Makers of Fallout 4 Script Extender politely ask players not to email them
The latest update for Fallout 4 has broken the Fallout 4 Scripter Extender, a critical resource in modding the game, and the modders are working to fix it.
Anyone that has ever tried modding Fallout 4 has no doubt encountered the Fallout 4 Script Extender (F4SE). This is a valuable resource for players and unfortunately the recent update to the game has broken it. The good news is that the developers for it are aware of the issues and are working hard on a fix. They have, rather understandably, requested that players do not email them with questions.
On April 25, 2024, Bethesda released its Fallout 4 Next Gen Update, which sought to improve the game for new and old players alike. Unfortunately, as anyone that’s used a mod will know, an update to a game can dramatically break a mod, which is exactly what has happened with the F4SE.
Source: Bethesda
The developers of the mod, Ian Patterson, Stephen Abel, and Brendan Borthwick, took to their F4SE site to let players know that they are currently working on a fix.
The 2024-04-25 Fallout 4 update (1.10.980 and later) has broken F4SE and the rest of the native code modding scene similarly to Skyrim's "Anniversary Edition" patch. I am working on an update and cannot currently offer a timeline for its availability, nor whether there will be any critical technical issues that would block an update. Do not email with questions.
Patterson then took to the Nexus Mods site to give players more of an update about the state of the script extender.
Thank you for all of the support! I assume people would rather have me working on the update than making individual responses, but in general thanks for the nice words and support.
2024-04-27: The first step of the update process is done, doing a first pass at updating all of the addresses for the new version of the game. Another long step begins now, validating the addresses and seeing if there were any structure layout changes. This would not benefit from external testing.
2024-04-28: Building regression tests for games on this engine is painful. To progress on something else that needs work before release, I'm porting over the plugin manager changes and loader changes from SKSE64 and SFSE. This modernizes plugin version detection, and minimizes the virus scanner false positive issues by using a single loader executable that doesn't need to change with each version.
There’s currently no timeline on when the Fallout 4 Script Extender will be fixed, which makes sense given these developers presumably have full-time jobs that keep them busy. For any player that heavily mods their game, it can certainly be frustrating when a developer releases an update that breaks mods. It’s almost like biting the hand that feeds you. While these games are good in their own rights, the modding community is why these games stand the test of time. Long-time fans work hard to continue to create content for players, ensuring that a game that is almost a decade old remains fresh.
The creators of the massive, upcoming mod, Fallout: London have expressed dissatisfaction with the timing of the latest Fallout 4 update. The team had been set to release the DLC-sized mod on April 23, but the release of the Next Gen Update threw a wrench in the works due to it breaking the Fallout 4 Script Extender.
So it’s not just the player downloading and using mods that have been affected, the big players in the modding scene that have been creating the content are running into issues as well. We’ll be sure to keep you updated on how the fixes for the Fallout 4 Script Extender are coming along. For more on this great series, take a look at our Fallout page.
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replySam Chandler posted a new article, Makers of Fallout 4 Script Extender politely asks players not to email them
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You'll recall Bethesda once attempted to monetize mods. Helping the community doesn't seem like a priority for them
https://gamingtrend.com/news/valve-and-bethesda-cancel-monetized-skyrim-mods-on-steam/ -
It wouldn't do much good without a final game binary. And the script extenders in particular are in a weird place since they involve modifying the game executable to enable loading external DLLs. There may be concerns that appearing to officially endorse or support those could open Bethesda up to legal liability.
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What are they supposed to do exactly? Isn't it a given that an update may break mods? Should Bethesda delay their release until mod authors are ready to react? Should they pay to bring mod authors in house so they can understand how to absorb the changes? I assume these mods aren't exactly coding entirely against well documented public APIs
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but what are they going to communicate specifically? They're going to inventory which random private APIs they changed? How the DLL/EXE layout has changed for code injection?
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now you're gonna need the legal department to sign off on this pseudo open sourcing of all your private APIs and still what is a mod developer going to do? Start updating the parameter lists of functions they call without having any idea about the behavioral changes to the functions and new side effects they introduce? is that going to meaningfully speed up the rate they can update their mods?
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Have you ever played Factorio? They are pretty much the gold standard for modding support. Machine-documented Lua API, their release notes have a section for modding API changes, the mods usually don’t break every new updates (in fact, it seems to be a bit rare) and the mods themselves can target specific Factorio versions and other mods versions if they also have dependencies.
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I learned how to block steam from updating my FO4 install so my mods wouldn’t break! It felt weird and satisfying.
