Folders in OpenMW launcher mods

Anything related to PR, release planning and any other non-technical idea how to move the project forward should be discussed here.
Post Reply
ajira2
Posts: 55
Joined: 30 Oct 2017, 14:27

Folders in OpenMW launcher mods

Post by ajira2 »

I suggest adding folders in the launcher for OpenMW for organizing mods and being able to expand or "minimize" a folder to check out your modlist.

One could create folders and name them "quests", "visuals", "followers", "npcs", "textures", etc.

I also propose the option that besides the mod it adds the version of the mod, for instance 0.75 and if there is an update available where you downloaded the mod (normally nexusmods).

I hope this is doable and useful.

Thanxxx!
User avatar
AnyOldName3
Posts: 2668
Joined: 26 Nov 2015, 03:25

Re: Folders in OpenMW launcher mods

Post by AnyOldName3 »

What you're describing are really mod manager features. There are issues with making our launcher into a mod manager, such as:
  • It being a massive task - there are mod managers that have far more lines of code than OpenMW does.
  • What makes a mod manager good is highly subjective - the best mod manager for one person can be pretty different to the best one for another, so we can never make everyone happy.
  • Feature creep is kind of a good thing with mod managers as you want them to be able to do any niche task anyone's ever needed, but that makes them pretty unmaintainable.
  • There are already mod managers that work with OpenMW to various degrees, so it's not super important to make one ourselves in the first place.
You'll find there are several mod managers that let you do the things you want and already exist. First, there are the traditional mod mangers that work with Morrowind like Wrye Bash, although they have the disadvantage that they'll throw all your mods into the Morrowind directory instead of using OpenMW's VFS to keep them separate. There're also mod managers with specific OpenMW support, like Portmod (which is command-line only, but designed specifically for OpenMW) and Mod Organizer 2 via its OpenMW Export plugin (the folder-like thing you've described is basically the same as its Separators feature, and it has pretty extensive Nexus integration).
Post Reply