TheTokenGeek

In response to post #44454420. Ha ha ha, cheers SydneyB

In response to post #44905540. This will be happening! I'm trying to learn basic modding at the moment and am documenting as I go along (mistakes and all!) :D

In response to post #45051570. Hey pancakemix, I'm not trying to take a single iota of credit away from level designers, concept artists, animators, developers or anyone else involved in the creation of a game with this interview. Screen-shot artists are incredibly skilled at what they do (just ask our image community) and are able to bring the best out of a game with their eye for detail. The only analogy I can provide is that I come from a photography background, and can attest that having a good team behind me and good subjects to work with will provide a smooth shoot and decent results - but it is still my skill behind the camera to take the shot. So while the game developers and the team behind the final product are extremely talented, they do need to pass it on after completion to show it off. That person will be someone like Duncan. I do hope you enjoyed the interview though. :)

Here on Nexus Mods we have a very vibrant, busy and incredibly talented screen-capture community. I'm going to be spending time getting to know our artists and introduce them into this series to showcase some of their work, find out what makes them tick, what tools they use and if they have any tips for others. Though to begin, I reached out to someone outside the community who I also hold in very high regard, the very humble and often elusive professional screen-capture artist Duncan Harris from ‘Dead End Thrills’. His specialty is capturing beautiful images for not only his personal satisfaction but also for publishers/developers the world over. What started in life as a hobby for him has deservedly bloomed into a full-time career. I first came to witness the work from Dead End Thrills when I was browsing one of the gaming publications that I subscribe to. The images I saw, though taken from a computer game, were worthy of space on a gallery wall. Truly pieces of art and I was in awe. I spent a good few hours browsing his website, after which I was determined to find the man behind them. Like I say, he is quite elusive. I hope that you all enjoy this interview and give Duncan some Nexus Mods love. Trying to find your name on your site is virtually impossible, and you don’t have any watermarks on any of your images. Though it seems you appreciate anonymity, would you mind letting us know a little bit about yourself and as to why your name doesn’t appear? I don't plaster my name all over the site because I'm strong believer that the story should be the games, the art belongs to the developers, and that someone covering those in a vaguely journalistic capacity should be as invisible as possible. (Says the man currently doing an interview.) Few things get my back up like people who get that backwards, who make themselves part of the discussion. This does backfire a bit when people assume the site is run by some shadowy enclave of Flickr users, but I'd sooner that than spend any more words on the site than it needs. Gaming has more than enough of those already. Can you disclose some of the titles you have worked on? Horizon: Zero Dawn, Hitman, Adr1ft, Rise Of The Tomb Raider, Dishonored 2 and PlayStation VR Worlds are some recent ones that come to mind - the ones I can talk about, at least. Have you always grown up with games, be it either in the form of consoles or computers? Definitely. I was lucky enough to grow up alongside Britsoft during the ‘80s and ‘90s, owning computers from the Oric 1 to the C64, ST, Amiga, etc. My dad managed a Currys, so I doubly lucked out in that respect. Programming and hacking were inseparable from gaming back then, so it’s probably no wonder I’ve ended up with such a weird job/hobby. That was a time when you not only felt you owned every byte of the games you bought but were encouraged to mess with around with them. Where did the name DeadEndThrills originate? I think it was the title of an essay someone wrote about JG Ballard, though we’re talking almost a decade ago now. I was pretty desperate for a blog title and ended up on Google. Probably too late to change it now. The band Cubicolor just used it for one of their new tracks, which has completely messed up my vanity searches (which were rubbish anyway). Although you say you’re not a photographer, there are examples of composition theories such as the golden ratio and the rule of thirds, did you ever get any form of training or research composition? I certainly know of them, as they’ll often crop up in conversations with art directors and the like. I’ve never knowingly used one, though, in the sense of arbitrarily using one to try and make something work. That said, aesthetics is a science to some degree, so most of what looks good conform to one theory or another. What first got you into screen-shotting games? How did that transition into a career? I used to work in magazines, back when screenshots of games were seen as a vital companion to the text. Days would often be spent trying to find what looked best on the page, which is as much about the arrangement and choice of shots as their individual merits. Bear in mind we were doing this just with the game camera on things like PS2. Dead End Thrills came about around 2007 as a personal blog featuring (bad) shots of Oblivion, Prey, and later Wipeout HD. The idea was to at least try and improve the quality of screenshots used in the press, though it was just a lark in truth. A publisher asked for some community stuff done, and it snowballed from there. I had a prior background in software engineering and graphic design so that mix of problem-solving, technical know-how, and working around the game industry for so long made it possible to speak the languages of both marketing and development, which I think was something of a rarity. Is your niche in the industry tightly knit? Do you know other professional screen-capture artists? Are there other artists out there whom you look up to and admire? There are lots of professional screen-capture artists, and most are a whole lot better than I am. I don’t think people quite appreciate how many professionals there are who simply do this anonymously without ever seeking public approval or an outlet. You’ve got agencies building shots from scratch; marketing artists hired specifically to ‘pretty up’ shots based on WIP assets, game artists moonlighting when needed … a whole industry. When does your work begin during the development cycle? Are you often working with titles well before they are released? It varies. I’ve worked on games where billboard scenery from PS2 was still being used as the placeholder; where the bloom was so bad it looked like someone was dropping nukes inside the characters; where the enemies had no hair, no skin… every quirk and f*#@-up you can imagine. To varying degrees, editors and workstations never work. Some of the circumstances are dire, to be honest, but that’s development. There has to be a certain body of assets there to work with, though. I suppose ‘alpha’ is the earliest stage I’d come in, for what that term’s worth. When you receive a build of a game from a developer, what kind of process do you go through to get the shots you are after? Do you work from a brief at all? Yeah, there’s always a brief. The reason so little of my professional stuff ends up on the site is that the brief is often quite different to what I’d do for fun. You’re making the best of a bad situation with most promo shots, whereas I try and make the best of the best situation on the site. The process with publishers (it’s usually publishers rather than developers) begins with a lot of ‘umm’ and ‘you realise that’ and ‘oh for f-’ until you figure out what’s possible in the time you’ve got. The trick is doing all that in such a way that you cost the publisher as little as possible. To be brutally honest, I’m not proud of the stuff I’ve done professionally. That’s not really how it works. Like modding, I imagine you need certain tools to get the shots that you’re looking for. Do developers provide you with any support to that end? I do a lot of hacking nowadays. Debug builds of games aren’t ‘screenshot builds’, and there’s a lot that still needs to be done before you have all the tools you need. If you look at the Street Fighter V or No Man’s Sky shots on the site, I had to pretty much dismantle those games to do those. You can never really know enough in that regard, so I can spend dozens of hours on a game I never end up doing anything with, but it never feels like a waste of time. It’s homework. You have to bear in mind that the last thing a developer has time to do is help the screenshot monkey do something there isn’t a feature for, so that’s on you, really. Some of the screenshots you have taken are often from fast-paced games (such as the Streetfighter series), yet the image is pixel-perfect timing. How are these achieved? Okay, So for something like Street Fighter V. I break the game in such a way that when I hit pause, none of the pause menu shows up - it’s frozen. I’ve hooked the camera - two cameras, actually - so I can move that around by modifying the coordinates in memory. I’ve hooked DirectX so I can track and move the individual characters while the game’s paused, including rotating them. I’ve hooked PhysX so I can run and manipulate the physics simulation while the game is paused, avoid clipping. I’ve hooked the depth of field component of Unreal Engine 4, and the animation timescales for the individual characters so I can find complimentary poses. I’ve disabled the game’s opacity stencil technique, which is what effectively renders the 3D characters in 2D to avoid mesh clipping; that means I can have proper interaction between limbs, etc. I’ve disabled the hit FX and the glow shader on the characters. I think that’s it - unless you include all the usual modding to access unreleased characters, etc. You have said that you can get screenshots upwards of 8K in resolution. Do you need a beefy computer setup to get these? How are they created? Let’s stick with Street Fighter. Unreal will render at whatever size the window is. Using SRWE, which Skyrim modders might know already, you can tell it to render at HUGE resolutions for just the seconds it takes to grab the image. I’m doing Fallout 4 at the moment, though, and you don’t get that luxury there. Then there’s something like Quantum Break where I’m still trying to figure out how to render at over 4K. With the release of Overwatch, the developers gave the player the ability to take 8k screenshots, though limited in where the camera is, what kind of tools would you like to see developers implementing into their games? I’d like to see tools which the developers would use themselves. Though I appreciate the sentiment, I don’t like tools which are more like toys - where there are weird limits placed on things like camera movement and rotation because the developer’s vanity has suddenly kicked in post-release, or for some other strange reason. I don’t like it when console games are promoted with downsampled shots the public ‘photo modes’ can’t do. The last one is more of a technical issue, admittedly - games can trade performance for certain debug features during development - but I certainly wouldn’t waste my time taking 1080p shots of anything. What are your thoughts on Ansel, the new screenshot tech recently released by Nvidia? I helped with that to a small degree during development, and I think it’s a worthwhile venture. There're ways it can improve in terms of UI and user experience, but they seem to have found their audience for it. Some of your images can evoke strong emotion, such as pity or sadness (for example some of the Tomb Raider series), suspense and horror (such as some of the Alien Isolation series) or awe (such as some of the Skyrim series). Do you intend to make an emotional response within the viewer? I think it’s only natural to do that with any image. Why else would you bother? I suppose a lot of screenshots are taken just to show off a game’s technical fidelity - bragging rights and all that - but those are here today, gone tomorrow. The interest for me is in knowing that there’s a gap between how a game wants to feel and how it does, and that’s often necessitated by gameplay. When you take the gameplay out, just how far can you go? One of my favourite shots is from your ‘Rise of the Tomb Raider’ series and is called ‘Rooftop Paradise alt’ (though I also love the standard ‘Rooftop Paradise’), do you have any favourite shots or ones you are most proud of? Yeah, well, don’t get me started on the ‘alt’ business. I try and limit the number of shots published to avoid repetition, as just the slightest bit of that creates fatigue in someone browsing them. There’s also an argument to say that if you’re torn between two shots of the same thing, you just haven’t taken the right one yet. Or maybe that’s self-defeating. So yes, the alts are kind of a compromise there. My problem is that I often end up liking the alts more than the originals, to the point where I delete the original and confuse everyone. There are a lot of shots I’d consider my favourites. I treat the site like a garden in a respect, and like walking through it from time to time. Ideally, they’d all be my favourites, as they don’t have to be far off for me to delete them. Any shot which is essentially perfect - where the composition works, where the fidelity is consistent, where there is atmosphere and drama - is a favourite. But there has to be a fair amount of creativity at my end for it to be worthwhile. That could be hacking, finding the right pose or lighting, or the multitude of things that go into a Bethesda RPG shot. In that sense, the shot you mentioned is okay, but it’s really just me snapshotting the developer’s work. Do you ever get negative feedback or comments from people? How do you deal with this? They’re not made directly, though. People sometimes repost the stuff on Reddit for whatever reason, which being a cauldron of negativity often responds by claiming the stuff’s Photoshopped or whatever. But that’s what happens when you put people into that kind of echo chamber environment. There’s no actual thought or reasoning behind those statements, so it’s not hard to ignore them. I do sometimes respond to them, though, if only to drop some facts into the equation. When you play a game for casual fun, do you ever stop and think that a particular moment would be a good place to capture or are you able to ‘turn your work brain off’? This is casual fun for me. I could literally count the number of games I’ve played traditionally on the one hand. Arkham Knight (which, internet be damned, I loved), and right now Thumper. I’m struggling already! I did try and play Fallout 4 properly until a quest bug destroyed my whole campaign, but I’m enjoying it more for the mods and shots. Then there are the games my kids play, but that’s more a case of me moaning the whole time about how cynically they’re emptying my wallet. What would you say is your favourite genre of game to play? What is your favourite genre to capture? Easy. Bethesda RPGs. I love the worlds. I love the modding scenes. I love that those games are, despite the occasional hiccup with patches, etc., open to modding by default. I love that it’s almost impossible to play these games on PC without sharing them in ways that reflect your tastes and peculiarities. I don’t begrudge people complaining about Bethesda’s (and indeed Valve’s) genuine screw-ups because I think it’s everyone’s job to ensure they stay true to what they’ve started. That said, it did make me laugh when Skyrim came out, and people complained that Creation Engine was ‘just Gamebryo again’. Did they not think how catastrophic the alternative might a have been: a closed, unmoddable, sleek and thoroughly boring new technology? Screw that. Gamebryo for life, baby. Have you ever come across a game that is truly beautiful from start to finish? Where every moment you think to yourself, this would make an awesome screen? Rise Of The Tomb Raider. Maybe GTA V. Probably Bloodborne. Blur, the racing game by Bizarre Creations, is one I often bring up. Thumper’s just come out, and that’s a basically a masterpiece in terms of focus and execution, not just in terms of visuals. I’m not saying all these games are beauty ‘from start to finish’ because in a game like GTA or Tomb Raider that’s impossible, but the technology and ambition of those games is overwhelming. Are there any games coming up that you’re are really looking forward to getting hold of? Tekken! Can’t wait for that to finally come to PC, especially as it’s Unreal Engine 4. I *suppose* I’m looking forward to the new Mass Effect, even if their cinematic vocabulary seems limited to the exact same s#*! they’ve always done. The cutscenes in that latest gameplay footage, in terms of what actually happens, could be from ten years ago. I’m actually quite keen to see what they’re adding to No Man’s Sky, as I believe it’s more than people are expecting. That game needed to offend just about everyone so it could shrink down to the Early Access title it always should have been, and I think it could be quite comfortable there. Just a shame it wasted to so much of people’s time and money in the process. We have a very active and passionate screenshot community, if you could give any advice on how to pursue this as a career what would it be? I honestly don’t know what to say! Bear in mind that there isn’t even enough work there for me to make a living out of - I shore it up with writing books, doing consultancy and the like - so I’m not even sure there is a career as such. If it wasn’t for the fact my wife is a doctor who puts up with a whole tonne of s#*! for a living, I doubt I’d be speaking to you right now. This continues to be a hobby that’s got out of control for me. It’s also worth restating that the professional side is almost completely different to the hobby side, and I’m not sure I’d call it fun unless you like problem-solving under strict and thankless conditions. I guess the recommendation would to go the journalistic route, and treat this as a way of appreciating and discussing games. Make it part of something complementary, as you’re far more likely to enjoy it that way, and you might even afford to eat something. Finally, it’s been a pleasure to view your work, and I’d highly recommend to any of our community members that are reading this to go and check out www.deadendthrills.com, it’s truly beautiful!

We're back again with another "Staff Picks", the regular feature where we spotlight some of the amazing work that can be found on Nexus Mods. These mods may be old or new, popular or unknown, serious or silly - anything goes! Just remember that other mods on the site may do roughly the same thing, so keep your eyes peeled and understand that these are just our personal picks. That said, hopefully you'll find something you may not have seen before and who knows, maybe we'll even learn a little more about each other along the way. ;) BlindJudge Game: Far Cry 4 Mod: Far Cry 4 Open World Mod v1.10 Author: jvarnes I've always been a huge fan of the Far Cry series; I love the open worlds that they create and the feeling of freedom as you choose your way around the maps. So when I saw this mod allowing me to jump into the North Island at game start, I thought I would download it and give it a whirl. It certainly doesn't disappoint. The beauty of this mod is it does far more than the name suggests. It allows you to buy any weapon without having to go through the rigmarole of unlocking them. Access to the various skills and traits are available from the start, and it also skips the annoying intro videos so that you get into the game that much faster. Now I can go and explore right from the get go, and I love it. TerrorFox1234 Game: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Mod: Infinite Heaven Author: Tinmantex Just in case you didn't have enough reasons to keep playing and replaying this marvellous game, here's a few hundred more. Infinite Heaven adds several hundred configurable options to MGSV:TPP with the intent on extending gameplay. These settings include being able to adjust enemy behaviours, loadout options, invasion conditions, and hundreds more. If you love the MGS series as much as I do, and are looking for an excuse to play more TPP... let this be that excuse. The only thing to be cautious of, when using any gameplay changing mod for MGS, is making sure that you are offline while using this. Similar to GTAV, using mods while online may result in a ban from the MGS servers. I never really got into the whole MGS online thing so, for me, this is a perfect way to add plenty of replayability to the single player game. You can find a full YouTube playlist going over the wealth of Infinite Heaven options This was also suggested by our community member morbidslinky, they said "I would like to recommend tinmantex's Infinite Heaven for Metal Gear Solid V as a mod for your Staff Picks feature. Infinite Heaven is a staple for modding MGSV. The mod author has updated the mod regularly for the past year as he, and a small group of modders, unravel more information from the game's source code. The mod is nearing it's 200th update, and I want to show appreciation to tinmantex for all his effort." SirSalami Game: Skyrim Mod: Dine with Followers Author: wgstein Meals are always best when shared with company and for those of us about to celebrate Thanksgiving, this mod may be especially appropriate. Dine with followers allows you to, well, dine with your followers! This mod adds a lot of meal-related interaction and functionality to your companions, most of which is customizable via MCM. Mix in a few other appropriate mods (such as Luka Pumpkins by ElioraArin) and you'll have yourself a recipe for a good time... *rimshot* While there is some tentative SSE support, Share Your Meal by flexcreator is an alternative but similar mod, built specifically for SSE, for those who may be interested. Zaldiir(Guest submission) Game: Morrowind Mod: Rise of House Telvanni Author: bhl Ever since I first started getting lost in Morrowind I've been a fan of the Dunmer, especially Dunmer Sorcerers. So naturally, I went with House Telvanni when I played Morrowind. While the Telvanni questline is great in and of itself, Rise of House Telvanni just takes it to a whole new level. It basically expands everything Telvanni and makes it so much more interesting and intriguing. Together with 'Uvirith's Legacy' (which is unfortunately not available on Nexus Mods at this time), the entire Telvanni experience is elevated to a new level of awesomeness! Every week, we feature a few mods that have caught our staff's attention, as well as some that were submitted by you, the Nexus Mods community. If there is a mod you'd like to see on this list, please send the name of the mod along with a brief (less than 200 words) description of why you like it to [email protected] and we'll consider posting it. Thanks, and have fun modding!

This week we move to the critically acclaimed Dark Souls series and chat to a young modder who goes by the name Cavou. Fed up with the tiling of the textures in the vanilla game, he set out to replace each offending texture to give a more immersive experience. Hey Cavou, thanks for chatting to me today, it’s most appreciated. Jumping straight in, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself? I’m currently 21 years old, though I was 19 at the time of making The Texture Improvement Project. I got into modding when I got my first decent PC back when I was 12. I’ve lived in British Columbia, Canada my whole life. My biggest passions in life are video games, art, creativity and imagination. I have a younger brother who is two and a half years younger than me and is an avid gamer as well, although he doesn’t do nearly as much modding as I do. Do you have any hobbies outside of the gaming world? I enjoy writing, I’ve even been working on a novel for the last few years on and off. I’m working on a different creative project entirely at the moment though - it’s in RPG Maker and has been my main focus for the last few years. Other than that, I like reading and going on walks and occasionally watching movies, but video games are by far my biggest hobby. Before we get into the modding side of things, would you mind telling us all a little bit about your gaming history? I first got into gaming because of my father, who bought a Nintendo 64 game console when I was less than a year old. He told me that I would watch him play games like Banjo-Kazooie, until around the age of 3, when I was finally able to play with his assistance. I got into the ‘Legend of Zelda’ series after I played ‘Ocarina of Time’ round my cousins house. He had been playing for a bit with me watching before handing me the controller while he was in the ‘Temple of Time’, I ended up wandering into ‘Destroyed Castle Town’ only to get so scared by the ReDeads there (when one attacked me) that I jumped off the couch and turned off the console. My cousin thought that it was so funny that he lent me the game, which he has let me keep to this day. I played various other games on my Nintendo 64 such as the Star Wars games - Shadows of the Empire and Rogue Squadron. My parents later got me a Gamecube and DS, and many years later a PC, PS3, Xbox 360, and 3DS. My brother and I earned and saved enough money to get a WiiU, PS4 and more recently an Xbox One. While I grew up loving Nintendo and still consider many of their old games to be masterpieces, I have recently been very disappointed in their games and their treatment of series such as Zelda and Metroid (among others). I have stuck with PC gaming for many years now as my primary gaming platform. If you had to try and choose a favourite game from throughout your gaming history, which does seem pretty vast, what would it be and why? My favourite game would probably be “The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask”. I played it when I was perhaps 5 or 6 years old and it was the first game I played without any assistance from my father, and with him only seldom watching. I was terrified by the dark, surreal atmosphere of the game and I played it over the course of years, slowly unravelling its mysteries and learning how to play all on my own, it was quite a journey. I had a young fascination with fear and the emotions it could evoke, I loved anything with a “spooky” atmosphere and at the time it was limited to tame Halloween episodes of kids TV shows. But, I remember vividly how I felt the first time in Majora’s Mask when the moon crashed into the world, that pure sense of dread as I watched the world get obliterated by the giant falling moon. After having been familiar with the mostly lighthearted world of Banjo-Kazooie, Majora’s Mask was a morbidly fascinating change of tone that helped me mature as a person from a very young age, it no doubt inspired my love of Dark Souls over a decade later. So if you had a love for Nintendo, you must have seen the release trailer for the Nintendo Switch, how do you feel about a console that attempts to be everything from a handheld to a fully fledged system? Is it enough to tempt you back to Nintendo? From my perspective, it looks like Nintendo is going to repeat all the mistakes of the Wii U with the Switch. The portable nature will hold back its potential performance as a current-gen console, and from all indications, the games will be very lacking, especially at launch. This is not helped by their needless hush-hush attitude on the Switch as if they see it as some amazing secret that will change the world, this will only amplify the problem people had with the WiiU of not understanding the function and intent of the console. The only confirmed launch titles for the switch are a Mario game and a port of Splatoon from the WiiU with arbitrary console-exclusive content that will result in a split in the player population. Reportedly “Zelda: Breath of the Wild” will not come out at launch, and there are no other known games coming to it. 3rd party support doesn’t mean a lot to me as I own every other console that is currently on the market and a powerful enough PC to run any game at nearly maximum settings at 60fps and above; in comparison, reportedly “Breath of the Wild” struggles to maintain 30fps on Wii U, and Nintendo stated there will be no difference between the WiiU and Switch versions - which doesn’t bode well as the Switch probably won’t be much more powerful than the WiiU, if at all, due to its portable nature. And besides, due to “Breath of the Wild’s” overly-large world with a focus on system-based gameplay, attacking enemy outposts and its unstructured sandbox gameplay instead of narrative, it is more like Far Cry than what I valued so much about Zelda in Majora’s Mask or Ocarina of Time, and interests me far less as a result. As for Mario, while I loved Mario games growing up, especially Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario 64 DS, the Mario and Luigi RPGs on the GBA and DS (especially Superstar Saga and Partners in Time), Paper Mario 64, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, and to a lesser extent Super Mario Galaxy, I haven’t had much interest or enjoyment in modern Mario games. I played and finished New Super Mario 3D Land and Paper Mario Sticker Star back in high school, I have played a bit of the New Super Mario Bros. U on the Wii U, and I also played a bit of Mario and Luigi Dream Team, only to find myself not liking really anything about any of those games. Mario platformers play it incredibly safe and come across as very sterile products without any real personality or creative spark. They're just platforms over bottomless pits with the same cycle of generic environments that try to be creative by changing small details to fit a very loose theme that doesn’t affect gameplay, and even playing New Super Mario Bros. U in co-op with my brother in multiple sessions to give the game a fair chance wasn’t enough for me to really enjoy it, and my brother agreed with my sentiment about the game. I really don’t expect Mario Switch to be any better in this regard. So, unless I hear truly good things about Nintendo’s games for the Switch, I likely won’t have any interest in playing what games they release. I do not want this to be the case, I want to find reasons to like Nintendo, but I simply cannot at this point. I also do not appreciate Nintendo’s heavy-handed approach to taking down Youtube videos with Nintendo footage or taking down fan projects, which simply compounds my issues with them. I hope something with them will change for the better, perhaps all the negative feedback snapping them out of their complacent stupor, but I won’t hold my breath. What first attracted you to begin modding? Did you have any previous experience? I first got into modding when I was around 12 or 13 after playing Half-Life 2 and Garry’s Mod for the first time. I loved the feeling of freedom and the seemingly endless possibilities that it gave you. I had always wondered if it was possible to add new things to the game since I never wanted any of my favourite games to end. I like to think that I’m a creative person and I always want to express myself, so I learnt how to install mods for Garry’s Mod - which I have to say resulted in various degrees of frustration whenever something conflicted, had missing textures or crashed my game. Crashes and conflicts were a lot more common and installations were very easy to mess up, especially for an inexperienced 13-year-old. I have so much gratitude for the existence of Nexus Mods and Nexus Mod Manager since it not only makes it more convenient for me and prevents me suffering those frustrations and easily-avoidable user errors, but also makes modding so much more accessible for a new generation of modders. I also got involved with a few mods for Half-Life 2 such as a horror mod “Black Flames” as a writer, and more recently a mod for Portal 2 “Combined Technologies” as a voice actor. Sadly, neither project saw completion, but such is the nature of modding and game development. So how did you actually gain the skills necessary to create mods? I mostly relied on the advice of other modders and Youtube tutorials while learning what I needed to do to make mods. I also had a friend who was familiar with Paint.net to give me some pointers. You’re known for your Dark Souls II texture mod - Texture Improvement Project which gives the game enhanced textures, how come you chose the Dark Souls series to mod? I immediately fell in love with the Dark Souls series. A high school friend recommended Dark Souls 1 to me and told me to install DSFix, which led me to discover the small but tight-knit Dark Souls modding community. A lot of other series such as Skyrim or Fallout have incredible modding communities - which I had plenty of experience with, I spent 733 hours in Fallout New Vegas, 170 hours in Fallout 3, and 448 hours in Skyrim - but the Dark Souls modding community looked like it could use some more contributors compared to the large amount of attention given to Bethesda RPG modding. When Dark Souls 2 came out I got hooked instantly and played it from day one on PC all through the DLC releases, so I was familiar enough to feel comfortable modding it. I ended up spending a total of 542 hours in Dark Souls 2, nearly 300 in Dark Souls 1, and many more hours in Demons’ Souls, Scholar of the First Sin, Bloodborne, and most recently Dark Souls 3. I think that is good enough evidence of how much the series means to me. You’re only 21 and created the Texture Improvement Project a few years ago, do you think modding is a good way for young people to get into game development? Yes, modding is a great way to get familiar with game development and learn how to dissect games, it helps you find out how they work internally with a first-hand experience. I am currently also working on an RPG Maker game which I will hopefully release on Steam, which I have been gradually working on since I was around 16 years old. When you created your mod, where did you gather your textures from? I modified the textures I extracted using GeDoSaTo by Durante, then modified them to eliminate the obvious tiling effect of the vanilla textures using Paint.net. As a result, I had to remove a lot of the high-contrast lines on them and other distinctive marks by “smudging” and blurring them. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it is all I could do given how the textures had been poorly applied to the environmental geometry within the game. Durante is very well known for his DSfix, it also assists with things like texture modding and resolution. Did you chat with Durante at all during the creation period of the Texture Enhancement Project? No, actually. I figured he’s probably a very busy guy, and I never found it necessary to ask him for help as I never really struggled with any aspect of my mod. To be honest, I never really needed any technical help after I received those few initial pointers from a friend of mine about the basics of using Paint.net, but a few different users of my mod did help me with certain parts of the project. It must have required a lot of planning to ensure that each texture is accounted for, how did you manage it? I kept a journal of each and every texture I found while playing that needed fixing, even in the DLC. The basic way I would work is play the game until I spot a texture that needed modifying, then exit the game near the texture’s location, open GeDoSaTo and then go back in the game so the loaded textures would be extracted. Then I just needed to fish out the textures with the tiling issue out of the folder of extracted textures (this could be quite a few if the texture was in a large area), modify it and install it in the folder for replaced textures. I would tweak it over and over by entering and exiting the game and making small incremental changes each time until I was more or less satisfied with what I had done. What would you say your go to suite of software is? GeDoSaTo and Paint.net were the only two programs I had to use, and both did a great job at allowing me to do what I wanted to do. Are there any Mod Authors that you look up to or who inspire you? EvilDeadAsh34 was a very devoted Dark Souls 2 modder who created plenty of mods, he stuck with the game until its community dissipated with the release of “Scholar of the First Sin”, this was tragically unmoddable and as a result the mods for Dark Souls 2 became irrelevant. Other modders for other games such as Puce Moose inspired me with his incredible quest mod for Fallout New Vegas, that mod has stuck with me in my memory to this day. How do you take criticism from users? Do you find it useful or frustrating? I find criticism very helpful, and I never mind helping people who have problems as long as they are mature about it - I like constructive criticism. Occasionally someone would have a crash which I’d be unable to replicate that they’d attribute to my mod, I would check them out, but they were never large-scale complaints and usually panned out to be down to something else. I’d also occasionally get comments saying that the original textures are better, which never bothered me since I only really made my mod for people like myself who were bothered by the repeating textures. After completing my mod, I even did a request from a mod user who wanted me to make icons match armour and weapons reskins in other mods, which I have happily helped with. I’m guessing that there aren't any real compatibility issues when you create textures? Mod compatibility isn’t really a problem with Dark Souls texture modding, since any texture replaced would just be overwritten if another mod tried to change the same thing, which I never saw happen even after using almost every mod available for Dark Souls 2. Finally, If you could offer any advice to our users that want to get into modding what would it be? The best advice I could give is to simply focus on something you feel passionately about, don’t rush yourself, but keep yourself motivated. Set your expectations low and don’t start with something too elaborate. A texture mod is a great place to start out because of how simple but effective it can be! Thank you for your time today Cavou, it’s been a pleasure talking to you.

Welcome to the new "Staff Picks", a new regular feature where we will spotlight some of the amazing work found on Nexus Mods. These mods may be old or new, popular or unknown, serious or silly... anything goes! Hopefully you'll find something you may not have seen before, and who knows, maybe we'll even learn a little about ourselves along the way. ;) BlindJudge’s pick: Game: Dying Light Mod: Timepiece Author: Impus I’ve always been into the whole ‘Zombie’ genre, right from the original Dawn of the Dead movie, so was beside myself when I saw the first for the game Dying Light - I mean, it was Dead Island, but GOOD. So when it was released I jumped on it like the undead craving brain and absolutely loved what I found. Luckily for me, the development team of Techland also opened the game up for modding and a slew of decent mods have been released. Timepiece is a small, but for me, quite essential mod that allows the player to look at their wristwatch when they are outside of a safe zone. This is essential as the zombie horde become faster, stronger and generally a lot harder to kill come darkness. Now I can keep track of time on the go and make sure I make it back to safety in time. SirSalami’s Pick: Game: Fallout 4 Mod: Remove Ugly Flat Trash Author: inawe Ever wonder why floors stay filthy even though NPCs are sweeping all of the time? Well someone did, and author inawe has started cleaning the streets quite literally with a clever little mod that removes most of the trash and clutter from a few commonly used floor textures in Fallout 4. This can result in a slightly more ‘lived-in’ feel for many of the places you visit in the wasteland, indoor and out. While some may say this creates a slightly less immersive experience, after what feels like a lifetime in the filthy wasteland, I think a little tidyness can definitely be appreciated. I’m a sucker for simple mods that make a noticeable impact on an entire game and this one is a great example. TerrorFox's Pick Game: The Witcher 3 Mod: HUD Positioning and Scaling Author: FPSRazR One of the first things I look at, with every single game I play, is the user interface (UI) and heads up display (HUD). It’s one of those things I think most people don’t think about too much, but can make such a huge difference in the way a game feels. As such, I always tend to look for HUD/UI mods first, as there is almost always something I think could be done better. Specifically, I tend to look for mods that let me customize my HUD by moving things around, resizing, hiding, and so on. Enter “HUD Positioning and Scaling”. This mod allows you to resize and reposition pretty much every HUD element. Simple as that. No more oversized and poorly positioned HUD encroaching on your screen space! I highly recommend combining this with Friendly HUD by wghost81 for the ultimate HUD tweaking experience. (Yeah I just snuck a second mod into my staff pick. What of it?) (Guest submission) DuskDwellers Pick Game: Skyrim Mod: Alternate Start - Live Another Life Author: Arthmoor This mod is great for a number of reasons - it's perfect for people who enjoy creating several characters and not having to sit and wait through all of the lengthy introduction sequence each time. It allows you to start in different and interesting locations, with a character who has a totally different background to the main game which in itself increases the game longevity hugely. But one of the best reasons for me, a Nexus Mod Manager developer, is that it has saved me countless hours in testing time as it throws me directly into the game - for that, I thank you Arthmoor! Every week, we feature a few mods that have caught our staff’s attention, as well as some that were submitted by you, the Nexus Mods community. If there is a mod you’d like to see on this list, send the name of the mod along with a brief (less than 200 words) description of why you like it to [email protected] and we’ll consider posting it up. Thanks, and have fun modding!

A team of like-minded modders, coders and creative individuals, an idea, and a strong desire to deliver a story they are passionate about to the gaming world. Oh, and of course, humanoid bears with swords, shields, and mystical totems! Witanlore: Dreamtime isn’t just a game; it's a love affair. Following two failed Kickstarter attempts for their game “Unwritten: Echoes of Twilight,” the Druid Gameworlds team scaled back their idea to concentrate on just one race - the Ursines. Now, following a successful Kickstarter campaign, lots of time, effort and dedication, the team is ready to release their first demo. I got to spend some time with them today to have a chat about the game and how they have found the development process. Cole MacLean - Senior Project Manager Herb Ospina - Lead Level Designer Matt Bone - Quest Designer Hi guys and welcome to Nexus Mods, would you mind giving us a quick rundown of who you are and what your role is within Druid Gameworks? Herb: Hi there, I’m Herb Ospina, lead level Designer on Witanlore - I graduated from Full Sail with a Bachelors degree in game Design. Matt: Hi, I’m Matt Bone, Writer & Game Designer. Cole: Hi, I’m Cole MacLean, Lead Game Designer and Project Manager. I do what needs doing :) Herb: He is indeed, “the man of many hats.” Where did the name Druid Gameworks come from and how did you all meet / get involved in the project? Cole: The name Druid Gameworks was sort of dual meaning, most of us have Celtic heritage and it was also a way of tipping our hats to the idea of old school game development. The company started out from my Oblivion Expansion project Reclaiming Sancre Tor, it was on that project that I met co-founder James Ford and several of our current team mates. The folks who have been on the project the longest were all modders first, people whom we met through sites such as Nexus Mods. After they were on board we recruited and filled seats from freelance and student pools. So if you were modders first, I presume you have been on the Nexus a while? Cole: I think all of us have been Nexus community members a long time, I think we first met up on the official Bethsoft forums but Nexus is the go to for good mod hosting so many of our handles are probably familiar to Nexus users. I’m Darkryder, we also have Zaldir, Arthmoor, jjc17, IonistheBear or Ionis, lilith, joshezzell and WindmillTilter. Between us we have created a number of mods that I hope are enjoyed by the community. Your first game Witanlore: Dreamtime has just been successfully Kickstarted, making twice what you were after. Did you expect such a positive response? Cole: I would say no, that was unexpected. We knew we had put together a strong campaign and the game Witanlore: Dreamtime resonates with a lot of folks, but I don't think we considered it would do that well so kept the goal fairly short. Can you give us the premise of the game? The premise is that Witanlore is a story-based RPG set on an island populated by humanoid bear tribes. We take a lot of influence from Native American tribes in their design, whilst throwing in a lot of our own flavour. As for the main story, you start the game as an ursine about to undergo the Chut'que, or Dreaming - a coming of age ritual, in which you travel to the Dreamworld to meet the Great Mother, goddess of the ursine, to learn of your destiny. Without giving away too much, I'll say that like all good stories, it doesn't go quite as expected. Matt, the studio has obviously written all their own backstory and lore for the game, what were your inspirations and how have you found the process? Matt: Fortunately for me, a lot of the world lore and the story specific to this game was in place when I came on board. But I have helped to flesh a lot out since, it made things a lot easier when it came to writing the dialogue and quests. I noticed in the demo that there are a lot of books scattered around, many of which are readable, is there a team in place to write these? Matt: I've written all the books currently in episode 1, though we definitely want to add a lot more, so will likely enlist a few others to contribute. And yes, that means I'm to blame for "Urg's poetry". Herb: I love Urgs experiments. Matt: He loves a bit of science! Herb, the game world already seems large and very open. How big will the game be upon initial release and how are you going to deal with expansion through each episode? Herb: The game world is roughly 11 x 10km, episode 1 will be a fraction of that. Each episode unlocks a portion of the continent and lets you progress through the story. Off hand their are roughly 3 or 4 large dungeons/caves to explore in EP1 along with other smaller adventuring areas. There are also points of interest to find. With the game being episodic, a lot of areas will be bounded off until we release that episode. However, once all episodes are complete and the full saga released the game will be fully open world, to explore as you please. How are you stopping the player from venturing into the next part of the game world, will it be invisible walls or is there some kind of blockage in the way (fallen tree etc.)? We’re using invisible walls, though the fallen tree thing is a good idea for some smaller areas in the future ;) I have read that the game will feature a lot of chaos theory/butterfly effect moments, make one choice and it affects something down the line. I played the demo earlier and in a conversation with Tuala (the female Ursine you meet at the beginning), I noticed questions leading in many different directions. Is this hard to plan out? I can imagine that the game is like a tree with a huge amount of branches the player can take! Matt: Hah, it can be a nightmare when it comes to writing dialogue and quest outcomes. You end up with a final dialogue tree that has to account for a hell of a lot of variations. But I think it's incredibly important to do that. It makes the player truly feel like their decisions and dialogue responses matter. Also, the voice actors hate me. The female Ursine in the demo (Tuala) is actually a good example. There's some seemingly incidental responses in that dialogue that can lead to some big changes in the quest - and the choices she makes as a character - down the line. Am I right in saying that your character could end up being ‘Evil’? Cole: Yes that's definitely possible What made you choose bears to be the basis of your Ursine race? Cole: Dreamtime started as an alt start questline from our original Witanlore title Echoes of Twilight. the bear race, Ursines, were one of 6 playable races for that game. We felt their culture was unique and diverse enough to be central to a standalone spin off. I love the character design sketches that have adorned your Steam Greenlight page, they look incredible. I noticed that there seems to be a number of different classes - will these be available for the player to choose at the beginning or do they become these through the choices they make? Cole: The player can choose their character's class at the start of a new game, they can also piece together a custom class if they want specific traits. Each class comes with a totem animal assigned, so if they want to pick what their totem is they will need to choose custom class and make the choices they prefer. The totems look a really nice feature, do they act like a companion? How are they activated and utilized by the player? Cole: Totems come in several incarnations that they cycle through as the player levels them up. At first they are a charm on the player's HUD, this represents the internal connection of player and totem. The charm glows when hidden items are near, when enemies are tracking them, or when a quest is close by. Reacting to these cues, for example talking to a quest giver the totem alerted you to, levels up the totem. When the totem levels up enough, and the player unlocks their connection to magic, the totem can manifest an ethereal spirit form. This spirit can be summoned but is somewhat limited. The final incarnation of the totem is a physical spirit guide, this works more like a companion traveling beside the player, following and dismissing at the player's whim. Magic doesn't unlock until Episode 2 by design so in Episode 1, the totem animals are charm forms. There are actually 14 totems in total and each has different buffs and bonuses. Wolf, Fox, Bison, Horse, Otter, Dragon, Hawk, Owl, Snake, Rabbit, Snowcat, Wolverine, Rat, and Bear. You’ve said that most of you have come from a modders background, would you say any of your inspiration has come from mods you’ve used or worked on in the past? Cole: I would say our time in the modding community gave us a good frame of what sort of extras gamers would like to see as part of the core game, like survival needs [hunger, thirst, etc] or role playing elements for example. So have there been any games that provided you or your team with inspiration? Cole: We definitely took some of our inspiration from the Elder Scrolls series, we are big fans of those games since at least Daggerfall, as well as games like Dragon Age Origins and the Witcher series. That said though, our approach has always been "This is what they did, what can we do differently or improve on?" Matt: Inspiration-wise for me, it's pretty much any good, story-driven RPG. Witcher 3 is an obvious one, as it really represents a high point of the genre. Though on a more indie scale, games like 80 Days show how far great writing can take you. Herb: I’ve been playing Elder Scrolls since Daggerfall and any other major RPG. My inspiration comes mostly from those games. I’ve always liked how Bethesda changes up the flow, in dungeons, to break up the linearity. You’re introducing something you’ve named the RP menu, can you tell us a little bit more about this nifty feature? Will it be expandable / modifiable in the future? Cole: The RP menu was my brain child and it actually almost didn't make the game because it was a really last minute addition. Basically, while playing other RPG games, it bothered me that I couldn’t sit down whenever I wanted. So I thought, what if we gave players the ability to call certain behaviors on the fly? It started with sitting anywhere, building a campfire, smoking a peace pipe, summoning companions. Working closely with programmer Filipe Tessaro we expanded the idea to include things like fishing, and building an actual tent, as well as adding buffs for performing these behaviors. There were other behaviors that didn’t make the cut so I think some intrepid modder could certainly build on the idea :D So the game is going to be moddable? Will you be providing tools? Cole: We're using Unreal Engine 4 for development and Epic has opened a pipeline to make moddable games possible. We'll be following their guidelines for sure. We also have a toolkit of our own that we'd like to finish developing and roll out for our modding communities to use specifically for our games. At the moment the toolkit is on hold but once the core programming is finished for Dreamtime the programmers plan to revisit the toolkit and get it on its feet for distribution. That’s brilliant to hear, I’m sure the community at Nexus Mods are going to have a field day expanding and modding the game! You must have come from working with the Creation Kit, how did you find the move over to the Unreal Engine? Cole: There really isn’t a comparison between the CK and UE4, it's just a different animal. We spent the first 5-6 months learning the engine before any significant development even started and to date, there's still something new to learn with every engine update. Herb: I personally jumped into the creation kit for about 5 minutes during my time in school for research purposes. Both engines are so different that if you work with one it’s hard to pick up the other, The workflow is so different. In terms of the entire process, what would you say have been the highs and the lows? Did the Steam Greenlight process go smoothly? Cole: There are definitely highs around every milestone, like meeting our kickstarter goal, greenlighting, showcasing the first time, etc It's been really good for the team to hit those marks along the way. We had a solid plan going into greenlight but I would say it went better than we could have imagined. We were in the top 100 in the first 3 days and had just a really positive and gracious reception from the Steam community. Matt: Although I wasn't there, showing the game for the first time at Orlando IX recently was a definite high for me, as I think it was for a lot of the developers. Seeing the photos and getting constant feedback from our team there was a blast, and made our game suddenly feel a whole lot more real. I remember Herb telling me how a guy was poring over every single dialogue choice, which definitely made my day (and reassured me that there were other people who played rpgs like I do...) Cole: That's not to say we haven't had lows, our team has hit all of the usual hurdles, budget gaps, employee turnover, we've been ripped off a couple times where freelancers required upfront payments and walked or didn’t complete the task as contracted. A lot of people will try to prey on an indie startup, we've learned some hard lessons about vetting the people we hire or work with and about sticking together to move forward after any set back. Herb: Indie development is hard. You have so many different people from so many different places working on their own thing. Sometimes people get crazy because of deadlines. With everyone working remotely it can be hard to interpret the tone of what people are trying to communicate with you. The biggest high for me was releasing the demo. It really hit home with me that it was finally out and available to EVERYONE to finally play. I left my day job to work on this full time, needless to say i got a lot of skeptical looks about it. But it's finally paying off. You’ve been updating Steam Greenlight with your progress. I noticed that the Character models were proving difficult to nail down and your Kickstarter funding is going largely towards character artists. How problematic were these and do you have any other characters (such as enemies) that have had similar issues? Characters have been a huge challenge, we've been through 8 or 9 different artists now, and several thousand dollars from concept art to game version and the player characters still aren't finished. When we enter Early Access only the Blackclaw tribe will be playable because we actually have to sell units to raise funds to finish the other tribes. Our in house artists have done a great job picking up the mantle for things like creatures which saved us from facing the same challenge with our fauna, but the enemy wolven model is still in the pipeline as well. Fortunately, the wolven don't appear until Episode 2 so we have some leeway there. So you need some money thrown at you to assist in the process. Can you give us details of your pricing structure, where we can pre-order/support the game and what your release schedule is please? Cole: In Early Access, each episode will retail for $6.99 if purchased as they release. Alternately, Players will be able to purchase the full game for $34.95 which includes all 5 episodes as they release PLUS all future DLCs FREE for buying the full game early! After Early Access, when all the Episodes are complete the full game will retail for $39.99 with DLCs priced separately based on their content. You won’t ever see a Druid Gameworks game priced at $60, ever. Ha ha ha, can I quote you on that!?! :D Yes, yes you can LOL :D :D. I just think that price model industry wide is a little steep. Fair pricing and quality content are two of our major business models. So where can people go to follow the development of Witanlore: Dreamtime? The best place to follow development is on our Steam Greenlight page. We also have an FAQ for some of the most common questions folks may have. I also tweet quite a bit if folks want to most up to date news, following our twitter feed is the way to go. We have a great article coming out on greenlight soon detailing Early Access and specific goals and release dates so that's one to watch for. Awesome, thank you ever so much for your time, it’s been great chatting with you all. Is there anything you would like to say to the Nexus community before we sign off? Cole: As modders the Nexus community was always behind us giving us support, feedback, cheers, etc. We need them now more than ever as there are a lot of naysayers who think modders just can't make games. We aim to show them what modders can do :D Matt: Also, keep making backpack mods. Our composer is weirdly obsessed by them… Cole: Haha quite. Herb: ROFL Thank you to all you guys for giving us your time tonight, it’s been hugely appreciated and we wish you all the success with the game. Herb: Thanks Paul! Matt: Thanks Paul! Cole: Thank you for chatting with us, it was fun! :D If you missed the link earlier, you can now try out the demo of the game! So there you have it, hope you enjoyed the second of our Sunday Discussions. We have plenty more lined up for you with mod authors, respected people in the industry and much, much more. If you’ve enjoyed it, please feel free to social media the heck out of us. We’re now on Twitter and Facebook!

As hard as it may be to fathom, before I began working for Nexus Mods, I had never really tried to "mod" anything. I mean, the only form of "modding" I had ever done in my life was add a spoiler to my first car back in 1996; put a window into the side of my first, self-built computer; and maybe change a console game with one of the cheat cartridges that were available at the time. Modding just seemed irrelevant to me, like an unnecessary hassle; I already liked the game so why on earth would I go tinkering with it? I mean, I’d probably make it unstable, or surely it would BSOD, right? It was the equivalent to me of taking a Ferrari and sticking a massive turbocharger inside it: it may be fun, but was it needed? No, of course not. I was also worried: Was I going to be VAC banned for changing textures? Would people think I am cheating if I added a mod to allow me to carry more in my inventory? Would it detract from the game if I added a map with all the roads? The list of concerns I had seemed endless. So what has changed? To put it simply, I tried it... Robin told me to take a week or so to have a play around and see what happens. So I started with Skyrim, the most popular game on the Nexus Mods website with over 1 billion downloads and counting. It seemed like a relatively good place to start; mods were readily available and highly tested by our community, so I loaded it up. I played the vanilla game for some hours, taking in the standard game vistas, the armours, weapons, NPCs, weather, and the like. Skyrim is an incredible game, one you can get lost in as the hours pass by like they're minutes. One moment it's 5 p.m.; the next thing you realise, you've hit 1 in the morning! Your character has many active quests, each like an episode of 'The Walking Dead', and you just need to see it through to the end before you can tear yourself away. I was enjoying the game... That's a given! However, I had to take the plunge; my job was now on a modding website, the biggest on the internet no less, so the pressure was mounting. To begin with, I went through the list of mods, which is a daunting task in itself as we're currently closing fast on 50,000 mod files. I explored the list of most downloaded mods and had a look to find those that were immediately going to give me something different, something I would notice, and something I would like. In fact, the first mod that I ever downloaded was SkyUI, which is by far the most popular mod file we have on Nexus Mods. This mod has been downloaded over 13 million times, that’s more than the entire population of Greece! That is a crazy figure that indicates how good the mod truly is. SkyUI is designed to change the UI (User Interface) of Skyrim in a huge way; it replaces every menu within the game with a far more productive and informative version. Need to know how much damage your mace swings for? Just open the menu. It brings in so many useful tweaks; it makes you wonder why the developers did not create it this way in the first place. Now, here is where I had my first RTFM (Read The f*#@ing Manual) moment! I installed SkyUI using Nexus Mod Manager (NMM). It seemed easy enough; you just click 'Download (NMM),' and the next moment, NMM opens, and the mod file is automatically added to your list of available mods. Then, you activate it directly from within the application. Easy! (That is of course until Skyrim Special Edition gets released and we get a huge influx of people, so we have to turn off NMM so the sites don’t go down ;)) After activating the mod, I opened Skyrim and went about my merry way; but where was this amazing new UI that I was expecting? Everything still looked identical! I opened up a browser and navigated rather solemnly to the mod page and read through the description. It seems I had missed one ever so minor part that was necessary to get SkyUI working correctly: I had not installed SKSE (Skyrim Script Extender). SKSE is a mod that isn't available directly on Nexus Mods, so I had to download it manually from their website. To put it shortly, SKSE does exactly what it says on the tin, it expands the scripting language for Skyrim to allow for bigger and more robust mods. The memory allocation patch that it includes also allows you to add more mods to the game without it crashing to desktop, I however, just wanted to use SkyUI. This time, I ran the game and pressed Tab – you could say that I was pleased when I was immediately presented with the updated menu system that I had been expecting the first time. I continued my game for another hour or two before stopping to think about what had just happened. Now I don't know about you, but have you ever thought about how much time that singular mod has saved you while you have played the game? Before, I would have to open up my inventory and then click to select Armour, Magic, Books, etc., and then run my cursor down the list to find their information. Now, all I had to do was open the menu, look straight at a table of items, and all the stats were immediately available. I could even sort by any of their values if I wanted. It was just a pleasure to use. SkyUI single-handedly changed my view of modding. Now, that may come across as a bold statement, but I'm pretty sure that most of the people who have read this far, and have Skyrim themselves (the original, not the Special Edition), will have SkyUI installed. Now, I digress, but the impact of the mod was made clear to me the other day when the Skyrim Special Edition was launched. I was looking forward to checking out the new visuals and improvements that Bethesda had made to the already excellent game. After pre-loading and waiting for the game to unlock, I sat looking at the screen wondering what mods I was going to install first. Working for the site, I knew that the interest was high, and we would soon get an influx of mods that I could choose from. Then it opened, and I quickly began the game and sat through that same cart journey toward Helgen, after which I had to configure my character (something I take my time over) and go into the actual gameplay. The dragon descended and away I went. I decided to follow Ralof and made my way through Helgen, collecting junk, choosing the sword over magic and following the path, only to emerge on the other side a little bit sad. Yes, the game was still fun; yes, it still drew me in, but the standard UI on the menu system was just terrible, and I was already missing the look and feel of SkyUI. So if this was just one mod, what could I do if I began to find ones that were going to prove helpful and stack them together? I must have spent a good few hours looking through the mods for Skyrim on Nexus Mods; I admit that I did it the 'easy' way and sorted through a list of 'Most downloaded' before going through each one to discover what it was offering. I believe that in the first few days of modding, I had downloaded, installed and activated around 50 mods. It was exhilarating to add new features to the game, jump into my character, and see what new items, tasks, quests, abodes and spells were available to me. The mini-games that I found tedious and (in my eyes) took away from the main game I no longer had to worry about. Lockpicking no longer deducted from my gaming experience as I installed 'KenMOD - Lockpick Pro - Cheat'. Concentrating on the quests now became the priority and it became clear that these mods had enhanced the game considerably based on my own personal tastes. With a choice of 50,000 files on Nexus Mods for Skyrim alone, I needed to think about how I wanted my game to 'feel', so I began plotting. I wanted to find mods that were going to enhance the sound and the visuals. I wanted a few more abodes in which my character could relax. Also, as the standard map in the game is 'adequate' but not great, I thought that maybe I should go for a different map. The list began to grow, and so did my frustration with the website. Nexus Mods is a vast repository; it hosts over 400,000 mod files and even more image files, but can you find anything on it? Yes, but barely. The search was only just functional and didn't allow many filters or arguments at all. Something was definitely going to have to be done to rectify that in the redesign! Over the period of around a week, I must have installed around 75 mods into Skyrim. It most certainly wasn't smooth sailing, I had numerous crashes to desktop, problems getting mods installed, trouble removing ones I no longer wanted and much, much more. But through tools such as LOOT (Load Order Optimisation Tool), sites such as http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/wiki/beginners_guide and the Nexus Mods Wiki, combined with lots of perseverance, I have now ended up with a build that suits me down to the ground. Now, following the release of Skyrim Special Edition I have to go through the entire process again. But you know what? That's part of the fun! I've based this article on Skyrim; it was the logical stepping-in point for me due to it being the most prolific game on Nexus Mods. But since then, I have had the enjoyment of creating a new experience within Fallout 4 ('Lowered Weapons' and 'Full dialogue interface' are two mods I now can't live without), adding different vault suits, changing the UI and allowing someone else to accompany Dogmeat and me on our travels. I've tweaked some of our lesser known and used games such as Dying Light, Starbound, Wolfenstein and Dark Souls to name but a few. Each little tweak here and there adds to the experience, allowing new possibilities and fixing some of the bugs that remain in games. The hardest part, for me, has been knowing when to stop and play the game. I get engrossed in the build. It becomes like a powerful drug and I find myself saying "just one more mod, then you can give it a play-through". The great thing I have found with modding is that it is all down to personal preference; there is no wrong or right way to mod your game. I mean, you can have your files in the incorrect load order or can put two incompatible mods together, which would need to be rectified before your game will work, but what you want to install is entirely up to you and your overall aim. The community that we have here at Nexus Mods (I know, I drum on about it a lot) truly is an excellent source of knowledge, one which I relied on a lot when I was first trying to get things working. I often found myself scouring the forums, trying to find a solution to some problem I had come up against, and more often than not, I would find the solution. I’ve found everyone I have spoken too to be exceptionally receptive, assisting me in all manner of queries and never begrudging my seemingly benign questions. Our community is a resource, one that each of us can tap into no matter how far along the modding journey we are. Over the coming months, Dave (SirSalami) and I will be presenting an 'Introduction to Modding' series that will concentrate on a particular game and show how we have modified it to meet our needs. We'll most likely start with vanilla Skyrim (Standard Edition) and begin adding mods to it. As the weeks progress, we'll show you how we use tools to get everything working, how they make it easier for you to organise mods, and much more. We do hope you stick around and join us. If you would like to submit an article to us here at Nexus Mods, please feel free to get in touch with Paul (BlindJudge) at [email protected].

Hello and welcome to what is going to become a regular feature here on Nexus Mods; the Sunday Discussion. Over the coming weeks we hope to bring you many interviews with all manner of individuals. Ranging from people such as Jokerine, Elianora, Caliente (and a whole lot more), to special guests, developers and even some of the staff members. Join us on Twitter and Facebook if you want to be notified when they are released. We’re going to start this feature off with a real treat. Chesko! He is a very well regarded mod author whose submitted work includes the hugely successful Frostfall. Chesko has been on the site since 2006 (which means he was in the first 200,000 to sign up to Nexus Mods) and is still very active within the community. Highly regarded and incredibly skilled, he has a cracking portfolio which I implore you all to go and check out. Before we get into the modding side of things, would you mind telling us all a little bit about your gaming history? I’ve been playing games my whole life! I grew up with the Commodore 64, NES, and SNES. If you had to try and choose a favorite game, or at least the one you have the fondest memories of, what would it be and why? Super Metroid. The atmosphere, the music, the discovery, the gameplay are all just incredible. The world is so cohesive and almost everything has a reason for existing. It was expansive without being too big, challenging without being too hard, mysterious without being opaque. A very close second is Morrowind. I have very vivid memories of the first times I visited Balmora and Ald’ruhn. It was some of the most transportive experiences I’ve had in games. What first attracted you to begin modding? Did you have any previous experience? I used to be a DM for a few D&D groups throughout the years, and that creative outlet was something I was missing. When you get out of college [and] start working, making commitments to meet with friends regularly like that gets a lot harder. Being able to kind of act as a very remote DM, with my text messages in the corner of your screen telling you “You’re feeling very cold…”, that’s a lot of fun for me. It’s like I get to DM for tons of people at once. I didn’t have any previous relevant experience. My first mod was “I think it would be cool if, in Morrowind, you always started the game at night, in a thunderstorm.” So I found where the game sets the game’s time and weather during the opening quest and changed the script and presto, I had what I wanted. That opened me up to the possibilities. Like, “Oh, if I can do that, then I can do this, and this, and this...” Thus began my fall down the rabbit hole. In order to further your modding skills you must have to take the time out to learn, adapt and evolve, what would you say is the best resource to do this? For me the best resources have been: the base game itself, followed by other people’s mods, followed by the Creation Kit wiki. I’ve never been much for learning from videos but I know that’s some people’s preferred method. Really I’m just a tinkerer. I play with things and experiment until I get things working the way I want. Do you have anyone that you can turn to if you ever get stuck with a certain aspect of a mod? I posted a lot in the Bethesda mod author forums quite a bit in my earlier modding days. Now, I usually don’t ever get that stuck. But if I did, I know I could ask the forums, or the /r/skyrimmods subreddit, or contact one of the other authors I’ve made friends with, and hopefully work things out. Do you check out the other mod authors to either compare or learn from? I’m very competitive. So, I do look at what’s out there and what they’ve done, especially when I’m about to create something in the same “space” as someone else. I’m usually never the first to release something in a category, but I’m known for executing really well. I look at what they’ve done, what they could have done better. What their users are asking for but they’re not delivering on. How I might offer my own unique spin on things. And sometimes I come across a mod and it blows me away; like, “How the heck did he do that?!?” Familiar Faces is the most recent example of that for me. So I eagerly take those mods apart just to see how they pulled some things off. That’s always fun. Are there any mod authors that you look up to or who inspire you? Absolutely. They’re the usual suspects. Arthmoor; Shlangster and Mardoxx; FadingSignal; Kryptopyr; Nikinoodles; Isoku; Expired. Do you work in a team of modders? If so, how do you divide the work and how do you communicate with one another? Nope; it’s just me. Sometimes I might need to request help from someone, like recently I really needed some help making some great new backpacks for Campfire, which FadingSignal was able to do an amazing job on. But usually when I request things like that it’s asynchronous to my other work, I try not to get blocked waiting on something. You created Frostfall which has been downloaded over 2 million times and played by over 800,000 people, do those numbers ever really sink in? It’s large enough that my brain can’t wrap around it. I’m humbled that I’ve (hopefully) improved the game experiences of so many. I was excited when Frostfall hit the Hot Files section and when it won File of the Month. Really though, the things I find the most rewarding are hearing people’s personal experiences with the mod, and how it’s created these completely new, organic moments they wouldn’t have had otherwise. And it’s like, “Awesome; I helped make that happen!” Did you expect the mod to become as popular as it did? No. Not at all. The whole thing was very surreal and it continues to be surreal. When I release something, it’s downloaded over a thousand times in a day. That’s over a thousand actual people. I try to sometimes imagine a room full of over a thousand people all playing with something I made and it just boggles my mind. Then that thought starts to terrify me so I try to tune it out and just focus on making something cool. It must require a lot of planning in order to produce a mod of that caliber, did you have everything written out in advance? How did you work out the stats that you were going to use? Frostfall has been very evolutionary and is a reflection of myself at different times over the last 5 years. The initial version had a simple goal and a very small scope; give the player hypothermia, make their equipment count for something, and give them camping equipment to combat it. I balanced it using a lot of spreadsheets so that I could see the entire system at the same time; things like “if I change the ambient temperature of this zone, how does that affect the player’s survivability?” Or, “What if their maximum exposure protection were increased by 10 points?” You can make one change and it has a cascading effect throughout the system. So, I use spreadsheets to see those changes to make sure things looked right “on paper” before I implement it. Really though, I find that it’s better to get things into people’s hands and listen to their feedback than it is to do a lot of up-front planning. You get something small working, you test it, you release it, and then you adjust it based on what people say they like or don’t like. With the release of Skyrim Special Edition you have begun to convert your mods for use with the updated architecture, how are you finding the process and what do you think of the re-release? The re-release has gone fairly smooth. The process of decoupling Frostfall and Campfire from SKSE started months ago, so that put me ahead of the curve when things were getting close to release. There’s been a lot of renewed excitement in Skyrim and mods, and that’s been reinvigorating. We’re still in a period of time dilation in terms of people’s expectations. It’s only been a week, but people are already very hungry for releases and bug fixes. Do you keep track of recently released mods? Do you ever look at them and think they would be a good fit towards your mods? I try to keep my ear to the ground. The Sleeping Bags mod came out recently, which was really cool, and that immediately started a dialogue between the author and I about how we could better fit things together. Thankfully they had already done a lot of the legwork themselves using the open APIs I publish for Campfire and Frostfall. Are you able to complete everything yourself or do you ever have to pass things off to other people? There are certain things I’ve had to have help with; mostly art (meshes, textures, etc). With things like Arissa, that required voice talent. Recently with Simply Knock I had to ask for a lot of help from Expired as that was my first SKSE mod, I couldn’t have done that without his help. Everything else (scripting / quests / anything in the Creation Kit), I try to do myself. It’s always funny when someone makes a comment to the tune of “Thanks for all the work the Frostfall team does!” In that particular case, there is no team… it’s just me! I always take that as a complement. How do you take criticism from users? Do you find it useful or frustrating? I have some of the best users on the Nexus. My mods wouldn’t be what they are now without their help. I greatly appreciate feedback as long as it’s actionable and helps me make a better mod. I try to stay in touch with my users as much as I can. Like Frostfall, your work tends to be quite elaborate, utilizing many aspects of the engine to add new layers of gameplay and immersion. Last Seed and Art of the Catch are shaping up to be more examples of this, adding new art, animation, sounds, and gameplay to Skyrim. What can we expect from these highly-anticipated mods? Well, I try not to set expectations too high, but my general attitude is “How would Bethesda do it?” Like, if they put real engineering effort behind a fishing system, what would it look like? And so I try to picture that and keep that vision in mind when I’m building these kinds of things. I often don’t have a comprehensive list of features, but I do know how I want you to feel. For Last Seed, I want you to feel clever as you try to keep yourself healthy even under the stress of being a hero. For Art of the Catch, I want you to feel like you’re playing a Zelda mini-game. So, now I need to figure out what features contribute to those feelings. Do you worry about mod compatibility when you develop? Absolutely. I try to step on as few other mods as possible when designing my mods. Like some other authors, I have a compatibility system that I use in most of my mods that does checks when you start the game and adjusts my mod accordingly. That said, it’s a balance; if you try to be compatible with everything, you can sometimes lose sight of what you were trying to accomplish in the first place. I try to be as compatible as possible without losing sight of my original vision. Recently I’ve started to care a lot more about providing interfaces (APIs, injected records) into my mods that other authors can leverage in order to create compatibility for their own mods and mine, without me having to be involved. That’s been very successful so far and there are several very creative things that have come out of that, like the Dig Site tents. If you could offer any advice to our users who want to get into modding what would it be? START SMALL. Your initial impulse might be to build a huge quest overhaul, or a brand new land mass, or something equally daunting. Once you get started, you might become very discouraged when you discover how difficult these things are to build and then just give up entirely. So find a very small part of what you want to do, do it well, and then expand from there and build on it. Try to learn as much as you can. Everything you create teaches you something. You don’t have to save the entire free world at once; make a small contribution to the community and let that motivate you to bigger things. Thanks ever so much for talking to us today. No problem at all. Thank you for having me here.

In response to post #43786625. #43787250, #43787275, #43788380, #43790465, #43818250 are all replies on the same post. I'm normally someone that is placid, calm and on the 'customer is always right' side of the line... But this post is so self-entitled that it riled me up a bit! Did you know this site is in the top 1000 on the internet? It is run by a skeleton staff of dedicated individuals, each of whom stay up throughout the launch to try their utmost in keeping the site up and running for you - despite pushing 15 Gbit of data (think of our bandwidth bill!) we managed it. Yet your comment is all about how you are circumventing a source of income we use to better the services - thank you, it's most appreciated! :(

In response to post #43548075. Thank you for the suggestions :) most appreciated.

In response to post #43547435. Thank you for the suggestions :)

In response to post #43547700. Thank you for the suggestions :)

In response to post #43547550. It's more the fact that we are very community orientated, this site is here for our users and we want to do right by them. Unlike larger sites that are run by their overseeing corporations, we are a tiny independent team who are here to build a site that you all enjoy to come to. We already have a number of features and interviews lined up, but with a community this big, we really want to produce content that is going to have the largest interest and asking for peoples opinion really isn't less productive - but actually the opposite.

We’re in the throes of the redesign at the moment and while I have left the actual development to our seasoned professionals, I have still been on the lookout for new content to fill it with. Like I mentioned in the redesign post of yesteryear, we are making the news and articles a bit more of a prominent feature. We’ve been in the process of collecting information, preparing interviews with prominent members of our vast and varied community and looking for ideas that we can follow up on for features. As the redesign doesn’t look like it is going to be completed within the next few months, we have decided to begin trialling these interviews and features to gauge what the reaction is from the important people of the site - you guys. We want to ensure that what we provide to you all is interesting and insightful. We’re not all mod creators, texture creators, screen-shot artists or audio engineers (amongst many other specialist roles) and I for one have found the conversations I have been having with them to be both enlightening and entertaining. I hope you all find that too. We will be trying to post an interview to the site every Monday beginning from the 6th November. Features will be following on the Thursdays and may be things such as tutorials, history, articles on developers etc. With this in mind, I am reaching out to our community to see what you would like to have featured on the site. Do you have a specific mod creator with whom you have great respect for and would like to hear from? Is there someone within the industry who you appreciate and would like to learn more about? The list of people is pretty endless due to the diversity and range of modding, but if you have ideas for people to interview then please let me know and I will do my best to add them to the growing list of people that I should try to get in contact with. We would also like to showcase some of the work of our community, so if you have an idea for a feature that you would like to potentially get out in front of our users then email me at [email protected] and I’ll let you know if it's something we would love to feature.

In response to post #43169335. What do you mean ;)

In response to post #42788680. That's a cracking comment, cheers... It's always nice to hear this kind of feedback, Robin is on holiday at the moment but am pretty sure he will be chuffed to read this. :D

http://i.imgur.com/4lMrjO3.jpg Robin: Alright, it’s eight o’clock and we’re English. So punctuality is important to us. So let’s get this show on the road. Paul: They’re on mute. Over to you? Robin: So the point of this AMA, ask me anything, is literally just to give you a forum to talk to me and I will try to answer your questions as best I can. Or as many of them as I can. It’s kind of just like a tester; we’re testing out various different features on the site. Trying to engage more with the community. Trying to get more stuff on the site that isn’t just automatically put on the site by people adding stuff themselves ala Facebook. And, so we’re just using me pretty much as a guinea pig for potential future interviews that we could do with other people within the community. So, with that said let’s get on to some questions. Who wants to give me some questions? Paul: Do you want to go with some… So the first one was from Thalassa. And she said with the games like Skyrim special edition and with the massive mods such as Enderal, do you see the new Nexus putting their own pages on that? So sections specifically for Enderal and sections specifically for Skyrim, the special edition. Robin: So, it’s a complicated matter. Same for Enderal as it is for the Skyrim, enhanced edition, or whatever they’re flipping calling it, that a lot of the mods for the current Skyrim mods on the site - 40,000 of them or so - are gonna work with the extended edition just like they do with Enderal, and some of them aren’t. And so it’s one of those things where I think we’re gonna have to play it by ear. And naturally Bethesda aren’t going to have to give us a heads up because of the unique way in which Bethesda handle their public relations which is, f*#@ing s#*&#33;. And…so…right now, ideally we’d like to just have it as a separate category. But if it turns out that more than ten percent of mods are not compatible – is that the right way around? I want ninety percent of the mods from original Skyrim to be compatible – so do the math. If it turns out that a lot of the mods basically aren’t compatible with the extended edition, then we will have to make a separate game for it. Having said that, it’s just playing it by ear, and we’ll just keep you posted the closer we get. But I think basically we know as much as you do on that one, because Bethesda…and yeah, we’ll keep you posted. Not that Thalassa is listening. Paul: It’s alright, I’ll type it all out. The next one was, is Nexus Mod Manager going to get a new UI? Robin: Yes, it is! And hopefully sooner rather than later. We’ve got a lot going on at the moment. Both as you know with the site redesign, and with Nexus mod managers as well, we’re…this is kind of like a transition year for us. Up until now a lot of our time – pretty much all our time was spent just trying to keep the sites running. Making it financially stable as well as physically stable. Getting the right server architecture in, content distribution network, the database cluster, and we finally got to the point now where we’re not being woken up at 3am at least fifty percent of the nights that we go to sleep. And that’s really awesome, but unfortunately what’s happened is that we have a lot of technical debt to pick up on. So up until now we’ve been jamming things in, trying to fix bugs willy nilly without really having any sort of order to it. And now we need to go back and reorganise things and the same thing’s happening with the Nexus Mod Manager. So we definitely are going to be giving the Nexus Mod Manager a face lift. We’ve got quite a lot of big news happening in that regard actually with Nexus Mod Manager, we’re just getting our bearings and we’re gonna, we’re gonna put up a big news post relatively soon. As soon as we got something to show for it. Next. Paul: Now you can pick some of the questions out as well that people are asking. How’s England? Robin: (deep sigh) Cloudy, wet, with the occasional bit of sunshine. We don’t have any hurricanes. We don’t have any big insects. We don’t have any big spiders. So all in all I’d say that we’re quid’s in. Which means we’re on a positive. Paul: Favourite lunch? Robin: Oh, dear Lord! Tuna Nicoise! Paul: Oh crikey days... Okay, where do you see the business in five years and what are your plans for expansion in five years? Thanks, Ben. authors note: Ben is a friend of ours from Computer Gaming events, LANS, Board Gaming etc. Robin: Thank you, Benjamin. Five years. That’s a long time. A lot of our focus at the moment is trying to diversify away from just Bethesda games. Not least because it makes sense for the continuation of the sites if we don’t put all our eggs in one basket, but also because – I think it’s clear to everyone – that Bethesda are an interesting company who maybe put their own interest above their own community which doesn’t always align with how I feel a business should be. So, we would very much like to push out into other areas. And I don’t just mean modding wise, but gaming related in lots of different areas. I’ve got plenty of plans. A few of them are in motion. A few of them aren’t, but none of them are really ready to talk about yet. So, yeah we’re aware of the situation we’re in. And plans are being made to at least try to alleviate some of the problems we have with being so Bethesda focused. Which isn’t really a focus that we have so much as the focus that’s been given to us by the community because - you know - Bethesda modding is extremely popular, So, yeah, we’re diversifying basically. Paul: Did you ever expect Nexus to get such a large community? Not just mod makers but all the users and the frequent forums and discord? Robin: No. No, not a chance – I mean, I started these sites when I was fourteen-years-old and it was literally a community website for Morrowind. We had a lot of information about the game before the game was released that was just available on the site. We had a cool little feature which was called the Seer counsel which was various “experts” within the community who were experts in a particular area whether it was stealth, or modding or magicians or anything like that who would answer questions on the forums if people needed questions answered. So it’s a lot more of a – just like a general forum and information site. And it was never expected to get this big. It used a YAB forum (yet another bulletin forum) and that was 2001 and it’s come a long way. And this, every year just requires learning new things to keep up with the massively changing landscape of the sites. So I definitely didn’t expect any of this, but it’s always a nice surprise. Paul: Have you thought about running any contests with prizes to draw in new users via social media? Robin: I have thought of that and I’ve always thought of going one further and seeing if we could monetise modding a little bit from our own funds. Like, say, increase the cost of premium membership by 12.5 percent and and we’ll put in 12.5 percent as well and give 25 percent of whatever people pay for premium each month towards mod authors. The inherent problem is that such a dodgy system – I say dodgy, it’s not dodgy, but it could be seen as dodgy- would attract the attention of Bethesda in a negative way. And I think the same would happen if we had a monthly competition, or bi-monthly, or biannual competition which had substantial prizes in it. So it is something I would be interested in doing, but we need to talk to Bethesda about it, and I hate to talk to Bethesda about these things because every time you ask them a question you’re opening up Pandora’s box; you don’t know what answer you’re going to get. So I have, but it’s a touchy subject. Paul: Since it’s an AMA – Have you ever tried hummus? Robin: (laughs) Yep, I like red pepper hummus the best! With pita bread. Paul: Okay, what is the financial state of Nexus? How are funds spent on upgrades, software updates, and site development? Is Nexus financially viable even if something unexpected were to happen to you? Robin: Ooh, that's a couple of questions. Financially stable? Absolutely. Yes, it is. It's taken awhile to get there, but thankfully with sites of this size now... I mean, what are we now? Let's double check. Alexa, which you have to take with a pinch of salt, says we’re the 818th most popular site on the internet. Which has a lot of reputation to go with it. So it enables me to get some good advertising deals now which even up to two years ago I couldn't get. So it's not a massive deal. As far as finances go, the way that the site, the company - I call it the company because it's run as a company - is financed is that a certain amount has to be reached before we’ll hire new staff. And that amount is what we’d need to be able to pay staff for an entire year before we even begin hiring them. Which is important to me because I'm not going to hire someone on who I can’t afford to hire for at least a year. As far as hardware goes, we’ve got a very good deal going on with the people over at Krystal Hosting, Krystal.co.uk. That's a company that I help set up when I was 15, 16. I subsequently sold my shares, but they’re still friends and Tom, who’s MrMason on the Nexus, is our head programmer now who came from Krystal. They know what they're doing. They're very good at giving me mates rates. So it's helped out alot with running the sites. There was an extra question there as well. I can't remember what was the third part of that... Paul: How much…how are funds spent on upgrades…It just says how are funds spent on upgrades, software updates and site development? Is Nexus viable if something were to happen to you? Robin: So the funds... it's kind of my job… one of my jobs is to try and notice where things are lacking on the sites and try and plug those holes. Over the past year we’ve hired three new staff. One of them was SirSalami. Who’s the community manager. That was really needed because up until then I was doing all of the community management and that wasn't much. And we really needed someone dedicated to that. And it's become clear in the year that he's been working that we actually need a second person for this job. So what we really need is an internal community manager. Someone who is good at handling the people we’ve already got on the site and an external community manager. Somebody who can be an ambassador for our site on the internet and the wider web. So that's the next hiring that we're going to be doing. The other two we got was Tom who I mentioned from Krystal. He’s head of programming on the website. The inherent problem we had was that…I stopped programming in 2011 when we first hired our first employee, which is AxelDominator. Since then he’s been smashing it out with code that reads like French to me and I don’t speak French. So I haven’t been touching the code. So we’ve now got three programmers on the website. We’ve got three programmers on the Nexus Mod Manager side. And people are coming to me asking me quite technical questions and wanting answers which – while I could give – requires me to do extensive research just to be able to keep up to point. And it made a lot more sense to hire on someone who could answer those questions in my stead very well. So that’s what we’ve done on the web development side. So basically, the way the funds are spent - to get back to the original point - is they’re spent as and when needed. And as I said the external community manager role is a role that we’re currently saving up for and as soon as we’ve got enough money for it we’ll, we’ll get them, and we’ll do it. I think that answers everything. Paul: There’s a question by Manga who I’m waiting for him to reiterate. But going on from that, what effect do YouTubers have on Nexus Mods? Robin: Let me log into our stats and I’ll let you know. Basically, not much. So I’ll just log in to the analytics and if you give me two minutes I’ll be able to answer that question accurately. Paul: I’m guessing with things like that as well, does Gopher and YouTubers who promote the Nexus bring some of their subscribers? Do you see a lot of things from that? Robin: Right. So according to our analytics - YouTube - links from YouTube, so let’s just go with links from YouTube to begin with. I know that’s not a proper mark on if they are good for us or not. They don’t even rank in our top fifty links in. So in terms of them sending traffic from linking in their description and what not they’re not in the top fifty. Bearing in mind that, funnily enough Loverslab is in the top twenty which is always quite funny. Reddit’s massive. Facebook’s massive. Skyrim and Skyrim gems and the STEP project, they’re massive, but YouTube – links from YouTube videos do not feature massively for us in terms of traffic. What they do do is obviously raise awareness and I imagine a lot of the people who are watching those videos probably don’t use the direct links, but in their own time will come to Nexus or do a Google search for those mods. So it’s not an accurate marker but in terms of our – what we can quantify YouTube isn’t massive for us. Paul: What is your favourite vehicle? Robin: What? For me to get from A to B? Paul: It just says what is your favourite vehicle? So interpret that as you wish. Robin: I like fighter jets, but if it’s a vehicle I’ll actually own that will be a car. I don’t like motorbikes at all because they’re just death wagons. I’ve lost a few friends to motorbikes so they can go f*#@ themselves. And, cars – cars are the way. http://i.imgur.com/OT0vjW2.jpg authors note: Maverick agrees Paul: Okay, where did the name Nexus come from? And what is your favourite food? Robin: Nexus came from a thesaurus. When I was trying to look up different words…thesaurus.com is a great website to use when you’re looking for a domain name or a name of a brand that explains what you want, but a bit differently. And Nexus – I knew that...I honestly knew what the word Nexus was, but it wasn’t until I saw it on the thesaurus site and thought, oh that works. It’s got an X in it as well, which Americans love. Anything with an x or a z…zed…zee…no, no, you guys are zed. Yep, so it had an X in it so Americans would love it, and it’s a little bit different. So that’s how I ended up with Nexus. Paul: Have you ever thought of funding the site through micro-payments, like the brave micropayment system or other methods? Brave looks to be a bitcoin micropayment system. Robin: Oh yeah, we’d like to accept bitcoin. We’d like to accept any financial way that you can pay, financially, that we can. Unfortunately, we’re quite limited in our eCommerce solution which is a simple package for our forum at the moment. It’s definitely, definitely on our list of things we need to change including forums, the registration process, the member database, and pretty much everything on the site needs to be updated, to be honest. But the eCommerce solution needs a massive overhaul. We’d love to be able to accept anything and everything that involves paying money. So, yeah that’s definitely on the cards. Paul: Okay, how far along are you guys on your redesign? When do you plan on deploying things out on the site? Do you guys plan on migrating – oh you just answered that – to use the IPB software anytime soon? Robin: The redesign is stumbling at the moment. Not because it’s difficult, so much is the fact that – one of the things I was talking about is the technical debt earlier. If you just joined us, to give you the short version, this year is a bit of a transition year for us where we are having to go back though our logic code and then update it. Make sure that it’s working properly. The sites were designed to be made by a single person and now we’ve got four or five people working on them. They need to be redesigned to accommodate more people which takes time. So it’s literally just a matter of time. We’re grinding through it. We obviously want to get this out as soon as flipping possible because our current design is obviously very dated and something that I’ve noticed personally from dealing with the No Man's Sky modding community is that we’re struggling to compete with other websites online simply because we’re using a dated look, even though these new sites are using WordPress skins which take ten minutes to set up, people would rather use a WordPress site than the Nexus if they’ve never been to Nexus just because it looks a bit dated. So the redesign is definitely foremost in our mind right now. But I can’t give you an actual time because I have no flipping idea. If I knew, I’d tell you. Paul: Okay, Mangas asked a question that I’m trying to get my head around. I’m not sure if you’ve seen it. Can you see it, Robin? Robin: Sorry, where? Paul: It’s 8:17, it’s, I’ll read it and you can... It’s will Nexus Mods control ads for revenue income? A game publisher will upload an ad or video to the Nexus, and the Nexus staff will approve that ad. Then when the site goes to download a mod they can watch or see an ad which can capture clicks and impressions. That way you make money and return stats to outside game publishers. You can sell that up to, like, 5k clicks, bundles, or impressions etc. etc. Robin: In short, no, because no one would use it. The advertising industry is abso-f*#@ing-lutely horrible. Absolutely horrible. It’s an evil that unfortunately I have to be involved with for the time being, but if I could get rid of it I flipping well would tomorrow because they are – it’s so backwards. Horrible to try to deal with, but if we had a manual advertising system then no one would use it. And if they did use it, it would be for pittance, and it wouldn’t fund the site. So unfortunately it’s a necessary evil, but if I can find any way to avoid that evil I will. Paul: What’s the best film you’ve seen this year and why is it Independence Day? Robin: I guess that was Ben! I assume that was Ben! That was an awful film! I absolutely hated that film. It was an insult to two hours of my life which I will never get back. What’s the best film I’ve watched this year? I really liked that Captain America film. It was absolutely brilliant. I did watch The Big Short earlier on in the year and really enjoyed that. Yeah, I’m going to just give you that. Robin: Actually, someone said Warcraft. I remember going into it thinking that it was going to be absolutely horrible. I came out thinking that it was really average. So if you think it’s going to be awful and it turns out to be average, then it’s good. Paul: I’m going to ask a question. Who’s your favourite film star? Robin: I don’t really have one. I honestly don’t. I love Brad Pitt films and if it has to be a woman I used to love Claire Forlani, but we never really see her anymore. So I don’t know, I honestly don’t know. http://i.imgur.com/Vvwse5y.jpg Paul: You said you were going to try and spread out into the games and not stay just on mods. Can you explain this a bit more? Robin: No. Paul: Will the old chat ever be fixed? Robin: No, it won’t because it uses really bad software from Invision Board who have decided that they probably don’t ever want to update it. So the old chat is the old chat, it’s going to stay the old chat and it won’t be updated unless they update it. Paul: Can the redesign be an option, or will we just have to accept it? Robin: You will accept it. We will be running it side by side for probably a couple of months. So you’ll be able to switch between the old and the new pretty much with one click. And we’re hoping that obviously people will transition over quickly and learn the new way; learn the new system and realise that it is absolutely a hell of a lot better, which it is. And as much as people are gonna say that it isn’t better I absolutely guarantee you it is and if you think it isn’t then you’re a little bit silly. But after those couple of months once we’re absolutely satisfied that the new design is working bug free the old design will be decommissioned. If you’re gonna ask why. Then the obvious reason is that maintaining two different forks of a web design is not efficient for a very small development team. And when we want to add new features we don’t want to be cramming it into the old site which is already ridiculously bloated. So that’s a few good reasons. Paul: Someone’s commented they never thought they’d hear the man in the suit drop the f-bomb. Robin: f*#@ity f*#@ f*#@ f*#@ c*%&#33;! Paul: What did you enjoy more then? Independence Day or Ghostbusters? And how do you rank the old ones? Robin: I didn’t watch Ghostbusters because I just knew I’d be upset. I really like the original Independence Day and I really like the original Ghostbusters. They’re classics of the time. They’re obviously not brilliant films, but what makes them brilliant is how corny they are. The new films are just horribly insulting. And that kind of fits into what we’re seeing in American cinema in the moment which is it’s two hours of non-stop explosions, action, no respite, no character development. Just non-stop action and it’s just an insult to my brain. Paul: Have you migrated to full devox architecture and with containerisation and micro services with a CDN download migration? I was hoping that it would be a signal that you are moving forward with a cloud based solution. Robin: I’m just reaching for my gun because that made me want to kill myself. I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about because this kind of, like, fits in well with that I was saying earlier about hiring on people that can hit a technical level that I lost about five years ago and haven’t ever found again because I’ve been too busy doing other sides of the business. I imagine if we asked Tom that he’d probably be able to give you a very good answer. But I actually have no clue what you said, so sorry I can’t help you. Paul: We’ll bring Tom into another one. Charmander, Squirtle, or Bulbasaur? Robin: Charmander, I reckon. Paul: What are some of your hobbies? Robin: Video games. Yep, video games are massive. Board games come – oh, I don’t actually know whether I prefer board games or video games. Obviously video games I can play every night whereas board games require I get friends over which isn’t hard, but you don’t normally get someone over every night to play board games. So board games and video games. I play a lot of board games. What else do I do Paul??? Do I do anything? http://i.imgur.com/XvyZuja.jpg Paul: Eat nice food? Robin: Yeah, I do eat out a lot. That’s true. I go to the cinema quite a bit although I don’t watch crap films. Yeah… Paul: It’s basically board games and video games. Robin: Yeah, it really is. Paul: What is the meaning of cheese? Robin: Cheddar. Paul: Okay, and if you had to choose wine or cheese. Robin: That is the world’s worst choice, because they go so well together. Don’t, this is upsetting me, I would probably…(deep sigh) ...but wine is my favourite drink as well...aah - I would pick cheese because I’m not a massive drinker. I’m not a casual drinker. Having said that, I did have a glass of wine with steak tonight, but that’s with steak. But I don’t drink that much, and I eat a lot of cheese so, yeah, I would keep cheese. Paul: What colour underpants are you wearing? Robin: Let’s check. Yeah I am wearing them today. Black. Paul: Is the site update CSS based instead of sprite sheet based? Robin: Yeah, we’re doing away with the image maps. They did my nut in something chronic, but they were so popular, say, about five or six years ago. So, yeah, CSS based, yeah, Paul, is it? Paul: Yeah, totally Paul: Nationality of South African. Thoughts? Robin: I don’t even know what that question is. Paul: Somebody is South African. Your thoughts on South Africans. Robin: (South African accent) Diplomatic immunity. Paul: Can they have a Halo channel on the Nexus page since Halo 5 is coming out on Windows 10 in just a couple of days? Robin: Yeah, but probably not. Halo Forge seems interesting should we say, but I think it’s going the same way as SnapMap for Doom. So it’s going to be hosted on its own servers. There isn’t going to be much room for playing around. But the Halo community’s absolutely mental. The modding that they managed to get out of that game when there were no tools available is exemplary. Just absolutely brilliant. I played Halo for the PC when it first came out. What was that – I was 18 at the time. So 12 years ago. And it was a brilliant game. Absolutely loved it. And I was absolutely staggered to find that people are still playing it now. Albeit heavily modded with their own web server browsers and stuff. But I would like to help out that community more if I can. Simply because they do such amazing work. The inherent problem is that a lot of the stuff they do isn’t necessarily legal. And that obviously puts us into hot water being such a big site. So, yeah, I would like to help and I will be looking into it, but there’s only so much I can do with this site. Paul: What do you think of Game of Thrones? Robin: I think it’s brilliant. I think it’s absolutely brilliant. I tried to read the books. I got about four books in and it just – it just went on and on and on and I - it’s one of only books that I ever stopped reading because I got bored. But the TV series I absolutely love. http://i.imgur.com/jdab6es.gif Paul: How do you keep yourself motivated? Robin: I think it helps working with people you actually like. It really helps, the fact that you can work from home once you get into the right sort of routine. I was the sort of guy when I was at university, or college, or high school, or secondary school that when it came to course work and things like that and when it came to revision for exams I can’t cram it. I need to do an hour on, an hour off. And that’s kind of how I work as well. I work for an hour or two and then I play a game for an hour or two. I work for an hour or two and then I play a game for an hour or two. Or I’d go out and do things. And that really works for me. A nine-to-five job – if I ever had to get a nine-to-five I might be screwed. But it’s a lot easier to motivate yourself when you enjoy what you do, when you can play a lot of video games, when you can talk to quite a lot of cool people, when you can work with some people you enjoy working with even if they can be dicks sometimes. And, yeah, motivation isn’t a problem for me. Paul: Okay, what do you feel are the key changes for an effective go-to market strategy for Nexus as it moves into a stronger competition with major corporations a ’la Bethesda? Robin: Can you – just tell me where that was so I can read it because I lost my head. Robin: Ah, I’ve got it, I’ve got it… Robin: What do you feel are the key changes… I feel like this is an essay question. What do you feel are the key changes for an effective go-to market strategy for Nexus? I don’t know what that is. I’m not going to lie, I did do a business study course and graduated, but I don’t know what that is. As it moves into stronger competition with major corporations, reasonably Bethesda.net? How I advertise and get my name out there? It’s a tough one, we’re obviously in a – as I’ve been saying on the forums, if the last generation – the last decade – was the decade of DLC, which is the decade where game developers decided to finally rinse players for all they’re worth and give up on some sort of – valuing their players and just rinsing them, then this generation is gonna be the generation of UGC which is what they’re calling it, which we all know as mods. UGC stands for User Generated Content. Sites like Facebook, Myspace before that, and even Nexus Mods to a very big degree have proven that if you provide people with the correct tools then the users of a product can increase the value of a product almost infinitely – indefinitely. And they are now going to be clamouring to monetise that. Which is really only natural because it’s a way for them to make money for doing very little in the grand scheme of things. They need to provide the tools. You guys do the rest. That obviously presents a big barrier for a site like Nexus Mods which one, can’t monetise legally and two, probably wouldn’t monetise even if it could. I mean, I would like to monetise it. I would like to help out Mod authors as much as possible because I definitely think that is right to do so. It absolutely is right to do so. But I probably wouldn’t do it on Nexus Mods so I probably would make another site for it and link it to the member database. But how is the Nexus gonna do it? I definitely have my ideas. It definitely involves diversifying. It definitely involves focusing more on the indie game scene. It focuses on promoting what is good about open modding as opposed to closed modding which is what Steam workshop is. And ideally it’s kind of what the role of our external community manager, which I was mentioning earlier, is going to be all about. About being an ambassador to the site on other boards to help us get the word out that Nexus Mods isn’t just for Bethesda games and it isn’t just for nude mods because at the end of the day only five percent of the mods on the site are adult content anyway. It isn’t just strict moderating cause it hasn’t been like that for five years now even though we’ve still got that reputation. So we’ve definitely got some hurdles to climb. We know what those hurdles are. We got some ideas about how we’re gonna do it. But we probably won’t share too much right now in this first chat. Next? Paul: Do you think the Bethesda game modding is so popular now because of the reused engine? Robin: Oh, absolutely! I think it really helps – I was looking at it the other day because someone was being a dick in the comments on another website so I wanted to look at the stats. And there were ten thousand mods out for Skyrim before they even released the tool set. Now there is no way we would have had ten thousand mods out for Skyrim unless people already knew how to mod the engine. And people cry out a lot for a new engine for the Bethesda games. They say they’re being lazy and so on and so forth, but it’s a, it’s done in quantity – if they were to redo a game with a new engine then who’s to say it wouldn’t end up being on IdTech6., or an engine which is a lot less moddable, or is only moddable in a way that – they much more directly control. If you think that they – they’ve been using a variation of the engine pretty much since Morrowind, if not Oblivion. Oblivion being ten years ago. Morrowind being fifteen years ago. They had absolutely no intention of monetising user made mods at the time nor do they have any intention of controlling it the way they’re trying to control it now with Bethesda.net. If they go and make a new engine now you can be damn sure that they’re going to be focusing a lot more on how they can control it. How they are gonna make sure that they direct mods in a certain way that suits them. And probably isn’t for the greater good of what the modding community is now, which is a lot more free and open. So it’s definitely a concern for me, and when people cry out for a new engine, I think it’s one of those cases where “be careful what you wish for”… Paul: Okay, what is your absolute favourite movie? Robin: I am an absolute sucker for Meet Joe Black. I absolutely love that film. I don’t know why. I think I like things that handle life and death very well. Good film. Paul: Okay, as consoles have come into play and competition from other sites, do you see more quality control of mods uploaded to the Nexus? Robin: No. No, not really. Simply because it’s not really our place to do quality control in that regard. Obviously we’ll do quality control when it comes to viruses, mods that we know break the game, etc. etc. but my issue with quality control, especially on a free mod hosting site as opposed to a paid modding site is everyone starts somewhere. And I’m pretty sure most mod authors have made some pretty s#*&#33; mods in their time and released them, or some mods that – when they look back they think “oh my God, that was pretty crappy” and if we start trying to raise the bar with modding and only release mods and help mods that are of a certain standard and quality then you are raising the barrier to entry where there shouldn’t be a barrier to entry. So it’s important that we are free, open, and willing to accept every sort of mod and not be dicks about it basically. Paul: What’s your favourite cartoon? Robin: Oh God, I haven’t watched cartoons in a long time. I loved the X-Men cartoon though. Ooh. Ulysses! That was a great cartoon. Paul: Not Archer? Robin: No, I’m not really into Archer. As much as people try to liken me to Archer all the time. I’m really not into it. Paul: If you’re one of the characters on the Red Dwarf, which one would you be? Robin: That was a little bit before my time, Red Dwarf. Because he’s the only one I can remember it would be Kryton. I’m pretty sure he was the robot with the weird hexagonal face. Paul: Yeah. favourite console before 2006 and your favourite game for that console. Robin: Obviously N64 and Golden Eye. http://i.imgur.com/6j30hHv.jpg Paul: What’s your absolute favourite and absolute least favourite board game? Robin: It’s got to be Game of Thrones, Paul. Paul and I play a lot of Game of Thrones when we meet up for board games with all of our friends and, it causes arguments. It’s brilliant because it lasts about three hours. We’re normally drunk by the end of it. So when it gets to turn ten and everyone turns over their pieces and we realize we made a massive cock up, and, yeah, good times are had. Worst board game? To be honest, I don’t play any s#*&#33; board games, but I’m not really a fan of Monopoly anymore, so let’s say Monopoly. Paul: Have you played table top D&D before and would you be interested in playing a live D&D session if someone offered? Robin: I’ve never played D&D. I’ve got a few friends that are playing D&D now, as well as friends that do it like the Star Wars RPG as well, and they seem like they’re having fun. Mainly the reason why I haven’t done it is because the people that do do it don’t live anywhere near me. And I’m not going to drive three hours to play Star Wars RPG with people. So I probably would do it. I’d give it a go. I’m not sure it would be my sort of thing, but I’d be willing – I’d be open to it. Paul: Okay, have you ever made any mods yourself? Robin: I did for Morrowind. I absolutely loved my “Boots of Unblinding Speed” because the “Boots of Blinding Speed” were a bit s#*&#33;. Let’s face it, because they made you blind. So, to be honest the problem with that was once I started making mods like that it was basically cheating and I’m the sort of guy that once you start cheating I can’t stop in a game. So if I use God mode to get round a particular puzzle – which I cannot be assed to go through because I hate puzzles in video games – it’s very hard for me to then turn off God mode again. So I have made mods. I try to stay clear of them because mods I make are the kind of quality life mods that I probably shouldn’t use. So I tried my hand at No Man’s Sky modding as well and that was ridiculous because I haven’t used a hex editor since I was about fifteen. So, yeah, I’m not massive on modding myself. I don’t really have much time for it and I’m a bit of a retard. Paul: Has anyone at any time appreciated in a personal message or email to you saying what a great job you and the Nexus team do? Robin: Thankfully we get quite a few of them and they outweigh the people calling me a c*%&#33;. So it’s kind of quids’ in really. Yeah – it is nice to get those sort of emails. It does happen quite regularly: private messages, support tickets, those sorts of things. And a lot of people also feel the need to send something nice whenever I respond to something in their support ticket when they realise I’m manning a support desk. So, yeah we do get that quite a lot and it’s very nice to get. Paul: When does Nexus Mod Manager support for No Man’s Sky come out? Robin: <laughs> Who wrote that? Paul: That was by Silent Mr. Dave. Robin: It might be Obsidian writing for him. So we’ve got a guy helping us along. He’s called ObsidianMinor. He’s doing a very good job. At the moment, we’ve got pretty much everything we wanted to put into it, but the modding is changing so quickly that – we keep wanting to add more things to it, basically. We’re getting a bit of feature creep, but we’re waiting on the ability to unpack and then repack files. Which someone else is working on so we’re kind of waiting on them at the moment. But it’s being worked on. It’s been done pretty well. I’m quite happy with where it’s going so yeah – yeah, we’ll be hopefully not too long now because I’d really like to get It out, as I’m sure Obsidian would and everyone else. Paul: Years ago you’ve talked of possibly making an adult Nexus for the questionable mods. Has anything changed? Robin: Yeah, I’m not gonna do that. I can’t remember what actually motivated me to want to do that. I think it was revolving around the Supporter image share. I was really not happy with what I was seeing in the image share on the site, which was basically just rule 34. It wasn’t nice. It wasn’t pretty and irrespective of whether we had an adult filter or not it was getting ridiculous. And I just didn’t want to host it. And I don’t mind it – I don’t mind if it’s a bit like with the mods. Five percent of the mods we have are adult content. And adult content doesn’t necessarily mean nudity. So I’m happy with the five percent ratio. That’s good, that’s fine, that’s actually a minority. But the image share was actually a majority of what I would call porn. And not very nice porn either. And I just wasn’t happy with it so I think that’s what sparked that conversation, but I’m now a lot more at peace with it so, no that won’t be happening anytime soon. Paul: Do you think the quality of users has declined over the years as modding has gotten more popular? Were they always entitled and toxic? Robin: Sorry mate, my mind went off into the wild. What was the question? Paul: Do you think the quality of users has declined over the years as modern – bare with me a sec. Do you think the quality of users has declined over the years as modding has gotten more popular, or were they always entitled and toxic? Robin: No, I don’t think the quality has deteriorated. I just think there’s a lot more people now. I think if we were to put it as, say, a percentage of people I think it’s the same percentage of people who cause the same amount of problems or lower the bar more than anything else. It’s just that when we first started with Morrowind there might have been fifty thousand people and now with Skyrim there’s five million people. So as far as percentages go there’s more people who are dicks, but that’s just because statically twenty-five percent of five million is a lot more than twenty-five percent of fifty thousand. Paul: What’s your favourite anime? Robin: Oh God, I haven’t watched an anime in years! What did I like back in the day? I absolutely loved all the flipping meccas. So, I loved Gundam Wing. I liked Rahxephon. I liked – I did watch Full Metal Alchemist, it wasn’t great. What was the other one? That was Full Metal or something or other? I can’t remember. The mecca ones I really liked. I wasn’t a massive fan of the really popular mecca which I can’t for the life of me remember now. Evangelion, that’s it. I kind of got a bit bored with anime once I got through my teenage years simply because the Japanese seem to have a fascination with having protagonists that are given extremely ridiculous powers they can save the world with, but they don’t want to use their powers. And that just really pisses me off because I can’t relate to it and if I had super powers I wouldn’t be pussy about it and that annoys me. So, Japanese anime just kind of pisses me off a little bit. Paul: Where do you see the site community in five years? I think you covered that briefly earlier, but Micalov just jumped on. Robin: Yeah, we did cover that earlier, pretty much. Basically, to give you the short version it involves diversifying quite a lot more out of Bethesda. Diversifying not just to different games, but also diversifying what we offer. So I don’t know what that’s going to entail just yet, but I have ideas. I’ve got lots of stuff in the pipeline which I’d really like to tell you, but if I do then it all comes out and this isn’t the right place to talk to you about it. So there are things that we’re working on, but I’m not going to talk about it right now. Paul: Do you like No Man’s Sky? Robin: No. I’ll give you a bit more on that actually. I kind of got ticked off because I wanted to just chill out and do some mining and on the very first planet I was on which was an acid planet which is always a f*#@ing s#*&#33; start. You know, you start mining something and within five seconds this bot comes along and starts shooting you. It’s not exactly the most chilled out environment for playing a game. So that kind of didn’t win it over for me in the first five minutes. And then to find out that you’ve been massively lied to, and it was a massive cash grab kind of plays into what really upsets me in the video game industry at the moment which is that – it’s just absolutely ridiculous. Game development companies have lost sight of the fact that players need to be entertained and don’t want to be lied to when looking for a particular thing which doesn’t seem to be fulfilled. So, yeah, No Man’s Sky upset me. Paul: I’ll go ask this one because this made me laugh. Marry, f*#@ and kill - DDProductions83, Hillary Clinton, or Trump. Robin: Right. I’m sorry, Darren, but I’m looking at this from a logical point. f*#@ Hillary because she’s a woman. Marry Trump because he’s got a lot of money and I could use him to really further my goals, you know, in life. And that will involve having to kill you. So, DDProductions83 with the candlestick in the library. Paul: What is your opinion of Tale of Two Wastelands? The banned mod that merges Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas? Robin: What a brilliant mod. What a shame we can’t host it, or couldn’t host it. I’m not sure if that’s true anymore actually. Yeah, I can’t remember there was two different mods that did that and one has been accepted now. I can’t remember which one it is. Paul: Will the Nexus Mod Manager ever support all the games on Nexus mods? Robin: Oh, I hope so. That really is an aim. That’s - you know, actually that’s a good answer for the five-year plan. We definitely want to be supporting as many games as possible. And we’re making changes to accommodate as many games as possible. I know that. And, yeah, we really want to make it to the point where when – you know – when we’ve got a site that’s got more than thirty mods for it we just put support in because hopefully it’s only going to take a day to add it anyway. So, yeah that’s definitely something. Paul: Are you familiar with Agile and Scrum? And do you manage your Employees and Company following any guiding principles? Robin: I’m assuming Agile and Scrum has something to do with coding. I remember you talking about Agile recently, Paul. Paul: Yeah, we use the Agile method. Robin: Okay, so we use Agile. I assume that’s because we like to be fast and on our feet and take one day at a time. I don’t know. Paul: It is. Robin: Good. I’m glad I’m really on the ball with this one. And, what was the second part? Paul: And do you manage your employees and company following any sort of principles? Robin: Yes. Yeah, the principal is treat them like they’re your friends and they get really upset. So treat them like s#*&#33; and you’re golden. No! Well, actually, Paul, you can answer that one. Paul: I love it, I met Robin and was best friend’s with him before I joined the Nexus and I just joined in basically because I said I didn’t like the look of the site and thought it looked s#*&#33;. And Robin said do something about it then. So he brought me on, and I’ve loved it so far. And hope I continue to do so. Robin: And how do you feel treated, Paul? Paul: Oh you’re an absolute arse but erm, very relaxed. You take every day as it comes and… Robin & Paul: (grumbled audio) Robin: You get a little bit of banter. Quite a lot of us, we had a good meeting about four months ago over at my house and lots of alcohol was had and board games were played. And it’s always nice to see the human side of the people you’re talking to via voice chat and text chat. And there’s some good banter. One of our Nexus Mod Manager programmers gets really upset because I never give him any positive encouragement. To be honest, it’s because he always says something’s going to take a week and it takes a month. So I don’t understand why someone needs positive reinforcement with something like that. But, hey, Fabio hates it. There’s another guy on the web development team, Tiziano, who always gets positive encouragement from me. So that fuels a nice bit of banter which I always like reading and fuelling myself. There isn’t really an ethos that goes behind it. I’m not a good leader. I’m not a leader at all, but I’m the boss so at the end of the day they just have to do what I tell them to do. So. Paul: Do you have any idea how old the youngest – how old the oldest Nexus users are? And what is the current average age? Robin: Off the top of my head, no. I can’t answer the youngest simply because if you’re younger than thirteen – which I’m sure we’ve got some people younger than thirteen – then you shouldn’t be on the site. And we do ban people if they’re under thirteen. So I can’t answer that one. But the old wise, I know we’ve got some seventy-year-olds, and I’m not sure about any older, but I’m sure statistically with 11.6 million members we’ve probably got an extremely diverse range with the eighteen to thirty-five being average. Paul: Okay, and if things were different with you and you never created the Nexus and any prior sites what do you believe your life would be like instead, i.e. what would your career be now? Robin: I’d probably still be doing the website hosting with Krystal. I was a partner in that company and I had a twenty-five percent stake, so I’d still be doing that. Krystal’s doing really well as well, so before Nexus Mods, well, at the same time as Nexus Mods I also ran a video game company that was offering free website hosting in exchange for putting advertising on their site. And that was getting something like ninety million page views a month and that was back in 2007; 2006 – 2007. So let’s just say I was doing more than okay before Nexus Mods took off and Nexus Mods isn’t the only business I have my fingers in. Yeah that didn’t come out right, but you know what I mean. Paul: Will the Nexus redesign be done before 2047? Robin: I hope so. Please let it end! Yes, it will be done before 2047. I just don’t know when. Paul: Do you enjoy watching rugby? Robin: I absolutely do! We have a premiership team in Exeter, which is where I live. I probably go and see four or five games a year at Exeter. I don’t really like Twickenham because it’s an absolute ass to get into and ass to get out of, but I do like going to watch rugby. I prefer the internationals, but I think it’s a superior sport to most other sports to be honest. Paul: What are your thoughts on open source and do you have any plans for Nexus Mod Manager or any of your other software sites be on open source? Robin: So Nexus Mod Manager is open source and has been from the very beginning. The mentality being that I personally think that mod authors should be more open with sharing their creations with other mod authors. And therefore it would be hypocritical to then create some software that facilitates modding which isn’t open source as well. So, in a way we kind of had to make it open source, not that we didn’t want to. Open source is brilliant. We wouldn’t make the website open source for two reasons. One, security. Two, it’s kind of a competition issue. But as far as Nexus Mod Manager being open source, abso-flippin-lutely and people have forked it and used it for their websites and we don’t mind at all. Paul: When is the IPO? Robin: Never because I like owning the company 100 percent. If I had to answer to someone else I probably wouldn’t be running the sites anymore. Paul: Okay, you only got three minutes’ left. We’re getting there. If you could make a game, what kind of game would it be? Robin: There’s two types of games. I absolutely love multi-player games. Single player games aren’t actually my forte. I know that might come as a shock to you considering the amount of single player games that we support on the site. But I play single player games for 50 hours to 100 hours and then I get bored and move on. Whereas multi-player games I think I’ve put about 300 hours into DOTA 2 and I’ll probably put about 300 – I’m sorry, 3,000 hours into DOTA 2 and probably a good 5,000 hours into the original DOTA. I’m playing Seven Days to Die with friends at the moment. Battlefield, I probably put a good 200 hours into each Battlefield iteration except Hardline since Battlefield II. So, multi-player game I’d like to make, and I’d also like to make a single player game which is completely open source, completely free, and completely open to modding and pay for it with a paid modding section. Paul: What is your usual brand of cologne? Robin: If I really have to wear it I’d rather wear Cerruti 1881, or I’ll wear, what’s that one which is like the flipping French sailor? Jean Paul Gaultier. Paul: <laughing> Sorry. What’s your favourite beverage? Robin: Wine. Red wine – red wine. It has to be a Malbec or a tempranillo. Paul: Favourite cricket team? Robin: Essex. Paul: Will you give someone a job? Robin: Depends what they do. Paul: Do you work out? Robin: No, I just eat well. Paul: Do you watch Gamegrumps? Robin: What’s that? Paul: I have no idea. Robin: No. Paul: Guess not. What time is it? We’ve got a few more questions. How tall are you? Robin: I’m 5’10” and three quarters. Paul: Rick and Morty, or Adventure Time? Robin: Neither because I just don’t watch cartoons anymore. I’m sorry. Paul: Favourite colour? Robin: Blue Paul: Coffee or iced coffee? Robin: Neither. I don’t do caffeine. Paul: Will you hire Darren for PR? Robin: No, because I want my company to do well. Paul: Will you explain the differences between biscuits and cookies? Robin: Biscuits will go – oh, hang on a minute. I can’t remember which way around it goes. Either biscuits go stale when left out and cookies go soggy. Or vice versa. Paul: Do you need glasses? Robin: No. I had my eyes tested only a week ago because I got a headache from being on the computer too much and they said I have perfect vision. Yay, yay! Paul: Do you have hair? Robin: Yes, I do. If you watch some of Darren’s “Get to Know your Mod Author” - monthly things - and I’m on them and you can have a look at me. Paul: Favourite Mod Author and why is it Gopher? Robin: Because he’s been good to me. He’s a nice guy. Paul: Favourite Mod Author and why is it Faded Signal. Robin: Because he is also a guest name model in the monthly chats and he seems a nice guy. Paul: Which way did you vote in Brexit? Robin: I voted Brexit because a bit of financial pain for what you think is right is the right thing to do. Paul: Do you believe in aliens? Robin: I do believe in aliens. I don’t believe they’re visiting our world, but I think statistically it’s a definite that they are out there somewhere. Paul: I’m just going to keep throwing these out there for a couple of seconds. Favourite mod show? Robin: Gophers Paul: What is love? Robin: Baby don’t hurt me! Paul: How did the universe start? Robin: Big Bang Paul: Chocolate or vanilla? Robin: Chocolate Paul: Are you building a game and what is it about? Robin: It involves rolling a ball around to try and complete a puzzle and get to the end of the map. We’re gonna sell it for about seven dollars. I don’t think it’s going to do very well, but at the end of the day what else am I gonna do? Paul: Monkey or a bear? Robin: A bear! Paul: Do you like Marmite Robin: Absolutely! I love Marmite. Paul: What was before the Big Bang? Robin: Another universe. Paul: And I think that will do. Robin: Yay. Paul: How’s your voice? Robin: Absolutely fine. I’ve just been monotone for an hour. Paul: Good job. Everyone’s saying good job. Well Terrorfox is and he’s chatting for everybody. Oh God! Why is Darude Sandstorm your favourite song? That’s from Tom. Robin: Because it’s so easy to dance to. Paul: There you go. Last one. I can’t wait for that to be your wedding song, Tom. Tom just had a baby and he’s going to ask Laura to marry him soon, I hope. Robin: Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard. Paul: And everyone on Nexus is invited to his weddings. Weddings, plural. Robin: To see the bastard! Bastard! Bastard! Paul: Can we stop talking because I’ve got to type this all up! Robin: No, let’s go for another hour. Paul: No, I’m getting the f*#@ off. I want to go to bed. I’m hungry as well. We’re having Nandos. Robin: Captain Monotone needs to talk more. Paul: Well you can talk to the people. I’m going to go now so I can go eat Nandos. Robin: I can’t keep track of – I can’t talk and read! Paul: Yes, you can. Everyone’s saying goodbye anyway. They said that Robin’s really boring and they’re gonna leave. Robin: I hate everyone. I hate them. Paul: They want twenty-three, they want twenty-three more hours of AMA. Robin: Oh, for charity. Paul: No. Robin: Yes. Robin: I understand that I talk extremely boringly, but I have no intention of starting a YouTube channel for this very reason. But I thank you for coming along. Hopefully I answered enough of your questions and I think – I think it was a success. So we might be doing this more often and maybe getting some more modders on to do AMA’s every now and again. I think that would be great. Thank you guys. Paul: Alright, let’s wrap this up. Yes, this is recorded, I think Dave’s recording it. I’m going to type it up and Dave’s actually going to post the recording, I believe. Good night everybody.

In response to post #42306390. Nothing will change in regards to users / subscriptions or memberships when we move to the new redesign. Simply changing the look and 'flow'. :D

This is the most derailed thread I think I have ever seen! :P So many different tangents, so many choices. Firstly, I just want to iterate that this AMA is not for questions like: - I was banned, why? - My account is locked, what is the reason? - Can you unban me please? But for pretty much anything else, I like the idea of finding out what Robin puts on his toast. How he likes his eggs in the morning (with a kiss?) and all that sort of stuff, obviously there will be a lot of mod related material as well.

http://i.imgur.com/4lMrjO3.jpg ----- Update: Here's the recording of the recent AMA (Ask me anything). Had a great time, thanks everyone! Hope to do it again soon! Stream: https://soundcloud.com/user-433087746 Download: https://forums.nexusmods.com/ama/nexus_mods_ama_robin_scott.mp3 ----- Recently we introduced Discord as our preferred community chat platform and it really seems to have taken off. We had a few hiccups and no doubt will have a few more, but we’re getting there with around 900-1000 users online at any one time. We’re currently looking at introducing various bots and roles within our little Discord world to make the moderation and joining a far more easy process - stay tuned. What I am excited about is that it has introduced an ability to talk direct, live and uncut to our community members! So what I thought was - what better way to take advantage of this than a few AMA’s and who better to start it all off other than Robin himself!? The way it will work is that there will be a voice channel setup that you will be able to join in order to listen to Robin answering questions, these questions will be posted by you guys into a dedicated #ama-questions text chat channel. Questions will likely be thrown into chat fast and furious, so it will be up to Robin to decide which one’s that he would like to answer. Dave (SirSalami) and I (BlindJudge) will also be in the channel to moderate and listen. I’m sure we’ll find it just as entertaining as you all. We have provisionally set the date for Tuesday the 6th September at - US Times 12:00 PDT 13:00 MDT 14:00 CDT 15:00 EDT UK Time 20:00 If you are unfamiliar with what an AMA is, it stands for “Ask Me Anything” and gives you the opportunity to speak direct to someone interesting. It is huge on Reddit and there have been some real classics, such as the AMA with Channing Tatum, Barack Obama and even the guy with two penises (nsfw of course). If you haven’t already checked out our Discord server, than please come and jump on and sign up. The only details you will need to provide are your Username and Email address, no other information is required.

In response to post #41548250. #41549805, #41554765 are all replies on the same post. We are going to be monitoring the chat and voice closely to begin with. We want communication to be free flowing but will obviously ban anyone who shares anything malicious, pornographic etc. These first couple of weeks are going to be a learning curve and we are looking at 'bots' that can help with moderation etc. We'll keep you informed.

In response to post #41554410. Really sorry to hear that, though I actually feel this is a huge benefit to the community. I have been on the chat and text all day today and got to meet a lot of people. There seems to be a good rapport going on between people and we have 170 people online at the moment compared to between 20=30 on chat. I would like to know your reasonings for not liking it though, so please feel free to message me or reply to this. Regards Paul

In response to post #41268885. #41269455, #41269515, #41270195, #41270680, #41271055, #41271230, #41271690 are all replies on the same post. This is by no means final, but these are a few screens of how it will look on a phone. Just created these to give you all some example: http://i.imgur.com/ECBnTuOm.jpg Click the image to see full screen :thumbsup: