Status of FO4 scene? Almost dead?

[Trykz]

I dunno. I suspect that once the SSE script extender is finished, the FO4 extender will be finished not too long after. It only stands to reason that things learned during the development of the SSE extender can be more readily applied to FO4, thus speeding up it's development.

 

However, I would not be surprised if they dropped FO4 entirely. The game is a mess. It's CK is a mess. And on the whole, it's the most sub-par game of the franchise. There's also ME:Andromeda's release to consider, as well as a few other titles slated to release in the first half of this year.

 

I suppose only time will tell.

 

Trykz

[Whizkid]

imo, only reason why it's prioritised over fallout is because skyrim se is basically an engine update most of the core functions remains i.e. 32bit to 64bit, so it will be much easier to convert another 32bit skse to 64bit skse.

 

and fallout 4 is 64bit and different from skyrim will definately take more time and learning curve is steeper.

 

my 2 cents

[Kimy]

 

The question you should be asking is, why did the script extender team prioritize SSE over FO4 when FO4 was out earlier than SSE? Why do I get that feeling that they just have no desire to continue with FO4 because of the mess choices Bethesda made. It's like almost giving candy to a kid and then changing your mind. The game wasn't going anywhere since it's the same exact game. You'd think they would finish FO4 first since it's newer game. You should be fearing if they decide not to come back. Like they ditched FO3, but due to the bad game engine.

You never considered these guys doing it for nothing may just prefer Fantasy to SciFi?

 

 

It's quite evident that FO4 is not a priority for them. The reasons are their own, and whatever they are, it's THEIR time and we can't question their decision.

 

However, the consequence if this is that we (as in the modders interested in FO4) better stop waiting for a mod that might or might not ever be completed. I keep saying this a lot lately, but FO4 Papyrus is a LOT more powerful than its Skyrim equivalent. Beth did us the favor to put in many functions in the vanilla API we formerly needed script extenders for. Stop waiting, start modding!

[pipdude]

The question you should be asking is, why did the script extender team prioritize SSE over FO4 when FO4 was out earlier than SSE? 

 

 

I have a sneaking suspicion it's because of familiarity. The SSE is Skyrim but updated to 64bit with the same engine underneath.

 

 

imo, only reason why it's prioritised over fallout is because skyrim se is basically an engine update most of the core functions remains i.e. 32bit to 64bit, so it will be much easier to convert another 32bit skse to 64bit skse.

 

 

 

It's quite evident that FO4 is not a priority for them. The reasons are their own, and whatever they are, it's THEIR time and we can't question their decision.

 

They gave their reasoning about this a while back:

 

I agree that F4SE has gotten less attention. Brendan (Expired) has been the main person working on F4SE for the last little bit. I had been involved heavily at the start, but real life got in the way when I was laid off in February and needed to find a new job. Now that I have settled into my new position I was ready to start engaging with the script extenders again.

 

So that brings us to the release of SkyrimSE. SKSE is by far and away our most popular script extender. Since the beginning of 2015 (4 years post-release of Skyrim) we've had 8 million downloads of SKSE. So there is a ton of demand for SKSE64 and a lot of mods already depending on it. So that has become our top priority right now.

 

So where does that leave F4SE? Brendan has basic papyrus support working - but much of it is untested. We need to validate where things are and get that turned on. Then we need to flesh out a lot of functionality. Some of that may be easier now that we're really engaged with SKSE64. But the engines are different. SkyrimSE is basically a 64-bit version of SKSE with some additional changes.

 

I hope to get involved with F4SE once we get SKSE64 out the door.

 

As for the forums - we haven't moved over to the new bethesda forums for anything yet. We still use the classic BGS forums for SKSE (and F4SE I believe). Given the popularity of SKSE and the ton of questions surrounding SKSE64 I have been hopping on reddit, bgs and nexus forums to keep folks up to date.

 

Sorry for keeping you waiting on F4SE. I know that it is important to get it out so people can do amazing things. There is only so much time and effort to be spread around, unfortunately.

 

 

https://www.reddit.com/user/behippo?count=25&after=t1_davl504

[Kimy]

 

 

 

It's quite evident that FO4 is not a priority for them. The reasons are their own, and whatever they are, it's THEIR time and we can't question their decision.

 

They gave their reasoning about this a while back:

 

*nod*

 

I guess what I wanted to say is that their reasons don't even matter. If they don't feel like it, don't have the time, don't have the manpower, work on something else, or the family dog ran away with the keyboard: The result is the same - we won't have F4SE anytime soon. Which in turn means that if we want any nice FO4 mods, we will have to find ways to write them without script extenders and stop waiting for something that might or might not ever see the light of day.

 

[Trykz]

Which in turn means that if we want any nice FO4 mods, we will have to find ways to write them without script extenders and stop waiting for something that might or might not ever see the light of day.

 

Which is exactly what I've been doing for race modding.

 

I've been working near exclusively on different methods for adding custom races. Things like terminals, holotapes, furniture, direct application to the player preset (the very bad and "dirty" way). So far, I'm thinking the best methods are scripts attached to duplicated furniture, terminals and holotapes (they're easiest to copy and give a unique name to avoid conflicts).

 

The mod I'm currently working on uses a holotape in the Pip-Boy to swap between 3 custom races on the fly, as well as 3 different versions of The Institute reclamation chair.

 

Since FO4 doesn't have any built-in mechanism for race selection, I'm doubtful that anything like Skyrim's RaceCompatibility would even be possible. But with the methods I described above, I don't think it's necessary anyway. Because race selection is determined after character creation as opposed to during.

 

What DOES need to happen though, is mods like LooksMenu Customization Compendium, Unique Player, and anything else that hooks into the "Player Preset" with direct edits needs to be rebuilt properly. Unique Player not so much, because custom races typically use custom body parts in custom folders anyway. But LooksMenu Customization Compendium functions by directly editing that preset. Which is not only very dirty, but is quite simply, a rookie modder mistake. A proper mod NEVER assumes sole control of any vanilla form. Especially one as important as the player preset form. Presets are handled MUCH differently in FO4 than they were in Skyrim. For instance:

 

Lets say you choose to edit the female Preset 5. In Skyrim, that finished preset IS your actual character that you will play. In FO4, any edits you make to female Preset 5 get "moved" to the "Player Preset", and the original female preset 5 reverts back to it's previously unedited form. If the player preset form is already edited, then none of those edits will carry over after a race swap. All those cool tattoos and facepaints? Not gonna happen for a custom race. They get removed by the transfer from the edited preset when you switch to a custom race.

 

In any event, a script extender WOULD simplify things by adding some dynamics to the mix. But as you said, isn't always necessary depending upon how you implement things.

 

Trykz

[Nalessa]

 

 

 

 

I feel like that will change once F4SE comes out in full. 

 

 

That'll take awhile, probably another 7-13 months.  It's been a year and a half and you're just seeing API hooks for papyrus starting to show up.  But considering the absolute pain and jump from skyrim to FO4 in terms of decoding what's going on?  It's a head of schedule especially considering the underlying engine changes.  On the upside, once they figure out FO4 it'll be much easier to get a skyrim SE version out, which seems to be their main push right now.  Especially since the SE is between FO4 and SE in terms of engine development.

 

 

 

I really think that for most modders Skyrim is better setting, not even couse there is more feedback from powers like SE or FNIS but becouse it setting suits perverts, artist and "artists" more. I mean are you even able to imagine MAK or Nisetanaka and their "god please stop spamming bikini armors" and skimpy armors in F4?

 

Considering before the bombs dropped, the world of fallout had about 70 years of advancement compared to rl, and look how much pervy shit we have irl

 

Don't need silly workarounds for having rubber or latex and call it ebonite to try and justify it lore wise, you can have electronic devices ontop of it even, radiation or some fanfic made pervy version of fev virus is an easy way to explain futa or w/e extra bodypart you want to add to people.

 

That and unlike skyrim, slavery is not forbidden in the fallout world so you can go as nuts on that as you want aswell.

 

You have more freedom to do crazy stuff in the fallout world then the TES one by far.

 

That being said, F4SE is no doubt going to be made, you can't stop pervyness, it always finds a way

 

I mean, look at what trainwiz has been able to do so far, some of his quest mods are damn impressive for only having "half" a f4se, I don't think it'll take as long as people might think it will for it to come out proper.

[Guest]

Just going to give my two cents and I'll be gone.

 

We can see that Fallout 4 is already the 3rd most popular modded game according to Nexus stats (New Vegas only beats it because of the number of files available)

 

Sure FO4 is mess when it compares to other Bethesda games but there's no denying that it is popular and it remains popular still. Fallout 4 was more played and downloaded game compared to New Vegas and 3 first year it came out according to Steam. I have a strong feeling that FO4's settlement system, PowerArmor system, and updated visuals are attractive aspects for people to continue playing and modding for it. 

 

As others have been mentioning, things will pick up when the script extender releases. Not going to lie that I was slightly annoyed that Silverlock decided to prioritize SE over FO4 but their reasons make sense (I'm just being a baby). I have faith that they will dedicate themselves to FO4 once it finished. Plus, didn't FO4 recently have an update a month back? I'm sure they want to wait for the game to be super stable.

 

I'm just afraid that this whole FO4 VR thing will be another step back to the team. Haven't heard anything regarding that though. I recently learned to mod (small stuff) so that I can contribute and keep the FO4 modding community active. People who say FO4 modding is dying and complain about it without contributing to the community makes me unhappy. 

 

Excuse my grammer. Ever since I moved back to Korea from the States I've been forgetting all the English rules.

 

Stay patient friends

[pipdude]

 

*nod*

 

I guess what I wanted to say is that their reasons don't even matter. If they don't feel like it, don't have the time, don't have the manpower, work on something else, or the family dog ran away with the keyboard: The result is the same - we won't have F4SE anytime soon. Which in turn means that if we want any nice FO4 mods, we will have to find ways to write them without script extenders and stop waiting for something that might or might not ever see the light of day.

 

Yeah. The reasons don't matter. And anyone taking things on without those tools should be applauded. Just, on the other hand, I can understand why authors might be reluctant also.

 

I'm also not ready to write off the extenders at this point. Maybe they are closer than we realize and just don't want to deal with the questions a public announcement raises?

 

I have some mod ideas that are dependent on those tools. So, if silverlock doesn't make them, my solution isn't to mod anyway. It's to hope that someone else makes something similar. And that probably won't happen if the entire community is under the impression that silverlock is still working on them. No hard feelings to them if they aren't going to make it happen. But, they should at least let everyone know the situation if that is the case.

[Kimy]

I'm also not ready to write off the extenders at this point. Maybe they are closer than we realize and just don't want to deal with the questions a public announcement raises?

 

That's wishful thinking.

 

Writing the entire thing without public testing in complete secrecy would be contrary to their own established practices -and- good development standards for open source community projects (which is short, manageable release cycles). The truth is very likely that outsides of making thing compatible with the HR Texture release a few weeks ago, nobody has touched that code in absolute ages. And I glanced over their source code a few days ago. There is really not much there yet. If people still think we're just a couple months away from a 1.0 release, they miiiiight be wrong.

[pipdude]

 

I'm also not ready to write off the extenders at this point. Maybe they are closer than we realize and just don't want to deal with the questions a public announcement raises?

 

That's wishful thinking.

 

Writing the entire thing without public testing in complete secrecy would be contrary to their own established practices -and- good development standards for open source community projects (which is short, manageable release cycles). The truth is very likely that outsides of making thing compatible with the HR Texture release a few weeks ago, nobody has touched that code in absolute ages. And I glanced over their source code a few days ago. There is really not much there yet. If people still think we're just a couple months away from a 1.0 release, they miiiiight be wrong.

 

 

They wrote that they decided not to post incremental builds until it was feature complete. I can't recall the reason. But, it's explained in the reddit threads I linked to.

 

Posting a feature complete beta this month would still be consistent with what they said they would do.

 

EDIT:

 

The hope for the mid-March beta is to have all current functionality ported over. It will likely not have all gone through full validation and regressions. In general we've decided against a partial release as it wil l make versioning difficult.

 

 

[Kimy]

Well, it's not that I wouldn't like to be wrong in this case. While I personally have pretty much given up on F4SE, I would love getting my hands on some of the mods people have been delaying because of it. But I am not holding my breath.

[Vader666]

The real question is what are people going to do when its mid april and we still haven´t heard news about a script extender ?

What people are doing in that case will heavily influence the future of FO4 modding.

[tazdotnet]

F4SE has not been abandoned - look at this last release (had some papyrus extensions working) and compare it to the previous release (papyrus extensions were not working)

 

- Expired has been working on F4SE while Behippo has been working on SKSE64

 

- also keep in mind the script extender team has different members now than it did when skyrim came out

 

- expired joined the team during SKSE development

 

- the code in SKSE that makes skyui possible was written by a script extender team member that was also part of the Skyui team (not part of the script extender team anymore)

 

- there is also ianpat, ianpat works for a game company so the possibility of having free time for script extenders is low but it is there

 

we also have to remember there were patches put out for SSE, that sets the team back a little - the script extender team doesn't read minds or see into the future that I know of so they can't predict when or how many patches will be released or when work will get busy

[pipdude]

The real question is what are people going to do when its mid april and we still haven´t heard news about a script extender ?

What people are doing in that case will heavily influence the future of FO4 modding.

 

If that happens I will be asking who is going to make a script extender in place of the silverlock team.

 

F4SE has not been abandoned - look at this last release (had some papyrus extensions working) and compare it to the previous release (papyrus extensions were not working)

 

- Expired has been working on F4SE while Behippo has been working on SKSE64

 

- also keep in mind the script extender team has different members now than it did when skyrim came out

 

- expired joined the team during SKSE development

 

- the code in SKSE that makes skyui possible was written by a script extender team member that was also part of the Skyui team (not part of the script extender team anymore)

 

- there is also ianpat, ianpat works for a game company so the possibility of having free time for script extenders is low but it is there

 

we also have to remember there were patches put out for SSE, that sets the team back a little - the script extender team doesn't read minds or see into the future that I know of so they can't predict when or how many patches will be released or when work will get busy

 

Yes. There was that promising update. But, then it has been silence for 2 months. Not sure what to make of that...

 

Behippo said Expired has been working on F4SE. If true, that is amazing. But, from what I've seen of Expired's work over even the last 2 years is that he'll show up for a short stretch of time and get a bunch of cool things out. Then disappear again for a long time. Seems like the work on extenders will take more of a commitment than that.

[Kimy]

Judging from the code, the 0.3 release looks like that was the latest dev build before they stopped working on it and moved on to SSE. Which they then just released when Beth updated the game exe for the HR texture patch, together with the compatibility patch for the new exe. Again, I wouldn't mind being wrong, but that's how it appears.
 

 

 

If that happens I will be asking who is going to make a script extender in place of the silverlock team.

 

 

You do realize that even IF someone else is going to step in (which is a big if), this would mean having to wait for another <insert a cute word for "eternity" here>, before a new team would get its bearings and produces anything remotely comparable to SKSE?

 

Well, let's just say by the time they will be done, FO4 modding -will- be dead for real. If nothing great will get released in the meantime to keep both modders and players interested in the game, they will uninstall FO4 and go do something else.
 

[pipdude]

 

You do realize that even IF someone else is going to step in (which is a big if), this would mean having to wait for another <insert a cute word for "eternity" here>, before a new team would get its bearings and produces anything remotely comparable to SKSE?

 

Well, let's just say by the time they will be done, FO4 modding -will- be dead for real. If nothing great will get released in the meantime to keep both modders and players interested in the game, they will uninstall FO4 and go do something else.

 

 

I don't think that is true, actually.

 

For someone who has the required skill-set, I believe that this could be put together in a relatively short time if someone put in solid hours on it.

[Kimy]

 

 

You do realize that even IF someone else is going to step in (which is a big if), this would mean having to wait for another <insert a cute word for "eternity" here>, before a new team would get its bearings and produces anything remotely comparable to SKSE?

 

Well, let's just say by the time they will be done, FO4 modding -will- be dead for real. If nothing great will get released in the meantime to keep both modders and players interested in the game, they will uninstall FO4 and go do something else.

 

 

I don't think that is true, actually.

 

For someone who has the required skill-set, I believe that this could be put together in a relatively short time if someone put in solid hours on it.

 

 

Well, I didn't count the number of SKSE API functions, but there are a -lot- of them. Writing the code itself isn't rocket science, but finding the proper hooks in the game exe is quite the grunt work, and most people probably wouldn't want to do that sort of work 8 hours a day.

 

[jaam]

Given how different the Fallout 4 code is from the original skyrim, "finishing" SKSE64 first can only benefit F4SE has it is easier to first find what changes where made to go from 32 bits to 64 bits and then, after "porting" those changes to the core of F4SE working on what is actually new in F4.

 

Also, FYI, there are ~6700 classes in the original skyrim, increased to ~8800 in SSE, but more than 1300 in F4. That is a lot more work to analyze and decode.

 

[Outlast1]

I don't know much as I only modded very small thing in Geck and CK, But I don't think FO4 modding is dying just crawling right now. I am too scarred to look at the papyrus thingy

 

because I can barely get my striker shotgun in FO4 to work. Though from my opinion I would say that right now its all about time and potential frustrations that's have popped up. reading

 

these posts seems to highlight a few aspects: Time, Limited maneuverability, Manpower, and current knowledge. This is not saying that those who work or do not don't have the smarts

 

its just from what I read on here its that taking apart the engine is a lot easier than trying to put it back together without a reference to go by. I would give it time as it is Physics for

 

characters is coming out slowly but faster than I saw it for skyrim. Lastly we all should pitch in, in the sense of support and lots lots lots and lots of bacon and cookies!

[KoolHndLuke]

I don't know shit about modding. But by reasoning I might ask what mod authors might work on if not FO4 or SkyrimSE? Are there any other games that offer the support for modding that these games do? From what I have seen and read other games are not offering any support for modding at all. Until the next "Big" game comes out that offers full modding support like these then I don't think that modding for FO4 is going to disappear. Just look at Oldrim- people are still making mods for that game and it is 6 yrs old.

[pipdude]

 

Well, I didn't count the number of SKSE API functions, but there are a -lot- of them. Writing the code itself isn't rocket science, but finding the proper hooks in the game exe is quite the grunt work, and most people probably wouldn't want to do that sort of work 8 hours a day.

 

A lot of those functions are really simple like just sending one variable that was previously hidden. But, yeah. Based on the description of finding the hooks, not something I want to spend time on. Otherwise, I probably would have looked further into it by now.

 

It will take a trooper.

 

I don't know shit about modding. But by reasoning I might ask what mod authors might work on if not FO4 or SkyrimSE? Are there any other games that offer the support for modding that these games do? From what I have seen and read other games are not offering any support for modding at all. Until the next "Big" game comes out that offers full modding support like these then I don't think that modding for FO4 is going to disappear. Just look at Oldrim- people are still making mods for that game and it is 6 yrs old.

 

The Sims series is very moddable.

 

Oldrim? I haven't really looked into it, but my impression is that people are still modding Oblivion!

[Kain82]

I thought the modding scene was dead.  But after coming back after 3 years the scene is alive and well.  There are a ton of high quality mods I've downloaded, since the last time I've played.  I just need to buy all dlc and I'm up to date.

 

As for Sextec, I am patiently waiting for the F4SE update.

[BoondockSaint]

Well, just checking 'new files' and 'updated files' everyday on the nexus you can have an idea if FO4 modding scene is dead or not. Instead of dead, It seem's pretty healthy.

[Panek]

 

 

Oldrim? I haven't really looked into it, but my impression is that people are still modding Oblivion!

 

 

Heck, even morrowind is still getting new mods on Nexus.