I know its not out yet, but can you guys give general descriptions to what we can't do? I don't fully understand what the hard-coded programming is and what effects it has to limit modders.

Whenever a game has modding tools, I notice that people do the most amazing things that you would never expect possible in that game. Is that the case in Skyrim, where everything is possible. But only certain people with natural programming skills can only do?

i know what the Ck cant do is..

it cant come any sooner!!

Well, it depends on what's hard coded. Adding skills? Probably a no go. Adding perk trees? Also probably won't happen (who knows, it's all speculation at this point). Changing the way shadows are rendered? Nope. Won't be done in the CK.

yes, that's what I want to know as well: what is hard-coded?

You can assume that everything that's not a form cannot be edited by the CK. The forms, as far they're decoded, are listed http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes5Mod:Mod_File_Format.

Note that a form definition in the file format doesn't guarantee that you can edit and/or create them with the CK. Some forms may be limited in function or number by code in the engine. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes5Mod:Mod_File_Format/AVIF so it's likely that you can edit those. I haven't encountered one that defines shadow rendering, so it's probably a safe assumption that you can't edit those.

You'll have to do a little digging and reading to find out what you may be able to do and you what you can't do, but much of the information is out there.

It does not list elemental damages or diseases. unless I'm looking in the wrong place?

Take a look at http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes5Mod:Mod_File_Format/MGEF and http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes5Mod:Mod_File_Format/SPEL.

It can't make changes to the engine code: We can't rewrite how the AI or graphics engine works completely, or code in multiplayer support.

hehe

thanks it's still not clear if I can add new elemental damages or new permanent enchantment effects (such as resistance to normal weapons) but it's a good start

The effect types are listed http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes5Mod:Mod_File_Format/MGEF#Effect_Types, since there's no form defining an element I don't think you can add a new type. You can however add a scripted magic effect (there's a script type), but that may have some limitations.

The http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes5Mod:Mod_File_Format/SPEL#ENCH form lists constant effect as a type, which gives hope for permanent enchantment effects. Resistance to normal weapons would be something that has to be scripted (as there's no magic effect type (see link above) that defines this resistance).

well, I still hope for the CK. after all, a new type is defined de facto by a corresponding resistance/weakness

These things are from previous games, and also stated in blogs/videos or other sources...

Hard coded things...

- Input controls (You can only modify buttons and what buttons/controls do, not how well they respond, or add extra input control, like 3D Mice, fourth/fifth buttons, special keys on gaming keyboards.)
- Shadows (You can alter shadow-levels, but not add shadows, fix shadow issues, or make them better.)
- LOD control (You can't "fix" the LOD issues since they are handled by the engine. You can only use it, or not use it.)
- Sound control (You can not structure sound-mixing, only place sounds and hope they play and mix correctly.)
- Particle control (You can't create "formulas" for particle effects, just tell the game which prefab effects to display. If the game doesn't have a multi-level particle-effect, or it is sloooow... you are just stuck with it.)
- AI (The game uses code for AI that is, well, less than desirable. You are stuck with your characters seeing through walls, not seeing you on certain objects, and unable to "reach" you, in many situations where they clearly should be able to reach you.)
- Script-flow (You can script actions and flow, but within the limits of the game's flow-control. EG, If the game doesn't do it, chances are good that your script can not do it. Unlike "game engine" script, which gives you access to the actual "flow" they used, not just the "flow" they programmed for us to use.)

Ultimately... These things will be missing... from the CK...
- Pre-object culling (Hiding unseen surfaces so the whole object does not have to be rendered. Objects will be slower, no matter what angle they are viewed, or where they are seen. Demanding more image loading than base-objects that come with the game, which are all pre-culled.)
- Mapping-optimization (Creating LOD textures, based off that pre-culling above. EG, all image-maps that are on custom objects will fill-up memory faster, reducing "cache" and extending loading, and lowering other quality.)
- Zone-culling (For those making whole areas, the whole area will ALWAYS load, even if it is behind three mountains, a city-wall, and in an LOD-FAR zone. EG, all land-mods will slow down the game.)
- Interface control (You will be able to use and modify the menu-things and quest-selection with severe limits. Making full custom flow and special-data difficult or impossible to use.)
- No custom data (You can rig data to pretend to be custom, using scripts, but are limited to the data-types and data-handling and storage of the game.)
- No API interface (Tools like the script-extender provide a nice hack, but it is not 100% effective, or guaranteed to work reliably 100% of the time. Eg, it fails, and your mod depends on it, your mod fails too, with no recovery possible after the point of failure {for that game-instance, not failure forever}. EG, it is impossible to use external code to effectively add things which the game fails to do internally, safely for the user.)
- The above limitations... (Which make things more than swap-mods difficult. {Swap = replace existing things with similar things.})

custom data?

MyCreature
.Strength=48000
.Speed=43223
.Velocity=1298
.Car=Volvo
.LottoNumbers=12,43,1,14,7,28
.HasKilledBunnies=Hell-yea,Lots-of-em

SortBy .LottoNumbers to find winner

erm, no, I need more explanation

Things like how the game handles playing animations, or streaming sound. Along with overarching things like the weather system. We can make our own weather and say how it works, but outside of those parameters we cant alter how it functions. How objects are loaded, or go into loading screens, and how things are displayed in those areas.

That kind of stuff. The more basic 'hard' level things are hard-coded. Of course, we don't know exactly, but we certainly will soon.

lol...

Objects have set values... You can not "add" more values, other than what they have, or "remove" the types used. Thus... MyCreature has TONS of useless data attached to it, even if I don't use any of them. Plus, I can not make my own "attributes" that only "my script" uses, which will not interfere with other scripts. (EG, I can replace "DamagePhysical" with something like "Speed", but any object that is not mine, will assume that value is still "DamagePhysical".... And, my script will assume that a swords "DamagePhysical" is the "speed", and attempt to make it drive fast, as a car, unless I code more... telling it not to read a sword as a car, and telling it not to send that data to the "PhysX" controller.)

To elaborate...

If there are no pre-defined values which you can recycle, you have to fake-it. But that only gets you the value, not the correct value-processing which would be associated with that value... Like my lotto-numbers... I would have 3,000,000 swords possibly winning the lotto, if I used the "DamagePhysical" value, instead of my own custom "LottoNumbers" value.

To make your own values, you need to tell the game what "Type" of data it is... Bit/Boolean, Byte, INT/UINT, LONG/ULONG, Single/USingle, Double/Udouble, String, BLOB, etc... Or set a type as a type... MyValue as MyArray(bit,byte,bit,bit,string[40])... Then the game has to create a database for those custom values, so they can be sorted, called, etc... Which it does not have the ability to do, since it uses it's own data-structures.

Again... If a sword doesn't have a "Coolness" value... or a "Sparks" value... You can't add one, unless you recycle another existing value, or create scripts to fake it, using formulated values for coolness or sparks, for all weapons.

Well... if you have something in mind that a form does not exist to edit, then you can always create a global script. Something that is running all the time, everywhere you go. You have to be careful with global scripts that run all the time. With Morrowind and Oblivion, all active scripts run once per frame. And the more scripts layered on top of each other through mods layered on top of each other, global scripts can cause a performance hit on the game.

Best bet on this would be to coordinate someone who is going to be getting his hands REALLY dirty with back-end mechanics scripting. Share what you want to see in that person's mod. He can build in conditionals for any global scripts that need to run so that maybe one or two lines of the script have to run per frame unless a certain condition == TRUE. We know from the previous two TES games that one script can fire another script. So the master global script could be just a series of if-then statements that only fire the scripts that need to fire. And if those scripts are DO ONCE scripts, then they process only once, and only when the master script tells them to. Now we don't know for sure just how the Skyrim CK will differ from the Morrowind or Oblivion CS. With any luck they've streamlined the script execution process even further and it will become a lot easier to handle more complex script interactions.

We'll know soon^TM

I believe they mentioned something about the number of "levels" of script evaluation... (Not directly sure if that was related to having more than just "global" and "Instance", but I believe it was... Might have just been related to having more "instance-types", but I should hope, that they adopted a more complex and controlled global-script-level also...)

Looking at video's, again, now... lol... (Might have mixed that knowledge from a RAGE technology interview I just saw... so I have to double-check.)

Assuming I understand what you're saying here I believe this is false. I'm assuming that there is an ini function to set the LOD distance as there was in previous elder scrolls titles. As always, correct me if I'm wrong though.

Yup. In previous games you can create multibounds to hide nearby objects from being rendered at full detail, like in a city or town, if they are out of view. You can't stop the entire land from loading in LOD, but Skyrim does this regardless, so it shouldnt slow down the game at all...

The LOD doesn't actually encompass all of Tamriel though...

We'll see what happens when Morcroft finishes his heightmap and gets it into the game :V