HDT SMP for SSE?

[tasairis]

3 hours ago, TheWilloughbian said:

https://bethesda.net/en/devnotes

 

Can/would someone copy/paste the text from the new app manifest, please.

I can only assume you are not talking about the <assembly> data, so... What manifest?

[TheWilloughbian]

1 hour ago, tasairis said:

I can only assume you are not talking about the <assembly> data, so... What manifest?

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\appmanifest_489830.acf

 

It tells Steam what version you are running. You set this to "read only" And set Skyrim to only update when you start the game, This way  you can stop Steam from updating Skyrim unless you want it to by keeping it in offline mode whenever you start Skyrim..

 

What I'm wondering is if I can make Steam think I'm running the latest version by editing the appmanifest to match the latest version. This way I don't have to worry about the occasions when Steam makes me login/go online to confirm my account.

 

Just a thought I had and wanted to try it out. I don't need the file, I just need to read the text. 

[tasairis]

7 hours ago, TheWilloughbian said:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\appmanifest_489830.acf

 

It tells Steam what version you are running. You set this to "read only" And set Skyrim to only update when you start the game, This way  you can stop Steam from updating Skyrim unless you want it to by keeping it in offline mode whenever you start Skyrim..

 

What I'm wondering is if I can make Steam think I'm running the latest version by editing the appmanifest to match the latest version. This way I don't have to worry about the occasions when Steam makes me login/go online to confirm my account.

 

Just a thought I had and wanted to try it out. I don't need the file, I just need to read the text. 

I would strongly suggest not doing that. I don't have any particular evidence that it would be A Problem, but as a software developer doing something like that just gives me a bad feeling. Setting the game to only update when launched is enough given that it only applies when the game is launched through Steam and we're always using SKSE.

 

But if you still want to, you can construct what the manifest should be using SteamDB's data.

[full_inu]

Wait, so authors of CBBE and UUNP do not want to see their bodies with physics on Skyrim SE?

Did they want to shut down all those bodies with physics on Skyrim LE too?

 

I only heard about SSE CBBE body with physics that was shut down just recently.

[Vyxenne]

18 hours ago, codylowey said:

once a person has decided they're no longer interested in developing and maintaining a mod, and they're basically rid of it, it only makes sense to hand it off to whomever else is willing to keep going with it.  You lose nothing.

This perfectly describes UUNP.

[Vyxenne]

45 minutes ago, Barragan said:

Wait, so authors of CBBE and UUNP do not want to see their bodies with physics on Skyrim SE?

Did they want to shut down all those bodies with physics on Skyrim LE too?

 

I only heard about SSE CBBE body with physics that was shut down just recently.

I think you have received bad information, or you have misunderstood accurate information. Here are the points that your post has wrong:

• The authors of CBBE and UUNP are making every effort to kill UUNP dead in SSE, including crippling SSE Bodyslide by removing UUNP from it.
• Both CBBE-Physics and UUNP-HDT bodies are inherently physics-capable- there is nothing special anyone needs to do but build them in Bodyslide.
• The authors of CBBE and UUNP have made no statements or efforts to suppress either CBBE or UUNP usage in Skyrim LE
• There is no credible indication that "SSE CBBE body with physics" has been "shut down" anywhere, "just recently" or since the dawn of recorded history.

 

The author of the most-capable physics mod (HDT-SMP-SE) has said he is "tired of SSE" and will no longer develop physics for it. Since Bethesda continues to inflict game-breaking Marketing "updates" aimed primarily at Console users despite their promise to stop doing that, HDT-SMP has to be updated every time the game and/or SKSE64 are updated to accommodate Bethesda's game-breaking changes. If the HDT-SMP-SE author does not either update the mod files or release the source code so that others can continue his work, we have to either block all game updates including the one that dropped earlier this week plus any and all future updates, and stay on SSE v1.5.39/SKSE64 v2.0.7 using HDT-SMP-SE as it is today, bugs and all- or give up all earring, amulet, hair and clothes physics, plus HDT High Heels, and go back to CBP physics which so far provides body physics only. All of this applies equally to CBBE and UUNP body types and has nothing to do with the authors of those bodies.

 

Hope this helps you understand what is actually going on.

[full_inu]

32 minutes ago, Vyxenne said:

• There is no credible indication that "SSE CBBE body with physics" has been "shut down" anywhere, "just recently" or since the dawn of recorded history.

I think authors of CBBE shut down Maximum CBBE?

[Rex89]

such a shame? this had to happen with SMP physics, i pretty much saw this coming from a mile away that the game was over due for a update for a wile now.

how long has it been since the last game update, a few months to a year ago ?

hopefully someone will figure something out, maybe make a new framework for physics.

as for CBP i think it's somewhat limited in what it can do unless the mod author improves it.

 

 

 

[TheWilloughbian]

8 hours ago, tasairis said:

I would strongly suggest not doing that. I don't have any particular evidence that it would be A Problem, but as a software developer doing something like that just gives me a bad feeling. Setting the game to only update when launched is enough given that it only applies when the game is launched through Steam and we're always using SKSE.

 

But if you still want to, you can construct what the manifest should be using SteamDB's data.

I've never had an issue. I keep Steam in offline mode so it generally isn't a problem. But, every once and a while Steam will force you to confirm your account to play Skyrim. This just makes it so when you go back in offline mode, Steam forgets that an update is required.  This method has saved me a few times from being forced to update.

 

I don't think the SteamBD files have the appmanifest. I think it's something the Steam client writes when the game is updated or when an udate becomes available.

 

There's lots of ways to keep Skyrim from updating. This is just the method I've been using. 

 

[Vyxenne]

8 hours ago, Barragan said:

I think authors of CBBE shut down Maximum CBBE?

You said "CBBE body with physics." That means either CBBE-Physics or CBBE-Special, neither of which have ever been "shut down." If the "Maximum CBBE" body was one of the ones where someone other than the CBBE authors had modified it, yes, the CBBE author(s) had it taken down. I assumed you were speaking of the actual CBBE Physics bodies.

 

 

[tasairis]

3 hours ago, TheWilloughbian said:

I don't think the SteamBD files have the appmanifest. I think it's something the Steam client writes when the game is updated or when an udate becomes available.

It doesn't, but it does have the data stored in the manifest. Like the latest build number. And new manifest IDs. I think the only thing it doesn't have is the total file size, but you can probably ignore that anyways.

 

Or just do what everyone else does: let Steam update, then downgrade manually.

[TheWilloughbian]

19 minutes ago, tasairis said:

Or just do what everyone else does: let Steam update, then downgrade manually.

Too much like work.   I figure updating the appmanifest will essentially be the same thing. Just less files to mess with.

[Kalessin42]

12 hours ago, Slashz said:

Yea that update is pretty useless so no thanks i would like to keep my physics ? and i think everyone who's doing mods will ignore to update their mods to the latest version of the game because other requirements are not updated yet and even tho every other mod got to update so that will take a while. 

Well, once SKSE is updated, the mods that need to be updated to work with it and are still maintained will probably be updated fairly quickly. So, odds are that most everyone not using HDT-SMP will have updated to the latest Skyrim SE within a few weeks. Doing anything else means that you can't get updates for the mods which need a specific version of SKSE, and it will generally make your life harder. Plenty of folks will have no incentive to do that. The big issue is going to be any mods that someone considers critical which aren't updated to work with the latest SKSE like they need to be (e.g. HDT-SMP), and anyone in that boat will get to decide whether they'd rather keep the mod that hasn't been updated and give up on updating other mods, or whether they'd rather have their other mods updated. If SMP really doesn't get updated, then some folks won't update, but given that you can't currently simply install full SMP for whatever body you want with a mod on the nexus, I suspect that only the most motivated folks are currently using SMP, meaning that if it doesn't get updated to work with the newer SKSE, it will likely mostly just die out, with only a few diehards who really want it using it. Most Skyrim SE modders will just update everything and not do anything with SMP. But hopefully, SMP will be updated rather than that happening. And if all it really takes is rebuilding the dlls, then it will likely be a lot easier to talk its creator into updating it than it would be to talk him into actually completing it.

 

Regardless, what's totally ridiculous about all of this is how simply updating what's in the creation club requires updating Skyrim's exe file. That just reeks of bad design. If they were genuinely fixing bugs, then the updates might actually be welcome (aside from the SMP issue anyway), but as it stands, it's just causing problems for anyone using SKSE (which is most of the Skyrim modding community).

[Illuminati]

4 minutes ago, Kalessin42 said:

If SMP really doesn't get updated, then some folks won't update, but given that you can't currently simply install full SMP for whatever body you want with a mod on the nexus, I suspect that only the most motivated folks are currently using SMP, meaning that if it doesn't get updated to work with the newer SKSE, it will likely mostly just die out, with only a few diehards who really want it using it.

It will fracture the community (more so) for sure. I can't see modders making a version for the newest version of SKSE and still have a 2.0.7 edition.

[Vyxenne]

2 hours ago, Kalessin42 said:

what's totally ridiculous about all of this is how simply updating what's in the creation club requires updating Skyrim's exe file. That just reeks of bad design.

This website needs to allow for more than one thumbs-up per post per user. I did the best I could, gave you my measly one thumb up where you deserved 100 of them.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I really have developed a love-hate relationship with Bethesda, and since game-breaking CC it's really trending toward the hate side.

[Kalessin42]

4 hours ago, Vyxenne said:

This website needs to allow for more than one thumbs-up per post per user. I did the best I could, gave you my measly one thumb up where you deserved 100 of them.

LOL.

4 hours ago, Vyxenne said:

I really have developed a love-hate relationship with Bethesda, and since game-breaking CC it's really trending toward the hate side.

Well, most companies do some combination of good and bad/evil. Bethesda manages to make solid games (albeit not without their problems), but they also do stupid stuff, and the way that they handle the creation club with regards to updates makes no sense. It's not evil, but it is incompetent. Maybe there's a technical reason that forces their hand, but if so, it pretty much has to be because of a stupid decision they made in the past. Worst case, the game should be able to just phone home and ask about creation club updates without updating the game's executable. What they're doing is a bit like if your browser had to be updated every time a web page changed. The only reason that it's not completely broken for their games is because they just has the one "web page" to worry about per game. And as incompetent as it is, it really wouldn't be a big deal if SKSE and the like didn't break with updates, but given that they do, it really is a big problem. And they should know that. But as the saying goes, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

 

In any case, hopefully they at least get their act together by the time they release Elder Scrolls 6 in 2063 or whatever.

[Vyxenne]

8 hours ago, Kalessin42 said:

Bethesda manages to make solid games

Ah, g'wan witchoo. I pre-ordered FO4 and couldn't wait to dive in and lose myself in it like I did in FNV- just hours and hours of nonstop wonderfulness, together with 150 mods to spice it up.

 

Then I built a Settlement and nothing was ever the same. FO4=Minecraft on steroids. Once you start with Settlements, that's all you can do in the game- every time you try to (for example) clear a safehouse for The Railroad, Preston screams at you that Green Pastures is under attack. If you delay long enough to finish clearing the safehouse, you lose the Settlement completely. If you break out of the safehouse instance to run save the stupid Settlement, no matter that you were 90% through with the safehouse, you have to start it over after you save 17 Settlements because while you're saving one, three more come under attack. Etc. etc. blah blah blah. I finally got a couple of mods that (1) Keep Preston from even calling me about ANYthing unless I'm in Sanctuary with him; and (2) keep settlements from ever coming under attack. Then, having pretty much eliminated "mandatory settlement babysitting" as an issue, I started a new game, hoping to find some immersion or fun in the various factions and questlines.

 

Sadly, the whole time I'm in FO4 I have to watch my character walk like a stick figure with a corncob up her ass. Despite 30-40 "beauty mods" there is no way to make face or body as pretty/sexy as any of my Skyrim/SSE characters. No matter how hard I try, I'm just putting lipstick on a pig.

 

I could go on and on, but the TL;DR is that I just quit playing FO4 after 20-30 hours or so because it became repugnant to me- just not fun.

8 hours ago, Kalessin42 said:

hopefully they at least get their act together by the time they release Elder Scrolls 6 in 2063 or whatever.

When TES VI drops in 17E 598, if it's still the Gamebryo engine I think I'll pass on it. To me, SSE is the pinnacle of Gamebryo engine development. If TES VI doesn't have in-built physics (like Tomb Raider 2013 does with Lara's hair) and full control over character creation like Skyrim has I'll just skip it and keep on with SSE.

 

So bottom line: Bethesda has made solid games in the past, but they quit doing that after Skyrim IMHO. That's why so damn many ppl are still playing Skyrim 7 years later- modders keep giving us new reasons to replay it and nothing else is even half as good as Skyrim.

[Vyxenne]

  14 hours ago, Kalessin42 said:

If SMP really doesn't get updated, then some folks won't update, but given that you can't currently simply install full SMP for whatever body you want with a mod on the nexus, I suspect that only the most motivated folks are currently using SMP, meaning that if it doesn't get updated to work with the newer SKSE, it will likely mostly just die out, with only a few diehards who really want it using it.

15 hours ago, Illuminati said:

It will fracture the community (more so) for sure. I can't see modders making a version for the newest version of SKSE and still have a 2.0.7 edition.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories or anything, but has anyone else wondered if all this unnecessary game-breaking CC crap could be a deliberate attempt on Bethesda's part to do exactly that? If they manage to fracture the modding community, thereby reducing 3rd-party modding activity, their CC fiasco begins to smell a bit better- in other words you make your "product" look better not by creating a better product but by suppressing and eliminating the other products... similar to what the authors of a certain body type are doing- actively suppressing "the other body type" in order to make their new one more popular instead of highlighting the actual advantages (if any) of their new body.

 

It's a despicable, underhanded tactic, but obviously some people are desperate enough to embrace it. Food for thought.

 

 

[tasairis]

12 minutes ago, Vyxenne said:

I'm not one for conspiracy theories or anything, but has anyone else wondered if all this unnecessary game-breaking CC crap could be a deliberate attempt on Bethesda's part to do exactly that?

Bethesda games are nothing without mods. Skyrim SE/VR/VSE exist because people were still playing LE years later, and that's entirely due to its moddable nature. There are definitely idiot managers and marketing types out there who would burn that bridge before crossing it and antagonize the modding community, but this is one of those times it's easier to turn to Occam's razor: the update is probably to add support for some CC mod feature that wouldn't work well with the previous engine.

 

This update added more idles for horses, something relating to swapping horse saddles, and an imperialsaddle.nif. I would put my money on an upcoming CC mod that deals with horses - surely not something as complex as Immersive Horses, but more like this PS4 mod (which sounds suspiciously relevant...).

 

IIRC SKSE 2.0.7 updated a day or two after SSE 1.5.39, and the dependent mods started updating shortly after that. The community didn't like it, of course, but it clearly demonstrated it was able to adapt. So if Bethesda keeps the updates to once every few months then people will probably live with it.

[Grey Cloud]

1 hour ago, Vyxenne said:

I'm just putting lipstick on a pig.

Hey, this is Lover's Lab. There's probably a thread devoted to that.

[codylowey]

1 hour ago, Vyxenne said:

I'm not one for conspiracy theories or anything, but has anyone else wondered if all this unnecessary game-breaking CC crap could be a deliberate attempt on Bethesda's part to do exactly that?

No.  Really, the only thing that updating "breaks" is SKSE.  So, either Bethesda knows about SKSE and that updates break it, or they don't.

 

A. If they know about SKSE, and know enough about it to know that updating the SE runtime "breaks" SKSE, then they also know enough to know that SKSE's devs always update SKSE within a couple of days to make it compatible and unbreak everything again.

B. If they don't know about SKSE, then they have no reason to care about "breaking" anything.  Non-SKSE mods aren't broken at all by exe updates.

 

I have no reason to think that Bethesda is aware of SMP or cares about it if they are, so I can't really imagine them trying to break it on purpose.  

 

Really, isn't it really a decision Hydrogen made all by himself to have SMP be reliant on a hard-coded SE version number to work?  Couldn't he, if he had wanted to, simply added a "anything newer than version number x.xx.xxxx" check instead?

[perrymwt]

3 hours ago, Vyxenne said:

When TES VI drops in 17E 598, if it's still the Gamebryo engine I think I'll pass on it. To me, SSE is the pinnacle of Gamebryo engine development. If TES VI doesn't have in-built physics (like Tomb Raider 2013 does with Lara's hair) and full control over character creation like Skyrim has I'll just skip it and keep on with SSE.

I think I have to disagree with you on this point for a couple reasons.

 

1) There will be thousands of man-years of modders' work and knowledge base just going to be thrown away.  Everything would have to be relearnt and rebuilt, starting with basic import/export plugins for 3D programs and tools like Nifskope.

2) There is no guarantee that the new engine will be mod-able, at least as far as the models and animations are concerned.  With DA:I, Bioware simply refused to let any info on their engine get out by claiming it was too complicated for ordinary people to understand and therefore mod.  With DA:O, at least there was some info that modders could use.  Check out the number of body mods for DA:O and DA:I.  As for Bethesda, who knows what the suits will decide.

 

I hope you find these objections reasonable.

[cminnow]

On 10/28/2016 at 12:11 PM, ousnius said:

You're (lightly said) best off forgetting about HDT PE and HDT SMP for now.

 

First, there needs to be a new SKSE, then someone needs to fully update/recode HDT (PE or SMP) to work with the updated 64-bit Havok library the game now makes use of.

We don't even know if Hydrogen (HDT) is still active or cares about SSE, or if someone else has the source code, or if someone else is going to code something similar from scratch.

 

There'll probably be physics at some point, but no idea if it will be the HDT style and by who.

 

TL;DR it's more than just "updating the DLL real quick" and it might happen or might not happen.

RIP SMP back in 2016.

[degenernate]

5 hours ago, codylowey said:

Really, isn't it really a decision Hydrogen made all by himself to have SMP be reliant on a hard-coded SE version number to work?  Couldn't he, if he had wanted to, simply added a "anything newer than version number x.xx.xxxx" check instead?

No, no, and no, absolutely not! Someone please correct me if my understanding is shaky on any of this, but what "breaks" is any mod reliant on a custom DLL, which turns out to be a small pile of really sophisticated mods that dig deep into the engine. Every time the game receives a patch (or new branch like SkyrimVR), the memory registers in the game EXE that these DLLs hook into change. This happens through no purely-malicious fault of Bethesda's, it's the expected result of recompilation in any programming language, and significant effort would have to be put in to make the engine not do this on every version change. Now, every single mod that relies on knowing those registers needs to have things pointed at the new registers, and a new DLL needs to be compiled and released - this isn't a huge job if you're Ian Patterson or Hydrogen because you mostly already know where to look for what broke, but pretty much anyone else would be completely lost if they were handed a mod's source code and a hex editor.

 

Now, why does it have to be like this? Consider Minecraft's modding community, maybe the only one larger than Skyrim's. Just like Skyrim, every time a new engine version got pushed, everybody who published anything more than a texture pack had to do this same memory register/recompile/re-release dance. People bitched about it loudly and constantly (say what you will about Bethesda's games, what would Minecraft have been if the core game was all anyone ever got?) Notch and the team preached for years about how proper mod support was coming, but even when the property got sold for billions of dollars, it wasn't clear anyone had even begun trying to make mod authoring less painful.

 

Why? Wouldn't you think making modding easy would be near the top of your damned list if you were Notch or Todd Howard? Turns out, no - if you're Notch or Todd Howard. All of this absolutely can be explained by a callous-but-not-exactly-malicious disregard for the huge roster of people making their games infinitely more valuable. You (and your lawyers, and your accountants, and your investors) all get to decide what to work on today, and if you're Mojang or Bethesda that's always going to be some feature that your investors and accountants feel is more valuable - making the lives of mod authors easier isn't even on their lists.

 

So sure, this sucks, and everyone should be loud and angry about the fact that zero effort was ever put into making DLL compiling painless, but now you're basically asking Zenimax's lawyers (a company founded and run by lawyers) to release large elements of Skyrim's source code, which ain't ever happening. Sure, efforts could have been made to absorb SKSE and SMP into the main codebase (I'm certain Bethesda is aware of them), but for all we know those efforts were made, and the SKSE authors' employment clauses prevented this in the same way those clauses prevented them from receiving any compensation for publishing SKSE; maybe adding boob physics was too risque to consider (fun fact - Skyrim is explicitly forbidden from being streamed on Chaturbate, with or without boob physics), or maybe Hydrogen was just too Chinese. The details that could lead to real finger-pointing aren't public, conspiracy theories aren't necessary to describe what's happening here when these companies simply not having adequate respect for modders is conceivable, and complaining about it probably won't do anything more than make you feel slightly better about how screwed up it all is.

 

TL;DR: DO NOT blame Hydrogen for SMP breaking all the time. He/she is a saint for putting up with Bethesda's modder-unfriendly patching process, though that reputation will be tarnished a little more every day we don't see SMP's source code or a fresh DLL.

[Kalessin42]

6 hours ago, degenernate said:

No, no, and no, absolutely not! Someone please correct me if my understanding is shaky on any of this, but what "breaks" is any mod reliant on a custom DLL, which turns out to be a small pile of really sophisticated mods that dig deep into the engine. Every time the game receives a patch (or new branch like SkyrimVR), the memory registers in the game EXE that these DLLs hook into change. This happens through no purely-malicious fault of Bethesda's, it's the expected result of recompilation in any programming language, and significant effort would have to be put in to make the engine not do this on every version change. Now, every single mod that relies on knowing those registers needs to have things pointed at the new registers, and a new DLL needs to be compiled and released - this isn't a huge job if you're Ian Patterson or Hydrogen because you mostly already know where to look for what broke, but pretty much anyone else would be completely lost if they were handed a mod's source code and a hex editor.

Really, the ones at fault for why this stuff breaks on updates is Microsoft. Other platforms do not have this problem. On POSIX systems, changing a shared library does not break anything depending on it if the symbols you're linking against haven't changed, whereas on Windows, if anything changes, you have to recompile. So, for instance, on Linux, if openssl gets updated with bug fixes, but the API stays the same, everything that links against it continues to work without having to be rebuilt, whereas if it were on Windows, everything using it would have to be rebuilt. It's this mess that causes folks to release multiple versions of dlls on Windows and gets you into "dll hell." All of this mess can be traced back to how Microsoft decided to implement dlls on Windows. If they'd done what other platforms had done, these problems wouldn't exist.

 

dlls are advantageous in that they allow you to share code between applications, and they allow you to dynamically load libraries at runtime (without which, plugins would not be possible), but they do not have the benefits that you get on other platforms where you can update a shared library or anything using it without having to update any of the other pieces (at least as long as the API and ABI stay the same anyway).

 

So, any company that releases a product on Windows like Skyrim is going to have these problems where dlls break when updates are made. Bethesda can't get around that. And the folks who release mods that involve dlls can't get around it. The net result is that any mod that isn't currently maintained is going to have problems whenever the game is updated, and there's just no way around it. So, if a mod isn't maintained anymore, and it includes a dll, if the game is ever updated, is going to break and stay broken, and there really isn't a fix for that. The only way it works is if the mod is actively maintained.

 

The only reason that Bethesda's behavior here is ridiculous is that the way that they've designed the creation club seems to require that they update the game itself when they make changes - something that normal mods don't need to do. The breakage would occur even if they were updating the game for good reasons (such as fixing bugs), so really, the issue is that they're updating the game for stupid reasons. They should have designed the creation club in a way that did not require updating the game itself whenever anything in the creation club changes.

6 hours ago, degenernate said:

TL;DR: DO NOT blame Hydrogen for SMP breaking all the time. He/she is a saint for putting up with Bethesda's modder-unfriendly patching process, though that reputation will be tarnished a little more every day we don't see SMP's source code or a fresh DLL.

Hydrogen is doing this in their free time, and the breakage is not their fault. So, getting mad with them over that isn't reasonable, and we should be grateful that they've given us anything at all, though I don't think that it's unreasonable to be unhappy if they quit, much as it's perfectly reasonable for them to do so. IMHO, if Hydrogen doesn't want to continue to work on SMP, they should make the source available for others to continue their work, but since it's their work, they do technically have the right to choose to not make the source available even if most of us would not be happy with such a choice.