BlinkDash

A blink/dash teleport for Skyrim SE/AE, as a C++ SKSE plugin (Address Library, one binary for SE + AE).

Hold a movement direction and tap the hotkey to dash that way. Havok rays shorten the dash at walls and follow walkable slopes instead of clipping through them. No .esp, no Papyrus, no new records — the plugin plus an optional settings tab in SKSE Menu Framework.

AI-generated. Every line of this plugin was written by an AI — purely vibe-coded, slopped together. No human authored or thoroughly reviewed it, so treat it as a hobby project: expect rough edges, and check it yourself before trusting it in your load order.

Features

• Tap to blink. Hold a direction (WASD or stick) and tap the hotkey; tap while standing still to blink where you face. Holding the hotkey does nothing, so sprint/jump keys are safe to bind.
• Collision-aware. Six body-height rays find the first obstacle and a body-volume probe at the landing spot catches corners a single line would slip past. The configured distance is a maximum: obstacles shorten the dash instead of cancelling it, and a 50-unit deadzone stops spamming the hotkey from creeping through a wall.
• Slope-aware. Hits are classified by surface angle: ground shallower than the max slope is followed up or down the hill; anything steeper is a wall the blink stops at.
• Momentum kept. The controller velocity from before the teleport is restored, so a mid-air blink keeps the jump/dash going.
• Ground snap. On the ground, the landing is placed on the surface below it (following a slope). In mid air the height is kept, so a jump is not dragged down.
• Effect shader. Any vanilla TESEffectShader in your load order, picked from a dropdown.
• In-game menu (SKSE Menu Framework): hotkey rebind, all settings, a logging toggle and a debug view, plus Reset defaults. Every change saves itself — no Apply button.
• Debug view (off by default): draws the last blink's rays and landing spot in the top-left while you play.
• Logging (on by default): a trace-level BlinkDash.log flushed after every line, toggled from the menu.
• SkyParkour friendly. Its crouch slide and mid-air landing roll keep working; the blink re-bases the engine's fall tracker so the interrupted fall is not charged on landing.
• Works without SKSE Menu Framework installed (menu skipped, hotkey still works).

Settings

Stored in SKSE/Plugins/BlinkDash.json next to the DLL (inside the mod folder under MO2). Written with these defaults on first run and never overwritten by builds.

Every number is an integer (units, degrees, points, milliseconds), so nothing in the file is a float. The file carries a version and is migrated in place on launch: a file from an older release (staminaCost, retriggerDelay/cooldown in seconds) is converted and rewritten once, and options this build does not recognise are preserved rather than dropped.

Setting	Default	Range
Hotkey	Mouse 4 (0x103)	keyboard key, mouse button or gamepad button
Distance (max)	200 units	100–1000
Max slope	45°	20–80
Cost per blink	10 (charged in combat only)	0–100
Cost resource	Stamina	Stamina, Magicka
Charge outside combat	off	—
Tap window	200 ms	20–1000
Cooldown	1000 ms	0–2000
Effect shader	Skyrim.esm:000E5C	any discovered shader, or None
Debug view	off	—
Logging	on	—

Hotkey encoding: 0x100 | n = mouse button n (0=LMB, 1=RMB, 2=MMB, 3=MB4…), 0x1000 | n = gamepad button n, otherwise a DirectInput keyboard scancode — the same numbering SKSE's InputMap uses.

Requirements

• Skyrim SE/AE
• SKSE
• Address Library for SKSE Plugins
• Optional: SKSE Menu Framework for the settings UI

Tested on 1.6.1170 only (SKSE 2.2.8). That is the one and only runtime this has been run on — no other version has been tried. It is built against the Address Library, so other Skyrim SE/AE builds may well work, but that is a guess, not a promise.

Install

Put BlinkDash.dll, BlinkDash.json and BlinkDash.ShaderNames.json in …/mods/BlinkDash/SKSE/Plugins/ and enable the mod. Under MO2 the JSON files live inside the mod folder, so they survive game updates.

Building

Requires VS 2022/18 with the C++ workload, CMake + Ninja, and a vcpkg checkout (git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg .vcpkg).

$env:VCPKG_ROOT = "$PWD/.vcpkg"
cmake --preset vs2022
cmake --build build/vs2022

CommonLibSSE-NG is not compiled: the build links the prebuilt package its release publishes (a one-time ~128 MB download, cached under the build tree), so a build compiles this plugin's own sources only.

Build from a VS developer shell (vcvars64.bat), otherwise the compiler will not find the Windows SDK.

By default the DLL is not copied anywhere. Set MOD_OUTPUT_FOLDER to a mod folder to auto-deploy on build, e.g. a git-ignored CMakeUserPresets.json:

{
  "version": 6,
  "configurePresets": [
    { "name": "vs2022-local", "inherits": "vs2022",
      "cacheVariables": { "MOD_OUTPUT_FOLDER": "C:/path/to/mods/BlinkDash" } }
  ]
}

Releasing

tools/Build-Release.ps1 builds the release and packages it in one step:

.\tools\Build-Release.ps1 -Version 1.0.1

It configures and builds the vs2022 preset with -Version stamped into the binary (so the log line and the SKSE plugin record report it), then writes packages/BlinkDash-<version>.zip containing SKSE/Plugins (DLL + both JSONs) and docs/, which MO2/Vortex install as-is. Upload that zip by hand on the mod page under Files. Nothing in the repo talks to the Nexus API.

• The MSVC environment is set up by the script itself (it runs vcvars64.bat, located with vswhere), so it can be started from a normal shell; VCPKG_ROOT or a .vcpkg checkout next to the repo is still required.
• -SkipBuild re-zips whatever is already in the build tree — for a failed upload, not for skipping the version stamp; rebuild when -Version changes.
• -FromFolder <mod folder> packages an already deployed mod folder (what MOD_OUTPUT_FOLDER deploys) instead of the build output.

Direction

The mod reads the game's control map for the keys bound to Forward/Back/Strafe, plus the left stick, and applies the result in the camera's yaw. A clearly pushed stick beats the keys, so a drifting stick never fights the keyboard. With nothing held but the player moving anyway (root motion, a slide, a knockback) the horizontal velocity is used. Nothing held and not moving: no blink.

Effects

effectShader selects a vanilla effect shader played on you when you blink. The plugin discovers every TESEffectShader in the load order at runtime; the optional BlinkDash.ShaderNames.json only adds readable labels, keyed plugin:formid so they survive load-order changes. It is generated from the vanilla masters by tools/GenerateShaderNames.ps1; add your own entries by hand any time.

Logging

Every step is logged at trace level and flushed after every line, so the last line is the last thing that ran before a crash. Untick Write BlinkDash.log (or set "logging": false) to silence it — the plugin runs the same either way.

…\Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\SKSE\BlinkDash.log

The log covers load, every SKSE message, config load/save and clamps, input events, menu interaction, and every blink step (gate checks, raycasts, teleport, fall-tracker re-base).

Debug view

Tick Draw last blink in game and the last blink is drawn in the top-left while you play: a plan view of the rays and landing with a scale bar and legend, plus the numbers (travel taken vs requested, blocked, body fits, direction, climb, surface angle) and what actually hit. It hides while a menu is open or the game is paused, so it never covers the cursor.

Why a blink can refuse

Logged with the reason every time: nothing held and not moving · not enough stamina/magicka · inside the cooldown · inside the deadzone (something solid within 50 units) · no clear landing spot for the body.

License

MIT.