Skyrim Special Edition and the 255 mod / esp limit - definitive answer

[lethielnyrond]

I'm glad that Nephenee and Arthmoor have provided a definitive answer, and also been kind enough to explain it. I think their definition of "totally basic knowledge of how things work" may be somewhat specialised, and in support of this point to the large number of people (including myself) who have asked this question and who therefore patently do not have either this "totally basic knowledge" or the clue they needed to connect to it. I had no idea till Nephenee mentioned it that the limit had anything to do with FormIDs. Now that I know it, I can see the logic, but without that piece the puzzle was insoluble.

 

Some of us do actually just play the game.

 

Again, thank you both for enlightening us.

 

Lethiel

[redbeaniez]

Theres a group that set up a thing that lets you play with 1000 mods. But it can't be just any 1000 mods it has to be exactly the 1000 mods listed on their site. You download them all and get them sorted, then run the script thing or whatever and it condenses them all to 255. My brother showed me his game with it and it looked fantastic.

 

*Edit* I looked at their site and apparently its down to 150 or something plugins. Pretty damn impressive. But you download it all at once as a "pack"

Edited January 26, 2017 by redbeaniez

[Wrapien]

Jesus christ

 

The limit is still there. It will always be there until they completely change how they handle FormIDs. FormIDs are 8bit strings, the leading two bits are used to indicate the source plugin. Starting at 00 and ending at FF. FF is reserved for items dynamically created in the game.

 

Therefore there is a max of 255 individual plugins. Skyrim SE comes with 5. Skyrim.esm, Update.esm, Dawnguard.esm, Hearthfires.esm and Dragonborn.ESM, leaving 250 available for use by the player.

 

This is not news. This has been known for ages.

 

Please attempt to do a modicum of research. ANYONE who works with mods could have told you this.

Bytes are 8 bits. Strings are composed of a number of bytes. Words can be 32 or 64 bits depending on the operating system. Skyrim SE is 64 bit so a word is 64 bits long. A byte can range in value from 00 to FF in hexadecimal. Please use the correct terminology to avoid confusion.

 

That said, I wish they had simply added another byte to the size of the FormID for the 64 bit version of Skyrim. That would have given space for a max of 4096 mods.

Edited February 3, 2017 by Wrapien

[Lisselli]

Who the hell would use 4,096 mods? Are you people crazy?

[Arthmoor]

Someone would, given the number of people who push 255 now. The engine would probably kill itself trying though :P

[Ratsel13]

Who the hell would use 4,096 mods? Are you people crazy?

I'm still trying to figure out who the hell would want a 1000 mods :confused:

Arthmoor is probably right.. :laugh:

[strawbqwerty]

Hmm imagine an army of lets say three thousand girly followers and that would leave just enough mods to get the rest of Tamriel the way you want it, I reckon one thousand and ninety six would suffice. Ah to dream.

[Samtoinette]

Since no one has mentioned it, the Merge Plugins utility on Nexus' Oldrim site has been updated to be used with SSE.

 

Also, I have just a few over the limit for now, but on Oldrim I was at least 50 over. I like having lots of followers installed, and sometimes one mod has a ton of plugins (like my preference-- WICO). So I have used Merge Plugins to merge esps from the same mod. I wind up having several small plugins of merged mods.

[PoorlyAged]

I am a really old operating system internist and I think @Arthmoor misspoke earlier. (Mistyped?) He said "they're using an 8bit form ID field". That isn't quite right.

 

The baseid of an item is displayed in the format xxyyyyyy.

 

The yyyyyy is six hexadecimal digits which are the 24 bit formid. The 24 bit number is assigned by the Creation Kit when a form is saved.

 

The xx is two hexadecimal digits which are the eight bit load order of the master/dlc/mod which contains the formid. This XX has a range of 00 to FF. FF hexadecimal is 255 decimal and thus is the max number of files besides the base game which is always 00_.

 

For a practical example, the basid for a Dragonbone Arrow (introduced in the Dawngard DLC) is xx0176F4. The xx is the load order of the Dawngard DLC in hexadecimal and 0176F4 is the formid for a Dragonbone Arrow in hexadecimal. Converted to binary (bits) you get 0000 0001 0111 0110 1111 0100 (and yes,I did that without a binary calculator). The baseid for a Septim (a gold coin) is 0000000f. Here, the first two hexadecimal digits (00) is the base game and 00000f if the formid for a single Septim in hexadecimal.

 

So the eight bits that @Arthmoor referred to where the load order, not the formId.

 

For further reading, here is a rudimentary explanation of binary and hexadecimal numbering and how they relate to each other. Just remember, there are 10 kinds of people in the world and one kind understands binary.

Edit - The Skyrim SE Creation kit still creates data for a 32 bit application.

Edited April 16, 2017 by PoorlyAged

[Lisselli]

Edit: Nevermind, don't want mods coming after me.

Edited February 20, 2017 by Lisselli