Vortex 1.0 Release

[BigBizkit]

Back towards the end of 2016 we began work on a new mod manager, Vortex, to replace the ageing Nexus Mod Manager. Unfortunately, we considered this change a necessary act considering the mess that NMM was (and still is) in.

 

When we first started work on Vortex we were very aware that, over the 6 years that we worked on Nexus Mod Manager, it remained in a state of permanent beta which reflected our lack of confidence in the software's ability to remain stable and provide a solid experience for all users. With Vortex, we set out to learn from our previous mistakes and today I am happy to announce that Vortex is officially out of beta and has reached a 1.0 release.

 

After over 18 months of work in private, we released the alpha of Vortex in early 2018 followed by a beta phase in late 2018. Today, Vortex leaves that beta phase entirely and hits an official 1.0 stable release, allowing users to mod 69 different games, up from the 28 games that the Vortex alpha launched with and the 27 that NMM supports.

 

In the 17 months it has taken us to go from our initial alpha to our 1.0 launch our Vortex developers have received over 58,000 feedback messages and bug reports. These reports were collated into 3,200 individual issues of which 3,000 of these issues have been addressed. 54 open bug reports remain, of which, not all of them are necessarily bugs and/or cannot be reproduced. In that time we have made 67 releases (almost 4 a month) that have contained bug fixes, performance improvements, UI and UX improvements, new game support and new functionality.

 

Since releasing the public alpha, many of you have tried or outright switched over to Vortex and your feedback and input has been invaluable in helping us improve Vortex and in making it more user-friendly along the way. It has truly been impressive to see the userbase for Vortex grow continuously over the course of these months and years.

 

 

The numbers

 

Using figures from the past two months, two-thirds (66.02%) of all unique users hitting our API were using Vortex to mod their games. When we limit these requests to just Bethesda games that number goes down to a still highly respectable 62.61%. These figures will only relate to mod managers that actually access the API (MO2 and NMM versions released after May 2019). Even if we could include old versions of NMM and MO as well as "offline" mod managers like Wrye Bash, it's safe to say Vortex is by far the most used mod manager now for Bethesda games, which is something we're obviously very happy about!

 

 

What does this 1.0 release mean?

 

Officially bringing Vortex out of beta means that we are confident that Vortex is now stable for almost everyone. We say almost everyone, as we simply cannot account for every single use-case and "interesting" setups that some users may have on their systems.

 

Our focus over the past 17 months has been on getting to this stage. Around about 80% of our time has been spent on bug fixes, speed improvements, refining our documentation and knowledge base for new users and improving useability, with only 20% of our time being spent on adding new functionality and features to the software.

 

1.0 marks a shift in how we delegate our time, the hope being that, now that the software is stable and we've dealt with as many bug fixes as we can find, we can now start to focus on "the fun stuff", which is adding new and exciting functionality. That's not to say that we won't be doing any more bug fixes, of course we will, but we're now confident we can spend more time adding features than bug fixing.

 

 

I'm half way through a playthrough, should I switch to Vortex?

 

While we are happy that so many of you have embraced Vortex already, we would like to emphasise once more that we are not forcing anyone to make the switch. If you have a perfectly functioning load order and a stable modded game, then - by all means - stay with whatever mod management solution you are currently using. We'd recommend this to prevent causing any issues with your savegames.

 

If, however, you are starting a new mod setup, playthrough, or are setting up your games on a new computer, then it might be the perfect opportunity to give Vortex a try.

 

It is important to point out that Vortex is different from other mod managers. It is designed to move away from the need for extremely granular manipulation of your load order and towards an automated solution to load order management. While we realise that Vortex might require some relearning and/or shedding of old habits, we are confident that if you embrace it, it will help you manage your mod installation with less effort, as it has helped many users during the alpha and beta stage.

 

Feel free to browse our knowledge base for tutorials and documentation to get you started.

 

 

What’s on the horizon for Vortex after the full release?

 

While 1.0 is a major milestone, it certainly does not mean the end of the line for Vortex. The team is already working on various improvements and new features to be added in the not-too-distant future.

 

 

Extensions management

One of the key aspects of Vortex is that it is released as open-source under a GPL-3 license. That fact has enabled our community to write their own extensions for Vortex further expanding its functionality and scope. For example, 12 of the 69 game extensions there are for Vortex have been developed and contributed by members of our community. Thank you very much to every one of you!

 

As one of the upcoming features after 1.0, the team is working on a system that will enable users to browse and add extensions from within Vortex itself. The idea is to make it even easier for budding programmers to add to the functionality of Vortex, and for users of Vortex to more easily find and install these third-party extensions from within Vortex.

 

Mod Packs

The big one! As we announced earlier this year, mod packs - a much sought after feature in the community - will be the next major feature we will be working on. 

 

We're not currently ready to disclose how it will work but we can say that it will be intertwined with Vortex.

 

As we know full-well the various concerns you might have about mod packs, rest assured that we are prepared to do it in a way that is right for our community, and that is both convenient for users, but also fair towards mod authors whose contributions are the very lifeblood of our site and community.

 

More game extensions

We will continue to add more game support to Vortex at a steady pace for the foreseeable future and we're always happy to hear from users who want to help us in this endeavour.

 

 

While the 1.0 release will not be anything major for most of our Vortex users who keep their software up-to-date automatically, it marks a significant milestone for us here at Nexus Mods.

 

If you tried Vortex during the early alpha and beta stages and found it wasn't for you or that there was a bug you didn't like, try again, you might be surprised at how it has changed in that time.

 

Lastly, we want to thank everyone who has contributed to the development and improvement of Vortex; the users who have contributed to the code base, everyone who participated in the limited alpha, the open alpha and beta, the regulars in the Vortex forums and on Discord, as well as the Vortex dev team.

 

 

Download Vortex 1.0.0:

https://www.nexusmods.com/about/vortex/

 

Knowledge Base:

https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/Category:Vortex

 

Importing mods from NMM:

https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/Importing_mods_from_NMM

 

Vortex Support Forums:

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/forum/4306-vortex-support/

 

Documentation for developers:

https://github.com/Nexus-Mods/vortex-api/wiki

[erri120]

hmm electron based mod manager without VFS? Sry but will probably never use anything that doesn't have some sort of VFS or symlinks. The nice thing is that due to this being electron based are we gonna see some linux versions or do you use windows native modules that can't be ported?

[Dark0ne]

In response to post #72141393.

erri120 wrote: hmm electron based mod manager without VFS? Sry but will probably never use anything that doesn't have some sort of VFS or symlinks. The nice thing is that due to this being electron based are we gonna see some linux versions or do you use windows native modules that can't be ported?

Vortex has multiple different deployment methods, including symlinks for certain games which support them (https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/Deployment_Methods). Edited July 30, 2019 by Dark0ne

[IIz777]

*Respectfully applauds...

[Guest deleted34304850]

Congratulations on this landmark achievement. Vortex is a wonderful product.

[erri120]

In response to post #72141393. #72141428 is also a reply to the same post.

erri120 wrote: hmm electron based mod manager without VFS? Sry but will probably never use anything that doesn't have some sort of VFS or symlinks. The nice thing is that due to this being electron based are we gonna see some linux versions or do you use windows native modules that can't be ported?

Dark0ne wrote: Vortex has multiple different deployment methods, including symlinks for certain games which support them (https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/Deployment_Methods).

True but not for the big ones, tho I can see my self using this for smaller games such as Darkest Dungeon

[TyOnNexus]

This is epic

[Tannin42]

In response to post #72141393. #72141428, #72141743 are all replies on the same post.

erri120 wrote: hmm electron based mod manager without VFS? Sry but will probably never use anything that doesn't have some sort of VFS or symlinks. The nice thing is that due to this being electron based are we gonna see some linux versions or do you use windows native modules that can't be ported?

Dark0ne wrote: Vortex has multiple different deployment methods, including symlinks for certain games which support them (https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/Deployment_Methods).

erri120 wrote: True but not for the big ones, tho I can see my self using this for smaller games such as Darkest Dungeon

The Bethesda Games don't work with symlinks, that's not our decision.
A usvfs based deployment method is available as an extension: https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/37

We do have native modules but those are either merely optimizations for windows that can just be skipped on Linux or they are only required for games that are windows-only anyway or they can be ported. There is no "unfixable" showstopper for Linux support and there are actually (external) people actively working on it already, can't say how far along they are though.

[valshares24]

NMM forever.

[Kaspar482]

I don't know if this has changed in version 1.0, but in a previous version installed vortex on a separate partition (drive D:). I later reinstalled windows (drive C:) with D untouched. Skyrim still works but Vortex lost all settings, install data, basicallly the whole setup. Would be cool if Vortex stores all its settings in the same install folder to avoid this windows reinstall mess.