Hey friends,
Hope you're all doing good? I just wanted to chat with you real quick about Clean Launcher and what I plan to do looking forward.
I have a love/hate relationship with it; it's my first computer program, and its reception has been kind of hit and miss. Some of you love it; some... well, I've cried at least once... The final straw for me was yesterday; a post woke me up to getting it sorted out once and for all. No more slapdash organizing, no chance of something going wrong. So here's what's happening...I've stripped the whole app back down to its bare bones, and I'm rebuilding section by section. The auto-organize feature has been nuked. It only worked well on smaller mod folders that are already fairly well organized. There's no possible way for me to account for every keyword and every format a modder/CC creator uses to name their content; thus, files like 'countertop' end up in 'tops' or vice versa. But I do like the idea of a manual organizer, so that's what I'm creating. It reads the folders already in your mods folder, displays them, and allows you to create new folders, drag and drop content over, and undo changes. No mistakes; no auto sorting. Basically, what I should have done in the first place, instead of trying to do the impossible. I've changed the duplicate file checker to be visually clearer, done away with the autofix, and made the fixes clear and easy (IMO). Scan Mods in general is going to be much more user-friendly by the time I've finished with it and cope with bigger mod folders better.What else? Oh right, Mod Profiles! Yes, this is getting an overhaul too, and I've made it far more robust, with safety fallbacks.
I'm keeping the dependency and outdated checker but ONLY for my mods, Core Library, and maybe UI Cheats. It's too much for me to manually keep on top of other modders' updates and add them to the JSON I host on GitHub. Originally, this app was meant to be for my mods only anyway, so I could help people troubleshoot any issues they were having.
So, if there's anything you'd like to see in Clean Launcher, add a comment here, or chat with me on Discord. For those asking about a Mac version, I don't have a Mac. I planned to bootcamp my NUC PC, but I just haven't had time. My main priority is to get everything on my to-do list out first.
If you got this far, thank you for reading! I have been having a bit of imposter syndrome lately, and when I have to put out multiple updates for my gameplay mods over the course of a few days, I feel really crappy for getting something wrong. However, on the other side of it, at least I'm quick to fix it! 😂Thank you, as always, for your support. I couldn't do any of this without each and every one of you, and for that, I'm eternally grateful!
~midnitetech 💚