ME3Tweaks Mod Manager 9.2 Build 136 changelog

[Mgamerz]

Mod Manager 9.2 is currently in private alpha

Note

This changelog is a work in progress

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, and the ability to modify the GlobalShaderCache via the M3GS feature.

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.

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.

Rich-text formatting for mod metadata

Mod Manager's mod description panel now has better formatting, making the metadata for mods easier to read. This will be expanded upon in the future.

Local log viewer fallback

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.

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.

Advanced diagnostics

The Mod Manager Logs & Diagnostics panel now has an 'Advanced 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.

Changed Features

• Application now runs on bundled .NET 10 (previously bundled .NET 8)
• 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
• 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
• Deployment requirement: Forced Export must now be consistent (explain this further)
• 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.

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 nexuscode being 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 bannerimagename not persisting across moddesc editor sessions
• Improvements to some concurrent operations in various places - settings, background task engine, etc