blisst

re: Pride's thoughts..

1)... Invisible packages:

I'm sure the TTW team has plenty of info on these the 6 different versions of Fo3 excluding localizations and users over there might be a good resource for building the default HASHes for the various versions or you to pre-supply.. Personally I can supply the steam eng-us hashes for skyrim, FNV and fo3..  I might even have access to the GFWL disc for Fo3 through a friend but no guarantees if he's still got it.

2)... I really like the idea of the (re)build list.

New feature requests:

1).. "Unify" .fomod filenames with mod metadata

there's a number of mods out there with really bad filenames but great metadata in the fomod script.. it'd be nice if there were a way to rename the filename of the fomod archive to #Desc_#Ver.fomod within FOMM. Additionally I like to edit metadata sometimes but there's no convenient way to change the archive name when you do so.

2).. "Upgade" Fomod archives.

Some kind of feature that would allow you to permanently add on a patch or hotfix archive into a main install archive. I do this manually all the time but I sometimes forget to rename the archive to reflect the patches applied, would be nice if the mod Manager could manage mods in this fashion. Output archive: #desc_#ver-Patched_#ver.fomod. An d a background highlight of those would be epic.

sorry I thought I was being clear about the past issues i'd experienced in earlier builds.. but when I started reading your replies It became clear that wasn't the case.. my bad

Niveus.. thank you for pointing that out.. I wasn't seeing anything on the TTW site indicating status of their code.

Pride.. glad you got in contact with Jax.. hopefully some of the installer can get smoothed out... as it's kinda dumb with the focus stealing as you pointed out.. but it's worse when you have to hit enter to move to the next bsaopt session. Enter to continue only occurs on specific configurations.. it's x64, or win 8, or win 8x64.. not 100% but Jax should know the specific conditions.

There was 1 brief mention in the bsaopt nexus threads about someone running into that running a batch of bsaopts... http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/461381-bsaopt/page-14#entry6922762

skyrim bsaopt, page 14 , post 137 and 139 is dev response

Re: NMC's.

No a .fomod (7z archive.. with no fomod script) Version of NMC's made w/ external tools.

Contents consist of a single 1.2gb BSA of Washed-out-Wasteland over NMC-NV-Small over Poco Bueno over NMC-Fo3-Small rolled into a .BSA through BSAopt per the TTW recommendation by Chuck: http://taleoftwowastelands.com/comment/4309#comment-4309

Then 7zipped (as package manager choked creating from directory).. renamed to .fomod and installed. Add fomod went fine, but FOMM choked when activating the package.

Forget which version of fomm this was.. early 14.x iirc.. 14.2 maybe?

Sorry no crash dumps.. didn't ever think they'd be handy I just assumed it was me running too much crap at once.

Compatibility view in IE isn't helping for copy/paste.. where's the button for going to simple edit mode form the fancy inputbox?

-edit fixed link!

currently deactivating and reactivating my larger fomods.. will update with what woks/doesn't in current build

Status report:

TTW main - no problem (multiple 1gb+ bsa's)

NMC's DC+NV & poco wrapup - no problem (single 1gb+ bsa)

Crosswings - no problem  (MANY bsa's a few over 500mb)

ya ya.. I know chrome or firefox.. but I can't be bothered

consequently i'm typing this in instead of pasting it..  http://taleoftwowastelands.com/content/lings-pretty-things-official-port  (forums, mod releases.. it's in there if link is fubar.. 1st post in thread)

I think it was both 14.(2,or 3? and 8) and 13.21 that snarfed on it w/o LAA bit.. but this behavior was not consistent that I recall.. just "could" happen.

Also if you roll NMC's f3 small, fnv small and poco Bueno into a bsa, and pack it.. that can kill FOMM also. (1.2g bsa)

I gravitated toward vbscript just because i'm somewhat familiar with syntax from many things excel/vba related.. so I was hoping a vbscript through WSH would do the trick that way no one would have to download python libs etc (I've personally had issues with PATHs and multiple python versions).. but I think the next plan is to try a vb.exe.. but i'm currently lacking motivation to break open vstudio.. maybe next week.. *shrug*

As for the run as admin in he TTW installer.. I *think* it's related to a few things...

1)... accessing the registry for the install dir for fo3/FNV

2)... calling console .net exe on win8... or opening the console session... I'm still fuzzy on this.. but the whole running BSAopt thing from the installer is a bit less than optimal..

Jax (he's coding the installer iirc) said there's some necessary tweaks from the current BSAopt, but no source available for current version to recompile it so that it will play nice with the installer..

3)... access to the "program files (x86)" directory.. .. ... but that should only be for write operations.. which isn't being handled by the installer.. the mod manager does that.. so don't quote me on this one

I don't know the ttw team's policy on their installer source.. I know I've got a link to it.. but I'm reluctant to share out of respect for their work.. I'm sure Chucksteel, Jaxfireheart, TrickyVein, Sesom, or Gribbleshinibbits8 could point you in the right direction.. they all seem to know what's up over there.. as I'm newb to their forum i'm still figuring things out and still don't know who officially is "on the team" (they don't seem to have that in the FAQ/docs from what I've seen)

PS.. NO TO MOD IS AWESOME!!!!!

Edit - PPS...

I did ask Jax about the possibility of using passthrough.exe from here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc164014.aspx to at least make he installer run w/o user-input by parsing the console windows for "Press enter to continue" then either terminating the console and moving on.. or sending the "enter" keystroke to the console and moving on to the next item.. but haven't heard back from him on my last series of inquiries.. so i'm not sure what the status is there.

 

1).. true... so while the 5gb TTW fomods would be hosed.. the ~1gb lings should work with the LAA bit flipped..

1GB things will work without LAA, it's stuff over 2GB that doesn't. LAA tells the OS that the program is using unsigned values (0..+4GB) rather than signed values (-2GB..+2GB).

 

having said that.. I *think* what you came across was more of a UAC-related symptom, and the extra steps you took wouldn't matter on pre-vista versions of windows... that is if I understand any of what I've read about inheritable object permissions and .net

I don't think it was UAC related; I've never had to run FOMM as admin and never seen a UAC prompt when running it. It's just the fact that if a mod has an install script (script.cs) inside it, then FOMM will just execute that code -- that code is considered what's called "unmanaged" so it must be granted permissions explicitly by the parent process. I didn't realize that things as simple as reading environment vars are protected by that mechanism.

The unmanaged code protection makes sense when I think about it, I just wasn't aware of how it worked.

 

See.. this is where the .NET weirdness comes in.. because if I understand what I was reading on the TechNet forums .. permissions don't need to be explicitly granted and are inheritable when UAC is disabled... but when it's not.. then everything needs to be set up individually..

Having said that.. it's likely confusing a number of different things I was reading at the time about other issues.. and this is all unimportant anyway since you got it working.

And don't get me started on why IE seems to hate input boxes unless I turn on compatibility view.. its starting to become a real annoyance.. especially because its IE's own implementation of the text input box that's not working.. *sigh*.. multiquote doesn't let me quote your same post twice... I was trying t organize things in a more readable manner by coping the beginning of the quote line.. but IE fails to place clipboard contents into the input box.. *shrug*

1GB things "should" work w/o the LAA flag.. however the TTW lings they've got up on the TTW site errors out or me w/o it. But that's all ancient history now in theory with your more sensible approach to dealing with the archives.

Regarding the output view.. Looks fine to me.

Regarding .Net versioning.. like all the major MS libs they *SHOULD* be backwards compatible.. so if you compile in 4.5 any functions introduced in 2.0 *SHOULD* be supported.. so in theory users should only require the latest release package for their OS/Architecture to run ANY .NET application.. However in practice there are SOME apps that require specific versions to be installed alongside the current. This is a common trend in MS libraries (directx5/3 ickyness and countless versions of MSVC runtime libs are just a couple examples).. but the common practice seems to be force your users to upgrade to the current version anyway.. and if they want to run an older app that requires .Net 3.5 (this is the one I see that resolves a lot of versioning issues) they can install it alongside anyway.

Already just on Nexus there's a truckload of utils for both Fallout and Skyrm that require .Net 4.0 and higher.. so it seems to make sense to me that when people install GeMM that they get the .Net package that they'll likely need for half of those utils anyway.

Oh and regarding BOSS.. I've been beating my head against a wall trying to write a dumb little vbscript that reads in the FO3 masterlist and writes it out as a FNV Userlist (for use in TTW obviously).. unfortunately it's NOT going well.. most of the scripting info on vbscript or jscript is really out there with the concept of writing for webpages and not for WSH, furthermore the documentation out there for WSH is really geared more or accessing the registry and policy editor than generic file operations.. anyone got a pointer to a good useable site? If not.. I'll likely end up grabbing the free vstudio and trying my hand at doing it in VB.. but that seems just like so much overkill for something that cold be a command line on a Linux box with clever use of grep and cat.

 

There were three problems..

1. The program was compiled for x32 originally, by timeslip. This meant even with more memory and LAA it still could not handle files *inside* an archive that are > 4GB in size.

2. The internal fomod installation process involved opening the archive and for each file inside reading the entire file into memory and then burping it back out again. This is the main thing I replaced to fix the issue on both x32 and x64. No amount of LAA or x64 can fix this, just cover it up for a while. LAA on x32 would still fall down on files inside the archive > 4GB, and it would still fail on x64 if the file was larger than your memory+swap. Now it will always work, just like 7zip itself, because I do it the same way --- extract to a temporary file and then copy the file to it's final destination.

3. The fix for #2 caused a permissions problem that I thought was x32 and/or TTW related. It turned out to be neither. I'm not a .net guy so I didn't realize a running fomod script did not simply inherit the same permissions as the parent process. This was the problem that took me so long to figure out.

1).. true... so while the 5gb TTW fomods would be hosed.. the ~1gb lings should work with the LAA bit flipped..

2).. makes a lot of sense... I can imagine it must have been necessary at the time due to the existing compression library of the time... also who would have expected that we're dealing with multiple 2gb bsa's in a single fomod archive like some of the larger texture intensive mods out there are.

3).. ya.. .net is weird.. and current implementation is a source of woe for the TTW team on Win8.1... due to the new handling of UAC on win 8.x the BSAopt part of the installer can't be run unattended, because there appears to be NO way to spawn a hidden console, or parse the console output to pass back to the main installer so it can manage the stages w/o user input..

having said that.. I *think* what you came across was more of a UAC-related symptom, and the extra steps you took wouldn't matter on pre-vista versions of windows... that is if I understand any of what I've read about inheritable object permissions and .net

ok on to grabbing new version so I can try NO TO MOD

It's possible, just a bit more involved. The NMM-style functionality was easy. I have an overhaul of the package manager form on my todo list because I'd like to add another idea from NMM there -- user defined categories. That will be a big enough UI change in itself that adding a simple lock/unlock that overrides the "yes to all" functionality would not be too difficult.

If I understand it that's basically all you want right, nothing more complex? Just something like a lock icon on each mod on the package manager screen, and if a mod is locked it overrides "yes to all" or "yes to folder" with a confirmation?

Here's how I was envisioning it..

Locked mods will disable the prompt for overwrite and auto-magically select "No to overwriting files for the locked mod." Ending with a  notification stating that the new mod attempted to overwrite files from the following locked mods (list) but overwrites were prevented due to lock.

In MY mind that makes the most sense.. so you get the functionality of the lock.. and if you want to overwrite your locked mods.. you have to put some real effort in to do so. In theory that would make it a bit harder to reflex-click the wrong button.

pardon the multi-post to follow.. IE's not letting me paste into the response box...

gack.. make 1 suggestion then disappear for a day or 2 and all this happens.. heh

jus to confirm a couple things..

Niveus yes it's a brilliant idea by the NMM team that's why i'd like to see it in GeMM.. (just "trying GeMM on" as a name for now).. and while my "spreadsheet view" idea is certainly a much more ambitious display of the same functionality.. i'm certain there's other people out there who would lust after such an OCD-friendly feature.. no reason why t6m replacer should overwrite my loadscreens XD (except some are packed in the damn BSA)

Pride.. ya from what I saw of the TTW source.. the installer doesn't really do anything special when writing the fomod script.. I think TTW installer source is public accessible if you have any desire to view it I can find a link..

Also the filesize on earlier builds seems much less than ttw's 5gb archives.. the TTW port of lings (about 800Mb) chokes for me w/o LAA bit flipped

Chi.. thanks for your continuous support of Pride's dev efforts here

*Anxiously awaiting the x64 build.*

if anyone's taking feature requests.. the 1 thing I liked about NMM was the "no to mod" option so my replacers didn't get overwritten constantly.. however I wasn't a fan of the implementation..

I'd prefer a lock mod option on the package manager where you can lock a mod so you get a warning "New mod" is attempting to overwrite files from "locked mod name". Would you like to allow this for: All files, Files of your choice, no files.

And if you're really ambitious.. if you do the "files of your choice option" a comparison list of assets in 2 side by side panels with asset info displayed (date size, etc).. kind of like a a spreadsheet view with applicable sorting functions, so if you just want nif's or textures.. etc then you can highlight your selections easily.

Anyway thanks all for your continued work.

The TTW site seems to host a version of the FOMM exe that should be more reliable for huge-ass fomods, like TTW (needs 64-b, 8Gb ram). Otherwise they recommend NMM :/

Anyway, could be something to keep in mind as an option maybe?

You can try patching it to 4gb aware with this: http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php

It seems to work for me for installing TTW, Lings-TTW.

PrideSlayer:

Here's some tech info on the LAA flag, that may or may not be useful for your continuing development efforts: http://helloacm.com/large-address-aware

I'm not up to speed enough to say if those are the header flags to implement for a 4gb compile in C# or just how to check for them.

Also regarding your request for ideas for a new name for your FOMM development:

FOMM-Prideslayer ed. ver.X.xx.xx

Frankly I believe it's advantageous to keep FOMM.exe as the filename, and "FOMM" in the package title.

Changing the .exe can be problematic for 3rd-party apps that expect FOMM to be FOMM.

FOMM is well-known but not everyone is aware that you're continuing development. By maintaining FOMM in the package name you're ensuring that someone searching for the current version of FOMM is more likely to stumble across it if they've never heard of LL.

Thank you very kindly!

--edit

to anyone else downloading this... if you try to install with NMM it gives an error so do a manual install or open the archive and delete the onenote toc file in: \data\Meshes\dlc04\armor\ and it will install just fine with NMM after that

Ian is quite killable, so if you have mods that increase spawns/difficulty you may want to make a B-line for him upon exiting Mitchell's place so you can talk to him before he dies

Any chance I can get a fresh link to Backsteppo's Clothing port V3?