SS2 Blue Mod Manager

[67448bc9a77abKolya]

You wouldn't be saving a single click:
A) Click to exit and start game, end game and click BMM to start it again: 2 clicks
B) Click to apply mods, click to start the game, end game and switch back to BMM: 2 clicks

Frankly, just because you're among the few people who didn't get how BMM works (despite the conveniently labelled button "Exit and start game") doesn't mean it's "ridiculous". That's not to say it couldn't work another way, but you haven't made a good point for it yet.

The only point I see is that some people expect it to work this way and get confused like you. And that is a valid argument.
But it could be solved in various ways, eg with a button that says: "Apply changes and start game"

[67448bc9a7952Gawain]

Would it be possible to auto save on every change?

[67448bc9a942eZylonBane]

You wouldn't be saving a single click:
A) Click to exit and start game, end game and click BMM to start it again: 2 clicks
B) Click to apply mods, click to start the game, end game and switch back to BMM: 2 clicks

Aside from the fact that launching programs takes a double-click, not a single click, do you realize you're advocating the DOS-era mindset of "Why would anyone ever want two programs running at once?" Because it's easier to switch between them, that's why. The taskbar and alt-tabbing do exist for a reason.

Frankly, just because you're among the few people who didn't get how BMM works (despite the conveniently labelled button "Exit and start game") doesn't mean it's "ridiculous". That's not to say it couldn't work another way, but you haven't made a good point for it yet.

First, the label "Exit and start game" does nothing to convey that changes aren't applied unless you exit first. So here's my good point then: The way it works now runs directly against common GUI standards.

• If BMM worked like a document editor, there would be a save button, and you wouldn't be required to close it to save your work.
• If BMM worked like a file manager or the registry editor, it would apply your changes automatically on the fly.
• If BMM worked like a control panel dialog, there would be explicit Apply and Cancel buttons.

Basically, BMM doesn't work like anything that users have come to expect, thus violating the principle of least astonishment. If something about what BMM does required it to work this way, that would at least be an excuse. But that isn't the case. Whoever programmed the save system just took the easiest way out.

Sigh. This is why programmer-designed interfaces have the terrible reputation they do.

[67448bc9a963cvoodoo47]

as mentioned over at the helpdesk, the path limit of a SS2 modfolder is 80 characters - as soon as the path goes over the limit, things will break. it would be nice to have the manager check for this and warn accordingly.

@Marvin ?

[67448bc9a99a2Marvin]

*bows his head in shame*

Trying to get the setup to run again. Last time was with Visual Studio 2013 which is not officially supported in Win10 anymore, so will see how that turns out. If it does not work, I hope a newer community edition will, don't think the trial version for a full professional version would offer even proper debug mode...

[67448bc9a9b15Marvin]

Well, VS2013 still seems to work and builds. Yay. Gathering what's been requested in the last few years. Anything to add?

Code: [Select]

- major
-- mod/application profiles
-- categories/mod sublists

- intermediate
-- automatic mod sorting (better gamesys ordering/filtering especially)

- minor
-- add support for cfg archives, relax archive file detection
-- apply settings automatically
--- at the very least, rename buttons
-- warn about mod path character limit

- setup
-- upgrade to VS2017+
--- drop WinXP support
-- upgrade dependencies (wxWidgets, 7z-cpp)
--- add HDPI support
-- (re-)structure project


[67448bc9a9dd5JML]

Don't know if it's easily possible, but off the top of my head I remember:
Checking for foldernames in UPPER- and lowercase and use both if both are present. Again and again this one is causing trouble on Linux, since there the foldernames are case sensitive.
E.g. there can be both an "OBJ" and an "obj" Folder present.

[67448bc9a9f06Marvin]

Just to clarify: The mod path 80 character limit applies to the whole path of the mod, including the folder itself? Let's say we have "C:\SS2\dmm\mymod", then the path length here would be 16 for the whole path, 11 for just the DMM folder, and possibly more than 16 for all the mod subfolders. But I guess 16 is the number to check against?

[67448bc9aa034voodoo47]

ok, I don't seem to be having issues with a 100 char path to the exe (SCP+SHTUP+engsubs active). is someone able to make the issue manifest in some way?

maybe this is an oldDark limit that has been lifted without us noticing? that'd be quite embarrassing.

[67448bc9aa128Marvin]

Well it's implemented, so I can update the number to whatever or just revert.

[67448bc9aa448Olfred]

I believe it is an OS problem which has been lifted with Windows 10

[67448bc9aa53dvoodoo47]

windows7 here.

[67448bc9aa8d8Kolya]

Gathering what's been requested in the last few years. Anything to add?

I think @ZylonBane wasn't happy with the "Exit and Start Game" button. He wanted to start the game and leave BMM running to switch back and forth via alt+tabbing. Not sure what the use case is since you have to restart the game anyway to load new mods, but he can probably explain this better.

[67448bc9aaa3fZylonBane]

Yes, you have to restart the game to apply new mods. There's zero reason you should also have to exit the mod manager to update mods. That's like if you had to exit Notepad to apply changes to a CFG file. It's weird.

The tool should just automatically update the mod state on the fly as you make changes.

[67448bc9aacc6Olfred]

windows7 here.

Oh yeah, with activating some more brain juice I realized I mixed up something.
With Windows 10 you can have more than 260 characters in a path, but you have to enable it or something.
Then the 80 was something old from Dark like you said.

[67448bc9aae1fvoodoo47]

I'm fairly sure I've seen someone having issues that have been resolved by shortening the path quite recently. though now that I think about it, it might have been the user shortening the path by moving the game out of program files, with program files being the real culprit.

[67448bc9ab15fMarvin]

I think @ZylonBane wasn't happy with the "Exit and Start Game" button. He wanted to start the game and leave BMM running to switch back and forth via alt+tabbing. Not sure what the use case is since you have to restart the game anyway to load new mods, but he can probably explain this better.

As I posted, I would make the manager auto-update, will probably just tie this to an existing interface refresh.

[67448bc9ab302Marvin]

This is an intermediate build. Changes so far:

Code: [Select]

#Version 1.16#
+ Added warning for long file paths (mod folder >=255 chars).
+ Added warning for duplicate folder names (only useful for Wine/Linux).
~ Added cfg archive option and "All files" wildcard (*.*).
~ Changed config save mechanism:
Added specific apply button and relabelled existing "exit and start game" button to clarify what is actually happening.
Added Ctrl+s shortcut for saving config.
On exit, manager asks if config should be saved.
Internal:
~ Upgraded build files to VS2019 Community (v142).
Upgraded to WinSDK 10+.
Dropped WinXP support.
~ Upgraded to wxFormBuilder 3.9.0.
~ Updated 7zip-cpp to current version.
~ Updated wxWidgets to latest stable version 3.0.5.Can someone test the attached build on a different machine than mine (Win10)? I'd be curious if the case sensitive directory check works under Wine and if everything still works in older Windows versions (except XP, SS2BMM should refuse to work there). If there are no obvious bugs, I'll move on to the other features.
[ss2bmm.exe expired]

[67448bc9ab43dvoodoo47]

I'd assume there is a good reason for dropping xp support? anyway, works on win7, but would prefer it to start in a slightly larger window to avoid the scroll bars on the right panel. maybe don't allow small window sizes so the bars would never appear?
[bmm16.jpg expired]

[67448bc9ab5c6Marvin]

Can set a more reasonable min size, sure.

VS2013 is the last version to still support WinXP as a dedicated build target and is neither officially supported anymore, nor is there a free version available.

I'd like to update to the most recent version of wxWidgets (again, to be future-proof) and put this on GitHub so that I or whoever tries to compile this in the future can do so via a (nearly) one-click solution using freely available tools such as the newest Visual Studio Community Edition. The old VS2013 release is simply not sustainable anymore.

Note: Technically, one can include a Win7SDK+VS2017 legacy option as a single component installed in VS2019 to still compile for Windows XP (platform toolset v141_xp). However, this is deprecated, could be deleted at a moment's notice, needs custom build scripts and clashes with CMake, which only supports setting the WindowsSDK from Win10 upwards.

[67448bc9ab6d7ZylonBane]

It'll be weird to see the mod manager drop support for operating systems younger than the game it's for, but maybe we could keep a "legacy" version around for the retro users.

[67448bc9ab7cevoodoo47]

yes, the 1.15 version will be kept available in the first post, marked as last that's xp compatible.

[67448bc9abb65JML]

[...]
I'd be curious if the case sensitive directory check works under Wine [...]

Will check within the next few days. Got to fiddle around a bit to be able to test this properly.

[67448bc9ac9bbJML]

Case senstive thingy doesn't work in Wine 4.0 with BMM 1.16.
I get no warning, and mods are broken when there happen to be an OBJ and obj Folder with their files spread in both folders.

Feedback: That Apply Configuration thing is annoying as hell. One more button to click every time. (Yes I know I can start ss2.exe)