scripting question - need clarification

[Pizlenut]

I dabble a bit with modding, have since oblivion, but I haven't ever released anything because I've never made anything that is my own. I don't know scripting besides what I learn from reverse engineering other peoples work. I have a question that isn't really a "how do you do it" but "what am I doing wrong". I am fairly lost on this, and I have done several searches already (from different attempts, different months) and never seem to find the information that pertains to my problem. Which leaves me to believe its problem related to me not knowing what im doing and simply not understanding something. My efforts usually don't go farther than tuning or adding small features, so nothing seriously complicated is going on. Needless to say my tinkering has met with limited success in Skyrim, one big road block I keep running into is this:

 

My problem is if I go into the CK, check skyrim + mod file I wish to edit; I can go in and locate the varius parts in the editor ID for the mod in the CK.

Lets say I double click the quest portion of the mod. That opens up when you double click, first tab is quest data.

Last tab is script, where it lists the varius scripts, their name, and 3 buttons, one being properties.

If you right click on a script, you can see an edit source option, but its greyed out unless that script is in the source folder(I think?). Yet sometimes a mod is installed without adding to the source folder. It shows in the CK, I can see its name, but I can see for myself that it doesn't exist in the source folder.

One such mod I tried to edit the BSA directly with notepad++ (heh figured id give it a shot) but it simply breaks if I do anything, even as simple as adding a line and commenting it out... which makes me believe that it is compiled and perhaps the source files are not provided on purpose for function or to protect them.

 

Is it possible to access the scripts for mods that do not have their information in the source folder, or are those basically "closed source" mods? I am not a programmer so please feel free to b&@*$ slap me around if this is just basically me asking why a bear shits in the woods - just b&@*$ slap me with some clarification :)

[DreamKingMods]

A BSA is a container for a collection of files, so if you unpack the BSA (search the Nexus for tools like BSA Browser or BSAopt to do this), it is possible that the source files are inside the BSA, and you can then extract them to your /scrpts/sources/ directory and edit them. However with Skyrim unlike past Bethesda games it is indeed possible for a modder to withhold the source files for whatever reason, making a mod essentially "closed source" as you say.

[IsharaMeradin]

To access source scripts in the Creation Kit they need to be in the source folder and not in a sub-directory either. So if you wanted to access DLC source scripts you would need to move them out of their sub folder. Many DLC scripts include base scripts as well, so copying them out first to a clean directory that you've setup with the identical data folder structure. Thus you can zip them up and "install" them with a mod manager so as to have backups made of anything they might overwrite.

 

The same would be true of any loose source scripts from mods that might be in a sub-folder. I've started doing that with my own work, just so I can let the end user's source folder remain clean. If they want to work with my stuff, they'd have to move it.

 

As far as scripts located inside BSA files... see what DreamKingMods said (he replied while I was typing :P ) Tho I'll save you the search BSAopt.

 

There are a lot of older mods where authors did not include the source file. More recently the authors include them as we've become aware that there are helpful users out there that can correct problems and share that with us if necessary. That said there is a tool out there that lets you look at a readable form of PEX files, but they cannot be recompiled. It simply converts the data into readable text. Might give an idea of what is going on but couldn't be used to edit such sourceless mods. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what that program is called. I just know that there is one.

[CraftySentinel]

  On 10/23/2013 at 12:19 AM, IsharaMeradin said:

There are a lot of older mods where authors did not include the source file. More recently the authors include them as we've become aware that there are helpful users out there that can correct problems and share that with us if necessary. That said there is a tool out there that lets you look at a readable form of PEX files, but they cannot be recompiled. It simply converts the data into readable text. Might give an idea of what is going on but couldn't be used to edit such sourceless mods. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what that program is called. I just know that there is one.

 

I do believe Champollion a Pex to Papyrus Decompiler is the tool you are referring to, it does however convert back to re-compilable Papyrus now and not just text, still not exactly source but pretty close to it.