Oblivion

NMM 0.60 Alpha release with profiling, ready for testing

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It's been a year in the making but we're finally ready to release what we think will be our final build for the next major step in NMM functionality, profiling. The download link for this build is at the bottom of this article, however, before you rush off, I highly recommend you read this article as it contains important information about this version of NMM.


What is profiling?

Profiling is the ability to create and switch between multiple different mod setups within NMM to facilitate different playthroughs of your game. One profile might be for your axe wielding Nord with mods specific to that character while another might be for your Argonian thief with active mods that you wouldn't need in your Nord playthrough. Or, you might just want to test a new setup without worrying about breaking your stable, current setup. That's fine, just make a new profile and do what you want; if it doesn't work all you have to do is switch to your Stable profile. With profiling, you can pick and choose what mods you have active, in what order, for the specific playthrough of the game you want.

While this functionality in itself is powerful, it's the added things that the Nexus as a site can do with it that excites me. We want to build on this functionality (note the future tense here, we haven't done this yet...) so that people can share their mod profiles with others, including their entire mod list and load order. Having an issue with your mod build or load order? Publish it via NMM and make it public on the site and others can take a look and see where the issue might be. Have a favourite mod reviewer on YouTube but you're tired of asking what mods they have installed to get your game looking like theirs? Ask them to publish their NMM profile on the site and you can then use this functionality to setup your game just like theirs. Want to back up your profiles so if your computer explodes all your mods and load orders are saved on the site, ready to be used by you should the worst happen? It's all possible. It's quite an exciting prospect, which is why we're putting in the time with this major update to NMM.


Why is it an Alpha? If it doesn't work for me can I go back easily?

This version of NMM makes such major changes to the way in which your mods interact with the game folders and we're such a small team here (2 programmers and me testing...) we cannot properly test this version of NMM enough to release it even under the "beta" moniker which we hide behind when there are bugs in the versions we release. As such, we are releasing this version of NMM as an Alpha release. That means it is not an automatic update that everyone can get when they start up NMM and see there's a new version and the only way you can get this version of NMM is by downloading it from the link in this news article. It will remain in alpha until we've had enough feedback from people using the alpha to confidently release it as a beta.

If you are one of those people who doesn't agree with NMM still being a beta and only wants to update to the latest version when it's confirmed as completely stable then I'd recommend not updating to this version. Additionally, If you're the type to moan about this, please, save yourself the time and don't bother (unless you want to donate a couple of hundred thousand pounds to the Nexus coffers so we can get some full-time bug testers using a myriad of different computer setups).

If you do upgrade to this version please do it with the knowledge that it's likely to have some bugs, but also with the knowledge that we here on the NMM team are extremely thankful to you for taking the risk and offering to help us out. It's people like you who help us to make NMM better.

To help you out, and to make sure you don't destroy your carefully tuned current NMM setup, when you install version 0.60 of NMM it will automatically create a backup of your current NMM setup in your NMM folder. If anything at all goes wrong with 0.60 for you and you get so fed up you no longer want to help us out all you need to do is reinstall version 0.53.x to the same folders and use the "Restore backup" functionality. You're then back to exactly where you were before you installed 0.60. No fuss. We've slapped up a quick wiki tutorial on how to do that, just in case.

With the backup functionality just mentioned it's my hope we can convince plenty of you to help us to test this version. The more people we have testing and reporting bugs the sooner we can get this rolled out and move on to some of that other cool functionality I mentioned.


Installing NMM 0.60 and the migration procedure

As per usual, to install this update of NMM simply run the installer executable and ensure you point NMM to the same folders as your current NMM setup. If you install 0.60 and no mods are showing, you've directed NMM to the wrong folders (and yes, that's your fault and not NMM's).

This version of NMM is a major update which completely changes the way in which NMM installs and interacts with files in your game folders. Because of this, 0.60 has a migration tool that will upgrade you from your current version to 0.60. The migration tool will automatically install any mods you have active in your current version of NMM and set it up as before. This can take a long time, depending on how many mods you have installed. However...

Unfortunately, because of the way scripted installers work (the mods you download where they have different options you select in NMM while installing the mod), NMM has no way of knowing what options you have picked once you've installed a mod. So while the migration tool can install any mods that don't use scripted installers easily, during the migration process you will have to interact with any and all mods that have scripted installers again. I understand, for some, that's quite a big ask. I will say this though, once 0.60 is out of Alpha, it will become the only version of NMM that continues to be updated. We will not be maintaining a profile version of NMM and a non-profile version of NMM, so the sooner you get it out the way and upgrade to version 0.60 of NMM, the sooner you can get on and continue to enjoy the bug fixes and new functionality we're releasing each month.


Reporting bugs and hot fixing

Considering the major changes in this version of NMM it would be unrealistic to assume it's completely bug free. We think it's bug free right now as we can't find any bugs, but 3 people testing something on specific setups can't test every possible variation. Hence why we need you.

As always, bug reports should be directed to our bug tracker on the forums. We've setup a specific category for this alpha version, away from the normal NMM bug tracker category, to make this easier for everyone. You can find it here.

We will be fixing bugs as fast as possible as soon as we find out about them and can replicate them. Remember that the more information you can provide us about the bug, what is causing it and how we can replicate it, the faster we can fix it for you. Keep an eye out in the site news or on the Alpha file page for information about bug fixes.

Please note: version 0.53, which we released recently, added a new "mod activation queue" system. Version 0.60.0a is not using this mod activation queue functionality as we are still considering version 0.53 as "in testing" rather than stable and we didn't want to complicate things by adding two relatively major changes into one big update.


Downloading 0.60.0a

We've decided to release this version of NMM via a Skyrim Nexus file page. In doing so, we can actively track the number of users who have downloaded this version of NMM, so we know how much help we're getting, and also quickly release hot fixes via the same mechanism.

NMM still works on all games listed on the NMM download page. The Nexus does not have cross-game functionality (one file page for multiple games) and we chose Skyrim Nexus as it is the most familiar and most used Nexus site.

To download this version simply head to the file page and download the file as normal.

All that's left for me to say is a big thank you, once again, to all those who choose to help us out and run the risk with installing this new version. While the risk is mitigated with the back-up functionality, we still appreciate you taking the plunge early with this alpha.

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  1. bben46
    bben46
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    Loki - the link has been posted over and over and over. It has always been there.
    For those who still can't find it.
    http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/896029-nexus-mod-manager-release-notes-and-download-links/
    Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click on the Previous builds, spoiler tag SHOW box
     
    Please note that the versions previous to v0.60 do NOT! support Fallout 4. They cannot be made to support FO4. It is not the profiles that give some people problems, but the conversion of older games to the new file structure that would be there even without the profiles. If you are starting from zero mods with FO4 there is NO file conversion and the 'profiles made my game break' problem does not exist. Because people just cannot get it that profiles are not some evil thing dreamed up by the nexus to make it hard - they were the most requested feature since the very first version of NMM. And are one of the big selling points of the Mod Organizer Manager. ( MO)
     
     .Net is NOT! a nexus program, but a part of windows that is required for many other programs besides NMM.
    If you cannot install .net - you have a problem with Windows NOT Nexus.   We cannot fix your Windows for you. Fix your windows first, and NMM may just work for you just like it does for most other people who have kept their windows up to date. Win7 requires SP1 for .net.  SP1 was released several years ago and has several important security updates. Not having it puts you at risk for malware. This is not something Nexus can program around. FIX YOUR WINDOWS!
  2. loki1944
    loki1944
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    For pete's sake please can someone give me a link for the pre-profiling/virtualization NMM; it's been a 7 hour exercise in frustration.
  3. Talwick
    Talwick
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    I'm having alot of trouble with this new organiser.

    Firstly, I had to manually right click and un-install each mod, as the ability to queue multiple un-installations wasn't possible. So, 227 mods had to be done, one by one, and then reinstalled.

    Secondly, there seems to be three steps to remove a mod now (I test quite a few mods out, and often remove them), rather than just two. First, deactivate, then un-install, and then delete. And there is no confirmation dialogue, or "finished task" information either. So when I bumped delete (right beside the [End] key), I had no idea of what I had lost.

    There should've been a bit more work put into this organiser before it's release, as it is prone to crashing, UI errors, and various other instabilities. And I've put too much work into Skyrim to have it messed up.

    Thank goodness I have a complete backup of Skyrim and NMM to replace it with.

    EDIT: I found out what I deleted. The Category folder. Quite surprising to not have a confirmation dialogue for that. Thankfully the folder I deleted was for my ordered mods, so they're all numbered.

    And I don't recall seeing a mention of this being an ALPHA or BETA on the update dialogue, so that might be why there's so many complaints from "unwilling test subjects"
  4. zebedinlee
    zebedinlee
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    I just switched over from 0.5 to 0.6 and I selected the option of NMM to reinstall my mods for me.. After it uninstalled all my mods successfully (and quite fast, 200 mods in 30 min, good job team!), the next step was rather a big disappointment. NMM didnt react for some seconds, so I just clicked on the NMM window and suddenly the programm just froze, then crashed after giving the usuall window than NMM had a problem and it made a tracelog blabla..

    After a restart I decided I ll just take the red pill and reinstall ALL my mods hand. BUT some mods cant be reinstalled as I have noticed.. At least there is the no entry sign on them. So I am glad I did a back up and I am going to redo it and reinstall NMM 0.5.

    I d have liked to test this application too, but I think that only makes sense when one is starting of a complete fresh install.. Hopefully one day there is a reinstall option which works.

    Another thing I noticed while NMM was uninstalling is that it does not uninstall mod backwards but rather randomly or by alphabetical order I guess. Maybe you can consider adding an option to uninstall mods backwards and let NMM trace this so it knows in which order they were installed in the first place. I find that a stable installion of Skyrim mods is not only a matter of how the .esp s are sorted but in some cases also a matter of which order one installed them in the first place.

    GReetz

    Z
  5. Wizzard2010
    Wizzard2010
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    What happened to the install window and mod counter totals?
  6. UltraX7
    UltraX7
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    Can this version of NMM be installed separately 0.53 rather than over the top of it, so that I can switch between either?

    Also, a question about the sharing of profiles once it comes to full fruition: Will there be the ability to have NMM download all the mod files associated with someone's profile that you don't already have?
  7. jas21k
    jas21k
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    I am sorry,but don't you all think fixing NMM is more important then profiling? I have had too reinstall Skyrim sooooooo many times cause NMM has messed it up so bad (sighs).Love the nexus site for mods,but the manager isn't very good.
    1. duchuy613
      duchuy613
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      I dont see why a mod manager could ruin your game. All it does is take a mod and put it in your Data folder. If you keep having trouble with the games, 95% of the chances are your fault for using conflicting mods or installing it without reading the mod instruction. Not every mod can be install with a mod manager.
  8. wahahe1
    wahahe1
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    I would love to test the alpha but I'll probably end up testing it on my laptop rather then my gaming pc simply because the instal que is to convenient to give up for profiles. I really hope it's added back in to a later release though because having that and profiling would make testing mods a lot more fun. I'm not sure how effective the profiles from the site would be with out being able to do the same overwrites and choosing the same scripted mod options that the person posting it did. Still, I'll keep on top of the progress with this and if I test it then I'll send any feedback that I can.
  9. Thandal
    Thandal
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    I am sorry,but don't you all think fixing NMM is more important then profiling? I have had too reinstall Skyrim sooooooo many times cause NMM has messed it up so bad (sighs).Love the nexus site for mods,but the manager isn't very good.


     
    Perhaps testing  ALPHA or BETA versions of software isn't for you...?
  10. mekanitz
    mekanitz
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    Profiles work decently well, just have to be patient. Can't really complain about not being able to do multiple actions at once, but hey. It still works just a little slower. All in all I really enjoy this version. Thanks guys!