Wabbajack-opt-out-of-modification-plan.md

Goal

To provide a method by which Wabajack can assist mod authors in maintaining creative control over their mods while still allowing for more rapid installation of mods

Current issues

• Users can download a mod, change it and create an installer with Wabbajack that publishes these changes via binary patching this goes against usage restrictions for "no modifications of this mod are allowed".
• Users can extract BSAs with Wabbajack, going against warnings for no BSA extraction
• The nexus doesn't seem to provide a good way to track a modder's desire to not allow end users to modify their files
• Wabbajack allows downloading from 3rd party sites that does not maintain author's rights. We currently have a "who cares" attitude, which isn't condusive to collaboration with the modding community. It would be good to improve this situation.

Plans for solving these issues

• Wabbajack maintain a list of authors/mods who have opted out of allowing their mods to be modified.
• This list will be editable via a GitHub PR (a hassle for authors), or by including a magic string WABBAJACK_OPT_OUT_OF_MODIFICATION (or something similar) to their mod summary page.
• Wabbajack will query this info during compilation and refuse to binary patch or extract BSAs for any mod in this list.
• Wabbajack will switch to using code signing for releases, and a non-exe distributed modlist. Modlists will become serialized blobs of data, and not executable code. This means users will know when they are using a unofficial build. And thus someone disabling these content control features will create a modlist that no official Wabbajack build will install.
• Wabbajack will scan files from 3rd party sites to try and find matches with the "opt-out" list. This matching will be done via SHA256 (not very useful) and via filename. So if author modder334 has opted out and his mod contains modder334s_immersive_cheese_reborn.esp, Wabbajack will never create a modlist that downloads opt-out files from a 3rd party site.

ESL flagging, form 44 conversion

This is something you probably shouldn't attempt even if someone allows it. The CK needs to be what process the form conversion from 43 to 44. 3rd party scripts should never be trusted to handle this process correctly.

I agree, making those changes outside of CK is a bad idea, which is why Wabbajack uses binary patching instead. After the conversion/edit has been made on the modlist creator's machine, Wabbajack can compare the changed esp to the original from the nexus. This results in a patch that can be used to create that same result on a consumer's machine by applying the patch to the same file from the Nexus. WJ verifies this process afterwards via hashing the result. So in essence, WJ doesn't know anything about ESPs, nifs, dds files, etc. All it sees is that a file changed from the original downloaded archive, and it patches it. The one game file type WJ *does* understand is BSA files. Those are quite simple, and so we have our own logic for extracting and creating those files.

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On Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 1:25 PM Arthmoor ***@***.***> wrote: ESL flagging, form 44 conversion This is something you probably shouldn't attempt even if someone allows it. The CK needs to be what process the form conversion from 43 to 44. 3rd party scripts should never be trusted to handle this process correctly. — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <https://gist.github.com/56e84beb1f985264648efb5f0f8cfdc9?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAE72HKGSRSG5VKUCNDBOQLQMD6JRA5CNFSM4I2U3VB2YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVNDWS43UINXW23LFNZ2KUY3PNVWWK3TUL5UWJTQAFZSV4#gistcomment-3040606>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAE72HOQ2UTEE2MAFV3IIIDQMD6JRANCNFSM4I2U3VBQ> .

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