With the upcoming release of CE: Enhanced, many modders are exploring whether or not to port their mods over from UE4 to UE5. Modders such as map makers have expressed that it would be too much work, while gameplay adjustment mods may port over without much change. And some new modders have expressed enthusiasm to work in UE5. As such, now the pool of mods available to Conan Exiles will become a mix of UE4 and UE5 mods.
Given how different UE4 and UE5 are, wouldn’t it be better to list CE: Enhanced as a separate game on steam (keeping mods associated with UE5 separate)? Maybe keep Conan Exiles in UE4 as CE: Legacy with all its mod attachments?
This is certainly going to need to be looked at - otherwise there’s going to be a lot of confusion. And then people will complain at modders that ‘your mod doesn’t work’, which will ultimately drive several modders to quit…
And that’s assuming mod authors bother to actually explain to those players who do read, what the mod is for and where its not compatible. Some authors write great walls of text with simple to follow details. Others can’t be bothered to write a simple description. Its a mixed bag of explanations. Between players who can’t read and mod authors who can’t write, you can imagine that the phase “use at your own risk” has profound implications.
The UE4 steam version will be playable to eternity, it seems. No further updates, but that can be seen as a good thing, too. And for that version, all the old mods will continue to work, and even new ones could be created.
It’ll be a big source of confusion. Good idea to separate the games in the steam library.
Also, it would clean up the mod library for UE5 users. The myriads of old, incompatible mods will make the game look semi-abandoned, although the contrary is the case.
What Onomog, Bodin and Khaletohep said. Basically I was getting at the fact that there will be mods that continue to work on UE4, and there will be mods that update to UE5 (and therefore won’t work on UE4) and some modders may be willing to maintain versions for both platforms. Basically, it’s likely to get chaotic, and people won’t write clear enough descriptions, and even when they do people won’t read them.
Plus modders get a surprising amount of abuse from the people they are providing with free benefits. It always blows my mind how quickly some players will scream at the modders for not having an immediate fix for an unexpected problem (or Funcom update). I’ve seen a number of modders walk away over the years, often for exactly that reason. My philosophy for mods has always been that I use them at my own risk and if they stop working (or stop being updated) for whatever reason, then I’m grateful for the time I had with them. And if my game breaks because of a discontinued mod, that’s the risk I chose to take. Sadly, that doesn’t appear to be the attitude that some players take…
Moreover, if a mod is popular enough, a new one on the same topic from a different author usually appears soon after it’s retired. Exceptions are rare.
I’ve long since been unable to imagine this game without a large number of mods. Therefore, my approach in this situation is clear: continue playing CE Legacy for a certain period of time, and then switch to the updated version once the mods I care about are updated for the new version of the game.
What do you think, @Dana ? Will Funcom be willing to list Conan Exiles: Enhanced (UE5) separate from Conan Exiles: Legacy (UE:4) in Steam so that the mod list posted in the Steam Workshop doesn’t confuse the two game engines?
I think everyone explained it pretty well already. But to add to this, I know that Savage Wilds, and its related mod Shima’s Compendium, are unlikely to be ported to UE5. The modders for both those projects are involved in their discord, still release updates/support for their projects. It’s not something I would call abandoned, by any means. But the work to port it would be enormous.
I believe, at least if the UE4 dev kit remains available, modders will likely be able to continue developing (both creating and adding to) the Legacy version of Conan. Knowing that no more updates will hit may actually be great since modders won’t have to worry about a patch in 6 months breaking things that affect their mods that they then have to fix.
You can relax It’s already decided that it’s going to be on the same app, which was also publicly announced.
Steam has workshop versioning since January so mods can still be kept separate even if they share the same app.
If it’s different versions of the same game, I doubt we’ll be able to have both installed on the same game. Bad for mods like Savage Wilds, or for people who like to install as many mini map mods as possible, as most people will probably switch over to UE5, denying them access to these mods on the same PC.
You raise a good point. I hope we do have the option to maintain both a UE4 and UE5 version at the same time on one machine. I wanted to at the very least record a video of my current base, but I doubt I’m going to get that done before the cut-off date (a lot of followers need moving around, plus there’s a key mod that really needs troubleshooting before I go for a video). But I also want to get on to UE5 and would rather not delay that until I’ve finished messing around with an old save. I dunno, maybe if I spent less time procrastinating on the forums I’d have already got it done by now…
Rimworld does a similar versioning. You can roll back to an older version of the game, the same way it’s being shown/discussed to work for Conan. When you swap branches in Rimworld, the game has to update the files to that old branch and when you swap back, it’s another update. Rimworld is a tiny game comparatively (appx 1GB) so it doesn’t take too long for this but for larger games…oooof.
Rimworld’s mods are usually often backwards compatible. Only time you might need a different version is when a fork was created because another modder took up an abandoned mod. So you just download both and swap between them in your mod list if you need different versions for different game branches. Hopefully Conan’s version works as seamlessly.
So, as I expected, swapping between branches for this particular game is…unpleasant, at best. The game is FAR too big to make this a feasible experience for someone wanting to play both.
Additionally, it appears that swapping between branches also resets config files, like key bindings and what you have your FOV, frames, etc set to. Which makes branching an even less appealing solution.
I had a bad feeling about that. Never fun having to remember what I had everything set to (especially if I lose keybindings). I got the video I wanted and some screenshots, just in time for the update, so I think I’ll probably close down my UE4 and stick with UE5 for a while. (At least until I can’t cope without all my mods…)
It’s already decided that it’s going to be on the same app, which was also publicly announced.