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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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Recommended Posts

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Posted
  On 10/19/2015 at 3:05 AM, GrantSP said:

No problem. I'm going to see if I can setup the Lazurus IDE to handle your repo, I can't get that RAD Studio XE from anywhere.

Don't think that's possible.  PM me and I can help.

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Posted
  On 10/19/2015 at 1:34 AM, Mator said:

(streaming now, 10/18/2015 6:33PM PST)

I can write a lot of things you could/shoud/not do in IDE, but when I got to the end, all I can say is use Ctrl+F9 to compile project (F9 to run) instead of building. Build compiles all units into dcu even if you didn't modify them, compilation will process only changed ones and much faster.

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Posted
  On 10/19/2015 at 7:03 AM, zilav said:

I can write a lot of things you could/shoud/not do in IDE, but when I got to the end, all I can say is use Ctrl+F9 to compile project (F9 to run) instead of building. Build compiles all units into dcu even if you didn't modify them, compilation will process only changed ones and much faster.

I had seen those hotkeys before, but never really internalized them.  Thanks.

When I just "compile" the project, will it still increment the build counter (in version, if I have auto-increment enabled) and will it still produce a new .exe file?  That's the main purpose when I press build.

 

Any other tips are more than welcome.  I feel fairly comfortable in Delphi XE, but still have a few things that I don't understand well.

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Posted (edited)

Mator Smash Standalone Alpha is available:
Download v0.0.4.0 here

 

Some notes:

- Core functionality is complete

- The UX for smashing and the algorithm are both more-or-less complete, may be updated

- Most of what needs to be done now is the creation of smash settings, which can be done by anyone with some knowledge of patching

- I'll try to make some documentation/tutorial resources for creating smash settings so you guys can get started on them

Edited by Mator
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Posted

oh this is weird, in a good way.

I was going to give it a test but there is a lot that still needs to be developed but from what I can tell.

 

Im curious if you know of a way to apply a certain change to other similar records, DIFF WMK is a fairly good example.

WMK adds several new weapons that use different texture sets to toggle various attachments.

DIFF edits the ICON to use a different, more descriptive icon.

 

Do you believe that this is possible?

How do you plan on applying certain changes to other records that are not direct overrides?

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Posted
  On 11/9/2015 at 5:51 AM, hishutup said:

oh this is weird, in a good way.

I was going to give it a test but there is a lot that still needs to be developed but from what I can tell.

 

Im curious if you know of a way to apply a certain change to other similar records, DIFF WMK is a fairly good example.

WMK adds several new weapons that use different texture sets to toggle various attachments.

DIFF edits the ICON to use a different, more descriptive icon.

 

Do you believe that this is possible?

How do you plan on applying certain changes to other records that are not direct overrides?

 

Smash doesn't do that, and won't be able to do that.

 

Smash will resolve conflicting overrides, and that is pretty much the absolute extent of what it will do.

 

What you want absolutely requires specific patching "scripts".  There's no reasonable way to generically predict changes from a specific set of records and apply them to all records given the massive range of changes that are possible and the complexity of them.  Such a solution would have to involve machine learning and would not lead to positive outcomes 99% of the time.

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Posted

Is there a sort of ... not tutorial, but at least *intro* out there for those of us trying to learn about this tool?

 

I took a stab at creating a "smash patch," and I did end up with a patch; however, it seems to be pretty similar to what I would have got using TES5Edit to generate a merged patch - only the "smash patch* is limited to armors.

 

Or is this pretty much par for course, so far?

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Posted
  On 11/11/2015 at 1:32 PM, mikegray said:

Is there a sort of ... not tutorial, but at least *intro* out there for those of us trying to learn about this tool?

 

I took a stab at creating a "smash patch," and I did end up with a patch; however, it seems to be pretty similar to what I would have got using TES5Edit to generate a merged patch - only the "smash patch* is limited to armors.

 

Or is this pretty much par for course, so far?

 

No, that just happened because you used a smash setting that only processed ARMO records.  ;)

 

Smash can conflict resolve any type of record.

 

I'm planning on making a tutorial-of-sorts later today.

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Posted

Mator Smash has been updated to v0.0.5.0.

You can download the new version here.

 

v0.0.5.0

- Added code so you can now toggle multiple nodes in the tree using the space bar.

- Fixed Treat As Single Entity never being triggered because children nodes were always disabled and couldn't be toggle without removing the flag.

- Fixed chain nodes linking nodes at different levels, which also led to access violations when trying to remove the links.

- Failed smashed patch status now retains after smashing completes.

- Smashing is now cancelable.

- Now storing element definition type information in setting trees.  NOTE: Elements in old setting trees will have the "Unknown" type.  You'll need to rebuild your settings to get type information.

- Made prune nodes option more user friendly and added an auto-prune option to the popup menu for fast and simple pruning.
- Fixed bug with deleting a smash setting not removing it from disk.  They now get sent to the recycle bin when deleted.

- Fixed issue with processing records when they were set to not be processed in the setting (which created ITPOs).

- Distinguishes between arrays better.  Unsorted dtArray elements will now be treated as arrays, as intended.

- Removes ITPOs after smashing.

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  • 0
Posted

Thanks for your work. Is this tool suitable for just users already? (like bashed patch - just a couple of clicks and it's working)

 

Sorry for my English.

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