SE Compatibility Tracking (Apr 23)

[Vortec]

59 minutes ago, Pfiffy said:

Is there a Source code???

 He has a Github page.

 

 "

Source & Contributing

Source is available on Github. While I intend to look into some other known bugs, no promises. If you feel like tracking down a bug and theorizing a fix or even implementing one yourself, feel free to contribute; I'm willing to maintain it for future game updates.                                       "

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17230?tab=description

[Pfiffy]

14 minutes ago, Vortec said:

 He has a Github page.

 

 "

Source & Contributing

Source is available on Github. While I intend to look into some other known bugs, no promises. If you feel like tracking down a bug and theorizing a fix or even implementing one yourself, feel free to contribute; I'm willing to maintain it for future game updates.                                       "

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/17230?tab=description

That's far beyond my abilities. I hardly get a script to compile....

But if there is a source code, someone might take over this and continue.

but more interesting is the address library.

[BigOnes69]

3 hours ago, remodel said:

Authors for SSE Engine Fixes (skse64 plugin) said "I don't plan to update this mod for AE. I simply don't have the time or energy to work on these things anymore."

This is a critical mod. It'll require expertise in creating DLLs to get it migrated, I'm not sure this will happen.

 

And then, there's USSEP (Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch) that has been updated and no earlier versions available. Sounds rather intransigent to me.

 

Looks like Skyrim SE modding will become rather limited one way or another.

SKSE team say they should be able to incorporate it into SKSE but it will take time.

[CPL254]

On 11/13/2021 at 5:38 AM, 4nk8r said:

 

How to prevent Steam from ever updating Skyrim Special Edition ever again (works for me, at least)

1. Disable Steam Cloud saves (Properties > General) - If you don't do this, I'm fairly certain the manifest will be recreated when Steam starts.
2. Shut down Steam
3. Move Valve\Steam\Steamapps\appmanifest_489830.acf to another folder on your system (or rename to something like appmanifest_489830-disabled.acf).
4. Start Steam
5. Look at your Steam Library (Elder Scrolls - Skyrim Special Edition should appear uninstalled).
6. Forever more start Skyrim SE via SKSE64 launcher

 

Or do what I did.  run Steam in the offline mode, and Install a small firewall software on your machine and block all internet access for Steam.

TinyWall - A free, lightweight and non-intrusive firewall (pados.hu)

Edited November 14, 2021 by CPL254

[4nk8r]

2 hours ago, Pfiffy said:

That's far beyond my abilities. I hardly get a script to compile....

But if there is a source code, someone might take over this and continue.

but more interesting is the address library.

 

While the Address Library is still going to be needed for existing pre-AE mods that use it, going forward it might not be valid any longer.  This is based on a comment in the PluginAPI.h source:

 

/**** plugin versioning ********************************************************
 *
 *    The AE version of Skyrim SE broke plugin versioning as many were written
 *    with the assumption that the Address Library would always be valid.
 *    These always report that they are compatible, then exit on startup because
 *    they cannot find their address library file.
 *    
 *    To work around this problem, version checking has been reimplemented and
 *    no longer calls any code. Plugins declare their compatibility, and SKSE
 *    determines whether to load the plugin.

[4nk8r]

12 minutes ago, CPL254 said:

 

Or do what I did.  run Steam in the offline mode, and Install a small firewall software on your machine and block all internet access for Steam.

TinyWall - A free, lightweight and non-intrusive firewall (pados.hu)

Why the hell would you do something so complex that also blocks updates for everything else you have installed?  My method allows you to leave Steam online and still get updates for the remainder of your installed games.  But you do you.

[Pfiffy]

16 minutes ago, 4nk8r said:

 

While the Address Library is still going to be needed for existing pre-AE mods that use it, going forward it might not be valid any longer.  This is based on a comment in the PluginAPI.h source:

 

/**** plugin versioning ********************************************************
 *
 *    The AE version of Skyrim SE broke plugin versioning as many were written
 *    with the assumption that the Address Library would always be valid.
 *    These always report that they are compatible, then exit on startup because
 *    they cannot find their address library file.
 *    
 *    To work around this problem, version checking has been reimplemented and
 *    no longer calls any code. Plugins declare their compatibility, and SKSE
 *    determines whether to load the plugin.

That is rocket science for me, I wouldn't even understand it in my language.... But I don't understand why we get a new .exe for the CC things that already worked with the old one. Is it really possible that they changed something important? 

[CPL254]

35 minutes ago, 4nk8r said:

Why the hell would you do something so complex that also blocks updates for everything else you have installed?  My method allows you to leave Steam online and still get updates for the remainder of your installed games.  But you do you.

I only have Fallout 4 and Skyrim SE in Steam.  So I don't need any updates.  But if you have other games, I can see why this method doesn't make much sense.  

[tasairis]

9 minutes ago, Pfiffy said:

That is rocket science for me, I wouldn't even understand it in my language.... But I don't understand why we get a new .exe for the CC things that already worked with the old one. Is it really possible that they changed something important? 

 

At the very least they recompiled the program with a more recent compiler, which is objectively beneficial, but the new compiler will do some things differently. Whether there were engine changes to support mod stuff is a secondary question.

 

Compilers as a whole do about the same thing: take human-readable (?) code that someone wrote and translate it to something machine-readable. But like with humans and human languages, different translators will do things slightly differently. And if you're used to how one compiler translated things, if another compiler steps in and does things differently, you have to learn that over again - not completely over from scratch, because stuff still has to work mostly the same way before and after, but maybe it moved some parts around and now some things aren't where they used to be.

[remodel]

4 hours ago, Pfiffy said:

Is there a Source code???

I looked in the downloads and didn't see it.  I don't know about Discord or GitHub though.

 

You might try and PM the author thru NEXUS if you know how to program a DLL.  When I was programing you needed Visual C++ to do it.  It's been 10 years for me now and it would take me a long while to get up to speed to even start.   When all this AE stuff started, I tried to recall some details but I only remembered bits and pieces of syntax and how to set up the compiler to create a DLL.   

[tasairis]

If you haven't heard, and if it hasn't been said here (I've lost track where I hear things),

 

- SKSE for AE is now 2.1.2. It loads plugins but is still a pre-release version, so don't upgrade yet.

- At least some of the SSE Engine Fixes fixes will go into SKSE, at some point

 

 

Also, some newly updated mods:

- Better Jumping

- Encounter Zones Unlocked

- Estrus for Skyrim

[remodel]

1 hour ago, BigOnes69 said:

SKSE team say they should be able to incorporate it into SKSE but it will take time.

Now that's good news!

 

In the meantime I'll just be modding the old version or playing Witcher 3.

[Pfiffy]

8 minutes ago, tasairis said:

 

At the very least they recompiled the program with a more recent compiler, which is objectively beneficial, but the new compiler will do some things differently. Whether there were engine changes to support mod stuff is a secondary question.

 

Compilers as a whole do about the same thing: take human-readable (?) code that someone wrote and translate it to something machine-readable. But like with humans and human languages, different translators will do things slightly differently. And if you're used to how one compiler translated things, if another compiler steps in and does things differently, you have to learn that over again - not completely over from scratch, because stuff still has to work mostly the same way before and after, but maybe it moved some parts around and now some things aren't where they used to be.

Does that mean after the update of SKSE everything will be fine? I guess, that a lot of people are searching for the source code of their .dlls now. I saw that Estrus is already updated for AE. And we will get a new Sexlab Beta out of the dev version from github. 

[4nk8r]

6 minutes ago, Pfiffy said:

Does that mean after the update of SKSE everything will be fine? I guess, that a lot of people are searching for the source code of their .dlls now. I saw that Estrus is already updated for AE. And we will get a new Sexlab Beta out of the dev version from github. 

Hopefully there are some parallel updates (SE/AE) on SL betas until the remainder of Skyrim is also AE.  I don't want to be forced to move to a half-baked AE install just to try out new Sexlab Beta features.

 

Edit: Hopefully it is just a matter of using 1 set of DLLs over another.

Edited November 14, 2021 by 4nk8r

[pburnt]

Haven't said this in a while but feel the need to: tasairis is freaking awesome!

[4nk8r]

30 minutes ago, CPL254 said:

I only have Fallout 4 and Skyrim SE in Steam.  So I don't need any updates.  But if you have other games, I can see why this method doesn't make much sense.  

Yeah, I have accumulated a few hundred games over the years.  Aside from having my Steam account for over a decade and the games I've explicitly purchased on it, I've been a member of the Humble Bundle for a several years as well.  I get 12 games a month from that.  I should start a lottery for my excess games from HB.  Lots of things I'd have never purchased on my own, nor plan to ever play.

[tasairis]

9 minutes ago, Pfiffy said:

Does that mean after the update of SKSE everything will be fine? I guess, that a lot of people are searching for the source code of their .dlls now. I saw that Estrus is already updated for AE. And we will get a new Sexlab Beta out of the dev version from github. 

 

SKSE updating means that SKSE itself is functioning as it needs to, because remember that it provides its own functionality (eg, Papyrus functions and the DLL loader). But there are also some functionalities behind the scenes (eg, DLL loading) that they've changed with the 2.1.x releases.

 

For past game updates, the process has been

0. SkyrimSE.exe updates - typically not a huge update so most of it looks about the same as before

1. SKSE updates for the new engine, but the rest of it is more or less unchanged

2. Address Library updates because the engine updated

3. Address Library-based mods don't update because that chore has been entirely offloaded to Address Library itself - which is exactly why it exists

4. Non-Address Library-based mods update because the engine updated

 

This time,

0. SkyrimSE.exe updates - except this time it's a large update and a lot of it is not the same as before (which is what the whole "AE update apocalypse" thing is about)

1. SKSE updates for the new engine, but the SKSE authors are also making some other changes at the same time

2. Address Library updates because the engine updated and so did SKSE

3. Address Library-based mods do update because even though the engine update chore is offloaded, they do have to care that SKSE updated

4. Non-Address Library-based mods update because the engine updated and so did SKSE

 

(that's the worst case scenario in a general way - some mods may be small and minor enough that they don't have to go through the whole thing)

 

So there's two parts to this whole thing: (a) SkyrimSE.exe updated and in a significant way that will make it take longer for people to see what happened to it, and also (b) SKSE itself is updating.

 

[tasairis]

31 minutes ago, 4nk8r said:

Hopefully there are some parallel updates (SE/AE) on SL betas until the remainder of Skyrim is also AE.  I don't want to be forced to move to a half-baked AE install just to try out new Sexlab Beta features.

 

Edit: Hopefully it is just a matter of using 1 set of DLLs over another.

 

It should look the same as before: if you have SkyrimSE.exe version 1.5.97 then you use SKSE 2.0.20 and related mods, and if you have SkyrimSE.exe version 1.6.318 then you use SKSE 2.1.x and related mods.

[4nk8r]

1 hour ago, Pfiffy said:

That is rocket science for me, I wouldn't even understand it in my language.... But I don't understand why we get a new .exe for the CC things that already worked with the old one. Is it really possible that they changed something important? 

Someone more knowledgeable chime in, but it seems like Bethesda's continued damage to Skyrim SE related to CC updates is mainly to support console systems that don't allow access to sites like NexusMods and similar.  I don't think the changes are necessarily needed for the PC versions to make use of CC plugins...or at least MOST of them.  Fishing might require some engine changes to accommodate.

 

Edit: DocClox broke it down.

Edited November 14, 2021 by 4nk8r
reference

[4nk8r]

6 minutes ago, tasairis said:

 

It should look the same as before: if you have SkyrimSE.exe version 1.5.97 then you use SKSE 2.0.20 and related mods, and if you have SkyrimSE.exe version 1.6.318 then you use SKSE 2.1.x and related mods.

 

I'm speaking specifically for Sexlab Beta updates going forward.  If AE DLLs for Sexlab and PapyrusUtils are produced, I'd hope new features/fixes added further down the line are maintained in both until AE is fully supported by the rest of the community (or at least the mods I want to keep using).

Edited November 14, 2021 by 4nk8r
clarity

[CPL254]

In Windows, the DLL's will load.  That's not the problem.  But it becomes a different story depending on how the mod was scripted.  For example, if the DLL's uses a static memory location to call up a certain instruction, most likely it will not work.  Typically when using a new version of the dev tool, the memory locations change.  In Windows when coding, there are many different ways of doing one thing.  If everybody follows the best practice in coding, one change by SKSE team should be enough to make all mods to work.  But that's not how it works in the real world.  It will take a while before all mods become compatible with AE.  So set your expectation really low.  It will take many months if not year.

[Tlam99]

New compiler, some new functions, that means the adresses are shuffeld. One has to check it line by line.

I did in the past some basic things in C++ and assembler, so I am not just talking out of the blue.

A couple of the early dll developers are gone (those which started after first SE release).

My, repeat, my guess it a year optimistic. Pessimistic 5 years plus n (n can be a number oder never) to have AE in the stage as SE ist now.

So my pick will be a number between 1 and 5 

 

 

[tasairis]

8 minutes ago, 4nk8r said:

I'm speaking specifically for Sexlab Beta updates going forward.  If AE DLLs for Sexlab and PapyrusUtils are produced, I'd hope new features/fixes added further down the line are maintained in both until AE is fully supported by the rest of the community (or at least the mods I want to keep using).

 

Depends on Ashal and osmelmc.

 

But if you have a fully functional version of Skyrim 1.5.97 and SKSE 2.0.20 then it's simple: don't update. And if SexLab and PapyrusUtil go AE-only, so what? In a few months when everything is settled down, then you can update.

[4nk8r]

2 minutes ago, tasairis said:

 

Depends on Ashal and osmelmc.

 

But if you have a fully functional version of Skyrim 1.5.97 and SKSE 2.0.20 then it's simple: don't update. And if SexLab and PapyrusUtil go AE-only, so what? In a few months when everything is settled down, then you can update.

 

Not quite my point, but I understand what you mean so I'll stop here.

[tasairis]

2 minutes ago, Tlam99 said:

New compiler, some new functions, that means the adresses are shuffeld. One has to check it line by line.

I did in the past some basic things in C++ and assembler, so I am not just talking out of the blue.

A couple of the early dll developers are gone (those which started after first SE release).

My, repeat, my guess it a year optimistic. Pessimistic 5 years plus n (n can be a number oder never) to have AE in the stage as SE ist now.

So my pick will be a number between 1 and 5 

 

A debugger and experience makes the process much easier. I don't have the appropriate skills, but last time I looked through SkyrimSE.exe, it appeared that many different functions were arranged linearly (like a function table) and a strings search for console and Papyrus names could help to identify many of them - which, of course, only applies to named functions.

 

Five years is silly, even for a pessimistic view. Of the mods with active authors, I'm figuring half will update within a month of SKSE finalizing (they've already started trickling in now) and the other half within 3 months. Impossible to say for the mods with inactive authors.