Review: Assassin's Creed Unity

ChemGuy1611 commented 5 months ago

Nexus Username

ChemBoy1

Extension URL

https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/878/

Game URL

https://www.nexusmods.com/assassinscreedunity

Existing Extension URL

NONE

New features

No existing extension

Automatically downloads and installs AnvilToolkit, which is needed to repack game files for some mods.

https://www.nexusmods.com/assassinscreedunity/mods/38

Information

[X] I confirm the above is accurate

Packaging

[X] This extension is packaged correctly

Testing

[X] This game extension has been tested
Review Tasks

If a task fails, contact the author to request changes before continuing.

[ ] Double-check for existing extension
[ ] Is the extension packaged correctly?
[ ] Does it install into Vortex?
[ ] Does it correctly discover the game?
[ ] Does it successfully install a mod?
[ ] Does it successfully install a collection?
[ ] Does the game run correctly with the mods installed?

When reviewed and passed, please complete the following tasks:

[ ] Run the GitHub Actions to add to manifest
[ ] Contact author
[ ] Ask Community to enable the Vortex button for the game
[ ] Update the #vortex-announcements channel on Discord

IDCs commented 4 months ago

Hey @ChemGuy1611, so I can see that for the ACU mods to work, the user must run anvil and re-package the data files into .forge files?

If that is so, is there even a point in deploying the mods to the game folder? We could have a separate modType for such mods that never deploys so that users can just create those forge files through the staging folder (and keep the game directory nice and tidy).

We can then go further and have a merged mod that contains all the *.data files with a numerical prefix to control the loadorder. If Anvil has commandline arguments we can actually ensure we create a merged .forge file on deployment.

I'm afraid the extension is too simplistic for what the Assassin Creed games require :/

Have a look at the merging functionality we include in the Dragon Age extensions and its archive handlers for an idea of what would be required.

ChemGuy1611 commented 4 months ago

Thanks for the reply. As always, your time and assistance is greatly appreciated!

So, for the .forge file unpacking and repacking, basically AnvilToolKit (ATK) will unpack the .forge files in the game folder, with a folder structure for the individual .data files. For most .forge mods, the mod files are the .data files in the same folder structure to be packaged into the .forge files by ATK. When the user downloads and deploys the mod in Vortex, it will deploy to the game folder and place the .data files within that folder structure, so that when the user repacks the .forge file with ATK, the new .data files will be packed into the .forge file. ATK grabs all .data files in the "Extracted" folder and packs them into a new copy of the .forge file and overwrites it (it creates backups of the originals when first unpacking). The files appear to use a leading number to prioritize the assets, so the mod assets usually start the file names with a "1".

Basically, ATK is repacking .data files into the game's existing .forge files, rather than creating new ones (I'm not sure if the game will alow you to load .forge files other than the original set).

There are also some mods that simply directly overwrite the .forge files with new ones in the game root folder, like this one: https://www.nexusmods.com/assassinscreedunity/mods/108?tab=files

Here are some screenshots of how the folders look after unpack and the matching mod folder structure:

Game Folder with Extracted game asset folders in "dlc_10", "dlc_11", and "Extracted":