Suggestion for Mod Management

[paul]

Suggestions for the Devs.
I have many Factorio games going at the same time, some with Space Exploration some with Industrial Revolution...what I suggest is a mod profile for each game, which can be set at the start. This would prevent having to chop and change mods and prevent errors when opening a game.

[DCYW]

I reckon they done that already by creating this website,
Website link [factoriolab.github.io]

I suggest a steam trading card system.

Too many overhaul mods may crash the game, so careful how many mods downloaded in your game played.

[Fel]

Mods used are recorded in the save, so you can go to the load menu, select the save and use the "synchronise mods" buttons to load the save's mods along with the correct mod configuration.

It does require restarting the game to apply the changes but you can tell it to load the save right without showing you the title screen at least.

[Hurkyl]

The devs don't do much with the Steam forums. If you want to make a suggestion you should do it on their official forums.

[Chindraba]

As @Fel already said, each game knows what mods were active when it was last saved. Is that not "a mod profile for each game"?

The other end of the extreme would be to have a different install of Factorio for each of your major gaming sessions, and one for "whatever" play. If you're stuck with the idea of always being "connected" to Steam it's a bit tougher to setup and manage and will require some scripting. If, however, you don't mind playing in non-steam mod, it's as simple as using the .ZIP download and making a folder for each version. (Linux installs already have that setup available, it's only .EXE installer which "picks" the folder for install.)

The other benefit to that "extreme" version is that the blueprint library is also unique to each game. So, when playing IR3 you don't have all the SE prints with stuff that cannot be built anyway. Add a shortcut on the desktop to each installed game and give it a nice name and you're all done.

[Lumpous]

You can either rely on the game itself to synchronize the mods when you load a savegame, or create a shortcut for each savegame by using command line parameters

• --mod-directory PATH
  
• --load-game FILE

steam://rungameid/427520// --mod-directory /path/to/your/mods/ --load-game /path/to/savegame.zip

[AlexMBrennan]

Is that not "a mod profile for each game"?

No, the mod profile is obviously the mod-list.json file.

The whole point of a mod list is to allow the player to EASILY and QUICKLY switch between mod profiles.

This would be trivially easy to implement (just allow the player to pick which mod-list.json to use BEFORE the game is loaded) but unfortunately Wube remain determined to waste as much of our time as possible.

--mod-directory /path/to/your/mods/

What that means in practise is that you are going to download 20 copies of the same mod. Wouldn't it be great if we could just use different mod-list.json files instead of having to duplicate the rest of the mod folder?

[Chindraba]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Is that not "a mod profile for each game"?

No, the mod profile is obviously the mod-list.json file.

Well, now. Some new information. I like learning new things. Simple testing showed my that the named file is simple to modify, and with a bit of planning, switchable.

I already share my blueprint library and mods between multiple installs. (Neatly avoiding the mentioned multiple download issue, by the way, across several installs, rather than merely across different per-game profiles.) Now I can, in rare cases where it matters, auto-load the mod "profile" I want for a specific game. I shall be doing exactly that for my soon to be restarted 100% achievement run. Assure myself that I won't accidentally load that game with any mods accidentally loaded from other things.

Sometimes you can eat your cake and have it too. Now if we could just the the lazy, sniveling complainers to use their grey matter for something other than keeping their craniums from collapsing we could all be enjoying the game and helping each other with real questions and ideas.

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

This would be trivially easy to implement (just allow the player to pick which mod-list.json to use BEFORE the game is loaded)

Right your are. It is so trivially easy, in fact, that any player could manage to do just that. All without the devs taking any time to change anything, or even push out a new update.

The triviality of it is impressive. One can even make a copy of that file, with a different name, and pre-select which mods to load before even generating a new map. Make a few of those, all in the same directory with different names. Pick the one you want "this time" and copy it to mod-list.json and then launch the game.

Of course, I'm a bit lazy, so I'll make a tiny script (batch file) to do that for me and then launch the game. Make a hotkey shortcut for that script and then I can launch a certified mod-free game just by pressing ALT+SHIFT+F.

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

The whole point of a mod list is to allow the player to EASILY and QUICKLY switch between mod profiles.

Actually, the way the system in Factorio is built, you cannot make it any easier, or faster, to switch between profiles once the game is loaded. You cannot switch mods while playing a game. You have to save (or not) and exit the game to change mods. Then, because of how much control mods are allowed to have, any change in them requires a reloading of the data structure of the game. Less than a full restart, but mighty close to one. So, once the current game is closed the process given early of picking the "sync mods" button on the save game you're switching to, or to make "this" game match "that" game's mods you can still use the button, and uncheck the 'load game' in the sync menu. No need to remember which mods are in that save, just use the button.

One other almost-nice feature is that if you load a game which was using mods and some of those are not loaded it will warn you and give you the chance to sync before loading. The reason it's "almost" nice is that this warning does not happen if you have mods loaded which are not in the save. It will happily, and silently, allow you to add new mods to a save game on load. I've ruined a few vanilla saves that way. That's why I like the new information. I can per-emptivelly avoid that issue on games where it matters.

Thanks for the new information.

[PunCrathod]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Wube remain determined to waste as much of our time as possible.

Even flat earthers have better conspiracy theories than you do.

[jamiechi]

Originally posted by Lumpous:

You can either rely on the game itself to synchronize the mods when you load a savegame, or create a shortcut for each savegame by using command line parameters

• --mod-directory PATH
  
• --load-game FILE

steam://rungameid/427520// --mod-directory /path/to/your/mods/ --load-game /path/to/savegame.zip

Never tried this, but I am sure it is a good method. I have been creating Junction links, or Symbolic Links.

I have been using an addon to File Manager for several years to make this easier. Or you can make them manually in a .cmd file.
https://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html

Right click the desired folder, and select 'Pick Link Source', and then go to the destination folder, and use 'Drop As Symbolic Link'. (First backup and remove the mods folder, and rename the Symbolic link to "mods" in it's place.)

In case you are wondering how safe it is to do this:
Note that Shortcuts are also links with a hidden .lnk on the end. Symbolic, Junction, and Hardlinks have also been part of Windows for years.

[Chindraba]

Originally posted by jamiechi:

I have been using an addon to File Manager for several years to make this easier. Or you can make them manually in a .cmd file.
https://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html
...
<snip>
Note that Shortcuts are also links with a hidden .lnk on the end. Symbolic, Junction, and Hardlinks have also been part of Windows for years.

Years is an understatement. While not trivial to create back then, they were built into the NTFS design. So, a couple decades, or more.

Anyway, the information provided a few posts back that the game, at initial load, looks at the mod-list.json file to know which mods to enable is quite handy. You can have an number of files (vanilla-mod-list.json, speedrun-mod-list.json, se-mod-list.json, ir3-mod-list.json, ...) in the mod folder and create simple batch files, each with their own link on the desktop, which will copy the right one for that "game", say se-mod-list.json, to the default mod-list.json, and then launch the game. If you're tricky about it, you can even have the batch file copy mod-list.json to se-mod-list.json when the game ends, in case you made changes to the mods and want to save the changes.

Of course, for those with the programming skills, there are other methods to use the same thing in a more complex method, but the core remains the same. I already have scripts doing that with the blueprint library so each game only has the ones I've made for that game instead of a giant collection of every print. Makes the game load much faster.