ME3Tweaks Mod Manager 9.2 Build 136 changelog #473
Description
ME3Tweaks Mod Manager 9.2 is a feature update that includes many quality of life improvements, significant changes to texture modding via the M3TO feature, the ability to modify the GlobalShaderCache via the M3GS feature, and changes to improve the overall health of the modding scene.
New Features
M3TO - Texture overrides without package edits
Mod Manager 9.2 introduces a new way to modify game textures for Legendary Edition games - M3 Texture Override. This system overrides textures at runtime, allowing textures to be modified without editing any other files. This has multiple benefits:
- No need to deal with the 'do not install mods after textures' rule
- Texture mods can easily be toggled on and off, as it's essentially just a DLC.
- Developers can use the mod manager alternates system to configure what textures to override without having to ship multiple mods
This feature requires work from developers to convert existing .mem mods to the new m3to system. Developers have been working on this during the private alpha for this update. New texture mods can be developed without the use of MEM.
M3GS - Global Shader Cache edits
As part of ongoing reverse engineering efforts, we can now replace shaders located in the GlobalShaderCache file for Legendary Edition games. This file contains shaders for things like bink video rendering and post processing. Developers can ship compiled shaders and override the ones located in the GlobalShaderCache.
Note
This is only for shaders that are not used by packages. This cannot be used to replace shaders in package files.
Multi-download download manager
Mod Manager now supports multiple concurrent downloads, which can run in the background.
Users who have NexusMods Premium subscriptions can now download and import mods directly from the updater panel, all with a single click, via the premium API Nexus provides.
Warning
This feature may have bugs due to its complexity, which will be fixed over time.
Cached Targets Manager #438
Mod Manager now includes a target manager that lets you see all targets that it knows about, even ones that fail to load. It can be found in the Mod Management menu. This is useful for scenarios such as a restore failing partway through, causing the target to fail to load. Prior to this, Mod Manager had no way to see failed targets.
Removing invalid targets that will never load will improve application performance and clean up the logs.
Rich-text formatting for mod metadata
Mod Manager's mod description panel now has better formatting, making the metadata for mods easier to read. For now, mods can't make use of the formatting, but may be able to in the future.
The metadata section will be improved in the future with better formatting and visible data.
Local log viewer fallback #435
As part of continuity planning, Mod Manager now includes a local log viewer that can open logs and diagnostics if the ME3Tweaks Log Viewing service is unavailable. This features requires Microsoft Edge to be installed on the system.
The local log viewer has slightly less functionality than the server version, as it does not have access to other ME3Tweaks services. However, this feature makes logs and diagnostics accessible to users who do not have access to me3tweaks.com.
Extended diagnostics
The Mod Manager Logs & Diagnostics panel now has an 'Extended Diagnostics' checkbox, which replaces the textures check checkbox. Selecting this checkbox runs operations that take longer but may yield more useful information such as package corruption.
Full textures check will still occur if you select this option, but now it only runs if your game is detected as texture modded by Mass Effect Modder.
Target merge features support multiple manifests
Target merge features that only supported a single manifest prior to Mod Manager 9.2 now support multiple manifests. This includes the following features:
- Squadmate Outfit Merge Feature Request: Multiple squadmate merge files in one mod #437
- Game 2 Email Merge
- Plot Manager Sync
Mods targeting moddesc 9.2 and higher can ship multiple manifest files with the corresponding file extension that the original feature used. During target merge, files with that extension in the root of the CookedPCConsole of the DLC folder will be applied in alphabetical order. This should make it easier for developers to provide mod configurations for mods using this feature. Mods targetting older versions of moddesc will not have their behavior changed.
Moddesc 9.2
The follow changes occur with moddesc 9.2:
- DependsOnKey behavior changes to fix bugs in original design of selection logic
- M3GS feature is available
- M3TO feature is available
- Multiple-manifest Squadmate Outfit Merge is enabled
- Multiple-manifest Game 2 Email Merge is enabled
- Multiple-manifest Plot Manager Sync is enabled
Changes important for developers
Warning
As we are expanding our native mod features, it is becoming increasingly important to ensure files are aligned with engine standards. As such, mod deployments now require packages to properly set their ForcedExport flags in package files to ensure this feature properly works. Mods will be blocked from deployment if invalid flag chains are found. These chains can be fixed with the tools provided in Legendary Explorer's Package Editor >Experiments > Mgamerz > Useful for developers menu.
Legendary Explorer Nightly has been updated to handle forced export chains better on edits.
Warning
Mods that have set an image banner that is the wrong aspect ratio will now be blocked from deployment until the image is either corrected to have the correct aspect ratio (580x47) or bannerimagename is removed from the moddesc. This is to prevent unused assets from being included in deployments.
Warning
Mods can no longer ship full file replacements (including as DLC overrides) for LE1 files that can be targeted by the LE1 2DA merge feature. Mods that did so were breaking this feature, so deployments shipping the target files will be blocked. The affected files are:
- Engine.pcc
- SFXGame.pcc
- EntryMenu.pcc
- BIOG_2DA_UNC_AreaMap_X.pcc
- BIOG_2DA_UNC_GalaxyMap_X.pcc
- BIOG_2DA_UNC_GamerProfile_X.pcc
- BIOG_2DA_UNC_Movement_X.pcc
- BIOG_2DA_UNC_Music_X.pcc
- BIOG_2DA_UNC_Talents_X.pcc
- BIOG_2DA_UNC_TreasureTables_X.pcc
- BIOG_2DA_UNC_UI_X.pcc
Changed Features
- Application now runs on bundled .NET 10 (previously bundled .NET 8)
- Long term: Dark mode dialog boxes are inaccessible #436
- Dialog boxes now use a more native windows theme
- Diagnostic log formatting has been improved to use tables, which make it easier to see large sets of data
- Changing targets switches to Modified Basegame Files if selected target doesn't support DLC to prevent being on a tab you cannot see the actual tab of
- Internally the UI for ModInstaller and the actual installer code have been split and significantly cleaned up.
- Updated minimum supported OS to Windows 11 24H2, Windows 10 22H2 (until October 2026)
- A few instances of a progress bar as an overlay have been fixed to follow the application theme
- Saving a batch install group now runs on a background thread, as initial save on textures hashes them and can take some time. This will prevent the app from appearing to freeze.
- Improved performance in batch editor when selecting texture mods by capping the max amount of target textures listed for a .mem file to 100.
- Mod selector dialogs: Double clicking a mod now acts as picking that option
- Archive Deployment now shows 'Finalizing...' when it's perform an archive copy step, which is part of the internal 7z implementation. This doesn't actually change behavior, it just shows you better what it's doing.
- When a mod reload finishes occurring, if there is any filter text, the filter will be re-applied so the UI stays consistent
- Installation Information now has 'smooth' scrolling which should allow you to more easily see the content of items that have a lot of subtext due to how scrolling now works.
- Mods that are hidden on NexusMods will no longer be shown for updates. This only applies to the information the ME3Tweaks server cached when it last fetched mod status.
- Changelogs that are long now have a text shortening toggle on them to prevent them from taking up an enormous amount of space when presented to the user when checking for mod updates.
- Moddesc: folder name mappings for source and dest dirs are now case insensitive for source dir
- Banner image can still be deployed even if invalid dimensions #478
- When the application is running under WINE (Mac/Linux), a dialog will be shown at boot Detect Wine #482
- Plot Manager Sync failing due to errors will now throw a dialog indicating what failed
- Verifying a mod download now shows progress rather than being indeterminate
- ASI mods that aren't in the manifest will now show version information as well as the other information available on the file
- Opting out of beta mode will ask if you want to downgrade to the Stable build. An update will be offered to downgrade the client back down to stable if stable is on a different version
- Feature Request: More Detailed Merge Mod Logging #487
- Unsupported OS detection no longer shows a dialog
- ASI's marked for install in moddesc.ini now check they are available in the manifest on deployment and throw a warning message if they're not
- Texture installer panel now shows progress in the taskbar as well so you can see progress without it being in the foreground
Linux improvements
While Linux is not an officially supported platform, thanks to https://github.com/D2ans0, there have been improvements in this build when running on WINE to prevent crashes and errors.
Bugfixes
- Toggling a DLC will now properly update the Installed DLC mods text to show -Disabled or not
- Toggling a DLC/deleting a DLC now properly triggers updating game state so the 'Show what mods are installed in the library' feature is more accurate
- Improved performance of DLC toggling updating game state
- NexusMods File Search works again. This was broken when the site design changed. Unfortunately this means that search by game will be very unreliable as Nexus does not give you a way to fetch tags in any of their APIs.
- The text shown when dragging and dropping multiple .mem files onto the user interface now properly bullet points the first item
- Fix
nexuscodebeing serialized to moddesc.ini when it doesn't need to be - Add warning dialog when a mod is detected that breaks the LE1 Bio2DA merge feature. This is what would trigger the 'Cannot merge into non-basegame/Bring down the sky 2DAs' - it is mods shipping files they shouldn't be
- Fix
bannerimagenamenot persisting across moddesc editor sessions - Improvements to some concurrent operations in various places - settings, background task engine, etc
- Inconsistent Check behaviour when using DependsOnKeys #458
Warning
Mods updating to moddesc 9.2 should verify their selection behavior works correctly when using DependsOnKeys, as 9.2 changes how selections work internally. Mods on older versions of moddesc won't be affected by this change.
- Wrong game can launch if SelectedLaunchOption in MainWindow.xaml.cs is not updated properly when game changes #476
- Slightly improved extraction performance for mods that have a very high number of files (file count, not size)
- Fix launch option dialog reverting values to INT/subtitle size 20 if the values aren't changed after it opens.
Notes
- Big thanks to beccatoria for testing the Binary Texture Package system quite extensively
- Internal work has been done to support upcoming ASIs that have additional dependencies beyond just the .asi file. These ASIs will come sometime after launch