SSE - mod & ram limits

[lazloarcadia]

Has anyone gotten a solid answer how many mods SSE can see? And how much RAM it can access?

[Laydor]

255 mod limit. And theoretically it can access 16 Exabytes of RAM if using 64 bit SSE and have a 64 bit CPU with a 64 bit OS. But honestly you are probably limited on the amount of RAM in your system.

[lazloarcadia]

Cool, thanks for the reply. I've seen a couple of other comments about the 255 mod limit staying the same for architectural reasons (mod compatibility, etc) but didn't know if that was official. I wonder if someone will make a patch or extension that can exceed this limit like they did with SKSE for scripting.

[cdcooley]

Cool, thanks for the reply. I've seen a couple of other comments about the 255 mod limit staying the same for architectural reasons (mod compatibility, etc) but didn't know if that was official. I wonder if someone will make a patch or extension that can exceed this limit like they did with SKSE for scripting.

No, the 255 limit is a core design choice. There's absolutely no way something like SKSE could alter it.

 

The game itself was converted to 64-bit code but the formID values are still 32-bit values and changing that would require altering absolutely everything. Even for the game developers changing it would be at least as hard as the switch from 32-bit to 64-bit code they've just done. So I don't expect that to change even for the next games in the series.

[Laydor]

 

Cool, thanks for the reply. I've seen a couple of other comments about the 255 mod limit staying the same for architectural reasons (mod compatibility, etc) but didn't know if that was official. I wonder if someone will make a patch or extension that can exceed this limit like they did with SKSE for scripting.

No, the 255 limit is a core design choice. There's absolutely no way something like SKSE could alter it.

 

The game itself was converted to 64-bit code but the formID values are still 32-bit values and changing that would require altering absolutely everything. Even for the game developers changing it would be at least as hard as the switch from 32-bit to 64-bit code they've just done. So I don't expect that to change even for the next games in the series.

 

 

Not that hard to include more bits, in fact they could have just used a 64-bit primitive/type instead of 32-bit even on a 32-bit system (bit slower tho). If they made it 33-bit values, they could double it or increase it by one hex value to be 9 hexadecimals long, making it 36 bits long or they could have done 48 bits, so the first 16 bits would be related to the mods, the last 32 bits for the form id.

 

It really isn't that hard to change. All you really are doing is changing a value type. Yes it is annoying as hell to do, specially if you have ten of thousands of lines of lines of code. But not impossible or require altering absolutely everything. And they would only have to change these values in the game engine and the creation kit. Then recompile both and then recompile the game. Sure it might take a week at most with most of the time just being compile time.

[lazloarcadia]

While I'll be the first to admit this last statement was WAY over my head, it basically sounds (in much more laymens terms) like a very advanced "replace all" type of search in MS Word? IE; more tedious than challenging?

[Lisselli]

For developers always pressed for time.. tedious and time consuming. Though it irks me a bit that they blew all that time on even this..

[fore]

 

 

Cool, thanks for the reply. I've seen a couple of other comments about the 255 mod limit staying the same for architectural reasons (mod compatibility, etc) but didn't know if that was official. I wonder if someone will make a patch or extension that can exceed this limit like they did with SKSE for scripting.

No, the 255 limit is a core design choice. There's absolutely no way something like SKSE could alter it.

 

The game itself was converted to 64-bit code but the formID values are still 32-bit values and changing that would require altering absolutely everything. Even for the game developers changing it would be at least as hard as the switch from 32-bit to 64-bit code they've just done. So I don't expect that to change even for the next games in the series.

 

 

Not that hard to include more bits, in fact they could have just used a 64-bit primitive/type instead of 32-bit even on a 32-bit system (bit slower tho). If they made it 33-bit values, they could double it or increase it by one hex value to be 9 hexadecimals long, making it 36 bits long or they could have done 48 bits, so the first 16 bits would be related to the mods, the last 32 bits for the form id.

 

It really isn't that hard to change. All you really are doing is changing a value type. Yes it is annoying as hell to do, specially if you have ten of thousands of lines of lines of code. But not impossible or require altering absolutely everything. And they would only have to change these values in the game engine and the creation kit. Then recompile both and then recompile the game. Sure it might take a week at most with most of the time just being compile time.

 

I totally disagree.

 

You are right when you talk about a simple 1-file program. But the Skyrim engine is a huge conglomerate of probably more than 20 years of development, based on the old gamebryo engine. You cannot judge from outside what what kind of programming techniques, casting, mapping to data and file structures are used over the time. Techniques that make it impossible to simply change the type.

 

The engine is not a properly designed piece of software. Why do you think there are all these CTD coming from. I bet by making the engine use a different type for IDs we would simply get more of them.

 

And finally: they gave us the game as they have implemented it. They have never designed and tested with a huge modding system in mind. Why should they change that now? More than 255 mods is the desire of an extreme small portion of their customers. A fraction of 1% I would think. Why should they spend effort and risk "stability" for that small community.

[lazloarcadia]

I'll admit, you argument about the customer base being small is a valid one, but lets not forget that it was largely because of the popularity of the game among the modding community than encouraged Beth to release the SE version of the game. So to say that we make up only 1% of their consumer base I don't think is accurate. Take for example how many times some of the most popular mods have been uniquely downloaded, some of them are in the millions. This gives us some idea how many modders are playing, and thus what a potential consumer base for the new product looks like.

[cdcooley]

The commenting about "an extreme small portion of their customers" is the number who actually think that 255 is some unreasonable limit. People using mods is a fraction of the overall number of players but certainly well above 1%. On the other hand, the number of people trying to run over 250 mods is only a fraction of that group. I would agree with fore that the group actually affected by this "limit" to the number of mods is actually a very tiny percent of the total. In fact, we know from looking at the overall list of problems on the support section of the forums that many people run into performance and conflict problems long before they get to that many mods.