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The Nexus Mods App is a Work in Progress

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The Nexus Mods App



Mod With Confidence
The future of modding with Nexus Mods.

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Nexus Mods App is a mod installer, creator and manager for all your popular games.

Easy to use, runs on your standard Windows PC and Linux alike. Don't waste time troubleshooting, play your games, fill those knees with arrows and most importantly, Have Fun!

The Nexus Mods App is about creating that Modding experience that 'Just Works' for old and new games alike!

Mod with Confidence

One of the biggest complaints of users over the years about modding is that they can't mod with confidence.

  • Will a new mod wreck my install?
  • Will I need to delete my game to revert a mod install?
  • The game updated, my mods updated, and now everything's broken.

Every step of the classic modding approach is fraught with pitfalls and destructive changes.

The Nexus Mods App intends to solve these problems. In addition to being a great mod installer, manager and builder, this project aims to always provide an undo feature for users. Not just on a metadata level (like most mod managers offer today) but on a per-file basis as well.

Go ahead, update that mod, if you don't like it, you can always go back to the game as it was before you made the update.

Concept: Immutable Mod Lists

Simple Data

Most Mod Managers have serious drawbacks and edge cases in how they manage files (data).

They start with a goal of keeping the game folder clean, through the use of techniques such as Symbolic Links, Hard Links and VFS Systems.

Unfortunately, most modding frameworks aren't designed with these systems in mind.

As a result, concepts foreign to end users (VFS, Symlinks) are forced upon them, and the incidental complexity of these systems often leak through the mod manager abstractions in unexpected ways.

For Example

Symlinks & Hardlinks:

  • How do you know if your game works correctly with Symlinks?
  • For Hardlinks, your mod files must be on the same drive as your game.
  • Links can have strange side-effects when files are modified, depending if the file was direct modified or deleted-created-modified.

Virtual FileSystems:

  • You have to run xEdit through Mod Organizer 2 for it to see your mod list (Bethesda Games)
  • Files end up in a different place from where the end user expects them.

Nexus Mods App Approach

The Nexus Mods App aims to merge the mental simplicity of manual modding, with the hygiene of existing mod installers, and a promise of: "you can always go back to what last worked"

The 'Data Model' of the Nexus Mods App can be thought of as an extension of lessons learned from the development of Nexus Collections and Wabbajack.

When you make a mod list, we don't directly manipulate files. Instead, we manipulate the 'instructions' used to deploy the mods to the folder, and clicking 'Apply' simply moves the files directly to the folder.

We do this in a way that allows the user to revert changes at any time. Files aren't 'linked' or 'staged' in any way, no functions are hooked and the the cognitive overhead of the modding process is greatly reduced.

Instead, users can focus on creating a perfect modding setup that works for them.

Further Reading: Comparison of File Management Systems

Drawback

No approach is without drawbacks, so it's only right for us to acknowledge ours.

The Development Team

The Nexus Mods App is developed by a very diverse, talented group of people.

  • Tim (Halgari): Team lead and author of Wabbajack, 20 years building large computer systems, and most notably a big fan of Clojure.

  • Sewer56: Best known for Reloaded-II. Built several modding frameworks and brings with him a lot of experience with micro-optimization, reverse engineering, and low-level knowledge; including the more arcane parts of .NET.

  • erri120: Worked with Tim for some time on Wabbajack, has been heavily involved with Mutagen (patching library for Bethesda games) and wrote the Gamefinder library used in the App.

  • AL12: Best known for being lead developer of Mod Organizer 2. Wealth of experience in various modding frameworks is appreciated.

We also collaborate with the Vortex people:

  • Simon (Simon): Been a Unity developer for some time and has quickly picked up the ins and outs of Vortex. He’s leads development on Vortex.

  • Nagev: Played a pivotal role in developing several impressive extensions and frameworks for the application.

Former maintainers:

  • Tannin: Created Vortex, and was the lead developer throughout most of its lifetime.

Development of the Nexus Mods App is funded through your subscriptions of nexus-premium

If you enjoy using the App, consider subscribing, thanks!