Modders hints and tips

[Pineapplerum]

Hey,

I've only been modding for about 3 days now. In these three days I've learned so much just by trying out different things, asking tons of questions and reading what I can online.

I'm not the kind of person who learns how to do things by reading a hundred page manual. It all becomes confusing to me and I become very tired, impatient and uninspired with everything I have to learn because there's so much to learn on a technical level-it makes my brain hurt so with that, I've only read minimal tutorial directions. I figure I'll learn the complicated technical stuff as I go along.

 

I'm starting out simple with just a beautification mod. Putting in a bunch of plants, gardens, planters, windowboxes, statues and other decorations in a district. I'm doing Bruma first as a practice run but then I'm going to go to town with Skingrad and upload that onto Tes Nexus.

 

What I'm finding is that I'm learning stuff just by playing around and trying new things. Nothing mind blowing just simple crap that makes it all go easier and helps to make things look better.

I was wondering what tips modders could share with us. Tips you only really learn by actually modding. Like with me, it was the planters and filling them up with plants. Sounds easy enough but it was actually challenging to me at first. I didn't know you could make a dozen of the same thing and then spread them out, make them different sizes, heights and positionings. With trying to fill a planter up to look lush and full with a bunch of tiny plants, that helped me out a ton. I also figured out I can use a plant on the bottom of the planter, something with a brownish dark color or green-I make it real big so that the plants sticking out of the planter actually look like they're coming out of dirt or they're sitting on top of a bunch of underbrush leaves.

Like I said, not mind blowing, just little things that make it a little easier and more realistic.

 

I'm thinking "real modders" must have tons of little tips and nuggets of wisdom. Would any of you like to share little things, or big things you've learned through modding?

Please do share. :woot:

[jaysus]

i usually sacrifice a cute furry rabbit before i start with a modding session, it helped me so far and will help you too i assume.

[Unavi]

i usually sacrifice a cute furry rabbit before i start with a modding session, it helped me so far and will help you too i assume.

 

bahahahhaa XD that totally made my day

rofl

 

 

Ps i'll now read the op and say something constructive (hopefully)

[Pineapplerum]

i usually sacrifice a cute furry rabbit before i start with a modding session, it helped me so far and will help you too i assume.

 

See, now this is what I'm talking about. Wiki would have never clued me in on this. This is great! Thank you for that. I'm off to find me a rabbit to sacrafice.

[LHammonds]

Most of my tips-n-tricks are put down on virtual paper...in those 100-page tutorials you mention. :thumbsup:

 

The problem is that there are so many things to do, you may not know what it is that you want to do when you start reading up on it or trying to figure out how to use a tool.

 

People learn different ways and some people just have to learn by trial and error because they just don't "get" the written word of a tutorial until they actually experience it for themselves and go back to the tutorial and say ah ha!

 

This is also VERY similar to methods I've seen how people learn to program in different programming languages.

- Some people jump right into trying to figure out a solution and "find" the right functions to use when they are needed.

- Some people have to be guided along using hold-your-hand tutorials

- Some people just need the technical reference manual

 

When I learned programming languages, I started from the bottom up...meaning that I went through and learned everything I could about each individual function. I didn't have much of a clue how to use most of them when learning about them but when it came time to start problem-solving, I found it MUCH easier to be able to call upon that earlier learning that there are 3 functions that could possible solve the problem and knowing where they are at...or at least "knowing" I read about something that would work well for a particular situation. I was able to solve problems much faster that way rather than going from Top-Down having an issue and not knowing what possible solutions there are...and having to hunt for something...basically covering the same material over and over to find solutions rather than going over the base knowledge once and then perform residual scans later...if that makes any sense.

 

Here is an article I wrote in order to help people guide themselves to the tutorials that would most-likely be useful to them: How To Make Mods

 

EDIT: And I thought the sacrificing of small animals was a given... :confused:

 

LHammonds

[Pineapplerum]

Most of my tips-n-tricks are put down on virtual paper...in those 100-page tutorials you mention. :thumbsup:

 

The problem is that there are so many things to do, you may not know what it is that you want to do when you start reading up on it or trying to figure out how to use a tool.

 

People learn different ways and some people just have to learn by trial and error because they just don't "get" the written word of a tutorial until they actually experience it for themselves and go back to the tutorial and say ah ha!

 

This is also VERY similar to methods I've seen how people learn to program in different programming languages.

- Some people jump right into trying to figure out a solution and "find" the right functions to use when they are needed.

- Some people have to be guided along using hold-your-hand tutorials

- Some people just need the technical reference manual

 

When I learned programming languages, I started from the bottom up...meaning that I went through and learned everything I could about each individual function. I didn't have much of a clue how to use most of them when learning about them but when it came time to start problem-solving, I found it MUCH easier to be able to call upon that earlier learning that there are 3 functions that could possible solve the problem and knowing where they are at...or at least "knowing" I read about something that would work well for a particular situation. I was able to solve problems much faster that way rather than going from Top-Down having an issue and not knowing what possible solutions there are...and having to hunt for something...basically covering the same material over and over to find solutions rather than going over the base knowledge once and then perform residual scans later...if that makes any sense.

 

Here is an article I wrote in order to help people guide themselves to the tutorials that would most-likely be useful to them: How To Make Mods

 

EDIT: And I thought the sacrificing of small animals was a given... :confused:

 

LHammonds

 

Thank you LHammonds, I've been looking at a manual from Lord Gannondorf and it's helped me some but I could use something else to go by.

I'll try to read more about it instead of going around hunting for answers. I guess that's your nugget of wisdom...read. :laugh:

Okay, I'll read it. It couldn't hurt. Hopefully, it doesn't get too technical. And no, really, I didn't know one was supposed to sacrafice a fluffy animal was apart of the ritual of modding. I have sooo much to learn!

 

Ps. I've looked all over the place for how to merge two objects into one. I found a tool for Tes3 called Testool but not for Tes4. Could you please point me in the direction of how to merge two objects together and how to make a non wall decoration stick to a wall? Can I use TesConstruction or do I have to get into the retexturing stuff...I'm not there yet.

[LHammonds]

I'll try to read more about it instead of going around hunting for answers. I guess that's your nugget of wisdom...read. :laugh:

I suppose. :happy: When jumping into the world of modding, it simply requires doing a LOT of reading / research. Luckily, there are reading materials now whereas they wasn't much of anything in the beginning which required lots of observation, analysis, trial and error. The very first thing one should read is the Oblivion Mods FAQ in order to get a base knowledge of understanding which many people have contributed to in order to reduce the amount of unnecessary headaches. :tongue:

 

Ps. I've looked all over the place for how to merge two objects into one. I found a tool for Tes3 called Testool but not for Tes4. Could you please point me in the direction of how to merge two objects together and how to make a non wall decoration stick to a wall? Can I use TesConstruction or do I have to get into the retexturing stuff...I'm not there yet.

Sounds like you need to import both objects into Blender and configure the collision to be "static" and export a new NIF or maybe you can change/edit both to be static meshes using NifSkope so you can place them in the Construction Set. Here is the base knowledge about Collision.

 

LHammonds

[NellSpeed]

If you don't already, you might also outline what you're doing before you do it. You don't need every single detail, but I find it saves me a lot of time to have a setup for naming variables, quests, etc, instead of doing it on the fly, and having to remember what's what.

 

And again if you don't already, comment scripts so you know what things do what. Or, at least, what they're supposed to do....

[Pineapplerum]

I'll try to read more about it instead of going around hunting for answers. I guess that's your nugget of wisdom...read. :laugh:

I suppose. :happy: When jumping into the world of modding, it simply requires doing a LOT of reading / research. Luckily, there are reading materials now whereas they wasn't much of anything in the beginning which required lots of observation, analysis, trial and error. The very first thing one should read is the Oblivion Mods FAQ in order to get a base knowledge of understanding which many people have contributed to in order to reduce the amount of unnecessary headaches. :tongue:

 

Ps. I've looked all over the place for how to merge two objects into one. I found a tool for Tes3 called Testool but not for Tes4. Could you please point me in the direction of how to merge two objects together and how to make a non wall decoration stick to a wall? Can I use TesConstruction or do I have to get into the retexturing stuff...I'm not there yet.

Sounds like you need to import both objects into Blender and configure the collision to be "static" and export a new NIF or maybe you can change/edit both to be static meshes using NifSkope so you can place them in the Construction Set. Here is the base knowledge about Collision.

 

LHammonds

Hi LHammonds,

I accept that I have to read a lot to figure out what's going on but sometimes I can't find the things I want to read about so I suppose that's the research part of it. I'm sure it's out there but honestly at times I just don't know how to describe what I'm looking for. Like "collision"...I would have never used that reference in my search.

But I guess you mean to read anything and everything so I'll know that I'd be looking for "collision". Yeah, I heard you telling me that in my mind. :laugh:

Thanks for the "collision" link. I'll read it when I'm ready to take that next step. I'll be happy right now if I can do some modding without anything crashing or giving me error messages. Trying to import things into Blender seems too big of an obstacle for me right now but I will bookmark the link and go back to it when I'm feeling more courageous. I appreciate your help, LHammonds.

[Pineapplerum]

If you don't already, you might also outline what you're doing before you do it. You don't need every single detail, but I find it saves me a lot of time to have a setup for naming variables, quests, etc, instead of doing it on the fly, and having to remember what's what.

 

And again if you don't already, comment scripts so you know what things do what. Or, at least, what they're supposed to do....

 

That's a fantastic idea Nell. Right now I'm on a "practice mod" and I'm just randomly going around trying to make everything look pretty without destroying my game or messing up anymore .niff objects and learning how to get everything the way it needs to be for the mod to work.

My real mod is going to be making Skingrad pretty. I'm going to have a lot of fun with it. But planning out everything I need/want to do is some good advice. This way when I get tired of my practice mod in Bruma, I can hop over to Skingrad and start taking notes, making an outline and knowing in my mind what I want it to look like before I begin to manually work on it. I may even get so inspired I'll brave the imports to Blender so I can "collision" a mod. Lol.

 

Comment scripts, huh? What the heck are comment scripts? :confused:

 

Thank you NellSpeed for your help.