• Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    This was also a time where UI layers were occasionally just made in Adobe Flash (I think it was just after Adobe bought out Macromedia) so having a UI with crazy out of theme colours and issues syncing with the rest of the game was a real problem.

    This was the reason early Skyrim mods rarely had custom UI*. Skyrim’s user interface is done in Flash and making even minor changes is a huge pain in the ass.

    I believe Skywind and Skyblivion both ran into problems implementing features from the old games due to this. Skywind actually had to scrap an entire feature set (their original implementation of enchanting, IIRC?) very late in development because the feature’s developer left long ago and didn’t share their Flash project files, meaning the team couldn’t change it to work with later mod builds.

    * I think there are modder-created UI libraries to make it easier now, but it was a huge problem back in the day.

      • Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        Ugh, of course it is. What’s one more outdated component in an engine that’s just a quarter century of hacks duct-taped together? I wouldn’t be surprised if Bethesda are still battling technical debt from its NetImmerse/Gamebryo days.