Starbound Mod Manager [Deleted]

Thanks for all the preemptive tech support for me, guys. You've been beating me to it every time I log in.

Taking a break from development while I get some much needed dental work done before my birthday on Monday. I've been working on getting the StarDB library I've ported to Java onto Maven's central repository so it can be used in version 2, but the documentation is very lacking, so it's taking some time to figure out. I'll get back in the swing of things soon with an update to 1.5.11 for .pak support.

 

Hey, could somebody help me out? I just downloaded this mod, and when I try to open the .jar file, I get an error that's saying "Mod Manager.jar can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer."

Has anyone else gotten this error? I'm running Mac OSX 10.9, if that helps at all. I'd really like to use this mod, but I'm not sure how to fix this error!

 

how do you install it i cannot find any .jar file?

 

nvm i figured out what i did wrong there but when i double click it it just opens it it dosnt run

 

Macs don't like uncertified apps. Read this kb entry for a solution.

Make sure you have java installed and properly configured.

After that, if you get any errors running the manager see my previous post for info how to get the error log.

 

Thank you so much! It worked perfectly! Now I can use the mod~

 

To expand on what Gyumaou said, sometimes programs like 7zip will associate the .jar filetype as an archive, since a .jar is just a fancy .zip file. So when you click on them, it'll open up the contents instead of running it through Java. You'll probably need to make sure that Java is the program opening the file and now Windows/7zip/Winrar/etc.

 

The Mod Manager doesn't work for me. Can anyone help me out on how to use it properly?

 

I myself am just trying this for the first time...

Having gotten frustrated with the incompatibilities of manual installation, I had hoped that this would be a much easier experience. So far, I'm finding it equally worrying. Thankfully, I haven't got anything going on in Starbound right now that I'm too afraid to lose. So if I somehow blow up my game or something, I'll live.

Still, wish me luck. I just finally got the manager to start without crashing... we'll see if it starts twice in a row, next.

 

You're not giving us any info whatsoever. How can we and why would we help you if we know nothing.

1. Have you read the instructions?
2. What are you doing? What is happening?
   
3. Post your error logs, if any. Read here how
4. What mods are you trying to use? Are they packed properly, again refer to instructions.

For a small number of mods it's probably easier to do it manually. Still, we're here to help just let us know.

 

Alrighty, so I'm back from my first test of the mod manager annnnd...

... I'm still having issues. I'll do my best to adequately explain what has gone wrong, since for some reason I have never once managed to successfully generate an error log.


First off, let me start by saying that the manager did NOT start up twice in a row. It successfully added and installed several mods with much greater ease than I'd expected, and all seemed well until I closed the manager by mistake. It seems that once it's fired up for the first time, it never wants to work again unless I delete everything and start it fresh like it's the first time. I've got it installed, as someone suggested earlier in the thread, in my User/Documents folder to void any kind of permissions kerfuffle... but it doesn't seem to have avoided the 'exception while running application' problem.

A mod manager is only as useful as it is reliable and popular, and right now I can't get it to work more than once... and I know for a fact that I'm not alone in this regard. With the number of mod conflicts only set to rise as the popularity of modding starbound increases, the presence of a reliable mod manager capable of making at least SOME of these mods compatible is going to be very important. If this particular program ran every time I tried to run it, I could very easily see it (and it's future, much prettier incarnation) becoming that platform. As it stands, I've spent several hours attempting to figure out things like "How does this choose which mod to install from the zip file when there are multiple mods inside?" and "Why is More Matter Manipulators STILL not being detected and added to the list when I try to add it?" without ever even touching the game.

I'd almost rather take my chances on picking through the mods manually.

The Colonies mod doesn't like to seem to play with anything else. More Matter Manipulators has NEVER ONCE worked for me, regardless of whether manually installing or trying to use the manager. I've almost assembled a complete LIST of the mods I use which don't really fully work together, enough so that I can at least judge which mods to install together at any given time. Add in the hassle of having to go back and read that the manager only accepts .zip files, that it simply never alerts you as to whether or not it failed to add a mod to the list, or gives any option for mods packaged together in a .zip with another mod... I've just not been able to make it worth the investment in time to actually USE a manager.

If someone could at least solve the problem of it throwing out exceptions every time it loads after the first, regardless of where I install it, then at least I'd feel like I was making some progress. As it were, I've been up and down this thread reading every tip and trick provided, and nothing has solved the issue for me. I know this computer has some funky permissions stuff going on, so it really may be on my end. I'm not going to simply dismiss the program out of hand for something that could be my fault.

But I'm also not the only person who has had this problem, and the number of people who have commented here in this thread is a mere FRACTION of the number of downloads it has had. There has to be a way to write the program such that it at least runs 99.9% of the time when you start it up... or else people are going to start looking elsewhere. And when people look elsewhere, then the mods start getting made in formats compatible with a more popular manager. And then we end up with a situation where certain mods only work with one manager whom the author is loyal to, while other mods are only compatible with the other... and so on and so forth.

Right now, as far as I know, this is the only mod manager available for Starbound. And it's good, when it's working. I just wish it worked more frequently.



Here's a final list of issues I've had.

1. I got a duplicate item error when first launching starbound after installing a small suite of mods. I've encountered this error with dyebucket before, so rather than trying to remember which other mod I'd installed that had a conflict with that, I uninstalled dyebucket.
2. I could not add to my mods list or install More Matter Manipulators. For whatever reason, despite being both a .zip file and appearing at first glance to be properly coded... it has NEVER worked for me.
3. I closed the mod manager after installing my small suite of mods, and attempted to start it up again. Exception errors every time. The only way to get the manager to start again, was to delete every file from the directory except the .jar.
4. No real explanation for how things work is provided. When something happens, or doesn't happen, there is nowhere for me to look except this 20-odd-pages-long thread for answers.
5. Several of my favorite mods come packaged with other mods or alternate versions. Logical Recipes, for example, has a normal and hardcore version.


I really do want to express how hopeful I am that version 2.0 won't have any of these issues, and that I'm not complaining merely for the sake of negativity. I truly WANT this to work as best as it possibly can, because it will mean the difference between me playing with two dozen partially-functional mods and me playing "Starbound, as it was Meant to Be."

 

I understand the frustration that all this is causing. I do, really! It's equally, if not more, frustrating for me to have this mod manager in such a broken state while the version that's far more reliable is taking a long time to develop. The code base is in such an atrocious state for the current version that attempting to fix bugs inevitably leads to more.

That said, reports like these really help me in making sure the same bugs don't make it into version 2 and I appreciate immensely the time put into testing this out and writing out what happened.

There's really no excuse for the mod manager not generating logs when they're needed, and for that I apologize. It makes it all around frustrating for everyone involved and could have been avoided early on. For this reason, the logging in version 2 is extremely detailed and customizable, using a thoroughly tested and popular library.

This is perhaps the one thing that I find most disappointing in all of this. In the case that my mod manager doesn't work for people (and with the nature of software development, there's always going to be at least one person it doesn't work for), I have no alternatives available for people to try.

As for the rest of the stuff, I'll be testing out the mentioned mods thoroughly and will try to narrow down what's causing problems before I release the .pak support update in the next couple of days.

If you'd like, I can also send you an early compiled version of version 2 you can try and see if that works for you. It's not a small download (around 160MB uncompressed) and it's not complete by any means, but it does have basic support for mod installation right now, including mod merging. If nothing else, it'll let me know if it starts up for you and if it doesn't, I can investigate the problem further and see if I can't fix it before a full release.

 

I would be more than happy to give it a shot and see how it works.

From the looks of things here, I'm not going to make much progress with the current version. Curiously enough, it seems that after manually installing several of the mods I'd been having problems with... some of them mysteriously began working properly! Without any of the other ones stopping working!

I've no idea how that happened... I'm prepared to accept that Starbound is haunted.

 

I'm having a Issue with getting the mod manager to find the mod files folder on my macbook.

 

That's a bit weird, all things considered.

From your post I gather you're running Win7/8. I'm in the same boat and have never had a single issue with MoreMM (manual installation). The mod is as simple as it gets - a crafting table, a few items, and some recipes - all in a plain folder structure. If you can't get it to work manually then that suggests an issue either with the mod files (corrupted?) or your copy of Starbound (verify files? check permissions in the relevant directories?).

Can you be more precise?

The manager creates its own /mods/ dir next to the .jar file - that's where the .zip files go before installing. So your dir structure should look something like this:

Code:

|-- Mod Manager
|  |-- config.ini
|  |-- database
|  |-- Mod Manager.jar
|  |-- Mods
|  |  `-- zip archives

Starbound stores the mods in

Code:

steamapps/common/Starbound/mods/

If your problem occurs during the setup phase then you can manually modify the config file. It looks as follows:

Code:

[paths]
systemtype: "Mac OS"
gamefolder: "<path to Steam>\steamapps\common\Starbound"
modsfolder: "<path to Mod Manager>\Mods"
backupfolder: "<path to Mod Manager>\backups"
filemanifest: "<path to Mod Manager>\assets.manifest"

modChooserFile: "<path to Steam>\steamapps\common\Starbound\mods"
[windowsettings]
width: "950"
height: "550"

Get in touch if you need more testers. I did java programming and debugging for some 4 years. Can't help full time but won't mind testing the code for you.

 

I'm trying to find out howto update mods cuz theres this mod i want but i haven to downgrade though I cant be bothered

 

Most mods use functionality that doesn't change much with game versions. The versioning info added to modinfo files works as the simplest sanity-check mechanism.

One trick you might try is to manually change the version info.

1. Open up the mod folder and look for a .modinfo file. It'll look something like this
   
   Code:

   {
   "name" : "LavaBlobber",
   "version" : "Beta v. Furious Koala",
   "path" : ".",
   "dependencies" : [],
     "metadata": {
       "author" : "Armed Mosquito",
       "modversion" : 1.0,
       "support-url" : "http://anvilgaming.org"
       }
   }

2. The "version" field is the sanity check. Modify yours to match the current game version (in plain text). Currently it's
   Code:

   "Beta v. Furious Koala"

Otherwise, if the above doesn't work, try removing the modinfo file altogether. It is not strictly necessary for the mod to work as long as the mod doesn't try to do anything too fancy. If all else fails, ask in the mod's topic - even if the author has abandoned it maybe some other users managed to hotfix it.

 

This is what my one looks like (by the way the reason it says furious koala is becuz i changed it)
{
"name" : "Pony",
"version" : "Beta v. Furious Koala",
"path" : ".",
"dependencies" : []
}

 

Erm, currently having a problem. My Loader loaded up once, worked fine, but after I closed it, every time after when I go to my mods folder and open it, it essentially says there was an "exception while running Application"

 

How do I add new mod with this? Sorry, I just recently bought the beta.