DMM - Dark engine Mod Manager

[664713487a853Marvin]

3. no, FMsel does not have a disable/pause all (mods) button, so such a button wouldn't be a bad thing to have in DMM (this is needed for Thief fan missions that are absolutely incompatible with any/all mods). NewDarkloader has it, but FMsel is what we officially support (and we probably don't want to fork it to ad the button there).

Ok, so the expectation is that either a) the user knows that an FM cannot stomach mods, will disable all of them in DMM, then start the mission via FMSel,  or b) the user uses NewDarkloader which takes care of this automatically (?) or by some other means? Do FMs have a marker file somewhere for that, or do they simply provide a ReadMe that explicitly states that mods are not allowed? I would guess that the average FM player is at least somewhat smart enough to figure that out.

[664713487aa39voodoo47]

a) is the deal. no sophisticated shenanigans necessary, it's just that I'll be able to tell the user complaining about everything being broken to disable all mods as his fm is known to be incompatible with everything.

[664713487ac23Marvin]

First try.

Forgot to add: You have to add "game.dataOverrideSubfolder Thief1" (if that's what you want, can be "game.dataOverrideSubfolder Gobbledygook" instead) to try the functionality you requested for Thief 1. For TFix, you can ship the mod manager together with a dmm.cfg which contains just that line as well, provided dmm is sitting in the same folder.

Fiddling with the Deactivate all button now.
[dmm_new.exe expired]

[664713487b2dbsarge945]

Ok, so the expectation is that either a) the user knows that an FM cannot stomach mods, will disable all of them in DMM, then start the mission via FMSel,  or b) the user uses NewDarkloader which takes care of this automatically (?) or by some other means? Do FMs have a marker file somewhere for that, or do they simply provide a ReadMe that explicitly states that mods are not allowed? I would guess that the average FM player is at least somewhat smart enough to figure that out.

Unless a mod specifically targets an FM, it's likely incompatible.

But I don't actually think this button is needed and might actually be detrimental.

Almost all of the mods on here are dml fingerprinted, so FM's should work fine regardless, and gamesys mods aren't relevant since afaik FM's use custom gamesys (at least all the ones I've played have). Meanwhile a "pause all" button might disable some mods which do work with FM's without the user knowing they work with FM's, giving them a worse experience.

I can understand the value of this button, but we need to advise people to use it as a last resort in case of conflicts, NOT the default thing to do whenever they play an FM.

[664713487b4c7voodoo47]

SS2 agreed, but the manager will also be used for TG/T2, where this situation isn't that rare. so yes, a quick "pause all mods because the fan mission is being dumb" button would be useful should someone want to play such a mission, as already mentioned.

as we have learned in the SS2 environment, mods and fan missions can be compatible without much issue (even if they don't specifically target one another), as long as the mod authors and fm authors set their resources up in a proper manner. this doesn't really exist in the world of Thief, where most people just do whatever makes their creation not crash the game (like importing their files into the vanilla crfs, there is no cure for that).

and we simply cannot fix this properly - there is way too many Thief fan missions out there, spread around too many download sites, trying to get them all into a compatible state simply isn't viable. hence, we will need tools that can handle them instead.

[664713487b600Marvin]

I think a simple Ctrl+Click/Shift+Click multi-select should suffice. An extra button seems a bit overkill, let's see if wxWidgets is playing nice (it never does, for me at least).

[664713487b71evoodoo47]

need to double check (this may be version dependent, using an old one right now), but it may be possible that when a mod is just paused (and not fully deactivated), the game will be loading dmls from that folder anyway.

that would be a bit annoying.

[664713487b8b5ZylonBane]

My understanding of "pausing" is that the mod IS fully deactivated, but the manager remembers its position in the mod list.

[664713487b9davoodoo47]

yes, I'm hoping I'm just doing something dumb over here - using the manager from the tool, b4 is paused b5 is active, and the dbmod log file shows b4 modfolder is being searched for dmls.

[664713487bb6bsarge945]

Dumb question, did you click apply?

[664713487bca5voodoo47]

full test on a clean install, and we are good - the game is snooping around the paused modfolder which is slightly unexpected (not doing that when the mod is deactivated completely), but not actually loading the dmls. phew.

tested both with the tool build and the very latest beta from here, same behavior.

[664713487bda3ZylonBane]

What exactly do you mean "snooping"?

[664713487bf15voodoo47]

searching the paused modfolder for dmls. like this (obj_fixes is paused);

DIAG: looking for file 'gamesys.dml' in path '*.\DMM\obj_fixes_v13\' (40200)

this does not happen when the mod is deactivated fully.

not sure whether this is a bug or a feature, but the important part is that the dmls are not getting loaded from the paused modfolder.

[664713487c2f7Marvin]

Here's the next version, multi-select included.
Note that I had to touch almost every UX method of the manager, so please test this extensively. If some people have done so, I'll probably do some maintenance work and then the manager is good to go. The code is here: https://github.com/pshjt/dmm/commits/scp_thief_fixes
UNIX/Wine testing is of course welcome.

Known issue: Drag-and-drop is limited to one item as I could not find a method that would work properly in all edge cases unless the list is frozen while dragging, which negates the benefits of drag-and-drop almost entirely.

Testing:

• Item order in table matches order in cam_mod.ini (after apply).
• Changing priority works as expected with any number of selected items: Inactive mods cannot be changed. Priority cannot be increased above 1 or decreased below last active mod.
• Activate/deactivate works with one selected, several selected (consecutive, from different parts of table), and mix of active/paused/inactive mod. Active should become inactive, paused should become inactive, inactive should become active. Activated mods are sorted to top of table (as before).
• Pause/Unpause works with one selected, several selected, mix of paused/unpaused (see above). Paused mods become unpaused, unpaused mods become paused. Inactive mods should stay inactive. Order does not change.
• Delete works as expected.
• Drag-and-drop works as expected with only one item.
• Tooltips always refer to the correct mod.
• Status bar always refers to the correct mod.
• Hotkeys work as expected.
• Perform the checks while you're trying to move items as fast as possible.

[dmm_1.1.exe expired]

[664713487c4a5Marvin]

So, if this needs to be out soonish ( @voodoo47 ?) and there are no discernible problems, I can just ready the release and be done with it.

Since I got into a festive mood, I've finally started tackling some long-standing issues:
* convert build system to CMake (makes contribution easier, and also brings the project a lot closer to being natively compiled, save for some very few Windows-exclusive features)
* make manager UTF-8-capable
* upgrade to new stable branch of wxWidgets, which enables full per-monitor DPI-awareness

These will take a while though.

[664713487c5abvoodoo47]

I'm still yet to test it in the T1 mode. so no rush on this.

[664713487c6adsarge945]

I'm yet to see a project improved by cmake. Usually it just gets in the way

[664713487c7e2Marvin]

It beats having to fiddle with a bunch of bat files and Microsoft's "guess where we hid this particular linker setting" approach to MSVS UI design. I'm from the world of Java, everything related to build tools in C/CPP is like a horror story to me.

[664713487c961Marvin]

That reminds me... newdark does not seem to actually support non-ASCII characters in any paths. Is that correct ( @ZylonBane , @voodoo47 )? The question is then if I should actually add UTF8 support to the mod manager and warn the user that a path is invalid, in the hopes that this may one day change with a new release, or not add the feature at all.

[664713487cb3dZylonBane]

I'd say it's entirely your call spending dev time supporting something that might work in the future.

I just came here to suggest that it would be a handy feature to be able to copy the current list of active mods to the clipboard, so you'd end up with something like:
1. HUD Logs
2. Four Hundred v20U
3. SHTUP-ND beta 1
4. SCP beta 9
etc...

This would save people having to post a screenshot to share their list of currently active mods.

Though at this point, the right side of the screen is getting really full of buttons. Might be a good idea to add a File menu at the top for the rarely-used functions?

[664713487cc7bMarvin]

At least I have to put in a warning about non ASCII characters. Currently the manager just silently ignores them.

There is already the import/export function. But it would not hurt to save the same info to clipboard.

A menu, maybe, or a quick bar.

[664713487cd83voodoo47]

the manager already crates a log file from where the list of mods can be copied to clipboard. same amount of clicks, and less clutter in the interface, imho.

[664713487cfecMarvin]

I don't think many people are aware of that file, it's more useful for debugging purposes. I thought ZB meant a Ctrl+C action anyway.

[664713487d121voodoo47]

yes. that means people having some kind of issue, asking for help here, and then us telling them to click open the log. us telling them to click get the info from the UI makes next to no difference.

less is (sometimes) more.