Announcement: Mod Organizer 1.3b (the b is for beta) and the future of MO - UPDATED 1.3.5 is out to the public

[Tannin]

UPDATE

 

New beta version 1.3.1 available on Sourceforge.

This should fix all reported problems. The only thing I couldn't make any sense of is the report of load order being reverted, could someone please work out reliable steps to reproduce it?

 

 

I just uploaded a beta of MO Version 1.3 to sourceforge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/modorganizer/files/?

 

Before I go into the changes, let me first advice against using this version as your primary installation. While it seems to be relatively stable and I've been using it on my own system for a few weeks now I will refuse to even feel bad if this ruins your setup.

Still, I would appreciate any feedback.

 

Right, features.

• Integration of loot 0.7 beta
• the integrated loot can now be updated without a new release of MO. (1)
• the mod list now has a new column that displays icons based on the content of the mod so you can quickly see if a mod contains, say, esps or textures or skse plugins or ...
• the mod list can be filtered by their content
• When you click a mod that has conflicts, the conflicting mods now get a colored highlight in the list.

Apart from this there have been a couple of changes under the hood:

• MO is now based on the current version of Qt (5.4 instead of 4.8). Unfortunately this also leads to a 4MB bigger archive.
• Windows XP is no longer supported.
• more game-specific functionality has been factored out into plugins. While this won't suffice to support non-gamebryo games right now it may be possible for someone (not me) to write a Morrowind plugin.

 

(1) To update loot, get the "loot api" download from the loot github page at https://github.com/loot/loot/releases/ and copy the loot32.dll contained within to the loot directory of MO.

 

---

 

Since I already have your attention I'd like to also announce that this is probably going to be the last feature-release of MO, at lease for a while.

This is not saying that I'll stop working on MO but the project has become too large for a single person to work on effectively in their very limit spare time and since it doesn't look like an active development community is forming around MO I decided to focus my time on very specific topics.

This will allow me to work on those things more effectively while allowing me to keep a shred of sanity.

 

So what I'll continue to do is:

• Fix bugs in the core application
• Fix severe bugs in the virtualisation library and plugins
• Add plugin interfaces on demand
• Work on a new virtualisation library that is more flexible and supports 64 bit
• Anything that I deem enjoyable. ;)

What I will no longer do is:

• Add any features (unless I deem the implementation fun)
• Answer any requests for help (be it PM, mail or on the forums) unless it's "I want to help out with MO but I need advice" or something like that
• Do the german translation
• Fix "minor" problems or "medium" problems in the vfs system and plugins
• Maintain "lists" like the categories mappings, configurator settings file,...
• Work on the tutorials in any way

 

The reason I will only fix severe bugs in the vfs library is that this lib will hopefully be replaced anyway when the new one is working.

The reason I will only fix severe bugs in the plugins is that I believe those plugins are sufficiently simple that others could easily work on those.

 

If you don't know, the features implemented in plugins is: all the installers, the tools below the "tools" menu, the diagnostic messages (exclamation mark) and now parts of the functionality specific to gamebryo games.

 

 

Known issues with MO 1.3 beta:

• right now filtering by the mod list by "checked, unchecked, update, ..." doesn't work.

[Tannin]

Maybe even add a BSA icon to the content column.

That makes sense, yes.

 

One bug I noticed was the hovertext for plugins being transparent.

quick fix for this is: open the file stylesheets/dark.qss and change "opacity: 100;" to "opacity: 255;"

 

A few minor quirks cropped up on the way. First, take a look at this screenshot. The vertical scroll bar of the left pane has a bunch of areas where the new conflict color is displayed ontop of it.

That is intentionally actually. When you have a mod list that spans multiple pages, this will let you see where in the list the conflict is even when it's off-screen.

 

My errors icon was showing a weird error. It says that one of the plugins won't load.

Oh, yes, that plugin is from the old version of MO and is no longer required. previewBase.dll now handles dds as well. Was previewDDS.dll actually included in the 1.3 archive? (i can't check right now)

 

 

I'll look into the other bug reports, keep them coming. ;)

[EssArrBee]

quick fix for this is: open the file stylesheets/dark.qss and change "opacity: 100;" to "opacity: 255;"

Yeah, this works.

 

Oh, yes, that plugin is from the old version of MO and is no longer required. previewBase.dll now handles dds as well. Was previewDDS.dll actually included in the 1.3 archive? (i can't check right now)

It's not, but I didn't do a fresh install. I just overwrote my current MO, so I didn't have to reinstall a ton of mods and general laziness.

 

I'll look into the other bug reports, keep them coming. ;)

Something new I noticed that every time I close and reopen MO the load order is different. I keep having to run LOOT the second I open MO.

 

EDIT: They are reset to alphabetical order every time I restart.

[hellanios]

Something new I noticed that every time I close and reopen MO the load order is different. I keep having to run LOOT the second I open MO.

 

EDIT: They are reset to alphabetical order every time I restart.

I noticed that this also happens to me but only if I click on the Configure Profiles option. 

Also,only when I sort the plugins through the built-in version of LOOT I'll get flags for the plugins.This doesn't happen when I run LOOT through the executables.

[GrantSP]

I noticed that this also happens to me but only if I click on the Configure Profiles option. 

Also,only when I sort the plugins through the built-in version of LOOT I'll get flags for the plugins.This doesn't happen when I run LOOT through the executables.

That's the reason why. The version of LOOT in MO uses a different format of 'masterlist.yaml' to the later versions of LOOT, you can't swap between the two.

Open your computer with explorer to %LOCALAPPDATA%\LOOT\<Game name> and remove the .Git folder and the masterlist.yaml.

Run the external version of LOOT again and it will download the latest masterlist and recreate any missing folders.

After this only use the external version.

 

nb. This is only if you haven't updated the internal LOOT in this beta version with the latest API from the LOOT website.

[GrantSP]

Another thing about using the internal LOOT API. I actually feel it might be better to drop it from MO altogether. It lacks the reporting facility of the full version and therefore you can't edit metadata for plugins or any of the other actions in the full version. This means if you want to do those things you will need to add LOOT to MO as an executable which sort of defeats the purpose of being able to add the API to MO in the first place.

 

MO manages mods very well. LOOT sorts them very well. Why not just use each tool as they are? In the same way MO doesn't have certain 'features' that users often request, because other tools do them better and are freely available.

 

Just putting it out there.

[hellanios]

Another report I have to make.When I try to remove a mod,MO will crash.This can happen multiple times before it's removed.There's a dmp file that's created each time after the crash.Using it on FO3.

[GrantSP]

You should probably create an issue in the Bug Genie and attach those dump files. Anything like that will be invaluable for @Tannin to debug that issue, whereas merely posting about it provides nothing for him to work with.

[hellanios]

You should probably create an issue in the Bug Genie and attach those dump files. Anything like that will be invaluable for @Tannin to debug that issue, whereas merely posting about it provides nothing for him to work with.

Done.

[pStyl3]

UPDATE

 

New beta version 1.3.1 available on Sourceforge.

This should fix all reported problems. The only thing I couldn't make any sense of is the report of load order being reverted, could someone please work out reliable steps to reproduce it?

Updated to MO 1.3.1. This looks better now! But the new BSA icon is missing on this list.

 

If you hoover with your cursor over the "Content" column of mod entries in the left pane, which do not display any Content-Icon (for example, but not only, the unmanaged dlc's), this little thing will pop-up.

 

Also, it seems that the new conflict colors in the left pane will not "update" correctly. Click on a mod X in the left pane that has conflicts with other mods. Then click on another mod Y with conflicts .. the colors will not update immediately, they only do once you have hoovered your cursor over those other conflicting mods of mod Y.

 

One icon

More than one icon

--> In the first case, maybe prevent the tooltip from linebreaking (seeing as it doesn't linebreak when more than one icon per mod are displayed)?

What is your intention regarding this, Tannin?

[Tannin]

What is your intention regarding this, Tannin?

Please read the lower half of the announcement post, I think it states very clearly what I intend to do with minor stuff like this. ;)

[pStyl3]

Alright, I understand.

 

Anyway .. apart from the mentioned things in my last post, v1.3.1 seems to be pretty stable for me. I also haven't experienced this loadorder reverting issue until now.

[KeltecRFB]

LOL, I was just about to ask when the next beta release was going to be posted and I will get it tonight.

Edited March 2, 2015 by KeltecRFB

[Octopuss]

Tannin, could "Work on a new virtualisation library that is more flexible and supports 64 bit" possibly mean better loading times? Just getting Skyrim to start (not loading a game) takes a fair amount of time with large amount of mods, so any improvement in this way is much, much welcome.

[Tannin]

@Octopuss: I doubt it. Actually, I'm fairly certain Skyrim starts faster when run from MO than without because the current virtualisation library has a hack that optimizes away a lot/most of the expensive .ini file queries Skyrim does.

The new library won't do that because it's intended to be more generic.

 

otoh it will hopefully only generate its file mappings once whereas the old library did that every time a process was started so my expectation is that the performance will be closer to the performance you would get without MO, be that positiv or negative.

[EssArrBee]

I think 1.3.1b solved the issue with my load order resetting on open/close. I can't reproduce the issue anymore, so go figure.

 

You know instead of all the other features and stuff people want with new 64-bit stuff and all that. I think it would be awesome to have drag and drop for the downloads tab from a folder in windows. If I download something that doesn't have the big green button then I usually move it manually to the .../MO/downloads folder in explorer, but if I could just drag it to the downloads tab in MO then it would save some time. My gauge for knowing if that is simple or difficult doesn't exist, but I'd think it would easier than a new virtual directory.