Global mod staged/mod download directory?

[Deleted2815227User]

I have a question, am I right in assuming there is only a global staged mod / mod download directory? You can't set them per game? I'm not missing something somewhere?

 

Because I'm right, WHAT THE HELL!?

 

If I'm wrong, how do I do that?

[AugustaCalidia]

If you are asking whether Vortex has one and only one downloads folder and one mod staging folder for all games managed by Vortex, then the answer is "no." In Vortex, each game managed has its own unique downloads folder and mod staging folder. By default, Vortex sets these up in AppData/Roaming/Vortex.

 

EDIT: Pickysaurus is correct. The downloads folder is global, whereas its sub-folders are game specific. When answering OP's question, it was the latter feature that I had in mind.

[Pickysaurus]

You can set the staging folder (per game) in Settings -> Mods -> Mod Staging Folder

 

You can set the download folder (global) in Settings -> Downloads -> Download Folder.

 

Inside the download folder, Vortex keeps a subfolder for each game. There no reason to split these out because it's not content used by your game.

[Deleted2815227User]

So, in other words: yes, you DO have a global mod download folder. And it's not necessary, huh?

 

How about you have two games requiring the mods to be on the same drive as the game, but the games are on different drives? LIke, not wanting to waste prime SSD realestate on an older game that will load up in acceptable time just fine on a classic spinning hard drive?

 

Are you expected to change the mod directory to the other drive, and copying the ENTIRE mod directory of all mods including of games that aren't on that drive, including those that require the mods to be on the same drive, over every single time you want to play the other game with mods? Sit there waiting 20 minutse, an hour, more, depending on how many mods and how big they are before you can startup a game?

 

This is so obvious to me that you let people set a directory per game; even without the idea of games requiring the mods to be on the same drive, it did not occur to me that I was changing a global setting (especially after clicking a button in the game section) that I needed to switch several times before I started to get an inkling, that every change in different games switched the global setting. This program has been around for 2 years, right, nobody has pointed this out before? The lack of this feature literally breaks the usage of the program. I wouldn't have needed to wait before this complication arose; choosing your own mod directory per game is what I have put into the program from the get go.

 

Where do I make a feature request?

[Guest deleted34304850]

so you have two games entirely different from each other in different locations, possibly physically different devices and they somehow share files?

curious as to what game does that, and if that is a hard requirement, why would you then install the games on different devices and put yourself into an impossible situation?

[AugustaCalidia]

Are you expected to change the mod directory to the other drive, and copying the ENTIRE mod directory of all mods including of games that aren't on that drive, including those that require the mods to be on the same drive, over every single time you want to play the other game with mods?

 

The mod staging folder is not global - it contains only the installed mods for a specific game. So the answer to this question is "no." Game A on drive C:\ will have its own unique mod staging folder, and Game B on drive D:/ will have its own unique mod staging folder. There's no need to copy over anything.

 

As for the downloads folder (which contains only archives, not installed mods), it does not need to be copied anywhere. In fact, it can be deleted once the mods are installed. (However, I do not recommend doing this.)

[Pickysaurus]

 

Are you expected to change the mod directory to the other drive, and copying the ENTIRE mod directory of all mods including of games that aren't on that drive, including those that require the mods to be on the same drive, over every single time you want to play the other game with mods?

 

The mod staging folder is not global - it contains only the installed mods for a specific game. So the answer to this question is "no." Game A on drive C:\ will have its own unique mod staging folder, and Game B on drive D:/ will have its own unique mod staging folder. There's no need to copy over anything.

 

As for the downloads folder (which contains only archives, not installed mods), it does not need to be copied anywhere. In fact, it can be deleted once the mods are installed. (However, I do not recommend doing this.)

 

 

That's pretty much what I said, but it might be clearer to the OP. Thanks Augusta

[AugustaCalidia]

@Pickysaurus

 

Yes, I simply repeated and enlarged on what you said to the OP. I did so because, in his post subsequent to yours, OP showed that he did not understood what you were clearly telling him.

[dizietemblesssma]

My one beef with setting folders is the requirement that a folder be empty. I have a data drive that is shared between two versions of win10. With Fallout4 insatlled on both and also Vortex I wanted them to share the same dowload folder, but when installing the second version of Vortex I had to do a bit of folder renaming and stuff so that I could get the second Vortex to use the same folder as the first. If I knew why you couldn't set the download folder to a folder with files already in it that would be nice:)

 

diziet

[Tannin42]

User: "I know a good place to store my downloads: c:\windows\system32"

Also User: "Stupid Vortex, showing me a bunch of dll files as downloads but I didn't download them. Best fix that by removing everything."

 

If you know your way around windows, you will know how you can easily work around the "only empty folders" requirement anyway. If you don't, please just accept that your use case is not supported.

Vortex stores meta information about the downloads you have, if you share a download directory between two windows installations (and presumably two copies of Vortex) they will interfere, with each installation only having meta data for some of the mods.