‘The complexity of mods we can make just shot up big time’: Oblivion Remastered modders breach a new frontier even without Bethesda support—making it play nice with Lua scripts

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In my profession as a writer, I lack practical skills that are typically required in other fields. Consequently, although I follow the Bethesda modding community closely, I often struggle to comprehend the intricate discussions among the brilliant minds involved. To me, a ‘script extender’ is essentially adding large blocks of white text to a script for the purpose of increasing its total word count.

It seems significant if creators from the Oblivion Remastered Modding Community have discovered a way to improve the game’s compatibility with Lua, as they excitedly shared on Reddit: “We’ve managed to find a method to allow Oblivion’s scripting engine to call any function we desire from a UE4SS Lua script.

BIG NEWS: We can make Oblivion’s scripts call Lua functions! from r/oblivionmods

Let’s simplify that for our understanding: Instead of explaining everything at once, let me give you a brief overview. Lua is a versatile programming language commonly used by modders to add unique features to various games. It plays a significant role in the Morrowind modding community, for example. The upcoming version 0.49 of OpenMW is generating much excitement because it will broaden the possibilities of what users can achieve with Lua within this game engine.

In simpler terms, Oblivion Remastered is a more intricate version compared to Morrowind. It’s a contemporary game that uses two different engines – Gamebryo and Unreal Engine 5 – both integrated together. Unfortunately, unlike most of their other games, Bethesda doesn’t endorse modifying this particular version, which means modders lack the official resources to tinker with its internal workings.

It’s astonishing, given their unconventional nature, that they’ve somehow managed to improve communication between Lua and Oblivion Remastered. This improvement allows the game itself to activate Lua scripts in a clever manner by manipulating its notification system – the text in the top left corner that informs you about various events like contracting vampirism, for instance.

On Reddit, user Time-Has-Come demonstrates an example of recent advancements: in this game, a player uses a spell which sets off a script within Oblivion. This script momentarily displays the message “madLevitationScriptStart” as a notification. The player’s Lua script then takes notice of that message, hides it, and responds to it, causing the levitation spell to activate – something I thought was unattainable merely a week ago.

Time-Has-Come emphasizes that the true brilliance of this advancement lies in allowing modders to utilize Lua for responding to distinct, particular in-game occurrences. Earlier versions of Lua scripts could react to events like you casting a spell, taking damage, or concluding a conversation, but they couldn’t respond to specific spells, damages, or dialogue options. However, now they can.

The scope is extensive… If you desire a minigame or additional menu option to appear following a dialogue selection, that can certainly be achieved. A unique XP system where you gain experience points from defeating enemies and choose skills to level up would be more challenging, but it’s feasible. Or perhaps an extraordinary request like having Martin Septim deliver a pizza to your real-life home? That falls squarely within the realm of possibility too!

Earlier, combining the spellcasting from Oblivion and the levitation from the Lua mod was impractical. Instead of a genuine spell, the Levitation mod functioned as an embedded mechanic activated by pressing the L key. This workaround didn’t align with the game’s magic system’s overall aesthetic. However, things have significantly improved, and this is just the beginning. As Time-Has-Come predicts, “get ready for some substantial mods in the near future… This demonstrates only one application. The potential applications are truly boundless.

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2025-06-02 17:47