Since this would be considered piracy these days, has anyone bothered to reverse-engineer how Vortex handles collections, so they can just be imported straight to Mod Organizer?

Every single fucking other application has bend the knee to Nexus, and forces you to fucking download files one by one, manually clicking each and every download.

There’s gotta be a better way.

  • glimse@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Is the nexus mod manager bad or something? I’ve used it a ton in the past but haven’t played any modded games since I built a new PC last year so I’m a bit out of the loop…

    I know CurseForge had some shit (which was “fixed” by creating a separate program without Overwolf) but haven’t heard anything about Nexus

    • dog@suppo.fiOP
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      1 year ago

      Yes, Vortex is awful. Wanna download a 100 mod collection without shilling money to Nexus, which they sure as fuck won’t give to mod creators?

      Lmao you better like clicking 300 times to finish those downloads, oh and the fucking buttons keep moving to combat “automation software”.

      • glimse@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I was wondering wtf you were talking about with this “Vortex” thing but I guess that just goes to show you how long it’s been since I used it lol

        • eric5949@lemmy.cloudaf.site
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          1 year ago

          Nexus Mod Manager has been dead since gosh, 2017 or so I want to say. They kept it around for a few years and I think you can still get it from somewhere on their site but iirc they hired the guy who made Mod Organizer 1 to make Vortex, the new Nexus Mod Manager. Mod Organizer is amazing though so idk why Vortex sucks so much.

          • glimse@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Their website says it was officially canned November 2021 which lines up with when I would have last used it (early 2021)

            Guess I’ll skip Vortex if I ever feel like replaying Stardew Valley

            • eric5949@lemmy.cloudaf.site
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              1 year ago

              Yeah it was in some sort of maintenance mode from 2016 to 2021, though I see that the developer has continued working on it under the subtitle Community Edition to this day.

        • dog@suppo.fiOP
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, the old NMM got shelved because it made downloading too easy.

          • eric5949@lemmy.cloudaf.site
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            1 year ago

            I wouldn’t say that’s why it was shelved, the old nexus mod manager was a broken buggy mess that fucked up all your game directories. Vortex sucks but it is better than NMM without rose-tinted glasses. Now does vortex suck because nexus sucks and doesn’t let the dev make it not suck? Probably. The guy that made it made Mod Organizer and that’s great.

            • dog@suppo.fiOP
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              1 year ago

              I don’t know if that guy is even involved anymore. Pretty sure they just hired him to try to stop MO development.

      • UlrikHD@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        What’s the problem with vortex? As a modder for total war, I dream about the day total war would get a mod launcher like that.

          • UlrikHD@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            Kaedrin mod manager, runcher, Prop Joe’s manager and a deprecated one by a user on the modding discord. We got plenty of mod managers in development but nothing as developed as vortex.

            Vortex allows for profiles, configuration during installation, easy install for central “mods”, very visible mod version, etc…

            I’m sure runcher/Frodo’s new mod manager will get there, but my point is vortex got everything a user and a modder may want for that game.

            Also, I’m not sure if Kaedrin is actively developing his mod manager, he doesn’t seem very active on the discord.

    • ReakDuck@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I think it doesn’t even support Linux which makes Vortex not relevant

    • dog@suppo.fiOP
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      1 year ago

      Yes and no. It’s just ass to read the “source” code because everything’s split into 10000 files.

      And that’s obviously to try obfuscate how collections work.

      • LeLachs@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Looks like your standard electron app to me. I’m no software developer so I could be wrong tho

  • idkman@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    This is quite thought provoking. I never thought in this manner.

    Don’t bother using collection. When I made one for personal use, the fucker downloaded some outdated version of the mod. I started using my download history to keep in check what I’ve downloaded and used vortex to handle the installation. Keeping bookmarks would be a better option.

    In general, simply dropping the mods in the correct location installs the mod, but few mods (like in case of Cyberpunk 2077, Redmods) get compiled to show up as game files, which might complicated the proceduce but I think its possible.

    I don’t know what you mean by downloading one by one. Nexus does lets you download multiple mods at a time when done manually. When installing mods with Vortex, it downloads it, installs it, verifies it and looks for the next in the queue.

    But if you are still keen to use more bandwidth, perhaps try using tor, see if Nexus allows it? I haven’t checked on my end since I never really downloaded huge mods.

    IIRC, Vortex can install manually downloaded mod files.

    Note that mods are not piracy. Developers make toolkits to extend the longevity of the game.

    • Mugmoor@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      If you don’t have Nexus Premium you need to go through each mod individually and manually download it. Some collections are well over 100 mods.

      With Premium it will automate that for you. This is what OP is trying to “pirate”.

      • terminhell@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        I’m so glad I finally baught premium on nexus tbh. But my account was grandfathered in when they went to me monthly sub.

        But it would be nice for free accounts to at least download in parallel even at the cap speed at least. It was years before I upgraded my account,so I know the pain.

    • dog@suppo.fiOP
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      1 year ago

      Mods themselves aren’t piracy, but circumventing paywalls that are meant to gatekeep content is.