Load order: reuse of mlox generated list?

[mym]

Hi,

I wanted to benefit from mlox load order, so I tried and copy/past my list of content data from morrowind.ini to both launcher.cfg and openmw.cfg while replacing the key of each line accordingly but it ended up with a wrong mod order and mods were partially selected.

Is my trick achievable?

[scrawl]

That won't work. The order of entries in Morrowind.ini isn't actually the load order. The load order in the vanilla engine is specified by the timestamp on the files.

What you need to do is use the ini-importer to import Morrowind.ini (button in settings tab of the launcher). But that isn't working either, because the importer ignores load order currently. There is a fix in the works though.

[mym]

I'm not familiar with pull requests: How can I merge it with my cloned version?

[scrawl]

https://help.github.com/articles/checki ... s-locally/

[mym]

Thank you for the link.

So I tried it, fetched the pull request into a new branch, checkouted the new branch, compiled the project again, tried the ini importer, and saved the order into a new list. But the new order is NOT reflecting the data files timestamps.

The new order is alphabetical: first ESM files, then uppercase ESPs and finally lowercase ESPs.

In addition, most ESMs are unticked and complain about needing to be loaded after one of the 3 main ESMs. But that problem was already there before the test branch.

[Dragon32]

Dunno if this is the right place to post this but I'm currently maintaining the mlox rule-set. The guy who wrote mlox, john.moonsugar, hasn't been around much for the past year or so. The most recent update to mlox (automatic checking for and downloading new versions of the rule-set) was something which abot wrote.

Anyway, mlox seems to be quite an appreciated and useful tool for players wanting to reduce the amount of mod conflicts and general weirdness which their games suffer from.

I've been wondering how OpenMW would affect it (new plugin names / extensions, new plugin directories etc.)

Whilst I don't know my way around the actual code I'd be pleased if mlox could continue to help people out who add mods to their game whilst using OpenMW.

Like I say I update the Google Code repository with new rule-sets and some kind of integration with OpenMW's launcher would be cool. I dunno if that's possible or how that could work, it sounds a bit post-1.0 to me... Happy to contribute what little I'm able to though

[dteviot]

Thank you for the link.

So I tried it, fetched the pull request into a new branch, checkouted the new branch, compiled the project again, tried the ini importer, and saved the order into a new list. But the new order is NOT reflecting the data files timestamps.

The new order is alphabetical: first ESM files, then uppercase ESPs and finally lowercase ESPs.

In addition, most ESMs are unticked and complain about needing to be loaded after one of the 3 main ESMs. But that problem was already there before the test branch.

@mym
I'm the guy who submitted that patch.
I've been told it doesn't work on Linux, but I'm developing on Windows, and I'm unable to reproduce the problem on Windows.
So, I need some help. Are you willing to assist?

I've got the following hypothesis of where the problem might be.

• hypothesis 1: Plugin files are not where I expect them to be:
  I'm assuming ALL the plugin files are in a subdirectory called "Data Files", which is in the same directory as the morrowind.ini file that is being imported. Can you check this is correct? i.e. The directory holding "morrowind.ini" that is being imported has a subdirectory called "Data Files", ALL the plugins are in this subdirectory. (If this is not correct, please tell me where the plug-ins are?)
• hypothesis 2: Case sensitivity of file system:
  The windows file system is case insensitive, Unix (and it's variants) are case sensitive.
  I'm wondering if the case of the files in morrowind.ini does not match the case of the files on disk.
  Can you look at the game file entries in the morrowind.ini file (they're the lines that start with "GameFile") and compare them with the names in the "Data Files" directory? Or, just send me a copy of your morrowind.ini file and a listing of the contents of the "Data Files" directory and I'll check myself.
• hypothesis 3: I'm not correctly handling the file timestamps on Linux.
  This will require either a new version of ini importer with debugging, or you hooking a debugger into ini importer.
  I'll defer this until we've eliminated hypothesis 1 and 2.

Thanks.

[dteviot]

I've been wondering how OpenMW would affect it (new plugin names / extensions, new plugin directories etc.)

Whilst I don't know my way around the actual code I'd be pleased if mlox could continue to help people out who add mods to their game whilst using OpenMW.

@Dragon32.
I've had a quick look at the mlox code.
I think the easiest way to integrate would be for mlox to

• Read the plugins from OpenMW.cfg. Pretty easy, it's an ini file much like morrowind.ini, it's just the plug-in file lines have a prefix of "content" not "GameFile"
• Write the files back to OpenMW.cfg in the required load order.

[Tinker]

I've got the following hypothesis of where the problem might be.

• hypothesis 1: Plugin files are not where I expect them to be:
  I'm assuming ALL the plugin files are in a subdirectory called "Data Files", which is in the same directory as the morrowind.ini file that is being imported. Can you check this is correct? i.e. The directory holding "morrowind.ini" that is being imported has a subdirectory called "Data Files", ALL the plugins are in this subdirectory. (If this is not correct, please tell me where the plug-ins are?)

This is most likely, the wiki page on mod installation, https://wiki.openmw.org/index.php?title ... stallation informs users they can place mod files anywhere that suits them. I have a folder ~/morrowind that contains Data Files, this folder only has the three 'official' esm and bsa files as well as the ini. Also in /morrowind is a folder for mods and each mod or family of mods has it's own folder and contains sub folders for meshes, textures, icons etc. as needed. Adding and removing mods is then simply a case of adding or removing the line from the config file. (I edit the config file daily, or hourly, when testing mods)

There is no defined path for mods, the config file defines each path. This installation method also works for windows users but linux users may be the only users who regularly furtle in the file manager.

Your comments about case error may be valid, OpenMW is supposed to be case insensitive but there have been problems in the past with some functions being case sensitive, also spaces in paths can cause problems.

If you need further testing I am available.

[mym]

So, I need some help. Are you willing to assist?

Sure!

hypothesis 1: Plugin files are not where I expect them to be:
I'm assuming ALL the plugin files are in a subdirectory called "Data Files", which is in the same directory as the morrowind.ini file that is being imported. Can you check this is correct? i.e. The directory holding "morrowind.ini" that is being imported has a subdirectory called "Data Files", ALL the plugins are in this subdirectory. (If this is not correct, please tell me where the plug-ins are?)

In my case all plugins (esp, esm) are in the "Data Files" folder.

hypothesis 2: Case sensitivity of file system:
The windows file system is case insensitive, Unix (and it's variants) are case sensitive.
I'm wondering if the case of the files in morrowind.ini does not match the case of the files on disk.
Can you look at the game file entries in the morrowind.ini file (they're the lines that start with "GameFile") and compare them with the names in the "Data Files" directory? Or, just send me a copy of your morrowind.ini file and a listing of the contents of the "Data Files" directory and I'll check myself.

I just checked and the case is exactly the same. I did some file listing/filtering to be sure (cat, grep...)

hypothesis 3: I'm not correctly handling the file timestamps on Linux.
This will require either a new version of ini importer with debugging, or you hooking a debugger into ini importer.
I'll defer this until we've eliminated hypothesis 1 and 2.

Maybe you can help me on that investigation.