this is probably the most frustrating interface ever.
VaM has quite a steep learning curve, so many new users get frustrated by it's interface pretty quick. But if you give it some time, and make yourself familiar on how stuff works, it will all make sense (but still looks bad, I'll give you that).
...the package manage might miss dependencies all the time unless you use the Hub and download whole scenes...
Your comment about missing dependencies I don't understand: VaM has an integrated Hub Browser which lets you scan for (and download) all missing dependencies, as long as they're publicly available through the Hub. Unfortunately, many creators will "lock" their creations behind various paywalls, and so VaM can't list or download them. Usually,
before downloading a scene/look/etc, you should read its description, because good creators will list all the dependencies in the description and most of the time will also tell you which dependencies are paid-only stuff.
I downloaded like 3 scenes from the Hub and they were good, downloaded like 4 torrents with content (50GB), and in the end the only good scenes were from the Hub, the others were like random isolated situations.
To be honest: that's the worst way to start as a new VaM player. It might be tempting to download lots of stuff and promising looking torrents (some people still do download everything they get their hands on and therefore end up using terabytes of space for VaM, which is just stupid!). But to new players I've always said:
- Make yourself familiar with how the interface works.
- Then start downloading 1-2 scenes or looks from the Hub with all their dependencies.
- Keep VaM's "AddonPackages" folder organized (e.g. make subfolders like "looks", "clothes", "scenes", "still testing", "want to keep" or anything like that, or sort by creators, which is what I do).
It's never a good idea to download a huge bunch of addons, put them all into VaM at once and then hope it's all going to work. I do download stuff I want to have 1-by-1, install it, check if I can find all dependencies, test the look/scene or whatever I've just downloaded, and if I want to keep it, sort those new *.VAR files into the appropriate subfolders. If I don't like it, I can just delete all the newly downloaded *.VAR files (easy, because they aren't in any subfolder) and be good.
Keep your stuff organized. That's the main advice I can give to anybody that uses VaM.
