Give Feedback
This video was originally streamed as part of C3: Community Creation Con on 2 Feb 2024, but in case you missed it (or simply weren't interested in a conference around Bethesda games) we've put it up on our YouTube channel too.
During the 45-minute talk, our very own Tim "Halgari" Baldridge walks through the following topics:
- Introduction to the Nexus Mods App: Why we build mod managers, software and hardware considerations and our open source philosophy.
- Design decisions: File deployment and archive formats.
- New features: Change tracking, "Global Undo" and the NX Archive Format.
- Community Involvement: Contributing and the frameworks we're providing to help.
We originally announced our plans to build a new app back in August, you can find that post here. We're also thrilled to say that Nagev has rejoined our team and will be working with Insomnious on our continued maintenance of Vortex.
The source code of the Nexus Mods App is available on GitHub and you can check out the milestones section to see how the project is progressing and what features we're added next.
If you like this kind of technical update or the video format and would like to see more content like it, please let us know in the comments!
116 comments
Speaking of our apps, for all of you have an Android tablet, there's another way to play your games remotely. I did that with Empire, and it worked like a charm. With Skyrim, not so much. I couldn't even move the horse!
Again, I think your app is a great idea. I hope we see it soon!
Thank you for your time. I remain,
Sincerely yours always,
Shezza.
For those interested in the drawbacks of this (still-in-devemopment)new mod manager, it can be summarized to 2 points:
1. Disk usage. The upcoming Nexus Mod App is using the "Immutable Modlists", that means the app will make a backup of your original game files at start(for a "factory reset/return to vanilla" kind of backup, without having to reinstall the game all over again).
This means an extra 60-100% disk size depend on the game size. So a 100GB game will need an extra 60GB-100GB for you to use Nexus Mod App. I don't think this feature can be turned off no, as this is the base for the manager to work.
2. This also means that computer/devices using this app need to be relatively fast if we want to use it comfortably. For the first time operation of a newly installed game, the speed of backup will take signficant more time than using regular mod manager(due to the 1st time backup process). Subsequest restore of files to the vanilla will also take more time(depends on the size of the files needed to be restored).
So for most of us with modern fast cpu and an ssd drive, this is not a big problem. But for older device users(older intel cpu, hdd drive, etc), this will take longer to perform.
I might be missing a few things(as I am in no way expert in modding or programming), but you can read more here.
Failure in this endeavor is imminent.
Not necessarily, as you don't have to back up any files that are not going to be modded. We plan on making this configurable, and also look into being able to source the files from the game stores themselves (redownloading steam files, etc.). There is a tradeoff here though if you want to make your loadout resiliant against the game auto updating you may want the files backed up, if you don't you can turn the feature off.
Again this is a bit inflated. The data is compressed, and as mentioned above if you don't want the files backed up you can turn off that feature. We're talking about a 1 minute process on a HDD to perform the initial backup for Skyrim SE. For a SATA SSD this drops to 27 seconds, and with a NVME drive 3.6seconds. Larger games take more time, but we're still talking about single digit minutes here, and it's a one-and-done thing not something you have to deal with on a daily basis.
The other question I had was whether the new mod deployment model will allow us to close out the Mods App after making changes to the load order & before playing the game. That's the part I liked about Vortex - MO2 requires being kept on because of the virtual filesystem. There's nothing wrong with that - I just prefer closing other applications when I play games.
Happy to see C#/.NET will be used here - that should result in better performance on Windows (even on slightly older machines). Thanks in advance & good luck on the project!
I only ask that the transition to the new Nexus Mod's Ass have a simple automated way to transfer big collections installed in Vortex to the new Nexus Mod's App.
Thank you!
Another frequently used feature in MO2 while developing a list is switching to an empty profile for modifying and testing mods. Presumably this will be a lot less fluid on NMA due to having to delete all the files from the game folder and then recopying them back when switching to the main profile?
So instead, they want to use a more traditional "simply copy the files to the folder" method, but with in-depth tracking of file changes, making for an approach which (hopefully) mitigates the issues of both symlink and VFS approaches, as well as (hopefully) minimizes the issues of traditional "simply copy the files into the folder" approaches. We'll see how it plays out in practice, my expectations are fairly high on that front given the background of the devs and the detailed technical knowledge portrayed in the video.
As for the abandonware question, this is hyperbole and not really worth discussing except for saying: nobody can really predict how it will turn out, it's fine (healthy even) to be sceptical but no real need to be overly negative about it. And also - Vortex isn't really abandonware since it still is maintained and updated by the Nexus Mods staff, just at a lower priority now since they want to make a better app, having recognised the pain points of the old ones.
The final question you posed re. automated installs, wabbajack, collections - so far I haven't seen this addressed directly anywhere, but I would imagine that since this is built by people who worked on Wabbajack and MO2, they'll likely want to incorporate the good from those systems wherever possible.
No longer worked on with an implication of being unfinished or buggy.
"Vortex still gets regular updates?"
Thats good, but for how long?
"In the video it explains it will not use VFS because this has a fairly high risk of failure in some games/software, and this risk is increasing as the way games are developed continues to evolve and change."
It's disengenuious to claim it's techncially impossible, when mod organizer 2 for one example has been doing it for over a decade and has shown none of these suppossed issues.
"So instead, they want to use a more traditional "simply copy the files to the folder" method,"
Isnt that how vortex works?, or i guess doesnt really work.
"As for the abandonware question, this is hyperbole and not really worth discussing except for saying: nobody can really predict how it will turn out,"
We know how NMM turned out and we know theyve already moved onto a new app before finishing vortex.
"On this note, we do have 2 people working full time on Vortex. So it's certainly not abandoned. There will be an overlap period where both apps are maintained by the Nexus, and then once we feel comfortable with the state of the Nexus Mods App we will move our developers off of Vortex and onto the App full time. That's not going to happen anytime soon, so please, continue to enjoy Vortex :D"
Not abandonware yet, i notice you emntion continue devlopment until the app is in a good place, but not until vortex is in a good place. thats slightly better i guess. Bold of you to assume i enjoy vortex and don't think i missed that you didn't acknowledge NMM.
look i get development is hard(though claim only to be an ameteur) and your trying to be positive publicly in the comments to avoid this becoming some sort of flame war. But im not saying any of this to cause hurt, im asking so i can be an informed consumer. Nexus has let us down repeatedly in the past, especially when it coems to these apps, so i think im justified in being critical, especially when the answers to my questions seem to be misleading(the impossiblity of VFS for example) or just dance around the topic, but essentially boil down to a yes (not abandonware... yet).
As I mentioned in the video, it only mostly works (for files not loaded by the OS's dynamic linking system), only works on Windows, and will likely break in the future when DirectStorage comes more into use. I also forgot to mention how about 6 years ago the entire system broke when Microsoft pushed out an update that reworked some of the internal windows APIs (https://github.com/ModOrganizer2/modorganizer/issues/1410). Thankfully Microsoft reverted the change allowing MO2 to work again, but it was broken in Windows 10 for roughly a month or two?
And I think you are slightly overstating what I stated. I said it was an extremely high amount of technical risk. Could work out fine, could fail epically, we likely wouldn't know until we invested significant time and money into it, and I'm not willing to take that risk.
If you want to talk about "abandonware", it's probably also good to mention MO2' virtual filesystem, which doesn't currently have an active maintainer because the code is so complex (due to the nature of VFS hooking code), that all the devs have moved on and the current MO2 devs don't really have the desire or resources to maintain it. That sort of risk is not something I'm willing to take on in this project.
It's been about a year, so correct me if it has been fixed. But vortex was incredibly unreliable for installing and especially removing files when switching profiles or uninstalling mods/lists. It would miss tonnes of files or only half copy them alot of times. Everytime ive tried vortex ive had to do a full game reinstall and manually remove leftover modding files. I remember it being a total pain to get 3rd party apps like TESEdit, LODGen or WyreBash and the like tow ork correctly with it. The UI and UX was atrocious, it seemed to put more onus on asthetics than functionality. Though for me personally a difficult UI is not a big deal and certainly not a deal breaker. Thats the specifics i remember, i remeber their being alot more that annoyed, but not well enough to describe.
But thats not really relevant, you know the paint points of the app, im sure the dev team gets countless complaints and bug reports constructive or otherwise. A simple search for "vortex sucks" will give you thousands of other anecdotal examples otherwise.
I am excited for this new app, i know it doesn't seem like it. It's not like i hate nexus, ive used the site htousands of times, contributed to it myself and have of course spent money on it (thats not to imply im entitled to anything).