Can Bethesda make more than 255 mods possible?

[bben46]

The problem is that the limit is from the ancient Gambrio engine that Beth has used since Morrowind. It never occurred to the game engine creator way back in 2002 that anyone could possibly want more than 255 mods. The engine is a 32 bit program. Using 32 bit architecture, a binary word is 8 digits (0000 0000) and that translates to 256 in the decimal arithmetic you are used to - so they use One binary word to store the index number for each mod. The Skyrim esm is always number 0 - or in binary 0000 0000, leaving 255 available index numbers. Yup, converting from binary to hexadecimal to decimal can be confusing

 

IF (and that is a very big if), they actually move to a newer 64 bit engine - AND they use the same method to index mods, the new single word value will be huge.

[simtam]

There form IDs in Skyrim.esm are at most 001xxxxx hexadecimal, from what I see, and this is most likely the largest plugin file. So, 3 more bits could be used to address the plugin index, that is, 2048 mod limit. Ain't nobody will write a binary patch for this...?

[bben46]

@simtam Nope it is baked into the game engine - after nearly 18 years if it could be done - it would have been.

The original version of Gambryo came out in 1997. This was not a known problem until Oblivion in 2006 ( I don't remember any problems with this in Morrowind and I also don't remember anyone being able to run 255 mods in Morrowind either) So, basically since 2006 - 9 years this has been known. The engine has been upgraded several times and this has not been addressed at all. And during that time many competent programmers have looked into it. With no success ( so far :tongue: )

 

Then we have FO:NV where Obsidian managed to do something to bork even that number - and limit us to just around 130 mods. With some users claiming as many as 170, and others not getting to the 130 mark. :wallbash:

[simtam]

To change what is baked in engine - that's what only a binary patch could do.

But why do you think it would be changed? 255 is a lot, and above that we have mod merging.

[Shadowheart328]

As a software engineer myself, I know that for their next game (if they use an upgraded engine of course) they can indeed increase the hard cap. However, from a realistic standpoint, a 255 limit (keep in mind this only applies to esp, and bsa files) that is quite enough. You must remember that the more you add to the game the increase of both crashes, freezes, and unexpected hitches also occur. In order to prevent the game from crashing even while modding, a hard cap I believe is a must.

 

Of course you can argue that gamers and modders should be allowed to crash the game however, they please, but from a legal point of view, creating a hard limit will prevent people from needlessly sueing the company for game crashes (even if they modify the files, since bethesda allows people (and provides the tools) to do so).

 

TLDR; In their next game they can implement a higher cap or remove it all together, but it probably isn't that realistic a goal.

[Xander9009]

Who exactly is going to sue them for a crashing, modded game? It would literally cost more to sue them than the value of the game, and the value of the game is about the maximum you could realistically expect a judge to award you for the unmodded game. Regardless of that oddity, I could see them keeping a hard cap intentionally, but I don't feel it's necessary. Just because there will be people who use mod combinations of mods doesn't mean that those who know how to watch their mod lists should be punished for it. Of course, even the more experienced modders will suffer crashes, it's inevitable. But I'd rather be limited by my own limits of toleration rather than the game's arbitrary limit.

[RealAntithesis]

There really isn't a good reason to deliberately cap the number of esps to 255. It's just finding a justification for a technical issue that should be overcome in any modern engine. Asserting that there is no reason why we need more than 255 esps sounds a little like saying there is no reason why anyone should need more than 640kb of memory. Many esps do not cause instability - an unstable modded skyrim is a result of the mods themselves and the changes they are making and how they are interacting with each other, not necessarily due to the number of mods. Plus there are a lot of mods that can cause instability but don't have esps. Besides which, the fact that people are merging esps indicates there is a real demand for there to be more than 255.

Edited October 6, 2015 by RealAntithesis

[Xander9009]

Those are really good points. As an example, my mod Display Equipped Magic has no chance of causing crashes, but can't be done without an ESP. It's literally a single quest with a single script with a single event with a single function (well, to be entirely fair, the functions are on a single line, but there are two functions: "Debug.Notification" and "akSpell.GetName()").

 

Now, my mod could probably be merged with other mods, but how is that any different from raising the limit? The only difference I can see between the two is that merged mods can't be handled separately by a mod manager, making them less preferable.

[silvericed]

Unless someone will make a software to merge everything automatically during Skyrim launch (this is Skyrim sub-forum?), on fly (and it had to be very fast).

Edited October 9, 2015 by silvericed