Skywind Standalone Poll

It sounds like at the moment standalone is the way to go. Currently the positives far outweigh the negatives.

But it seems like we should wait a little bit, problems could arise.

It might be worthwhile to fully flesh out both the pros and cons lists before making such a big change.

One attractive point of Skywind is the ability to play two TES games in one. Making it standalone would remove that.

While this cannot be fully decided upon at the current moment in development, I vote for a fully independent, standalone Skywind.

This for me is because I don't like the idea of having it being connected to Skyrim, as it then begins to feel less like an entire game, and more like another, less so official-feeling area that you can jump to, from the core Skyrim world. For me, I absolutely hate the feeling of illegitimacy that comes with having the two games in one (three, if you count Skyblivion much further down the road), and it ruins the experience of traveling through Vvardenfell about two hundred and seven years before Skyrim even happened.

I have a thing for organization, and separation. I believe that if Skywind is a standalone title, then it will feel legitimate, and real.

Though admittedly, I don't understand much of the technical side (close to nothing.)

The more standalone Skywind gets, the more happy I am.

I am talking as a fan not a contributor so its up to you to decide. But making it standalone take away a choice. If player wants to go trough both games with one character or make one character for each game which is main way to play it (playing it with one character both games is optional and not possible without console commands or additional travel mods - so there is no lore problem because you cannot get to skyrim from morrowind unless you willingly want to break the lore) making it standalone take away that option and adds nothing from my player point of view (i can see only possibility for different main menu screen and different user interface) but dont know from your modders point of view.

Take that only as an opinion of one fan of this project.

Will making it standalone better allow for ports to future engines?  If a new game comes out I wouldn't want to be tethered to Skyrim's limitations arbitrarily.  More ram access better textures and a new GUI optimized for PC all sound good to me.

Not being able to play the exact same character with the exact same gear hasn't been possible in any of the other ES games - they're standalone games, not Mass Effect or Halo where you play the same ridiculous savior of the universe every single time.  Distinct characters.

Anyway, the new options this would allow seem to greatly outweigh the 'con' of not being able to use console commands to cheapen the experience by dragging the Dragonborn through time and space to live life as a Nerevarine.

We better define what standalone will mean: I think all it will be is copying and pasting the Skyrim core files from the person Skyrim install and putting it into a new directory. It might also be a new Skyrim.esm master, however we have no idea exactly how much of a "stripped" skyrim master we can have. The current one fails to play. We really don't know what happens with forms getting loaded either. Are forms loaded at runtime, meaning only when they are needed? If this is the case then having a full Skyrim master might make no difference anyway. Certainly having the extra World Spaces doesn't seem to effect loads.

Pro's

Probably more save game bloats with making it a mod and thus corrupt save games. Easily the biggest problem with players trying to use a Skyrim save with Skywind.

I really like the idea that Skywind should be installed separately to players existing Skyrim install. Just so many things can go wrong with their Skyrim game. Plus you know who they'll come crying to.

"I installed Skywind and it broke my game...whaaaaaaaaaa"

And who they will blame

And who they will blame

Yours Truly...badum tsh

I vote for standalone, for various reasons, but mainly that skywind is a full game in itself, and 2) by the time we release this everyone would be bored of the original world space.

by the time we release this everyone would be bored of the original world space.

I disagree. I think it would be awesome to use my Dragonborn character to travel across all of Tamriel...groan...losing will to live...its pointless to collect anything as I'm already invisible and I can only get armors and weapons with stats that are weaker than what I've got, oh fuck, I'm a retard...but I'm playing the DRAGONBORN COOL!!!

Oh yes, I forgot to bring it up earlier, though I am one to often mess up my games with the wrong mod treatment, and another reason I would prefer  Skywind to be standalone is so that not only does it not touch my Skyrim setup, but so it does not completely break my Skyrim as well.

I think that, ultimately, Skywind should be released as a Standalone. Just my vote.

Opposing posts should not be deleted, I agree, I was wondering where his bit went. And as I now go back through here, I notice that all in favor of standalone have been given downvotes, simply because. Just downvoting these opinions looks childish, and unnecessary towards the goal of the thread, which is to simply get opinions on the matter.

Assuming it is legally viable, I would love to see a standalone Skywind.

There is no difference between stand alone and not as you described. Because I doubt it is possible without pissing the Steam off. The question should be renamed to "compatible with vanilla Skyrim or not".

There is commonly defined data that could be changed to improve experience in Skywind but will affect Skyrim too, for example battle music, worldmap imagespace, verlet physics cape form, etc. to name a few most harmless. Then there is speeddata file(s) that must be changed for new animations (as far as I know) but will ultimately break some animation mods for vanilla Skyrim like FNIS and similar ones.

I'm for "not compatible", we should not care for compatibility with other mods or even Skyrim itself. Skywind is a separate game on it's own, not a new quest for a pumped dragonborn.

p.s. Really, rename this thread, the title is misleading.

I abstain from the vote. Its seems bit premature to be deciding such a change when we are all (including myself) not totally aware of its effects and the work that be needed. 

It wouldn't be distributing Skyrim, it would be an installer copying and pasting Skyrim on your machine to a new folder.

I think I can probably satisfy this debate anyway, installer has these options:

So, from someone who likes clean, stable games that use less memory I think stand alone is a great choice. It would also be great to have our own launcher and what-have-you. But what is best from these views: tech/developer, player.

Well i like the idea of choosing the installation folder, but if that is a lot of work  (i don't if it is) i don't mind if skywind becomes a standalone, nevertheless i think we should wait a bit before making it a standalone to make sure there aren't any other cons.

Once again with this topic...

I am against it.

1/ Let someone prove to me the feasibility. I hear talking about that almost since I joined but have never seen any proof of concept.

2/ As mentioned by someone else, you remove a choice (and that's one more occurence where I don't understand most people). Start a new game with Skywind today. Select "Start in morrowind", you will never see Skyrim! Just discipline yourself.

3/

zilavI'm for "not compatible", we should not care for compatibility with other mods or even Skyrim itself.

Compatibility with other mods should be really low priority. If mods want to be compatible to Skywind, it's their job.

Compatibility with Skyrim should be a little higher [I mean trying not to impact too much vanialla Skyrim - limit to what we can not avoid - and obviously not break it]. It would be great to list the impacts we have on Vanilla and we had earlier talks about having an additional esp easy to check/uncheck in order to switch from assets/what-have-you without uninstalling.

4/ The argument of not breaking your Skyrim install is kinda moot considering you can use tools like mods like MOD organizer http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/1334/? in order to have different profiles and never install anything in your skyrim folders. I have reinstalled my Skyrim a couple of weeks ago and I replaced my Wrye Bash with this, it works perfectly: I have a skyrim installed with plenty of mods and a very small profile for skywind. I can switch between both in just one click. And nothing is installed in my Skyrim folder. We can write a step by step procedure for this.

5/ What about legals/user license? I don't know the specifics but I wonder if there would a "legal" problem with moving files from your skyrim folder to another folder. It would be an individual action of course, but we would provide a tool to do it. Cue the drama.

6/ As I posted elsewhere, if we want this project to be completed one day (ie being able to say "everything is working, we can release. Now everything else is just extra."). We need to limit our scope. This is not something that I feel should be in our scope.

<a href="http://tesrenewal.com/users/alexanderb" title="View user profile.">alexanderb</a>

• We don't need to worry about putting too much stress on the engine or worry about mod compatibilities.
• We dont have to "mind the gap" between games. (fixes issue with lore)
• It adds to the experience being forced to start at level 1 (starting at level 40 or 50 ruins the fun and removes alot of the challenges)
• far less to load in Creation kit
• we can change the UI, make our game unique!

• engine stress? Skywind with no particular mod, no enb, runs very smoothly on my 3-y-old machine. Do we have actual proof that having the full Skyrim master is impacting performances if you never go into Skyrim worldspace?
• lore-issue: Same as choosing to travel or not between Skyrim and Morrowind. If you want to have a lore reason, either use a travel/lore mod if it exists one day, or make up your lore in your mind.
• Experience issue with high level characters. Are we really debating on that? It's like wondering what we should do if player use tgm in the console. If that makes everyone feel better, we can still have a disclaimer: "better played with a low level char".
  no kidding

  [External image]
• far less to load in Creation kit. Hum today I'm only loading a 16MB skyrim stripped master file in my CK when I work on Skywind... Seems pretty reasonable.
• we can change the UI, make our game unique! once again project boundaries and even if we do it and we don't want to impact Skyrim, we can still have an optional esp.

> It adds to the experience being forced to start at level 1 (starting at level 40 or 50 ruins the fun and removes alot of the challenges
> we can change the UI, make our game unique!
= It's already more than sufficient basis for chosing standalone variant.

> Character continuity (not being able to go from one story to the other)
= That is PRO.

What about the character creation? We have that in the beginning, don't we? So we first get through the shit opening of Skyrim, go through the whole tutorial, get all the quests and then coc to the slave ship in Seyda Neen? That doesn't sound that good or immersive to me to be honest, the beginning of the game is one of the most important parts, one that you would remember the most. But if that's the way you wanna go with Digi it's your call. Can we at least set it to start a new game in Morrowind automatically if we have Skywind installed (but still be able to load old Skyrim saves at the risk of conflicts)? I've seen a couple of mods which add different starting points, and even the ability to choose it from a list, we could go with that.

Dragomir: But that is not the case, you press start new game and then you choose to start in morrowind or skyrim, if you press morrowind you start in prison ship with proper intro movie from morrowind and you will never see skyrim in your entire gameplay of skywind, unless you use console commands or optional travel mods

also you create your character when you leave prison ship. when guars starts to ask you (that was the case in last public version)

Alrighty then, I'm fine with that.

Just wanted to weigh in on this.

I think that keeping the two together is actually the better idea. First off keeping the vanilla Skyrim ESM means that when problems and bugs arise there will be a much wider pool of modders who are familiar with it and could potentially help. A stripped back variant might restrict you to the small group of coders within this project who were intimately involved in creating it. 

(Keep in mind this is coming from a outsider with extremely basic modding experience)

I also imagine that it could be possible to create a mod which transitions between the two in an immersive way. For example if you choose between Morrowind 3E and Skyrim 4E when starting a new game, and after you finish the character creation process a second save game is auto-generated and has the CharGen data copied over. Then it's simply a matter of implementing a save/load trigger.

When the Nerevarine goes to sleep in a bed he could dream of the Dragonborn and vice-versa, or an artifact could have the same effect when activated. 

Another thing, Would having it not be stand alone mean that I start up skywind on the Skyrim menu? Because I'd prefer to have a separate menu, and loading screens for each, and is another reason why I'd prefer it standalone

Like I've said before I'm on the side of caution. First of two of the pros for standalone (or whatever zilav says it is) are completely opinion based so i'd cut those two from the list and like digi said I have and many others have yet to see hard data that suggest that the pros stated above are actually true. The fact of the matter is that this will decision will be decided on the technical aspects and till i see proof I'll be against the change. 

stand alone would be nice when its more ore less finisht so u can get al the skyrim stuf out of it and have 1 pro looking game

but cant u ceep it optinal i like to believe there are those ho wanne travel between skyrim and morrowind and those ho dont

and for the love of god dont start the talk about howe to travel between skyrim and morrowind that hase been talk over to dead   

Sorry no1, wasn't trying to get off topic. Just wanted to make the point that if there is a technical limitation when you have both maps loaded that leads to save game bloat, it could hypothetically be circumvented by splitting up the save slots. :)

To put it into perspective: this is the exact inverse situation of the Molag Bal statue. Sure it was fine from a lore standpoint but not everyone wanted that Statue in the game, thus it limits the audience Skywind will reach.

By making Skywind a stand-alone expansion you remove the ability to take Skyrim characters into Skywind which in turn limits the audience Skywind will reach...except this time it's a core function which attracts people that's being discussed as being cut.

This idea is awful, implement it at your own risk but know it could easily kill the project's popularity, easily.

Lets pretend that the fast travel issue doesn't exist and that the decision here isn't on such a grand scale that it could change the people who are interested in the mod-vastly.

With Skywind not using Skyrim.esm you lose the thousands of mods which can cross over from Skyrim to Skywind because they effect specific systems, such as ASIS, Equipping Overhaul and so forth.

Again, this idea is awful and should be abandoned or at least done as a optional install option for the final version, if you give people choices, no matter how silly some of them may be (subjectively) then it doesn't matter because we can choose what suits us and our intended purpose.

We don't care about its "popularity", we care about its quality. Remember we are making this for our own pride, challenges and fun.

If we were to lose an audience because they didn't want to play the game because they couldn't use their Skyrim character, this is of absolutely no loss to us. Can you imagine the maturity level of a person who refuses to play Skyrim because they couldn't import their Oblivion character?

With Skywind not using Skyrim.esm you lose the thousands of mods which can cross over from Skyrim to Skywind because they effect specific systems, such as ASIS, Equipping Overhaul and so forth.

The problem is that we can never guarantee compatibility anyway, so you risk a broken system trying to be. As a few people mentioned its better if they come to us for compatibility. Make patches like people do for Falskaar.

Probably one thing to add to the Pros: Game mechanics styled on Morrowind.

You can have popularity without sacrificing quality and one could argue that having both is a sign of a truly good product.

We're not talking about a niche player base which would validate your point. We're talking about a key feature of the product which a lot of users will use. I will bet you my 780 ti SC that you will have more or equal players using Skyrim characters at some point in Skywind or have Skywind characters go to Skyrim.

Falskaar needs very few compatibility patches because it isn't standalone. ASIS and friends work on Falskaar because it's not stand-alone. If Skywind becomes stand-alone it will lose access to mods which will increase the project's longevity.

If your goal with Skywind is to just make it for yourselves and screw everyone else then why have any sort of PR? If that's really your stance then don't do any PR and don't give anyone updates, then make this site as private as possible...which I half expect anyway since that's the direction this project is headed at an alarming rate.

We're not talking about a niche player base which would validate your point. We're talking about a key feature of the product which a lot of users will use. I will bet you my 780 ti SC that you will have more or equal players using Skyrim characters at some point in Skywind or have Skywind characters go to Skyrim.

Then this will actually be a failure on our behave to provide best experience to the players. The difference in experience of starting an adventure as the Nerevarine cannot be underplayed or the experience of leveling and difficulty of early game play.

You've basically convinced me that we have to make it standalone to ensure that people get the best out of the game, which is what we are aiming for.

If your goal with Skywind is to just make it for yourselves and screw everyone else then why have any sort of PR?

Yeah its to get other contributors on the project. My god have we got some genius developers, its been a real pleasure sharing the same hobby with you guys. Can't wait to see if we get any more "wizards" onboard. Always enjoy seeing what people bring to to the table.

DIYDeath

If your goal with Skywind is to just make it for yourselves and screw everyone else then why have any sort of PR? If that's really your stance then don't do any PR and don't give anyone updates, then make this site as private as possible...which I half expect anyway since that's the direction this project is headed at an alarming rate.

Well to be fair a lot of the PR is to recruit new devs.

HappyChappy

We don't care about its "popularity", we care about its quality.

I don't care about popularity but I certainly hope some people enjoy the result!

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Probably one thing to add to the Pros: Game mechanics styled on Morrowind.

[/quote]

... which is counter to what we said so far (Skyrim mechanics).

One of the biggest issues with a standalone version is going to be making it standalone, we kind of need the file structure steam set up otherwise it wont launch the game. Even if you moved all the files to a new location and tried to launch via skse steam wont let you.

I'm in favor of keeping it dependent on skyrim, more options, things to do, and then it can be labled as the next great expansion for skyrim with loads of shit to do, and for modders to use.

If we do leave it dependent we should offer resources on how to optimize your game. Bloated saves, is a scapegoat used by people with poorly optimized games, and badly modded skyrim. In my last play through I had 2xy mods, where x is less than 5 and y is any whole number less than 10, atleast 5 of which where very script intensive, skyre, enhanced blood, and some others I would have to pull up the list. I got to 175 hours with very little ctd's near the end of the play through when me swapping out mods really showed. Skywind, Skyrim it doesn't matter when it gets down to modding, there are safe practices that people dont follow.

I've got a few more arguments but I just woke up so pardon me if I leave this short.

Then this will actually be a failure on our behave to provide best experience to the players. The difference in experience of starting an adventure as the Nerevarine cannot be underplayed or the experience of leveling and difficulty of early game play.

The best experience is to provide the choice to make those decisions for ourselves. People don't like being restricted unless there's a really, really good reason behind it and this isn't even close to a good reason based in fact. It's a good reason based on personal taste but personal taste shouldn't factor into a decision to change a important and core mechanic.

@ Digital

Similar to Morrowind mechanics could be seen as a con: Morrowind wasn't known for good mechanics, it's known for its good story and immersion for a time when video games were largely made for pre-teens. The combat ensures the game doesn't age very well with awful systems like the *hit* system. though that's opinion so it would be better to devise a mcm mod to introduce Morrowind combat if the player chooses. I mean, if Skyrim Overhaul lets you alter the combat in just about every meaningful way possible I'm sure you guys could too via a optional mcm menu.

HappyChappy

You've basically convinced me that we have to make it standalone to ensure that people get the best out of the game, which is what we are aiming for.

And every argumentation point brought so far convince me of not going standalone. If the strongest pro you have is "otherwise players can use overpowered characters", that is just non-sense. Will you block the console so newbies cannot turn on tgm ??? We already offer the possibility to play one game only if that's what you want. Why would you deny the option to go from Skyrim to Morrowind and vice versa ? Call them stupid, it's not a problem, but it will not impact you, no one forces you to do the same.

This is really the kind of discussions that I never understand (ie that piss me off) around this project. If you have something that you hate but it's optional, what do you care ?

STANDALONE is the way to go for so many reasons! I understand that a lot of people are making arguments that this will limit there choices and yes it will. Now understand that the idea of this project is to essentially renew Morrowind to today's standards and just because some people would enjoy playing the game with their Skyrim characters doesn't mean we need to change our focus to help them out. These are SEPARATE games, and they should ultimately be treated as such. Now people can bitch and complain that its not fair to force them into playing a new game.... how about you make a mod or what have you to bridge the games? Maybe someone here wants to use their Oblivion character, should we try and give them options too?

There are many benefits to having a standalone that will help keep this recreation of Morrowind feeling fresh and new: New UI, different mechanics, and we would never have to worry about interfering with Skyrim anymore. Those are some of the things that popped into my head and I know there are a lot more that will be helpful to having a standalone that I wouldn't know of.

Now, to anyone who is mad about how I feel and think I'm an ass for going against your wishes, go ahead and vote me down but this is the best way to bring Morrowind up to today's standards of Elder Scrolls games.

I'm no expert on this topic by any means, but after reading all the comments, I would tend towards the side of standalone, if only for the sake of establishing this project's independent identity. However, that being said, one thing that does worry me is mod support. This was brought up previously in the thread, and to some extent, answered.

Yes, we couldn't guarantee that other mods would work with Skywind, whether it was attached to Skyrim or not. But then again, no mod in existence can truly say that. The potential issue I see is that if we make Skywind standalone, mods are no longer just "not guaranteed" to work, they will be almost 100% guaranteed NOT to work. Now I don't know what the general audience for this might think, but I know that I for one would love to have mods installed for this, despite any occasional glitches. There are tons out there that I think would contribute to my immersion and enjoyment of Skyrim. If we take skyrim.esm (that is what we'd be doing, right?) out of the equation, would we be making existing mods virtually inaccessible without heavy reworking?

Really, I'm not particularly convinced either way, and I've heard great arguments from each side. There's also a good chance I have no idea what I'm talking about. But I just thought I'd raise this question in the interest of provoking discussion.

Thanks, and keep up the good work! Standalone or not, I know I'll be playing this!

mspeed101

STANDALONE is the way to go for so many reasons!

Really mate, I love for you to explain how going to standalone won't go off without a hitch. I really don't understand why we're voting now I haven't seen one proof of concept yet and everyones getting all riled up without even waiting to understand the full impact that this will have on the project. If we're voting now we're putting all our eggs in one basket and dropping it and expecting there to be a pile of pillows at the bottom. Something like this is not something to be rushed and decided by solely based on votes. I would like to see what we're getting ourselves into before we make a leap like this. I for one have mixed feeling about this and as should the rest of you until one of the tech guys speaks indepth about this choice. I think it silly to start making hasty decision when we don't fully understand if this will work or what will happen if it does work what will happen. 

TL:DR Before we all get excited lets understand whats going on first.

Shushine

mspeed101

STANDALONE is the way to go for so many reasons!

Really mate, I love for you to explain how going to standalone won't go off without a hitch. I really don't understand why we're voting now I haven't seen one proof of concept yet and everyones getting all riled up without even waiting to understand the full impact that this will have on the project.

I don't know any specific when it goes to pulling this off and I'm not going to tell you it will be an easy idea to accomplish but I have listed some pretty straightforward ideas involving getting rid of conflicts with Skyrim. I can tell you that as far as I know, a Standalone would relieve many conflicts that need to be worked around because of Skyrim, but I don't work on any of that stuff, I'm going off what I've heard in the past.

Alright I think when its all said and done that our installer gives the player the direction they want to head.

I've written up some specifications: http://tesrenewal.com/forums/tools-and-coding/req-coder-needed-to-build-installer-yes-again-incomplete

If they choose "Skywind is created with a new installation of Skyrim", then they basically get a "standalone" version, which we are free to introduce any unique features that we want without conflict. If they don't then its just a disclaimer that its at their own risk to their Skyrim game.

As painful as it is to think that somebody will want to play Morrowind with a leveled up Skyrim character (oh dear god the inhumanity!!!), so be it.

As far as "mind the gap", we just won't have a travel option for players using their existing characters from Skyrim, they can download a mod to do that (as it is now). Putting this with default game, just begs trolls to complain about what a stupid concept it is. So better that those wanting it, come and get it. No complaining that way.

Just to solidify my reasoning is that a stripped Skyrim.esm is a big unknown for us anyway. Testing removing particular groups and seeing how it plays out could be done, but I think most of us here in the know got the feeling that it will not make much of a difference to performance and stability and just makes making mods that much harder to guarantee compatibility.

Also our initial reasoning for a standalone was mainly to do with having to override Skyrim elements, like replacing behaviors, so that Cliffracers would overwrite Dragons. We seemed to ironed out a lot of these actual show stoppers. Unless somebody brings up a factor would mean that Skyrim is broken, we might as well go down the path of let the player choose.

Look, if we're going to go standalone we have 2 options about achieving it with steam installations. Firstly we distribute cracked skyrim files, and we all know how that's going to turn out. Second we use a custom launcher based off the mod organizer.

The mod organizer is built such that all the mods sit in their own directories and only interact with each other in a virtual environment that the MO sets up. Find a coder and have the splice the MO up, it's open source, into a very basic version of itself that all it does is disable all the mods the user has installed and injects skywind. This is the only way I see skywind being a standalone client, you could even build it with the ability to install mods specifically designed for skywind.

Beyond that I'm still going to urge the dependency on skyrim as by building it as a standalone and running it in tandem with skyim you're going to have a lot of redundant things, and it's going to bog down skyrim's engine and cause more crashes, the only difference is you'll be able to say we didn't intend for users to do that so sod off. Building 2 versions one that's designed to work in tandem and one that's not seems a bit large for the current scope of the project.

The only thing we have to worry about right now, as far as mod compatibilities is the spear system that Eham developed, as it stands something very similar is being worked out in the private sector, we weren't' the first people to make that system we just made it better, and as such once a release gets out I'm sure fore would build in a patch that made it work with other people patching the behavior files. Think of it like this, yes we don't have to worry about compatibilities, but we're also nerfing all work done by other people in the past and limiting the creativity of everyone down the road.

Minding the gap between games has been an issue in the past I remember coming around the morroblivion forums and seeing this issue discussed, you know what I saw come out of it, approximately nothing. Did I care? No, you download and play this for the experience you want to get, we shouldn't be tailoring the world for anyone nor should be forcing people to play the game we want them to, like forcing the to start at first level and play only morrowind, bloodmoon, and tribunal. Bioware is a great example of this, remember hearing about a player who got ban from the game because he found a high level chest that was unguarded and farmed it for expensive loot.

The creation kit, is a fair argument as we are forced to basically work with such a watered down master file. Bethesda probably didn't have a project of this magnitude in mind when they built their software. As such it would make it easier for modders to work with the project down the line.

I want to bring up the ui but I can't seem to find a place for it. The ui is a complex thing and from the looks of it there isn't much you can do to it's general shape beyond what the SkyUI team did to it, unless you want to bring them on board and have the build the project from scratch for our mod or rebuild their entire release I don't see a new UI as a benefit if anything it will be a downgrade from what's out there now.

Looks like Happy is ignoring me, but I repeat - "standalone" is not possible due to a legal reasons (and maybe even technical). You can't release a tool to mess with DRM protected content on a user PC.

Skyrim.exe is a DRM content protected by Steam, creating a program to copy it out of it's default installation folder could be considered "cracking" by Valve. Or not. Anyway do you want to risk and bring attention to this project of another company?

And with "copying" out of picture there are no "pros" left, that's why I said there is nothing to discuss. Again, the real question is do we want to overwrite vanilla files to improve Skywind experience at the expense of losing compatibility with other mods or even vanilla game? I already mentioned earlier that you can pack all conflicting files into a separate BSA and allow user to load it on/off by activating an empty additional plugin ESP file in any mod manager including Skyrim launcher. Playing Skywind? Turn it on. Playing anything else - off. Very simple.

@mxzero11 Forget about MO, it is a marginal mod manager used by a small group of people (yes it is), forcing it on a user is the worst thing we can do.

Hello. I'm new here. I'll just give a quick jab of what matters to me in this discussion. 1. Coming out with the ability to use your skyrim character may be a feature some people would enjoy. And more mod compatibility is also something they would. I however believe that whichever way that is chosen, or if both options are given, the more stable implementation will win out. Stability is important for any future modding. If people can mod the mod(skywind) on a more stable framework, that would be better. I'm not a modder. I'm not extensively but more hardly knowledgeable about these technical areas but that is my opinion. :)

If it's technically possible i would make sense to make it stand alone. As for the legal standpoint.... we are far off to the dark side :P.

Skyrim.exe is a DRM content protected by Steam, creating a program to copy it out of it's default installation folder could be considered "cracking" by Valve. Or not. Anyway do you want to risk and bring attention to this project of another company?

I'm pretty sure that you can make backups and multiple copies on a single pc for DRM content. I could be wrong, but its seems that Steam users do that to have multiple instances of Skyrim, and these are posted on the Steam forums, so I'd say its perfectly legal. I mean Steam is checking your license.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3028847

So I still think user chooses installer options is the happy medium.