Basically the issue is that every six months they break all mods. Many projects over the years got abandoned after an update, or they were just never able to make progress because every six months they’d have to spend weeks patching.
There are some big mods still, but they’re mostly just content additions. Anything that does overhauls, or has lots of overlapping systems, is doomed to failure unless they want to target a specific version of the game and never update. There was a big story mod awhile ago that decided to lock the game version that they supported, but it died when some dependencies updated to the new game version.
Modders work in their free time, so they can only make real progress when they have a stable base for a long long time.
Sure but that still leaves a lot of unnecessarily broken mods. I don’t know how backwards compatible a lot of the main mods are but doesn’t this risk forcing players to either upgrade and uninstall some old mods, downgrade and uninstall some new/updated mods, or downgrade and play the guessing game of which versions of which mods are compatible where? And after the backlash of the first update Bethesda went ahead and did it again so clearly they don’t care about steamrolling modders’ work and they might do it again. Modders going to give up eventually and go back to New Vegas lol
The mods that weren’t backwards compatible were primarily the ones that depended on the script extender. This was an unsupported executable that expanded on the commands available to the scripts in the mods.
Not to say unsupported is bad, but everyone was well aware that if they depended on the script extender, they would break if the game updated at all. The biggest mods avoided that dependency for exactly this reason, and really didn’t have any trouble. (Sim Settlements still worked the entire time, for example)
And like usual, the community stepped up and updated their unsupported extension quickly, ready for this outcome.
If you made a mod that depends on the script extender and then quit playing the game or supporting your mod, that was a choice you made as a modder. Meanwhile there’s mods that haven’t seen an update in 8 years that continue to work without issue.
People act like mods breaking after an update is new. Bethesda (and every other dev team) has been doing it since Morrowind (and long before that) The MWSE and everything else were fine back then, too.
Yeah, Minecraft updates break mods all the time but there it is just something the community accepts as normal and lives with. The huge update rage is something I only see with Bethesda game modding.
Because Bethesda games are exclusively single player and offer absolutely no way to decline updates. If they had the old version available as a “beta” or (even better) if Valve stopped dying on the “every game must be updated before launching it even single player games because fuck you” hill there wouldn’t be any outrage.
Turn automatic updating off for the game in question in Steam, and then set the download rate for Steam to 0 so it can’t update when you start up the game.
Without having to re-buy the game, yes. I’d even be willing to pay GOG a bit of money for the cost of hosting the files etc, but I’m not paying Bethesda twice. That’s just rewarding bad behaviour.
Right, that’s really more of a Steam issue than a Bethesda issue. I get why Valve and Bethesda don’t want to provide customer support for old versions, but they don’t have to. People have been figuring out their own problems when using obsolete systems or software for a long time.
I have no issue with Steam pushing the updates and encouraging you to take them, but giving no way to decline is a pretty poor user experience. Especially when we already know they keep old versions on their servers, as people have made guides on how to downgrade with Steam
I mean, the issue is that the updates fix nothing of value and break mods in this decade old game. Passable update for console, “why did you even try?” on pc.
Yeah, but let’s be real - modding isn’t for everyone. The show was a mainstream hit, so a lot of eyes were on the game again. Adding native improvements like that are a benefit to the game overall and to the people who don’t know how to mod or care enough to do it. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. But at the end of the day, hooking to a binary is just a hotfix away from being broken till someone fixes it again.
Bethesda offloads bug fixing to modders altogether too frequently to simply handwave modding as niche on PC. Over a decade on, comprehensive bug fixing mods are still amongst the most frequently downloaded files on nexusmods for Skyrim and even Fallout 4. They can’t have their cake and eat it too, and then complain that they urgently had to eat it.
Their actions don’t exist in a vacuum. Had they done this 5 years ago, it may have been received with confused appreciation, as it was with Skyrim. Now? After those mod creators have long since abandoned the game? It’s no longer welcome.
The mod-supported ultra-widescreen option was not good. Bethesda’s update is definitely better than it was, and since that was the only Fallout mod I used these updates are all good to me.
The next gen update used a completely different compiler, and that created a highly different executable, that’s why the update for script extender took so long and that’s why the script extender for next gen edition is unable to load “old” script extender mods.
It is the same that happened with Skyrim Anniversary Edition.
The mods that updated for the first update were already updated within 24 hours of the next one.
The only mods that are still broken now are mods that were made and maintained by people who have stopped playing the game some time ago.
And even most of those still work, if they didn’t rely on the script extender
The game is a decade old. I get the feeling that most mods will never be updated.
Downvoters should go check out the Stellaris mod graveyard. So many good mods gone forever.
Damn, you’re right, it’s almost been a decade already. I honestly thought it was younger than that.
I don’t like thinking about that, lol. Skyrim being 13 really makes me feel old
i was in 5th grade i think when skyrim released
ive been out of school for nearly 5 years now
Might as well just throw me in a retirement home while you’re at it, kid.
Tell me more about Stellaris
Basically the issue is that every six months they break all mods. Many projects over the years got abandoned after an update, or they were just never able to make progress because every six months they’d have to spend weeks patching.
There are some big mods still, but they’re mostly just content additions. Anything that does overhauls, or has lots of overlapping systems, is doomed to failure unless they want to target a specific version of the game and never update. There was a big story mod awhile ago that decided to lock the game version that they supported, but it died when some dependencies updated to the new game version.
Modders work in their free time, so they can only make real progress when they have a stable base for a long long time.
Sure but that still leaves a lot of unnecessarily broken mods. I don’t know how backwards compatible a lot of the main mods are but doesn’t this risk forcing players to either upgrade and uninstall some old mods, downgrade and uninstall some new/updated mods, or downgrade and play the guessing game of which versions of which mods are compatible where? And after the backlash of the first update Bethesda went ahead and did it again so clearly they don’t care about steamrolling modders’ work and they might do it again. Modders going to give up eventually and go back to New Vegas lol
The mods that weren’t backwards compatible were primarily the ones that depended on the script extender. This was an unsupported executable that expanded on the commands available to the scripts in the mods.
Not to say unsupported is bad, but everyone was well aware that if they depended on the script extender, they would break if the game updated at all. The biggest mods avoided that dependency for exactly this reason, and really didn’t have any trouble. (Sim Settlements still worked the entire time, for example)
And like usual, the community stepped up and updated their unsupported extension quickly, ready for this outcome.
If you made a mod that depends on the script extender and then quit playing the game or supporting your mod, that was a choice you made as a modder. Meanwhile there’s mods that haven’t seen an update in 8 years that continue to work without issue.
People act like mods breaking after an update is new. Bethesda (and every other dev team) has been doing it since Morrowind (and long before that) The MWSE and everything else were fine back then, too.
Yeah, Minecraft updates break mods all the time but there it is just something the community accepts as normal and lives with. The huge update rage is something I only see with Bethesda game modding.
Because Bethesda games are exclusively single player and offer absolutely no way to decline updates. If they had the old version available as a “beta” or (even better) if Valve stopped dying on the “every game must be updated before launching it even single player games because fuck you” hill there wouldn’t be any outrage.
Turn automatic updating off for the game in question in Steam, and then set the download rate for Steam to 0 so it can’t update when you start up the game.
So you say that you want the gog.com version of the game then?
Without having to re-buy the game, yes. I’d even be willing to pay GOG a bit of money for the cost of hosting the files etc, but I’m not paying Bethesda twice. That’s just rewarding bad behaviour.
People have whined about this for twenty years. Yawn
Then perhaps it is an issue that should be remedied?
They’ve got top men working on it as we speak.
Top. Men.
Right, that’s really more of a Steam issue than a Bethesda issue. I get why Valve and Bethesda don’t want to provide customer support for old versions, but they don’t have to. People have been figuring out their own problems when using obsolete systems or software for a long time.
I have no issue with Steam pushing the updates and encouraging you to take them, but giving no way to decline is a pretty poor user experience. Especially when we already know they keep old versions on their servers, as people have made guides on how to downgrade with Steam
I mean, the issue is that the updates fix nothing of value and break mods in this decade old game. Passable update for console, “why did you even try?” on pc.
They add plenty of value, people just haven’t really read into it. I.e. widescreen support, performance optimization, etc.
You mean things that mods had fixed almost a decade ago?
Yeah, but let’s be real - modding isn’t for everyone. The show was a mainstream hit, so a lot of eyes were on the game again. Adding native improvements like that are a benefit to the game overall and to the people who don’t know how to mod or care enough to do it. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. But at the end of the day, hooking to a binary is just a hotfix away from being broken till someone fixes it again.
Bethesda offloads bug fixing to modders altogether too frequently to simply handwave modding as niche on PC. Over a decade on, comprehensive bug fixing mods are still amongst the most frequently downloaded files on nexusmods for Skyrim and even Fallout 4. They can’t have their cake and eat it too, and then complain that they urgently had to eat it.
Their actions don’t exist in a vacuum. Had they done this 5 years ago, it may have been received with confused appreciation, as it was with Skyrim. Now? After those mod creators have long since abandoned the game? It’s no longer welcome.
The mod-supported ultra-widescreen option was not good. Bethesda’s update is definitely better than it was, and since that was the only Fallout mod I used these updates are all good to me.
Technical question - does the script extender use signature/pattern scanning at all?
It sounds to me that it may have broken because it doesn’t use it.
You could say “oh they recompiled it so the registers changed” but I highly doubt they changed the code that much or touched optimization flags.
The next gen update used a completely different compiler, and that created a highly different executable, that’s why the update for script extender took so long and that’s why the script extender for next gen edition is unable to load “old” script extender mods.
It is the same that happened with Skyrim Anniversary Edition.
Oh this is the “next gen” update? That would explain things.
Oh well…
They actually do fuck up the memory registers. It’s essentially the same problem DFHack has whenever Dwarf Fortress gets an update.