Please understand that my intent when publishing lots of individual mod pages isn't to spam the Nexus. There is no way to publish a page but have it hidden from the front page of search results. I am trying to trickle out the pages slowly, but I have 40 to upload so if I upload 5-8 per day as I have been doing it is still going to take me most of a week to do it. Preparing all the materials for all the pages took me upwards of 80 hours over the last week, so believe me if there was a viable alternative I would have taken it. That isn't counting the time it took to prepare the optimized textures, testing etc.
Some people have accused me of click-baiting. I am using descriptive titles, it is not my fault some views truncate the titles, but it only takes a mouse over and you have a clear description too if you are using a tiled view.
Optional files isn't designed to handle 120+ current "optional" files and I will most likely have more than that soon enough.
Version numbers for optional files downloaded in NMM are set at the time of download based on the version number on the options page, bottom right of each file entry, or from what is in the FOMOD (I don't use Fomods for this project). When NMM does a version check it compares that number with the current version number of the mod as a whole. So for mods with lots of options such as Armorsmith, you get lots of triangle warnings even though you are up to date on all files. It causes me no end of frustration on multiple popular mods with lots of options.
Here is an example of what it is currently like using the main SWOP file and some older patches that are still "current" because I haven't retired them yet (the guns have their own pages).
Just imagine what a block of 20 or 30 seclected texture mods is going to look like... a wall of triangles with false warnings, and no idea when an actual warning is true.
It causes what I like to think of as "warning blindness" - half your mod version column ends up full of warning triangles for optional files which are actually up to date. As a mod author changing the version number on the page doesn't help the people who have already downloaded the files.
What NMM should do is compare filename downloaded to filename on server, and if you have the latest filename then the 2.1 optional file is still current, even if the main file is at 2.2. But it doesn't.
It kinda works for real optional files that change every time a primary file changes, such as some of the landscape/grass retexture projects that also offer upscales/downscales with every release, and it works for some option patches for guns that get updated frequently to reflect a current version.
Unfortunately it can't possibly work for my project.
Creating all these extra pages is a considerable investment in time, but eventually every single page will have it's own optional files, and maybe also optimized versions of retextures, thus multiplying out the amount of files considerably. It also has a negative marketing effect. If someone downloads an optional file, they can endorse the parent. In my case I only get endorsements on the main project if someone downloads the main project instead.
Ultimately I am thinking about the long-term usability for my users, whereas a few are thinking about the short term inconvenience for them of clicking a link to look at a second page. So much so they troll my comments on multiple mods.
As mentioned in my previous comment this gun is on my list of weapons to take another look at, as I am human, and sometimes the tools don't work the way they should and I have to jump through hoops switching plugins in Photoshop to get things to work.
This is one of the lighter textured guns, but it doesn't have all the different color variations of others which multiply the size of the total textures, but don't necessarily get used in game.. though leveled lists can affect that.
A rising tide lifts all boats. If you use the full 40 gun package so most of your weapons use optimized textures, any gun switching issues you have will be significantly reduced.
It is on my list of things to check.. not officially a bug.
As mentioned on the main project page because of the manual process and also due to photoshop plugin bugs / lack of features errors can creep in especially with transparency, and I have had the intel plugin for some reason create mipmaps that don't actually get used by the engine at all levels. That happened with the Glock 20 and I had to revert to using NVidia.
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Please understand that my intent when publishing lots of individual mod pages isn't to spam the Nexus. There is no way to publish a page but have it hidden from the front page of search results. I am trying to trickle out the pages slowly, but I have 40 to upload so if I upload 5-8 per day as I have been doing it is still going to take me most of a week to do it.
Preparing all the materials for all the pages took me upwards of 80 hours over the last week, so believe me if there was a viable alternative I would have taken it.
That isn't counting the time it took to prepare the optimized textures, testing etc.
Some people have accused me of click-baiting. I am using descriptive titles, it is not my fault some views truncate the titles, but it only takes a mouse over and you have a clear description too if you are using a tiled view.
Optional files isn't designed to handle 120+ current "optional" files and I will most likely have more than that soon enough.
Version numbers for optional files downloaded in NMM are set at the time of download based on the version number on the options page, bottom right of each file entry, or from what is in the FOMOD (I don't use Fomods for this project). When NMM does a version check it compares that number with the current version number of the mod as a whole.
So for mods with lots of options such as Armorsmith, you get lots of triangle warnings even though you are up to date on all files. It causes me no end of frustration on multiple popular mods with lots of options.
Here is an example of what it is currently like using the main SWOP file and some older patches that are still "current" because I haven't retired them yet (the guns have their own pages).
Just imagine what a block of 20 or 30 seclected texture mods is going to look like... a wall of triangles with false warnings, and no idea when an actual warning is true.
It causes what I like to think of as "warning blindness" - half your mod version column ends up full of warning triangles for optional files which are actually up to date. As a mod author changing the version number on the page doesn't help the people who have already downloaded the files.
What NMM should do is compare filename downloaded to filename on server, and if you have the latest filename then the 2.1 optional file is still current, even if the main file is at 2.2. But it doesn't.
It kinda works for real optional files that change every time a primary file changes, such as some of the landscape/grass retexture projects that also offer upscales/downscales with every release, and it works for some option patches for guns that get updated frequently to reflect a current version.
Unfortunately it can't possibly work for my project.
Creating all these extra pages is a considerable investment in time, but eventually every single page will have it's own optional files, and maybe also optimized versions of retextures, thus multiplying out the amount of files considerably.
It also has a negative marketing effect. If someone downloads an optional file, they can endorse the parent. In my case I only get endorsements on the main project if someone downloads the main project instead.
Ultimately I am thinking about the long-term usability for my users, whereas a few are thinking about the short term inconvenience for them of clicking a link to look at a second page.
So much so they troll my comments on multiple mods.
Any constructive comments regarding this I am happy to entertain in this dedicated forum post on the main SWOP mod page.
Any similar discussion here henceforth will be deleted and reported to moderators as per the terms of service.
but this gun almost has no textures
ufooginwotm8888
25.6MB to 6.67MB
As mentioned in my previous comment this gun is on my list of weapons to take another look at, as I am human, and sometimes the tools don't work the way they should and I have to jump through hoops switching plugins in Photoshop to get things to work.
This is one of the lighter textured guns, but it doesn't have all the different color variations of others which multiply the size of the total textures, but don't necessarily get used in game.. though leveled lists can affect that.
A rising tide lifts all boats. If you use the full 40 gun package so most of your weapons use optimized textures, any gun switching issues you have will be significantly reduced.
People are using the full set and gaining the performance benefit I claim to have got.
You could check out the full S.W.O.P. project page which explains the reason I started creating these textures. It helps a lot of people.
As mentioned on the main project page because of the manual process and also due to photoshop plugin bugs / lack of features errors can creep in especially with transparency, and I have had the intel plugin for some reason create mipmaps that don't actually get used by the engine at all levels. That happened with the Glock 20 and I had to revert to using NVidia.