Looking for a small team of moders

[seularts]

Hi, I am looking to assemble a small team of moders and voice actors to make one of a kind lore friendly Skyrim quest. I have a great story and some very innovating ideas that will make this mod one of a kind. I do however need someone skilled enough to code and build the mod from scratch as it will contain some tricky techniques.

 

The story: A tale of a young thief who will be introduced to a new "faction" of mysterious thieves, led by a very charismatic leader with some dark secrets, right after the player finishes all the main quests from the normal thief guild in Riften. The plot revolves around a quarrel between this group of thieves and another group of very wealthy merchants whose ultimate goal is to eliminate the competition and find a unique artifact that will bring them wealth and power.

 

The quests will have multiple choices and endings that will balance the weight of dominance to one faction or the other. There are many other aspects that will impact these quests, such as 3^rd party characters that will have other interests and might even play important roles on how everything ends up. Things will be polished along the way if something isn’t clear enough, but there will be abundant content, a few new dungeons and I’m looking for some very interesting voice covers with some smart/outstanding voice effects if possible.

 

When this mod is done, all I ask in return is to be credited for the scenario development. If you are interested give me a heads up.

[seularts]

Anyone!?

[Matth85]

As I tell everybody. There are 2 problems:

1) There are not enough modders left, with any kind of skill, for a "team".

2) All you got, and seem to want to contribute with, is vague storytelling. The kind you learn at the age of 5.

 

To interest people, you need to have started something, and show you are dedicated. You need to know exactly what skillset you need.

[seularts]

Well actually I have something worked out so far. All I need is someone who can script well and can put quests together with some NPCs. I can provide the quest lines, rewards xp stats etc. The level design is not going be too complex (I have part of the dungeons/buildings layout finished), though it would help to have someone with awesome creativity on the team.

 

As for specs: I will need a new game mechanic where a player will need to gather favor within the friendly faction in order to meet and talk to the leader. If he doesn't have enough trust inside the faction the guards will stop him and tell him that he is not yet worthy.. or something along those lines. Favor is obtained through quests and by killing specific npc targets (within the world) belonging to the enemy faction.

 

Another mechanism would require certain npcs to lower their shop prices when a specific clothing piece is being worn (faction reward). Also I would like the player to be motivated to continue playing even if he does a crazy mistake like trying to pickpocket or attack one of the faction’s npcs. This would mean that the faction's npcs will not directly attack the player, but rather cast a knockout spell that will send the player into a prison cell, or just throw him outside the compound (random location) with all his items looted from his person and with very low health. This way if someone is playing with "tgm" they can't mess the quests and constantly reload after they kill all npcs. Maybe if the player does this constantly the faction can impose a more severe punishment and disable access to their faction’s base till things cool down after a few days (1 week).

 

Also I have this crazy idea (don't know if this is possible) to make certain dialog options or helping items available if the easy difficulty is set on. For example, if the player is in the prison cell and has easy mode on, there will always be a lock pick on the ground to escape through the cell’s door. If normal+ or hard+ difficulty is set up, then he will have to find alternative ways to escape as there will be no lock pick available. Also in this same modes (medium+, hard+), if the player uses a bone to remove some bricks on the back of the holding cell to escape, the next time he ends in the same cell he won’t find the bone there anymore (one time use). This way he will have to appeal to his cunning methods so the guard may set him free or something similar.

 

I know it’s a bit of a hand-full what I ask, but this could force players to adapt to a thief-like stealthier approach and not just go for the “blade first and ask questions later” method. There might be other little things I could think along the way, but so far this are the most critical ones that make my idea unique. At the end of the story, the player will feel he is rewarded with something genuine and has a dramatic impact upon the game's environment and npcs, depending on which ending he chose (so far I came up with 4 endings). This way he avoid the situation of the “civil war factor”, where it doesn’t matter which side wins since the game still takes you to the same end result.

Edited May 19, 2014 by seularts

[Matth85]

So, you got the story planned out, but nothing else? Again, that won't cut it. There seem to be an average of 3 "need a mod team!" per week. Yours is not unique, nor special. You need to sell your idea to the community and hope you can get somebody to help you out. If you don't do that, the only post you will get is the standard "I got no experience, but I am willing to help!", which then dissapears after a week.

 

Here is a few things you can do, given you want it enough:

 

1) Start making things in the CK. You can not script or make quests? Well, then don't. Make everything else. That way you tell everybody "hey! I got almost everything set up! All I need is a genious scripter who can connect everything, and add some neat functions!".

2) If you want custom models, you get concept art. If you can't draw, get somebody else to do it. If nobody wants to do it, google something similiar.

3) You got a dungeon layout? Good! now take a overview picture of it.

 

Basically, to get a team set up, you need to sell 2 things. You and your idea. If you don't show you are going to be the most dedicated, or do the most work, or that you don't believe in this the most, nobody else will believe you. At the same time, if your idea is not flushed out perfectly, and does not stand above the crowd, what makes it special?

 

you see, ideas are not rare. Modders generally got more ideas than non-modders. Scripters are more oriented to solutions than the average joe, and the average modeller got more ideas, and moer understanding on how to do it, than your average joe. So the whole "I got this awesome idea!"-argument doesn't work. Everybody got ideas for huge mods. The difference is, however, that experienced modders know how long a big mod takes, while a new modder does not.

 

While saying all of that, the modding community is not big at the moment, and will not grow again before a new TES or Fallout installement. The majority of people you will see around here are voice actors and fresh modders. Some times the odd experienced Ck worker will show up, or a decent 3d modeller. You will not be able to collect a team of "good", relative, modders. though you might get a couple of fresh modders, at which you'd might as well learn to script yourself. Who knows, you might even like it!

 

Sell your idea. Sell yourself as a leading type. Show the community something. Visualize it. A picture of a dungeon proves more than 5 A4 pages of lore and story. And finally, know this: Modding takes a lot of time.

 

Best of luck!

Matth

[DrNewcenstein]

Many moons ago when all we had was 2D (Doom, Duke Nuk'em, etc), I made a few things in the Build Engine for Redneck Rampage. I worked from a set of tutorials to learn how to do a lot of things in that, and was invited to join a "team" by the guy who was going to be the self-appointed "team leader". He had no skills. The easiest tut was to build a door, and he couldn't even do that. But he sure had the Team Name and logo for when we hit it big :lol:

 

20 years later, I haven't touched those games, but I'm pretty sure I could still build a door, it was that simple.

 

 

"Team" indicates you're sharing the load. The first part of "team leader" is "team". Don't say "I've got things started", say "I've got the areas built and working and fleshed out, but there's room for creative input and suggestions".

 

But then again, my opinion of "teamwork" is that it's an acronym for "Taking Every Advantage of Me Without Observing the Rules of Karma".

 

Learn how to do everything yourself, that way if you can't find someone to do it, you can do it. You're not a Pro Dev, so there's no deadline crunch.

[seularts]

Thanks for the advice guys. I am working on it and I do know it takes a long time to build. I was just trying to be more efficient and work with a team that knows level design and scripting (way) better than me to bring my idea up to life faster and in a more professional way. Seems I'm not that great at selling my stuff, but I will try to make some snapshots with a better description and maybe even a small intro and see how that goes :smile: Again thanks for the helping tips!

Edited May 20, 2014 by seularts

[jaxonz]

Glad to see that you aren't discouraged by the well-intended (and perhaps brutally honest) advice you received.

 

I've never collaborated on a mod (although NaeSoem did a translation of one of my mods and Matth85 is doing me the honor of crafting mesh and textures for one), however I am a software professional who has managed some very large teams. Collaborative development is a challenging endeavor, all the more so if the contributors are unpaid hobbyists. If you want to marshal capable talents (and I am certainly not among them) to your vision, it needs to be clear, compelling and well scoped. (Think about how you might pitch something on Kickstarter, only instead of asking for money, you are asking for people's time, creative energies, and hard work... in other words, you are asking for much more than mere money.) You also received wonderful advice on making room for others to have creative input; if you are asking for volunteers, you can't dictate terms. Make them partners in the effort.

 

 

A few comments of my own:

• I like the notion of encouraging smarter tactics. Interesting challenges make for interesting play. However, I think that a well designed quest should allow for multiple styles of play. One that requires a specific specialization will inherently appeal to a smaller population of players.
• There seems to be an anti-cheating goal in the discussion with "tgm". IMHO, it is useless to try to do this. If folks want to cheat, you can't really stop them and taking efforts to do so would likely break something else.

You stand a much better chance of attracting people to your effort if you have some modding experience under your belt and have already contributed to the community. I searched, and couldn't find any mods by you so far. As others have mentioned, they've already been inundated by pitches that go "I'm new to the game, don't really know how CK works, can't script, can't model, and can't structure a story, but I have this really great idea!!". On the other hand if Matth or Chesko asked for help, people would be falling all over themselves. (Not my intent to omit the dozens of great modders out there... just 2 names picked at random.) So, while you are putting effort into designing your quest pitch, also consider cutting your teeth on CK and putting something out there. It is a learning curve we all have to go through and it can be a rewarding experience. It will also give you an appreciation for some of the things modders have accomplished given the very limited tool set at their disposal.

 

Anyway, go for it! Best of success!

[seularts]

Hey jaxonz, thanks for your help! The tgm thing is not actually an anti-chat, but it’s rather part of my design so players don’t break the flow of the quest lines. In a normal Skyrim quest, if you attack a quest NPC you will automatically have to reload or find a crazy way to cool off things. My idea is that if you get the npcs angry they will punish you, but still leave enough room for you to continue the quest without becoming aggressive for a long time and without actually killing you. This way, players live with their mistakes and it will impact their relationship with the faction by losing temporary favor and having to pay bigger prices when buying something. Of course there is no way to stop someone to cheat, but at least I can make the game immersive even for people who use cheats :)