Anyone with ambitions for a larger mod?

[sp0ckrates]

On 2/4/2024 at 7:29 PM, Pellape said:

If my ideas will fit into the project, count me in as well. But I do have limited time until June as I am a CG Student (2D and 3D) and we get new stuff to make every day. But between June to September, I will have a lot of fee time to spare.

I started to mod Beth games 2004 and was mentioned in a video of the best 10 dungeons for Morrowind 2017 and I tend to make bigger projects than many smaller ones. Peek here and he do complain a lot of bugs in my mod but I fixed them 2020 and released it again    The Caldera Ancient mine took 2 years to make and was released a week before Oblivion was released.

 

Another big project that took 2 years to make is the Legacy of the Champion, Oblivion, which is influenced by the best Skyrim mod ever made which I think is the legacy of the Dragonborn. It is not only a house mod but a faction mod, with 60-65 quests so far and the house is loaded with scripts and has its own store for weapons, armor, spells and everything that I need as a player. The house also has some unique stuff I never seen elsewhere as when I get odd ideas, I sure implement them and some where extremely hard to implement but I seldom give up. i did had a lot of help from the community when I could not implement some crazy ideas.    Oblivion is so easy to mod, compared to Skyrim and Starfield will not be easier to mod.

Well in between i made a lot of small projects but rarely uploaded them to Nexus as we used other sites 15-20 years ago, which are gone now, so a lot of cool stuff is gone forever, not only my stuff but also a lot of high quality stuff that other made as well.

Starfield?

What i wanna make in Starfield is a similar mod to the Champion mod, or rather  the Legacy mods, a museum where the player collect stuff that gets displayed in the house/museum. As all meshes in the house is either resources or made by myself, I plan to port them all to Starfield more or less. Will a hobbit house fit?  I do not know as it is a shell anyway and could be changed to anything but something wooden I think at least. What is more important is the inside, that is bigger than the outside and go underground, towards Anvil and under the road you see in the video.

Making factions and stories? That's the harder part, making up stories that will fit. In Oblivion it was easy and maybe it will later in Starfield?  I do not know.

So I think I will put the main base at a shoreline, maybe in a cell at the Jamison planet and have a garden there and no resources and portals to other bases where production takes place. Quests will be added to build the museum but I will not put 2 years to make a single dungeon, no way, as I had enough of that 2006.    In Oblivion I added stuff to 60 dungeons with scripts, to avoid any form of conflicts, and that was low life poiintless dungeons anyway and the sewers under Cyrodiil, that are questless to 80%. Avoiding conflicts is something every modder must or should take in consideration and the best way of doing that is to use unique cells and make unique stuff and not edit any landscapes. The area where the house is, and the bases, are avoidable but the good side of the way Starfield planets works, is that it is 1 chance in a million modders will edit the same cells, if they stay outside the city cells and attractive cells.

If i release this as a single modder or in a project, does not matter really.      I am used to being a part of projects and teamworking, so it is nothing new to me.

What i do know, a project like this has no end. Look at the Legacy of the Dragonborn, which not only support the Skyrim original stuff as it also supports a lot of other modders stuff, it is a mod that glue the whole community together. If I recall right, it has support for over 50 other mods and modders as they all get their own spot inside the museum if they ask for it or if they are asked by the author as well. There is no limit of what can be made for sure. The only limit is our own imagination. It also has its own WIKI. 

Damn time flies, 20 years this year as a modder...  

What will i be able to make?  Well anything or everything.

• Edit stuff with CK and Xedit
• 3D , not only in Blender as I learn to use loads of different apps in school. NifSkope as well.
• 2D, textures, gimp, PS and now also in Substance.
• Scripting. Well I do like Oblivion scripting and I did some Papyrus stuff in the few mods I released for Skyrim but I have a lot to learn about Papyrus, and it is mainly about how to define stuff that is my biggest problem.

We do a lot of animations in school, well that is what we are focusing at right now, so lets see how easy that will be to implement in Starfield?  Nothing is impossible...    Between 2006-2008 I was part of a lot of community projects for Oblivion but they are all gone, some got saved by other players and uploaded to Nexus, which was good as I did find some of my stuff there that i missed when I restarted to mod Oblivion again 2020.

/Pekka. 

Beautiful mod; awesome work!

[sp0ckrates]

No word from the author of the OP. That being said, I'm still interested in collaborating, should anyone want to do the same. 

 

[sp0ckrates]

On 1/23/2024 at 4:26 PM, DrDavidBowman said:

@sp0ckrates I think first of all working on the scope and scale of the project is key, particularly who wants to be involved.

Then, what we are most interested in making, what is easiest to develop, and what we think will be most appealing to our target audience. That will then lead us in the direction of a road map, and a list of requirements that we can breakdown into epics (larger pieces of work) and individual tasks. (We'll also need to agree on a work management platform like Gitlab, Wrike, Trello, etc.)

Personally, in terms of the game, I'm imagining the main character starting on a large battleship as some kind of recently transferred sergeant, minor officer or famous commander's child who has to prove themselves. The ship itself is on boarder patrol in a galaxy full of tension and poised for war.

That kind of context gives a limited environment at the start and allows the stakes of any missions or actions to be high with lasting consequences. 

I'm really flexible around the ideas and would love to collaborate. With a small team and limited time it's key we get the most story and gameplay time out of the least development work. That's going to naturally look like something initially more linear, that we can then build on over time. The nice thing about having the first main environment being the battleship (maybe the XSS Agamemnon or similar kind of name) is that it's limited and can be reused. Also ships are powerful characters in their own way, e.g. Serenity, Enterprise, Rocinante and Galactica.

Those are some thoughts on the starting points, quite straight forward in some ways, but I think a lot of the fun is the creativity, working together and seeing others enjoy hmwhat you've made.

Are there any things you'd be particularly interested in doing with a larger project? Also any reflections or ideas from what I've said (again, I'm not fixed on anything at this very early stage)?

As a second reply: I like the “galaxy on the verge of war” theme. I think it worked for “The Expanse” (awesome show, may it RIP) with Earth at war with Mars, and war is also a common theme for 3 other epic universes: Star Wars, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica. 
 

What I’d love to see in Starfield is the war between the UC and Freestar Collective reigniting. Like the various Fallout games, if you join a side, you become the enemy of its enemy. 
 

But making one faction an enemy of another would once again require the creation kit, so we’d need to wait until at least April, but I might be willing to join a team if you ever convince others to form one. 

Edited February 14, 2024 by sp0ckrates