Kezyma's Plugin Finder for Mod Organizer (by Kezyma)

[DoubleYou]

Discussion topic:
Kezyma's Plugin Finder for Mod Organizer by Kezyma
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If we add more of these plugins, this plugin can make installation easier.

[TechAngel85]

Easier or just different?

OT: I really dislike our selection of emojis. There are so many missing from modern standards...

[z929669]

All of these Kezyma MO plugins are interesting, but the pitfalls seem huge if we came to rely on them.

[Kezyma]

On 12/24/2021 at 12:59 AM, TechAngel85 said:

Easier or just different? :thinking:

OT: I really dislike our selection of emojis. There are so many missing from modern standards...

For me, the purpose is to make mod setups completely portable and to make it easier to switch between drastically different mod setups or game versions without having to do anything more than switching profiles in MO, since swapping out different game exes, script extender versions, ENB setups and so on just becomes a case of enabling or disabling them in MO instead of the painful process it was before. 

I find it easier to use, but I've also been using it (or something very similar) since I wrote the original version in 2018. I think rearranging the files into the Root folders is probably about equally as confusing as extracting the right files into the game folder, for first timers anyway. After that, it makes updates/changes/removal a lot easier though!

On 12/24/2021 at 4:18 AM, z929669 said:

All of these Kezyma MO plugins are interesting, but the pitfalls seem huge if we came to rely on them.

Other than getting into habits, you should be safe with all of them, I think! For Root Builder, if you need to get rid of it, running a Build manually will effectively install all the root files, so you can remove Root Builder and it'll be no different to if you'd manually installed them from the start.

As for the other plugins, Reinstaller keeps all the backed up installers in the MO/plugins/data/reinstaller/ folder, so you can retrieve them if needed, Curation Club is a run-once plugin purely for time saving, Profile Sync can be safely removed at any point and all profiles will just keep their current mod order, Shortcutter's shortcuts still work if it's uninstalled and Plugin Finder can be removed without affecting anything at all!

I'm happy to answer any questions about them that you might have  

[z929669]

1 hour ago, Kezyma said:

For me, the purpose is to make mod setups completely portable and to make it easier to switch between drastically different mod setups or game versions without having to do anything more than switching profiles in MO, since swapping out different game exes, script extender versions, ENB setups and so on just becomes a case of enabling or disabling them in MO instead of the painful process it was before. 

I find it easier to use, but I've also been using it (or something very similar) since I wrote the original version in 2018. I think rearranging the files into the Root folders is probably about equally as confusing as extracting the right files into the game folder, for first timers anyway. After that, it makes updates/changes/removal a lot easier though!

Other than getting into habits, you should be safe with all of them, I think! For Root Builder, if you need to get rid of it, running a Build manually will effectively install all the root files, so you can remove Root Builder and it'll be no different to if you'd manually installed them from the start.

As for the other plugins, Reinstaller keeps all the backed up installers in the MO/plugins/data/reinstaller/ folder, so you can retrieve them if needed, Curation Club is a run-once plugin purely for time saving, Profile Sync can be safely removed at any point and all profiles will just keep their current mod order, Shortcutter's shortcuts still work if it's uninstalled and Plugin Finder can be removed without affecting anything at all!

I'm happy to answer any questions about them that you might have  

Thanks for posting and the additional info. I think we will simply run some of these in our personal setups and see how it goes. The pitfalls I mention are in regards to updates to these MO plugins if/when MO updates are not backward compatible for said plugins. The default plugins bundled have no issues, since they are maintained my the MO devs, but third-party ones could create problems if creators go AFK. There are a number of potentially interesting plugins that I have hesitated to try (and become reliant upon) for this reason. I'm sure some of us will test drive and ask questions if we have them.

[Kezyma]

38 minutes ago, z929669 said:

Thanks for posting and the additional info. I think we will simply run some of these in our personal setups and see how it goes. The pitfalls I mention are in regards to updates to these MO plugins if/when MO updates are not backward compatible for said plugins. The default plugins bundled have no issues, since they are maintained my the MO devs, but third-party ones could create problems if creators go AFK. There are a number of potentially interesting plugins that I have hesitated to try (and become reliant upon) for this reason. I'm sure some of us will test drive and ask questions if we have them.

The devs of every currently known MO plugin are all either active or reachable in the MO discord, there's only a handful of people making plugins (Plugin Finder has 18 plugins and 6 are plugins I wrote), but I know what you mean! Thankfully, MO devs have mostly had a role in the development of every plugin and a good portion of them are actually made by MO devs anyway, so hopefully wont be going anywhere.  

In the case of Root Builder, it's got a few things going for it there. I've kept it updated for nearly 4 years now, in one form or another, but more importantly, there's another plugin that does something similar using the same folder structure, which seems to have been accepted as the 'standard' for root game files. So if RB and the other plugin both disappear, any replacement that someone makes will almost certainly use the same mod structure (unless RB just gets integrated into MO at some point). 

I've also updated all of my plugins (except the 2 still in alpha) to work on the next version of MO after playing with it for a bit, so that should last for quite a while already!