January 2022 Update

Hey all!

So this update post is long overdue. Over the past few weeks there has been basically radio silence on TPF 5.0 progress which I am terribly sorry about, but it doesn't mean there was no progress! There is a lot going on for me IRL right now so I'm completely swamped by too many things at once. Can you believe that I'll move to the Netherlands next week and start University the week after that? I sure can't.

State of TPF

So the whole idea of getting 5.0 out in December didn't work out. This was due in part to the absolute madness that December turned into, I just had a lot to do IRL. If I'm stressed over IRL stuff I don't have the peace of mind to sit down and focus on TPF unfortunately.

However, the delay was also caused by me FINALLY starting work on a custom balancing overhaul. This will not only replace WACCF but also give me a solid framework for adding new content. It involves rebalancing of weapon and armor stats/progression as well as integration and consistency patching for Simple Smithing Overhaul and More Craftable Equipment. The weapon/armor part is mostly done already, but I still want to look at clothing & jewelry.

I should also address the ongoing confusion over TPF/TPF-X. As it stands, I expect to have a reduced amount of time to work on anything related to my modding projects in the coming months as it'll be my first term at University. That being said, I don't think that progress will be halted altogether. But whatever shape TPF 5.0 will take has to be easily maintainable.

My current intention is to merge the original concepts of TPF and TPF-X. In the future, LOTF should basically replace what TPF was originally supposed to be while TPF 5.0 onward will have lots of stuff that was previously unthinkable. The setup is actually largely completed and I have updated about 60% of the manual guide so far, but aforementioned balancing overhaul is a bigger project and won't be finished for a while. The plan is still to go Wabbajack + Manual Guide.

Right now the best projection I can give you for TPF 5.0 is Summer 2022 at the latest. It depends which of my current ideas I want to integrate. Alternatively, I could also see an early release when I have Spring Break in March. I am not yet decided whether I want 5.0 to be a WIP to be expanded in future releases or if I want it to be as complete as possible in the initial release. However, rest assured that I am hard at work and that a lot of progress has already been made.

State of LOTF 

LOTF is doing great! As a Wabbajack list it has become a good deal more popular than I ever expected for a basically-almost-vanilla setup and now it is even the base for Guitarninja's Septimus 2 which is fantastic. As mentioned before, the LOTF 2.x updates will gradually add support for all the Creations from Anniversary Edition to the CC profile so I will be chipping away at that in the coming months.

State of WTP

WTP has received an update to 2.2 today which fixes some performance issues that arose from overwriting Previs Repair Pack with This Is Trash. I had previously assumed that the combination should work if This Is Trash overwrites with its own precombined meshes, but clearly I was wrong about that. I still don't fully understand Fallout 4's optimisation system and to be honest that is because I don't care enough. I am a Skyrim modder first and foremost, and Fallout 4 is more of a side hustle for me.

With the removal of This Is Trash, WTP should be in a pretty good spot for now and I'm very happy with its current state. Today's addition of Ultrawide support rounds it off nicely and thankfully the lack of constant updates makes any Fallout 4 list comparatively hassle-free to maintain. I am currently neck-deep into a Skyrim playthrough with LOTF but fully intend to finally play and finish Fallout 4 before a certain other Bethesda game drops later this year ...

Starfield

Yeah so that's getting close to becoming a thing, no? To get the obvious out of the way: If Starfield is as moddable as previous Beth titles, then I will most definitely mod the hell out of the game. Obviously I can't look into the future, but if I like the game when it drops - and I probably will - then I certainly intend to work on a Wabbajack list and potentially a guide for it.

Anniversary Month

In December we celebrated TPF's fourth birthday with a big screenshot competition and a huge amount of giveaways. I honestly lost count of the amount of games we gave away, but it was a couple dozen. I was blown away by the amount of keys that were provided by the community so much so that I decided to keep the giveaway channel around. It is now called #community-giveaways and I intend to continue dropping any of my own left-over keys there. We also have a steady stream of contributions from other users so keep an eye on that channel!

Now I do want to admit that I had a lot more plans for the month that I simply didn't get to, for instance, I had meant to do another user poll to get some feedback on TPF. I still plan to get to that stuff, it'll just happen a bit later on. Once I've moved to the Netherlands and get my full PC setup back up, I might hopefully gather up the courage to try streaming again. That was a thing, too, huh.

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Well, I think that is all the latest. I hope you all made it into 2022 with minimal damage, and that you are staying safe and healthy. Let's make this year better than the last one, yeah?

Happy modding, y'all!

Phoenix