5 replies to this topic

[TheCapitalist1987]

  I am a new lifetime member to The Nexus but have been very familiar with it and the modding community for over 3 years now. 

 

   I have been working on a large quest mod called "Deathclaw Peaks" for over a year and a half now and have poured my blood, sweat and tears into it. Roughly 3000 hours of work. 

 

   I'm looking for a little help on how to take my mod from finished on my end, to having a few people test it before I generate the LOD and start asking for voice actors, since I really don't know how to do that yet. 

 

   I don't want to post in the wrong forum or accidentally release a 90% done mod to the site by accident so if there's anyone who could give me a little direction on this I would be super appreciative.

 

   It's a Fallout 4 Mod, with zero external assets.

   The main quest of this mod is about 7 hours long from start to finish.

   The worldspace is roughly the same size as Nuka World from Fallout 4, but very mountainous.

   There are a number of side quests.

   There are roughly 8 new weapons.

 

   It's my first mod. It's very ambitious. I've done about 1000 test runs. 

 

   This mod is more or less ready for testing so I would like to hand it off to ten or so people to test it out for me before I do all of the finishing touches. I guess what I'm asking is:

 

                   Should I post the mod as a beta test but limit it to 10 people?

                   Should I post that I have a mod and then send it to 10 people who reply?

                   Should I start looking for voice actors now, through a post?

 

   If there's someone who has done these types of quest mods before out there who could give me a little advice, that would be super appreciated. Thanks in advance. I'm really excited to get this thing out before Fallout 76 drops.

[HeyYou]

Post in the FO4 forums here somewhere..... not sure which forum would be best. The mod is likely relatively small? So, maybe you could email it to your testers?

 

May also want to post over the the bethesda forums, asking for testers. Pretty active community there.

[Thuggysmurf]

Do it as a beta but get as many testers as you can. Don't limit it to 10. I've run or helped run betas for 4 large quest mods: Fusion City Rising, Outcasts and Remnants, Outlaws & Revolutionaries, and Project Valkyrie.

 

Project Valkyrie was by far the smoothest beta, and that's largely due to hosting it on Discord.  Beta testers are much more likely to leave feedback on Discord vs. sending you a PM, and that way they will also communicate with each other, not just you, and that will generate ideas and catch issues that would otherwise be missed. Here's what we did on Discord:

 

https://discordapp.com/invite/gMpaxn3

 

(Note: the beta download links were removed after release on Nexus to avoid people downloading outdated versions)

 

The Northern Springs DLC did something similar on Discord, and when it released, that gave Northern Springs a ton of momentum, helping propel it to #1 over the past 30 days.

 

As far as where do the files get hosted, open a free dropbox account, then put the link to the files on Discord.

 

Also, set up the mod page now and use the Articles section to cover things like Random Q&A, Known Issues, Troubleshooting, etc.  The main mod page will not be visible before publishing, but the Articles will, and you can link them right from Discord.

 

Also offer the beta on Nexus Mod Talk, but don't expect too much response. If you can put a trailer together, post it on Reddit Fallout 4 or Reddit Falloutmods. But be prepared for not a whole lot of response, but a ton of negativity and trolling. The Reddit community is an order of magnitude more toxic than anything you'll encounter from the worst elements of Nexus, but you might get a couple good beta testers out of it.

 

Voice actors: Casting call works, that's what most quest mod authors use. I use Fallout fans wherever possible though, because rather than just saying the lines, they'll give feedback, write their own stuff, and it ends up more creative.  To get the voice actors though, you need a video preview, script, etc. that gets them interested enough to do it.  And until you've got the voice acting in, it's not a beta, it's an alpha, or really pre-alpha.

 

Hope some of that helps.  I'd be happy to play test if you want.

[TheCapitalist1987]

Wow. Damn. Okay.

 

Well the mod is currently around 28MB when I run it on my PC with no voice acting and most quests finished from start to end. There's around 5000 Lines of dialogue and the actual size of the world space is around 200 cells. You could very comfortably spend 10 hours on this mod if you wanted to complete it to 100%

 

It's pretty ambitious and I thought I would have more time to finish it, but since the announcement of fallout 76 I'm really feeling pressured to get it out before November, lest there be dramatically less interest, simply due to the new game. From what I see however, I may be setting my sights a little to high.

 

I may have to just keep working on this and take a little more time and release it 6 months after the release of 76 though.

 

Regardless, I really appreciate all of the feedback and I'm gonna get going on all of the suggestions you've given me. I'm sorry I didn't get back sooner too. I was in hospital for a few days but am back to it now.

 

So I need to set up a discord server for myself and post a link from the nexus to discord, and advertise it as "alpha."

 

My big issue is just that I don't want hundreds of people downloading this in the first week. I really do want all kinds of feedback though because I don't want this to be a halfass mod considering how much work has gone into it, yet there are some things I need to limit based on time, and the fact that this is my first mod and I'm not super scripted in scripting. I've learned a shitload but I would still consider myself intermediate at best. 

 

As far as a video goes, I was planning on doing one but it was going to be after a lot of testing. Now however, I know to make one for every voiced character. Makes a lot of sense actually. Good way to play the director.

 

Thanks a lot guys. I may have further questions in the next week here.

Edited by TheCapitalist1987, 18 August 2018 - 09:43 AM.

[TheCapitalist1987]

Alright. I think I've set up the basics of a discord server. Not sure how to set up links or invites or how to show people how to get into it yet but I'm gonna keep digging. Also would like to get a few videos made and actually have some content before I do any of that so I'll be working on it for a little bit here. Thanks again guys and I'll keep you posted.

[SKK50]

If your quests or dialogue have complex triggers, conditionals or parallel dependencies best to include a utility script ** and instructions on how to use it ** that will dump debug.trace of all the significant state information to help trapping the edge conditions you are probably looking for.

 

I typically use something like [ cqf MyDebugQuest "MyDebugQuestScript.Dump" ] to dump out GlobalVariables, ActorValues, LocationStates, Spawned or created ObjectReferences, RefCollection counts, conditional script variables and such. Massively speeds up defect investigations.

 

If its linear trigger - do - complete, probably don't need to bother.