request: make mods on nexus vortex friendly /// mod folder structure

[hello]

hey guys, first of all thanks to everyone making mods and uploading to nexus. very appreciated!
i got a small request though: when you upload your mod on nexus please try to make it vortex friendly.

vortex is the nexus own mod manager which works by saving all the mods you download to a directory and then hard linking that directory to your ...\DaggerfallUnity_Data\StreamingAssets folder. there is some computer wizardry involved here but we can ignore it.
vortex also has a download functionality included, that will download and install mods with just a few clicks. another advantage is updating or uninstalling mods and file conflicts are extremely easy to manage.

right now, most people just pack their mods however they feel like and that means if you want to use vortex, you unfortunately have to download a mod manually, unpack it, change the folder structure to comply with vortex, repack it and then readd the packed archive to vortex. this is pretty tedious, especially when the mod gets updated and just installing it by hand will be faster than using vortex in the first place.

so for a huge boost in convenience for your mod users (number of clicks to install/manage your mod can be counted on 1 hand) you could do it like this:

[*] 3 seperate downloads, one for each OS.
[*] have the archive folder structure ready for a straight unpack into ...\DaggerfallUnity_Data\StreamingAssets

that's all you have to do and it will be VERY appreciated by people who want to use your mod.
i know it's a small bit of extra work but if you do it once.. no one of us will have to do it ourselves.

note: if the first folder in the archive is identical to the archive name it will still work. so if the archive name is example.rar and inside is the folder 'example' which then contains the folder 'mods' that has 'example.dfmod' inside everything will still go into ...\DaggerfallUnity_Data\StreamingAssets and work right away as you would want.

i'm not an expert by any means so if anything i said is wrong please correct me!

[TheLacus]

Support for Vortex was introduced when several mods where already uploaded to Nexus; "Download with manager" button is enabled by deafult so all these mods got the button even if they didn't comply with Vortex format. I added informations on mod manager support to the modding docs, but many mods aren't currently following them.

I agree mod managers are very useful and i believe Vortex can also support installers with selectable options (but i never tried it myself). For example you can install DREAM and choose if you want the sound plugin or not, etc.

Unfortunately, Vortex is only available on Windows but i think is worth it anyway. I'm going to make this topic a sticky for visibility

[Hazelnut]

This is the first I have heard about Vortex needing a certain format. Happy to comply, but I could not see any info on this when I follow the link to modding docs. I eventually found it in the last sentence "If you want to support Vortex mod manager, pack your compressed archive so it can be extracted directly inside StreamingAssets folder; as a readme, put a text file with the same name of your mod inside Docs folder."

Will try to follow this on future mod releases.

[TheLacus]

There was a topic about Nexus from last year.

[Baler]

I prefer the Community Nexus Mod Manager over Vortex
https://github.com/Nexus-Mods/Nexus-Mod-Manager

And I would like if mods had support for it so I could check for updates across all mods faster.
Just my 2 Cents, it's bullshit that nexus limits free user speed even if their lifetime is "inexpensive".

[King of Worms]

Can someone confirm DREAM is working using vortex? It should I guess. Thank you

[hello]

Can someone confirm DREAM is working using vortex? It should I guess. Thank you

it's working perfectly - reshade needs to be installed manually obviously, but that's normal.

[King of Worms]

Can someone confirm DREAM is working using vortex? It should I guess. Thank you

it's working perfectly - reshade needs to be installed manually obviously, but that's normal.

Very cool, thank you