September 2021 Update

Hey all!

This is a big one.

The Personal Stuff

I have three more weeks of school ahead of me (plus one after the holidays) before my finals in early November. After I quit regular school just after my fifteenth birthday, I had thought I would never get to this point and all my plans for the future just evaporated in front of my eyes. I rather thought I'd off myself before I'd turn eighteen.

But I made it after all. I'm 22 now and almost done with my primary education (Abitur in Germany), and I will go to university, and the thought of that is profoundly exhilerating and terrifying at the same time. I managed to evade reality for such a long time that finally facing it will surely throw me into cold and foreign waters.

TPF Going Forward

Whatever happens, I do not wish to quit modding, or abandon TPF.

The way I see it now is that I have about four months left to get my various modding projects to a point where they are manageable with less time investment as I will invariably have far less time for modding than I did in the past.

My Wabbajack-only lists, LOTF and WTP, are fairly tame and have caused me little grief in the past. It should come as little surprise that the manual TPF guide is the real problem and frequently the reason for my own lack of motivation to work on anything modding related. And therefore ...

The manual TPF guide will receive a final major update and then retire.

End of an Era

That's really what it is for me. The guide is how I started and how I got to where I am now. Over the years, I toyed with the idea of retiring it so many times that I can see folks on my Discord server collectively rolling their eyes whenever I bring it up again. Just make a decision already, and stick with it. Well, here it is.

The best indication of Manual vs Wabbajack users I have is the unique downloads count for the CRP (that everyone needs) and the Loadorder.txt (only required for manual installations) on the TPF Nexus page. For TPF 4.7.6 (the current version) it's 745 WJ installation vs 141 manual installations. For the last major release, TPF 4.7, it was 891 WJ vs 110 manual.

If something has to be sacrificed, it will be the manual guide.

Now, I will NOT take down the guide. The final version, TPF 4.8 (and 4.8.1 because, let's face it, I will have messed something up), will stay up and usable, and will probably not be seriously outdated for a few months yet.

Officially, TPF is on a "temporary hiatus". I may well return to update it one day. However, the important part is that I cut myself loose for the time being.

TPF Wabbajack

So what about the Wabbajack installer? The truth is, I don't know. Like the manual guide, the WJ installer will probably be useable for quite some time without updates. I may continue to do maintenance updates or hand off maintenance to a third party (currently talking to a few people regarding this).

TPF Addons

The two biggest TPF Addons (forks), TPF - Dragon's Editions and Slidikins' Strenuous Skyrim, are perfectly standalone and will not be affected. They are also available as Wabbajack lists and currently in the testing phase before being added to the Wabbajack UI as official lists. Their future is up to their creators.

TPF-X

Going forward, I mean to divide my time between two projects, one of which is, unsurprisingly, TPF-X. It is still an expansion of base TPF although with more features and some rather ambitious ideas I've been having with regards to modularity (no promises, etc). Instead of having my attention divided between two setups, I will finally be able to devote all my tinkering energy to TPF-X.

Beginner's Guide

Meanwhile, the guide-writing part of my work on TPF will instead be switched to that Beginner's Guide I want to finish so badly. I truly believe it is more important to more people than TPF Manual will ever be. It's the only thing I'd ever consider sacrificing TPF Manual for.

Coming Up

- TPF 4.8 will be out later today.
- LOTF 1.3.1 or 1.4 (not sure yet) will probably be out tomorrow.
- Currently working on a WTP update (surprise!). No ETA.

There is no TPF-X ETA. I am going back to the drawing board with that one, starting from scratch. It will still be based on TPF, but I intend to redo some texture choices (hand-picking is easier in WJ) and largely replace the CRP with smaller patches. I also plan to use LOOT + custom rules for the first time ever so I can offer optional stuff (Creation Club support primarily).

Closing Words

TPF Manual may have reached the end of its life at (almost) four years of age, but I'm not going anywhere. Those evenings wishing I could work on TPF-X or the Beginner's Guide, but working on TPF instead are now at an end and I will finally be able to focus on what I truly want to spend my time on.

Anyone looking to get into modding will benefit from the Beginner's Guide more than from TPF Manual. Anyone looking to play TPF will have more content, more hand-picked mods, more custom edits in TPF-X, an overall higher quality than TPF could ever have delivered.

So, at the end of the day, nothing is truly lost. We're just changing course. =)

Happy modding!

Phoenix