Skyrim Modding Community - Over a half-decade giving birth to gullible programmers

[c-no]

It's not in my view history anymore, which sucks since its good for a giggle.

Would this be it?

 

[ADN_VIII]

Would this be it?

Sadly not.

 

[c-no]

The worst, though, are the political/SJW modcows. One modder for FFX-2 (PC version) made the female characters have more conservative outfits, and while it was of rather good quality, she raised a lot of SJW-styled stink over it. Their political opposites aren't much better, especially if they are trying to be serious, like one modder who made a derogatory mod about some SJW (I believe it was an insulting depiction of them in Fallout 4 you could set up as a decoration) that the Nexus later took down, which caused a lot of people to mirror it and whine about suppression of free speech.

While this is late, it's related to the topic of terrible modders.

Looking into the modder related to the FFX-2 mod about character outfits, the stink happened on Steam. The worst of both sides just had to come in.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/359870/discussions/0/357287935538857714/
Honestly, if one argues about practicality, that goes in the trash when considering what the game is. This is a game that's a sequel to a game where you have a man with a volleyball beat monsters to death with it. A game part of a series where a hand mounted mini-gun in one of the games is weaker to a very big sword. Much as how one can speak of sexism and all, this is just a video game where the fashion is all weird and such on various people such as Tidus (and speaking of sexual gaze and such, that could more or less vary upon person to person). As for those complaining over the mod, it's just a mod that alters outfits. Both sides are filled with autism and it's all just screeching pain.

 

[NIGGO KILLA]

EMBRACE FOR PAID MODS ELECTRIC BOOGALOO PART 2!

 

[Aquinas]

oh boy am i fucking HARD

 

[Aquinas]

"If I’m accepted to be a Creator, what can I create and what is the dev process?

Creators are required to submit documentation pitches which go through an approval process. All content must be new and original. Once a concept is approved, a development schedule with Alpha, Beta and Release milestones is created. Creations go through our full development pipeline, which Creators participate in. Bethesda Game Studios developers work with Creators to iterate and polish their work along with full QA cycles. The content is fully localized, as well. This ensures compatibility with the original game, official add-ons and achievements.

Are Creators Paid For Their Work?

Yes. Just like our own game developers, Creators are paid for their work and start receiving payment as soon as their proposal is accepted and through development milestones.

Is Creation Club paid mods?

No. Mods will remain a free and open system where anyone can create and share what they’d like. Also, we won’t allow any existing mods to be retrofitted into Creation Club, it must all be original content. Most of the Creation Club content is created internally, some with external partners who have worked on our games, and some by external Creators. All the content is approved, curated, and taken through the full internal dev cycle; including localization, polishing, and testing. This also guarantees that all content works together. We’ve looked at many ways to do “paid mods”, and the problems outweigh the benefits. We’ve encountered many of those issues before. But, there’s a constant demand from our fans to add more official high quality content to our games, and while we are able to create a lot of it, we think many in our community have the talent to work directly with us and create some amazing new things."

Now, I dont think this is too bad, myself, hell it could possibly bypass sony's weird shit. Whats your opinion on this, @Jaimas and
@GethN7

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

"If I’m accepted to be a Creator, what can I create and what is the dev process?

Creators are required to submit documentation pitches which go through an approval process. All content must be new and original. Once a concept is approved, a development schedule with Alpha, Beta and Release milestones is created. Creations go through our full development pipeline, which Creators participate in. Bethesda Game Studios developers work with Creators to iterate and polish their work along with full QA cycles. The content is fully localized, as well. This ensures compatibility with the original game, official add-ons and achievements.

Are Creators Paid For Their Work?

Yes. Just like our own game developers, Creators are paid for their work and start receiving payment as soon as their proposal is accepted and through development milestones.

Is Creation Club paid mods?

No. Mods will remain a free and open system where anyone can create and share what they’d like. Also, we won’t allow any existing mods to be retrofitted into Creation Club, it must all be original content. Most of the Creation Club content is created internally, some with external partners who have worked on our games, and some by external Creators. All the content is approved, curated, and taken through the full internal dev cycle; including localization, polishing, and testing. This also guarantees that all content works together. We’ve looked at many ways to do “paid mods”, and the problems outweigh the benefits. We’ve encountered many of those issues before. But, there’s a constant demand from our fans to add more official high quality content to our games, and while we are able to create a lot of it, we think many in our community have the talent to work directly with us and create some amazing new things."

Now, I dont think this is too bad, myself, hell it could possibly bypass sony's weird shit. Whats your opinion on this, @Jaimas and
@GethN7

Better than what I thought it was going to be. I don't think certain mods will appear on the service, such as total conversion mods like Enderal if it get's an updated Skyrim Special Edition.

Also
PCGamer
My main question, how do you get credits to spend on mods, is answered:

"Creation Club is available via in-game digital marketplaces in both Fallout 4 and Skyrim Special Edition and purchased with Credits. Credits are available for purchase on PSN, Xbox Live, and Steam. Your Credits are transferable and can be used in both games on the same platform."

So not paid mods, but still paid mods.

 

[Jubileus]

As some over on r/skyrimmods noticed, there's a key line in the FAQ there:

"Also, we won’t allow any existing mods to be retrofitted into Creation Club, it must all be original content."

Translation: if it has already been made, you're SOL on getting in on this program. No current mods will be appearing here, because they're not going to be accepted (in theory; this of course assumes Bethesda does their due diligence on seeing what's out there already). That's fine and dandy, except Skyrim's mod ecosystem is rather saturated as it is and that's going to make it damn hard to pick things nobody's done. I still think it's a program worth attempting, I just question them trying it now instead of rolling it in with a new entry to the series. As it is, Bethesda's going to have an awfully fun time circling the square on picking things that won't get screeches of rage for "muh plagiarism".

Skyrim's modding community is notoriously belligerent on the subject of IP ownership, with a range of different viewpoints and the status quo leaning towards "you don't have the right to do a fucking thing with my mod except install and play it, and even that is something I may fuck with when I throw a tantrum six months from now because of political memes". Some of these ragebeasts that aren't able to make something up to snuff to get into this program will no doubt be trolling it for the most minor infractions to screech about.

It will be fun to watch. I wish good things for the experiment, I just think it's the wrong fucking time to be doing it.

 

[Jaimas]

"If I’m accepted to be a Creator, what can I create and what is the dev process?

Creators are required to submit documentation pitches which go through an approval process. All content must be new and original. Once a concept is approved, a development schedule with Alpha, Beta and Release milestones is created. Creations go through our full development pipeline, which Creators participate in. Bethesda Game Studios developers work with Creators to iterate and polish their work along with full QA cycles. The content is fully localized, as well. This ensures compatibility with the original game, official add-ons and achievements.

Are Creators Paid For Their Work?

Yes. Just like our own game developers, Creators are paid for their work and start receiving payment as soon as their proposal is accepted and through development milestones.

Is Creation Club paid mods?

No. Mods will remain a free and open system where anyone can create and share what they’d like. Also, we won’t allow any existing mods to be retrofitted into Creation Club, it must all be original content. Most of the Creation Club content is created internally, some with external partners who have worked on our games, and some by external Creators. All the content is approved, curated, and taken through the full internal dev cycle; including localization, polishing, and testing. This also guarantees that all content works together. We’ve looked at many ways to do “paid mods”, and the problems outweigh the benefits. We’ve encountered many of those issues before. But, there’s a constant demand from our fans to add more official high quality content to our games, and while we are able to create a lot of it, we think many in our community have the talent to work directly with us and create some amazing new things."

Now, I dont think this is too bad, myself, hell it could possibly bypass sony's weird shit. Whats your opinion on this, @Jaimas and
@GethN7

Certainly better than their previous attempt.

 

[GethN7]

Certainly better than their previous attempt.

True, it is marginally less idiotic than the last time they did this, but I predict one of four things

1. It lasts, but pulls in a so-so profit at best.
2. It doesn't last due to copyright screwups and lawsuits.
3. It doesn't last because profit from this is crap.
4. Profits and legal trouble murder this before it has any real chance to go anywhere.

And as a bonus:

5. Pirates make it all free anyway just to piss all over this out of spite.

 

[proteus4994]

Bumping this thread for a real treat.

https://archive.fo/HRewM

tl;dr: A Nazi somewhere may have used my mods, so I'm getting rid of them. Fuck Drumpf.


Edit: A small taste of this wall of text

And it was at that point that I realized that at some point, a real life Nazi - not a joke, not a meme, but an actual person who believes in eugenics and genocide as domestic policy - has used my mods at some point, and enjoyed them. Of course this is always the case when you work with the sheer number of users that I work with, but what really got to me is that knowing that the gamer demographic skews straight white male, and that the PC gamer demographic skews it even further that direction, could it possibly be that the majority of people in the gaming community share these bigoted views? I would certainly hope that given the relatively young age of the demographic this would not necessarily be the case, but given the comments I've received over the years, it certainly wouldn't surprise me if the majority of you were open bigots on and offline.

Soooooo, that's why I quit. I realized that I am serving more Nazis than I am comfortable serving. Frankly, ZERO nazis would be ideal, but once we get to be over 10% Nazi, that's where I draw the line. And I believe that there is a high enough chance that the gaming community, including the skyrim modding scene, has crossed that 10% threshold.

 

[lol you sukc]

Since THIS particular Pandora's box was opened, grab your barf bags if you need them, and I'll tell you how the adult modding community of Skyrim works.

The Nexus is where you can find all the fanservice mods, nude mods, and some sex mods, mostly the really vanilla stuff. Anything really explicit was banned pretty early on.

If you want to find where the really deviant stuff is, go here:

http://www.loverslab.com/

You require an account to download anything from here (unless it's hosted externally and linked), and it's got an age gate, don't enter unless you're an adult.

Loverslab is where you can find sex mods for damn near any game where people want to see characters going at it. And yes, they will allow all sorts of rape, slavery, and bestiality mods, among other perversions.

However, they do have one line I'm happy to say they won't cross:

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/2734...e-regarding-content-with-underage-characters/

tl;dr; We don't host pedo mods for anything, we won't tolerate it, we don't accept bullshit excuses to justify it, and we will toss out anyone who hosts anything like it on our site for any reason.

You cannot link Loverslab on the Nexus because Nexus doesn't want to slap an age gate on itself, and some mods may require stuff you can only get on Loverslab, so they just tell people to look up whatever the mod is on Google on the Nexus mod page if it has a dependency on aLoverslab mod.

It's worth mentioning that some nonsexual mods sometimes require Loverslab mods, especially for Skyrim, since some mods require customized skeletons for bodies to perform certain physics functions, and the same bone structure mods that allows sex mods to work are often used for custom poses mods. The same is true for some other games like Fallout 3/NV/4/Oblivion, etc.

To my knowledge, the Nexus and Loverslab have a public policy of not pissing each other off, but it's not uncommon for people banned from the Nexus to show up on Loverslab, often because they made something too explicit for the Nexus and got banned for it.

I realize that Skyrim is by far the most popular game but even by relative measure it seems that it gets the most degenerate shit compared to Fallout and Sims. I wonder why that is.

 

[GethN7]

I realize that Skyrim is by far the most popular game but even by relative measure it seems that it gets the most degenerate shit compared to Fallout and Sims. I wonder why that is.

Easy. Skyrim has gotten the most indepth extensible scripting support of them all.

Morrowind has it, but in a very rough form that isn't really conducive to super elaborate animations.

Oblivion has a refined version, but it's still pretty terrible.

Fallout 3 and by extension New Vegas simply use a rewarmed over version of Oblivion's extended script code.

Skyrim was when they finally got excellent scripting support, partially thanks to Papyrus scripting being easily adaptable for this purpose, and partially because the extended scripting writers for the previous games had refined their craft enough they figured out their previous mistakes and limitations from the previous games.

 

[WeeGee]

I wonder how Creation Club will affect this community when it eventually comes to Skyrim.

 

[c-no]

Bumping this thread for a real treat.

https://archive.fo/HRewM

tl;dr: A Nazi somewhere may have used my mods, so I'm getting rid of them. Fuck Drumpf.


Edit: A small taste of this wall of text

Removing mods because a nazi would use them? Only words one could have is just simply laughing at the guy. Yeah, it sucks you could have some legit nazi enjoy your mods but so what? Removing your mods because of them only reinforces an idea that you'd be more or less be some kind of sensitive coward.

 

[GethN7]

I wonder how Creation Club will affect this community when it eventually comes to Skyrim.

They won't care one way or another for the most part. They might be annoyed if it messes with ingame extended scripting functions, like how the latest update to Fallout 4 messed with with Fallout 4 Script Extender until they were able to patch it.

The main reason this is so is because extended scripting requires external DLLs that link with existing game executable files and add additional functions not provided by default or would be extremely difficult to provide using stock game modifications.

 

[Sparky Lurker]

Seems some major drama is going down with a popular Skyrim multiplayer mod lately.

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/av4f5f/skyrim_together_is_stealing_skse_source_code/ (http://archive.li/jx8AH)

I guess it's time for more drama. Sorry, I hate having to do stuff like this.
Skyrim Together is stealing SKSE code, uncredited, without permission, with an explicit term in the license restricting one of the authors from having anything to do with the code, who denies using any of it (in case this gets deleted)? The proof is pretty clear when you look at the loader and dll in a disassembler. They're using a hacked-up version of 1.7.3 classic presumably with some preprocessor macros to switch structure types around as needed between the x64 and x86 versions.
Starting with the loader, it's basically skse_loader with all of the options filed off and the error messages changed. In main, they check the error code of CreateProcessA against ERROR_ELEVATION_REQUIRED, then have a slightly reworded error messagebox to handle that case. That I could see being a slightly suspicious coincidence.
Head down to the actual DLL injection code at +4B81 and follow along with skse64\skse64_loader_common\Inject.cpp's InjectDLLThread. The first function is just a SEH wrapper, calling DoInjectDLLThread to do the real work. DoInjectDLLThread looks almost exactly the same, only with the check that the DLL exists removed. The timeout for WaitForSingleObject is exactly the same, even being switched between INFINITE, 60 seconds, and not being called at all via two bool arguments with the same indices. That's a pretty clear copy.
Moving on to the dll, tons of file paths are available in the strings:
Common is of course MIT-licensed and doesn't require attributation (but is always appreciated), but the main SKSE source isn't. It's technically always been under common copyright law, but after yamashi's terrible behavior towards the script extender team (best left to another post if you really care) he earned a special callout in the license:

Due to continued intentional copyright infringement and total disrespect for modder etiquette, the Skyrim Online team is explicitly disallowed from using any of these files for any purpose.

Yes, it was that bad.
Looking throughout the DLL, there's tons of code easily identifiable as copied unchanged from SKSE just from the strings and error messages. Most if not all of the new script functions are there, serialization, basically everything. RTTI data points to tons of SKSE custom classes; honestly the whole thing makes me feel sick.
If you want a great "smoking gun" of SKSE code being directly used in functions they added, look at the definition of TESNPC and compare it with the function at +2B5A00 which appears to be walking over the members of a TESNPC (among other things) to build a string. The names of the fields just happen to match up, even including the numbered "unknown" ones. That's beyond coincidence.
It would be easy to keep going and pointing out examples, but it gets technical and boring very quickly. I think these examples cover everything pretty well.
This source code theft is completely uncredited, denied by the authors, and I'm sure has been a great help in developing their mod that is currently only usable when paid. Currently I'm not sure what to do about this situation.
Note that it is normal for ordinary native code plugins to use the SKSE source code directly, and that's OK. They are supposed to have their source available, but in reality that doesn't always happen. ST is causing a problem by violating the license, not crediting, going out of their way to keep closed-source, and effectively charging for a mod. This reflects badly on us, and pushes us in to a very bad legal position with Bethesda.
I wish that one day there could be a drama-free online mod.

r/skyrimmods - Is Skyrim together in danger?

955 votes and 377 comments so far on Reddit

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For those of you who don't know "Skyrim Together" is a Multiplayer Skyrim mod. It was announced a few years back to be in production and as of a month ago has entered into "Closed Beta."

Normally this would be fine, except the closed beta isn't free. You can pay for it to get access to it. It has gone through multiple patch cycles, and when asked when it will be made free to the public the developers simply state that they don't know.

Payment is as follows. You "Donate" to them on patreon to gain access to the Mod.

• 1 dollar gets you access to the mod with sub 10 tick rate servers.
• 20 dollars gets you access to the mod with 60 tick rate servers, and gives you early access to new patches/builds.

You also may not host your own servers and the creators have stated they don't plan on allowing people to do so any time in the near future.

My issue is this. They are Clearly monetizing/selling a Skyrim Mod under the guise of donations, while at the same time denying users a more enjoyable in game experience by not allowing them to host servers and hiding good servers behind a 20 dollar pay wall.

I've paid my dollar, but I'm worried that this is violating Bethesda's EULA, and that this Mod will get taken down as a result due to the greedy practices of it's creators.

I have brought this issue up in their official discord, and was told that Bethesda knew about the mod.

When I asked if Bethesda knew about their charging and monetization they stated "Bethesda has for sure caught wind of what is going on, and have clearly decided to not take action." This means they did not ask Bethesda or let them know they were going to do this.

Bethesda has sued for far less, and with Fallout 76 falling into the shitter, It's only a matter of time if they keep up with these practices.

I would hate for a mod I've waited for for years to be removed or destroyed by greed. I'm fine with donations for mod creators as well. Hell I support Beyond skyrim, but no other mod uses those "donations" as payment for access while exluding it from the general public. You donate to support not to buy.

TL;DR Skyrim Together is breaking terms of service, charging for their mod and servers.

EDIT: I GUESS SKYRIM TOGETHER REALLY WAS IN DANGER LOL

The whole project has been shrouded in some shady goings-on since its inception. I don't know the truth behind it all but I do know that those guys are making $34,000 a month on Patreon now and that is serious cash.

EDIT: Screw it, I'm copy and pasting that post and putting it here for maximum visbility.

Here's a fun fact: Yamashi, the original creator of Skyrim Online (not to be confused with Tamriel Online or Skyrim Together) and lead developer of Skyrim Together, was busted for trying to make an ESO emulator during the early betas. The original Skyrim Online site no longer exists, but somebody did post the news update about it over on Steam before it was removed (and considering I was one of the ten people who actively followed Skyrim Together, can confirm this was legitimate): https://steamcommunity.com/app/72850/discussions/0/357285398697100567

Hey guys! With what's been happening lately (or rather, what hasn't been happening) I thought I'd give you all a status update on the mod and related projects.
A few months back, Yamashi went off to work on a TESO emulator for the closed beta, which garnered some attention - in short, Zenimax caught wind of the project and shut it down permanently. The TESO emulator isn't coming back any time soon and can be considered buried for now.
Now, in conjunction with the shutdown of the TESO emulator, I've been unable to contact Yamashi or anyone else working higher up on Skyrim Online for about two months now. I've been hoping that they would show up, but seeing as it's been a while now I thought it would be appropriate to share what I know with you.
Skyrim Online is currently in a development freeze due to Yamashi being off the radar, and we have no other developers. This means that for now, the mod is not being actively developed and new features won't show up for a while. I'm as saddened as you guys are - until I can get an update from Yamashi or Tytanis about what's going to happen, I know as much as you do.
This doesn't mean that the forums are going away, nor any of the services associated with the mod (chatting, server list, etc) - I'll still be here to help out with any issues you have. However, new features won't be coded until Yamashi returns. As for what he's up to, I'd rather not speculate. It's his private life and I don't want to be poking around in it.
For now, though, the mod can be contributed to if you're proficient in C# - the repo is available here ( https://github.com/yamashi/SkyrimOnline ) and you can freely fork it.
If you've got any questions, post them here and I'll try to answer them to the best of my abilities.
//Jargon

He also had/has a Guild Wars 2 emulator: https://devhub.io/repos/yamashi-GW2Emu

And The Old Republic: https://github.com/trespa/SwTor-1.3

As you might expect, emulators for MMOs are very... not legal. Sometimes developers let them slide, but what was particularly egregious about his ESO emulator was that he was trying to corner the market before the game was even out.

Now the story is that during his absence, he was hired by Zenimax to work on ESO legitimately. This is definitely possibly true, but there's been a fair bit of shady stuff about it that leaves me somewhat skeptical (though it should be noted that there is a Max Griot credited for ESO, which is Yamashi's new handle).

When he finally came back, he explained that he was no longer permitted to work on the project because of the ESO shenanigans. Whether or not this is due to Zenimax threatening legal action and banning him from modifying their products, or because he was legitimately hired by Bethesda was never determined:

You guys probably understand the TESO shutdown was caused by something, so yeah I have been really busy dealing with all of this.
Regarding Skyrim Online, I might not be authorized to work on game projects anymore but I don't know if mods are part of this, if so I will try to find someone to take on after me, if not I might be able to access some data that will allow me to pick up the dev and get somewhere a lot faster.

He also told me that if Zenimax got wind of the work on the project, they could shut it down. This is unusual, because Bethesda has always historically allowed developer mods with no problems. There was also something about him living in France, despite there being no French studios listed as credits for ESO. Short of him using company-owned code for Skyrim Together (which would be an enormous breach of faith), I don't see how Zenimax could ban him from working on a third party modification for a Bethesda game in his spare time.

There are also numerous accusations against him/other members of the Skyrim Together team for stealing the work of former contributors (you can read some in that Steam thread I linked), though obviously that's a he-said-she-said and we'd probably never know for sure.

He also accused Seigfre of Tamriel Online fame of stealing his code, despite Skyrim Online being open source, and he really stirred up a lot of drama with those accusations back when Seigfre was still active.

And of course, there were the endless accusations that they were intentionally withholding the project/information about the project to farm more Patreon money, but I don't think there's any evidence to support it.

Am I saying that Yamashi is definitely lying about being a Bethesda employee or something, and that there's something fishy going on? No, I have no idea if any of it is true or not. But there are some serious red flags that lead me to be seriously skeptical at the very least. The saving grace is that there's a lot more talent on Skyrim Together than there used to be, so I can only hope that the new blood is comprised of honest folks and that all of this is little more than hearsay.

All I know is that if/when it comes time to actually play Skyrim Together, I'm going in with burner account information because something just doesn't smell right to me.

 

[HeyYou]

Bit late, but shezrie deleted her Nexus account. I'm not going to sugercoat it like the people in that thread, shezrie is one of the biggest drama whores in the community and constantly does shit like this. She posted a bit in the thread, here's the removeddit since several of her comments were deleted. For some context, anytime you see _Robbie and EnaiSiaion, they're not random people. They're fairly prominent modders, especially Enai. They are firmly in the "modders who get in a tizzy about negative feedback and try to control their mods are assholes" side of the fence, like Wrye, so they are naturally going to be opposed to the Arthmoor and shezrie side of things. Arthmoor himself would probably be 'tisming up the thread, too, but he's banned from the subreddit.

 

[???]

Has anyone ever made a troon follower mod, or let's say a Hand Banana from ATHF (whose primary form of attack would be to rape you) enemy mod? Or any obvious bait mods?

 

[X Pac Heat]

Anyone interested in Arthmoor drama? Apparently he's DMCAing people who are using outdated versions of his patches or something.

r/skyrimmods - Arthmoor has, possibly illegally, used DMCA to get a version of USSEP taken down.

1,855 votes and 906 comments so far on Reddit

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