here is is: http://www.gameinformer.com/games/fallout_4/b/playstation4/archive/2015/06/17/19-new-details-fans-need-to-know-about-fallout-4.aspx

• When you play a modded version, the game will make a copy of your save file so your pure state game will be preserved.

So my interpretation of this is that it will make a special save that filters out the modded refs and scripts and such so that you can then remove a mod anytime UNLIKE skyrim.

As a mod creator (over 20 years with bethesda games) these are my guesses to how this will work:

Running (saved) Scripts, object ref (such as actors) and their base objects , quests, and all other things that could be edited in the CK would be ignored in the special save.

Things that would still be stuck in your game would be any modified stats (such as raised health or skills) any vanillia object or actor that the mod gave you and all other changes to any vanillia part of the game such as force completed quests or amount of gold you have and so on.

This is INFINITELY better than skyrim. Go I wish they could patch this back into skyrim...pretty please?

The 2 big things this will do for users is reduce(maybe close to eliminate) corrupt save games AND you will not be TRAPPED by a mod that you thought liked for 20 or 40 hours then discovered some part of it that you hate but now you are married to the mod in your present save game. This will make less desirable or just ANY mod less "STICKY".

I don't know if it's that robust. Could just mean it makes a backup of your save before installing any mods; and if you want to get rid of those mods, you'd have to go back to that save.

Grrr... "thanks" for the realty check... yes, you could be right.

My optimism comes from other statements they have made about mods and bugs and how they learn lessons from Skyrim and feedback from modders and mod makers that they have implemented in fall out 4.

Hopefully some interviewer that actually uses mods will pin down a DEV and ask them about this.

Regardless, good to see they're improving mod support in the game itself

Of course it's because mods are coming to consoles, can't just leave it in state it has been in the previous games. But, who cares? It's still an improvement

I don't think it will be this complex. I guess they are just cutting the save files down to initial needed data.

• base charactervalues (level, coords, ...)
• base id's of items for inventory use
• QuestLevelProgress

This should be it. There is not much what really needs to be saved due the ability of generating content.

But a feature wich will become worthless over time, due the nature of some mods messing with vanilla files.

Wich means the unaltered save will still be altered. This on the other hand will make a clean install needed, or countless of hours of cleaning the files by hand (wich happened to me just once (Skyrim)).

Yeah, I feel like they'll be improving the game's own mod interface a lot to make it a bit more d'oh!-proof. Nothing as advanced as a community made mod manager complete with installers, but maybe we'll see checks against missing master errors and incompatibility detection, and easier load ordering. A step up from the Steam Workshop, but obviously still not as robust as the Nexus Mod Manager or Wrye Bash.

mmmm... you know... MY vision would not be hard for the DEV to do because they already do it ...sort of...

In the CK when you load a mod there is a window that will show you ALL the things that the mod changed in the CK.

so they already have programming to detect all that. Also in the CK (creation kit) you can select the changes in that same window and in one button click remove them all!

So again they already have the basics to do what I envisioned.

I will maintain hope anyway.

Even if they do implement some sort of savegame-cleaning code, I'm sure that trying to remove a mod and carry on with the same savegame will still carry a great big 'Not Supported By Bethesda!' warning.

Simply because there is only so much testing they'd be able to do on such a feature, only so many weird and woolly scripts they could throw at it. And overlooking something, or failing to anticipate whatever complexities might arrive with a script extender thrown into the mix, doesn't mean one broken quest or vanishing object. It means the entire savegame is trashed.

And even if they can correctly clean all scripts and assets used by a mod out, if a mod replaces a default game script, or changes the structure of a default quest, or edits a vanilla race, then removing the mod will still leave the savegame with baked in state-data that's now inconsistent with the current base game + enabled mods, and may still (especially in the case of scripts) have completely trashed the savegame.

I think the best they could do (and I hope this, at least, will be done) is have a clear, even if complex, set of steps that a mod can take to clean itself up and make itself as-near-guaranteed-as-makes-no-difference safe for uninstallation, and that the game will invoke the mod's clean-up script (if present) when a user decides to remove it. That way, even if Bethesda themselves would never officially support such a system, a well written mod could be uninstalled.

While there are steps mod-makers can take to mitigate any uninstallation problems in Skyrim, as far as I'm aware there is no surefire way to absolutely guarantee a clean mod closedown, especially as any cleanup must be manually invoked by the user.

I disagree. Oblivion did this very well indeed. I am not saying they would go back to the savegame file format they had before but I am saying it is possible to remove mods and not necessarily kill your game without all the hassles we have now.

There should more than that in a save file, unless I'm misinterpreting what you are saying. With scripts, for example, it needs to save all the variables, current state, and any function currently running.

FYI, there was an interview with Todd shortly after the presentation (next day, maybe?) where he stated exactly the above (well, somewhat paraphrased, but he essentially said that yes, the game makes a save when you add a mod and then you play from that save so that you go back to the save prior to adding said mod if you remove it later).

Yeah, Skyrim is the first game to really dislike unplugging mods from savegames, but that is related to its new scripting language, methinks. Maybe they've changed how it affects savegames for 4, but if it's still Papyrus I wouldn't count on it.

Nope. Morrowind disliked it too. Removing a mod - even altering load order - could result in "doubling" in Morrowind. Doubling is a phenomenon where doors, banners and NPCs would be duplicated. Left unchecked, it could cause save game bloat and instability.

Oblivion was the anomaly. It was the only game in the series that allowed us to remove mods and alter load order without serious repercussions.

How is this different from manually creating a vanilla save before adding whatever mod(s) you want to your game?

Or testing each mod you add individually by making sure the existing mod deck works (i.e. existing mods play nicely with each other and do what they were designed to do) then saving that modded game, then adding the new mod? Because if the last mod you install doesn't work or borks your game, you can always remove it and reload the previous save that didn't have it.

I guess I'm not understanding your point at all here. Is this because you will be playing on a console v. PC?

This is pretty surreal if forced, say you add an mod who adds a few weapons modifications, you are not able to test this at once as you need higher skills/ items. Later you finaly test it and find you don't like it however removing it will roll you back.

Yes some mods are hard to remove and adding an save (named) before adding mods is smart but still.

Yes and from what I head form the DEV I had thought they undestood this and took steps to fix the situation (make the save game system more user friendly like Oblivion's) but from what AiTenshi1 posted (see above) it seem I am wrong.

@ Alaric the Visgoth

What I said (or tried to anyway) is that it is technically possible to make a save game system so that a special save is made along side your normal save. The special save would be a "clean save". This "clean save" would have all your progress for hours of play after you loaded mods. So latter you could use this to remove all your mods any time without losing your progress. Not as great as how it worked in Oblivion where you could remove just one mod and not all without losing your progress, but better than what was the annoyance for many modders called Skyrim.

This is a moot point however if what AiTenshi1 posted is really what the DEV did. If they really did that then they did practically nothing at all IMO because players already do this anyway. All they would have done is made it an automatic "pre mod" save rather than manual.

It would be a nice feature and in theory it could be accomplished. However I got the impression that SmkViper just meant when the game detects you've added a mod it will create a backup of your safe vanilla save for you to go back to. Perhaps even marked as such like "Save 10 (unmodded)". That save will remain unchanged forever, so you can go back to it. Essentially meaning you don't have to remember what save had mods or not, without having to use Wrye Bash.

What would be good is if a save file tags exactly which data structures (including script instances, variables, forms etc) belong to what mod, and then safely remove or deactivate them when the mod is removed (or disabled). Surely this would be doable. Also, some sort of utility to export the vanilla game state from a save file would be good too. This would allow a player's character to be imported into a fresh save game, but retaining important data from the vanilla save state such as character stats, items, and quest progression. At least then, we wouldn't have to constantly start new games whenever the save eventually corrupts itself.

I sure hope this means mods will be easier to remove. My current run of Fallout New Vegas has textures flickering through the entire textures database, putting ghoul eyes on the wall instead of wood planks, or neon signs on the ground instead of stone slabs.... the reason, I have read, is that I have too many mods installed. So I have to un-install some mods.... but from previous, recent experience in removing mods from Fallout-3, I know that this can be dangerous.

Some mods (those that just add weapons or clothes, etc) are relatively safe to uninstall - you just lose the item that the mod put in the game. But other mods use Hidden Perks and scripts that you have to actually ~stop~ before you can safely remove the mod, or else the game freaks out because it thinks the script should be there and it's NOT (because you just yanked it out). I've tried to be more careful about reading up on mods and bypassing those that indicate you have to StopQuest or otherwise issue console commands ~before~ you uninstall the mod.

Why would scripts need to get saved?

You just save if it was triggered or not, wich depends on the questlevelprogress booleans aswell as the character stats (triggered spawns at a certain level for example), as far as I know.

Therefore you just need to save the questlevelprogress stuff in order to check if a script was triggered (1) or not (0).

Or in beth terms it would be 10, 25, 50 or something like that.

I consider a clean save as ripped down to it's core. Only essential stuff.

Because a script can have many states. The save needs to know what state it was last in.

A function can run and not finish by the time you save, meaning when you load that save the function carries on from where it was left.

You're misunderstanding how scripts work. They're not just on/off bits of stuff. They hold and carry data, for possibly indeterminate amounts of time.

We are talking about a savegame, therefore you just need to save the results, not the entire progress.

My ifelse|true/false argument was just an example to point out you don't need the entire script, just the results.

A savegame itself doesn't need to care if there is an ongoing progress. The nessecary script will be loaded, when you boot up your unmodified game.

The savegame only needs to offer the current status of a certain script, not the entire script. The script will be loaded anyway by the gamefiles. Just the recheck(result) needs to be saved to determine the correct state of a script.

Example:

Quest A is running.

Quest A has these states: 0 (quest start), 10 (goal 1), 25 (goal2), 50(goal3), 100(completed)

We saved our game at 25. Therefore we only need to save the 25.

0, 10 aren't even needed anymore, because these states has been finished.

Therefore while we load our vanilla game, the script will be loaded anyway. Therefore we don't need to save an entire script.

I would save the entire script ONLY if I would need to double-check or if I encounter a bug.

But we only need the results in a vanilla save. Keep it simple.

That sounds horrifying.

You keep talking about the script that controls a quest. That's probably 5% of the scripting in skyrim. Like I said you're misunderstanding how this works.

It's understandable because you're not a programmer. At least, not a Skyrim programmer any way. I am.

What is so hard to get on the word "example"?

Do you need a dictonary? I would be pleased to offer you one.

Because you can extrapolate this to all kind of scripts/functions and so on.

And we are not talking about Skyrim. We are talking about Fallout 4.

If they would present us another Skyrim, I would personaly burn their office down.

Skyrim has been a pain in the a...in certain areas. So I wouldn't dare/hope/assume they will make the same mistakes again.

But we have a "new" engine, new possibilities and new features. Therefore a "fresh" start, wich doesn't work with "Skyrim or Fo3/NV thinking".

You can see how beth handled serveral stuff in the past, and some of it has been nearly the same for years.