Other VAR Manager

[bill_prime]

bill_prime updated VAR Manager with a new update entry:

Small update, fixed a few potential issues with some of the save/load buttons.

Small update, fixed a few potential issues with some of the save/load buttons.
Added exception handing to the save/load filters buttons.

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[xadamadax]

Bill, been using forever, but never stopped to comment. Fantastic tool. I've been meaning to ask, if it's not too much work to add restore exceptions on the installation side (not the repo side). I.E. If you have subfolders in the VAM addonpackages folder and only want to bring in packages that are referenced by a subset of those folders. Either way, love the tool and use it almost daily.

 

[Fibus]

I added some exception handling to the Save Filters button, can you grab the newest version from here: https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/var-manager.16971/history
Should be VAMvarmanager_debug.34
Can you try the Save Filters again with this version and let me know what the error message box says?

v35 is a bit of an improvement. Canceling out of the save prompt for Save Filters no longer throws an error, but I still cannot successfully save the .xml file containing the filters. Entering a file name and pressing Save gives this error.

 

[Fibus]

v35 is a bit of an improvement. Canceling out of the save prompt for Save Filters no longer throws an error, but I still cannot successfully save the .xml file containing the filters. Entering a file name and pressing Save gives this error.

Out of curiosity, I did some additional testing. At least for me, the errors that I previously posted begin to occur with version 31 (Jun 22nd '22 release). Version 30 and prior appear to work without throwing errors. Interestingly, version 31 is also when the load time for the app began to increase (v30 loads instantly but v31 takes a few seconds). I only did minimal testing of moving old vars (which was one of the options that threw errors). Save Filters is not an option in this version so I cannot test. Hopefully this helps, if you continue to investigate this issue.

 

[bill_prime]

v35 is a bit of an improvement. Canceling out of the save prompt for Save Filters no longer throws an error, but I still cannot successfully save the .xml file containing the filters. Entering a file name and pressing Save gives this error.
View attachment 206328

Well this is pretty much useless to me unfortunately. Sorry, really hard to debug issues I can't reproduce.
Let me think about it a bit. Got any screenshots of your VAR Manager before you click these buttons?

 

[bill_prime]

Out of curiosity, I did some additional testing. At least for me, the errors that I previously posted begin to occur with version 31 (Jun 22nd '22 release). Version 30 and prior appear to work without throwing errors. Interestingly, version 31 is also when the load time for the app began to increase (v30 loads instantly but v31 takes a few seconds). I only did minimal testing of moving old vars (which was one of the options that threw errors). Save Filters is not an option in this version so I cannot test. Hopefully this helps, if you continue to investigate this issue.

One thing we can try it resetting all the VAR manager settings entirely.
Just delete this folder from your computer:
%localappdata%\VAMvarmanager

 

[nsfwthrowaway77]

Hey Bill, quick question - does the "skip favorites" option also skip vars referenced by those favorites?

I've had some people mention that before, it might have to do with files that were created in WinRAR or something and the ZIP library I am using cannot read them.
If someone could send me an example of a broken file, I could do some more research.

Also, here is my list of "broken" vars if it helps you narrow it down:

 

[bill_prime]

Hey Bill, quick question - does the "skip favorites" option also skip vars referenced by those favorites?


Also, here is my list of "broken" vars if it helps you narrow it down:
View attachment 206488

That's a lot of broken vars... hmmmmmmmmm doesn't make sense. Is one of them pretty small file size you can upload here?

Skip favorites will not backup/move vars that contain files marked as favorites.

 

[nsfwthrowaway77]

Skip favorites will not backup/move vars that contain files marked as favorites.

Right, it won't move a var marked as favorite - but, if that favorite has dependencies that are NOT marked as favorite, will it move those? I guess I could just try to test this myself lol.

Anyway here's one of the small broken vars.
7zip gave me a "header error" when unzipping it, but it seemed to unzip fine.
Also, these vars don't have any problem loading in vam.

 

[bill_prime]

Right, it won't move a var marked as favorite - but, if that favorite has dependencies that are NOT marked as favorite, will it move those? I guess I could just try to test this myself lol.

Anyway here's one of the small broken vars.
7zip gave me a "header error" when unzipping it, but it seemed to unzip fine.
Also, these vars don't have any problem loading in vam.

Thank you, I can see he file has an error, and the error being thrown "A local file header is corrupt." for that file in VAR Manager.
After doing some digging it might be a problem with the .NET zip library not able to work around this.
Seems they may have fixed the error in .NET 7.0
I am going to try updating to .NET 7.0 and see what happens.

 

[bill_prime]

bill_prime updated VAR Manager with a new update entry:

Updated to .NET 7.0, fixes a number of issues with unreadable archives.

Updated to .NET 7.0, fixed some issues with unreadable vars.
You need the .NET 7.0 Desktop Runtime
You can grab it here: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/7.0
Direct link to 64-bit: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/...u/runtime-desktop-7.0.2-windows-x64-installer

Fixes:

• Unreadable vars due to zip file header error
• Unreadable vars due to meta.json errors (trailing commons)
  • Naughty...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[bill_prime]

Right, it won't move a var marked as favorite - but, if that favorite has dependencies that are NOT marked as favorite, will it move those? I guess I could just try to test this myself lol.

Anyway here's one of the small broken vars.
7zip gave me a "header error" when unzipping it, but it seemed to unzip fine.
Also, these vars don't have any problem loading in vam.

Thanks, the latest update should fix a number of your issues.

 

[bill_prime]

bill_prime updated VAR Manager with a new update entry:

Fixed issue with zip file triggering windows defender for some reason...hopefully.

Fixed issue with zip file triggering windows defender for some reason...hopefully.

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[nsfwthrowaway77]

Thanks, the latest update should fix a number of your issues.

Yep no more broken vars error in the .net 7 update

 

[SneakyOne]

Hi guys,I have a complete noob question.So I downloaded Var manager from hub,installed .NET 7.0 Desktop Runtime. What to do next? How to launch this Var manager?

 

[bill_prime]

Hi guys,I have a complete noob question.So I downloaded Var manager from hub,installed .NET 7.0 Desktop Runtime. What to do next? How to launch this Var manager?

Did you download the resource and extract the .EXE file from the zip? It's called VAMvarmanager.exe
After you open it, you need to select your VAM main directory and the folder where you want to backup your .var files.

 

[SneakyOne]

Did you download the resource and extract the .EXE file from the zip? It's called VAMvarmanager.exe
After you open it, you need to select your VAM main directory and the folder where you want to backup your .var files.

Thank you for reply!

 

[willmason]

Hey Bill great work as always - I have a new situation I'm trying to use var manager: I have a folder of clothing presets I would like to continue to use in a fresh VAM install, however I'm unsure of how to use the information in the presets to "quarantine" off any dependencies needed for these presets. I tried checking off only "clothing presets" for the exceptions as the only checkbox, but this didn't remove nearly as many var's as would make sense, and addonpackages still has random ones that I'm sure aren't applicable. any advice would help greatly!

 

[bill_prime]

Hey Bill great work as always - I have a new situation I'm trying to use var manager: I have a folder of clothing presets I would like to continue to use in a fresh VAM install, however I'm unsure of how to use the information in the presets to "quarantine" off any dependencies needed for these presets. I tried checking off only "clothing presets" for the exceptions as the only checkbox, but this didn't remove nearly as many var's as would make sense, and addonpackages still has random ones that I'm sure aren't applicable. any advice would help greatly!

When you check-off "Clothing" under Scan Local Presets for References it will search the entire Custom\Atom\Person\Clothing folder (and sub-folders) for any .var references.
So you would need to manually move files from there, and keep only the .vap preset files you want to keep clothing active for.

I suppose what you would need to do is:
1. Backup Everything

• There is no easy button to do this, but you could use the Backup All Specific-Type vars button, having selected everything in the OR column like this (click the column header to select everything):
• 
• After this, all vars should be moved to the backup folder except for any exceptions you have selected for creators or folders to not back up.
• FYI: This button does not check for references, it only checks for the type of objects in each var.

2. Restore Only the vars you need/want

• Now, you can use the Restore All Referenced vars button (having selected the "Clothing" option under Scan Local Presets for References) to restore any vars needed for those clothing presets, and any other references needed, from your backup folder.

 

[willmason]

amazing thank you!

When you check-off "Clothing" under Scan Local Presets for References it will search the entire Custom\Atom\Person\Clothing folder (and sub-folders) for any .var references.
So you would need to manually move files from there, and keep only the .vap preset files you want to keep clothing active for.

I suppose what you would need to do is:
1. Backup Everything

• There is no easy button to do this, but you could use the Backup All Specific-Type vars button, having selected everything in the OR column like this (click the column header to select everything):
• View attachment 214776
• After this, all vars should be moved to the backup folder except for any exceptions you have selected for creators or folders to not back up.
• FYI: This button does not check for references, it only checks for the type of objects in each var.

2. Restore Only the vars you need/want

• Now, you can use the Restore All Referenced vars button (having selected the "Clothing" option under Scan Local Presets for References) to restore any vars needed for those clothing presets, and any other references needed, from your backup folder.

 

[bill_prime]

bill_prime updated VAR Manager with a new update entry:

Fixed sub-folder exceptions not working for backup and restore exceptions.

Fixed sub-folder exceptions not working for backup and restore exceptions.
If you have sub-folders selected in your Folder Exceptions, It would backup those vars even if they were specified as a Folder exception.

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[AWWalker]

Can it handle SYMLINKS and HARDLINKS? I have vars on their own separate M2, with a junction pointing to it.

 

[bill_prime]

Can it handle SYMLINKS and HARDLINKS? I have vars on their own separate M2, with a junction pointing to it.

Actually, I didn't know how SYMLINKs or HARDLINKS work and just looked it up.
As they are just files, it will work fine. It will move the SYMLINK and HARDLINK files between the VAM folder and some BACKUP folder that you create to turn them on/off in game basically.
You would need to create the symlinks and hardlinks first of course, VAR Manager doesn't do anything to create them automatically.

 

[AWWalker]

I hardlink the whole folder, i'll try again, had a few .net runtime errors whenever it was trying to process. If i see what it's doing, or catch the $error, i'll let you know.

basically i'm doing this:

mklink /j /d AddOnPackages v:\addonpackages

so that that folder actually lives on a separate m2 drive on a different bus, so that it helps with load speed. I do this for my daz folders too. Would really love to figure this app out to reduce the fluff automagically.

 

[xadamadax]

I hardlink the whole folder, i'll try again, had a few .net runtime errors whenever it was trying to process. If i see what it's doing, or catch the $error, i'll let you know.

basically i'm doing this:

mklink /j /d AddOnPackages v:\addonpackages

so that that folder actually lives on a separate m2 drive on a different bus, so that it helps with load speed. I do this for my daz folders too. Would really love to figure this app out to reduce the fluff automagically.

I use sym links and it works great