A solution to non-permissive mods?

[Asrienda]

So unlike many games, SSE has a problem: tons of mods that need conversion. This is because of a few reasons: LE to SE (esm, esp, hkx, and nif conversions), SKSE to SKSE64, HDT, CBBE/UUNP to CBBE SE, etc.

 

Some mod authors have stayed in the community and diligently update their mods or allow others to do so. Others haven't, but have an open license to their mods, allowing people to convert and post them. And finally, there are some mod authors that are around but don't allow posting of a converted mod and there are some that have left the scene entirely and didn't open their mod to being repost as a conversion.

 

 

I think I have a solution to the last group ... A byte-level patcher. A few exist but I'm about to write my own. The idea is, you get the original files and a patch file, apply it, and you now have a working and modified mod. This avoids copyright issues because the patch files themselves are a list of changes, and are not usable on their own. If you only added some nodes to a body, for example, only the new nodes and maybe some extra data would exist in the patch file.

 

This would basically automate changes to the original work, so you could post them without issue. The workflow of a user would be to get the tool (once), get the original files from the original author as normal, get the patch file(s), apply the patch, then install as normal. It saves the need for every single person to manually convert mods to work in SE, for example, but respect the original author by not reposting their work.

 

This doesn't seem TOO hard of a tool to make, that's not the issue, and I've already done some research and proof of concepts. Any thoughts on the overall idea from the perspective of both mod authors and users?

[27X]

No means no, and that includes "did not foresee bethesda needing new console money so pete hines can have a gold plated toilet".

 

SSE sold 4 million copies on PC, and LE sold 4 times that, they will never have content or logistical parity in your gaming lifetime, and by the time SSE is the only option available, the Skyrim modding scene will be dead as a doornail, since unlike id of old, bethesda is afraid of the public having code and thus improving their game to a completely unreasonable and more importantly unsalable/unmonetizable degree, so it's kind of ironic that you're suggesting a byte level patcher.

 

There's certainly a moral case to made about losing content because of corporate greed, but given the cartoonishly mercenary environment that TES modding has become all this is going to be used for is stealing content and repackaging it, so you're just replacing corporate greed with modder and user greed, not really a sum advancement, and you have no method of managing control to support mod authors who want to up-port to SSE but lack the motivation, time, or platform and chucklefucks like several certain chinese modding concerns whose sole purpose is to repackage anything they want into pay for play compilations that the original authors receive jack shit compensation for or even credit.

 

The elephant under the couch you're sitting on and actively ignoring is a very large chunk of mods currently available are simply and literally amateurishly written. Good coding practices didn't happen in Skyrim until 2016, with most actually streamlined and tightly coded mods only appearing last year. So a huge chunk of that content will likely cause issues at base operation, much less being thrown in a 200+ mod load order.

 

While SSE is certainly much more robust in taking abuse than LE, it isn't an impregnable fortress and you'll find over and over that loudest "never had a CTD" apologist evangelists are usually completely full of shit, and I've found several combos of pretty popular mods that kick SSE square in the face every time, without fail, particularly mods that alter sound, navmeshes or animation timing.

 

While a byte patcher is an obviously "cleaner" solution than QQBang Circles and behind the back hackery, there's still the issue of respecting the author's wishes.

 

[Asrienda]

Your arguments mostly seem to be against Skyrim as a whole and Skyrim SE in particular, so I won't address those. I'm not thinking about making this with the intent to solve any greater problems with the community nor with Bethesda nor the continuation of Skyrim as a game.

 

 

Author's wishes are good and all... And a patcher respects the author's rights with regards to copyright and licensing - you'd still have to get their original works from their chosen distribution site, for example. But you're allowed to modify things for personal use. A byte-level patcher just automates that process without having to get specialized tools besides the patcher itself.

 

I didn't think of the problem of someone creating a patch, then the original author creating an official ported version. I'd imagine most people would take down patches posted if an official version is released, but there's no way to control that.

[Lodakai]

I dunno... i can see both sides of the argument.   And maybe I am mistaken, but don't we already have tools that allow to port over a good portion of the mods anyway?   

Unless you advertise a page on nexus or something for each individual patch using the mod title... I don't really see how a new tool would really be that much of a problem.

 

If some of those  mods have poorly written code, and someone with little experience ends up self porting it into a poorly converted umm.. conversion.  Wouldn't it be more beneficial to have someone at least be able to make something a little more thorough to alleviate that particular issue?

 

I look at it as being similar to making a compatibility patch.   There are plenty out there being created for mods that have had the authors vanish.   Are we to say this is an immoral practice as well?  It can be thought as such only in cases where the authors specifically ask for their content not to be patched or made compatible with anything else without their specific consent.   In that case,  I would side with the argument against doing that.

 

But, that is just my opinion and there are a lot of things I am probably unaware of.    I guess it would be up to forum moderators if they want that kind of thing on this site or not.   So maybe check through that channel as well as a general consensus from end users.

[Azazellz]

I think, if you have enough skills, you can make some kind of "all-in-one" patcher, which will look like SkyProc or FNIS.

User install mod from OldRim, run your patcher, then it scans for non-NewRim mods (or user can point to specific folder with all content), then patch them. Unpacks and packs archives, converts meshes, textures. and esp files.

SKSE-plugins can not be patched this way, but, I think even without SKSE-plugins it be enough for most people.

Since it will be "modder's resource", you don't need any permissions from other modmakers.

 

We already have something similar, but separately for each part of the mod (one tool for meshes, one for archives. CK for esp-files...)

I have not seen a solution that will do everything all at once in a few clicks and in fully automatic mode.

[Asrienda]

19 hours ago, Lodakai said:

I dunno... i can see both sides of the argument.   And maybe I am mistaken, but don't we already have tools that allow to port over a good portion of the mods anyway?   

Unless you advertise a page on nexus or something for each individual patch using the mod title... I don't really see how a new tool would really be that much of a problem.

 

If some of those  mods have poorly written code, and someone with little experience ends up self porting it into a poorly converted umm.. conversion.  Wouldn't it be more beneficial to have someone at least be able to make something a little more thorough to alleviate that particular issue?

 

I look at it as being similar to making a compatibility patch.   There are plenty out there being created for mods that have had the authors vanish.   Are we to say this is an immoral practice as well?  It can be thought as such only in cases where the authors specifically ask for their content not to be patched or made compatible with anything else without their specific consent.   In that case,  I would side with the argument against doing that.

 

But, that is just my opinion and there are a lot of things I am probably unaware of.    I guess it would be up to forum moderators if they want that kind of thing on this site or not.   So maybe check through that channel as well as a general consensus from end users.

 

Well the primary example that I thought of was converting a body. The CBBE team said, for example, that there's never going to be an HDT anus on CBBE and they won't allow anyone to modify the CBBE and post the modified body. It's their creation, that's their right. They don't have the ability to stop people from modifying it after they obtain it through the proper channels, and that's how it should be as well - people can and should be able to modify things for personal use. However, requiring each individual user to modify (in this example) the official CBBE body with an HDT anus would be basically a deal-killer, it's a lot more involved than replacing a file with another file... the CBBE body is a single file mesh (not including bodyslide), so there would be no "easy" way to allow users to add such an addition without basically learning 3d modeling... or a byte-level patcher. 

 

I'm in no way targeting the CBBE team in particular, it's just an example off the top of my head that is easy to understand. I completely agree with their rights to restrict re-uploading their work and deny others the ability to upload modified versions of their work. But a byte-level patch isn't a modified version of their work, it's essentially instructions on how a computer should modify it. And as it would require the official version as a base, everyone's rights are respected!

[Asrienda]

18 hours ago, Azazellz said:

I think, if you have enough skills, you can make some kind of "all-in-one" patcher, which will look like SkyProc or FNIS.

User install mod from OldRim, run your patcher, then it scans for non-NewRim mods (or user can point to specific folder with all content), then patch them. Unpacks and packs archives, converts meshes, textures. and esp files.

SKSE-plugins can not be patched this way, but, I think even without SKSE-plugins it be enough for most people.

Since it will be "modder's resource", you don't need any permissions from other modmakers.

 

We already have something similar, but separately for each part of the mod (one tool for meshes, one for archives. CK for esp-files...)

I have not seen a solution that will do everything all at once in a few clicks and in fully automatic mode.

That's not the intent I was going for actually   It wouldn't automatically convert mods for you, it'd convert a file from it's original state to a new state that someone else already created/modified.

[labradoorhandle]

Just because it's technically allowed doesn't it's not a "bad faith" move. If the creator is still active and you start releasing patches that modify or convert their work against their wishes don't be surprised if the mod gets pulled or the author stops modding altogether.

 

Making strictly conversion patches for abandoned mods where the author no longer can be reached is a different story though.

[Asrienda]

I mean, I'm not making patches, just a tool. It can be used for good or evil.

 

I don't know if I'd call going against author's wishes a bad faith move. Like, I'm sure Bethesda, Blizzard, Disney/Marvel/Star Wars, and every other major IP creator and holder absolutely hates Rule 34 parodies of their property and adult modifications of their games. But legally they can't do much about it due to fair use, etc. Is a large portion of LL a bad faith move? Or not because the creator is a faceless studio/corporation, not one individual? I wouldn't say it's nice, but not go as far to say it's necessarily "bad". 

 

Another example: you're allowed to make an archival/backup copy of computer software. There are other stipulations, but that's irrelevant right now. Most companies really don't want you doing that and will go to some length to prevent it. Is it bad faith to go against their wishes, or are they the ones that are in the wrong for trying to restrict your rights? Maybe both? Neither?

 

I think we could agree that "bad" would be blatant copyright infringement, like Tera/BDO/Daz3D/Soul Calibur/etc. armors that take existing assets and repackage them for Skyrim. That's not just a modification or a patch or a parody, it's straight up infringement. It allows people to use the original copyright holders' work without obtaining it first legally. But even if it's bad, they survive to become popular on many mod sites.

 

I don't know if a byte patcher could even be used to facilitate entire file type conversions. Like, it would input and output properly, but it'd basically be "delete the entire file A and write the entire patch B as the output new file C". The only saving grace might be random bytes that coincidentally match up... Which would allow it to work as intended, I guess. Hmm.

[Varithina]

Another option would be a clear and detailed conversion guide, clear pictures and detailed text, showing how, what and why each step is needed as well as all the tools needed, which allows the use to convert things for their own use which pretty much bypasses any problems at all.

[Asrienda]

2 hours ago, Varithina said:

Another option would be a clear and detailed conversion guide, clear pictures and detailed text, showing how, what and why each step is needed as well as all the tools needed, which allows the use to convert things for their own use which pretty much bypasses any problems at all.

That's actually why I had this idea, to quickly convert things without installing the CK, nifskope, NifOptimizer, and other tools. 

 

I've made such a guide before on LL, and although the guide is unnecessary now (bodyslide uunp and cbbe se basically replaced 7b), it still would be far easier to just say "download the original file, download this patch file, apply it to the original file. Done."

[Varithina]

4 hours ago, Asrienda said:

That's actually why I had this idea, to quickly convert things without installing the CK, nifskope, NifOptimizer, and other tools. 

 

I've made such a guide before on LL, and although the guide is unnecessary now (bodyslide uunp and cbbe se basically replaced 7b), it still would be far easier to just say "download the original file, download this patch file, apply it to the original file. Done."

True, but those type of automated patchers can be as iffy as hell themselves, and getting one patcher to one with all the mods would be a major task, the other option creating a separate patcher for each mod would be a lot of work.

 

And such a patcher may fall under you may not modify or change the mod without permission clause that most mods carry in with them.

[Lodakai]

2 hours ago, Varithina said:

True, but those type of automated patchers can be as iffy as hell themselves, and getting one patcher to one with all the mods would be a major task, the other option creating a separate patcher for each mod would be a lot of work.

 

And such a patcher may fall under you may not modify or change the mod without permission clause that most mods carry in with them.

I dunno... isn't that taking it a bit too far?   I mean, isn't it common practice to modify and change armor sets all the time with body slide?   Perhaps we are being overly cautious about this concept.

 

ETA: As long as any patch tool requires the user to download the original assets from the original author, and allowing them to know where to give proper credit.  I think overall any patch tool would be useful.  In my opinion, the only real problem is when people try to pawn off assets as their own, thus bypassing efforts from the original source.

[Asrienda]

2 hours ago, Varithina said:

True, but those type of automated patchers can be as iffy as hell themselves, and getting one patcher to one with all the mods would be a major task, the other option creating a separate patcher for each mod would be a lot of work.

 

And such a patcher may fall under you may not modify or change the mod without permission clause that most mods carry in with them.

I'm fairly (but not 100%, maybe 95%) certain that "you may not modify, even for personal use" terms aren't enforceable. And I've also never seen such terms on mods.

[Asrienda]

2 hours ago, Lodakai said:

 

ETA: As long as any patch tool requires the user to download the original assets from the original author, and allowing them to know where to give proper credit.  I think overall any patch tool would be useful.  In my opinion, the only real problem is when people try to pawn off assets as their own, thus bypassing efforts from the original source.

I definitely agree! I got caught up in some stuff, but I might have something ready by the end of the weekend to test.

 

Code/software will be MIT licensed. Which basically means, do whatever you want with it but it's provided without any guarantees and don't hold be liable for anything.

[Varithina]

10 hours ago, Asrienda said:

I'm fairly (but not 100%, maybe 95%) certain that "you may not modify, even for personal use" terms aren't enforceable. And I've also never seen such terms on mods.

I did not say for personal use, for personal use you can do anything you damn well want to a mod and they original author gets no say at all, distributing the changed mod however usually does require the creators permission.

[Varithina]

11 hours ago, Lodakai said:

I dunno... isn't that taking it a bit too far?   I mean, isn't it common practice to modify and change armor sets all the time with body slide?   Perhaps we are being overly cautious about this concept.

 

ETA: As long as any patch tool requires the user to download the original assets from the original author, and allowing them to know where to give proper credit.  I think overall any patch tool would be useful.  In my opinion, the only real problem is when people try to pawn off assets as their own, thus bypassing efforts from the original source.

Most of the creators of the bodyslide files do have the permission of whoever created the armour in the first place to make those conversions, for example the last I knew kendo2 does not permit cbbe bodyslide conversions of his clothing/armour, but uunp is perfectly ok, and that is clearly stated in his posts of those items, though he could of course have changed his mind it was, hmm, months ago when I last noticed his permissions.

[Asrienda]

1 hour ago, Varithina said:

I did not say for personal use, for personal use you can do anything you damn well want to a mod and they original author gets no say at all, distributing the changed mod however usually does require the creators permission.

Can you elaborate on this, then, because I definitely misunderstood it:

 

"And such a patcher may fall under you may not modify or change the mod without permission clause that most mods carry in with them."

[Varithina]

1 hour ago, Asrienda said:

Can you elaborate on this, then, because I definitely misunderstood it:

 

"And such a patcher may fall under you may not modify or change the mod without permission clause that most mods carry in with them."

Ahh, I see what you mean, mostly it it boils down to just what the mod authors terms and conditions are.

 

The patch by definition changes the mod in some way, that would be no problem for private use, when distributed however the mod author could claim that it violates their terms for the distribution of their mod in that the patcher changes their mod, and they have not given permission for this, it does of course depend a load on the mod author and the permissions they give for their mod.

 

To be honest it is murky and the sort of thing a legal team would no doubt charge you a fortune to sort out and in the end it would more than likely end with a maybe in there, and of course we can debate the issue for ever and never really get the correct answer as it all pretty much boils down to each mod author and what they say can and can not be done with their mod and its attached assets.

 

To be honest I am a bit surprised that non of the mod authors based here have not said something.

[Asrienda]

The patcher isn't their work and doesn't contain any of their work, so they don't have much (perhaps not any) standing on restricting it, as anyone using the patcher would have to obtain the original work legitimately first, then apply a patch later.

 

It's the equivalent of instructions on how to convert a LE mod to work in SSE, for example, but it's machine instructions instead of human instructions. 

 

I've released a couple mods on LL exclusively and a couple mods on Nexus under a different name... But I'm biased of course. I've studied US IP law a lot over the last 8 years or so, but I'm not a patent lawyer and don't claim to be an expert. But I'm pretty sure this would work under us copyright.

[Varithina]

1 hour ago, Asrienda said:

The patcher isn't their work and doesn't contain any of their work, so they don't have much (perhaps not any) standing on restricting it, as anyone using the patcher would have to obtain the original work legitimately first, then apply a patch later.

 

It's the equivalent of instructions on how to convert a LE mod to work in SSE, for example, but it's machine instructions instead of human instructions. 

 

I've released a couple mods on LL exclusively and a couple mods on Nexus under a different name... But I'm biased of course. I've studied US IP law a lot over the last 8 years or so, but I'm not a patent lawyer and don't claim to be an expert. But I'm pretty sure this would work under us copyright.

As I said it is pretty murky, at the end of the matter my best guess would be go for it and leave it up to either nexus or ll admins to decide on whether it is valid or not, as at the end of the day both are privately owned and run sites and they get to say if it will be hosted.

 

I do like the idea of an automated patcher for outdated mods, it would be great, I have tried converting stuff and had it go bleh, far too often and quite often most of the guides assume various things of the person doing the conversion, or out right miss steps because they think it is obvious that x or y needs doing between various stages.

[Jinxxed0]

I dont see how this is even an argument worth having. We're talking about about tool/program used to making converting mods easier/faster. I would love that for two reasons. So I could convert my own mods to SSE without having to go through the tedious process and so people can just do it themselves if and when I can't do it. I personally don't like having SSE installed when I have zero intention of ever playing it anytime soon.

 

There's literally no issue here with a tool like this as long as the converted mod isn't released since it can already be done with just the CK and Nif Optimizer. It's tedious and can require some trouble shooting, and then some testing depending on the mod. But it's possible. So a tool to make it faster would be good for everyone from SSE users to modders who don't care about SSE but still want to support SSE players.

 

 

[Asrienda]

Just to be clear cause I think there's some misunderstanding... I'm not proposing a tool that specifically converts LE mods to work with SE by fixing animations, esps, and nifs.

 

I'm proposing (and working on) a tool that simply converts a file from one state to another state. If used to convert LE to SE, someone still has to do the process once and post the patch file.

[Varithina]

1 hour ago, Asrienda said:

Just to be clear cause I think there's some misunderstanding... I'm not proposing a tool that specifically converts LE mods to work with SE by fixing animations, esps, and nifs.

 

I'm proposing (and working on) a tool that simply converts a file from one state to another state. If used to convert LE to SE, someone still has to do the process once and post the patch file.

Ahh, right ignore everything I said then, as I was thinking you were creating a tool to do the first line you wrote, if it is for the second then go nuts, they get no say in the matter ?

[KhajiitiClaws]

Personally, I'm a big fan of this idea. I'm not sure how other people will feel, but it will most likely lean towards an ignorant knee-jerk reaction, something akin to "MUH RIGHTS".

From what you're proposing, there would be no copyright/legal concerns with this, but you'll need to think about where you'll be posting this.

 

From my experience, the mods at the Nexus don't really care if something you do follows the rules or not. What matters to them is, does this make their more popular modders (the lifeblood of their site, and thereby, their income) uncomfortable? And if so, and you're in the way, there is no doubt in my mind the file will be pulled. You may even receive a formal warning and/or ban. They own the site, so they can break their own rules as they see fit, and do quite often. I've been on the receiving end of this, calling out Arthmoor for his despicable behavior towards people asking run-of-the-mill questions on his mods' forums. What did I get for my trouble? Banned from accessing his content, and a formal warning by the Nexus staff. 

 

Basically what I'm trying to say is, it doesn't matter if your files will even contain an author's original content or not, if one of the authors in questions complains, and is popular, you will most likely get your tool removed, and possibly have some action taken against you. I would recommend you tread carefully if you intend to post this to the Nexus.