I'm new to all of this stuff.  I'm 30 years old, been PC gaming since I was 13.  I have become cozy with the concept of the Steam Workshop.  So I have to ask, why are all of these mods not automated at this point?

 

I figured with programming and technology we have available today, any type of modding system would have automated mod installation and addon installation.  Just tell it where the game is installed(Even this appears to be able to be automated) and let it check for duplicate or latest versions and add the appropriate files each time you install an addon.  This way everything is handled correctly the first time and all files are up to date(Because each file should have some kind of self check and auto updater when you launch the game).

Is there a technical reason as to why we don't have this kind of ease of access?  I am excitedly curious because I spent a little over 3 hours yesterday getting all of the basic essential LSPDFR mod addons on top of LSPDFR installed into my game, only to have errors pop up.  I attempted to fix those errors with a rather creative auto troubleshooter but even that couldn't fix some of them due to permissions errors.

So end of the day, why isn't an automated package installation system the standard with all this nifty stuff?

Edit: An additional example of a modder's own automation could be say the Albo mods.  You see quite a few of them on the website here.  What if all you had to do was download one Albo installer.  That installer self updated in the background and when you launch it, it lets you choose which of Albo's mods to add to your project, it then downloads them to your computer and installs them to the appropriate locations all the while checking for duplicate or out of date versions of files.

This way you download one installer instead of 8 mods separately.

EDIT Edit:  OR LSPDFR team could take it one step further and all modders would simply submit their mods through a standardized format to them.  They would provide one launcher that handles the installation of all mod developers' mods who are in this community.  One launcher, select a modder, select which of their mods to install.  Not sure if that's asking TOO much, but another idea.

Edited June 24, 20196 yr by Cryptic Strolski

Because in order for a game to be modded on steam they must have modding frameworks set up in their game naturally. GTA does not have this and tbh the way they set up their archives and files for their games, Rockstar seems to want to make modding their games to be difficult.

 

As for mod automation tools, these again are typically only around for games that have innate modding support as the game is designed with this type of modding in mind (Bethesdas games have a built in launcher for instance, and their games are designed with modding quite literally in mind, they design the games to allow for it).

 

Open IV is quite honestly a miracle to be around really. Community made toolsets for modding to this degree do not typically come around. Theres OIV format archives with assembly and content files that can install mods automatically but this also has it's own drawbacks. Since this game is not Skyrim modding was not designed for it from the start. Files must be replaced instead of the game reading the modified files on top of the games original data files. This means uninstallation is impossible quite frankly with the current automated install tools ( youd have to copy the files you're overwriting and then hope your mod user is uninstalling the mods in the exact same order they installed them in etc. 

 

As nice as automation tools are for modding, they're quite honestly the bane of modding as well. If a user can just click a button and the mod gets downloaded, installed and prepped for the user then they will likely have no idea what they even just put in their games (many modders across all games have a tendency to have wild edits in their mods that have nothing to do with their mods). Or of they have an issue where to start looking.

 

Modding should be involved, modding should be mildly tough, modding should not be completely automated like Steam Workshop (which btw has numerous severe issues that no other mod providing format has).

 

All in all GTA modding is closer to how modding should be rather than the steam workshop.

Edited July 1, 20196 yr by dymedef