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[WIP] Mod Picker


TerrorFox1234

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http://www.modpicker.com


Description
Mod Picker is an ongoing project to design a web application for modding similar to PCPartPicker. The goal is to help users in the building of a mod list using crowd sourced compatibility information and mods scraped from the major sites that distribute mods (Nexus Mods, Steam Workshop, Lover’s Lab).


Benefits of Using Mod Picker

  • It will be easier to find mods on mod picker than it currently is on other sites due to our extensive and easy-to-use filtering system.
  • Mod Picker will have mod reviews, so you’ll be able to determine the quality of mods upon the basis of community feedback.
  • Compatibility, install order, and load order notes will help you build a compatible and stable mod list.
  • You can participate in the community by submitting reviews, compatibility notes, install order notes, and load order notes.
  • All crowd-sourced information will be weighted based on our unique and flexible reputation system. The word of people who know what they’re talking about will be worth more than the word of random users who have no standing in the community. You gain reputation from mods you’ve authored, by contributing to the site, and from other users recognizing your contributions to the community.
  • You can make your mod list public on the site, share it with your friends, or link to it for troubleshooting advice.
  • Automated download and setup of utilities and configuration files as well as assisted mod installation (you will still need to start the mod downloads yourself).

Meet the Team

Mator - Team Leader
Hi guys. You may know me from my projects Merge Plugins and Mator Smash. I enjoy developing tools for mod authors and mod users. I’m really excited to be leading the Mod Picker team in building a powerful new platform to redefine the modding experience.
Terrorfox1234 - Public Relations
Hello everyone! I am a moderator on the Skyrim modding and Fallout modding subreddits and author of the Beginner’s Guide featured on GEMS. I am always looking for new ways to contribute towards helping the community and make modding accessible to everyone. I believe Mod Picker will accomplish this in a way that nothing has before and I am thrilled to be a part of it.
ThreeTen - Developer, Designer
Hey all, my name is Grant and I am one of the UX/UI Designers on the team! I have been modding skyrim for a few years now, with mods such as Real Shelter and NPC Visual Transfer Tool. I am incredibly excited about what Mod Picker will be able to provide for modders and mod users alike; and strive to make the mod picking process as easy as possible.
Sirius - Developer, Designer
Heyyo! My name is Adam, and I’m excited to be helping out with this awesome project that the community has wanted and needed for a long long time. I’m known online as TheSiriusAdam, but other than a slightly impressive League of Legends profile there’s not much fame to my name.
Nariya - Developer
Hi I’m Nariya, I’m currently working on the backend for the Mod Picker project. I’ve been playing Skyrim on and off since release and I’m excited to contribute to a tool that will finally streamline the modding process since I usually completely uninstall my game and mods when I’m done.
Thallassa - Designer
Hi you guys, I’m a novice designer and mod user who does my best to share everything I’ve learned over the last year and a half of modding. In my limited free time I like to drink tea, knit, and listen to metal. Once in a while I even have time to launch Skyrim!
Breems - Developer
Hi, everyone! My name is Tyler, and I'm primarily working on the desktop application(s) that accompany the Mod Picker Site. After creating ENB Organizer, I was excited to find a community-driven project I could contribute to. When I'm not doing dev work I enjoy mild gaming, playing music, and trying very hard to be lazy.


FAQ

  • I’m a mod author, will this drive users away from my Nexus Mods pages?
    No, we will be driving users to your mod pages. Our goal is not to supplant you or your mod pages, our goal is help users to discover your mod and learn about how to use it in a mod list (e.g. help them with finding compatibility patches). We will not be hosting your mod files, have a comments section, or a description on our site. We will be linking directly to your Nexus Mods page from our page, driving traffic to your pages and Nexus Mods.
  • Will you be hosting my mod files without permission?
    No! We will not be hosting any mod files at all! All downloads will continue to be served from the locations where you have uploaded your mod.
  • Will this replace Nexus Mods/Steam Workshop/Lover’s Lab?
    No, absolutely not. We’re being very careful to not replace functionalities from these sites. We will not be hosting or redistributing any mod files.
  • Will this offer similar functionality to LOOT?
    Most likely yes. One of the core services that Mod Picker provides is helping users build a stable mod list. Load order is a big part of that, and as such Mod Picker will have sorting functionality. Mator has talked with WrinklyNinja about LOOT, and the limitations are clear and well understood. It’s mostly a difference in philosophy in regards to the user experience for sorting a load order. We are aware of and deeply thankful for what LOOT has done for the modding community, and are hoping to build a new solution that can continue to serve users in their load order sorting needs.
  • Will this offer similar functionality to modwat.ch?
    Yes.
  • Will this offer similar functionality to STEP?
    No, this will enable the members of STEP to do what they do more efficiently, and will enable other people to do what STEP has done with minimal effort required. STEP is a guide that focuses around a specific set of recommended mods. Mod Picker is, at it’s core, a utility to make building your own mod list easier.
  • Will this replace <insert other tool or website here>?
    Probably not. Our goal is not to replace existing solutions, but to augment them. Mod Picker will work with mod managers and distribution platforms to offer users the best mod list building experience possible.
  • Will Mod Picker be open source?
    The core site won’t be, but many modules will be. E.g. Mod dump, and the automated installation script/application.
  • What games will you support?
    From day one we will support Skyrim, because it has the largest and most established modding community. Soon after we will add support for Fallout 4, and from there we will add support for Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 3, Oblivion, and (maybe) Morrowind.
  • Can anyone change the info on the site, like wikipedia?
    Users with sufficient reputation can edit contributions made by other users on the site under certain circumstances.
  • Won’t people abuse that?
    Abuse will not be tolerated. If the abuse is intentional the user may have privileges taken away or receive a temporary ban. Continued abuse will earn them a permanent ban. A public history on every post will also allow members of the community to revert undesirable changes, and members of the community can withdraw reputation from users they no longer trust.
  • What if someone submits information that is incorrect?
    We will have a system by which you will be able to submit suggestions/corrections on user contributions. These suggestions are then vetted by reputable members of the community and if a majority agreement is reached the contribution becomes open to editing by users with sufficient reputation.
  • Do mod authors have control over their mods?
    Verified mod authors are given reputation for their mods and access to control aspects of the pages associated with their mods on the site.
  • How will you verify mod authors?
    We have a plan for a system that works similar to how scraping mods works where we’ll provide you with a verification key on our site, have you post it on your profile page, and then scrape your public profile page. If we find the key in a post on your profile page your account will be verified.
  • What are you developing the site with?
    We’re using Ruby on Rails, AngularJS, and MySQL.
  • Will you offer an API?
    Yes! We will offer a full RESTful API serving up JSON that you will be able to leverage in your applications.

Development Status
Complete

  • Account pages
  • Mod upload
  • Index Pages
    Articles, Mods, Plugins, Mod Lists, Users, Comments, Reviews, Compatibility Notes, Load Order Notes, Install Order Notes, and Corrections
  • User Settings page
  • Mod page
  • Edit mod page
  • User page
  • Mod List page
  • Home page
  • Help Center
  • Notifications
  • Reputation System

Active

  • QA
  • Help pages
  • Moderation tools
  • DevOps & Automation

Planned

  • Video tutorials
  • Public API Access
  • Mod list setup utility
  • Notification settings
  • Email notifications

Various Links

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I dont get it

 

Why all these people and time / effort will be dedicated to reinventing the wheel and turning it into a website knowledge base ..

 

.. when less effort applied to updating LOOTs masterlist metadata for Load After entries and Priorities ( where they are needed ) could achieve refining the same goals ?

 

LOOT already admirably does everything we could possibly want from a Load Ordering tool, it just needs its masterlist refining for edge cases which hardly anyone is providing good feedback for.

 

I guess the website could be used to help refine LOOTs masterlist though, so its not entirely a big waste of effort.  :shrug:

 

Benefits of Using Mod Picker

  • It will be easier to find mods on mod picker than it currently is on other sites due to our extensive and easy-to-use filtering system.
  • Mod Picker will have mod reviews, so you’ll be able to determine the quality of mods upon the basis of community feedback.
  • Compatibility, install order, and load order notes will help you build a compatible and stable mod list.
  • You can participate in the community by submitting reviews, compatibility notes, install order notes, and load order notes.
  • All crowd-sourced information will be weighted based on our unique and flexible reputation system. The word of people who know what they’re talking about will be worth more than the word of random users who have no standing in the community. You gain reputation from mods you’ve authored, by contributing to the site, and from other users recognizing your contributions to the community.
  • You can make your mod list public on the site, share it with your friends, or link to it for troubleshooting advice.
  • Possibly an automated download solution, depending on feedback from mod authors and hosting sites.

 

Easier to find mods = You have better filtering than any other site ?

 

Mod reviews and quality are going to be subjective, may aswell use Nexus top files list

 

Point three already = LOOT masterlist

 

Yey another community - I guess there may be another agenda .. Advertising ?

 

Point five = "We are going to be right and everyone else is wrong" O_o ok.

 

Point six can be done anywhere

 

Point seven = Nexus wannabee ?, or yet another Masterlist repository ?

 

 

Edit : If my last question is close to being true, then is this going to be sort of like support knowledge data for Mator Smash ? ... Similar to masterlist for LOOT you will have your own site repositories for Mator Smash ?, if so then I can see it all being valuable

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If I get it right as well, you can see it as an expansion of Modwatch, where the user can also share all of the conflict-related informations (LOOT-like master list, Smash settings, and how to build custom patches that are out of the scope of conflict-resolution), with direct links to the mods in questions (Cruelly missing from Modwatch currently).

With some more pooling/database management, and of course general submission (Masterlist-like), to build a set of general informations, non modlist-specific.

 

 

That's just how I see it, although I'm linked to one way or another to almost any of mator's other projects, this one is the exception ^^

 

 

As far as "updating the LOOT masterlist goes" while I 100% agree on the concept, I have to admit that its contribution is sytem is rather unfriendly.

I had the git synced on my computer for something like a whole year, but the process of submitting is rather awful, and the forum-based contribution are hard to get validated (how much people have explained thousands of time that mods such as ELFXEnhancer or ELE should be near the bottom of the load order to avoid conflict with reference-placement mod ? How much time have it been explained that for more than two years, the warning to not clean GDO is obsolete as of v1.4 ?), and LOOT warning lack an "advanced user section" (GDO again : There is a record that have to be manually deleted as its "fix" have been integrated into USLEEP, but conflict because USLEEP's fix is more complete. This kind of informations will never make it into the LOOT masterlist).

 

Also, LOOT is completely unable to handle loose files.

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If I get it right as well, you can see it as an expansion of Modwatch, where the user can also share all of the conflict-related informations (LOOT-like master list, Smash settings, and how to build custom patches that are out of the scope of conflict-resolution), with direct links to the mods in questions (Cruelly missing from Modwatch currently).

With some more pooling/database management, and of course general submission (Masterlist-like), to build a set of general informations, non modlist-specific.

 

 

That's just how I see it, although I'm linked to one way or another to almost any of mator's other projects, this one is the exception ^^

 

 

As far as "updating the LOOT masterlist goes" while I 100% agree on the concept, I have to admit that its contribution is sytem is rather unfriendly.

I had the git synced on my computer for something like a whole year, but the process of submitting is rather awful, and the forum-based contribution are hard to get validated (how much people have explained thousands of time that mods such as ELFXEnhancer or ELE should be near the bottom of the load order to avoid conflict with reference-placement mod ? How much time have it been explained that for more than two years, the warning to not clean GDO is obsolete as of v1.4 ?), and LOOT warning lack an "advanced user section" (GDO again : There is a record that have to be manually deleted as its "fix" have been integrated into USLEEP, but conflict because USLEEP's fix is more complete. This kind of informations will never make it into the LOOT masterlist).

 

Though I have never got into updating the repository side of LOOT or BOSS before it .. I can imagine from what I have seen that it is unfriendly ( I think sourceforge - before it went the way of using open source projects to bundle malvertisements - Used to be better to get to grips with ).

 

But the thousands of reports, I dont think Wrinkly ( or repository maintainers ) ever gets to see them posted in the LOOT topics with supporting xEdit evidence of the reasons they need to be added. I think he sees maybe the odd "so and so says X is wrong fix it", but thats about it. Wrinkly does not have the time to be investigating so many reports which quite often are just lazy author says it needs to be last ( like the thousand and one other mods which also need to be last )

 

.. All the proclaimers for last slot could more than likely use Requirements, Priorities or Load After metadata .. But again nobody submits such suggestions that I have seen, certainly not in the thousands anyway.

 

Heres a question - What is GDO ?, if I were a maintainer hit with that information what am I supposed to do with it .. See ?.

 

 

( PS I am just playing devils advocate here, not being an affront to the project, all community projects are good ideas because they advance the knowledge of the community )

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( PS I am just playing devils advocate here, not being an affront to the project, all community projects are good ideas because they advance the knowledge of the community )

 

I know that, and that's why I'm answering, this is how debate have interesting outcomes ^^

 

 

 

 

Heres a question - What is GDO ?, if I were a maintainer hit with that information what am I supposed to do with it .. See ?.

 

I think that perfectly illustrate why a part of the community is dissatisfied by the LOOT contribution system. I expect anyone who's maintaining something as critical for the community as the LOOT masterlist to know what GDO means in this context, and how to download it and verify the statement I just made in less than ~ 2 minutes.

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I think that perfectly illustrate why a part of the community is dissatisfied by the LOOT contribution system. I expect anyone who's maintaining something as critical for the community as the LOOT masterlist to know what GDO means in this context, and how to download it and verify the statement I just made in less than ~ 2 minutes.

I think you expect the impossible then. It's not reasonable to expect everyone to know every acronym for every mod. People are assuming an awful lot by saying "GDO did this" and expecting "GDO" to have meaning. The way I was taught in school is that when you're going to use an acronym, you explicitly define it once, like so: Guard Dialogue Overhaul (GDO) and then just use GDO after that.

It isn't just for the benefit of the LOOT team either. Anyone else reading the post will have the information at hand and might be able to contribute something useful instead of also wondering what it means. I get reports like this in a lot of my mod threads and I just don't have the time to go chasing down acronyms for reports that don't have much substance to them anyway.

 

I don't much care for the expectation that someone maintaining a high profile project like LOOT or USLEEP or whatever should be a fluent expert in everything the mod community has to offer. I don't expect Mator to either, even though he seems to think otherwise :P

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Well, yes, but expectation definitely are subjectives, that the least we can say about it  :P

 

 

People are assuming an awful lot by saying "GDO did this" and expecting "GDO" to have meaning. The way I was taught in school is that when you're going to use an acronym, you explicitly define it once, like so: Guard Dialogue Overhaul (GDO) and then just use GDO after that.

 

Here is how I see it :

In a real life conversation, no one will define "USA stand for United States of America" once, because the person who's talking to you know/assume that you are an american (you are right ?), and that your education/culture taught you that, because this acronym is part of the american culture (and in this case, part of the international culture even).

GDO is in my opinion part of the Skyrim-modding culture, same as USLEEP, ITM, STEP, LOOT, MCM, ENB, NMM, bsa, coc or uGridToLoad. Those term doesn't have any f***** meaning for "normal" person, but should directly ring a bell for any people who know about Skyrim modding enough to provide something like LOOT.

 

I'm obviously not saying that every mod-acronym should be known by "one person", but GDO was the perfect example of something not as obvious as "USKP" (or my "USA" irl example), nor those mentioned in the previous paragraph, but sufficiently used community-wise to be considered "Skyrim culture" (mod around for several years, mentioned in almost every modding guide, oftenly mentioned in "Should I clean my mods ?" discussions, 63000+ endorsements, first hit in when googling "GDO skyrim", and I never said it was Guard Dialog Overhaul but you still knew it :troll: )

 

Then again, what is, and what isn't, part of the "skyrim culture" isn't carved in stone. I guess we could argue hours on the downside of this (there definitely is, especially the fact that it make it harder for "outsiders" to come on board), let's just say that's subjective matter and I'm on the "People who launch big projects should know as much as possible about mods and the modding community" side, and you're not.

 

Let's call it a day and keep the thread on this Mod Picker project, talking about mod acronyms isn't going anywhere. 

 

 

Fun fact about how the "modding culture" change, that I didn't know where to put in the above message :  : If I ask "who is Wrye ?" to someone who joined the community in the last 2 years, he'll probably answer me "Lol, it's not who, it's what. Wrye Bash is a mod manager:woot:

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I think there's a pretty big difference between knowing what USA or EU means vs a somewhat more obscure corner of life that has acronyms for things we may not all have heard of. :P

 

Just because LOOT is an integral part of things in Skyrim modding doesn't mean the people running the project should be expected to know every mod acronym out there, or indeed to even be familiar with the mods after the mod names are known. That kind of community input is what LOOT needs to define any needed metadata rules.

 

You know, kind of like what Mod Picker is going to rely on for building up data? Community input? :P I would not expect you guys to know every acronym for every mod, major or minor, and would hope that part of such a project would include helping people identify these things as part of what it does.

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Alt3rnity, you've brought up some good questions here and I think Kesta did a good job addressing a few of them. I think others may have similar questions/concerns so I'd like to take this opportunity to address them as best I can.

 

 

Kesta explained the main reason our system should be more approachable than LOOT, but we are also building a lot of stuff that isn’t offered by LOOT.  Looking at this as a LOOT clone is an extremely unfair simplification of what we’re building here.

 

You have better filtering than any other site ?

 

So far, yes, I do believe so. Our filtering system expands beyond just categories and allows a high level of customization. Combining the various filters with adjustable sliders creates a system capable of much more fine-tuning (only want to see Weapon mods with less than 250 endorsements that were posted between March 2012 and June 2013? That's possible)

 

Mod reviews and quality are going to be subjective, may aswell use Nexus top files list

 

This isn't a simple matter of the public endorsements of a mod. Reviews and quality are weighted based on a reputation system. The intent is that this can give high-quality mods with few endorsements on their respective hosting site a chance to be seen by more people. I'm sure there will still be some highly popular mods with a high rating on Mod Picker. However, as popularity does not equate to quality, this will not always be the case. Unfortunately endorsement ratings on hosting sites tend to have a snowball effect, and mods that are being just released don't stand a chance of catching up to the mods on the Nexus Top Files (since those have had years head start to pile on the endorsements and continue to do so). Our system should allow high quality mods a chance to shine regardless of the date they were released or their endorsement/download counts.

 

Point three already = LOOT masterlist

 

Aside from the things Kesta mentioned I will also point out that LOOT does not make recommendations on install order, only plugin order and some compatibility notes.

 

Yey another community - I guess there may be another agenda .. Advertising ?

 

I can see where the notion comes from, but no. We have even had discussion about the potential for this to be profitable, and all have agreed that it is not a priority. On that note, our site will not have any advertisements.  We will run on donations, and possibly a premium membership service.

 

Speaking personally, as a frequent help of beginners (through my Beginner's Guide and a constant flow of direct messages) and moderator of the Skyrim mods subreddit, I have seen many people asking for

 

A. Mod packs

B. Someone else's stable mod list that they can copy

C. Someone else's Skyrim installation that they can share via dropbox/drive/mediafire/etc so that they don't have to set anything up

D. Offering to pay someone to set things up for them

E. Other easier/faster ways to create a stable game

 

It's something that, as the series has grown in popularity to reach a more casual/general public demographic, has become sought after more and more. Again, I spend 80% of my time in the modding community helping beginners get through the initial learning curve and off on their own. Unfortunately there have been those that simply weren't even slightly tech savvy and really struggled to understand everything it takes to build a heavily modded stable game.

 

Some people might say "then don't mod it's not for you", but I think that isn't very fair and is an elitist mindset. I'm personally not a huge fan of that. I love welcoming new people into this hobby of mine that I love so much and don’t think it should be an exclusive club (again, not implying you said this). When Mator presented this idea I saw an opportunity to really help those more casual or non-tech savvy individuals be able to enjoy a modded game.

 

We all love the modding community and that is why we are building this. Heck, even as an experienced user of mods that can get 200-300 mods running with little to no issues, I would not mind cutting the setup time in half. Real life is real and at 30 years old free time is not in abundance :)

 

Point five = "We are going to be right and everyone else is wrong" O_o ok.

 

Perhaps we need to rephrase this? That is not the intention. We don't decide who gets reputation.  Anyone can earn reputation by being active and making contributions.  

 

Our system calculates user’s reputation based on a number of factors, the most important three are: the mods they’ve authored, their contributions on the site, and other users “endorsing” them.  Say Arthmoor has 1000 reputation and you have 5 reputation.  If Arthmoor endorses you, you gain 5% of his reputation (without him losing it).  This gives you 50 reputation, putting you at 55 reputation.  Arthmoor can only endorse a maximum of 15 users on the site, so he will have to choose who he endorses wisely.

 

Point six can be done anywhere

 

Doing so with the same level of detail that Mod Picker provides would take quite a bit of effort.

 

If I wanted to share my entire set up with someone I would copy and paste my modlist.txt, loadorder.txt, and ini files into pastebin, go to each mod page and grab their links as well, type up a summary of each mod, and make notes about compatibility and installation. The end result likely wouldn't look very good to the person viewing it, and would take a lot of time to prepare. With Mod Picker you will be able to share all of those details in a fraction of the time and effort currently required.

 

Point seven = Nexus wannabee ?, or yet another Masterlist repository ?

 

Neither! We definitely expand beyond a masterlist repository and we will in no way be trying to replace or compete with Nexus. Namely we will not be hosting mods and we have no intentions on becoming the primary hub for modders. As a comparison, PCPartPicker doesn't replace or compete with Newegg and Amazon. It augments the PC user experience to be able to find what they are looking for on those sites in a more efficient manner. In a similar fashion we are only seeking to improve the modding experience and help people find what they need/want in a more efficient manner.

 

I hope this clears some things up! Let me know if you want to discuss any of these points further :)

 
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Also, regarding mod acronyms/aliases, Mod Picker will allow multiple aliases to be associated with mods.  Mod authors will be able to edit these, and they will be displayed on the mod's page.

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Speaking personally, as a frequent help of beginners (through my Beginner's Guide and a constant flow of direct messages) and moderator of the Skyrim mods subreddit, I have seen many people asking for

 

A. Mod packs

B. Someone else's stable mod list that they can copy

C. Someone else's Skyrim installation that they can share via dropbox/drive/mediafire/etc so that they don't have to set anything up

D. Offering to pay someone to set things up for them

E. Other easier/faster ways to create a stable game

 

It's something that, as the series has grown in popularity to reach a more casual/general public demographic, has become sought after more and more. Again, I spend 80% of my time in the modding community helping beginners get through the initial learning curve and off on their own. Unfortunately there have been those that simply weren't even slightly tech savvy and really struggled to understand everything it takes to build a heavily modded stable game.

 

 

It all sounds pretty good, I have quoted the above because I think it could be the source of many headaches if the intention is to host any kind of all in one mod pack :

 

Many times we have seen throughout TES games history there have been some very well done attempts, whereby all permissions were sought, and the mod compiler tried to keep on top of all developments from every ( included ) mods authors, quickly respond to deconflicting inter mod developing problems .. and provide their own support for the whole thing as opposed to the individual original authors being bugged for support on a compillation they did not want any part of supporting.

 

Its a logistical 'mare which even the most dedicated to the cause we have seen eventually fade / burn out. And then with nowhere else to go .. Users then revert to bugging the original authors - Which is why a lot of experienced mod creators these days will flat out refuse to have their mods included in any kind of compillation.

 

There have been a lot of other such compillation projects too which have had no kind of responsible approach to original authors applied and just bundled together on Russian sites for instance, who just blatantly ignore all pleas for help or original authors complaints .. And the problems derived from those compillations existing balled out the many reasons everyone was warning people against doing them in the first place

 

There are many other complications I cant recall at the moment .. But imho I would warn against offering such projects.

 

Although with such a large backing and newer tools such as Mators Merge Plugins ( which we have never had the excellent capabilities of before that tool came along ) .. I can see such projects being more manageable.

 

 

Edit : Just noticed in the QA you dont intend to host any files, so strike the above questions

 

 

One missed question was an edit I made above ..

 

Edit : If my last question is close to being true, then is this going to be sort of like support knowledge data for Mator Smash ? ... Similar to masterlist for LOOT you will have your own site repositories for Mator Smash ?, if so then I can see it all being valuable

 

.. or is that info under wraps for now :)

 

 

Edit : Ooh and something I found out recently ( admittedly I am a bit slow on the uptake of this issue ) which would be a major consideration of any mod compillations http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/3924850-corrupt-saves-strcount-0xffff-ctd-on-load/ ( the save limitation on the amount of strings constricted by a 16 bit integer )

"strCount is a 16 bit field. It's maximum value is FFFF hex or 65,535 decimal. Once the number of strings is incremented past 0xFFFF we're guessing the pointer 'wraps around' and resets to 0x0000 making the save unreadable"

 

Until possibly the SKSE propellor heads can come up with some kind of workaround for the problem, or all concerned mod authors utilise something like papyrusUtil, then all of your compillations would need to carefully balance string storage use, possibly leaving an allowance for individuals to add more mods or at least a warning that A.Compillation is on the hairy edge of stuffing your saves with strings and breaking them .. Dont add more mods - Which the kind of user you are aiming at will no doubt completely ignore / not read

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Well there's pros and cons. I like the idea of mod packs, but fear you will have your work cut out in maintaining their validity.

For it to work, every mod-pack collection will have to also have it's own masterlist of compatible and incompatible mods requiring continual monitoring and upkeep. Good luck with that. :)

As BOSS, LOOT and Mod Picker all get into the ring, what are the odds others aren't going to enter the fray?

As far as mod authors are concerned, they will just want to load the mod up on a hosting site and let the BOSS, LOOT and Mod Picker do the crawling and doc research to get the right order for the mod. Otherwise it's a pain.

Mod quality will always a subjective attribute though, Baa-Baa download figures, endorsements, user rep and load orders only tell some of the story.

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Well there's pros and cons. I like the idea of mod packs, but fear you will have your work cut out in maintaining their validity.

The website isn't about us (the creators of the site) making and maintaining mod packs, it's about you (and other users) making them. Also, we call them mod lists, because "mod pack" has a negative connotation in the community.

 

For it to work, every mod-pack collection will have to also have it's own masterlist of compatible and incompatible mods requiring continual monitoring and upkeep. Good luck with that. :)

Perhaps you missed the part in the OP where we crowd-source compatibility notes? The way the site works is such that the community contributes and maintains compatibility information between mods, and that compatibility information can then be presented on a mod list so we can guide users to remove mods or add compatibility patches when necessary. We aren't doing upkeep per mod list, the community is doing upkeep of overall compatibility information.

 

As BOSS, LOOT and Mod Picker all get into the ring, what are the odds others aren't going to enter the fray?

As far as mod authors are concerned, they will just want to load the mod up on a hosting site and let the BOSS, LOOT and Mod Picker do the crawling and doc research to get the right order for the mod. Otherwise it's a pain.

What BOSS and LOOT do is very different from what Mod Picker does. Neither of them scrapes mods, and neither of them has a web interface for building a mod list like Mod Picker. Neither of them crowd sources information as effectively as Mod Picker will, and neither of them has any way of weighting crowd-sourced information. Correcting information also lacks a formal process. In addition to all of these things, BOSS and LOOT offer user experiences that restrict them to the "after I've chosen my mods and want them to work together" part of the modding equation. Mod Picker will be used throughout the process of finding, researching, selecting, and downloading mods and compatibility patches.

 

Mod quality will always a subjective attribute though, Baa-Baa download figures, endorsements, user rep and load orders only tell some of the story.

Of course, what is a good mod to you is not necessarily a good mod to someone else. But I'd personally state that download figures and endorsements are not measures of quality, but rather measures of popularity. I think that's the biggest issue with finding mods right now - we actually don't have any quality metrics available to users.

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Yey another community - I guess there may be another agenda .. Advertising ?

 

I can see where the notion comes from, but no. We have even had discussion about the potential for this to be profitable, and all have agreed that it is not a priority. On that note, our site will not have any advertisements.  We will run on donations, and possibly a premium membership service.

 

 

My bold - So that could change at a later date - I understand that Mod Authors need to take action ( Opt Out ) if they are not happy.

Why is it not Opt In, where you invite Mod Authors and their work to add value to the site ?

If the site is not all about profits, there is no need for it to just harvest everything out there to maximise returns

 

Will you also be creating all of your own descriptive content, and images where needed, and not using original works descriptions and artwork ?

 

Edit : The reason for this last question may not be so obvious, but for example all of my mods on Nexus now have a sentence at the end of the description ( aswell as in the Permissions box which people in the past seem not to be able to find ) which reads ..

"I will only be uploading to Nexus, TheAssimilationLab and AFKMods - All other sites DO NOT have permission, to upload or redistribute any of my files, images or descriptive content, past, present or future."

 

The reason for that was the appearance of the GMOD sites, which scraped nexus of mods / descriptions and artwork wholesale. Just to produce "free" content pages for their own staging of an advertising machine and monetary gain ( similar model as Nexus but without authors volunteering their work to be hosted as a trade off, it was just grabbed ).

They eventually were taken down if we as mod authors made an effort to get them taken down .. The whole site was about getting as much money out of content for free without permission from anyone.

Once that failed, the author then proceeded to do the same trick on a new site name and a couple of changes in hopes that it would not be noticed and would work second time around. And a third ... Hence the appearance of what initially may seem a bit ridiculous in the permissions department, but was intended as clear instructions against such sites making money out of our work without even asking permission to start with ..

.. For whatever site names come along in the future with the same parasitical tricks.

 

So now there are probably lots of descriptions, maybe secreted away in a readme inside the downloadable file too that needs to be extracted and checked, that initially may not be so obvious, and your site is going to have to take care with every single file and all available authors instructions that every detail regarding what you can or cannot copy is adhered to.

 

You are going to be enabling other people to become elevated and create reviews as they become more trusted on your site with their behaviour and ability ..

 

.. So you will need to prescribe a set of ground rules for all such authors to follow, and make them aware that they should similarly not just copy / paste descriptions and artistic material before they have read and understood all details of every mod they are handling on your behalf.

 

 

I may have missed it, but your FAQ here mentions you will not upload mods files a couple of times, but Images / Art and Descriptive content I dont think are given a mention.

 

Maybe a mockup image of how the thing will look may quell a few questions ?

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The beta has been started.  You can email modpicker@gmail.com haven't already received an invitation and you would like to participate.

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The beta has been started.

 

Oh cool, if your other projects are anything to go by that means your about to get bored with this one and randomly do something else again for a few years :P

Edit : Teasing aside, its all good practice, experience and knowledge gained for yourself.

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Oh cool, if your other projects are anything to go by that means your about to get bored with this one and randomly do something else again for a few years :P

Edit : Teasing aside, its all good practice, experience and knowledge gained for yourself.

 

Being light on my feet allows me to make software that's kind of neat.  :P

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