Vortex and Unsupported Games

[ovinnik]

Why does Vortex allow for the "management" of games it obviously does not support?

I frequently see bug reports, complaints and nonsensical advice all leading back to this very issue. People try to install mods for games Vortex doesn't work for, then leave frustrated comments for frustrated authors to sift through. Even worse, sometimes users instruct other users to use Vortex for said unsupported games, because apparently the tool is falsely peddled as the gold standard for everything.

The titles I'm primarily talking about are the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, because they're what I'm familiar with. I've no doubt, however, that there are many more such cases. I realise that mod authors can remove the "Mod Manager Download" button from their files, and it helps. If they think of doing this at all -- many don't. But it's, quite frankly, a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

Please: Stop Vortex from trying to manage games it wasn't built for.

[DoctorKaizeld]

Vortex won't try to manage games it doesn't work for only the ones in its compatibility list will work.

[ovinnik]

That's ... something? Then at least a portion of those attempting to use it for unsupported games will be stopped in their tracks. Doesn't keep some from trying, apparently, and doesn't keep all bad advice at bay. But yeah. It's something.

 

Let me rephrase this, then: It looks like titles that shouldn't be are in its compatibility list. DA: Origins is definitely one. The Witcher 3 is listed and doesn't seem to be fully compatible either. I thought one or two ME games were included as well, but it's a good thing they're not.

[Tannin42]

Vortex doesn't claim to support Mass Effect (any version) or Dragon Age Origins and doesn't offer installing mods for them. We can't stop users from trying to hack around that however.

 

EDIT: Correction: I confused DA1 with DA3. Vortex does in fact support Dragon Age Origins, to our knowledge it's supporting it just fine.

 

The Witcher 3 otoh is very much supported and many hours of development time have gone into improving support for it.

This is not a binary thing however, just because a game is supported doesn't mean that every single mod no matter how the author packaged it will work flawlessly, this is true for any mod manager.

 

It appears to me that you're trying to blame us for the mistakes of others. We can't prevent users from doing stupid things while also being Vortex users and we can't stop anyone from uploading any zip to Nexus Mods that then can't be installed in a standardized fashion, we can't even verify that a file uploaded to the dragon age section is actually a dragon age mod - or a mod at all.

 

All automated mod management is a best effort kind of deal, the only alternative would have been to put tight restrictions on what can be uploaded to Nexus Mods from day 1. Unless you can provide a time machine that ship has sailed.

You are welcome to report concrete cases of mods that don't install correctly so we can make a better effort to support them but expecting every mod to install correctly right away or us to test every single one of hundreds of thousands of mods across a thousand games is completely unrealistic.

 

The reality here is: We have tens of thousands of mod authors vs a handful of developers developing a handful of mod managers.

 

These tens of thousands of mod authors forwarding the information to mod manager developers when their mod doesn't install correctly - or repackage their mod so they do work - is minutes, maybe an hour of work per person. That's doable. Each mod manager developer testing their mod manager against hundreds of thousands of mods is several lifetimes of work per person. That's decidedly not doable.

[Zanderat]

I can confirm Dragon Age Origins works fine with Vortex. Some mods need repacking they were packed incorrectly. Also, Vortex doesn't support .override files but it does handle .dazip files correctly. Here is a list of mods that I am currently managing via Vortex for DAO, all working correctly (except still trying to work out conflicts with QFP, but that is a different issue)

4K Upscale Video Package-4690-1-0-1593392707
Additional_Epilogue_Fix_v3-1120-3
Afternoon Sun
All Companions-5260-1-0-1591295479
Armor of the Black Fox v2_1-793
Awakening Lore-Friendly Epilogue Rewrite-5287-1-0-1593814106
better shaders-3801-1-0
Clothed Prisoners-1682
DA2 Merrill-4675-1-0-0
DABIK for DAO Full Package
Dahlialynn_Sleep_Until_Dawn_2_1-3722-2-1
Dain's Fixes-4384-3-1-1585309187
dao_extradogslot_1_41-664
Desire Demon HD-4229-1-0
Dragon Age Redesigned
dt93a_dazip-336
Elelith_textures_DAO-3973-
Elelith_textures_DAO_Enviroment-3973-
Elfy Ghost Boy-4722-1-0
Elven Orphanage-5219-1-1586755979
IA 2.0 RC1 Fixpack 6
IA 2.0 RC1-577-2-0-
King Cailan Clothed-1682
Lady of the forest HD -4227-1-0
Lock Bash v7e for Original and Awakening-301
Lore-Friendly Epilogue Rewrite-4981-1-0-1545030575
Madd Gift Guide V1_1-385
MetaGame Items v5-13
mods.txt
More Options at the Pearl v3_3-1176-3-3
more_detailed_tooltips_1.2-4499-1-2-1577102525
Morrigan's Ring Mage version-5065-1-1-1562107968
Morrigan_Necklace_Edit-178
MRP_V110_DAZIP-1120-1-1-0
NBaio
no friendly fire-5257-1-1590928823
No Helmet Hack 1_6 Origins-202
No_Helmet_Hack 1_5a Awakenings-202
one_sec_cooldowns_mod-256
origin cunning flags-5149-1-0-1576993933
QMT v1_1-207
QUDAO Fixpack v3.5-4689-3-5-1550475932
Ser Friden-1682-1
Shale Retextured HD v1_2-823
Sick Ostagar Solddiers-1682
SilveriteFix_v102-1762
Skip the Fade-816
Skip_Fight-2672-1
Slidefixes_Bella_Kaitlyn-1120
TEST-15-
The Icons Project v0_24-826
The King is Dead-4719-1-0
The Rescue at Ishal-4690-
Theta HD 1_2-3869-1-2
Version 2 - no more snarling-130
vortex.deployment.dazip.msgpack
vortex.deployment.msgpack
White Teeth v1_1-44
ZDF Complete v2_1 Dialog Tweaks Compatible-928-2-1
__merged.dazip
__vortex_staging_folder

 

[ovinnik]

@Tannin42

I'm not asking for Vortex to be made compatible with every conceivable form of mod. I'm fully aware that this would be an impossible (and rather unnecessary) task. What I'm worried about is essentially communication. Vortex is said to support games it doesn't -- or apparently doesn't fully -- support. See, for example, the .override file format for DA:O.

Your answer is to tell mod authors to repackage their mods to fit your tool. My concern is with reviewing the way it's being advertised as fully compatible. That's it. So no, this isn't about blaming you, or anyone. I have no stake in this other than hoping for fewer frustrated posts by people dealing with incompatibilities and user error. Though I guess that there will always be that.

@Zanderat

As an aside, No friendly Fire involves recompiling various combat-related base game scripts. It's completely incompatible not fully compatible with Dain's Fixes. And you definitely don't need ZDF alongside Qwinn's Fixpack.

[Zanderat]

Thank you @srnk. I am trying to sort out such issues before starting a new game. As far as .override files go, if I come across one, I am using DAO Mod Manger to install it and then rounding up the installed files and compressing them up that Vortex can reinstall them (after uninstalling in DAO MM).

[Tannin42]

I'm not telling mod authors to repackage their mods, just saying it's one pragmatic way of dealing with installation issues.

But the main thing I'm trying to get across is that we may not be aware of the issues. Again, we do not play all these games, we do not test all the mods.

 

We don't intend to partially support games, our intend is always to fully support them, any incompatibility will be treated as a bug.

 

However, bugs need to be reported by someone. I'm not officially aware of any incompatibility with DA:O, no user, not a single one has reported to our feedback system or issue tracker that .override files don't work - or what they are, what sample mods fall into that category and how they are _supposed_ to work.

And since this problem hasn't been reported, no steps are being taken to deal with it, be that fixing it or documenting the limitation or whatever.

 

If something - anything - bother you with Vortex, give us feedback through the supported channels to give us a chance to deal with it. As long as these things are effectively discussed behind our backs, in discord or reddit, some comment section or a forum thread, you don't really have a right to complain that we don't fix it, we can't fix what we don't know about and we can't document limitations that we don't know about.

 

We're advertising DA:O as fully compatible because that is what we assume is the case. If you want us to react to that not being the case, tell us about that, don't complain that we don't know about things that no one told us about.

It's really frustrating to learn that who-knows-how-many people have been annoyed by something and every single one of them assumed they don't have to tell us because surely we magically already know and just can't be arsed to act.

[Zanderat]

Sorry. I would have reported the .override problem sooner, but I just got back into playing DAO. I just sent a feedback suggestion about the .override issue with a rather prominent example, NBAIO https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/554? (don't judge me! :cool:)

[DoctorKaizeld]

Sorry. I would have reported the .override problem sooner, but I just got back into playing DAO. I just sent a feedback suggestion about the .override issue with a rather prominent example, NBAIO https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/554? (don't judge me! :cool:)

*indiscriminate judging intensifies*