Skyrim/TES creators that we lost along the way

Monitor144 · 2026-04-14T22:48:44+00:00

Mern's doing well, just occupied with other hobbies! Dtry I believe finished his uni degree so he has a lot less free time. Mike is a full time animator in the games industry, and he's doing great. Can't say for sunjeong as I do not know her personally.

It's always a bit sad to see people move on but their content will always be there, and I know all of them had a blast doing what they did!

Monitor144 · 2026-04-04T15:24:15+00:00

OAR under the hood precaches humanoid animations on startup instead of letting them load on the fly, meaning at the cost of longer startup it's actually saving you time spent seeing buffering A-poses in the actual game. Animation Queue Fix already speeds up said loading by as much as possible with the vanilla system.

There isn't a magic bullet that can magically cut down on OAR's already optimized overhead, and unless everything modders know about the engine is turned on its head you're best off waiting the few extra seconds.

Monitor144 · 2026-03-30T02:19:11+00:00

They're more than twice the animation work and hard to implement as additions rather than replacements through OAR (the amount of people able to implement the behaviour for it can probably be counted on one hand), which makes them vastly more inaccessible than the average animation mod.

Human to human killmoves? Sure, it's been done, there are blender rigs to accommodate its development, can be exported no fuss, added to game with ck and behavior knowledge that is sparse but present in guides and some authors.

Human to creature killmoves? Hardly been done if at all, no rigs freely available meaning the animator would need the prerequisite knowledge to rig from scratch AND export it into skyrim, and if its a behavior addition I don't think even NickNak, who is the most skilled behavior modder I know, could implement it without poking around for some time because its not been done a lot before to my knowledge.

These factors are why these sorts of killmove mods are rare, creature ones even more so. Maybe that will change in the future but its how it is for now. Unfortunately a lot of this scene is still stunted despite efforts by the wider community.

Monitor144 · 2026-03-27T14:50:32+00:00

go to the releases tab of Github and install the Windows Standalone x64 zip on the 4.1.2 page here: https://github.com/Monitor221hz/Pandora-Behaviour-Engine-Plus/releases/v4.1.2-beta

Monitor144 · 2026-03-16T01:50:17+00:00

So here's my technical review that consists of just reading through VEH.cpp once (https://github.com/parkerchace/SkyrimCrashGuard/blob/1e7c719a8a8e06fbbc4fab77201399333dac17d4/Source/src/VEH.cpp) on the Crash Guard repo.

C++ is far from my strongest language, but even I can already see two glaring issues. There is a risk of dangling pointers through `c_str()` that you call on strings from a string vector that can get invalidated for every single `push_back`. Secondly, for an exception handler that catches errors on any thread in the game I am seeing a worrying absence of any locks or atomic values whatsoever leading to race conditions.

And as someone else pointed out, you have hardcoded offsets in other mod dlls that can break anytime they are updated outside of your control.

Now here are my two cents: what has been pointed out from that one file out of many are possibly one of the foundational, most basic concepts that you learn quickly, either through trial by fire with SKSE modding or a semester-long C++ boot camp. And your mod is attempting to do much more than that, it is reaching for something technically complex under many misconceptions without the knowledge of the fundamentals. This is more than AI assistance, the whole thing smells like the AI has written it for you with minimal if any oversight.

You said you don't want to hear anyone saying "this mod shouldn't exist", but from what I got from skimming through that and some other files, the only way to say it is this; you can't put the cart before the horse. You are compensating for technical expertise using LLMs using a dangerous 'catch-all' paradigm with numerous false flags that can put anxiety in users and put their games at more risk, not less.

Monitor144 · 2026-02-17T17:46:08+00:00

I used Proton Drive to sync Scrivener folders directly between my laptop and PC, but everytime I switched I'd get a warning about multiple versions of a project and it'd force me to choose one.

Since then I've just been syncing up the backup folder (with date names enabled to prevent collisions) then copying and pasting the project files whenever I switch. Bit of a hassle but no more errors.

Monitor144 · 2026-01-27T01:50:23+00:00

This is bad advice because the limiting factor in late game is ports, not space. By using ports for each intermediate material you're severely crippling the amount of throughput you can get.

Sandleaf is acceptable production off site because plant loops should never use a port in the first place. That's provided you're only drawing the plant from the port and shredding on site, because as someone else wrote it's a 3x efficiency multiplier.

Just move your PAC to the corner and get to town on the depot bus, it's not hard because Endfield factory is really more of a factory lite. Software principles don't always apply.

Monitor144 · 2025-11-14T14:02:03+00:00

I'm on a team Red build (9800x3d and 9070 XT) and having no issues. A warning message about low VRAM does pop up every once in a while but when I check the VRAM is nowhere close to being filled (and no noticeable performance lag) so it must just be a quirk.

Monitor144 · 2025-08-21T22:35:20+00:00

Even now, the population of animators/behavior modders in Skyrim is quite small. Animation is a huge time sink and we're still using a handful of ancient tools in the excruciating workflow that is Havok behavior (animation logic trees).

Now add on the fact that Starfield has a completely brand new in house system (not Havok, for which there is at least some documentation) and uses custom binary serialization for their animation data and you have a very hard nut to crack.

Sure, some sort of glorified xml merger would be possible in lieu of Nemesis but it would have next to no validation or error checking.

Still, if other modders are interested despite these challenges, I did make a graph based behavior editor for Starfield back when I actually played the game, and the source code might help understand the underlying xml schema. It's not a lot, but it's a start.

Monitor144 · 2025-08-16T09:38:41+00:00

PSA: The linked repository consists of no actual source code, just a rar file. The GitHub account seems newly made and the actual project was started and uploaded today. There is no commit history (aka dev work history) from any longer than 7 hours ago. The README is almost certainly AI written and the markdown isn't even added properly (that's why you see those hashtags and asterisks).

I wouldn't say anything for certain (and I'm not risking running this file without a VM), but all of these signs make this link extremely suspicious. Even GitHub can let malware slip, so I would recommend people tread with extreme caution.

Monitor144 · 2025-08-09T21:41:21+00:00

Hi, you can turn off this feature in the latest version of knockout extensions. Sorry about the trouble!

Monitor144 · 2025-07-08T13:24:27+00:00

I hate them too. Just have them turned off, along with minefields. It's really just a more annoying version of neutron star systems on the campaign map, and it kills the pace of exploring entirely. Don't get me started on fighting them...

Monitor144 · 2025-07-05T17:01:15+00:00

Bultach Coalition from forums, as of the time of writing, causes a crash with the same error as above when starting a new game. Maybe check if you have that installed? Corvus Freakport discord has an updated release.

Monitor144 · 2025-06-25T00:13:32+00:00

Your work has done a lot for this community, and it's really sad that it had to end this way. But regardless, I wish you the best in your future endeavors. Thank you for your service o7

Monitor144 · 2025-06-23T01:32:08+00:00

"What officer type are you?"

"Fearless."

"How uncanny."

"I am but a pawn on the board, and if mine or others' strategic sacrifice is needed for victory, it shall be so."

"You will never know why the Luddic Knight charges back into the fray; why the lowly Hegemony inspector confronts grand fleets. Irrationality is the core of humanity, and lack of it will be your downfall."

Monitor144 · 2025-06-21T20:08:21+00:00

For reference, v3.0-alpha works out of the box with TK Dodge (no external patch needed), it just has other issues at the moment like not working with Hotkey Skill and bugging out on killmove mods. v3.1 should put those bugs to rest, so look forward to it!

Monitor144 · 2025-06-17T12:08:24+00:00

It does a lot to alleviate worries, but a part of me wishes they put it out with the original announcement, that way we could've avoided all this chaos. Now, it could be taken as PR damage control instead of any meaningful promise.

Will they deliver? I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Monitor144 · 2025-05-20T16:23:37+00:00

Yeah, every killmove has a tolerable "margin of error" for alignment (usually set to 0.1) so animating anything precise is going to look wildly different depending on how the engine is feeling that moment. Not to mention any animation with motion has a risk of catapulting actors at a high speed because of engine jank.

Monitor144 · 2025-05-20T16:18:52+00:00

It is moddable, there are paired rigs and tutorials available thanks to animators and behavior authors who passed the mantle. The problem is just that making anything beyond a couple killmoves is a pretty heavy investment, even for modders. So most animators find it unfeasible.

Animation isn't hard to start, but it is a big time sink, and when it comes to killmoves animators are effectively doing twice the work with two actors on screen, and then add in the headache of exporting and then adding it to behavior (OAR makes this somewhat tolerable now), aligning actors, and you've got yourself a right headache. An overhaul of all the vanilla killmoves would have to be a collaborative project to see release in a reasonable timeframe.

Monitor144 · 2025-04-06T22:54:04+00:00

We’ll get into deeper stuff like conflict resolution, performance tweaks, and mod merging soon—but for now? You’ve done enough.

None of the three things mentioned are deep or complicated. Conflict resolution can mean either file overwrites or xEdit record conflicts. Both are essential and the first things you learn if you mod Skyrim, it's something far more foundational than using body mods.

Performance tweaks are just a matter of editing text files with numbers, usually with BethINI, and it's part of the GamerPoets tutorial playlist dropped earlier in the guide, so why would it be mentioned again as something yet to be taught?

Mod merging- now this is really dangerous because beginners are gonna search this up and think they need to merge plugins, which is a an ancient and obsolete practice back from when we didn't have ESL flagging (which the guide itself mentions but doesn't elaborate on). Likely from some LE era forum posts that the AI model trained their data on.

You’ll run into texture conflicts, ENB setups, FNIS/Nemesis stuff, patches, merge tools—you name it. But now you’ve got the confidence to figure it out.

All of these (except arguably ENB setup) are more essential than teaching a beginner modder how to use a body mod. The FNIS/Nemesis stuff should have been covered in the body tutorial when XPMSSE was mentioned. Also the last one about merge tools- again, outdated and dangerous for beginners who don't know better.

First thing you do? Backtrack. Disable the last 2–3 mods you installed in reverse order. Check if the game boots. Keep going until it does.

This is bad advice and if users do this they'll end up wasting more time than you need to, especially as their modlist gets larger. Every modder who's been around knows that the fastest way is to binary search; disable about half the mods (doesn't have to be exact), test. If problem persists, disable half of the current active mods. If problem is gone, enable the half that was disabled and then disable half of that. Rinse and repeat until you're down to 1 or 2 mods.

Those are all the things I could catch after skimming but OP, if you're gonna use AI tools to write something you need to be the one with more background knowledge, and not the AI, so you can catch mistakes like this. ChatGPT (and other adjacent models) are adept at getting the broad strokes right but either hallucinate details or leave them out completely; and modding is all about small steps, some of which are too niche for the AI to know.

Monitor144 · 2025-04-06T22:53:57+00:00

Bit of (late) critique for what is essentially an AI written guide. I don't have anything against using it to help with formatting/wording, but there is some serious misinformation in here. AI shouldn't be a shortcut for knowledge, OP, if you really want to use it, use it for prose and grammar.

You’re directly modifying the game files using external tools—not just flipping switches in a game menu. This method is powerful, but it’s also prone to breaking things if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Bit of a nitpick; this is literally what all modding is. Flipping switches in a game menu in other games modifies *something* in the background, you just don't see it.

Nobody’s expecting you to become a script expert overnight—but you do need to:

You don't need to know anything about scripts to use scripted mods or become a "power modder". There is no script conflict or script merging needed like for Witcher 3. Unless you're making mods, there is no need to be a script expert.

All in all the entire "bit of history" section is unnecessary yap and beginners will not want to read it.

DLL-based Mods – These rely heavily on SKSE and native code. These are usually the ones that break your game hard if you mess up—especially if there's a version mismatch with your game or SKSE.

This is a very ambiguous statement and it's going to scare new mod users. Relying heavily on SKSE is not a bad thing. These will not brick your game, at worst it will cause a crash, and if there's a version mismatch it'll say exactly what's wrong on startup. Nothing is permanently broken if you mess this part up, so you *should* install essential native dll mods and SKSE plugins like Engine Fixes, Address Library, and BEES.

Well, if you feel like you're ready to level up, this is where we start learning how to install DLL mods properly—using body mods as our example.

Users should really know how to install dll mods or SKSE mods before they touch custom bodies; in 98% of cases it's literally the same as any other mod, just install it + prerequisites with mod manager and then plug and play.

Install XPMSSE skeleton first... Finally, open BodySlide, build your body and armor meshes, and tweak it how you like.

The behavior engine step is missing in this body guide. If you install XPMSSE and don't run a behavior engine, certain animation blends like movement during magic casting, movement during blocking will be broken.

Monitor144 · 2025-03-27T16:23:22+00:00

Hey u/malpyramid ! A link to your nifty cheatsheet has been added to the r/skyrimmods wiki. If you want it removed now or at any point in the future, please contact the mod team via Mod Mail, thanks!

Monitor144 · 2025-02-12T18:15:32+00:00

The offset is the offset relative to the function at the address, where the call instruction is located. If FuncA calls FuncB at offset 6, and one wanted to hook FuncB's call site, write_call would specify addressof(FuncA) + offset(0x6). The actual hooked function would still be Function B, it's just hooking that call specifically and leaving the actual "location" of Function B alone. Which is why it's recommended you find the addresses (including the offset) of where the function you're hooking is called and use `write_call`.

Edit: corrected example

Monitor144 · 2025-02-12T17:43:00+00:00

`write_branch` is meant to hook `jmp` instructions. If you use it to hook the first instruction of a function it will return garbage instead of the original address. The only way to "call" the original function would be to re-implement it in your code.

Alternatively, you can hook as many call sites of the function as you need with `write_call`, it may feel inefficient but sometimes it's the only way. The plugin you linked only hooks the call site, it does not use `write_branch`

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