Mod Manager 5.0 is a significant update for Mod Manager - it adds a many new features and contains huge performance increases as well as a lot of bugfixes from the 4.5.x series!

MR1 Changelog: #47

New Features

• ME3Explorer is no longer used behind the scenes. It now uses my Mod Manager Command Line library of tools, which is partially based on both ME3Explorer's code as well as Mass Effect Modder's.
  • This results in huge speed boosts because the way ME3Explorer was called was incredibly inefficient. This speed boost is distributed across most behind the scenes things like AutoTOC, MixIn caching, ModMaker compiling, and DLC unpacking.
  • In measured tests I was able to see up to 7.2x increases in speed for compiling ModMaker mods from scratch (with no cache), and mod installation time is cut in half. Unpacking DLC literally takes seconds now rather than tens of minutes.
• Mod Manager can now switch between different installation directories and update the Mass Effect 3 registry key so the game can boot from whatever one you choose. If the key isn't updated, Origin runs MassEffect3.exe from the folder listed in the registry key even if the one launching is different. The directories are now listed in data/BIOGAME_DIRECTORIES. The value in me3cmm.ini is deprcated and is read-only now.
• Mod Manager can now grant write permissions to the user account for the selected Mass Effect 3 game directory. No more 'don't install in C:Program Files (x86)', just let Mod Manager grant you the necessary write permissions. You can find it in the tools menu.
• You can now create batch install mod groups, so you can just click a few buttons and multiple mods install. Find it under the Mod Management menu.
• You can now choose to use a Windows based theme in the settings, rather than the cross-platform default look.
• New tool in the tools menu: Map Pathfinding Viewer. Lets you open a pcc or pcc dump file (typically a BioD file) and view the pathfinding mesh for the AI in an overhead view. Kind of clunky, but was used by me for a bit when I fooled with it. Maybe someone will find it useful.
• New tool in the tools menu: PCC Data Dumper. It is the tool I built for quickly finding variables and values from PCCs by dumping their data into a human readable text format for easy searching. Pretty slow, but very handy.
• You can now unpack TESTPATCH (Patch_001.sfar) in read-only mode. It will dump the files into /data/Patch_001_Extracted.
• Tools On Demand: Tools not included but available on github can be automatically downloaded and updated. This release includes Mass Effect Modder and ME3Explorer. When you run the program, if your local copy is out of date, Mod Manager will prompt to update it for you.
• You can now deploy mods using the mod utils menu. It will stage the mod (so only relevant files are included), TOC the mod, and then compress it for you. You can then post this to sites like NexusMods where both Mod Manager and non-Mod Manager users can download and install it.
• Tips are now displayed on the right side pane (description area) when no mod is selected. These tips are updated via the ME3Tweaks Tips Service.
• NEW DOWNLOADS ONLY: A vanilla game repair database is shipped with Mod Manager, so if you forget you should still be covered. You can update it if you need to still.

Changed Features

• ModMaker now multithreads decompiling and recompiling coalesced files, which should result in moderate speed boosts.
• Mod Manager now does a Full AutoTOC on all mod installs. The option to turn this off has been removed. Using the new FullAutoTOC.exe makes this take seconds and works with SFARs.
• Mod Manager no longer reloads the entire interface to refresh the mod list - the list will simply update.
• Mod Manager will highlight updated or new mods in certain scenarios, like downloading or importing a mod
• ModMaker entry window (where you insert the code) now will attempt to automatically detect your game language by reading the game's registry key
• ModMaker now caches the mod delta files to data/modmaker/cache. In the event that ME3Tweaks disappears your downloaded mods will be preserved. You can drag and drop these files or sideload them through the entry window. Sideload window now opens this directory by default.
• About Window has been updated.
• Mod Merging Utility has been removed.
• Mount.dlc Editor has been moved to the development submenu.
• There is no longer an enforced ME3Explorer minimum version. When launching ME3Explorer from the tools menu, it will check the local version against the listed server version and prompt for an update if one is available - but it is not mandatory. The updates are downloaded from their github.
• ModMaker Compiler is no longer logged by default. The compiler logs a lot of useful debugging information but for almost all users it is not used. It can be turned on in options if I request it. Turning it off saves a lot of log clutter.
• 7za.exe has been replaced with 7z.exe and 7z.dll.
• JoJo Differencing Tools (jptch/jdiff) are now downloaded on update check if not found on the startup update check. They used to only download on mixin installation.
• Exiting Debug Mode option has been removed. The only feature debug mode does now is force logging to the console. Only a very few select users knew how to enable debug mode.
• Mod Manager 3.1's MixIn Shipping for mods has been removed. This was a feature that allowed users to ship patch files that would compile into a mod. This feature was never used by any mods and was not documented.
• Some dialogs now show up in a slightly different order than before to make the UI a bit more proper feeling.
• The Official DLC window no longer shows a dialog to reload mods - they simply refresh in the background.
• The logging to file option has been removed. It is now always on.
• GUI compatibility generator now always decompresses files to avoid some issues that ME3Explorer introduced when saving some PCCs.
• The GUI transplanter tool now is based on MEM code and is slightly faster, and should have less issues.
• ModMaker now shows what is going on when working with language files (TLK)
• The About window has been completely redone in Java FX. I wanted a decent looking about window, but I don't have the time or willpower to rewrite the entire app in the new UI framework. Links are clickable and its much better.
• Drag & Drop now supports multiple same-file extensions rather than only singular file or a folder. Drop 2 TLK files for example.
• Mod Utils menu is now available via right clicking directly on a mod
• Mod Utils menu now has a 'open mod folder' option.

Bugfixes

• Mod Manager no longer writes to System.out or System.err, only to the log file. It used to write to both concurrently. I use these extensively to debug and only in debug mode will they be output. Removing the invisible output results in huge speed boosts - merging coalesced's in ModMaker compiler literally takes seconds now.
• Tooltips no longer appear on the menu items if the tooltip is blank in the help menu.
• Custom DLC Mod Importer no longer shows red text if there is nothing available to import.
• You can now upload or save just a Mod Manager Session Log from the log options window. It used to require at least one other option.
• The MixIns application dialog now centers to the calling window properly.
• ModMaker works again if you pick italian or the all languages option. Used to fail as italian was included in the supported languages list twice.
• Importing a mod with a name consisting only of spaces will now fail validation. It wouldn't import, but would fail instead. Now it just fails the precheck.
• Security update for the mixin downloader
• Logging has been fixed for mod startup and mixin startup. It used to leak some messages to the log even if they were turned off. Should slightly improve startup performance.
• ME3Tweaks Mod Identification service now stores the mount priority as an integer rather than a short. Some telemetry data indicates user(s) have uploaded mods with a very high mount priority that would cause the identification service to crash when parsing. Older builds of Mod Manager will show 0 for these high priorities, while 5 and up will work properly.
• Importing a compressed mod will now properly show the description (and scroll to top) if it has substitute or alternate file specifications.
• Updated Commons Lang to 3.6
• GUI Compatibility generator now simply promotes files that are blacklisted - This should finally fix BioD_CitCas.pcc issues from CEM that have somehow persisted through multiple builds
• Multiple minor bugfixes

• Fixed Italian language bug that would cause italian language to break ModMaker
• Changed me3_cmm_last_run_log reference in a modmaker dialog to show the diagnostics log message instead.
• ModMaker now shows the current operation when working on TLK files.
• Completed batch mod installation feature

• Bugfix: Mod Manager will exit when a startup crash occurs, rather than just chilling out in your RAM
• About Window (original version) was removed
• Additional logging when acquiring the GUI transplanter
• GUI Transplanter download link has been updated for MM5, so 4.5.4 and below continue to work
• Removed galaxy map code from compatibility detector - was no longer used
• Delete WORKSPACE folder for compatibility mods
• Additional logging when generating a compatibility pack fails
• Added SWF/GUI dumping button to FileDrop Window - not yet implemented
• AI Pathfinding requires 64-bit windows
• Keybinds Injection now highlights mod
• ModInfo editing now highlights mod
• Bugfix: Compatibility compression option would edit the windows UI state for that session and not actually change compression options
• Compat generator compression requires 64-bit windows
• Removed error output when skipping cmmbackup file when making a game database update, not an error and not really useful anyways
• Made ME3Tweaks link work in the about window
• Updated Heff's Logger (binkw32) link in about to his github

Beta 5 milestone

• Testpatch unpack location now opens if you unpack testpatch.
• Grant Write Permissions on initial startup when finding the registry key (not when a user selects directory)
• ModMaker create mod - scroll mod list to have it come into view when reloading the mod list
• New item in mod utils menu: Compress mod for deployment. Stages, AutoTOCs, and then does a pretty hefty compression on the mod. Compresses better the more RAM you have - I limit it to try to prevent paging.
• Move Mod Created dialog over main window when mod is created
• Log save failure due to size - save button is disabled
• Change Browse... to Add Target if > 0 biogame directories
• Unpack window now shows 30GB requirement
• Custom DLC Manager now has View conflicts button
• Fix Import compressed mods table header not showing until mouseover from previous betas
• Bugfix: Compressed mods would not show description as loading error in compressed mod inspector was not ignored (files obviously don't exist locally yet)
• Compressed mods description panel scrolls to top when selecting a mod now rather than being at the bottom
• Most windows (not dialogs) should now show up in the taskbar. They could sometimes get lost and cause issues. This should alleviate some of that. The standard dialogs will not show up still and a few custom dialogs I made will also not (like .NET missing dialog)
• Add license text for libraries
• Add zlib to About Window
• About Window is no longer resizable
• GUI Compatibility generator now simply promotes files that are blacklisted - This should finally fix BioD_CitCas.pcc issues from CEM. Don't know how this was not fixed, I remember testing it...
• Mod Manager Command Line v5 now required - fixes some transplanter issues
• GUI Compat mods now include the version they were built with
• Log uploader capped at 512000 bytes, which is pastebin's limit. Used to calculate it wrong.
• Serverside Change: Bad pastebin post will now have a bit better message formatting. This affects all versions of Mod Manager, not just MM5.
• MEM is now a tool on demand and has a built in updater
• Logging has been changed in some areas
• Removed logging for starter kit TLKs as it slowed it down
• Highlighting a mod in the modlist on reload (e.g. a new mod was imported) now makes sure the list scrolls into visibility
• PCC Data Dumper header was improved to reflect faster dump times.
• ModMaker accept mixins dialog now details why the dialog is shown and that you should accept mixins.
• Starter Kit window updated to teach users on mod deployment
• ModMaker Coalesced Compiler has a more accurate progressbar now
• Minor text changes in various UIs

Beta 7 milestone

Beta 8 milestone

• File drop now shows if batch operation had an error. This also applies to starter kit and gui compat libraries. GUI compat won't show the error though, but it is now logged.
• Batch installs now stop if X is clicked
• Compress output was fixed
• Add tips service
• Removed upgrade cleanup from Mod Manager 3/3.1 - should improve startup times
• Mod Manager Command line is now x64/x86 specific
• Removed GUI transplanter updater. It will now update with command line tools. If issues show up I may reintroduce this.
• Changed compress mod for deployment to Deploy Mod
• Fixed previous beta issues where check all mods for updates did nothing
• Fixed starter kit button disappearing when it should have just disabled it
• ModMaker Compiler is now visible in aero peek
• ModMaker Entry Window is now visible in aero peek
• Derby.log has been moved to data/databases

TODO:

• Upgrade testing. Take a copy of your 4.5.5 install and overwrite the EXE with the new build.

RC1 Milestone

Soaktesting Milestone