NorthWolf

Been trying to see if there's an easy way to do this without making a F4SE plugin. If anyone has made any progress I'd be interested to know what you've tried.

Thanks. I made some progress after considering this some more. I'm not really experienced modifying animations and read elsewhere that it was difficult (effectively impossible) to make new or edit existing animations, so I inaccurately assumed I'd have to figure out some hacky way to get the proper animation to play. Turns out I'm wrong: it's pretty trivial to modify the logic behind the animations (just not the animation itself), so it's possible to actually have a simple solution to the animation problem. The real hurdle is still figuring out what's actually deciding the state of the UI. I'll try to see if I can figure out how to spoof it on the player but it's a lot less obvious if it even exists. That said the more I look at this the more I'm inclined to make a guess I'll probably regret: it might not be that hard a plugin to make for F4SE. But that's just a guess (that I'll probably regret). As for the SWF files, ActionScript 3.0 isn't bad to work with. The real problem is that you wouldn't just have to learn ActionScript 3.0 -- the entire UI uses the Scaleform framework AFAIK so you have to have an understanding of that in order to work with it. If you had prior experience with ActionScript 3.0 that might not be an overly difficult journey, but it'd be an especially uphill battle if you didn't have a good amount of experience in a similar object oriented language. Still, you could probably pick up ActionScript 3.0 relatively quickly if you really wanted to, so I wouldn't throw in the towel if you're really passionate about it.

All that's needed to render a mod unusable by the console market is to add a script that uses a F4SE function call. All that's needed for a "mod pirate" to crack this DRM is removing the function call. For mods that are intrinsically dependent on F4SE? This is basically impossible. For everything else (i.e. the majority of mods), this is trivial to fix without even needing to open the Creation Kit. There are other topics discussing the actual technical details, advantages, and disadvantages to several methods including F4SE dependency and it might be worth taking a look at them. The Vaporware DRM threads are probably a good place if you're interested. You mean the YouTube content id system that's considered highly contentious last time I checked? It's not a good idea. It's also not likely to be feasible on the scale Bethesda is working at. It's also incredibly fragile. Unlike YouTube's content id system, Bethesda has to work with just random people for lack of a better word. You quickly run into the same problem with them insanely asking for a DMCA complaint: how do they verify this is the original author? Another issue: what happens when somebody tricks Bethesda by uploading somebody's mod content first and claiming it as their own? There are a lot of flaws that would make this ineffectual at best and destructive at worst. There's really no reason for them to not just have a report system with a team of active moderators that review reports in a timely fashion. Anything else is probably jumping the shark until that system shows itself ineffectual.

Definitely wanted to see something like this since Project Nevada made most VATS perks have a corresponding benefit to the bullet time system. Would love to see this grow into a similar role.

I believe the developers of STALKER were allowing their assets to be used in modifications for other games, but please don't take that as fact without doing your own research. Are you suggesting just using assets from those games?

Because...

If you're interested in making changes like that using something like FO4Edit is going to be the best choice. You can simply make a custom ESP that patches in changes you want for your own personal game, i.e. removing items from leveled lists.

I read somewhere (I'm sure that inspires confidence in this info) that setting the time scale to 0 would cause the AI to never cross cell boundaries. If I find a source on the info I'll post it, just something to watch out for in testing.

Yes, you need to move your old Fallout4.exe back to the Fallout 4 base directory and name it "Fallout4.exe" exactly. F4SE looks for that specific file name to my knowledge. So you might end up renaming "Fallout4_1_5_205.exe" to "Fallout4.exe" in my example. I don't actually know if that specific downpatcher is safe to use. Downpatchers aren't really an uncommon sight in certain modding communities so it's not like the idea alone is suspicious in any way. I would base your choice on whether or not to take the leap based on if that site is reputable (I don't know), if that thread has any complaints of odd behavior among its replies, etc. Ultimately it's up to you to decide if it's worth the risk.

Mandatory updates are annoying and I don't agree with them but I'm also willing to admit there's a reason that companies do them: non-technical users who will avoid updating and yet still bring complaints to them when the software breaks. I really don't think that's justification for failing to provide an opt-out feature, though, I agree. The talk about F4SE being blocked, however, is alarmist. I don't really understand how you get from the subject of mandatory updates to the subject of Zenimax going on a crusade against modifying code. No doubt a lot of companies have wanted to do this for ages in the form of DRM, but they've consistently failed. Bethesda owes a lot of its popularity on the PC platform to the modding community and trying to stop projects like F4SE would be both costly and pointless for them. Considering F4SE is just injecting/overwriting functionality through hooking memory addresses in the Fallout 4 process they're going to be hard-pressed to actually stop them. If they wanted to. Which I can't imagine they do. The steps I described to prevent updating shouldn't alter the game in any way. Creating a backup could alter the game only if you did so improperly. You still want to have a "Fallout4.exe" in your Fallout 4 directory and you want to launch using the "f4se_loader.exe" in the same directory. If you give me a step-by-step of what you did I can try to figure out what's going wrong.

Is it the setting you get from going to "Manage Game" then "Set Update Options..."? If so it's the same setting, I just tested to make sure (changing one changes the other), though if there is a different setting let me know.

I think the problem is that you're not considering the actual implementation. For example, let's say you want to make a house. You need to place down 4 floor props, 8 wall props, and 4 ceiling props. You need some kind of "ghost" to work with while building in the building mode, otherwise it'd be impossible to do it properly -- you wouldn't have snapping and wouldn't be able to see what you were building around if parts immediately disappeared after placing them. Or is the idea you had completely different? Is it that you request your settlement builds a concrete wall and then, after a delay of x hours, it's available in the build menu to be placed freely?

I feel really silly for not knowing this, but... are you referring to Steam's Big Picture Mode? If so, I think we're referring to the same setting. That was a poor explanation on my part, I've updated the post to try to explain better so that people don't think they'll always have to wait a day for an update to F4SE if they're not accustom to how this cycle works. Thanks!

To be fair, the Romans did some pretty cool things with concrete. I mean, they didn't have radiation and deathclaws to deal with. But they did have a lot of lead in their drinking water, so that's kind of similar, right? Though to seriously discuss your point, I think you've made me realize another serious problem I have with a lot of what's getting released. A lot of it is just thematically inappropriate and I think it's another reason I haven't cared for it. Wasteland Workshop seemed like a gimmick to me, as does Contraptions Workshop. Vault-Tec is thematically inappropriate but at least it makes up for it with having some potential to be genuinely interesting. They don't really feel either feasible or like they would have a genuine role if you were trying to actually build a settlement in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I mean, it would've been boring, yeah, but I would have more happily paid money for a pile of new settlement building objects if they took the time and energy to make them good quality.

There's a way to avoid having Fallout 4 automatically update if you're coming here because F4SE is broken. Also, to mirror some of the other comments: please don't blame the developers of F4SE on this. By the very nature of the technique they're using they have to update alongside every update Bethesda pushes.

I'm not sure, might just be a feature that's always enabled. The entire thing is worth it even if just for the object and surface snapping, yeah. The other stuff isn't too hard to use if you get accustom to it, though, if you ever considered using the more involved features.

The funny part is when I was writing this I wanted to make sure I gave accurate information so I went to check if launching straight from "Fallout4.exe" would auto-update or if it was only if you launched "Fallout4Launcher.exe". It automatically updated. Then I went to my backup folder only to realize I hadn't actually backed up 1.5.205. Now I'm stuck in the same boat. I guess I won't be able to help Preston with that settlement that needed my help. What a tragedy.

In case it goes missing in the sea of new topics, I thought I should mention that there's a way to stop Fallout 4 from automatically updating if you only launch through F4SE.

Unless that was added to vanilla recently, that's probably a Place Everywhere feature. Puddycat mentions it above. There's a learning curve to Place Everywhere by the way, but it's entirely worth it if you enjoy the settlement building.

I came on the forums today only to notice a lot of frustration that Fallout 4 had updated and as a result broken F4SE. The issue is that F4SE will always break when Fallout 4 updates, that's just an inevitable result of the technique they use. Usually this isn't an issue since the developers of F4SE create a patch to work with the beta that will become the next patch meaning you can just update F4SE alongside Fallout 4, but this will help if your game has updated and F4SE doesn't support the version for any reason. That said... There's a way to stop Steam updating your game: 1. Navigate to Fallout 4 in your Steam library. 2. Right click and open "Properties". 3. Go to the "Updates" tab. 4. Under automatic updates, switch to "Only update this game when I launch it". 5. Only ever launch the game through F4SE. The last step is the crucial one. If you launch the game through F4SE then it won't automatically update through Steam. If you ever launch it through Steam or even through Fallout4.exe, it will update automatically. Afraid of accidentally updating? There's a solution to that, too: If you're clumsy (like me) and afraid you'll accidentally open Fallout 4 through a method that will cause an update, copy the "Fallout4.exe" that works with your F4SE installation. You could put the file anywhere but I advise renaming it to reflect what version of Fallout it is. For example: "Fallout_1_5_205.exe" or something similar. Now if Steam forces you to update for whatever reason you can simply go in and copy the new version of "Fallout4.exe" to create a backup, name it similarly according to the new version code (i.e. "Fallout_1_5_307.exe") and then replace "Fallout4.exe" with your backup (in this example "Fallout_1_5_205.exe". I would advise keeping a folder of these backups as it gives you a way to roll back unwanted updates at your leisure.

That's interesting that you would classify it that way. I always considered "expansions" or "expansion packs" to be the major content addons, while "DLC" would be all of the other smaller things. I find it funny as well because I feel similarly. I remember expansion packs used to be absolutely massive things back in the 90's and early 00's where they would literally offer as much (or more) gameplay as some modern games do out of the box. I never really liked the shift to "DLC," which was always a lot smaller in comparison. I still don't. Because I guess I'm getting old. Anyway, having mostly enjoyed most of the expansion content released for Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas I'm sad that I've had absolutely no desire to purchase the Fallout 4 season pass. I probably won't purchase it until I can get it for $5 or maybe $10 on sale, which will take a long time. The only reason I could see to break that rule is because some modder creates something amazing that requires one of the DLC packs. Not sure Bethesda should be relying on a modder creating something I absolutely can't live without that relies on one of their DLC packs in order to sell me content. That said, I can't judge the DLC because I haven't played it but absolutely none of the content has been inspiring for me on paper. I'm particularly frustrated by the workshop expansions because I felt the whole settlement building mechanic was something with a massive potential to be an actual gameplay mechanic with some management/city builder aspects but instead turned out to be more-or-less a sandbox to build pretty things in. Plus I kind of expected that on top of the gimmick Wasteland Workshop offered there would be a bunch of new build objects, not a tiny amount of content that a modder could make in a few days. I'm kind of bitter about the settlement building. Wonder if that shows. Maybe the Vault-Tec Workshop will fix that and I'll feel some reason to buy it at that point.

It's an interesting idea but one that would seem difficult to implement. If it's possible to record what a player places in build mode into a FormList or whatever you could potentially have it so that a player creates some structures in the area and then finalizes them once they feel they're complete -- the new objects get disabled and then enabled after the appropriate time period. Not sure how feasible it is in reality.

Nice. Also glad it's a holotape.

Based on my experience with other developers? I wouldn't be surprised at all if you aren't correct and there's just no (relevant) in-house documentation to even format for the wiki. Even if there is in-house documentation it's probably for Skyrim because I can't see a reason they'd write volumes of new documentation for Fallout 4 -- it's just not significantly different enough to justify it I'm guessing.

@Jeoshua: I said this on the other post for this topic, but I think a lot of people are concerned about the signature getting stripped out because they're not fully understanding the primary purpose of this. I won't reiterate the points in detail needlessly but I think trying to make it absolutely clear that the primary purpose is to establish authorship will help reduce confusion -- I think people read "DRM" and think that if it's easy(ish) to remove it's not valuable. Though you're already clarifying a lot so I don't know. I think people are also just going to consistently jump to conclusions on something like this.