Starfield fans are already trying to develop resources that’ll facilitate day-one modding

For those who’ve invested thousands of hours into the likes of Skyrim and Fallout 4, the release of Starfield can’t come soon enough.

Regardless of how you feel about the prospects of Bethesda's venture into space, whether you like what it looks like in Far Cry 5, or how you want to go about building your first intergalactic outpost or settlement, the idea of being able to delve into a freshly curated game filled with new quests, characters, and locations has RPG lovers of all stripes intrigued.

It seems as though some of those eagerly awaiting their invitation aboard an interstellar transport already have their attention focused beyond the game’s release date, with one seemingly having gone as far as starting to plan out and develop a program to facilitate modding prior to the release of a script extender.

Are you excited to see what Starfield’s modding scene will produce?

The code-based creation of this would-be astronaut, user LinuxVersion, is the subject of a thread on the Starfield subreddit, which began with a post entitled: “The WIP public API for my Starfield DLL modloader (like script dragon) and mod menu overlay”.

They then went on to explain the inspiration and context behind their work, which you can find on GitHub, saying: “I've been pretty excited to play Starfield for a while now and decided to mix my hype with my hobby of writing C++ code.”

“On release, most mods will (likely) be simple texture replacers and INI setting tweaks.” added LinuxVersion, continuing: “(The Starfield script extender) will probably take several months or longer (to arrive as a) a stable release, so I came up with a dead simple DLL plugin system (called starloader) that injects imgui into Starfield, to allow for native code shenanigans on day one, hopefully.”

While a couple of fellow spacers responded by complementing LinuxVersion on their work and having taken some initiative, user i_need_a_fast_horse2 suggested that it might be “a bit premature”.

This prompted LinuxVersion to explain: “You would think it's a bit premature, but I have the starloader code and some example plugins working in Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Skyrim Special Edition, without recompiling or altering the code across different games. I have no reason to believe Starfield would be any different.”

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Another concern came from user JustCoda, who wondered whether the possible inclusion of anti-piracy software in the game could cause issues with starloader, to which LinuxVersion responded: “Denuvo would be (a) very unlikely (inclusion), Bethesda has always taken a very light approach to anti-piracy and it has worked out well for them so far.”

Regardless of whether you’re currently coming up with a bunch of ideas you’d like to see modders bring to Starfield, make sure to follow us for lots of guides to its world and mechanics. You can also check out our latest mods of the month for some killer Skyrim and Fallout mods that’ll help tide you over until it arrives.