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Mod Manager 4.2.3

Posted: Sat May 14, 2016 6:00 pm
by Mgamerz
I'm making a thread here because Mod Manager 4.2.3 has a pretty big set of changes. It is not yet available.

New features:

Starter Kit Generator
Generate a working Custom DLC by filling in a few fields. Don't hackjob all that shit together by hand anymore.
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Custom DLC Conflict detector
Mod Manager can now find conflicts between custom DLCs and list them.
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Generate GUI mod compatibility pack to fix Controller/Interface Scaling mod conflicts
The SP Controller Support mod (and to a lesser extent the Interface Scaling mod their add-on mod) modify a lot of files that other people mod. This typically makes users choose between mods such as backoff or bonus power packs or controller support. Mod Manager now can see when a UI mod is conflicting with another mod and will take the second highest priority files and put them into a new mod, and inject the correct GUI files into it (e.g. xbox GUIs). Everything else is left the same. All of this is done by clicking the button in the above picture and entering a name, that's it. It will generate compatibility for the GUI mods to all conflicting files where it is the superceeding DLC.

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As such, the mount priority of the controller mod will be raised to 5500 to supercede just about all mods so this function will work. Otherwise another mod will cause users to find a UI they can get stuck in and Mod Manager will not know it's having an issue. Obviously this can't fix compatibility issues between non GUI mods.

Automatically apply alternate files depending on DLC status
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A common thing to all ME3 mods is the need for compatibility packs if a user doesn't have some of the DLC, or *has* some of the DLC. For example, my SP Controller Mod requires you to manually run a file to enable the Genesis 2 DLC by swapping in a different file. With 4.2.3 and moddesc spec 4.2 you can now specify alternate files as part of the mod.

In the case of this example, Mod Manager will now perform a few additional steps when installing the mod. It will see that there is a check for precense of GENESIS2, and if it exists, it will repoint the source of a file to copy to another one. So essentially, most users will get the standard basegame BioP_Char.pcc in my normal DLC_CON_XBX folder. Mod Manager will repoint for users with GENESIS2 to install the BioP_Char.pcc file from my GENESIS2 folder, which will make that DLC work with this mod. At the end of install it will automatically AutoTOC the installed folder for this. The mod in Mod Manager will remain unchanged. All of this is fully transparent to the user, they have to do literally nothing, it just works.

The available conditions are: DLC_PRESENT, DLC_NOT_PRESENT, and eventually I will have a MANUAL one where the user manually turn on an alternate file (in my example, I will have an alternate startup.pcc with a smaller HUD). You can do condition testing on either Mod Manager headers (RETALIATION, LEVIATHAN, etc) or the DLC foldername (DLC_CON_BACKOFF, DLC_CON_MAPMOD).

Currently you can only alternate on one installed condition per file, so you can't be like if both backoff and EGM are installed, do this, its only backoff OR EGM but not together.

Code: Select all

[CUSTOMDLC]
sourcedirs = DLC_CON_XBX
destdirs = DLC_CON_XBX
altfiles=((Condition=COND_DLC_PRESENT,ConditionalDLC=GENESIS2,ModOperation=OP_SUBSTITUTE,ModFile=DLC_CON_XBX/CookedPCConsole/BioP_Char.pcc,ModAltFile=GENESIS2/BioP_Char.pcc,Description="Enables Genesis 2 DLC to work in character creation"))
The way you have to define this is somewhat ugly, but unfortunately that's just a limitation of ini files. It allows you to add multiple alternates by separating them with commands, and enclosing each spec in ( ).
Invalid alternate specs will cause a mod to fail to load.

ME3Tweaks Updater Service updates
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I've been working with Kinkojiro for the past few weeks to get his Expanded Galaxy Mod testing done with Mod Manager's updating through the ME3Tweaks updater service. His feedback has helped me improve it so its much easier to use.

- Manifests will now only update what has changed
- You can now "sideload" an update file into mod manager so you don't have to host the entire mod update on ME3Tweaks
- LZMA is much faster
- Updates will now immediately abort if a file fails to pass its hash check when downloading rather than finishing download and saying something failed
- With ModDesc 4.2 spec you can now automaticlaly specify serverfolder name, sideload URL and sideload only files for automatically applying those to the manifest

Bug fixes
I've fixed several bugs.
- Mod Merging utility will now correctly copy the right side's Custom DLC folders if any are present. Previously it only worked for the left side
- more stuff i can't remember atm

I plan on making a series of videos for mod developers and mod users so they can see what needs to be done.