[Feature Request] Remove dropdown option for mods in a modpack

[sleepy-evelyn]

Having to press a blue arrow to expand the mods list seems un-neccesary. It's not obvious that the launcher can even display the mod list for the pack I imported from modrinth without just testing to see what the button does.

I understand this option might be so people can add their own categories of client mods but this could be done a different way, maybe by prioritising those installed by the user at the top and giving them a unique colour or icon to show they have been installed manually by the player.

[sleepy-evelyn]

Finally another issue with this design is it's hard to spot duplicates.

I decided to install sodium manually here but you can see I now have 2 seperate versions of the same mod installed. Ideally the launcher recognises is a mod has already been added to an instance to prevent duplicates.

[Moulberry]

Having to press a blue arrow to expand the mods list seems un-neccesary.

Most people don't need to open the modpack to see the individual mods. Forcing all the mods of a modpack to be shown would just make it even harder to organize and update.

Finally another issue with this design is it's hard to spot duplicates.

It's gonna be hard to spot duplicates either way, unless you can memorize every mod that's part of a pack in your head. If you really need to check if Sodium is already installed, you can just type Sodium into the search bar

[sleepy-evelyn]

The thing is both the Modrinth App and ATLauncher list all the mods in the modpack without requiring additional steps. Both also handle duplicates properly by presenting a "re-install" button when searching for new mods that are already in a pack

I don't think the current design is intuitive because hiding content from the user after they've selected the "mods" category doesn't really make much sense. There is no risk in presenting the data requested by a user and there are plenty of occasions where a user may want to disable a client mod within a pack. For someone who uses an M1 Macbook I have to do this for most modpacks as mods can often include x86 exclusive features or libraries.

[Moulberry]

The thing is both the Modrinth App and ATLauncher list all the mods in the modpack

The Modrinth App and ATLauncher work by downloading the mods from the modpack and then throwing them into the mods folder. Pandora actually allows modpacks to be loaded directly.
If you open the mods folder of an instance, you won't see 200 different jar files, you'll just see the single .mrpack file. This makes organization much easier.
Modrinth App/ATLauncher show modpack mods alongside other mods not because it's the better design, but because they are forced to due to the way they load modpacks.

I don't think the current design is intuitive because hiding content from the user after they've selected the "mods" category doesn't really make much sense. There is no risk in presenting the data requested by a user and there are plenty of occasions where a user may want to disable a client mod within a pack. For someone who uses an M1 Macbook I have to do this for most modpacks as mods can often include x86 exclusive features or libraries.

The vast majority of users just want to run modpacks as-is. The current system makes organization significantly easier since the mods from the modpack are separated from mods that they installed separately.

Even if you need to toggle mods off for your M1 mac, you only need to do that once. Saving a single button click 1% of the time at the cost of worse organization the other 99% of the time is not a good tradeoff.

I guess I could make it so that if there is only a single modpack inside the mods folder the dropdown starts open, but if you have other mods installed alongside the pack it starts closed

[sleepy-evelyn]

I don't think what you've said is true. Most users do want to add additional client mods or remove mods they don't want within a pack. It's part of the reason why Prismlauncher is so popular and tools like Packwiz with optional mod selection tools are frequently used by server owners when they develop custom modpacks.

Being able to easily disable mods is a neccesity for almost every single modpack you download on Apple Silicon devices. For example modpacks often bundle the distant horizons mod which hasn't worked on Macbooks for a long time. The same goes for Vivecraft, certain game controller mods, often Iris shaders as well and some voicechat mods.

it took me about 10 minutes to even figure out how to do this with the current layout and I only discovered you could disable individual mods after clicking on the dropdown button through sheer trial and error. I don't think it's good design because deliberately hiding information from the user doesn't make any sense if a player already has the "mods" category selected.

As I mentioned before the current design makes it incredibly easy to install duplicate mods as well. Thats the main problem i'm trying to put forward.

[Moulberry]

Most users do want to add additional client mods

Yes, which this system makes easier because their additional mods aren't just thrown into the middle of a huge modpack

Being able to easily disable mods is a neccesity for almost every single modpack you download on Apple Silicon devices.

You can simply type "distant horizons" into the search bar.
I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you do know there is a search bar right? Because your other complaints with installing duplicate mods makes it sound like you didn't see the search bar

it took me about 10 minutes to even figure out how to do this with the current layout and I only discovered you could disable individual mods after clicking on the dropdown button through sheer trial and error.

What? You didn't try clicking the only button other than the toggle button for 10 minutes? Where were you even looking for those 10 minutes for how to disable individual mods

[sleepy-evelyn]

I've already suggested alternate methods for making additional mods clearer without relying on this dropdown approach. Those are only suggestions though.

To answer no I didn't notice the search bar, it doesn't stand out. I'm sure I would have noticed with time but my mind doesn't work like that I miss details all the time. I wasn't staring at the mods page for 10 minutes straight obviously but I simply thought that because it only showed the .mrpack file I couldn't add or remove mods until I used trial and error. The fact that isn't immediately obvious I think is bad GUI design.

I'll give another example. I thought Pandora Launcher hadn't added the ability to load log files yet until again through trial and error I clicked "select log file" because that looks like a text input box at first glance. The text is faded and only a very tiny arrow at the end suggests it's a dropdown box which I missed. For some reason clicking on the massive box in the center doesn't do anything. Surely turning that into a button would make more sense if nothing is loaded yet.

p.s. It would be nice if you were not so condescending in your replies. I've only used your launcher for a couple of hours i'm not an expert. I'm just sharing first impressions of what I saw.

[Moulberry]

I've already suggested alternate methods for making additional mods clearer without relying on this dropdown approach. Those are only suggestions though.

If you mean 'maybe by prioritising those installed by the user at the top and giving them a unique colour or icon', I'm not sure if that's very clear.

To answer no I didn't notice the search bar, it doesn't stand out. I'm sure I would have noticed with time but my mind doesn't work like that I miss details all the time. I wasn't staring at the mods page for 10 minutes straight obviously but I simply thought that because it only showed the .mrpack file I couldn't add or remove mods until I used trial and error. The fact that isn't immediately obvious I think is bad GUI design.

It's really hard to design a UI if you just don't notice important UI elements. I think that's the fundamental problem here, not whether or not there is a dropdown, but helping you notice it. The only real way to solve that is by adding some kind of tutorial that points you towards the search bar/dropdown button and encourages you to click on it.

I'll give another example. I thought Pandora Launcher hadn't added the ability to load log files yet until again through trial and error I clicked "select log file" because that looks like a text input box at first glance. The text is faded and only a very tiny arrow at the end suggests it's a dropdown box which I missed. For some reason clicking on the massive box in the center doesn't do anything. Surely turning that into a button would make more sense if nothing is loaded yet.

Making the center a button isn't ideal because the center gets hidden once you select a log, so you wouldn't be able to switch without clicking the intended dropdown. I added upwards pointing arrows to the text which should make it harder to miss the dropdown:

p.s. It would be nice if you were not so condescending in your replies. I've only used your launcher for a couple of hours i'm not an expert. I'm just sharing first impressions of what I saw.

I'm not sure which reply you mean but if it was the very last one, I was simply shocked that it was possible to spend 10 minutes, but I see now that it was just an exaggeration.

[Moulberry]

I can also just make the launcher remember whether you have the pack open/closed and then make it open by default? That's probably doable

[sleepy-evelyn]

If you mean 'maybe by prioritising those installed by the user at the top and giving them a unique colour or icon', I'm not sure if that's very clear.

It could honestly be something as simple as giving the mod names bold text and placing them at the top of the list. I'm not going to pretend I know what the best solution is here though.

The only real way to solve that is by adding some kind of tutorial that points you towards the search bar/dropdown button and encourages you to click on it

It's definately not the only way. Visual design is primarily about the shape and appearance of elements and where they are placed. Often text isn't even required if an icon is distinct enough. Although it's best to still add tooltips for accesibility.

For example here the search box pops out because it's seperated by padding from other content. The launcher follows a consistent theme whereby I instinctively know that colour of gray represents an input box. The box is rounded to signify it's an interactable element. The box is also fairly large in size and not smaller than other elements on the page.

Simularly for the dropdown box in Pandora launcher you want a fixed width so you can see the downwards arrow and again a certain amount of padding and contrast. Additionally you could automatically load the latest.log file like Modrinth does to make it clear that the app can load in log files.

I'm not sure which reply you mean

I mean the comments about not knowing the search bar was there and the 10 minute comment. I didn't provide enough context though I should have said it took me about 10 minutes from the moment I first installed the launcher. In that time I was also installing and launching modpacks, adding mods, tweaking the launcher etc... I don't think it was an exageration because I was explaining that I should have understood what it meant from the beginning without having to use trial and error.

[Moulberry]

For example here the search box pops out because it's seperated by padding from other content. The launcher follows a consistent theme whereby I instinctively know that colour of gray represents an input box.

I agree, the input boxes should have a distinct colour from the background. I'll try to submit a pull request upstream to change this

The box is also fairly large in size and not smaller than other elements on the page.

The search box in Pandora also took up the whole page

Additionally you could automatically load the latest.log file like Modrinth does to make it clear that the app can load in log files.

Hm probably, my concern would be if the latest.log file was extremely large it wouldn't be a good idea to load automatically.

I mean the comments about not knowing the search bar was there

I did say "I mean this in the nicest way possible", and even then it did turn out that you didn't see the search bar, so I'm not sure what the problem is

[Moulberry]

I submitted an upstream pull request here to make input elements easier to see: longbridge/gpui-component#2135

[sleepy-evelyn]

The search box in Pandora also took up the whole page

The horizontal width doesn't really matter, in some ways it can be a detriment because it blends in too well and looks like a vertical spacer. It's about the size of the box overall and the size of the text within it.

my concern would be if the latest.log file was extremely large it wouldn't be a good idea to load automatically.

You could check the size of the file to handle rare edge cases when the file size is too large. In that case you just wouldn't load anything or pick another log file to load in.

I did say "I mean this in the nicest way possible"

Adding that on doesn't really change what was said. The problem was not what was said but how it was said. "but you do know there is a search bar right?" was un-neccesary and the way you phrased it makes it sound like if someone misses the search bar they must be dumb. In the same way though maybe me saying I thought this was bad GUI design was un-neccesary as well.