Trykz

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.

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

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.

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

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: 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

And 6 months in, I could have said the same thing about Skyrim. Or Fallout 4. Yet here we are. Enderal is a reality, and Fallout: London is literal days from release. But speaking of Conan Exiles, Funcom proved one thing: It is unwise to follow up an MMORPG with an RPG. I played Age of Conan online for a fair few years. It was a great game, and I enjoyed it immensely. Couldn't really get into Exiles. Conversely, it is unwise to follow up an RPG with an MMORPG. Hence, Skyrim's wild popularity when compared to Elder Scrolls: Online. Bethesda proved it again with Fallout: 76. NEVER has there been a truly successful follow-up of either. RPG's and MMORPG's are beasts in immensely differing veins. And it is unwise to try to follow up one with the other. I attribute this to their playerbases being so vastly different. YMMV. So I say again: History is the greatest teacher. For me, the biggest problem with Starfield was the choice to start the game in the mine on Vectera. Because it drops you into the game waaaaaay beyond the rich backstory it tries to feed you later. It would have been far better to start the player learning about the Earth being doomed to destruction, and then sending them through Constellation to the moonbase to discover the origins of grav-tech space travel, the Artifacts, the Starborn, and how it all relates to round out the MQ. But, as is typical BGS, they decided to go the ass-backward route 🤣

This: And this: Admittedly, I was less than impressed with the overall state of the game at launch. But do I regret buying it? No. The story was a bit boring. And the NG+ was quite disappointing after finishing the story. Travelling back in time just to start all over again, knowing all that happened before while everyone else acted like we never met, was rather unimpressive. I did quite enjoy all the little side quests scattered throughout. Enough that I restarted the game with a fresh character to run through again. The shipbuilder is a lot of fun to play with as well. I've built a fair few from ships that I stole from spacers, Va'Ruun zealots, and the Crimson Fleet. Probably close to half of my playtime is spent in the shipbuilder. The potential of this game's foundation is immeasurable. A lot of "adult oriented" content is already in place. From bounties to shipboard brigs, seedy cities with sketchy backstories, to "goody-two-shoes" actors and religious cult factions/figures who don't need any reason to nefariously harrass you, because your mere existence offends them. All this in the "native", unmodded game. All it needs is a CK, and scripting and animation tools to exploit it all. All of this WILL come. Just as it did for all of the most popular BGS games. In a few years (or less) we'll likely see an Enderal-esque total overhaul of Starfield's main story. All the naysaying around the possibilities surrounding this game have been heard before. In 2006 when Oblivion released. In 2011 with the release of Skyrim. In 2015 when Fallout 4 released. How many times has the doom-and-gloom crowd peddled this bullshit, and how many times have modders proven them wrong? EVERY time. Full stop. 97%? What depths of who's ass does this bullshit come from? 🤣 I suspect it's more impatience than disappointment, but we're barely 6 months in. So people need to settle down and let BGS get their shit together. They will. Because they always do. History is the greatest teacher.

Well hello, 2011..... it's been a while, my naysaying friend 🤣

It was so easy for many to write off Cyberpunk 2077. Saying it was a doomed game with little to no future potential. I know. I was one of those people. And I still am. But not because it's a horrible game. Nor for it's buggy release or lack of any feeling of real connection to the character you spend so much time playing. Cyberpunk's redemption tour was implemented for a single purpose: to redeem CDPR's reputation PRIOR to their true flagship IP's next release: The Witcher 4. Had they not done something for CP2077, there was a good chance Witcher 4 might never see the light of day. Investors felt robbed. Devs felt betrayed and underappreciated. And fans felt deceived. And those feelings were well justified even before it released. That said, I didn't hate the game. But I didn't love it either. The world was outstanding. The side-quests were engaging and fun. The important characters had depth and meaning. But the main story and it's outcomes sucked. I never felt like there was any real connection to my V character when I was working through the MQ. It was ALL about Johnny Silverhand. I was playing HIS story. He had unfinished business, and i was just along for the ride. I had more fun doing fixer jobs, side objectives, and being chased by cops than I did playing through the MQ. It felt like a chore that I HAD to work on before I could get back to the stuff I had fun doing. The worst thing was realising that it really ISN'T an "open world" game. Take Skyrim or FO4 for example. In Skyrim, you exit the cave after the intro and go do whatever you want. You can set the MQ aside for as long as you wish. In FO4, you exit the vault and do the same. But in CP2077? You finish the intro and save the girl, only to immediately go into the Watson Lockdown. Which "gates" the ENTIRETY of the remaining game, and forces you into the MQ to access anything further. You can't even leave Watson to explore the rest of the world. I cheated my way out of Watson, and could do NOTHING. No fixer jobs. No side objectives. Nothing. That is NOT what an open world game is. It's just the opposite. It's a "one and done" game because CDPR achieved their goal. Redeem themselves to salvage the potential of their future Witcher game. I haven't bought Phantom Liberty. I don't know if I ever will. I'm just not that interested in it anymore. And that says a lot coming from a once diehard fan. Maybe when I'm bored, or Steam has a giveaway promo I'll grab it and check it out. But I doubt I'll spend any real money on it. Anyhoo, @blue1820 is right. This should get back on topic. So where are we at right now as far as tools go? I haven't been paying a lot of attention as I've been working on Droids on and off for the past few weeks. Anything for working with meshes and textures? Nifskope, GIMP, etc.... ?

Steam reviews aren't really indicative of how the game is truly faring. For example: of the total 87,887 (mixed) reviews, steam placed only the last 7,392 into the mostly negative category according to that screenshot. Worse yet, they don't break those numbers down further to give an accurate assessment of the state of the game. So you're left to "assume" that the game is doing horribly based on that limited information. So, of that 7,392 negative reviews, what percentage is positive? And of the total reviews, "including" the last 7,392, what percentage is positive vs. negative? Which would be a more accurate indication. And as far as I know, Steam's reviews are derived solely from PC players. So what are XBox players saying? Can they even use mods yet? I think not without a CK capable of creating them. I said earlier in this thread that I don't believe Bethesda was ever looking for any game awards or the like. They're building, patching, and planning new content with an eye on "longevity". They're in it for the long haul. And they know mods are the key to that longevity. And not just the mostly R and PG shit on Nexus. Seriously. Who plays a non-adult, un-modded Oblivion, Skyrim, or FO4 anymore? In 6 months to 1 year's time, Starfield will begin it's path to becoming no different.

Agreed. Even without a CK, Starfield's modding scene continues to grow. And that's what I mean.... more seasoned modders may go, but more likely than not, return once Starfield's CK is released to see what they can do with it. I also expect that if the necessary tools to accomplish what they want are not yet available even after the release of the CK, it will simply be that much longer before they're drawn back. But many/most will come back. I haven't picked apart the game's files much at all. Yet. But I intend to. My main hope is that Expired will look into building a new RaceCompatibility mod for Starfield so multiple custom races can co-exist in a load order. We'll see..... If not, I'll likely go with the runtime Leveled List injection method I made for Fallout 4 using a generic injection script. I'll know better when I finally sit down to dig through the game's files.

Yes, how thoughtless of me..... please forgive me for not keeping EVERY version of Skyrim installed. And for somehow forgetting that I am obligated to keep YOU happy with your particular version of the game, in perpituity. You complain that I'm no longer here to serve your needs, to then brag that you have the tools and technical knowledge to do the thing you expect me to do..... yourself? Please accept my deepest apologies..... 🙄

A reasonable plan. But modders claiming to be disinterested in a Bethesda game without one is really no great surprise. I myself haven't touched the game in almost 2 months. And I'm much more a sci-fi fan than fantasy. I suspect once the CK is out, many will return to the game to see what they can do with it, or to see what new mods they can add to reinterest them. But even then, with Bethesda updating roughly every six weeks, I suspect it will still be a bit slow before we see adult mods of any significance, as once again Bethesda repeatedly breaks many mods that depend on SFSE (I'm looking at you Skyrim 1.5 patch 👿), given their planned patch/update schedule (roughly every 6 weeks or so).

Bethesda said Q1 2024, so more realistically..... June at the earliest. Maybe even July or August. Which is fine with me. If they're truly in this for the long haul, then they're likely going to keep a reasonably sized team on this game for at least the first 8-9 months post release to hash out as many bugs, glitches, and broken content as they can before they release a CK. I'm thinking we'll see a CK sometime just prior to the first DLC.

Repeatedly asking isn't going to get it finished any sooner 😜 However..... Coming closer to my retirement years, I've left my career in plumbing for good. I'm now working as a maintenance department head for a local campground. It affords me a little more free time during the week, and the work environment is far less stressful because I'm not stuck inside scheduling constraints for completion. Be that as it may, I still need to get the place into better shape than I found it. So for the moment, I have "a little" more free time to mod. But not a lot. In the coming weeks that will grow as I get things in order and better organized. By month's end, I should be in a far better place, with lots more free time as I hire in a new team for the grounds and facilities work. That said..... I just finally finished the sixth sub-level of ten total you'll need to get through in the final dungeon. Without saying too much, I can give you this to stew on..... Sometimes up is down. And sometimes down is up. EVERY level is connected to EVERY OTHER level. So..... if you were thinking to yourself, "meh, 10 levels? Pfft..... no problem!" Think again. I built the damn thing. And even I keep getting lost during playtests 😈