CIDER - CONTAINER ITEM DISTRIBUTOR EASY RESOURCE

Description
Expanding the concept of SPIDER to other similar frameworks, I decided to tackle CID, which is a very nice modding tool for customizing our Skyrim experience through game records distribution at-launch. As for SPID, CID can be quite laborious, particularly for newcomers or when handling extensive distributions. The process involves meticulous checks for correct record structures and references, often necessitating the launch of the game for verification and testing. It was in this context that I embarked on the journey of creating this program. Its primary goal is to alleviate these complexities by offering a user-friendly and all-in-one solution. This program provides an overview of CID-based mods, simplifies their management in one place, and eliminates the need to launch the game repeatedly for every distribution file checks.

CIDER (Container Item Distributor Easy Resource) is a utility program designed to centralize, check, sort and manage all the contents related to Container Item Distributor (CID). Should be compatible with any mod manager at the time being, including Mod Organizer 2 (MO2) (default settings) and Vortex (more custom settings to come).



Current features*
- No ESP (utility program).
- Scans all installed mods in the root folder of the mod manager (Mod Organizer 2 or any manager) and identifies those that utilize Container Item Distributor (CID) framework, to retrieve the records distributed from all - or only those selected - user distribution files (_CID.ini files).
- Check, optimize and displays all detected content by category, enabling users to access all content quickly, easily and from a single location.
- Allows users to easily create and make changes to distributed records and distribution conditions directly from the interface, including creating new distribution and editing distribution files (_CID.ini).
- Allows users to parse their mods to get records, filter them, display relevant info, and easily populate widgets.
- Tweakable users settings:
* Root path customization: you should be able to install CIDER in any folder (including outside of your mod manager) and to set a custom root path to your mod manager root folder. You can change your target directories paths either directly from CIDER settings menu or from the settings.json file (just copy-paste your mod manager root path enclosed in quotation marks, into the 'path'>'mods' key of the settings file). Note that if you follow the classic "as-a-mod" installation method, CIDER is still able to get the default root path for MO2 with no need to customize it yourself.
* Records sharing: by default, you will share some distributed records that will contribute to the training of the upcoming prompt manager (being based on a machine learning technique, a big amount of data is needed for that feature); everything you share is fully anonymous +++ (only distributed records and some CIDER settings are shared), but you can disable record sharing by clicking the in-app corresponding button if you don't want to contribute to help the development of future features.

* Please check the video for a global overview of the tool, and refer to the complete playlist for more detailed guidance on using CIDER's specific features (currently linking to SPIDER's tutorials, but they will be expanded for other frameworks very soon).



Installation
1. Download and install the program with your mod manager (tested in a MO2 setup, but should be compatible with any manager; if you have any issue, a future release will include custom settings and the ability to change their root path, making it compatible with any custom and unusual installation), just as you would do with any mod.
2. Launch the app, and let the magic happen.
3. A browser window should open if everything works as intended, but if it's not your case, open your favorite browser and click here (or enter this url by yourself: http://localhost:5001/).
3. As an optional step, you can add the program to the app tab of MO2 to launch it from your mod manager launcher (not tested). If you need guidance on how to do that, you might find this video useful (it's for my mod DART but the process is basically the same).



How to use
CIDER relies on using menus and widgets, which is very straightforward. Here you can find the location and general information about the current tools provided in CIDER:
- Nav menu (top): unused by CIDER for now (indeed only one RecordType can be distributed through CID at the time of writing these lines).
- Widgets (center top): create, edit, check and optimize a Record to distribute through CID. Submit it to add it to your current distribution.
- Distribution (center bottom): display all Records to distribute through CID, sorted by categories. You can import records from existing distribution files (by clicking the "folder" button), edit each record and category, and export/save your current distribution into a new file (by clicking the "download" button).
- Settings menu (bottom left): edit your settings (eg., custom folder paths, record sharing...) and exit the app. Hover to expand.
- Explorer menu (right): parse selected mods from your modlist, allowing to get records, filter them, display relevant info (left-click on a record), and easily populate widgets (right-click on a record to activate its context menu). Hover to expand.



Need more help?
In many cases, you can access helpful information directly within the interface by hovering over a button, input field, menu, or other elements.

Each widget includes a "?" button (top right) that can be clicked to access a video tutorial for helpful tips on its functionality.
Please note that some tutorials are still WIP.
The full playlist can be found here (currently linking to SPIDER's tutorials, but I will expand to other frameworks).

The detailed readme (WIP) can be found on the project repository, following this link.

Of course, if you can't find the information you're looking for in these resources, feel free to ask in the posts section.



Compatibility and load order
No known incompatibilities.



Future plans
- Additional features for quality of life improvements: an automated scanner to retrieve user references from their modlist's active esm/esp/esl files, automatic check of distributed records to detect errors (for instance, if you enter a reference that doesn't exist in your mods), a prompt manager (like Midjourney) and other easy-to-use integrated tools aiming to help user to write their records and streamline their distribution process like features like creating custom records/formlists/etc. directly from CIDER (with no need to open SSEEdit)...
- More customization: expand user settings (new language integrations, themes?), provide more options for distribution files and category management...
- More tutorials: complete the integrated tutorial videos (accessible from the (?) button of each widget) to cover advanced and new features.
- A fully-online version to save disk space, and enhance the optimization of computing operations for some upcoming advanced features.
- Expansion to other similar frameworks (eg. BOS, KID, SRD, CRD, AOS, FLM, IPM,...):
* SPID - PRIORITY: DONE
* CID - PRIORITY: DONE
- Fixes/enhancements:.
- Since it's a community tool, I'm open to other ideas: feel free to share them in comment section. ;)



Source
GitLab repository



Contributors
Since it's a community tool, contributions are welcome: feel free to use the comment section and/or to contact me. ;)



Credits and aknowledgements
ThirdEye3301 for creating this amazing mod named Container Item Distributor (CID) expanding the great collection of powerful frameworks to container distribution, giving our community a much-needed feature for modern modding.



My other tools and utility mods







(:          Of course feel free to share your content, and to endorse if you like the work done here!          :)