Why do we make mods?

[Pellape]

Very good question and hopefully I will stay short, which I rarely do. (I failed)

I started to play the Bethesda games 30 years ago, and making mods 20 years this year, 2004.

• Is it funnier or more boring today? 
  • Nope.
• Is it fun making mods? 
  • Mostly - Nope. 
• Is it fun planning mods? 
  • Extremely fun.
• Is it fun always playing your own mods?
  • YES, Extremely fun.
• So why do you do it? 
  • IDK!!!...???
• Do you get pissed if no one likes your mods?
  • Some but it doesn't matter much. I did got pissed at a Video maker, judging my stuff ones, even if I did like the video...    You can read about it in another thread here.
• Do you promote your self and your mods?
  • Always!!
• When is it funniest? 
  • Making new and unique stuff, no one has never made before.
• Do you succeed making your dream mods and new and unique solutions?
  • Yes, always, so far. We can thank NVSE, Fose and OBSE for that as they made it possible.

Making mods can be extremely tiresome and boring, so is it with everything you know, no matter what you do. I do it for my self but I also publish everything I make, so from the start, I have to be careful what resources I am using, doing a lot of research, trying to find something similar that will do and when I cannot find it, I have to make it. It is not always I know what a mod will end up at when I start with it, as I make up this text at this very moment, I do not know where it will end. The most crazy ideas pops up when I am in a state between being awake and falling asleep, mostly when I am in bed as I cannot close down my brain until I fall asleep, which is bad really. My GF mind is empty when she foes to bed, mine is not and I envy her. Damn, mostly I just think nonsense.

What made me play these games for 30 years? Mainly TES and now Fallout? Well I was extremely skeptic about Fallout until I got so pissed at the sh't game Starfield and I thought. WTF am I gonna do now?  TES? Not again, I played them all, tested all mods worth testing, made loads of new ones, most is gone with the sites where we dumped them. It was funniest for me to work in teams and we sure had good teams back then and I still make stuff for other modders, like Maskar in the Oblivion section and I chatted with him yesterday. Not that he likes all my ideas for sure, but still.

I used to like making 3D since 2005, not that it is always fun, but I managed to make stuff to look exactly as I wanted them to look like and that is extremely creative and creativeness, is what drives us in the first place, like any artist, musician or whatever. I came into 3D school a year ago, I  think 500 applied and only 30 got a place in that class and we had to make a showcase to be able to apply as well, which resulted in the best class they had for 20 years our teacher did claim. But I went into the wall last December and now I still hate 3D. It was to much. Should I ever see myself working as a 3D artist or game developer?  Never in my life. I used to think computer hardware and software and coding C++ was fun during the 90's and I went to Computer Technician school in the end of the 90's. Do I think it is fun working as technician?  NO WAY!!!   I hate it.    Would I apply as a coder?  NEVER!!!! 

Where is my first 8-bit home computer I bought 1987?  Right here, at my desk. 

I was also active in the Swedish Atari Association for many years, both as secretary and accountant. Wrote extremely long protocols and articles in our monthly Magazin. I also had the support telephone for 2 years.

Do I think it is fun to support my fellow players if I now will be able to do it, to solve their sh't?  Extremely fun and also solve NVSE and scripting problems as well. Very very fun indeed. Than I do not do it for myself but still I will learn something in the process and hopefully make someone else happy. I cannot count how many modders I did help at the Oblivion forum really.     I also made stuff that I could not solve myself, like this sh't but if I had googled it, instead of making the video and rant about it in the Oblivion forum I might had solve it. I did not solve a single Papyrus script without the help of the community when I did play Skyrim and I hate papyrus. Well just look at this mess, that i have shown many many times before, but still fun to watch, I think so at least...  but I better stop now 

An ordinary day in the Display room 2020, my first video ever made by the way and I made loads since then. I had to make it, to be able to explain my problems. DraketheDragon at the Oblivion forum solved it and I never forget when I saw the light, and manage to make the weapons to sit steady at the walls. All with a single solid OBSE command. I think it was OBSE at least, In GECK, we uncheck collisions at the object form, simple as that, not in Oblivion CS as far as I can recall.

By the way, the mess and problems are solved in this later video 2022:

 

Odd, this video had 13 viewers now. Lets change it to at leadt 14. 

 

Edited November 4 by Pellape

[Pellape]

I have been thinking, What am I most proud of and like best in my Oblivion mod?  Well except the 60 quests?  My Dvemer coffee machine and my Dvemer coffee cops. The poison we can make with it is extremely OP but it sure was needed at some bosses I had to fight, or I had to use the console to kill them. It is also fun to get back to my farm as it crashed in the last version and my summer play thru, and I need to recompile all script outdoors or whatever, find the broken NIF or ...  Well. I have not seen the farm in 2 years myself. I might never solve it. IDK!!!  NM...  Lets grab a cup of coffee instead.

The coffee machine and cups where made with the 3D freeware Blender, optimized in Nifscope, exported with a the newest NIF exporter. Blender was also the base software we used in the 3D school last year as well and now it is in use in the majority of the 3D studios in Sweden. All my 3D CGI videos are made in Blender by the way. All, that sounds like I made plenty really, well no I did not.

Textures I used was a free dvemer resource addon for Oblivion, with Morrowind Dvemer asserts. I just love the Morrowind Dvemer stuff, a bit better than I like Skyrim Dvemer stuff really. I made a Dvemer museum in Morrowind 2020.

 

I also like my Wine bottle rack a lot. Took me weeks to solve how to add the bottles to it, and I never gave up. It was the timing between each bottle that was the main problem.

1. Drop bottles in a cabinet manually or with additem
2. Remove them from the cabinet with removeitem, add them into a OBSE database, with an array
3. add them at the feet of the player with placeatme
4. find the ref within a small area from the player with OBSE (nvse)
5. Move the ref with setpos and setangle into the rack
6. Wait to see if the rack exploded or not and sometimes during the test, I did had wine bottles all around the whole kitchen bouncing around. Stuff at the fireplace also did bounce aroud until I fixed their bad collisions with Nifscope, every single vertice changing their coordinates as you cannot edit collisions in Blender, only make new ones.

 

 

Edited November 4 by Pellape

[Pellape]

On 12/17/2023 at 1:09 AM, JimboUK said:

I mod for myself which is why most of what I make never sees the light of day, it's either unfinished or uses assets I can't share. When I do upload something I'm not too bothered about endorsements or downloads, if only one person gets some enjoyment from it then it worth doing, what I do like are screenshots of my stuff in other people's games, it always brings a smile to my face unless they've vandalised it in some way.

You should really clean up that mess, and release all your stuff, as I sure wanna test it all, no doubt.     If that is not too hard that is. It can be boring to go back to old stuff, specially if you have new fresh ideas for sure.

[Pellape]

On 12/18/2023 at 2:54 AM, JimboUK said:

I started making the club in these screenshots back in 2017 and it's still not finished. 

Looks damn cool. Is it FNV or?  Extremely nice screenshot I must add, so tasteful. I liked it a lot. It sure reminds me of the club in Starfield, the stairs, the colors, the vibe.

Edited November 4 by Pellape

[Pellape]

On 12/18/2023 at 1:59 PM, laclongquan said:

Also, searching for what you need on Nexus can be a real challenge, considering a lot of modders has no sense of keyword, and/or actively refuse to take suggestion in that regard.

SO do-it-yourself is a necessity because good luck wading through Nexus search result to find a mod that satisfy some niche interest of yours.

I do have the girl that made the first skimpy stuff for Morrowind as a good friend at FB, but today, finding no skimpy stuff that looks good is hopeless. Damn, it is not realistic to fight in skimpy stuff at all if you ask me. Candian Ice, the one that started it, made amazing stuff. She is hard as steel as a person, no doubt, but still my old Morrowind friend and I had many though, but she is the only one I have in FB...  But when I saw her stuff, the first time, I just stopped and   Damn, what is this? That made me curious.

Only way to get her stuff was at her forum. When I was there, I did start to get interested of trying to make stuff myself, had Qarl, Alien Slof, Canadian Ice as mentors and inspirations. Qarl taught me about 3D, told me to start with Blender. But first I used Qarl's 3D models, added them in game for Morrowind 2005. I also became Canadian Ices forum moderator, so was Qarl and Alien Slof among other famous or infamous modders. We protected her from sh't heads popping in there, throw them out as fast as possible before Canadian Ice saw it as she hated all criticism, which made her just sad, nothing else. So say Alien Slof in this video as well, all nasty players, making the life miserable for her and she also talks about Qarl, that passed away 2011, she told me in a PM 2020. Skimpy stuff?  Yes a lot of it, but damn, they where best at what they did make, within that area. You could not find better mentors in game modding, making the impossible possible, trying the limits.    I never made skimpy stuff myself, well shoes for the Exnen body, but that's it. The textures, not the model. May had fit to Bab as well, IDK.

My first Oblivion char, 2006, Bab body:

I never play anything else than a Bosmer in TES. I love bows. But I did play Daggerfall as a mage the last time and it rocked.

I did not like when the shoes did not match the dresses, which disturbed me a lot. So I made shoes and boots for all Exnen stuff I think.  Does it matter for the game play?  Well not really as I sure did not use them when I was fighting or exploring. I do think that those shoes also worked for the Bab body but I do not remember really. It was around 2008 after all. They where made for Exnen's body I see now, not Bab, as I first thought. Never Mind. 

Qarl made the best retexture ever for Oblivion. He taught me about normal's and how to get models in game from Blender. He was so helpful and also fun, always.

I did forgot he also was mentor for Alien Slof, as she mention that in this interview below. I do not know what I had done today without Qarl really? I did open Morrowind CS 2004, scratch my head, closed it, never touched it again until I started to follow Qarl. I did open it again, got frustrated, but I thought: If he and other players can do this, so can I and here I am now, just take one step in a time, damn, it was so frustrating for a long period. CS is almost same as CK, the Construction Set, renamed later to Kit CK...  Why? I do not have a single clue, but Morrowind CS is almost the same as GECK. CK is really NOT!!!  I still dislike CK, no doubt, even if I made mods for both F4 and Skyrim, I had no control at all, specially about Papyrus, that makes no sense to me at all, alias this and alias that, damn...  Just let me make my ints, shorts, refs and arrays, damn it...  I still cannot make a single Papyrus script without the help of the CK modders...  I do not get it...  Impossible. I only get frustrated when I try it. I did follow kinggath brilliant Bethesda Mod school, well a couple of chapters at least. If I had been patient enough, maybe I had learned it? It did not appeal to me, that is it.

Well Qarl (R.I.P 2011), I sure miss that guy a lot.    Alien Slof mention this also in the video below, not the year, just that he is no longer with us. He never had the chance to see Skyrim 2011-11-11. I would had been amazed about what he could had been able to make there for sure.    Well sh't happens and we will all go the same way one day. But still I had so much fun following in his footsteps, we all did, we drooled at his VIP's, we all said, just WOW, every day.    If he made a grass texture, or whatever, we just said     There is still some stuff I do not understand about normal's, but it has with wetness to do, that he mastered. I think it was wetness if I am not mistaken? I do not recall seeing wet textures in Oblivion last summer...    Well..  Fill me in, what can we do with normal's?  I did learn to make normal's from the ground in Blender at 3D school 2023, but that was the basics only. Well here is my portfolio from school by the way, made April 2024. I guess it would not exist if I never met Qarl. No mods, no 2D, no 3D, no quests, no nothing. IDK??

My computer I had back then, 2006-2007 could not handle his huge textures, so I remade them from 1k, to 512, I think it was. He did yell at me when he saw my normal's as I just scaled down the normal's, and he said or wrote rather, you cannot do that, make new ones he said, they are blurred and ugly. He was pissed, very pissed even. So I did as he said, learned to make new ones. I could not continue making bad ones for sure... 

Here is the Alien Slof interview, about modding but also about player reactions and she is a brilliant artist, oil painter, her site is down today, damn...  There was amazing art there, horses. Yes, her horses, oil paintings that is hanging at many British bars and pubs today. If you visit a British pub and see a nice horse painting, it is hers most likely. Her old alien art is just...   Amazing... She did play Fallout as well and now ESO, I think still...  I just love her horse textures for Oblivion. I cannot say that we became friends, not ever, as I just did follow her VIP's, not as close as I got to Canadian Ice, after a while but that sure took some time. But Qarl, in the other hand, we became good friends fast.

What did Canadian Ice make before she stopped playing games around 2008? She made the most beautiful mages robes I have ever seen. Just robes, nothing else but so unique and good looking. It was not long ago I did ask her if she had play any games, and she said no, she has not since 2008. She does make lovely real clothing instead. So lovely good looking stuff, her own designs. I did ask her if I could make boots, suitable for her robes and she did say yes, so I made them the same year, included them in the Bab shoe package that I made.

Seeing the boots, without the robes, may not make any sense at all. They did fit perfect together however and that is what matters. I cannot find the specific robes that did fit with these 2 boots. I bet it is all gone.

Ahh, I do recall now, her house, that became my main house. She made all the textures here. it was in Solstein and very cold. Suitable for Canadian Ice. I just loved it. It was under the sea, in the ocean south of Solstein, so you had to swim to it and dive deep, a big Crab shell at the ocean floor. So damn good looking. Many cool rooms and a nice kitchen as well.    Redooran Style.

When you did find the house, you got access to a big portal room. No more swimming needed. I could just have found the portals at the other end, but those where tiny soul stones, hard to see, but they was visible at the map, well it did not hurt to take a swim in the cold water really. You can see them at the center here at each portal. The big Soul stones.

So what did we mainly make? Skimpy stuff or serious stuff?  A few did only focus at Skimpy stuff but the majority did not, or maybe some. Still, it does not matter really, does it? I did focus at serious stuff to 97%, but that's me.    Is skimpy stuff not serious stuff?  IDK??  Many do not think it is, as then they would not come to Canadian Ice's forum and make a mess, attacks, type unpleasant mails, critism or whatever. That was not accepted, that was bad behavior. We kicked them fast and hard back to wherever they did come from, IDK and I do not care.    It did piss me off as well, no doubt. All we wanted was to just have fun, that is it.

 

Edited November 4 by Pellape

[Pellape]

13 hours ago, VaultHuman said:

Ii don't know how to make a mod and i don't want to learn. Making mods, is like make a film, or build a house or drive a car for days and days. i always endorse a mod because i like it or for the effort. Thant's all.

No one will blame you for not want to learn it ever. I did try to endorse those making requests to try make them them selves though, and I did offer myself to teach them, but still it is their choice to not make it and not learn how to do it and no one can blame anyone for what they really want to do with anything really. What is most important in life is to just have fun, every day, if possible. As I did type earlier, most modding is not really fun to make, the result is. But to get to the result, we must make some boring stuff, and sometimes that is just frustrating and stress me, sometimes a lot. Then I just put it away, and do something that is fun. It took me long time to learn it, with a lot of frustrations. 

I do feel the same as you about F4 and Skyrim. It is to damn hard honestly.

Edited November 4 by Pellape

[JimboUK]

7 hours ago, Pellape said:

Looks damn cool. Is it FNV or?  Extremely nice screenshot I must add, so tasteful. I liked it a lot. It sure reminds me of the club in Starfield, the stairs, the colors, the vibe.

Yeah it's FNV, I put all those people in there just for screenshots, the mod could never be released with that many NPC's and light sources in the same place, the frame rate was well into single figures, it didn't crash though which is something. 

[laclongquan]

Yeah, well, ten years ago I said Im never gonna be a modder, noway, nohow.

Five years ago, a TTW modder in TTW forum suggest me to use FNVedit to check mods to see if it conflict or buggy where. I response: it's very nice of you to suggest newbie to use an advanced tool for a task like that. At that time I dont know what FNVEdit is other than it being used much among modders.

I still keep that idea/opinion, and didnt change it even now. But I do learn to use FNV edit over years.

Interests drive education, learning, and training~ You never know if you would become a modder until you are put in the ground (or into the cremator).

[Pellape]

@laclongquanFNVedit or just simple Xedit can also be extremely dangerous tool and I use it often, daily, almost...  It is a low level tool, a tool that almost can do anything but also cause harm if you do not know what you are doing. But damn, some stuff is only possible to do with it. It is the same with NifSkope, that can crash any NIF if you do not know what you are doing.    I do have enough control with Oblivion meshes in NifSkope to make stuff to work as I want them too, well mostly. What about F4 and skyrim? Well they are different, but still, well much harder really. I do think Oblivion when I use NifSkope and that is not good, not if I edit F4 or Skyrim meshes with it.

Low and High level coding?  Well we script high level code, code we can understand. The CPU does not, it only understand short instructions, like assembler but do we understand assembler?  When you know or learn how a CPU really works, well yes. Did I learn it? Yes for Motorola 8-bit 6804, at Chalmers Technical University 1999, No for Intel 386 and I did try 386, gave it up, went into C++ instead and was able to make stuff fast. I did start with  C around 1993 I guess. I did try Assembler to learn more about the CPU and it was hard to learn....  Damn...  Was it fun?  Yes, is it useful?  IDK??  Well yes really. Do I think it is fun today? No way but still, when you learn to ride a bike, you do not forget how to do it. I do have a basic knowledge about how the CPU is making stuff and communicate with the bus and plugin cards and it is just amazing it is working as fast as it does today. It is really unbelievable. When we did learn the Motorola 6804, we did one clock manually with a button, saw different lamps light up, 8 in a row, saw our code to run, one single step in a time. Our CPU's today do that several billion times every second.    My first computer had a CPU with 1.79 khz. I think it is Motorola 6806 or 6808. IDK...

When Morrowind and Oblivion was released, we did get CS immediately shipped with the CD's. When Skyrim was released 2011, we did not get CK until 2012 so Xedit was the only available tool and it sure made my game to crash so much, I left Skyrim a year later, even if we then had CK. When I did pickup Skyrim again, 2019, I sure was very suspect against all mods and I really was very careful of what I did install, and I also managed to make my game to be extremely crash safe. Still, everyone should use Xedit, but damn, do they need to release stuff that will make a hell for other players. As long as we are careful with it, it is damn good.    It is easy to blame the Xedit mods for making the bugs, when the game it self was extremely buggy, but I was very pissed off at Skyrim 2012, frustrated, angry, lost interest in it completely. Skyrim SE was extremely good, no doubt. My F4 is a bloody crash mess.    The community was pissed off and frustrated over the time it took Bethesda to release CK and it was the same with Starfield. I do not know if CK is available for Starfield, and honestly, I do not care as that game, well I played it for 6 weeks until I thought: What am I doing? This game is pure junk. Then I went to Fallout 4, later FMV and F3, and here I am. Making text walls.    Fallout is MUCH MUCH funnier than Starfield is. Well Starfield might have a nice base for mods? I do dislike the way the planets are working, the random stuff and that every planet are the same as everyone else. It is not possible to have the same animals and plants at every planet, that makes no sense to me. Resources yes, life no. I did study Biology 2 years ago, learned about how the cells are working and did a deep dive into the evolution and that tells me that Starfield wildlife is pure bullshit and I hate exploring those planets.    I am also into deep astronomy and also Cosmology and I love it. Astrology? Pure bullsh't if you ask me.    Astrobiology?  Very interesting subject for sure. How did life came to be? Some guess with cyanide really as cyanide is often created in craters, during an impact.    It is an interesting theory as any...  No one knows. What the Astrobiolog is doing is to make theories about alien life but also aid the science in ways to find life elsewhere, which has never happen, not yet at least, not until proof is found, scientific proof, not just eye witnesses and obscure videos. Science. Well that is the reason I dislike Starfield. It also get repetitive fast and boring.

Edited November 4 by Pellape

[Pellape]

I just did recall, I did make more unique stuff for Morrowind and Oblivion, as I was among the few that used shields in close combat. Shields? An area that no one did care about at all, not making any that really fit each armor. It was none existing. I think I made the first one 2005 as well

So I made this: (not my screenshot as that player did not use the right armor with that shield)

It is not my upload, the uploader made new screenshots, and did not match the shields with the right armor. NM, he did save them.  My own uploads and screenshots are not available anywhere as far as I know. If it was not for him, this would had been lost forever. Original site is down, so is my own. I just did a google search, well nothing...  Well this looks promising.  I saved it, DLed the meshes and textures    Damn...    My old shields 

Here we see a variant for a Skyrim armor, ported to Oblivon by me and another modder, together, my bloody shield again, adapted 3 years ago:

Is it easy to make a good looking Bosmer? No way, I did fail it the last play thru...  NM... 

I also used the original meshes and a mesh that Canadian Ice made, but the mesh at these screenies, is my favorite. The sword, was made by another player 2004-5 and I have the rights to use it as I please from the original author and I still use it in both Oblivion and Morrowind. It is both 1-handed and 2-handed, well at least in Morrowind. So it is available in my shop in my mega Oblivion mod. Very unique sword. I also included loads of different player made high quality bows, to have it all in one place. With their permissions of course. here is the shop, my own fence. The Fence.

I also made all painting frames, resource is at Oblivion Nexus. My first Mesh if I recall right. The ones at the sides of the fireplace. The resource also have a tutorial, of how to crop your screenshots, how to save them as dds and how to get them + book textures in game. How to do it your self. My COBL book retexture pack

The Shield textures are very simple to make, just an gradient, or a piece from the armor texture it self, that it is made for, or I did a color analyze of the armor texture, made gradient ones that did fit, that is all. So I used the same meshes, made loads of different gradients, for each armor type I did like, exchanged them in NifSkope, save as a new mesh. So boring but I like the result, and that is what matters, 512 texture size.    I do think I made shields for every original armor, but I do not remember and for all player armors I did like, and tested and they did like it as well. So the comments from those modder's where extremely positive but they did not use shields and refused to make any at all them self.    So to get things right, make it your self.

As I am a Swede, with some Viking blood, I do like the round shield best of all forms, even if other forms are more effective, but I must love the form, or other wise, it is meaningless. Am I a viking?  Well no...    Does vikings exist still?  Well just look at the biker gangs or modern mafia, drug cartels or whatever organized crime groups. Nit that a majority of the biker gangs is criminal, but one of my cousins is member in one called Bandidos who is in war with Hells Angles, and another is police, so...  Canadian Ice is more viking then I am as she is a biker girl, drive bikes, is what she likes best with her old husband and modder Hounddog who is also damn good modder. All new photos, is from her driving big bikes mostly with him as well.    Do I share her real name? Never in my life. I bet she would come to Sweden and kill me or he, Hounddog, will for sure, if I did. 

Colors are extremely important to me, the colors must fit. Everything must look appealing for the eye, nothing else is not acceptable for me. 

I also made this axe. I shop trees with it.

Edited November 4 by Pellape