Fable Explorer Keeps Crashing.

[Precipice]

I started this morning spontaneously wanting to go through my millionth playthrough of Fable when I decided I'd try this stuff out.

I encountered a couple problems off the bat trying to get this utility to run. After some searching I've discerned that my issue was related to the registry entries relating to the installation path. After getting that sorted it worked fine, and I spent about an hour looking through various things and referencing different materials here and on other sites to see what I might want to change. As I neared completion, I went to modify one last entry and got a crash. To my dismay, none of my changes were saved.

I understand that there is no in-progress backup, and I can't just click File Save every thirty seconds because it doesn't work that way. After some troubleshooting and experimenting I've found that it is an issue not very different from Skyrim's Creation Kit, in that having it open for a while, playing with too many things and opening large files or entries can lead to unpleasant results.

Does anyone know of anything that is more stable or user friendly than Fable Explorer? And on an unrelated note, does it work on Anniversary? And on another unrelated note, are there any must-have mods or must-do modifications that anyone would recommend?

 

[Precipice]

I take it we don't have a strong and active modding community here. That's alright, I chased up the issues and got'em sorted, finishing my playthrough with only a few crashes.
Do we have, by chance, a mod-using community? Having tooled around with it some, I'd really like to get in there and tear some **** up, maybe contribute a mod or two if anyone's interested.

 

[Dark Drakan]

We had a decent amount of modders here for some time but the modding community took a nose dive a while ago. Keshire & Oldboy were the main 2 go to guys here originally but haven't seen them around for a long time. They were campaigning for more robust tools and proper mod tools from Lionhead but nothing came of it yet. We did have quite a few other enthusiastic modders also but they haven't been active for a while either.

 

[Precipice]

If it's the same Keshire that worked on Movie Battles, it's a terrible shame he's not still around, but the silver lining is that he's left a wealth of information here. Thank you for the answer though. I'll see what I can do with what's already been posted. The upside is that because you guys preserved it, it's still there for people like me to use and learn from. Thanks for that as well.

 

[Dark Drakan]

If it's the same Keshire that worked on Movie Battles, it's a terrible shame he's not still around, but the silver lining is that he's left a wealth of information here. Thank you for the answer though. I'll see what I can do with what's already been posted. The upside is that because you guys preserved it, it's still there for people like me to use and learn from. Thanks for that as well.

Plenty of guides and old mod information lying around the place from when we had an abundance of members contributing for those sections.

 

[Precipice]

A couple of observations that will hopefully assist other would-be explorers of the modding section.

The tools were built on XP. Changing everything to run as administrator and in compatibility mode with WinXP SP2, disabling visual themes and changing system settings to optimize for performance rather than appearance (I like the Classic theme anyway) drastically improves speed and stability. There remains an issue with dependencies. Everyone, including modders and the tool authors, recommends getting the latest everything, but I'm inclined to disagree. The tools were made with Visual Studio 2005, so MSVC++ 2005 runtimes are needed, but which version? I got rid of every version I had installed and only reinstalled the very earliest one still available for x86, because the tools are x86 programs. The other dependencies are .net Framework and DirectX, which are already taken care of on newer machines and can't be downgraded, not that I'd recommend fooling with that anyway.

Now it runs smooth and without issue. This will make learning to use it much less frustrating.

 

[Gikoku]

There's folks that still use mods, yeah. Problem however, is that a lot of the mods that were done here used 3rd-party hosting sites that are either dead or the links having been expired. We could've really used something more direct (a la Nexus for example) where everything is always available so long as Steve can manage.

If it's the same Keshire that worked on Movie Battles, it's a terrible shame he's not still around, but the silver lining is that he's left a wealth of information here. Thank you for the answer though. I'll see what I can do with what's already been posted. The upside is that because you guys preserved it, it's still there for people like me to use and learn from. Thanks for that as well.

Keshire's still around doing his own endeavors actually, I bumped into him recently (much to my surprise) with his work on WWE 2K15 over on the official 2K site where he built new modding tools there for PC. That man is doin' god's work out there, no idea if he'll ever come back to the Fable communities, but he knows he's always welcome.

We had a decent amount of modders here for some time but the modding community took a nose dive a while ago. Keshire & Oldboy were the main 2 go to guys here originally but haven't seen them around for a long time. They were campaigning for more robust tools and proper mod tools from Lionhead but nothing came of it yet. We did have quite a few other enthusiastic modders also but they haven't been active for a while either.

=] Don't forget ol' Sephi, she still mods TLC when the mood arises but it's just for personal use these days. Kesh & OB eventually got their wish, sorta.. when Lionhead released modding tools for Fable Anniversary, but at the end of the day it wasn't that much different than what was already possible with TLC.

Sigh, I still like to think what this and all our fellow Fable communities could've been like had LH been more open and accepting of modders and PC support, a game like TLC can only be stretched out so far with limited tools.

 

[Precipice]

There's folks that still use mods, yeah. Problem however, is that a lot of the mods that were done here used 3rd-party hosting sites that are either dead or the links having been expired. We could've really used something more direct (a la Nexus for example) where everything is always available so long as Steve can manage.

Quite. It's one of the bigger issues I have right now, there are links to tutorials and other modder resources that don't exist anymore, many to this site. I imagine it's link rot from forum updates and similar things, but for assets hosted elsewhere, it's just gone. Information that I can't benefit from anymore.

Keshire's still around doing his own endeavors actually, I bumped into him recently (much to my surprise) with his work on WWE 2K15 over on the official 2K site where he built new modding tools there for PC. That man is doin' god's work out there, no idea if he'll ever come back to the Fable communities, but he knows he's always welcome.

The man is a mad god. I've seen his works all over the place. Should he ever feel so inclined to grace this doorstep again, I'd love to chat his ears off about things he probably won't want to talk about.

=] Don't forget ol' Sephi, she still mods TLC when the mood arises but it's just for personal use these days.

My works will probably be for personal use as well. For the past few years now, whenever the urge hits me to play a game, I try to look at what could be done in the way of modding. Such was the case with Fable.

Sephi. §ephiroxa§? Last seen last year, almost to the day. I've seen her posts here but not at the modding site. Still, if she is lurking about, I'd very much like to have another person who has seen and done some of this just to have someone to talk to about it.

Kesh & OB eventually got their wish, sorta.. when Lionhead released modding tools for Fable Anniversary, but at the end of the day it wasn't that much different than what was already possible with TLC.

Sigh, I still like to think what this and all our fellow Fable communities could've been like had LH been more open and accepting of modders and PC support, a game like TLC can only be stretched out so far with limited tools.

Seeing what was accomplished despite the lack of support and severe limitations, I would think that, if modding had been supported along the lines of Fallout or TES, the Fable modding community would still be around and that Fable as a whole would be much, much more popular. It's truly a shame. I always thought that Fable TLC and 3 (haven't played 2, no console) were some of the better games I've played and yet they could have been made infinitely better.

 

[Gikoku]

Quite. It's one of the bigger issues I have right now, there are links to tutorials and other modder resources that don't exist anymore, many to this site. I imagine it's link rot from forum updates and similar things, but for assets hosted elsewhere, it's just gone. Information that I can't benefit from anymore.

Indeed, on the flip side we do still have our buddies over at FableTLCMod that have lots of stuff you can thumb through. So thankfully not all is lost

My works will probably be for personal use as well. For the past few years now, whenever the urge hits me to play a game, I try to look at what could be done in the way of modding. Such was the case with Fable.

Sephi. §ephiroxa§? Last seen last year, almost to the day. I've seen her posts here but not at the modding site. Still, if she is lurking about, I'd very much like to have another person who has seen and done some of this just to have someone to talk to about it.

Same, I've done some personal modding with some of Bethesda's games on my own time and it feels pretty good just going at my own leisure doing what I want. Compared to say a public release where you have to handle other people's wants and issues.. can be stressful to watch sometimes.

Yep, Sephiroxas. She mainly hangs around on her facebook, but I've been itching to get her back on here. I know she'd enjoy someone else to talk to about modding for once in a long time. I'll see if I can try and convince her to finally come back, even if it's just for a little while.

Seeing what was accomplished despite the lack of support and severe limitations, I would think that, if modding had been supported along the lines of Fallout or TES, the Fable modding community would still be around and that Fable as a whole would be much, much more popular. It's truly a shame. I always thought that Fable TLC and 3 (haven't played 2, no console) were some of the better games I've played and yet they could have been made infinitely better.

Exactly. Morrowind to this day is older than Fable and yet it still has a healthy modding community and is even getting a well documented fan-remake thanks to Bethesda's modding tools. Bethesda knows that the lasting life-blood of their communities is the modding support, I wish Lionhead could've realized the same instead of being 10 years too late with Anniversary (and it still wasn't what we truly asked for).

I mean, they could release full blown tools now if they really wanted, but the communities have dispersed so much that there wouldn't be much of a point anymore.