FierceSlayer

This is great news! Keep up the awesome work guys.

I completely agree with you, as a relatively new member of the community I didn't feel comfortable criticizing the SD model but you have eloquently stated the problem in a fair manner. This is exactly what my feelings are about the ideal state of extending the functionality in Skyrim, I miss not having the same flexibility I had in Oblivion and I only had those two plugins installed (OBGE & OBSR), everything else as pure Oblivion scripting. I'm very happy to know that SKSE and Papyrus integration is close. That is a valid concern and I respect your decision; I don't know of an open source license that would provide those protections. I would still like offer my assistance as a developer to help add some keyboard and mouse input management functions I need in my own mods to SKSE. These particular functions are also used by other very popular mods that are currently broken for users of Skyrim 1.4.27 until ScriptDragon is patched. You may already have these new functions in development so I wouldn't want to reinvent the wheel. Let me know if you could use my help in any way. Thanks for all your hard work and for the detailed response to my post. PS: Looking thorough the code in the current version of SKSE I see you have some input management code already in place so it may just be a matter of me learning how to use it. I'll spend some time to become more familiar with your code.

Thanks for responding to my post, but you missed my main point which is to help improve the experience of using and developing advanced mods that require functionally not provided by vanilla Skyrim and the Creation Kit. :-) To be frank, one of the main reasons (but not the only one) that prompted me to write this post is the current situation with ScriptDragon. Currently it appears that only one person is enhancing, supporting and maintaining the code for it. He has done an outstanding job in enabling advanced functionally for mods even before the Creation Kit came out. Unfortunately, there have been 2 days of downtime for all mods that rely on ScriptDragon due to the automatic update by Steam. This is affecting hundreds if not thousands of users of some wonderfully addictive mods such as Extra Hotkeys and Immersive HUD (if you use the feature to toggle the compass on an off) just to name a couple that I personally use. It's very hard for a single person to maintain a program used by thousands of people all over the world, specially if it has dependencies on frequently updated code (such as Skyrim). Having a team of developers working together to maintain, support and enhance the code would greatly improve this situation. I've also seen several post on various sites by users that have given up on ScriptDragon and any mod that depend on it because they don't want to deal with the downtime caused after each Skyrim patch. This is not good for mod authors that have worked so hard to give us cool mods. As I stated in my original post, the benefits that could be achieved by combining both software components into an open source project are numerous. This doesn't necessarily mean combining all of the code into one DLL (although that would be nice if it was possible). I've reviewed the code for SKSE and the code provided with the plugin examples in ScriptDragon. I see tremendous opportunities for synergy and improving the overall mod development and user experience with a single project to continue to extend the functionality of Skyrim. This is just my opinion from a mod development and user standpoint. I greatly enjoyed the OBSE (Oblivion Script Extender) and the great mods that it made possible in a single package. It provided all of the functionality I needed as a user and as a beginning mod author. Having the same in Skyrim makes sense to me.

You are absolutely correct about ScripDragon not being a script extender since its plugins are actually C++ DLLs with a .asi extension, so perhaps the name of the project would have to be changed, if it does become a project. :-) But I still think of SKSE as a script extender for simplicity since it provides functions not available in Skyrim's native scripting language. Obtaining better integration between SKSE and the Creation Kit would also be extremely helpful, By open source I mean to actually register the code as project in one of the open source sites, such as SourceForge. For example, Nexus Mod Manager is registered on SourceForge. This has numerous benefits just to name a few: Code Hosting Version Control Bug Tracking Increased Visibility of Project (hopefully translating to more collaboration) Mailing List (to communicate with users and developers) Increased Trust of Code (by being on a well trusted and accepted web site such as SourceForge) My main objective in starting this topic was to get the conversation going and see where it takes us. I also hope to contribute to the Nexus Mod Manager open source project soon. If there was an open source project for combining the best of SKSE and ScriptDragon, I would do my best to contribute to it as well. Thanks for keeping the conversation going.

Thanks for responding eltucu. I've contacted both the SKSE team and Alexander Blade about this topic, and I'm waiting for their response. Hopefully, they can respond to this discussion thread directly and let us know their feelings on working together for the benefit of the Skyrim modding community.

Thanks for responding nosisab. I agree that their approaches a different. From a C++ code standpoint, both approaches have advantages and disadvantages, combining the best of both into an open source project would help bring together the best minds in the modding community to solve the problem of extending Skyrim's scripting functionality in a way that enhances the experience for both mod authors and users.

I would like to start a conversation about my desire to have a single community supported open source script extender with all the great functionality that SKSE and ScriptDragon currently have. I know this would have to be approved by the authors of both software packages, so this is an informal discussion. I looked through the forums and did not see this topic. The benefits I see of having a single open source script extender project for Skyrim are: 1. Improved support: having a larger group of developers, testers, technical writers, volunteer support staff, and maybe even a project manager, quicker updates, centralized bug reporting and fixing 2. Improved documentation of all functions and features of the scripting engine 3. Simplified development of new mods/enhancements of existing mods: currently, as a new mod author I've had to go through the C++ code of both SKSE and the plugin examples in ScriptDragon to determine the functions I need to use for adding advanced functionality (which is not provided by Skyrim's scripting engine) to my mods. As an experienced software developer, this is not a big problem for me, but it would still save valuable time and effort. But I’m sure that there are aspiring modders that don’t have C++ development experience, having a well-documented and supported script extender API can ease the learning curve and make future mods better than they already are. 4. Simplified installation of advanced mods: some amazing mods like Immersive HUD require the installation of both SKSE and Script Dragon for full functionality. 5. Increased user base for mods that require script engine extensions: some users are reluctant to install mods that require 3rd party software to run. Having a single formalized open source script engine extender project for Skyrim would help increase the confidence level of some of those users, which should help the community grow and mature. There are probably other benefits I have overlooked. My questions to the community are: 1. Would you like to see a single open source script extender for Skyrim? 2. For those of you that have avoided using both SKSE and ScriptDragon, would having a community supported open source script extender give you the confidence use it. I love the Skyrim modding community and want to see it continue to grow and prosper. I think that a single open source script extender is a step in the right direction. Please let me know your thoughts about this topic. Regards, FierceSlayer