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[WIP] Mator Smash


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Mator Smash

VIDEO TUTORIAL - For v0.0.7

GamerPoets Video - For v0.4.1

 

 

Mator Smash is now available on Nexus Mods. 

Nexus Mods Mod Page

 

 

As of v1.0.0, Mator Smash has a "Quick Patch" button

As of v0.5.1, Mator Smash will copy records with "errors" in them (such as unresolved/unexpected references)

As of v0.5.0, Mator Smash has new algorithm features and is more stable.

As of v0.4.1, Mator Smash merges redundant plugins properly.

As of v0.4, Mator Smash now produces complete record prototypes

As of v0.3, Mator Smash supports Fallout 4 and Skyrim SE

As of v0.2.2, Mator Smash allows you to modify tags on plugins from within the program.

As of v0.2.1, Mator Smash has Smash Settings for Skyrim for every Bash Tag Wrye Bash offered for Oblivion.

 

Changelog:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

Purpose
Mator Smash is an application built on the xEdit framework developed to replace the primary functionality of Wyre Bash - the creation of patch files to combine (or merge) conflicting overrides to overcome Bethesda's "Rule of One". Wyre Bash used to provide this functionality in the days of Oblivion through the usage of bash tags, keywords that would be put in the description of the mod that would then tell Wyre Bash what types of records it should try patching. However, the current status is that Wyre Bash only provides this for a handful of record types for Skyrim, and this has been the case for quite a while now. There are several users (most notably Sharlikran) who have been working to update Wyre Bash's codebase to work with Skyrim, but it's been an uphill battle. As of now, it's not certain whether Wyre Bash will ever offer the same functionality it did in the days of Oblivion for Skyrim mods. That's where Mator Smash comes in.

 

Why is this necessary?
As per Skyrim's "Rule of One", any two mods that modify the same record but in different ways will conflict with each other in a way that can't be resolved asides from the creation of a compatibility patch. Because the number of Skyrim mods exceeds 40,000, there is no conceivable way to manually build enough compatibility patches to make every possible load order (or even a small fraction of them) work with each mod operating as intended. Mator Smash automates the most important part of the task of compatibility patch creation - the combining of conflicting edits. This is something that we've been needing for a very, very long time.

 

How does it work?
Warning: technical jargon ahead. Where Wyre Bash has separate procedures for the patching of individual record types, Mator Smash has a few generic procedures for the patching of ALL record types. This means that Mator Smash has, with very little development effort, achieved the capacity to patch more records than Wyre Bash has ever been capable of patching. This is achieved through a recursive traversal method which traverses override record structure, comparing subrecords between a master record, a source override record, and a destination override record. Upon the basis of this comparison, certain subrecords are written to the destination record while others are skipped and others are deleted from it.

 

Development Status
I began development of Mator Smash as a standalone application built on top of the xEdit API 10/18/2015. Here's the GitHub repository. Check out the design folder in the repository for various files relating to my design process. I'll be live streaming most of my development on livecoding.tv. I'll be streaming mainly on weekends 9:00AM-9:00PM PST. Because of major code reuse from merge plugins standalone, smash will be entering public beta very soon.

Mator Smash is currently available as a proof of concept script (which is slow and lacking in features/a clean user experience). You can download v0.9.4 of that script here. This script can currently correctly patch a massive number of different types of records. FAR MORE than Wyre Bash or any other currently available solution, and more than any solution that has ever existed for Skyrim or any other game.

 

Implemented Features

  • Dynamic, flexible settings: Smash settings are comprised of a tree which has information on how records/subrecords should be handled. This will allow users to control how a patch is created on a per-subrecord basis. This will make smash relevant regardless of the nature of the mods being patched, or the game the mods come from. Each node (record/subrecord) will have the following data associated with it-
    • Process: Whether or not smash should process this node and perform conflict resolution for it if a conflict is found.
    • Preserve Deletions: If a mod deletes an element inside of this node, that deletion will be preserved in the generated patch.
    • Treat as single entity: If a mod overrides any subrecord in this node, the entire node will be replaced with that mod's version of it.
    • Chaining: Linking allows you to copy multiple side-by-side elements when any one of those elements changes.
    • Override Deletions: Allows a plugin to restore deleted elements.
    • Force Value: Forces values from a particular plugin to be used, and only allows plugins which require this plugin to perform further conflict resolution on affected records.
  • Tags: As of v0.2.1, all Bash tags that were offered with Wrye Bash for Oblivion are now available for Skyrim.  Smash will automatically detect tags and apply smash settings to the plugins that have them, assuming you have smash settings that correspond to the tags.
  • Managed smashed patches: Patches you build will be tracked in the program, so you can quickly and easily rebuild them when your load order changes. You can also have multiple patches for your load order, if you feel that is desirable.
  • Multi-language support: I built a really clean, extensible, and easy to use language system when I developed Merge Plugins Standalone. Smash will use the same language system to support multiple languages out-of-the-box. As a translator, all you have to do is make a text file to create a translation and have users install it in their lang folder. The rest is handled by the program.
  • Fast and easy setting creation: Select some plugins to build a setting to specifically handle the conflicts they are capable of creating in a load order.  Toggle or set flags for multiple nodes at once.  Select similar nodes in a setting tree.  Conflict resolution has never been quite so powerful, flexible, and easy.

 

Planned Features

Smash is now pretty much feature complete.  Further development energy will be spent on porting it to a zEdit application mode, zSmash, which will include a new, streamlined workflow.

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Posted

About LOOT's masterlist :

 

This is crowd-sourced but reviewed before going live. And the process to submit is a bit to tedious for "nobodies".

You have to clone the LOOT git on your PC, make youor changes in the masterlist, and then send a pull request with comments/justifications, and your changes will be integrated in the next masterlsit revision. (And the latest masterlist is always downloaded when you re-run LOOT).

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  On 1/22/2016 at 8:48 AM, Kesta said:

About LOOT's masterlist :

 

This is crowd-sourced but reviewed before going live. And the process to submit is a bit to tedious for "nobodies".

You have to clone the LOOT git on your PC, make youor changes in the masterlist, and then send a pull request with comments/justifications, and your changes will be integrated in the next masterlsit revision. (And the latest masterlist is always downloaded when you re-run LOOT).

Yeah, that is not crowd sourced, lol.

 

That is "developer"-sourced.

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Posted
  On 1/23/2016 at 11:25 PM, EssArrBee said:

If there are some subrecords that don't show up right now, is it possible to add them? Should I make a request on Github for that type of stuff or do it here?

Yeah, some subrecords are missing for certain very specific reasons.  You can add them manually to the json for a setting (a PITA, but it'll work), but a long-term solution would be me updating the record prototyping code.

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  On 1/30/2016 at 2:33 AM, EssArrBee said:

Mator Smash won't be able to patch anything in a dummy plugin since there is nothing to patch. It's just the file header AFAIK

This.

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Posted

I actually wanted to post this in the Merge Plugins Standalone page specifically because of the inbuilt MO BSA management features it uses. So the point is still valid, whenever a tool leverages the xEdit api it needs to have the BSAs that list the assets it might reference loaded by plugins, not allow MO to handle them.

Is that not the case?

 

Again I'm not concerned about the dummy plugin not having anything in it, that's self-evident, the issue I see is the referenced assets in the BSAs in the merge. If the MO managed BSAs are being seen by your tools without any input from the xEdit api, then that's fine, I'm not sure of how the program is structured.

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Posted
  On 1/30/2016 at 5:23 AM, EssArrBee said:

Mator Smash only patches plugins. BSAs are no matter.

 

You are correct that BSAs matter when merging mods which is different from the goal of this application.

Yeah, I posted in the wrong place. I knew where I wanted to go. Just didn't get there.

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  On 1/30/2016 at 4:23 AM, GrantSP said:

I actually wanted to post this in the Merge Plugins Standalone page specifically because of the inbuilt MO BSA management features it uses. So the point is still valid, whenever a tool leverages the xEdit api it needs to have the BSAs that list the assets it might reference loaded by plugins, not allow MO to handle them.

Is that not the case?

 

Again I'm not concerned about the dummy plugin not having anything in it, that's self-evident, the issue I see is the referenced assets in the BSAs in the merge. If the MO managed BSAs are being seen by your tools without any input from the xEdit api, then that's fine, I'm not sure of how the program is structured.

Luckily, Merge Plugins doesn't operate by the same BSA code that the xEdit API does, so I don't think this is an issue with it.

 

I'll verify in the code... Yep.  Merge Plugins will arbitrarily load BSAs associated with ESP files.  It (obviously) won't do anything with BSAs not associated with ESP files UNLESS copy general assets is enabled (in which case they're treated as general assets).  This is fine for the purposes of Merge Plugins so long as users don't try to merge merges which have multiple BSAs, something which is strongly discouraged and not directly allowed through the application.

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Posted

@Mator I'm a little confused. Isn't the functionality of Smash essentially the same as that of Merge Plugins with the exception that that tool also merges the assets used? If that is the case what is the benefit you see of having two distinct tools when perhaps just one could suffice? Keep in mind my opening sentence. ::):

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Posted

The way I view the difference between xEdit Merge and Wrye Bash/Flash is that the former merges based on some straightforward general purpose rules, while the latter allows user-created tags on individual plugin record types/categories to selectively alter the choices made at a record level when the merge is done. Isn't this the same as the difference between Mator Merge and Mator Smash? I also thought there was a lot of common code between the two Mator tools, but having common code doesn't always mean that two programs should be integrated. Perhaps these could be integrated, but the json files for each tag seem to have a fair amount of code specific to each tag type, so the programs might be better remaining separate.

 

Or perhaps I'm also confused.

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Posted

Merge Plugins actually merges the whole plugins you select into one single plugin. It also can copy over assets for you to put it all in one mod folder so you can disable or delete the mods that were merged. I actually don't know how conflicting records are handled by Merge Plugins since I haven't messed with it in too long (since before the standalone came out). I really need to get back into it though.

 

Mator Smash is a patcher. It can patch your entire load order. It is like the Bashed Patcher from Wrye Bash/Flash/Smash, but it approaches the whole thing differently. I'm guessing it also uses xEdit to build off of so it can patch more records than the Bashed Patcher since that needs specific code for each record/subrecord. Say you have two large mods that both make lots of changes to Cell subrecords like RWT and AOS. You need to merge the water type subrecords with the acoustic sound subrecords found in the CELL records. This is what patchers do best. Overall it can remove the need for many, many patches that take up load order slots. For example, the AOS patches would be unnecessary with Mator Smash. 

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