SS2 Blue Mod Manager

[674413ebef401voodoo47]

I'll be poking into things in the next few days. anyway, pausing a conflicting mod will not remove the warnings - intentional?
[no_pause_for_the_wicked.jpg expired]

[674413ebef67fMarvin]

Somewhat. Not standard behaviour though, compared to other checks. Updated.

[674413ebef77cvoodoo47]

checking on the profiles, they work ok as far as I can tell, did however expect to see all existing profiles available in the Manage Profiles window.

[674413ebef86eMarvin]

I should probably grey that out or simply not show it until loading a profile.

[674413ebef970Marvin]

@voodoo47 Updated again, plus better icons

[674413ebefaccMarvin]

Since there were no more complaints, I created a new release: https://github.com/pshjt/ss2bmm/releases/tag/v1.16

Would it be possible to somehow get access to the main post or would you need to create a new thread for that? I would not want to break any links that way, but without edit rights I cannot change the post.

[674413ebefbd1voodoo47]

yep, no complaints. attaching the exe to the first post quickly, K will have to figure out whether he can give you edit rights somehow.

does the 7z.dll need an update?

[674413ebefcb0Marvin]

Thanks. No it does not.

[674413ebefe1aKolya]

You're the owner of the first post now, Marvin.

[674413ebf000cKolya]

Just a heads up to @Marvin:  The current version 1.16 from Github gets flagged as a threat by Windows Security (with security update from 11.12.2020).

According to Virustotal.com 2 of 70 antivirus are detecting a threat, including Microsoft.

EDIT: You can submit a file for analysis to MS here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/filesubmission/
I will also do it, but there are different ways depending if you're a user or developer. //Submitted

[674413ebf00faMarvin]

Ugh. Will do, thx for the heads up.

Oh, you already did. Thx!

[674413ebf020eKolya]

Yeah, it says now that they removed the detection. Although you can force a definitions update in windows, it will probably take until the next automatic update for most people, to not get it detected anymore.

[674413ebf0331Marvin]

I guess you'd want to wait until using the new version for the current SS2Tool server build then.

I never had any problem with Windows Defender on my pc, but the official Github build is from a Windows virtual machine with a different VS version. You'd think that Github being owned by Microsoft would help with such things, but oh well.

[674413ebf0432voodoo47]

I'm thinking I'll pop one last request in - lets add TG/T2 support, all that's needed is the manager to recognize thief.exe and thief2. exe as valid. //nope, some more tweaks would be necessary.

[674413ebf0554Marvin]

That's indeed not very difficult, but.. why? I thought Thief's fan mission managers included mod support and that the standard setups established by the fanpatches nowadays are built with either drop-in support or custom installers in mind. Wouldn't SS2BMM be an illt fit without other adjustments`?

[674413ebf0637voodoo47]

I actually have no idea, never tried the new Thief loaders myself. maybe someone will pitch in.

[674413ebf076dMarvin]

I haven't tried Thief in years, so actually I dont't really have a clue.

What I would expect to find in a standard patched-up T2 would probably be:
- several CRFs in the main folder from various mods
- several overwrite folders in the main folder containing either mods or fan mission additions
- an already customised mod_path in cam_mod.ini, without a central folder structure like in SS2
- some custom installer crap from stuff like HDMod
- fan mission stuff I know nothing about
- maybe T2X

That would probably need to be consolidated.

[674413ebf08efvoodoo47]

checked, it's pretty close to what SS2 currently has, mostly because the same people are helping to set things up - apart from using "mods" instead of "DMM", and needing different folder to always be present at the end of the modpath (SS2 needs "patch_ext", TG "FMdml", T2 "MISPATCH+T2FMDML") there is little difference.

I'll snoop around a bit more, but I'm thinking Thief compatibility wouldn't be a bad thing - there already is a couple of mods floating around, and being able to activate/deactivate the built in mods without having to re-run the patcher sound pretty good as well.

we'll see.


//quick check on AngelLoader, it's definitely not a mod manager.

[674413ebf09c5Marvin]

Well, those are just config changes. Easy.

[674413ebf0b55voodoo47]

in that case, I guess I'll ask you for a test build. ok;

SS2:
DMM folder is being used for mod storage, "+patch_ext" needs to always reside at the end of the mod_path in cam_mod.ini

TG (thief.exe):
MODS folder is being used for mod storage, "+FMdml" needs to always reside at the end of the mod_path in cam_mod.ini

T2 (thief2.exe):
MODS folder is being used for mod storage, "+MISPATCH+T2FMDML" needs to always reside at the end of the mod_path in cam_mod.ini


also note - currently, the modmanager adds .\ in front of all the mod folders, like this;

Code: [Select]

.\DMM\scpb5+.\patch_extlooking at the Thief configs, seems like this can be omitted, and this

Code: [Select]

DMM\scpb5+patch_extworks just as well. so I'm carefully going to say it should be ok to get rid of all the .\ bits, to have unified handling for all three games.

lets see where will this bring us.

[674413ebf0c3dKolya]

Version 1.16 is not flagged by by Windows security any more and most people should have the new signatures by now, so I updated BMM in SS2Tool.

[674413ebf0d96Marvin]

Thank you, Kolya.

voodoo: I would like to have everything in a single exe and then possibly rename it to something like "Dark Engine Mod Manager" (ideas welcome). One could let the manager auto-detect the game it is being set up for and choose a default config from that, with few constraints and user overrides as usual.
Ideally, patches containing the manager such as SS2Tool would deliver a minimal .cfg file with it to make sure that any initial config is always the optimal one regardless of how oudated, and therefore incorrect, a potential manager version would be.

In any case, I have to sort out my German SCP localization and the subtitles first and will get back to this at a later point.

[674413ebf0e7aKolya]

I'd go for "Dark Mod Manager". Suddenly the DMM folder makes sense.

[674413ebf109dMarvin]

@voodoo47 Couple of questions as to unified mod manager:

If I see it correctly, one could omit the mandatory patch/mod folders completely if every game simply used the install.cfg correctly, that is, use load_path for DML patches and resname_base to add custom patch folders that should overwrite \res or \data . Is that feasible? SS2Tool already does this somewhat by putting dml fixes into the misdml folder and cleaning up MIS and OSM files, except for still needing the patch_ext folder which could very well be added to resname_base instead of via DMM.
In my ideal world, all three Dark games would use a single dml fix folder, a single data folder (with MIS, OSM, CRF, RES and all the other files), and a single patch folder, and change install.cfg accordingly. Using different names for the same thing (midsml, T2FMDML) seems nonsensical and could also be fixed.
This would need a coordinated effort by Kolya, you, and probably Jax64, though, possibly by other mod authors as well (HDMod?).

Next, there are cutscenes. Thankfully, I'm not aware of any cutscene mods for Thief or Thief 2, except for FMs (which fmsel handles). SS2BMM assumes that any movies will always be present in a mod's \cutscenes folder. The base movie_path is already exposed via config. I could expose the "cutscenes" string via config variable as well, or just assume that any mods will always put their movies into a subfolder named cutscenes.

TFix puts its mods into \mods as well as \mods subfolders - this won't work. Could you fix that?

T2Fix uses osm in the uber_mod path , is that intended? Furthermore, the custom changes for multiplayer would probably need to be dealt with in some manner as well.