Automatic STEP

[Smitty]

It is a tricky debate that most likely is not going to change much until the coming of the next TES title. Who knows.. bethesda might go the same way as valve and make modding into something that can be bought as DLC/cosmetic content. 

Isn't that sort of what Obsidian did for FNV? Vaguely, to my understanding they took some of the mods from FO3 and made them apart of the game, like food/water/sleep and weapon attachments. However they just took the idea and remade them, not the mods themselves. Valve just hired anyone that made a good mod and turned it into a standalone video game. I'm not sure if I see Bethesda doing that tbh.

 

Also when you say TES title, I'm going to throw Fallout into that mix (I think FO4 is the next one to come out anyways, if rumors are correct). TES3+ and FO3+ pretty much use the same engine as far as I know. I've seen people bring Morrowind into Oblivion, Oblivion into FO3, and FO3 into FNV. I think it kind of stops at FNV because Obsidian took the engine into a different direction than Skyrim, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Skyrim be brought into the next TES/FO game.

 

As for the debate about permissions (because there's nothing more to say about torrent, what's said is said), usually I just see people pawn off their mods to other people if they stop supporting it. That happens everywhere, with Nexus I always see the line "I got permission from the original author to continue it", with other modding communities like FTL, I usually just see "the OP disappeared so I took the project under a different name." You do raise a good point about mods suddenly not working in a pack, although authors never really have responsibility in the first place for anything they make. If they change or remove so much of a mod that it's not even close to the original, then the original can just be it's own standalone for people wanting a different experience than the pack in question. Then that authors name just gets put in the pack for being a contributor, however that's about as much recognition as a memorial wall.

[Aiyen]

Nah I did mean the next elder scrolls title.. the next fallout is most likely too close for them to do it, or at least not do it full scale, only to test the waters I would imagine.

 

Anyways, what I imagined was more along the lines of how DoTA2 works.. if you get a visual mod approved you get part of the profits etc. I did read that more developers found that method interesting as a alternative to current micro transaction models, or at least as a supplement. By far and large most mods in most games are just alternative models and textures, and there are some really talented people out there doing it. 

 

As for the other part.. again there are so many shades of grey in how much a given type of mod you can remove before it is no longer the original. Another hassle we have had to deal with here on STEP is huge debates on how to do things.. most recently the whole BSA vs loose files debate. Before that we had an issue with the guard behavior overhaul mod.. which did a few things in a non standard way, that worked but would mess with cleaning of the mod and with a few conflicts with other mods. When you have that sort of basic disagreements on how to do things, then imagine how difficult it is to get people agree on what sort of content is acceptable to remove and which is not and still have your name on it. 

[Nozzer66]

The day Nexus or any other mod sites make their stuff torrentable will be the day I quit modding.

[TechAngel85]

A group of developers are already bringing all the provinces of Tamriel into the Skyrim engine. It's called Beyond Skyrim if you haven't heard of it. Once finished, it'll be pretty much an entirely new game.

 

https://www.darkcreations.org/forums/topic/6814-all-about-beyond-skyrim/

 

 

Another group is bringing Morrowind into the Skyrim engine as well. That one is called Skywind: https://tesrenewal.com/skywind-faq It's not released yet, but if you have Oblivion, they're already ported Morrowind into the Oblivion engine: https://tesrenewal.com/

[Smitty]

The day Nexus or any other mod sites make their stuff torrentable will be the day I quit modding.

Really that bad? What's so bad about torrent that makes you quit modding? The only bad thing about torrent is the fact it's very popular for pirates because of seeding, which used properly is a very good thing. Some developers put their own games or files on torrent because it's a lot more efficient than a server. It's like a knife; you need it to prepare some very good meals, but you can also use it to kill people.

 

A group of developers are already bringing all the provinces of Tamriel into the Skyrim engine. It's called Beyond Skyrim if you haven't heard of it. Once finished, it'll be pretty much an entirely new game.

I saw, looks amazing. I've also been following Skywind for the past month or so, and I remember playing Morroblivion before Nexus had to remove it because modding assets from one game into another is against Bethesda's permissions for their product they made for profit.

 

Nah I did mean the next elder scrolls title.. the next fallout is most likely too close for them to do it, or at least not do it full scale, only to test the waters I would imagine.

You think FO is that close? It makes me giddy just thinking about it, I was a Fallout fan before I was a TES fan.

 

I've never played or even looked too much into DOTA, but it sounds interesting how they do that. I can't imagine they make much though. Didn't they do something similar for TF2?

 

And for grey areas, meh. What some people find one way others find different. You can never have agreements on shades of grey, but I guess that's what keeps humanity interesting. Also, I could imagine a chunk of people fighting petty battles over nothing if you just shove them all into a colab project with their own mods, although miracles happen. However that gets me wondering, how did NVEC come together? It's a huge cluster of popular mods, not so popular mods, and controversial mods that break the lore like it was as fragile as the engine. I tried it, but there are a few mods I wish weren't in the pack. Unlike STEP, it just threw whatever the pack creator liked, regardless of lore or compatibility with any mods not included.

 

Edit: Cut down quotes

Edited December 7, 2014 by Smitty

[Aiyen]

From my point of view the torrent question becomes... what would it give me that the current system does not ? Even without a premium account I can easily download several files at once at 1-2mb/s depending on the mood of the server. Getting more then that on a torrent would again require some dedicated people or server setup. This is not even considering the premium account method of sustaining everything, which I still do not have a problem with.

 

Also another issue with the whole packs pre created idea is that eventually the nexus would drown in a million almost identical packs with minor variations... I doubt that would actually simplify things for a lot of users. It would for example be much harder for the non savoy end user to get new mods working with an existing mod list. The best solution would by far be the ability to ask the nexus to say... download all go have a cup of tea and watch some tv.. come back and get all try hard modder. 

[hishutup]

I dont know about you but steam workshop is ready kinda like that... they have dozons of collects and i would say some have mods that can cause ctd and ruin saves... I have found that it would hide the adoption of newer mods because everyone would just use packs that obviously have issues...

[Nozzer66]

Really that bad? What's so bad about torrent that makes you quit modding? The only bad thing about torrent is the fact it's very popular for pirates because of seeding, which used properly is a very good thing. Some developers put their own games or files on torrent because it's a lot more efficient than a server. It's like a knife; you need it to prepare some very good meals, but you can also use it to kill people.

 

You said it. Piracy. I loathe pirates with a passion. And for that reason alone I personally wish Torrents would disappear off the face of the internet. And I debate the efficiency argument as well.

 

Hence my hatred of torrents, seeding and anything to do with the whole shady practice of them.

[GrantSP]

@Nozzer66

I feel you may be taking your justified hatred of piracy to an extreme. There is a place for the torrent system but... I'm of the view that STEP doesn't need it.

@Aiyen is closer to the point I think. Pre-packaged mods of the collection you are after will lead to MORE issues than they will solve. It will become an even greater problem than mod pages with patches for Vanilla+DB, Vanilla+DG, Vanilla+HF, Vanilla+DB+HF, Vanilla+DG+HF, Vanilla+DB+DG and Vanilla Legendary. And then you still get someone asking if their setup needs to have all the DLCs. The mod author has gone out of their way to provide all the combinations possible and still there are some that can't navigate all the options.

Imagine that situation when you are dealing with a dozen or more mods? Endless stream of questions like: Can I use this with that? Does this need that to work? What about this mod?

The more work you put in the more work you will need to maintain.

 

If the whole process of adding mods together to make STEP seems too daunting to some what about making some scripts to automatically do some of the work?

Manually download all the mods for a section to a temp folder, run the script that unpackages them and combines only the files needed and re-packages those into the "STEP section x" mod.

A lot of work I agree, but it negates the gaining permission thing. All mods can exist as they are now. Users that are fine with adding the mods by them selves can still do so without needing to get new packages that are essentially the same as what is already available.

New users can gain a sense of accomplishment by gathering the needed mods together and they may even learn what is going on if the scripts provide a measure of feedback.

Just a thought.

[TechAngel85]

Let me put one little aspect of this discussion to rest that keeps popping up and that's the automatic downloading of mods. We've discussed this before at length in the discussion of the STEP Installer program that has been developed, left to sit, developed some more, and basically abandoned. The fact of the matter is, Nexus, specifically Dark0ne, does not want us to develop and use any tool that would pull and download mods directly from Nexus. The reasons are many; however, in the end we're going to respect those words and wishes. There will most likely never be a tool of any kind to directly download any mods in STEP without having to visit its Nexus page. This is an idea that is nearly as old as STEP itself and has been well discussed, but let us put it to rest. It's just not going to happen.

[Aiyen]

Yeah sadly you are most likely right tech... it is a pity though. 

I do not recall if we actually ever discussed making a scripted installer that would check if you had all the mods, and then did all of the installation. While I can see some benefits to that approach, there is ofc. also a few drawbacks.. mainly being the amount of time we have at hand to maintain it! :s 

[Smitty]

 

Also another issue with the whole packs pre created idea is that eventually the nexus would drown in a million almost identical packs with minor variations...

If that was true we'd be drowning in individual mods with almost a million identical versions... actually that is kind of true in a sense, but I've seen a lot of people learn fomod code and just shove all those variations into a single installer, which (depending on the skill of the developer) will automatically detect which version you need, or give you a set of options. 

 

With something as large as STEP, it's really just a matter of which files to include or not for the most part. I wish NVEC had more options to disable certain mods. The counter argument to that is that the file could be larger than it would need to be. Could be, it really depends on what you want and your system.

I dont know about you but steam workshop is ready kinda like that... they have dozons of collects and i would say some have mods that can cause ctd and ruin saves... I have found that it would hide the adoption of newer mods because everyone would just use packs that obviously have issues...

Ew, steam workshop. 

 

You said it. Piracy. I loathe pirates with a passion. And for that reason alone I personally wish Torrents would disappear off the face of the internet. And I debate the efficiency argument as well.

 

Hence my hatred of torrents, seeding and anything to do with the whole shady practice of them.

That's honestly pretty closed minded to think that way. Yeah piracy can hurt smaller developers, but by that logic you should hate the internet, computers, and even the files themselves for letting themselves be pirated. Torrent is just a tool that accidentally makes it near impossible to remove a file once it's uploaded because everyone who's downloaded is a mirror, instead of a server like traditional means. Do you hate the files too for not having sufficient antipirate protection? Knives because they're popularly used to kill people? Or maybe computers because everyone uses them for porn?

 

Hate the pirates, hate the ones that crack files and upload them, but don't hate the tools they use because those tools weren't designed to be used for pirating, they just are, and there are already trackers knocking out the main seeders seeding illegal files to make it harder for anyone trying to download them.

 

The fact of the matter is, Nexus, specifically Dark0ne, does not want us to develop and use any tool that would pull and download mods directly from Nexus. The reasons are many; however, in the end we're going to respect those words and wishes.

I don't fully understand those reasons, but I imagine they fall under something like dropping website views, allowing modders to more easily not read the individual mod pages and directions, allowing modders to more easily forget to endorse a mod, etc etc. 

 

Those are valid issues, which is why I may or may not be against a tool like that, however installing all of the mods properly is what lazy me wanted. Yes I did learn how to use a few new tools and tricks for modding, but being a modder I'll actually use what I learned installing STEP. What if you have some casual player who isn't technically experienced at all, and never plans to be? They'll never experience an enhanced Skyrim because they'll never take the time to learn and install everything. They didn't make Skyrim itself a hard to install game, it's just click, download, and play. For someone who just wants to do that, and nothing else, perfect. The only real upside to learning everything is fixing your own problems, customizing Skyrim to perfect what you want, and maybe even making your own mods. Which is great for someone who wants to learn everything, not for someone who just wants to click and play something amazing.

[TechAngel85]

I don't fully understand those reasons, but I imagine they fall under something like dropping website views, allowing modders to more easily not read the individual mod pages and directions, allowing modders to more easily forget to endorse a mod, etc etc. 

 

Those are valid issues, which is why I may or may not be against a tool like that, however installing all of the mods properly is what lazy me wanted. Yes I did learn how to use a few new tools and tricks for modding, but being a modder I'll actually use what I learned installing STEP. What if you have some casual player who isn't technically experienced at all, and never plans to be? They'll never experience an enhanced Skyrim because they'll never take the time to learn and install everything. They didn't make Skyrim itself a hard to install game, it's just click, download, and play. For someone who just wants to do that, and nothing else, perfect. The only real upside to learning everything is fixing your own problems, customizing Skyrim to perfect what you want, and maybe even making your own mods. Which is great for someone who wants to learn everything, not for someone who just wants to click and play something amazing.

Those were among the reasons as well as added stress to the servers because we are one of the largest Skyrim communities and are starting to branch out into other games as users are taking up those roles and building STEP-like guides for those games (Fear and Loathing for FNV, Mystic Dawn for Oblivion, Clear and Present Danger for FO3, and more are sure to come). So with that in mind, I can understand Dark0ne's concerns with such a tool. However, the tool's main objective was to install sort of an "image" of a properly configured STEP onto the user's computer which is more of what you're talking about. If I remember correctly the this would have worked in one of two ways:

 

Take an image of a properly configured STEP and basically copy that image onto the user's computer. They start up Skyrim, STEP enhanced style.

or

User downloads all mods, puts them into a single directory and with the use of black magic, the tool would run and configure a proper STEP image and install it for the user.

 

The first was ruled out due to the Dark0ne's concerns. The second never made it into practice, but both would accomplish what you are talking about. No modding experience required. Just download mods and run the tool. It can all be found in this forum: https://forum.step-project.com/forum/34-semi-automatic-step/

 

EDIT:

Here's the actual word on the downloading of mods from Nexus: https://forum.step-project.com/topic/1248-skyrim-nexus-downloader/?p=21669

 

Here is the wiki page for the project: https://wiki.step-project.com/SASTEP

 

To be honest, I'm not sure why development stopped.

[Aiyen]

If that was true we'd be drowning in individual mods with almost a million identical versions... actually that is kind of true in a sense, but I've seen a lot of people learn fomod code and just shove all those variations into a single installer, which (depending on the skill of the developer) will automatically detect which version you need, or give you a set of options. 

 

 

Creating an installer that only handles a few popular mods inside a narrow selection is one thing.... try doing it for a SkyRE + SRLE pack is another deal entirely. The amount of possible variations and the length of that installer would be nuts! 

 

At the end of the day I can entirely understand why people just want that tailor made "press install and play" option.. but considering the amount of variations, and the amount of work involved in the process then it is hard to expect anyone to really do it without getting paid for it.... and once money starts to get involved then legal stuff gets involved, and so forth. Like I mentioned earlier then I will not be surprised to see modding being part of the future of micro transactions where you then do get the "press install and play" option etc. But for skyrim I do not see it happening. 

[Nozzer66]

I don't follow nor accept your premise, Smitty. I will NEVER use torrents as they are unsafe and like a number of other inventions, we'd be better off and safer without them. If that makes me close-minded, so be it, I'm close-minded. 

 

As for hating the internet, well yes, I do loathe a good part of it.

 

But the day things like torrents become de-rigeur, I'm gone.