I've been so busy with my real life (Android) development projects, I haven't had time to work on my mods. Thomas Kaira sent me a message offering to make some updates for me, which is very much appreciated! That got me thinking maybe I should just post the mod on Google Code (or better alternative?). I don't want to abandon my mods, but I just don't have time right now to make the updates to address what the new Skyrim patches/dlc are breaking.

Thoughts/comments?

No need to post the mod to Google Code, I would offer a separate package with the non-SW downloads containing the source scripts. PSC files are easily readable in Notepad++ or other text editors, there is no change at all in file format between TXT and PSC, the only difference is the three letters at the end of the file.

I always encourage modders to make their mods open-source whenever possible. Every single script mod made for Oblivion was open-source, and there is no reason to change that for Skyrim. It helps fledgeling modders learn and it allows for users to customize their experience.

If you include Papyrus scripts and other assets in your mod (on download sites other than Steam), you could include permission in your ReadMe for other people to create derived versions. Although if you did go down that route you might want to add a disclaimer that you aren't responsible for and won't support any versions except your own.

I suspect that for a mod to successfully go 'open source' would still need someone to receive, vet, and approve submitted changes, so that there was one coherent mod for people to download; and it sounds like you wouldn't want that someone to be you. Letting it out into the wild to divide and mutate is probably far from ideal, but if it finds just one capable and dedicated modder then any rubbish versions are likely to disappear very quickly.

They might damage the reputation of your original work first, though .

So, no actual helpful ideas from me, but perhaps some food for thought .

In my opinion, absolutely every mod should include the papyrus source files. The only reasons I see not wanting to post it are:

A ) Forgot / was lazy / honest mistake / didn't think it was important
B ) Way too bent out of shape about protecting your "special sauce" / methods of achieving some actions, for fear they may be copied (in which case, get over yourself)
C ) Embarrassed about code quality

The value of having the source available is incredibly important and valuable, for new and veteran modders alike. Without MadMole's help the other day, I would never have known that doing a Player.MoveTo(BedReference) would actually make the player lay down in the bed. I would have literally never figured that out because that's not what MoveTo is even supposed to do. But he figured it out, so, I get to benefit from that.

To answer the core question: Yes

Edit: And now the above trick is on the Creation Kit wiki. And so the circle is completed.

So very much agree on this, and yes its loads of features who experts can use.
Only reason to not release source is that you have bad code. Hearhfire uses one NPC and one container for each of it fertile soil spots you can plant on. My farming mod uses one NPC for the filtered list of seeds to plant with unlimited plants. However it contains other bugs, if anybody could solve acurate placement at ground level I would download at once.

I think 90% of the time it would be because of B... that's sad, I agree with you.

OT (on topic) I will always suspect a) and then he refuse an update assume c) or worse d) evil actions, undocumented features like an small chance of converting your character to an Khajiit.

OT (off topic) You saying that move character to bed will have him lie down? Now with an override on activate we could get something like see you sleep?

There's only one legitimate reason I could see for not distributing your source code. Spoilers. If you've got some clever trap or whatever you don't want cheaters to peek at and ruin for others. That would only justify keeping one particular script a secret though.

Aside from that, I'm a big supporter of including your .psc source files and I always have with my work. When I first started modding for Morrowind and Oblivion, I learned most of what I know now off of reading other peoples' code. I never glean much from sanitized documentation and sometimes not even from brief example snippets. I learn by seeing and then figuring out how to expand on the same principles.

I think most people just forget or aren't entirely aware of what's being packaged with their mods.

Anyway, as for the specific mod in question here, all Scenic Carriages requires at the moment is some navmesh love and a bit of script tweaking to account for the added Hearthfire destinations. If you're looking for someone to surgically deal with the navmeshes, my local copy of it has already been handled and I'd be happy to pass that back along. No more CTDs. I haven't touched the carriage scripting yet though.

It's C for me. I program "Spaghetti Code". LOL.

Not sure why this turned in to an issue about including source code... really seems to be an issue for some people.

My first release of ScenicCarriages included the source code, but when I had to start packing the files manually, it was taking forever for me to find my source files in the list of over 10,000 TIF__000xxxx files... So I gave up. (Call me lazy.) Later I learned how to prefix my source files, but no one seemed to care about the source so I still didn't bother. I actually wish more people were interested in my code. As a dev lead being on both sides of code reviews, I certainly don't think my code is perfect and I don't take it personally, but I do think I've come up with some good solutions. I've posted the stuff that I think is usefull on the Wiki and happy to share with anyone who asks. But this wasn't the reason for my posts.

Thank you to the few people who actually responded to my original point, about making SC an "open source" project. You have some really good points andyw, so maybe that isn't going to work. For now, I'd love to get the fixes you made Arthmoor!

My main concern right now is that I don't want SC to require Hearthfire. Thomas, most of the changes for your suggestion are going to be in the ESP, with very little scripting modifications. I don't see a good way to "branch" the mod which those kind of changes would require? Unless you have a nice clean solution for determing if Hearthfire is loaded and adjust the dialog (and script) options accordingly, it seems there would have to be two different versions of SC?

I personally would love any and all code.
I'm only now beginning to learn papyrus, and what some have said about learning from a working example instead of documentation is very, VERY, true where I'm concerned.
Seeing the things in their native environment really helps in constructing something new, and figuring out how everything works.

That and all of us are doing this as a hobby, there doesn't seem to be a point in not including the source.

If I found out something cool like the MoveTo thing, I'd want to tell as many people as possible, and then watch as they use it in ways I hadn't even imagined. And install their mods and play them because they end up being way better than mine.

I misunderstood the original point of your post. So few mods go "open source" (in the traditional sense) that I thought you just meant beginning to include your source files.


More people are interested in your code than you probably realize, and keep in mind that a guy a decade from now might want to reference it. They're out there, you probably just don't hear about it (much).

Anyway, thank you for Scenic Carriages.


Never would have thought of that. Great idea.

That is correct, a separate "Hearthfire Edition" would be needed. The basic scripts themselves would likely not need anything special added to them, but there would need to be dialogue changes as well as initializing the Hearthfire-added carriages into the SC system.

If you would prefer not to get into that, that's fine, but I still highly recommend you make the mod open source so that others who would want this in their game could try on their own time.

Okay, a "Hearthfire Edition" does have a good ring to it And I think many people would really appreciate it! The source is available in the Misc section on Nexus. Thomas, if you still want to it, you're welcome to. I can either host it on the (Nexus) ScenicCarriage site (with credit to you), or post a link.

The alternative of course, if you don't want to maintain two separate versions, is to make a compatibility patch that addresses only the specifics of what needs to be changed.

That's what I did with Ars Metallica, and I see no real reason why that can't be done here, other than the current lack of script source code for Hearthfire.

I think I'll add that leaving mods open-source helps alleviate the problem of abandoned mods becoming permanently incompatible due to official updates and the like. Of course, you sort of already said that in a later post in this thread.

I'll take a look and get things going then. If support is your worry, I'll take care of all that stuff.

I don't see why you don't consider B a legitimate reason. As far as I know, You can't use meshes or textures other people do without asking for permission. I don't see why this should be different. Opening a pes file is easy enough, but If I decide to use anothe person's idea, I ask for permission and if it is not granted I didn't use the idea.

If you think mesh or texture authors shouldn't have their work protected, then forget what I said, but if you do think like aparently most modders do in that case, I don't see why you should consider this a different matter.

That's not really justification in my opinion, though. Others who figure it out without cheating could just as easily tip people off. I can see why one would want to do that, but the benefit of providing them to


Pretty much this. I've been trying to make a spell reflection script and having a hard time with it. I was going to look at the only other mod I could find that does this, but he keeps his scripts closed source because he doesn't want people copying them... So since I'm doing this for learning purposes, and I don't want mine to be a ward, that's pretty much a waste to me now :/




I don't see it exactly like that. I think they have rights but the community can learn so much more from having access to scripts. I don't know a lot about modeling and all that, but I'm pretty sure you can't get the same level of information from looking at somebody's mesh or textures.

But in the end is the same. You stay twenty hours modeling an armor and you are an artist whos intelectual property needs to be respected. You stay twenty hours finding a way to overcome a dificulty in scripting or object handling in the esp, and it's not only perfectly fine others using your method, you are a jerk if you didn't make it as easy as you can for them to do it. It's simply not fair.

Of course, the community can learn from the scripts and esp files. The community can also benefict from using meshes and textures as modder resources.

I'm not saying peple shoudn't learn from others work, I'm not even saying you should not open the pes files from the ones not adding their codes. But I can't see why someone not includding that code, even if the reason for not doing so is maintaining her work a secret (as it would work ), may be perceived in a different way than someone not giving universal permisions for using their meshes and textures.

Both works require effort and creativity. In my opinion, you should be praised when you share your code, not berated when you don't.

The reason is that for the entire lifespan of the Elder Scrolls since Morrowind, scripts are and always have been open-source. This means the community mindset is that scripts are open to others to view and modify to their leisure.

The same goes for resources, you are allowed to privately do anything you want with them. Change the texture or completely redo the mesh? Go right ahead. You just needed the right tools for the job.

The problem here with scripts is that the compiled PEX files are only useful to the game engine. On their own, they are completely worthless. By denying the PSC files, you are not only denying the users the ability to derive scripts from their scripts, you are denying them the right to modify the scripts for personal use. That is an empirical right in the modding community, you may do whatever you wish to someone else's work for personal use so long as it remains personal. In order to do that for scripting, you must provide the un-compiled PSC files.

It is generally frowned upon that you deny someone else the ability to make personal taste changes to a mod.

However, at the same time, I don't think any less of people who do decide to close the source for their mods since not too many people have a tendency to edit the actual scripts. Any if you really want to get into it, you could just ask them to send the source files to you.

A bit of devil's advocacy for a moment.

Scripts in past games were open source, yes, but not by choice. There was no way to block access to them due to the scripts being embedded in the ESP files. Further, the source code for them was visible as plain text even if someone didn't have the CS. A text editor could be used to view it. There have been plenty of people I've talked to over the years who have asked me if there's a way to hide their source from prying eyes. I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to do this if they want to.

The process of doing that was a pain, because if you lost the source code you couldn't undo it later, even to fix a bug.

Skyrim is the first of the games in the series based on this filing setup where the scripts are compiled externally, so those people can now simply not include the source. It's a perfectly legitimate thing to do. Though, as has been said, not considered best practice.

And why I don't hold it against them if they choose not to include the source. It's easy enough to ask if you are persistent about it, after all. No more difficult than requesting permission to use someone's meshes in your mod.

"give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" - This is the difference. I can take what I learned from various scripts and apply it to new and completely different scripts. I can't do that with a texture or 3d model. Me handing out 3d models with full rights to the community does nothing to support this, it simply gives some people in specific situations the ability to copy my work and use it in there mod. Closing your mods script source only hinders future programmers from making good work, and causes them to have to go through the same tedious line of research you did which ultimately slows down development.

Sure, I think somebody flat out copying a script is bad, but honestly I'd rather provide my sources for free right off the bat for people who want to learn.


Don't get me wrong, I'm not aiming this at you personally: you may technically have the right to withhold the right for me to look at your scripts, but I have the right to berate you just as well for hindering community development.

As for secrets in the mod itself that you don't want people to spoil, like I said, it can be done without sharing the source.

What I'm saying, is that scripters should have the same status as modelers. The fact that you can use only the work of the first group for learning is circumstancial. I'm saying just that the same way, no one will say anithing about a modeler not giving universal permissions for her/his work. No one should say anything about a scripter not sharing his/her code.

I'm not going for or against the code sharing. I had been involved in mods where I shared the code and mods where I didn't (for different reassons than the expossed ones, by the way). It's only that I found that no one should be criticished for not sharing the code, while other aspects of modding seem to be perceived as intelectual property.