NOMM Guides

• 1: The NOMM onboarding process
• 2: Launcher Presentation
• 3: Dashboard Presentation

1 - The NOMM onboarding process

NOMM comes with a really simple & intuitive onboarding experience.

It will ask you for basic information like where you want to store downlaods, and where you want to store your mods in staging.

Staging & Downloads folder selection

Keep in mind that:

• Since NOMM uses symlinks, there is no obligation to keep the staging folder on the same drive as your games.
• NOMM will create its own game-specific folders in both the downloads and staging folders.
• NOMM will not create a parent folder in the folder you have selected. That folder will act as a parent folder

To clarify, this will be the file structure for downloads:

[download-folder-you-selected]
|-- Skyrim
|   |-- mod_1.zip
|   `-- mod_2.7z
|-- Warhammer 40K Darktide
|   |-- mod_1.zip
|   |-- mod_2.rar
|   `-- mod_3.zip
`-- Final Fantasy XII
    `-- mod_1.7z

And this will be the file structure for staging:

[staging-folder-you-selected]
|-- Skyrim
|   |-- mod_1
|   |   |-- mod_1_files
|   |   `-- more_mod_1_files
|   `-- mod_2
|       `-- mod_2_files
|-- Warhammer 40K Darktide
|   |-- mod_1
|       `-- mod_1_files
|   |-- mod_2
|       `-- mod_2_files
|   `-- mod_3
|       `-- mod_3_files
`-- Final Fantasy XII
    `-- mod_1
        `-- mod_1_files

Nexus API key

You have the option to add your Nexus API key to NOMM to enable mod and metadata downloads.

This API key can be obtained from the Nexus website via this link and scrolling all the way down.

You may also obtain it yourself by following these steps:

• Click on your avatar top right,
• Select Site Preferences
• Select the API keys tab on the left

And then in the same way, you will have to scroll all the way down to obtain your API key.

Once you have copied it, you can simply paste it directly in NOMM.

If you want you can simply press “continue” on this step, but obviously that will disable half the features of NOMM.

You can always add this key later from the options menu.

Giving NOMM access

NOMM will need access to a few paths to work properly. The first thing NOMM will do once initial setup is over is scan your libraries that are configured on supported platforms.

Once it has done that, it will request that the user give it access to those libraries AND the previously selected paths for downloads and staging.

As much as NOMM will be able to continue functionning without the access to all libraries, NOMM will not be able to launch without write access to the downloads and the staging folder as that would directly impact its ability to mod literally any game.

Once you have used the command generated by NOMM, you will have to restart it for those new access rights to be provided to the app.

And that’s it, you’re done!

Next steps

Even though NOMM’s UI was designed to be simple and intuitive, we still made a wiki page on navigating the UI if you’re lost.

You can also check out the troubleshooting guide if your games/mods aren’t working or your NOMM is facing problems.

2 - Launcher Presentation

Initial scan & access check

Your first step when you launch the app is the “launcher”. It is where all the library-based logic happens.

Access check

First, the launcher checks if it has access to all your libraries.

If it doesn’t it will display a special screen to ask you to provide access or to ignore and continue anyway.

Game detection

The launcher will then check all of your config files and try and match them with games in your libraries.

Once that process is done (generally takes <1 second), it will display all your games in a neat library-style format.

Main screen

Congratulations, you’ve reached NOMM’s main library window!

Each detected game will be represented by a tile. Each tile has:

• the logo of the platform it was detected on bottom right
• the number of downloaded mods displayed bottom left
• the detected path of that game when you mouse over

From here you can do one of three things:

You can:

• Select a game and move on to the dashboard
• Modify the options
• Force a full rescan of libraries & config files

Options

NOMM comes with some options to customise your modding experience.

First you have the options to modify the downloads and staging paths. Doing this will cause NOMM to check that it has access to these new folders right away.

You also have the option to modify the Nexus API key (with a little button that checks if the API key is valid)

“General” settings

Per-game accent colour

In the configuration yamls for each game, it is possible to define a colour that corresponds to that game. If that value is set and this option is turned on, when the user launches a game from the launcher, the primary colour will be replaced by that configured colour.

Skip Launcher

If this option is turned on, the app will entirely skip the launcher and instantly launch the dashboard for the last selected game.

Disable download window

By default, NOMM spawns download windows when downloading files from supported platforms. It is possible to hide those windows entirely and only show the notifications that signal a download started and was finished (or an error occurred).

Fullscreen NOMM

This will launch the dashboard windows in full screen (this will not impact the launcher windows).

Forcing a rescan

You can always force NOMM to rescan libraries. This will:

• Force NOMM to scan for all libraries
• Force NOMM to un-ignore previously ignored libraries
• Force NOMM to syncronise the configuration files with the versions included in the release

3 - Dashboard Presentation

The NOMM dashboard is split into three tabs.

The Mods tab

Action Buttons

Let’s start by explaining the handful of buttons top right.

The mods tab lists all the mods currently available in the staging folder.

Refreshing the metadata (Checking for updates)

As previously mentioned, checking for updates is done via the metadata refresh button ().

Once the button is clicked, all mods that have mod IDs will get their data refreshed from the connected modding platform.

If a mod is detected, a new button will appear on the mod’s row in the list.

Clicking this button will take you to

The mod list

The main part of this screen is the list of currently installed mods.

Here is where we need to differentiate between manually downloaded mods and mods downloaded through NOMM.

• For manually downloaded mods, all NOMM knows is
  • the file’s name
  • the file’s download date
  • the file’s contents
• For mods downloaded through NOMM, we have also access to:
  • The mod’s real name (often quite different from the file name)
  • The author(s)
  • The uploader
  • The version
  • The description
  • The link to upvote/endorse a mod
  • The thumbnail

Row contents

Each row contains (if the mod was downloaded from a supported platform)

On the left side:

• A toggle to enable/disable the mod
• The mod’s name as a title of the row (or the file’s name if the mod was manually downloaded)
• The mod’s author(s) as a subtitle

On the right side:

• The update available indicator () (only appears if an update is available)
• The mod installation () date & time (you can mouse over this to get a full date format)
• The mod enabled () date & time (you can mouse over this to get a full date format)
• A bin () button to remove a mod from the staging folder. This does not remove the downloaded files, only the installed files. It will still be possible to reinstall the mod from the downloads tab later.

The mod preview pane

With NOMM 0.10.0 we have introduced a mod preview pane, accessed by clicking directly on any row in the mod list.

Changing the deployment path

The preview pane allows the user to change the deployment path of a specific mod.

This is useful for mods that don’t fit the mold and need to be deployed somewhere different than most other mods for a game.

For obvious reasons, this can only be done when the mod is not deployed.

This change is permanent until the mod is removed or reinstalled. In those cases, you will need to re-do the change.

Changing a mod ID

The preview pane also allows the user to change a mod’s ID.

This is generally used when you manually downloaded a mod and you want to link that mod to an entry on a supported modding platform.

After having modified the mod IDs of the mods you want to link, you have to refresh the metadata of the mods.

The downloads tab

The downloads tab is designed to handle the downloaded mods (i.e. the archives).

The downloads tab is a lot more straightforward than the mods tab.

There is no preview pane, and very limited information on the mods displayed.

Let’s look at a row again:

On the left we have:

• As a title, the name of the mod (if the mod was downloaded via NOMM)
• As a subtitle, the name of the file

On the right we have:

• The version of the downloaded mod
• The downloaded date ()
• The installed date ()
• The “Install” button (replaced by the “Reinstall” button when the mod is already installed)
• A bin () button to remove a mod archive from the downloads folder. This does not disable the mod or remove it from the staging folder, it only deletes the downloaded archive file. It will still be possible to enable/disable the mod from the mods tab.

Installing/reinstalling a mod

When you click the “install” button on a row of the downloads tab, the respective mod’s contents will be extracted from its archive to the game’s folder in the staging folder.

If the game is configured to have multiple mod paths, you will have to choose where to deploy the mod to.

Reinstalling a mod does the same exact thing, simply overwriting the previous version that was installed.

The utilities tab

The utilities tab is still going to see some extensive development, but basically currently it is a place where specific tools to help mod that game can be found, downloaded, and installed. Think special tools that are necesary to mod a game, like a mod framework such as SKSE for Skyrim.

It will very likely see a major touch up (or maybe even be replaced by something completely different) in the next major release.