Mod Manager Discussion

[junior geode]

I wouldn't force disable. Just make the line red & display a warning symbol with e.g. a hover

[autumn hamlet]

probably

i can add a warning when clicked tries to resolve it itself

[junior geode]

Yeah, a popup that says "this mod is marked as incompatible with XYZ, are you sure you want to enable it?"

[autumn hamlet]

well i thought more on the lines of having a warning symbol like next to the delete symbol that just has a tooltip with proposed changes and when you click applies those

[final wren]

i would honestly just go with this approach
#1464652513704808657 message
trying to auto-resolve multiple complex dependency chains that can have random intertwined incompatibilities migth cause hair loss

[autumn hamlet]

well yeah i will go with that but the tooltip is just there to then if clicked automatically enable all depends and extend and disable all incompats it wont autoresolve beyond that even though that be easy

[junior geode]

Auto resolve is something you could potentially support, but it'd have to be an opt-in thing imho. Or a button.

[autumn hamlet]

it be a button

it currently just is what it always does

[junior geode]

Plenty of reasons why you'd want to run incompatible mods; most coming down to "the incompatibility is grossly overestimated/can be worked around/patched by a third mod"

[autumn hamlet]

yep

[final wren]

ya personally I definitely want to be able to load incompatible mods on purpose so I can observe the errors and fix my code, if the incompatibility is blamed on my mod

[autumn hamlet]

we definitly need to show warning too though cause users often wont even notice they installed a dependency and the disabled it and their mod stops working

[final wren]

absolutely

my only ask is let me get an unskippable warning and then allow me to ignore it anyway, so everything that I want to be installed, gets installed

[autumn hamlet]

this work?

it now forces nothing the only thing it does is install depends when installing a mod

the manager is managing to manage even more managed mods by the day

lol

[final wren]

i think that will be fine for now, but some sort of a pop-up that lists the collection of detected issues would be better to get the message across from avg user perspective imo

[junior geode]

I'd make it auto-enable dependencies on enable, but not disable either when you disable either, if that makes sense?

[autumn hamlet]

nah only on install the rest is in the warning if they want to only enable some mods they can do that else just autoresolve it for you and do with all the dependencies and incompats

[junior geode]

Or maybe popup a "This mod has the following dependencies, all checked ones will be enabled", and then a list with checkboxes beneath.

[autumn hamlet]

i could

but why

just added complication no mods is gonna have more then like 4 dependencies for like at least some time

[junior geode]

User QoL

[autumn hamlet]

sure i will do once i added other more pressing matters

[junior geode]

If you have e.g. 100 mods installed (but not enabled), it might be a pain in the ass to go through them and track down dependencies

(People who mod Rimworld or Skyrim or Minecraft know)

[autumn hamlet]

well just autoresolve

it doesnt do it for all mods

only for that mod

ik you may not want to have some specific mod enabled just disable that after yousrself

:)

or i could make it a dropdown where you can click specific problems to resolve

and one resolve all

yep will do that

probably

some day

later

in like half an hour once im done with the rest

[final wren]

my friend often complains about his oblivion mod collection 😄

[autumn hamlet]

do you really want a popup every time you enable a mod instead of just a warning symbol as long as we convey to the user that that shows problems it will be fine

bro was not typing only that in so much time

[final wren]

no i was typing up a useless message

😄

[junior geode]

Could make it a setting to skip the menu & auto-accept all tbh

[final wren]

its lost in time now

like tears in rain

[autumn hamlet]

well its not a menu yet

[final wren]

lemme get back to the cooker so I don't set the house on fire

then I will try to explain myself

I will make a mockup of what I meant

[final wren]

makes sense?
would only cause a warning check once per dependency chain

[autumn hamlet]

well i could but how exactly would this be better then just having that warning also this would only be when 2 incompats would be or maybe you remove a dependency

[final wren]

User QoL
this is one thing that may seem completely unnecessary from a power user or engineer's point of view because ofc we will check those warning labels
but avg end users don't read warning labels without being force-fed them

source: a big part of my job is automating software installation

[autumn hamlet]

a forced popup seems to intrusive for user like well us who often would deal with this i can maybe make it a notification like thing

i would keep the warning though

the notifcation would only stay for a short while

to grab the users attention

[final wren]

it's up to you, ultimately its your app, I'm just trying to give ideas that make sense based on experience

[autumn hamlet]

i think i will implement it as a notification which can be disabled in the settings though if you believe a interupting popup should be included as well i can do that

as an option

[final wren]

tbh as long as we don't start seeing things like there is a mod that patches the patch of another mods patch, that was already patched by another mod, there won't be too many nightmares! 😄

[autumn hamlet]

will release update asap

oh nvm just remembered a thing

[mild verge]

guessing this isnt supposed to happen lol

[pliant pine]

oh, I thought it was just me

[mild verge]

hahahaha

[autumn hamlet]

@final wren

[final wren]

is there a duplicate ?

[autumn hamlet]

no

one of them is laserfix

[final wren]

ah

its duplicate displayname

[autumn hamlet]

yep

btw

[final wren]

i just got up will fix in a bit

[autumn hamlet]

we probably want to require the id for an mod to be like com.something.that just so we have a bit more unique id per mod

you get it

[autumn hamlet]

theres a update out for NOMM very epic update trust

mod manager discussions 2082???

[pliant pine]

huh

[autumn hamlet]

literally 2084

[final wren]

delete and lock thread
wipe the project, there are no mods for this game

we should have stopped at 1984

[mild verge]

what game

[final wren]

now they know and they will come for us

https://tenor.com/view/men-in-black-agent-k-figment-of-your-imagination-neuralyzer-mib-gif-7763596499493619120

[autumn hamlet]

@final wren you said you can add a list of urls with names to the extension in the manifest? what structure would you use so i can already add support for the next update

[final wren]

just an array

I don't want to add like url names

because

infinite names

[autumn hamlet]

sure

[final wren]

pls add twitter
pls add mastodon
plas add xyz

no

[autumn hamlet]

so only urls

["url"]

[final wren]

ye

[autumn hamlet]

call the property when you add it just urls

[final wren]

or if you want

i could make it named properties

[autumn hamlet]

well what makes more sense

[final wren]

and then you can parse them as a hashtable

or smth

just make sure your data structure is flexible

[autumn hamlet]

lets do a hashtable/dict/map

[final wren]

json isn't type aware, but for the client that sounds reasonable

[autumn hamlet]

obviously

[final wren]

json bourne
has no type identity

[autumn hamlet]

"name": "url",

right

?

[final wren]

yes

[autumn hamlet]

cool

[mild verge]

hey just another question i can only see around 10 mods in the manager is that normal atm?

[final wren]

we need to populate some metadata initially

and then it will keep those entries up to date by itself

[mild verge]

got it

[final wren]

I'm probably gonna get the common back-end to "1.0" tonight or tomorrow, then I will update the documentation and open a dedicated thread, where I will share info on how mods can be added

[autumn hamlet]

Nuclear Option Mod Manager Manifest

NOMMM

[final wren]

or NOMNOM but i can't make it work rn 🫠

Nuclear
Option
Mod
Library

noml

[autumn hamlet]

Nuclear Option Mod Manager Neatly Organized Manifest

NOMMNOM

btw i thought about the manifest again should we for both artifacts nd extensions make the id and version a key in a dict no real reason works fine as it is just think that makes more sense imo

[final wren]

Nuclear Option Managed & Neatly Organized Manifest
NOMNOM

[autumn hamlet]

sure

sounds good

better even

[final wren]

we made NOMNOM work

[final wren]

the current structure makes it easy for schema validation, and you can always handle it as a key value pair on the other side

[autumn hamlet]

well i can also just read it as a object and the transform it into a map on my end

[final wren]

when I do content validation I convert the mod lists to hashtables where id is they key, it makes it easier to look things up as I iterate + serves as a duplicate id check

[autumn hamlet]

so you could?

[final wren]

I don't want to note it as keyvalue pair in the json schema itself

because for the first pass of schema validation, im pretty sure I can't validate for that

unless i just put them in as an array of comma separated strings

i guess

same with URL actually

because can't validate the presence of arbitrary property names

and infoURL should be required, at least one url that leads somewhere

[autumn hamlet]

can you not make the url list require certain keys

like info and source and so on

[final wren]

content validation is fully customized though so there I have flexibility but I aim to keep things simplistic, so if anything needs to be extended in the future it causes less headache

[mild verge]

sounds great keep up the good work both of you

[final wren]

(the reason content and schema validation are 2 separate things, if the schema is obviously bad, the job will terminate early and won't waste more action runner time)

[autumn hamlet]

can you explain me complete NOMNOM pipeline as it is planned rn

[final wren]

didn't denote YES/NO on the conditions properly

[autumn hamlet]

so uh to add a modto the manifest you would pr a specificmod.json meta or something right?

[final wren]

yes

https://github.com/KopterBuzz/NOModManifestTesting/tree/main/modManifests

[autumn hamlet]

will that file ever change will the automatic updating proces smodify that fiel directly or is no mod specific state stored and only the master manifest

[final wren]

there is an action that triggers when a PR is submitted to staging branch

and it checks if any .json files changed in that directory inside the repo

then it will run the checks on them

[final wren]

yes

the meta manifests are used to always regenerate the master manifest

the automatic update also updates the meta manifests

[autumn hamlet]

imo the modspecific jsons shouldnt store any state ebyond the definition not even like the first artifact and should never be automatically update we may add cache inbetween but not in that original file

[final wren]

I get you but what if no proper release

like those voicepacks rn

[autumn hamlet]

well we dont

[final wren]

I just don't have auto-update enabled

if the release isn't compliant

simple

[autumn hamlet]

we need to basically force anyone to use this i dont believe any mod will surpass the 2gb limit per file ina release anyways

else raw has a limit too

[final wren]

if someone wants downloadcount and autoupdate, they have no other choice 🙂

[junior geode]

username.modname seems fine enough. Though I wouldn't enforce an arbitrary schema. com.(...) is a Java/commercial thing anyway. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_domain_name_notation for further reading, if you're interested)

I'd be highly surprised if username.modname would ever cause collisions.

[autumn hamlet]

well might as well not give them a choice at all then

[autumn hamlet]

thats is true but on further consideration i dont think it matters we have thw automatic validation anyways when ids collide it just wont allow to add a mod to the manifest and it needs to be changed before being added

@junior geode i believe you said to remind you to test NOMM if you havent yet

[final wren]

yeah from my perspective ID just needs to be a unique string that stays forever the same, to avoid collision checks

and protect integritiy of package relationships

[tawny oracle]

one day™ (not actually in one day)

[autumn hamlet]

are they limited in what chars you can use if not limit to like a-zA-Z0-9._-

[final wren]

can be any utf8 character

[autumn hamlet]

well they cant though on my end as i save the mod ina folder with the id as name i could change it but its very easy to do and you cnat use certain chars in folder names

[final wren]

i can be more restrictive

[autumn hamlet]

yay

[tawny oracle]

https://tenor.com/view/robocop-comply-you-now-have15secons-to-comply-gif-11880617

[final wren]

but atm I just save the master manifest json as utf8 without bom so if anything is not utf8 will just covert into funny squares

[autumn hamlet]

sorry i may be stupid but what scenarios are you talking about

[final wren]

that would happen is someone edits the text with their editor set to a broader encoding standard

[autumn hamlet]

whos codeeditor not set to utf8 though

😭

[final wren]

I often work with data that comes in from different sources and different encoding, so I may be personally traumatized

[autumn hamlet]

understandable

[final wren]

oh also let me tell you about the time when I accidentally saved the hosts file on all of our 26k work computers as unicode with bad automation XD

[warped hamlet]

waht could this be..

[autumn hamlet]

?

[final wren]

this thread is about a common back-end that mod manager apps can use to serve mods

[warped hamlet]

neven seen it before

[autumn hamlet]

the thread or what

[warped hamlet]

the thread

[autumn hamlet]

#1467341462227124305

you need to check that out

[warped hamlet]

cool

would download

[autumn hamlet]

would?

[warped hamlet]

yea..?

[autumn hamlet]

why would if can?

[warped hamlet]

idk

[thorny hatch]

Hello, what is blueprinter, where can I find it and can I use it to edit stuff?

[autumn hamlet]

?

[autumn hamlet]

why do you need it

[final wren]

@autumn hamlet if you want arbitrary key-value pairs for urls I'm gonna just make it like this
because the built-in json parser will deserialize into custom object, and turning objects with arbitrary property names into hashtables is something I'm not willing to suffer right now

and this way I can still validate URLs on my side

[autumn hamlet]

just make them objects

easier to handle

[final wren]

I won't make objects where property name can be arbitrary
otherwise u gotta think about all the different link types ppl would want to post

idk about you

but I have no desire to do that

[autumn hamlet]

no i mean why not { "name": "", "url": ""} list of those

am i not getting something

[final wren]

i guess I can do that

it just feels like more dead text that takes up space

[autumn hamlet]

well we arent optimizing for space yet anyways

[final wren]

good with that?

I'm gonna freeze additional schema changes for now, I have to finish the automation

the url change is in dev and will go live

whenever you are ready

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KopterBuzz/NOModManifestTesting/refs/heads/dev/manifest/manifest.json

[autumn hamlet]

yep

[final wren]

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KopterBuzz/NOModManifestTesting/refs/heads/dev/manifest/manifest.json

[autumn hamlet]

discord not working on my pc rn absolute cinema

[final wren]

auto update is working in dev branch now

[final wren]

gonna update the instructions tomorrow and then rename the repo
https://github.com/KopterBuzz/NOModManifestTesting/blob/dev/README.md

@autumn hamlet lmk when you are ready for new manifest change re infourl

[autumn hamlet]

i will im currently trying to fix my discord though

[final wren]

launch tbm

nuke from orbit

then reload

[autumn hamlet]

well no

already did thaz

its somehow the entire network im just using data on my phone rn

[final wren]

is discord not cooperating with your internet or smth

[autumn hamlet]

idk

it happend in the past too and stayed for some hours always without any fix

and its slow often too

not even the discord website works

[final wren]

discord always slow for me when I'm in Norway

I think Jens Stoltenberg is listening on my chats

I'm not crazy

[autumn hamlet]

💀

it has to be some routing issue with the isp

whatever

i dont need discord anyways

[autumn hamlet]

well

idk

i dont think so

[final wren]

nobody ever thinks its dns

but it almost always is

i had a funny one at work once where our primary dns and the secondary dns had a conflict, which resulted in very specific ajax calls not going out
and as a result, the holiday booking system didn't work so nobody could book holidays

[autumn hamlet]

who needs holidays anyways

[final wren]

takes 30 seconds to run the auto update with current number of files
projected runner time for 30 days is 6% of github premium runner time allowance

thats not so bad

[autumn hamlet]

how many things do we have rn

[final wren]

if the numbers get bigger I can always just set up a local runner and some parts of the flow can be parallelized

local runners are always faster

[autumn hamlet]

obviously

[final wren]

#1464652513704808657 message

this entire thing

runs every hour now

to automatically discover new releases and update dependencies

(only on dev branch for now)

[autumn hamlet]

tbh if we run into problems with the runner time

we can just not run it every hour

duh

[final wren]

I don't think we will, at least for a very long time

the schema and content validation can be paralellized as well so it can scale better than current version

[autumn hamlet]

we say that now but obviously this is gonna be used by everyone by tommorow and the count of mods will 10x

obviously

[final wren]

there isn't much compute intensive in this to be honest just some hashtable lookups and simple condition checks so I don't think it will be significantly impacted by a growing number of meta files

[autumn hamlet]

how is the api request count looking

[final wren]

haven't done it yet but that also wont' be a concern for ages

allowance is 5000 per hour

[autumn hamlet]

well yes

[final wren]

we are probably doing like 30 per hour

or less

[autumn hamlet]

with how many mods

[final wren]

can you imagine that I understand

[autumn hamlet]

how many requests do you do per mod and per release

like 1?

[final wren]

if you have something that can extend hours per day to 90

send it over, I'll pay for shipping

[final wren]

atm yes

because 1 request will return 1 page of up to 100 releases

so it doesn't have to paginate yet

[autumn hamlet]

that will be fine for a long time for most mods

[final wren]

ah actually
https://docs.github.com/en/rest/using-the-rest-api/rate-limits-for-the-rest-api?apiVersion=2022-11-28#primary-rate-limit-for-github_token-in-github-actions
limit is 1000 per hour for current configuration

because the action runner is using GITHUB_TOKEN

if I spin it out to my server I can bump it to 5000 per hour

https://docs.github.com/en/rest/using-the-rest-api/rate-limits-for-the-rest-api?apiVersion=2022-11-28#checking-the-status-of-your-rate-limit
ah the response header can tell me what's up so that's excellent

[autumn hamlet]

ok finally discord working again on my pc

[lofty cliff]

So how is this working out generally? Anything to be aware of, other than early days?

[nova spear]

Had an inexplicable error when trying to install bepinex from the manager but when I restarted it said it worked.

Found my nonstandard install location no prob :D

Only real """issue""" is that smartscreen tries to stalin it

[rich walrus]

imagine not turning of stupidscreen by microslop after windows install

[final wren]

only way to stop smartscreen from blocking an app by default is to get it signed with a code signing cert that is trusted by MS. that is Expensive.

[final wren]

We have working mod manager app now and the back-end infrastructure they can use to source mods is almost finished

[nova spear]

i try but it's like "ask again later"

[final wren]

they want to slowly turn windows into iOS and not let you run unsigned software

every now and then they make it slightly more annoying to run unsigned code

[lofty cliff]

alright. would it be ideal to switch over from BepinEx?

[final wren]

"for security reasons"

[final wren]

umm

mods still use bepinex

that won't change

difference is

you won't have to install anything manually to get mods working

[lofty cliff]

alright, i'll take a look then

can't wait for this to be more automated for new folks

[final wren]

we will need to set some basic guidelines for modders that they need to follow to make stuff compatible with the manager, that's all

[lofty cliff]

i just hope it has better naming than USB

[rich walrus]

we also need modders to stop distributing mods via discord and use the tools developers are supposed to use

github (or any alternative), writing proper changelogs, branch management....

[final wren]

the working principle of our modmanager backend is that it checks the github release page of known mods, and if it discovers a new release package it gets added to a central metadata library, which the mod manager client software itself uses to populate its catalog

[mild verge]

three quarters off the people using these mods dont know how to use github thats the point of the mod manager

[autumn hamlet]

well its also significantly faster to enable disable download mods even when you know how to use github

[lofty cliff]

as an example: i found out a few days ago that the releases page is on the front page of a github repo.

anything to simplify the process for most people will help

[final wren]

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KopterBuzz/NOModManifestTesting/refs/heads/dev/manifest/manifest.json
this has been auto updating itself since last night, still looks healthy!

[autumn hamlet]

epic

[final wren]

good instruction documentation really helps with this, but an "app store"-style solution like a mod manager app is certainly a much better user experience

eg both NOTT and NOBlackbox had over 1000 downloads already, without any mod manager support in the past.

[lofty cliff]

so if i want to make a bepinEx mod, what's a good place to start?

[mild verge]

[final wren]

familiarity with C# Unity programminmg doesn't hurt
you need a decompiler to be able to read the game code to figure out how to do what you are trying to do (DNSpy, ILSpy or similar)

for a simple "hello world" styple plugin, this is a good reference
https://github.com/clumzy/NO_Tactitools/tree/77bfbb718925e5412dc4254af4549b035a36a55e/MyFirstPlugin

https://docs.bepinex.dev/articles/dev_guide/plugin_tutorial/index.html

[lofty cliff]

https://klipy.com/gifs/hello-ariane

[final wren]

and if you want your mods in the manager library, basics of using github to make releases is a good idea to get familiar with

https://github.com/KopterBuzz/NOModManifestTesting/blob/dev/README.md#how-to-add-your-nuclear-option-modb
these are basic requirements I ask for, but the instructions will be updated later today

@lofty cliff also just to make sure we are on the same page, try not to make mods that people might perceive as multiplayer cheats

[autumn hamlet]

@final wren you said you wanted to "release" NOMNOM push the dev branch to main and make a thread in the mod forum today right?

[final wren]

yes

I gotta get some workshit done

but I can push dev to main any time if NOMM supports the new manifest schema

[autumn hamlet]

the new version does and it also wouldnt break old ones they would just ignore the unknown key

[final wren]

coolio

[lofty cliff]

do you consider a 3rd person hud cheats?

[autumn hamlet]

debatable

[lofty cliff]

do you consider context specific sounds from a complex rwr cheats?

[autumn hamlet]

technically

[lofty cliff]

i guess i can just stop there then. back to user

[glass token]

I would say that it probably just depends on what the host says

[autumn hamlet]

always

[final wren]

somehow caused a f********&^&^%^%&% merge conflict but its resolved now

😭

auto updates are live

[autumn hamlet]

val urls: List<UrlReference> = emptyList(),

find the problem @final wren

"infoUrl": [
{
"name": "info",
"url": "https://github.com/Ol1vver/bepinex-soundmod"
}
]

little hint

i think we forgot to talk about what we wanted to name that property lol

how hard would it be for you to rename infoUrl to urls on your end or should i make an update

[final wren]

we didn't talk about changing the property name, so I did not change it?

[autumn hamlet]

ig not

💀

[final wren]

what is the expected property name

[autumn hamlet]

for me its "urls" rn

[final wren]

if you do stuff like this pls talk about it first

thanks

[autumn hamlet]

yep

i thought i did

my fault

so uh can you change it ?

pleaseeeeeee

[final wren]

I only have to change the property in every single script

[autumn hamlet]

):

im sorry

i make update

[final wren]

dw I'll change it

makes more sense for semantics anyway

will be live in a bit

there is one breaking change left, I do want to rename the repo eventually and then the URL will change from

https://kopterbuzz.github.io/NOModManifestTesting/manifest/manifest.json
to
https://kopterbuzz.github.io/NOMNOM/manifest/manifest.json

[autumn hamlet]

well ig i can change the default url but as url is a setting its stored in the config though i could make an exception ig that updates the url to this if its the old one in the next update

[final wren]

but I do have to go and do something now to earn a paycheck so that will come later

ya lets leave this for a future update and then we can coordinate

"urls" change is live

[autumn hamlet]

will maybe also change the name of the nuclearoptionmodmanager repo to NOMM

[final wren]

updated docs

https://github.com/KopterBuzz/NOModManifestTesting/blob/main/README.md
https://github.com/KopterBuzz/NOModManifestTesting/blob/main/SCHEMA.md

[final wren]

#1469341192733855806 message

[lofty cliff]

so idk what it is, but is there some assembly required with some mods?

[final wren]

wdym assembly

like assembly references?

[lofty cliff]

sorry sorry

[final wren]

yeah to be able to develop mods you gotta add some dlls to your project references

from the game and bepinex etc

there is a bepinex project template you can add to visual studio but I personally hate it

[lofty cliff]

i should have been way more specific
sorry

[final wren]

no worries mate

[junior geode]

Don't apologise for asking questions! 😄

[nova spear]

@final wren you should push the ffb mod to the manager :3

[final wren]

I will when its done

[warped hamlet]

how does this work

how to install

[mild verge]

#1467341462227124305 message

I really need to add my mods to it

[warped hamlet]

ok

[mighty aspen]

X-post here as I found this thread and maybe it would have been a better place to post:
#1467341462227124305 message

[final wren]

this thread was used for discussion during development of NOMM & NOMNOM 🙂

[tranquil mulch]

So uhh

Nomm is not looking in the correct files for my nuclear option is

It's trying to find it in a different folder somewhere else.

[autumn hamlet]

#1467341462227124305 message

you can manually select it

[tranquil mulch]

I tried it but it keeps saying something about security
I'll try doing it via flatpak and that might help

[autumn hamlet]

oh that

yeah

no idea

sorry

i will be looking into that but probably not going to be fixed soon

just try the other formats

[tranquil mulch]

I'll try wineprefix as well if it solves it

I suspect it might

[marble edge]

i just don't even use a mod manager
i have two folders, the BepInEx plugins folder with the mods i'm currently using and a separate one that has those mods and everything not in use

if i want to use a different mod, i copy that mod over from the second folder, and if i want to stop using a mod, i just remove it from the plugins folder

[tranquil mulch]

is there like a tutorial on how to get the flatpak to work

[abstract palm]

Is this broken on Fedora? I installed the rpm, but it just fails on launch with ```Error opening "NOMM.cfg" file: No such file or directory

[modest orchid]

too