Jump to content

Mod Auto-Installer


Arthmoor

Recommended Posts

Logos aside' date=' Sigurd's got a point here. Much as I love Bash, OBMM really is more intuitive at the entry level. Nice big buttons, a simple system of color coding things, and as long as you can figure out omod files (there's instructions right there), you're pretty much good to go. It also, and I think this one is really key, has a nice one file installer that you don't have to think really hard about.

Bash has almost none of this. I see there's an automated installer, but IIRC that's pretty recent, and I personally had to go fucking around with Python, which is well more than a normal user should need to expect. Worse, the interface is like nothing else ever - You either know which right click menu to use on which tab, or you don't. Even worse, in addition to the lock times thing, you either know about ctrl+arrow to move mods around, or you don't. You can either figure out the colors and dots and plusses, or you can't. Worse still? The docs for Bash SUCK. Frequently incomplete, missing info, outdated, obtuse. Unless you really know what you're doing, or have somebody willing to teach you, Bash is really really hard to figure out. Easy once you get there, but getting there is really tough for the uninitiated.

It also happens to work about 10x better.

Also, browsers are a poor comparison. One browser is essentially the same as the next as far as the tech illiterate are concerned. Instead, think of Bash as being something akin to Blender. You know how we keep having conversations where I do something in Blender and everybody says "OMG how did you do that!?" and I say "Well, actually it's really easy, just do this this this and the other thing with the keyboard shortcuts and you're there" and everyone says "What is this I don't even?" Yeah. That's you versus new users with Bash.[/quote']Pretty much, the BASH docs are sinful, and the colour coding they use puts people off as well.See, technically the easiest to read colours for your eyes are royal blue and cnary yellow (aproximately), while white on black and white on blue are also good. That's your eyes, your brain likes black on white - because that is how it has been trained since infancy.It also understands that Green = Ok and Red = dead, but Bash uses colours like purple and blue in novel ways.Yes, this gives you all sorts of information, but its not useful information for most mod uses, its something people don't WANT to know because thay can't understand how to fix it.And you know what else? I still use OMods, because they are easy to build and install. For me it's easier to open up the archive and repackage it to be dropped into the Data folder, then OMod it for installation and safekeeping than it is to faff around with BAIN,It's my own personal hybrid between brutal manual installation and automation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

you either know about ctrl+arrow to move mods around, or you don't
This is flat out false. Stop spreading lies for God sake. Bash has normal drag positioning. It's had it for ages now. You people need to stop with this crap already.
The docs for Bash SUCK
At least it *HAS* some. OBMM? Yeah, sorry, but shitty ass windows help menus don't count.
its something people don't WANT to know
Pretty much the entire argument against Bash, right here. It isn't that it's intimidating, people are just being lazy asses and that's it. Period.Packaging a mod? Bullshit. OBMM's process is as far from intuitive as these things get. Bash? Easy as pie. I figured that out without even having to read the docs.Without fail, EVERY user I've ever nudged into trying Bash has come back to me and thanked me for making them see past their fears that had been instilled by fearmongering users who hate Bash for no good reason. There's a shitload of absolute bullshit being spread about the community about Bash. All of it by a select few people, who in turn convince the noobs that they know what they're talking about - because it "wrecked their game". Never once when cornered have any of these people been able to say *HOW* it did this. Yet we're expected to believe they know enough about modding to have un-wrecked it without a blanket reinstall. Uh huh.Oh, and the "it needs Python" argument is a load of shit. OBMM won't function without .NET. You have to install that manually as well. So nice try there too. No normal user should ever have to deal with that either, yet we accept it because ?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sigurd, I can't say I ever had any problems working out how to use Bash, and I never really had any problems learning from the available docs. Certainly, having prior experience and a fairly sound knowledge of how modding worked from a year of using OBMM did help, but I found Bash very much a pick-up and go experience after a brief session of reading the outdated guide on Wrye's website (or wherever). And to be clear OBMM has FUCK-ALL documents and the ones it does have are pretty much useless. Aside from making OMOD's, which even then is quite poorly explained by the documents (the Beter Cities readme tells you more about the process), I had to learn everything else by trial and error and even today I don't know a lot about what a lot of buttons on OBMM do (my general impression is stuff-all, though).But acutally, I do have one gripe; python has never installed fully on its own for me, I've always had to go back and reactivate some of the applications is installs first time around for the complete job. Maybe I missed the instructions, but this did piss me off.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've used Bash from day one of modding my game. Why? Cause you guys told me to. And why wouldn't anyone want to learn it? Pretty much everyone's modded game needs a bashed patch, so why not just use one mod manager? I've never touched OBMM, couldn't tell you what it looks like or how to use it, or comment on the documentation, but I can point you immediately to the Bash Pictorial Guide that someone took the time to make. A guide, with pictures! Sorry, but I'm with Arthmoor on this. There's no excuse not to learn Bash.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We don't disagree particularly. Bash really is the better solution. However.

This is flat out false. Stop spreading lies for God sake. Bash has normal drag positioning. It's had it for ages now. You people need to stop with this crap already.
And I had no idea it existed until just now' date=' honestly. Then again, BOSS has pretty much made any need to dick with that feature essentially pointless, I think for a whole lot of people. Also makes that whole lock times by default thing utter bullshit, but that's a whole other thing.
At least it *HAS* some. OBMM? Yeah' date=' sorry, but shitty ass windows help menus don't count.[/quote']You'd be surprised how much they do count. And at least with OBMM the help files are right there if you click a huge button. I just now went looking, and yeah, Bash has a help file button too, but it's a tiny little icon in a really non-standard spot. Even then, well, I dunno, I'm still using Bash 287 (yeah, yeah, I know, I know), so maybe this changed, but I'm looking at a whole lot of outdated and/or nonexistant pictures and functions here. There appear to be some pretty nice guides for noobs, but they're not in the main package, so who cares?As far as the colors go, not only are they heavily non-standard, to figure out what they even mean, you have to do a hell of a lot of digging in the help to figure it out. Even then, I'm not sure the descriptions I got actually make sense to anybody who doesn't already know what's going on.
Pretty much the entire argument against Bash' date=' right here. It isn't that it's intimidating, people are just being lazy asses and that's it. Period.[/quote']And yet, somehow every time we have this conversation about Blender, which, surprise, isn't that intimidating if you know what you're doing, you act all intimidated about the thing. Ease of use and intuitive design isn't just some thing people bitch about because they're lazy. You've got time to go through the hoops on Bash, I've got the time to go through the hoops on Bash, most people don't have the time or the know-how to pick up the hows and whys of mod installer ordering, Bashed patches, mod repackaging, and what have you, never mind actually learning Bash.I feel like I should make a commentary on the similarities to the imminent happening of the year of the Linux desktop here, but eh, this may make my point better.
Packaging a mod? Bullshit. OBMM's process is as far from intuitive as these things get. Bash? Easy as pie. I figured that out without even having to read the docs.
Lucky you. I got hella lost. And the docs aren't the best. I mean' date=' I can figure it out, I guess, once I find the installers dir, but where that actually is isn't really very clear. I happened to chance upon it, personally. Like anything with Bash, once you figure it out it's great, but that initial figuring out phase can be pretty exciting.Good luck on explaining repacking things, too.
Without fail' date=' EVERY user I've ever nudged into trying Bash has come back to me and thanked me for making them see past their fears that had been instilled by fearmongering users who hate Bash for no good reason. There's a shitload of absolute bullshit being spread about the community about Bash. All of it by a select few people, who in turn convince the noobs that they know what they're talking about - because it "wrecked their game". Never once when cornered have any of these people been able to say *HOW* it did this. Yet we're expected to believe they know enough about modding to have un-wrecked it without a blanket reinstall. Uh huh. [/quote']Ok, so:1. Yeah, I love Bash too. Just sayin'.2. You're aware that most of these people with problems, and I see it all the god damned time in my AFK_Weye thread, don't have the know-how to even understand the problem, much less fix it, which is why they've come to you, and why it's so damnably hard to get useful information to help them fix things. For that matter, you're well aware that I'm no idiot, and how much stuff do I pass on to you because I have no idea?3. It's also not particularly clear to your average user that there are even problems to be aware of. I mean, we got all the way through Morrowind with no clue, and unless you're particularly active on the forums, there's a whole world of pain you have no idea even exists until it comes and bites you.4. And, hey, I'm as much for education as the next guy, but the community does a pretty horrific job of it. I mean, I go to the official forums, and I'm thinking "Yeah, they'll have some stuff about this I can read! Oh hey, in the mods forum there's even a FAQ pinned up top! Great!"Too bad that FAQ is, check it, more than THREE YEARS out of date. Doesn't even mention BOSS, for chrissakes. Never mind cleaning or anything else. BOSS, (sort of) Bash, TES4Edit and cleaning, LOD generation, OBSE, TOTO, the list goes on, it ain't there unless you dig, which is excessively stupid. You can ask questions, but IME that only seems to work so-so. The assumed baseline for knowledge is already pretty high, and your chances of getting unhelpful and confusing answers likewise.Which is all to say there's an entire body of knowledge here that's completely obvious to those of us who have been living with it for years, but the number of confused noobs suggests that not a whole lot of people get it.
Oh' date=' and the "it needs Python" argument is a load of shit. OBMM won't function without .NET. You have to install that manually as well. So nice try there too. No normal user should ever have to deal with that either, yet we accept it because ?[/quote']Because most people already have .NET in one way or another? Windows Update and all that shit? Not a whole lot of people have Python for anything (Bash and Blender in my case), and not only that, Bash has its own special version of Python. Nevermind the amount of screwing around with Python you sometimes end up having to do that you'd never need with .NET.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Dwip; I agree that there is need for extensive revision of the FAQ's and various other help guides available (or addition of them).But I would say that one of things that should be attempted to be achieved in that process is to make it clear to newcomers that Wrye Bash (plus Boss, for that matter) is the choice for mod management and make it as accessible as possible with tutiorials that can be easily accessed form obvious locations.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I dunno man. A blue ? on the status line for an app tells me loads. It's an info/help icon. That's a standard UI icon for Christ sake. If it being on the status bar instead of on the top menu with big flashing red "HELP" is what it takes, I'm sorry, but that person is already a lost cause. It could be the world's best UI design ever and still run into people who can't find shit.I think you're being totally disingenuous with the whole Blender thing. Blender's UI is straight out of 1985. Yes, they had mice in 1985. They had windowed UI's too. They were all as ugly and functionally retarded as the one in Blender too. Windows evolved. Blender looks like it just arrived via DeLorean. Bash is light years ahead of it in terms of simplicity. Even the Blender guys have acknowledged this because their new version sports a modern UI and they tout that as their primary improvement in the new one. Which unfortunately can't be used for TES modding because none of the nif scripts work.You would be surprised at how many of these people who come to us know the problem and have some vague idea of what's going to be needed to solve it. They're the ones who turn around and scream bloody murder when you tell them what they already knew - that you'll need Bash. They know this but are trying everything to worm out of having to use it - not out of a lack of ability but because it won't hand them the result they want RIGHT FUCKING NOW DAMMIT. You know this to be true.So what do you propose instead? The forums are where the knowledge is born. Stick it in some wiki? Someone tried. UESP turned into a political battlefield that's controlled by a select few elites. The CS wiki isn't the appropriate place for most of this stuff. Nexus has one, so I suppose stuff could go there, but then you're just shifting it all from one website to another. You sound like you expect utility authors to write novels to package with their products or something. Not even Microsoft does that anymore.That said, yes, I agree the FAQs need help. They should probably all be tossed out and new ones put up to replace them. So then the question becomes. Who gets the honor of writing one up that covers most things? Me? You? Hana? The FCOM group that already has a stranglehold on everything else? Joe Blow? Given the number of people who ask stuff that even the 3 year old FAQs cover in mind numbing detail, I'm not sure the effort would even be noticed. People are THAT lazy.And no. Because most people won't have .NET unless they ask Windows Update to install it, or some random program demands it. *drumroll* Bash asks for Python AND provides it too if you're using the standalone package. Or it has a nice convenient Python utility pack you can use. Which btw is not some specially tweaked version of anything. They're all the standard versions of the modules you can download right from the source web sites.We're never going to solve any of this though until people who know better stop spreading the same misinformation year in and year out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been doing a bit of work with Myk on BAIT. Part of our efforts have been to improve the UI. So I sent him a link to this thread. Myk put a post on Nexus about the new mod manager and DarkOne has invited him to a discussion (Myk confirmed that he has been invited to have a discussion).So at least the WB group is involved in the discussions. Hopefully this will lead to positive results on both sides.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I dunno man. A blue ? on the status line for an app tells me loads. It's an info/help icon. That's a standard UI icon for Christ sake. If it being on the status bar instead of on the top menu with big flashing red "HELP" is what it takes' date=' I'm sorry, but that person is already a lost cause. It could be the world's best UI design ever and still run into people who can't find shit.

I think you're being totally disingenuous with the whole Blender thing. Blender's UI is straight out of 1985. Yes, they had mice in 1985. They had windowed UI's too. They were all as ugly and functionally retarded as the one in Blender too. Windows evolved. Blender looks like it just arrived via DeLorean. Bash is light years ahead of it in terms of simplicity. Even the Blender guys have acknowledged this because their new version sports a modern UI and they tout that as their primary improvement in the new one. Which unfortunately can't be used for TES modding because none of the nif scripts work.

You would be surprised at how many of these people who come to us know the problem and have some vague idea of what's going to be needed to solve it. They're the ones who turn around and scream bloody murder when you tell them what they already knew - that you'll need Bash. They know this but are trying everything to worm out of having to use it - not out of a lack of ability but because it won't hand them the result they want RIGHT FUCKING NOW DAMMIT. You know this to be true.

So what do you propose instead? The forums are where the knowledge is born. Stick it in some wiki? Someone tried. UESP turned into a political battlefield that's controlled by a select few elites. The CS wiki isn't the appropriate place for most of this stuff. Nexus has one, so I suppose stuff could go there, but then you're just shifting it all from one website to another. You sound like you expect utility authors to write novels to package with their products or something. Not even Microsoft does that anymore.

That said, yes, I agree the FAQs need help. They should probably all be tossed out and new ones put up to replace them. So then the question becomes. Who gets the honor of writing one up that covers most things? Me? You? Hana? The FCOM group that already has a stranglehold on everything else? Joe Blow? Given the number of people who ask stuff that even the 3 year old FAQs cover in mind numbing detail, I'm not sure the effort would even be noticed. People are THAT lazy.

And no. Because most people won't have .NET unless they ask Windows Update to install it, or some random program demands it. *drumroll* Bash asks for Python AND provides it too if you're using the standalone package. Or it has a nice convenient Python utility pack you can use. Which btw is not some specially tweaked version of anything. They're all the standard versions of the modules you can download right from the source web sites.

We're never going to solve any of this though until people who know better stop spreading the same misinformation year in and year out.[/quote']You use a Querty keyboard?Did you realise there are about a half dozen better, more ergonomic, ways to organise a keyboard? Are you going to switch?With computers ergonomics is mostly about conforming to expectations, Microsoft Office stayed the same until '07 and '10 is actually a step back, because people struggled to adapt. BASH looks like nothing I have seen except a hex editor.Ergo, most people have never seen anything like BASH. If it conforms to any standard it isn't the one most people expect.I'm not sure why you don't believe us. You seem willing to believe most people are "lazy" but can't comprehend that you might just be smarter/have a better aptitude/more experience.Most people struggle with BASH, so Ockham's Razor says its probably something to do with BASH.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Sigurd; I disagree, I think people are lazy. Fuck it, I was lazy for a long time and didn't bother with Bash AND suffered for it, but when I finally gave up and decided to try it I quickly found that it was neither as scary or complicated or difficult to use as I thought it would be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not sure why you don't believe us. You seem willing to believe most people are "lazy" but can't comprehend that you might just be smarter/have a better aptitude/more experience.Most people struggle with BASH' date=' so Ockham's Razor says its probably something to do with BASH.[/quote']Actually, no, I am perfectly willing to acknowledge I'm smarter and/or have a better grasp of tech stuff. None of that invalidates the truth that most users ARE lazy and don't want to learn new things. Spend some time in mod comment threads, you'll see people openly saying they don't want to bother with learning new stuff. To which we can simply facepalm and walk away.So yes, Occam's Razor. User inertia. They're just too damn lazy to learn something new.Also, I hold no illusions that calling them out for being lazy will change anything.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

- Blender: Drat, I'm failing to make a good Back to the Future joke here. That said, I don't see how my point about interfaces is invalidated here. Want to do stuff in Blender? The core concepts aren't particularly more advanced than the core stuff you do in Bash, you're just hampered by the interface and bad docs a lot. If you get told what you're doing, surprise! It's pretty easy.- Maybe I just get a different class of user than you do, but no, almost invariably if I'm like "Yeah, go do this thing in Bash" they go do it. I've seen those people you describe, sure, but don't see them as a majority.That's all pretty much besides the point, however, which is that there are all kinds of perfectly legitimate reasons to demand easy to use, uncluttered interfaces that don't require a ton of specialized knowledge to work. Technological elitism makes you feel good and all (just ask the Linux zealots), but does tend to leave you out in the cold.- As to the knowledge base, I tend to view the official forums as the best spot. Not a lot of people know about the CS wiki or the Nexus wiki or TESA or even UESP, nor is the wiki format necessarily the best idea for this sort of thing. Official forums would be best. I don't really care who writes it, I can think of several fairly good candidates off top of my head, but somebody or somebodies need to keep it current.And, yknow, funny thing. I spent all this time with AFK_Weye 2.0 updating the readme, making it easy to read, trying to answer a lot of the questions I knew already got asked and answered. Turns out people mostly don't ask those particular obvious questions anymore. Wonder why.Which is to say that, yeah, there's always jackasses, but people WILL try if you throw them a bone. There's just nothing in the way of bones at the moment.Re: .NET, turns out that a lot of things require it, so it's pretty common to either get it installed for you, or get told early on you need it, so it's pretty hassle-free. Python, not so much. And I'll say that Bash and its relationship with Python have gotten better over the years.tl;dr - I'm basically in accord with Sigurd's post above mine. It's awfully easy to dismay your average user. Also, any time you sound like a Linux zealot is probably bad.Re: Windows 8, I keep waiting for somebody to explain to me why an interface that's totally awesome on my phone is somehow going to be totally awesome for my desktop. I'm given to understand that the old familiar taskbar interface is driving around in there too, and that this is something the tech media is excited about, and sure it'll be awesome for tablet users and phones, but I'm not one of those people, so who cares?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

- Maybe I just get a different class of user than you do' date=' but no, almost invariably if I'm like "Yeah, go do this thing in Bash" they go do it. I've seen those people you describe, sure, but don't see them as a majority.[/quote']It could have something to do with the fact that I have a larger surface area that's exposed to more of these types of users. Especially those who want the weather mod but openly, and usually quite aggressively, proclaim they refuse to learn how to use Bash despite everything in our docs and on the site saying you can't use it without it. Which is doubly strange, since many of these same people can be seen elsewhere claiming they're using FCOM. Which we all know is functionally useless without Bash. Your offerings don't require Bash simply to operate, so you just aren't seeing the same pool of users. Trust me, they're out there, and they're legion.That in mind, I hate to invoke a cop-out, but it pretty much renders the rest of your argument meaningless in this case.@Sigurd: I'm afraid hardware used to communicate with the entire PC is in a league all its own and has no useful correlation with the UI's of various apps that people use on said computers. No. I wouldn't use a Dvorak layout or any other of these supposedly better ones. I doubt you would either, but trust me when I tell you this - those who aggressively advocate devices of that type are in the same class as Linux zealots. Or Microsoft programmers who have convinced themselves everyone wants an iPC interface.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do read your threads, you know, so I'm not precisely new to the phenomenon. I am also aware that there are a much greater than non-zero number of people who aren't lazy but also don't understand what's going on. They're not ALL lazy assholes. Haters gonna hate, to be sure, but there's a non-trivial number of people, and I will include myself here, who would be better served by a more intuitive, less cluttered interface and better docs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's not just my BGS threads you realize. This sort of thing comes more from the Nexus side of things than anything else.Also, what's more intuitive to one person may not necessarily be so for someone else. Classic example - someone JUST posted in one of my threads today saying that OBMM is horrible and that people should be promoting Bash more aggressively so we don't have to keep dealing with it. Clearly that person, like me, does not buy into the lie that OBMM is the more intuitive app.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Sigurd: I'm afraid hardware used to communicate with the entire PC is in a league all its own and has no useful correlation with the UI's of various apps that people use on said computers. No. I wouldn't use a Dvorak layout or any other of these supposedly better ones. I doubt you would either' date=' but trust me when I tell you this - those who aggressively advocate devices of that type are in the same class as Linux zealots. Or Microsoft programmers who have convinced themselves everyone wants an iPC interface.[/quote']Um, pot kettle black?You're exactly the same about keyboards as some people are about BASH then. It is perfectly possible to produce a keyboard wired exactly the same way as a QUERTY one whilst improving on the layout of the letter keys for faster typing. Yet you aren't even willing to consider switching?By your own definition that makes you "lazy", but I prefer to think of it as humans prefering to stick with what they are comfortable and familiar with.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice try, but no. I have in fact tried that abortion of a keyboard Microsoft once tried to foist onto the market. Near as I can tell, it was a total failure. Last time I was at Fry's there wasn't a single so-called "ergonomic" keyboard on the shelf. Every last one was a traditional QWERTY layout.I personally didn't like the split design. It didn't do anything other than dramatically slow down my ability to type. I know plenty of other people who said the same thing. We had a grand total of 2 people at Behr who had them and clung to them steadfastly even after they disappeared from the market and were well on their way to disintegrating.So no. It doesn't make me lazy. I tried the thing. It was a wreck. Many people I know tried them too and came to the same conclusion. They're no longer sold as far as I can see, so apparently either the entire world is lazy or, just maybe, that keyboard actually did suck.You know as well as anyone in this thread that this is not the case with Bash. I've yet to have anyone I've convinced to try it come back to me cursing my name for all eternity for making their lives a living hell or claiming it hindered their ability to manage the game. A short learning period and all their fears melted away.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Back in 1999 when I had a tumor in my wrist and then surgery and in a cast for 3 months then had to work really hard to get use back, I thoroughly researched options for typing.There were two that actually helped, one was a smaller keyboard. I cannot remember who makes it. The other was a piece of software invented by this guy at a University in Canada -- Montreal I think call half qwerty which re-configured the keyboard so that you only had to use half of it and could type one handed. Typing one handed creates problems of its own eventually but that did help for the short term until I could type with both hands again.The smaller keyboard only works for people with smaller hands though (like me). I don't think there are any really good options and that one by ms definitely was one of the worst ones out there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...