data folder is squeaky clean, and remove and/or rename all of the game's Vortex folders in AppData (or wherever you have them) and in My Games. Maybe that would work.

 

 

Thanks - "the game's Vortex folders in AppData" sounds like it's what I was after. I'll try it out.

[Tannin42]

For Vortex a "Managed" game is a game for which there is a profile. So deleting all profiles for said games is all you have to do to "unmanage" the game.

[rmm200]

Added to my personal knowledge base. Thanks.

[AugustaCalidia]

Same here. Thanks, Tannin42. That certainly saves a lot of work!

[tesnexus8]

Thanks Tannin42. :)

 

It seemed odd that there was no way to do that - and there actually "isn't", sometimes, because it can be unavailable in the UI...

 

For anyone else who has the same problem, there's an "Enable Profile Management" switch under Settings. IDK what the default for it is, but if that's off you'll need to enable it to get the "Profiles" section to appear so you can remove a game.

 

(not actually edited, but the forum seems to sometimes remove line spacing the first time I post something, even though it's still there when I edit the post and just have to re-submit it without doing anything else...) :)