A New External Lotro Mod Manager
 

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen,

It's finally here! :) A very easy-to-use Mod Manager for all those mods.

You can find the source page here: http://lotromod.projectparagon.info/


For more technical information, it makes it easier to set up the folder layout by automatically placing your mods in the Lotro\Plugins Directory and allowing a one-click activate/deactivate. This Mod Manager works externally to LOTRO.

This Mod Manager complements Cearbhall's PluginManager which is for in-game only.

My team has made some of your Lua plugins already available as *.lotromod files (which are just zip files with a renamed extension ;) ) and are included in the samples. However, feel free to make your own *.lotromod files and distribute as you see necessary! :)

You can find detailed information on the LotroMod format on the LotroInterface Wiki

Thanks for the link Bredic. :)

No worries Cairenn! :)

I am happy to create releases here on LotroInterface to keep it all in-house.
Not quite sure where to head to upload version 1.0 - what category would it fit under?

so we start this prior to launching lotro right?

ok...do i have to turn it off when i leave lotro?

or can i leave it on for the next time i run it?

and will it work across accounts like plugins/abc files do now?
(i have 4 separate lotro clients)

also if i am already using shady's in game manager...how does this one help me?

:D

I don't have a specific category for something like this, just yet, because until this introduction of Lua into the game there hasn't been much call for anything like this. All the other tools that have been released have been for developers, not users.

I have to go out for a while (family visiting from out of town) but I'll try to create a new download category when I get home later on tonight, tomorrow by the latest.

You can start it or stop it whenever. However, if you do activate or de-activate a plugin, just make sure to do a "/plugins refresh" in-game. You can turn Lotro on, log in, switch to the Mod Manager, activate a plugin, switch to Lotro, do "/plugins refresh", load your plugins and away you go... :)

Yes, once you activate a plugin, it is placed in the Lotro/plugins directory. This means that the plugin is available for activation whenever you run Lotro on that computer account - NOTE: The computer account is what you use to log in to your computer, not your Lotro accounts. So you can log out of Lotro, re-log in on a different Lotro account and it will all be there. If you do something like Start -> Log off and choose a different computer account, then you will need to re-add and re-activate the mods (same as the abc files) since the mods are stored in your "My Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\Plugins" directory.

This Mod Manager places the plugins in the appropriate directory for your Lotro game to detect. So it will place Shady's in-game manager in the right spot for Lotro to detect. Think of Shady's manager for managing the plugins inside the game, whereas the Lotro Mod Manager is for managing the plugins outside of the game. :)

New download cat is ready: http://www.lotrointerface.com/downloads/cat6.html

I just gave it a whirl, because I wasn't quite sure what I would need this for, having the in game manager.

It's pretty slick! First off, it comes with the few that I already use (so good taste there), and second, it's a great way to keep your 'in game' list cleaned up. If you like to download and try lots of plugins, it's a good way to download a bunch, throw in this external mod manager, activate, try it out in game, if you don't like it, de-activate it out in the mod manager, and it's not in the 'in game' list the next time you run the game (or do a /plugins refresh).

Now to figure out how to automatically update our plugins from this site, and to allow us to grab new plugins through it! :p

Bredic and I are already talking about how we can get this working with Minion so that it will do exactly that (find updates, look for new scripts or skins). :)

Thank you for your kind words. :)

As Cairenn mentioned, the auto updating stuff is in the works. In the meantime, we really need as many of the current plugins converted to the LotroMod format as possible. This will allow people a single-click install (or a drag-n-drop install).

The LotroMod format is specified here on the wiki and it's very easy to use! :)

Happy Modding!

I would like to suggest that you keep support for files with the .zip extension as well - provided that they include the required xml file. Mainly because it's kinda counterproductive in combination with the subversion available here - which can only generate .zip files. Although I can edit my trunk to include the necessary xml file, I don't have any control over that extension.

There is a little secret....if you drop a valid LotroMod file on the Mod Manager with the zip extension, it will work like a charm. :) In fact, the extension "zip" and "lotromod" are interchangeable.

Thanks for the info though - didn't know the SVN here generated zips only. But yeah - zips are totally cool as is. :)

Ok good deal! I just wanted to make sure. You probably know as much as I do that when it comes to apps dealing with files, there are plenty of them that get lazy with validation. :p

This is nice for the end-users must admit. Cheers!

Just a little idea .. this could be easily tweaked to support skins as well, yes ? *winks*

edit: and maybe you should make some kind of link to this thread (or new thread) in Wiki if you're not planning to upload the manager here.. would make the commenting a bit easier to keep them all in one place :)

As there doesn't seem to be a reaction on my file comment, I'll repost it here, hoping Bredic will see it this way. ;)

I'm not sure if this is known, but it looks like (in v1.0.0) the metadata update dialog is set to reset the

to

every time it is saved. Tends to get confused a lot for me. :)