Droids of the Commonwealth - the Re-redux ?

[xenic]

Has anyone heard anything regarding this mod or where to find ASIA? 

[Varithina]

7 hours ago, xenic said:

Has anyone heard anything regarding this mod or where to find ASIA? 

 

Look over the last couple of pages in this forum and you will know everything we do about it, as for ASIA somebody may well dm it to you if you ask, as the download files were removed quite some time ago.

[Trykz]

So I figured I better let everyone in on what's going on.....

 

when I learned about the next gen update late last year, there were a lot of rumblings about some pretty major format changes.

Most relevant to me, were changes to the .exe that were suspected to majorly break F4SE, as well as changes to the BA2 structure.

So I decided to wait until I could know for sure. Moments ago, I learned that BOTH have come to fruition:

 

From Steam user VastEnemy:

Quote

 

The creation kit has been updated, and with it new restrictions. All mods made with it, or updated by it won't work on previous falllout 4 executables. You have to update the game to use any mod that was created or updated by the new creation kit. The new Fallout4.exe can open old and new mods (backwards compatible), the old version, cannot. 

What I'm reading in the community, is if you are on the older fallout 4 version (pre-april 25th), you are now unable to use any mods made on the current creation kit because those mods are packed in a new format which the old fallout4 can’t read. If you are a mod author and wish to stay on the old version, you are effectively barred from making mods for the current version.

 

For those who remain on the the old version of fallout 4 and hang out on the nexus, beware. Any mod made by or updated in the new creation kit won't work on your version.

 

This will split the community of mod creators in 2. Those who make mods for the legacy version, and those who make em for the current version. That's wild!

 

 

I have not yet updated my game OR it's Creation Kit. I likely won't until F4SE and various mods I use which depend on it are all updated.

There is currently no concrete timeline for F4SE, but progress IS ongoing.

 

I don't want to release Droids onto an .exe that will only run it for some. And I strongly suspect that Bethesda is NOT finished with this.

They have a lot of work to do if the immense number of complaints over this update is any guage of how many are having issues with

it. So future patches will likely keep breaking things until they finish.

 

Given this, I can't really give any estimation for when I might release it.

 

For now, I'm just plugging away at streamlining things and finishing up the last cells. I'm also working on item requirements for the

Droid hardware/software systems. I suspect that, at worst, I may have to recompile all the scripts under the new F4SE, and save the mod

under the new .exe and BA2 format in the updated CK. But we'll see how it goes.

 

I also want to merge the entire mod into a single ESM since the earlier updates I made are pretty baked into the overall mod, and scattered

all over the place throughout. For example, edits in Thermal Edition are carried over into Naval Edition, and edits from BOTH are carried over

into Lunar Edition. I REALLY NEED to clean all that up. It's quite a mess and will make support for the mod a much greater chore than it needs

to be. I see so many overwrites in FO4Edit, it's almost embarrassing 😜

 

I should be a bit more active here now. So I want to take this opportunity to ask those of you who have played earlier verions of Droids for

your input. THIS WILL BE THE FINAL VERSION I ever build for FO4. So any proposed changes, additions, or general ideas to improve it are

all welcome. Now is the time.

 

Thanks, Trykz

[MysticDaedra]

1 hour ago, Trykz said:

<snip>

 

Thanks, Trykz

Hey Trykz, good to hear from you! I think for most folks, myself included, just knowing that work hasn't stopped entirely on the mod is fantastic. I'm sure the F4SE team will have things sorted out shortly (I think some of them actually work for Bethesda now, which is crazy), but I agree that there will likely be another patch, or multiple patches in the next few days/weeks/months. If nothing else than to fix the so-called widescreen fix lol.

 

Keep on truckin'. Looking forward to seeing what you've "done with the place"

[CrantiusColto]

Thanks for the update, Trykz.

 

Damn Bethesda.🤬🤬

[Undertower]

Always been here and waiting for new Droidversion, but i'm not the right guy to test it, sorry

Thanks for your post and opinion how the things are right now Trykz!... I guess we have to wait for the next moves from Bethesda and see how things will unfold. I'm not gonna install that mess which will mess up my already "sorted mess" xD

[dragon_dude_green]

I was worried that the Next Gen would completely screw things up...but, you seem to be rolling just fine. I've waited this long, I'll wait as long as I need to

[Trykz]

So trying to merge this mod is proving immensely challenging.

 

I managed to merge Thermal Edition into the main Droids of the Commonwealth.esm. I "thought" everything went well, until I

tested the merged file. Most parts transitioned normally. The race swap fired and loaded into the vat in the weapons factory

perfectly. The factory itself loaded without issue. At this point I checked my test character's inventory. No holotape. Then I

realised that the Temperature actor value had not loaded. I believe this may be because I had to remove the Droids of the

Commonwealth - Thermal Edition.esm master requirement from the Droid Stat Widget mod to get it to load. ALL of the other

actor values loaded fine except the temp value, indicating that the widget mod was otherwise working fine without the

removed master file.

 

So now I have to figure out why the AV isn't loading in DSW, and why the race swap script isn't adding the holotape.

 

I suspect that's minor in comparison to the other issues. Namely, the fact that I spent ALL DAY attempting to get the two remaining

editions to merge with the newly created main master plugin. BOTH ESMs contained numerous unresolvable errors according

to the Merge Plugins program. Most were interior cell issues somehow related to precombines. Which is odd, because ALL interior

cells in the mod are custom built. The only edited exterior cells are where I placed the refrigerated trailers, none of which had any

reported errors in the original ESM.

 

At this point, I'm considering whether it might not be better to just start over. But before I do, I'll give this another go in the morning.

 

Trykz

[Varithina]

4 hours ago, Trykz said:

So trying to merge this mod is proving immensely challenging.

 

Depending on various things and the size of the ESM, you could be reaching the maximum records size for a ESM, in which case the game will in effect truncate records, have had it happen myself a couple of times when doing merges of  mods, reloading the merge into ck will usually give you a error about truncated records, but will still load.

 

It might also not be worth while merging the various ESM, just leave them as separate files, sure it means taking up more space, but if it is causing this much hassle to merge them, especially if it is working, well my first though would be don't merge them.

[Trykz]

6 hours ago, Varithina said:

 

Depending on various things and the size of the ESM, you could be reaching the maximum records size for a ESM, in which case the game will in effect truncate records, have had it happen myself a couple of times when doing merges of  mods, reloading the merge into ck will usually give you a error about truncated records, but will still load.

 

It might also not be worth while merging the various ESM, just leave them as separate files, sure it means taking up more space, but if it is causing this much hassle to merge them, especially if it is working, well my first though would be don't merge them.

 

My main concern at this point is the wide range of errors found in the later ESMs.

 

I found this morning while inspecting the main mod that there were many broken property links throughout the script fragments.

I attribute this to edits I made to those fragments in the later ESMs. A mistake I'm paying for now as I try to clean things up.

 

I'm currently searching through very old storage folders trying to locate the original ESPs for the base mod and each edition created

after it. Hopefully I didn't lose everything in hardware issues of past years. If I can get my old rig fired up, I'm hoping I'll find a lot on

it's drives.

 

We'll see.

[Trykz]

Surprisingly, I found a Droids ESP from waaaaay back in 2018.

 

Man, talk about "bare minimum"..... apparently it was created even before A.S.I.A. was finished. Which

would make sense. Droids is what A.S.I.A. was originally meant to be all along before it exploded into

something far more "structurally" complex than I intended. I wanted Droids to be a complex mod to

play, but not so much of a chore to set up. Definitely not as much as A.S.I.A. was. All those multi-part

body and armor combinations that completely sidetracked my original vision for the mod. The

complexity was meant to be "fun". A.S.I.A. was far too simplistic for that.

 

So at this point, I've come to the conclusion that NONE of what I built previously is going to be a

suitable launch point from which to rebuild this mod. Thinking about it, there are a lot of things I

could have done much better. And at the end of the day, I want to release this final build as the

very best of my capabilities. And to accomplish that, I think a fresh start is in order. The current mod

is simply too screwed up to salvage. I should never have built "editions" to add stuff. I should have

just edited the original mod to improve and add the stuff I wanted. Lesson learned.

 

I have all of the meshes, textures, and even the script sources I've written over the years which should

help facilitate a proper rebuild, and the improvements and additions I've been wanting to include. Which

I think is a pretty good head start. Though I'll likely update things like the body/clothes to the latest FG.

 

When I finish laying out the development roadmap, I'll be creating a new thread for everyone to follow

along, after which I will request that this one be locked. Much of the new mod will feel very familiar.

Equally so, much of it will feel very different. Locations will undoubtedly change, as I plan to rebuild

every necessary cell from scratch to avoid any issues, and hopefully avoid errors like those I found

during the merge attempt. Functionally, changes should be pretty minimal.

 

With that, it's time to get to work.

 

Trykz

[MysticDaedra]

1 hour ago, Trykz said:

Surprisingly, I found a Droids ESP from waaaaay back in 2018.

 

Man, talk about "bare minimum"..... apparently it was created even before A.S.I.A. was finished. Which

would make sense. Droids is what A.S.I.A. was originally meant to be all along before it exploded into

something far more "structurally" complex than I intended. I wanted Droids to be a complex mod to

play, but not so much of a chore to set up. Definitely not as much as A.S.I.A. was. All those multi-part

body and armor combinations that completely sidetracked my original vision for the mod. The

complexity was meant to be "fun". A.S.I.A. was far too simplistic for that.

 

So at this point, I've come to the conclusion that NONE of what I built previously is going to be a

suitable launch point from which to rebuild this mod. Thinking about it, there are a lot of things I

could have done much better. And at the end of the day, I want to release this final build as the

very best of my capabilities. And to accomplish that, I think a fresh start is in order. The current mod

is simply too screwed up to salvage. I should never have built "editions" to add stuff. I should have

just edited the original mod to improve and add the stuff I wanted. Lesson learned.

 

I have all of the meshes, textures, and even the script sources I've written over the years which should

help facilitate a proper rebuild, and the improvements and additions I've been wanting to include. Which

I think is a pretty good head start. Though I'll likely update things like the body/clothes to the latest FG.

 

When I finish laying out the development roadmap, I'll be creating a new thread for everyone to follow

along, after which I will request that this one be locked. Much of the new mod will feel very familiar.

Equally so, much of it will feel very different. Locations will undoubtedly change, as I plan to rebuild

every necessary cell from scratch to avoid any issues, and hopefully avoid errors like those I found

during the merge attempt. Functionally, changes should be pretty minimal.

 

With that, it's time to get to work.

 

Trykz

As much as it really sucks to kinda have to "start over" (not entirely it sounds like, thank goodness!), everything you've learned can actually come together more cohesively I suspect. Looking forward to what you come up with!

[Varithina]

6 hours ago, Trykz said:

 

I found this morning while inspecting the main mod that there were many broken property links throughout the script fragments.

I attribute this to edits I made to those fragments in the later ESMs. A mistake I'm paying for now as I try to clean things up.

 

If you are using the new version of the ck then be aware it is not compatible with the older versions of the game, so could cause issues, older versions are backward compatible, so the new version of the game will read older versions of the header and files, but files created or saved on the new version of the ck are not compatible with older versions of the game, think that is stated in the update notes somewhere, though it may be in the ck update notes rather than the games one.

[Trykz]

22 minutes ago, Varithina said:

 

If you are using the new version of the ck then be aware it is not compatible with the older versions of the game, so could cause issues, older versions are backward compatible, so the new version of the game will read older versions of the header and files, but files created or saved on the new version of the ck are not compatible with older versions of the game, think that is stated in the update notes somewhere, though it may be in the ck update notes rather than the games one.

 

I know. I posted on this above one of your earlier posts.

 

I have not yet updated my game OR the CK. I don't intend to update until F4SE and the mods I use are all updated.

 

That is not to say that I won't ever update. But I AM waiting until I'm certain that Bethesda has sorted the wide

variety of issues many players are having with it. I play the game in 32:9 aspect ratio at 3840x1080 res. And every

comment I've seen from others running the same as me has been pretty negative. Everyone will eventually be

running on the update. And I suspect that most of the currently supported mods will be updated under the new

CK as well. It'll just take time. Mainly because unlike Skyrim, there is no previous version that lets you largely ignore

this new version. Once the most popular mods update, anyone who plays the game regularly will have little choice

but to update to continue using their favored mods.

 

For now, I'm just biding my time. I want to get as much of the mod completed as possible before updating.

 

Speaking of the mod.....

 

I think I may have found a way to overcome the old issue of the game engine timer, and how it varies from mode to mode.

If I'm right, then survival mode "may" no longer be a requirement, because I'll have more control over how the game engine

manages the Power actor value timer. I'm currently working on how to tie the SPU AV into other the vanilla AVs, and then

tying that into a new "overclocking" ability to provide a power hungry short term buff to various other values.

 

I'll further detail all of this later in the new thread. For now I want to get the base race finished and presentable.