SS2 Blue Mod Manager

[673fc0f283310Marvin]

I'd like to keep everything in one place. I agree with ZB's idea. Making a "wrench & hammer" icon, maybe overlaid on the Mechanist's gear, seems doable.

Edit: Progress so far. Works somewhat even for small sizes but needs some detail and shine.
[preview.png expired]
[dmm_icon.svg expired]

[673fc0f2834e3Vegoraptor]

My initial idea was something along the lines of a steam engine with some simple neon circuitry in the background, unifying the (sort of) steam- and cyberpunk-aspects of the games, as well as taking "Dark Engine" literally. Lacking any real talent in graphic design beyond mixing and modifying existing art, I didn't get too far, though.
Speaking of bad ideas, is it too late to throw the name "Dark Engine Mod Organizer" into the ring?

[673fc0f28364cZylonBane]

Explain what the point would be of changing the word "manager" to "organizer".

[673fc0f283720Vegoraptor]

People love acronyms

[673fc0f283851Kolya]

Well if you put it like that... Dark Engine Mod Instance Universal Rollout Guided Expander

[673fc0f2839b6Vegoraptor]

I like it, but calling the tool a guided expander would mean we either indulge in false advertising or put additional workload on Marvin the dev-team to make it so.
Admittedly, both options appear to be so hot right now.

[673fc0f283c42ZylonBane]

People love acronyms

"Gosh, I'd sure love to try some mods!"
"No problem, first download DEMO."
"Okay, I downloaded the demo. How does that help?"

Yeah, that would work our great.

[673fc0f283d3bKolya]

Try to lighten up a bit. You act like you're the only one with a brain here. Not every suggestion needs to be hit with maximum contempt.

[673fc0f283e6dMarvin]

In science, with biology and physics being the worst offenders, there's a very annoying habit of trying to shoehorn the most ridiculous acronyms into anything from protein names to microscopy techniques. It's gotten so bad that it is impossible to renember the actual name of some method because spelling out its 10-letter acronym makes you have an aneurysm.

Thankfully, the world of System Shock is still very healthy in this regard, and I intend to keep it that way.

[673fc0f283f53Vegoraptor]

Very well. Also, observe how I prefaced my suggestion.
We are still far from such wonderful brainchildren as INADEQUATE (Incredible Natural-Abundance DoublE-QUAntum Transfer Experiment) though.

[673fc0f284076voodoo47]

DMM sounds just fine.

[673fc0f284172Marvin]

Release candidate. Linux (Wine) testing would be welcome since Thief 1/2 files are far less standardized in terms of case sensitivity.

- added ability to recognize both /cutscenes and /movies folders for cutscenes
- Fixed manager not recognizing game when swapping from Thief (2) back to SS2

[673fc0f2842cfMarvin]

Fixed a tooltip in SS2BMM and uploaded a new release, also uploaded the v1.15 release here for preservation (or catalogizing, depending on if you believe GitHub to go down).

GitHub does not allow to fork one's own repository, so I created a new one: https://github.com/pshjt/dmm

[673fc0f2843c0Marvin]

Docu site is up: https://pshjt.github.io/dmm/

[673fc0f284493Kolya]

Nicely done, I feel well informed. 

[673fc0f284592Marvin]

When testing is finished, I would open a new thread to keep the post history clean and let all current links remain valid. At the moment, there is absolutely no functionality added wrt to SS2, so there is no need yet to include DMM.

[673fc0f2846e1Kolya]

I assume DMM will replace BMM as the mod manager for SS2. In that case it would be best if all outside links currently pointing at BMM will end up pointing at DMM in future. This can be achieved by creating a copy of the first post, then splitting off all comments here and attaching them to the new thread, which leaves you with one post under the original (BMM) URL which you can rewrite for DMM. It's a bit of a hassle, but quite effective for SEO and user comfort. Give me a sign if you're interested. Of course you can alternatively just link to the new thread in the first post.

[673fc0f2847e0Marvin]

Actually, I would leave the comments with the old thread. Too much clutter. Otherwise sounds fine.

I'll get back to you.

[673fc0f2848b6Kolya]

Yes, the comments would end up in the old thread. Sorry, if I've been unclear.

[673fc0f284c08sarge945]

I really like the idea of having one mod manager for the Dark engine games.

Would it be possible/wise to have different icons based on whatever game it's being used for? I could imagine a systemshock-styled icon and a thief styled icon and it switching between them.

[673fc0f284d08Marvin]

Not possible afaik. You can only have one main icon, and if you set multiple, windows explorer still picks the first one in an alphabetical list.
Setting it programmatically during execution would be possible but inane.

[673fc0f284dd3voodoo47]

again, as new versions are released maybe once a year, there should be no problem with simply building two executables with a different icon.

[673fc0f284ed9Marvin]

Sorry to be so blunt, but it's a terrible practice to keep separate builds (build script, artifacts) just for the sake of having a different icon when there is exactly zero benefit to it, and unless someone can convince me this is a much-needed feature, I won't do it. I'm certainly not keeping anyone else from doing it, either.

[673fc0f284fd8Kolya]

  But my bikeshed!