Skyrim Special Edition Development (Patreon)
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Lately, a few people were wondering about how DD and DCL development for the two different Skyrim variants works. So I am going to clarify!
Like many other Skyrim modders, I am still developing all my Skyrim mods on Legendary Edition. I have no plans to change this anytime soon, if ever. While I realize SE getting more and more popular and I acknowledge that for a new or average users, SE is probably more convenient to set up in a stable fashion (as far as the word "stable" ever applies to Skyrim...), for an experienced user who knows what and how to tweak, there is no difference, really. For me, LE works just as well if not better than SE. And you don't fix what's not broken. This also guarantees the continued availability of my mods for LE, which still enjoys a lot of popularity.
This is to explain why there always will be a slight delay of SE releases. The SE releases are a port of the LE ones. These delays are no ill will on my part, it's just a consequence of the fact that I don't develop (or even test) on SE and it takes time to port them for SE. The port itself is done by community volunteers, namely Pfiffy and Zarantha. I largely don't get involved in this process, other than I will of course fix any bugs they report back to me. Even if I wanted to, at this point I do not possess the necessary expertise to do LE-to-SE ports. That's quite normal in software development. People develop games for Windows, other people port them to Mac or Linux. Me largely staying out of this process will make sure I can put my available time into developing new features for the mods and hunt down these pesky bugs that most often apply to both versions anyway! And I like to believe that's in everybody's best interest!
Since the SE versions have found a larger audience lately, I have started to be a bit more present in the SE support threads, mostly to gather general feedback about the mods and their features, so it does not go unnoticed. Troubleshooting SE-specific problems is still something I will have largely have to leave to volunteer supporters.
Now, I know the SE version has a few issues, largely centered around some items using NiOveride or HDT-PE, neither of which is available for SE, unfortunately. Short of outright removing these items from the LE version as well, there is nothing I can do to remedy that at this point. This doesn't mean (as some people on LL have indicated) that the SE version is "unloved". It just means that there still -are- tangible differences between LE and SE that cannot all be resolved easily. I am still committed to deliver a great DD/DCL experience for SE. I am just happy with how the process work as it does right now, and hope you are as well.