On the Nexus (not in NMM), the easist way to tell before you download it, is if you click on the little magnifying glass icon next to the name of the file, it will show a preview of the mod file structure.

wow, thanks so much, that is very helpful than manually checking each one. Followed your advice and just added some mods that add textures like mountain dew stimpacks and some other skins like arm and hammer cleaner for the abraxo. Also one that removes the ... in the inventory, that should really be in the game. A mod shouldnt be needed to fix that.

Seems that anything involving a script is wrapped in .esp I noticed so really people should avoid ANYTHING using a script.

I'm sorry that the past means nothing to you and you don't value community history or knowledge. That's sad. Your game will not be happy with the way such a stance treats it.

It's corruption that manifests pretty much right away and causes some pretty obvious problems. The issue that caused it to take 8 months to figure out the last time was partly due to the CK itself being delayed for 4, and the other 4 spent taking the time to nail down the precise causes for the issues. Which you seem fine with repeating for no valid reason.

The program has not changed in that time. The issues are still very much present. There is absolutely no reason to expect a different result. If you had been involved in the modding community for any length of time, you'd know blanket statements like this don't come without proof.

I'm testing the latest development versions of FO4Edit.

FO4Edit currently works fine for creating really simple plugins, like game settings. In fact, the last public version of TES5Edit works fine for the simplest plugins.

All of the record types have been outlined so far, but there's a lot more to do before FO4Edit is ready for primetime.

https://github.com/TES5Edit/TES5Edit/commits/fo4dump-refactor

Question: keep seeing people talking about beth.net but what is that? tried going to the site but its some site for a girl named Beth it seems to have nothing to do with fallout unless its some placeholder site maybe as a joke?

Also isnt making a whole site and hosting stuff to expensive when steam does it for free? Are those mods on this beth.net site safer than the ones on Nexus? is beth.net a real thing?

Rest assured that some of us are noticing, tho. I am not using any mods right now because (a) pffft, don't need them until I've atleast played the game as intended, and ( your warning.

During one of the E3 press conferences or discussions it was made known of bethesda.net would be used for downloading mods for the Xbox one console and likely the PS4 as well. Likely to be available for the PC as well. This forum is supposed to be moved over there as well but the notification was a few months ago but no news on when that will be if it will be.

Except, ya know, people are using ESP mods now without obvious corruption issues. That doesn't mean that non-obvious issues aren't there (they probably are).

Also, Fallout4Snip has been updated since then (though as far as I know it shouldn't fix the problems from back then).

Finally, I've been involved in modding Bethesda games since Morrowind - not just in using, but in developing them. Some of the mods I've worked on have even been integrated into the base games in some fashion (wall displays in Skyrim, and hotkeys being remembered when you drop and then pick back up an item in Fallout 4), though I'd guess that's convergent evolution rather than Bethesda specifically setting out to copy me.

No, you shouldn't use ESP-based mods right now if you're not willing to lose your saved game. But the utter certainty displayed in this thread that all ESP-based mods suffer from hidden corruption issues because a single tool from back in the early days of Skyrim modding caused problems, even though those corruption issues haven't yet actually manifested themselves in anyone's Fallout 4 game as far as anyone knows, is silly (especially since most ESP-based mods probably aren't made with that specific tool anyways).

So what about falloutsnip? safe?

As often mentioned throughout this thread, it's impossible to say for sure. Try a mod and see, if you really want to use that mod, whatever tool it was made with.

Just do so knowing that there is an uncertain risk your savegame may become irretrievably corrupted. At some point. Maybe long after you've lost interest in that character. Or maybe not. Or it may never be corrupted at all.

Seriously, the simple message is nobody knows for sure. There is an uncertain degree of risk with all tools. Some have a past history of causing problems, but that doesn't mean the others are safe. And it doesn't mean that all mods made with any tool are inevitably corrupt.

Risk it or don't risk it, the choice is yours. Just don't blame anybody except yourself for the consequences.

And such is how it started off back then too, back in November and December of 2011. Then, after it became clear something was very wrong, people began posting about it. Corruption was showing up more and more often, and it became clearer and clearer that it was due to using pre-release tools.

When the CK finally came out, some folks got lucky and were able to resave Snip-created mods and resolve their issues. Suddenly reports of corruption began to drop. It became crystal clear after SOME of us (myself included) were foolish enough to use Snip to do mod cleaning with, which made the corruption issue stand out like a sore thumb. Took months, and a lot of folks had to rebuild their mods from scratch in the CK. Myself included. The damage ran deep in those cases because of the mishandled compression issue. The CK could not (or possibly chose not to) correct it.

And anyone can plainly see in the commit logs on GitHub that no effort has been made to address the actual problem with the compression corruption. So you're now openly trying to assert that a tool known to generate corrupt output has been fixed when it's plain as day this hasn't happened.

So? Most of the knowledgeable people in this thread trying to warn you about using Snip have even more modding and development experience than you do.

I'll be the one: No. It's not safe. Period. No evidence exists to prove otherwise.

Wait for FO4Edit. The guys apparently work faster than fast - the test version is already leagues ahead of the capabilities of Snip and xEdit has no history of mishandling compression and inducing corrupted output. One can already do some simple stuff like changing game settings, redefining globals, and simple moving of references in the world. Probably more too but so far this is all I've poked at.

EDIT: And so it begins.... http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1544248-bug-report-index-pc/?p=24563250

Dude, I said in the bit you quoted that the problem was not fixed; I was just correcting your assertion that the program was never updated.


I was replying directly to your assertion that 'if I had been involved in modding for any significant period of time', I'd simply believe you without any evidence to back up your claims; I've been involved in modding Bethesda games for as long as anyone, so that was patently untrue.

Yeah, well, if you've been involved for as long as you say, it makes me wonder why you don't know the facts surrounding Snip. It's not like that knowledge was kept from everyone. It was plastered all over the official forums in 2012.

I didn't do any modding of Skyrim until 2013 or 2014, as I finished my initial play-through prior to acceptable modding tools being released (I'm primarily a scripter, so I need the official tools to be released before doing much of anything); I've never used TesVSnip.

Then you were lucky to avoid it and should be thankful those of us warning you now did our due diligence in 2012 so you didn't have to experience that

GECK/CKIT aren't buggy or anything.

Perhaps you're being a bit too cautious because the events of the past have made you paranoid. Obviously you have to exercise caution when using mods, but that applies every time, all of the time. Doesn't matter if they were made with the official tool, xSnip, or xEdit.

The vast majority of mods we have are texture changes. After them, we have gameplay setting changes, and using xSnip for those isn't likely to harm your game.

Oh no, not this rubbish idea again.

I guess we will not be able to trust mods for FO4

you're clearly just being dramatic. That is not what's being said at all. It is not a blanket statement. It only pertains to mods that are created using historically buggy tools. it's a very simple idea.

Not siding with anyone on the debate. I'm ready to admit that Snip might be able to copy records and match a 100% byte to byte accuracy, meaning they're fine. And I'm really happy about it, always glad to see tools available. But let's face it : It still need way more knowledge than what most people have to make correct mod.

Some simple examples :

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1478/?

Contains duplicated formIDs

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1145/?

Delete some infos such as terminal-doors links, when trying to edit the doors record to make them scrappable/craftable.

Safety ? No. Still using it because [censored] this, I'll just scrap the save once unplayable and start over, it's funnier with mods. But still, I'm living dangerously. I just know it.

The only mods in question are the .esp mods. Straight texture re placers should be ok.

I doubt .esp mods that change gameplay settings are worth worrying about either. The ones with nested records and lots of them, sure, but you should always assume any mod can do harm -- doesn't matter if it's made with GECK, xSnip, or xEdit.

Hell, that's part of the reason Bethesda doesn't do support for them. I'm sure one of the more experienced modders would have no problem creating a large .esp now, just as an inexperienced modder could easily create a corrupted .esp using the GECK later.

The problem is that you're talking about the exact same program, with some small updates that were not targeted at addressing the problem. You are free to call it paranoia, but that's a lie and you know it.

Snip is proven without a doubt to cause data corruption. You can feel free to blow up your game with mods made with it if you like.

Your attempt to malign xEdit in the same sentence belies your utter lack of knowledge on the subject. xEdit has no history of creating corrupt plugins, and as such is not prone to generating the same problem since the people who created it are far more cautious and only enable what's absolutely safe. They are also intimately familiar with the compression mechanisms used by ESP files.

It's outright laughable that you'd even suggest the CK generates corrupt plugins. It can't, by definition, since it's the authority on what constitutes a valid plugin. Which then leads me to believe you've never even used it and thus can't be qualified to comment (big surprise given your history).

So if warning people about this is supposed to be a bad thing, then I have no idea what else to tell you.

One more perfect example

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/2061/

Good thing author admitted that something is wrong with his mod

"Warning! This may not be related to the mod, but I have to warn you: after I made this work in my game, the textures of my T-45 have gone strange and the console language changed from English to... squares. I do not know whether this mod caused it or anything else, but be careful."

People who know the structure of plugin files already understand what's the problem, and http://s24.postimg.org/8otsclker/image.png. Yes he used Snip to create binary equal copies of weapons, but all strings in master file are localized, and without that flag in plugin's header and appropriate strings files you get "squares". And this is even harmless in this case since it is only names and textures, but I've seen FO4 using localized strings in even more important records and fields besides in game text.

I see such mods every day on Nexus, it is spreading like plague. The problem with snip is not only compression, but making a binary copy of records doesn't work anymore since Skyrim. Just the opposite - they must not be equal to work properly now. Only 1 week passed and such mods are spreading all over nexus already, in 3 months it could become complete disaster. It is not particulary the fault of Snip since it doesn't involve compressed records, but rather lack of any knowledge and understanding from wannabe mod makers rushing to release mods at any cost right here, right now, without waiting for official tools.

Wrongly delocalized records had some direct issue in skyrim, I don't know yet how they are handled in fallout4 but here is what I observed in Skyrim, when the UI can't find a correct word to build the feedback:

-Dialogs can stop working

-Quest can be broken

-Items not been able to be picked up

-Rare (weird) cases where the texture is in string ressources (some GMST), the texture can stop showing up

Autoquoting myself: Avoid subtree (some structures have changed) /compressed/ localized records.