SS2 Blue Mod Manager

[674480f207083sarge945]

this would be quite useful if having 100+ mods loaded was a common thing, but as the normal max is about 20, it's basically just increasing complexity

The main reason is so that it becomes a lot easier to track which little extra files are for what mod. Like "SS2 Black Egg". I would put that in the Vurts Organics category and immediately know what it's a part of. Sure it's more of an issue with 100 mods, but it's still an issue with 20 mods. Sure, I could rename the folder for that mod, but renaming a folder is more work for a user than dragging and dropping something into a new category within the mod manager itself.

also, I don't think it's doable without manually giving an unique identifier to EACH mod available here (as mentioned earlier, the manager has no way of knowing what's what without it). ouch.

This is only needed if you want to automatically assign mods to categories, which, as the Polito form would say, is impractical and unnecessary. Just dumping them all in an unassigned category and letting the user move them around is much easier, and actually reduces annoyance for people who don't care about categorisation or who don't like auto-categorisation. Other mod managers for other games offer to automatically sort mods into categories, and I always turn it off because it always gets it wrong.

remember, even the current very simple and clean manager can be hard to figure out for some people.

This is probably the real issue, and I can't really argue against it.

[674480f207359voodoo47]

so you basically want a button that would create mod subfolders, then some functionality that would allow you to move loaded mods there (drag and drop?), and then the manager reading mods from the subfolders, while being able to deactivate the entire subfolder.

sounds like a lot of hassle for next to no benefit - I reckon most people just want to 3-click load mods and go play the game, not indulge in reorganizing their folder structures. as mentioned, the simpler things are, the less chance of someone messing up - download mods, load them up, arrange priorities, off you go. anything that would disturb the ease of those three steps is less than desirable (and probably would just lead to more people using one those awful modpacks that are floating around the internet).


I have to admit I have very little experience with loading mods for other games though - pretty much the only other thing I've ever tried was the nexus modmanager for FO4, a horrible, bloated, unusable abomination with one trillion functions nobody needs. I've almost ended up shouting at that thing "dude, I just want to load mods in a way that would make them work, you really don't need to create a video conference with santa claus for me". I might be wrong, but that's probably what every newbie wants to do, and what a modmanager should allow to do in an easy way.

NMM is EXACTLY where we do not want to end up with BMM - and I can imagine that NMM also started as a fairly simple tool, but then a lot of people had a lot fairly good ideas.. and look at the result. so my stance on this will always be firm - unless it's something critical, the manager is better off without it.

[674480f20763fMarvin]

What voodoo said.

[674480f207747voodoo47]

on a slightly related note, I still think that forcing gamesys mods and fixup mods to their proper place (either automatically or via a button) would be a good addition.

[674480f20789bsarge945]

I guess you're right. I can put up with not having mod categories if it means we don't end up with NMM SS2 edition. That thing is horrible.

That being said, it is definitely the tool I choose in the relatively rare instances where I do actually want to have a video conference with Santa (about twice a year)

[674480f207b2eMarvin]

on a slightly related note, I still think that forcing gamesys mods and fixup mods to their proper place (either automatically or via a button) would be a good addition.

It's on my mind, but it will be a few months til I have enough time again.

[674480f207c3fvoodoo47]

hey, a small fix request: the manager sees crf files as unrecognized - they should be, as crf is a valid SS2 resource format (so obj.crf works the same way as an obj folder, for example).

[674480f207d3dMarvin]

Trivial, but had to reset my system recently and didn't get anything MM-related set-up yet and have, like, negative free time right now. Will have to wait, as usual. How urgent is it?

I can more ore less just ignore archive file types altogether and let 7zip figure it out.

[674480f207e19voodoo47]

absolutely not urgent. just a visual oddity, no effect on functionality whatsoever.

[674480f207f2avoodoo47]

@Marvin, any idea why BMM fails to extract the Secmod3.2 archive properly?

[674480f208095Kolya]

The archive contains another achive: 'goodies'.rar
Once you remove that, SECMOD.3.2 installs fine.

I suggest to extract the goodies to a folder. And not using names with apostrophes, however 'ironically'.

[674480f2081c9voodoo47]

the fun thing is that the 3.199 archive also has it, but gets extracted properly, so I'm thinking maybe some edge case bug - if that's the case, squashing it would be preferable.

[674480f2082deMarvin]

No idea. My first bet would have been a problem with unescaped single quotes like Kolya says but indeed the other archive is fine.  BMM tries to extract goodies.rar on top and fails. Removing the single quotes and re-compressing works fine. Why? Who knows.

Will add the archive to my "look at it in debug" list once I get back to BMM. If I get back to it...

[674480f208457Kolya]

@Marvin: This might work:

Code: [Select]

7za.exe x -t *This should only open the top level archive. Not tested.
See: https://sevenzip.osdn.jp/chm/cmdline/switches/type.htm

[674480f208542Marvin]

Sure thing, the question then is why this is not necessary for the other archive.

[674480f2086e5Kolya]

Yeah, that is a good question. The sub archives ('goodies'.rar) are exactly the same. And there are no suspicious file changes going on between these mod versions (see screenshot).

But even when I re-7zipped SECMOD3.2 it failed to unpack in SS2BMM. And it's clearly failing due to 'goodies'.rar, since what little gets unpacked is the start of 'goodies'.rar contents:

Code: [Select]

intrface
|_ANIM_1.pcx (0 Byte)
I started copying the changes over one by one, then testing in SS2BMM, but this takes a long time and I got bored. So I started syncing more files. And then the problem never happened.
My new SECMOD3.2.7z worked with 'goodies'.rar and all. The only difference was that I had used a Total Commander 7zip plugin for packing this time. Both packers I used were 64bit versions.
So yeah, some problem with single apostrophes in file names when packed with newer versions of 7zip apparently. I'm going to sleep well after this.
[SECMOD3.2_vs_SECMOD3.1999.png expired]

[674480f2087cbMarvin]

Kommander Kolya to the rescue!

[674480f2089aeZylonBane]

Punctuation in a file name? Seriously?

[674480f208aaaZylonBane]

So is it at all possible to make the mod manager immediately update the config files every time you change something? This business with having to close the program before changes take effect is really annoying and counterintuitive.

[674480f208b7bKolya]

What is your use case?

[674480f208ce1voodoo47]

as mentioned elsewhere, people sometimes leave the manager running after setting up their mods and just try to start the game without exiting it properly. this results in mods not loading, despite the manager window displaying them as active.

https://youtu.be/OR-qTfKlRtE?t=2021

I don't consider this a real problem, just a case of the user doing.. I don't want to say dumb stuff, but sometimes things are exactly what they are. would compare it to someone who didn't reboot their computer after installing hw drivers - just don't do dumb things and everything will be fine.

[674480f208dbbKolya]

Maybe the "Exit and start game" button just needs to become sexier.

[674480f20902bOlfred]

Maybe add an "Apply" or "Save to File" button. That just writes to the files without starting the game.
That way it might become clearer that it actually needs to be safed.

[674480f20916cZylonBane]

An Apply button would be an improvement, along with a big bright warning bar when there are unapplied changes.

But if I understand correctly how the mod manager works, activating/deactivating/reordering mods is just rewriting a single very small text file. There's no earthly reason why it shouldn't update the mod configuration in real time, like a file manager.

Either way, requiring users to exit the manager to apply changes is ridiculous. If someone is experimenting with their mod configuration, it's perfectly reasonable to want to leave the manger running as they pop in and out of the game.