This is a thread for speculation.

Anyone who has spent any length of time playing with modded Bethesda games knows that every mod that does significant things to the presentation of the game requires SKSE, NVSE, Mod configuration menus, FNIS, etc. We can speculate that Bethesda plans to make Bethesda.net into it's cross platform (possibly paid) mod distribution area. We can also safely speculate that game-play, animation, physics, and 3D (ENB type) mods won't appear in any fashion on this site because they all require 3rd party hooks into the engine in various forms through dll injectors, etc. Those things will likely remain in the purview of PC modding sites like Nexus.

So, what mods will manage to be cross platform? Custom armors and weapons? Quests if they follow the vanilla formula only? Hi-Res packs are probably right out because they will explode the consoles. On the types of content that it is possible to distribute via the official mod service cross platform what sorts of content will be allowed? Whose job will it be to curate that content? How does load order get determined? So many questions.

Some thoughts.

From what Bethesda and Valve have said following the paid mods fiasco, Valve were a significant driving force in that attempt, in large part because it had worked well for other games. Bethesda have said that FO4 mods won't be paid, and I think they had their fingers burned badly enough that they're going to stick to that. So "possibly paid" is, I think, more in the realm of paranoid fear than significant possibility.

Hi-Res packs may not be entirely out. I've no idea what the graphics capabilities of the consoles are, but I'd be surprised if there weren't some areas of the game that could safely have higher textures applied. But certainly extreme, across the board hi-res packs seem less likely for consoles.

Mods that require third-party tools could easily be supported on Bethesda.net. It just means that when modders upload mods they'd have to say what, if any, third-party tools are needed, and those mods that need them wouldn't be made visible to players browsing for mods on a console.

Mods suitable for console could be very wide-ranging. There's a lot that can be achieved with Creation Kit, new models, new textures and scripting, far beyond 'vanilla'. And we really don't know what new features will have been added into Papyrus for FO4, but there may be somewhat less need for a script extender - that's a question only time will tell. However, a potentially big problem will be the voiced protagonist. Previously, if a new NPC had a slightly poorly acted or recorded voice (or even silent voice needing subtitles), well, that's mods for you. But trying to get sensible speech fragments for the protagonist could be hard, and having them silent with subtitles could be very jarring. So that'll be limiting.

My big concern is for model editing and creation. Bethesda haven't released model exporters since Morrowind, I believe because the exporters they use in-house have so much licensed middleware incorporated, and there's no way they can re-license it. From Oblivion to FO3 to Skyrim, getting models from a 3D modelling package into the game has gradually got harder. The teams that have, with great effort and ingenuity, produced exporters, have few members. The skills and effort needed are just too high to attract many coders to that unrewarding hobby. As a result, I don't believe there's much in the way of straightforward or up-to-date tools out there, and with FO4 there's a real risk there won't really be any.

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On what sort of mod content will be allowed, the impression I got from interviews with Bethesda is that pretty much anything that doesn't have stolen copyrighted material, depicted six or nudity will be allowed. They've certainly said explicitly that they're not against mods that could break player's games - largely I suspect because there's no way on earth they could ever test mods thoroughly enough to prove they were entirely bug free, so have decided not to worry about that at all and just be up-front about the risks players take downloading mods.

As for curating... well, the fact is it's impossible to say. They could do some very basic curating as an automated process (no new character/creature/clothing models or textures = no nudity, no new animations = no explicit six), and those could be passed through without a second glance. Delaying mods on console, and when they do become due for release, checking comments and complaints on the PC release, would allow them to quickly spot inappropriate content without actually looking at the mod themselves.

But there may simply be more work than either Bethesda, Microsoft or Sony can deal with by way of curating, and they might simply have to rely on a complaint/report system.

That's something I wouldn't worry about. If the need is big enough (and it will be) someone will make it.

Ah, but who? I'm pretty sure the niftools exporters for Blender 4.9b still need hand hacking to get the models to work in Skyrim, and the niftools exporters for Blender 6 are still in development and (as far as I can see) likely to remain so for a significant amount of time to come. I'm not sure what the state of the 3DS Max niftools exporter is, but the project status on sourceforge shows as inactive. So I'd be faintly surprised if the niftools team were in a position to get things working for FO4 for a long time to come.

Anton did some tools for Blender, but he's just one person and may not have time or inclination to do any for FO4.

Can we a get lip sync included please?

It was included in the Skyrim Creation Kit, so I'd be very surprised if it wasn't included in the FO4 one.

I'm sure the model artists will find a way; the only added challenge I see is the transition to physical-based rendering, which will probably be worth it in the end. It might take a bit to get things really rolling, though.

The vast majority of content I see hitting the consoles is weapon and armor add-ons. Quest mods shouldn't be a big deal either, although we're all going to have to learn to deal with the missing voiced protagonist (I imagine it will feel like Oblivion's conversations transplanted into Fallout 4). And lots of gameplay tweaks and enhancements; you'd be surprised what can be done without a script extender, or hell, without scripts at all. AI packages, leveled lists, crafting, item stats, most "magic" effects, and several perks are their own formalized systems. Radiant Story can also replace a lot of functionality that previously had to be done with scripts, although generally quests and scripts go hand-in-hand.

One thing I really want to see is more support for UI tweaks without requiring a script extender. It would be so awesome if console mods can add new HUD elements or UI changes. I wonder if the alternate HUD for Power Armor is a hard-coded thing, or if Bethesda implemented a system to switch out UI elements based on conditions.

Hopefully . It would be really, really nice if Bethesda could release a basic, stripped down exporter. It could only be for 3DS Max, of course, as that's what Bethesda use (shame, I can't afford that, but oh well) but it would be something.

I'm not sure why I think this, but my suspicion is that it'd either be hard-coded, or possibly a bit of a mix-n-match, with some aspects under the control of the quest-designer but other shard-coded.

The thing is, as quest designers aren't UI designers, it doesn't really make sense to implement a flexible system that they can tweak. The only reason to implement something like that is either if they have many UI variants in the game, and needed the ability to quickly prototype and adjust them on the fly (unlikely), or with an eye to supporting modders.

I don't know a damn thing about exporters, but maybe one day Beth will be able to phase out the middleware and include an in-house one as part of the Creation Kit. Hell, maybe with PBR the .nif format evolved into something else. NetImmerse File doesn't mean much any more.

That's all wild guessing, though, I'm far from qualified to validate that assumption.

That's very true. When Beth puts in the effort to make a formalized system for something, it's usually something that sees use throughout the entire game in different forms. They wouldn't need to create streamlined processes for adding/tweaking UI elements if they only need to do a few different UIs through the entire game. Now, they could have new conditional UI elements, like perk-enabled information or things that only show up when you're using certain equipment, that could necessitate creating a more streamlined way of modifying the UI. But they probably didn't.

What would be beyond fantastic is if Bethesda included some form of Mod-Configuration-Menu functionality in the base game, now that they want to get mods on all platforms. I so don't want console mods to be stuck using message-box option menus attached to scripted configuration rings.

Hey thanks for the info!

I'm really curious about what we will get when Creation Kit for Fallout 4 finally gets released. This is something which could badly backfire on Bethesda when it is poorly executed. Before with Bethesda games we knew that we are on our own when making mods and only relasing GECK/Creation Kit was already something not many publisher do. But now with officially announcing mods for consoles and building up hype for it, Bethesda put themselves in a situation where they are expected to deliver.

Imagine they announce mods for consoles but there aren't many mods because noone is able to actually get new meshes into the game because of lack of tools, or the mods have to use clumsy ways to allow configuration or just display stuff. On the PC we could get around the latter with script extenders, but on consoles this won't be an option. So if they don't provide some official APIs for that kind of stuff, mods on console could be a one time thing, because of public outcry and Bethesda deciding that the outcome was not worth the effort. It's like the paid mod debacle which was very poorly executed and therefore killed in no time (Don't get me wrong, I actually liked it that it got killed so quickly. But on top of being a controversial thing, they additionally did it so poorly that killing it as quickly as possible was their only option).

I speculate that no definitive answers to these questions present themselves until Bethesda introduces the mod to consoles....and this thread will then possibly become a relevant topic with meaningful discussion.

Well... a bit earlier than that .

The Creation Kit is confirmed by Todd Howard as PC only. Any mods for console will be made on PC using the same toolset as mods for PC. The only major difference will (as far as we know) be whether they get downloaded to run on a PC or on a console.

So when the Creation Kit is released to PC is when a lot of these questions will be answered. Some questions may have to wait until the facilities are released for downloading mods to console.

But this discussion isn't necessarily entirely meaningless - it's possible that the Creation Kit (unlike the game itself) isn't completely feature-locked. Not that that there'll be significant changes (Bethesda will, after all, only be prettying up the toolset they use internally), but a few of the thoughts and concerns expressed here may slightly influence Bethesda's thinking .

Depending on how things go, I may jump back in to the tooling scene again to possibly be an icebreaker if needed. It will depend on if the community has anyone more capable/enthusiastic covering things I've done in the past and my own personal motivation and availablity after the release. Unfortunately the community can be fairly unforgiving to its own which sometimes makes it hard to donate a lot of time to it.

I would be surpised if Bethesda does release a 3dsmax or maya exporter for nif given they have not in the past. The Gamebryo license doesn't allow for it to my recollection and they probably dont want to spend the money to get license which would allow it. I'm certain they would not do a blender one given their pipeline is max based last I knew. Its possible that the NIF format has not changed much given that Gamebryo hasn't released anything in several years and Bethesda is probably content to use what they already had for skyrim. That would make a smoother transition. Heck it would be nice if they would release an official rig for the skeleton too but I won't hold my breath for that either.

I'm wondering, what's the likelihood that Bethesda modified the .nif format to the extent that they can rename it and make it an in-house thing? I know what PBR does, but how does it change the format itself? Conversely, if the .nif format hasn't changed much, then how hard would it be to update the tools that already exist for Skyrim?

No idea about Bethesda.net, but many kinds of gameplay mods can developed using the Creation Kit, without any third party hooks.

Same goes for quest mods - what did you mean by the vanilla formula only?

True story,

I've asked on more than one occaision for Beth to sell me the source code to their exporter, and they just said that it wasn't possible and ultimately not up to them. Could have been a canned reply, but it did imply that middleware most likely was the culprit. It may be something left over from their engine. Or even an in house tool that their parent company has rights they absolutely refuse to relinquish under any circumstances, so they can't even speculate on selling it. I would like to know exactly what the issue is though because that's a massive hold up on modding every time they release a game.

Basically no chance they can rename it that easily. They enhanced it but the way Netimmerse/Gamebryo is structured the serialization is part of the classes so they have no legs to stand on from an IP perspective. It doesn't have a formal definition like something I suspect in the Infinity engine games had. Community Tool updating may not be too hard if they did like Skyrim and just made a few changes. Where there were problems were in the custom stuff like havok objects in the past that BS added. Maybe facial stuff would be an issue again as they used facegen for that which is yet another too.

3dsmax updates were hard mostly because that sdk changed (unicode strings) so the existing code needed a significant rewrite. I think someone on the Skywind project made a pass at that. The other big breaking changes they have done was heavily updated the esm file format but that is something they could totally document for the community if they wanted to since that is in-house. And of course papyrus was another major example of major changes. I've not followed FO4 enough to know if they did anything like this again.

Yep, I hear ya. Gamebryo/Netimmerse wrote most of the exporter with some customizations done presubably by Bethesda for Havok (and things like decapitation used in Fallout 3). They probably would still not give out an Importer though which most of the community needs as a starting point for body meshes (unless they provided an official skeleton rig). Gamebryo isn't dead yet but sure looks like it from the outside. While I dont think exposing the exporter would present too much risk to their IP, I'm sure their lawyers probably disagree and its easier to just say no to these requests.

When BS announced the Creation engine, I really hoped they would drop Gamebryo engine since its now basically a glorified serializer for the NIF files but perhaps the two are still intertwined in terrible ways we dont know about. After all they did successfully drop KF files for animation and switched to havok animation so they could presumably switch to FBX or an inhouse format if they really wanted. The problem for the community is that at least we know the NIF files reasonably well at this point and something new brings lots of unknowns so it may still be for the best.

Gamebryo still works in Skyrim, just not for actor animation.

From what I know PBR does not require the nif format to be changed at all. PBR just requires different textures and they can be easily incorporated by just adding more texture slots (or repurposing old ones). Given the problems with exporters and their building up of hype for mods, the wisest decision from Bethesda would be to introduce as little changes as possible to the nif format.

I'm wondering how the new less load screens is going to affect how building/optimizing the interiors and exteriors is done.

I have a bad feeling that I'm going to be rebuilding most of the mod I've been working on since FO3

The "Bethesda Nif" has evolved over the years with a gradual increase in complexity mainly due to the advancements in rendering. For FO4 we will most likely see another step in it's evolution. Don't know how they plan on dealing with alterations to Navmeshes and settlement building, do away with the Navmesh, build another collision layer in the nif, add a Navmesh pre-built into the nif??? The community tools for dealing with these changes has been slipping behind, the last version of 3DS to have "fully functioning" Niftools was 2012 with later versions getting limited functionality. FONV you can export functional Mopp collision from 3DS, but you can't for Skyrim.

If they were to release anything to help modders out the important thing would be exporters for Havok animation and a tool enabling us to work with behaviour graphs.

And that, sadly, is likely to be the hardest thing for them to release due to licensing issues. Same with Havok physics or any other middleware.

Basic mesh exporters might be possible, depending on the term of their license to the NetImmerse format and the code for handling it. They clearly have a wide-ranging license to modify the code and extend the format, so they may just possibly have a license to distribute an executable that generates NIF files from other data.

However, even if they do have the right, they'd certainly have to write a new distributable exporter excluding all trace of Havok or similar middleware code. And that might just not (in their opinion) be justifiable cost.

I live in hope, but not in optimism.

This is from a http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Fan_Interview_IV, so I don't know how much of it is still relevant, but it may be of interest:

20. There is no denying that Oblivion depends on a large game modding community. Are you planning on giving this community more advanced tools such as an up-to-date Construction Set or an exporter for 3dsMax in the near future? Right now, modders often have to revert to needlessly complicated methods to achieve the same quality as the original game. If not, is it due to contractual obligations with the third party software creators?

Well, I could deny it, since the console versions don’t depend on it at all and the majority of people playing Oblivion play the console versions, but that’s me just being a smart-ass. Anyway, we really, really push hard on making our stuff really mod friendly and putting out our tools, and I’m glad we got the wiki site running so well. We’re very proud of what the tools allow and what users have made, I think we have the best mod-community in the world, and it really is one of the reasons the game is so popular. Ok, now to the actual question, which is our art exporter. We have an internal Max version 5 nif exporter we use. It only works on that version and it is NOT a slick program. The other ones people are already using for Oblivion that we didn’t make get the job done just as well. Why didn’t we release ours? It’s a very long answer that is mostly legal stuff, from all the middleware we use to…other things that complicate it more. Anyway, we feel strongly that if we can’t really support the exporter the way we want, there’s no reason to have one when similar ones are already being used. Search the CS wiki, and you’ll find excellent alternatives to creating art for Oblivion, and trust me when I say our ways are just as complicated. You aren’t missing a thing.

(I quote these fan interviews a lot. I hope they do one for Fallout 4 soon; it's a great place for them to field technical questions from the modding community, and explain some of their design decisions.)