New (old) modder working on huge mod

[Rukil]

Hi guys, was looking for some potential advice, as well as general ideas.

 

What I am working on:

A decently long, and very dangerous "dungeon" for DA:O, little disappointed that theres only a few true dragons in both DA:O and DA:A. I was planning on fixing that with a basic quest, and a long cavernous map added in to the deeproads, that turns into a cave system that leads up into the mountains for a climactic battle with a strong(er) High Dragon than the one you fight before the sacred ashes. Also probably a few new sets, i was thinking a massive armor, a medium and a light armor set, and some weapons as well.

 

This is very much still just conceptual state, I haven't made a full mod (other than making gear just for my character) since morrowind (where i made quite a few but released only a couple), and the dragon age toolset seems to be very different from the TES ones i'm used to, and I only downloaded it today. Any advice one can offer would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

TLDR: I is making big dangerous dragon dungeon, plz halp!

[DarkeWolf]

I really, really, REALLY miss the TESC. While some things about it did require a bit of a learning curve, it was exceptionally easy to use once you got it down.

Toolset... not so much. Very much so, not so much, actually.

 

For the most part, a lot of what you're going to be dealing with, is stuff that I havent tried out yet, so about the only thing that I can really offer you is links :(

And a word of advice.... toolset likes to suck down huge amounts of ram, and thus... crash a lot. Save your work often!

 

http://thenexusforums.com/index.php?showtopic=167987

http://social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset

http://social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Tutorials

 

I'd also recommend starting at the beginning, and maybe use some of the premade areas as your starting points, so that you can get the hang of what you're doing, and then throw in some of the custom made areas once you start to get the hang of it.

 

I wish I could contribute more, but I wish you the best of luck in your endeavor, and hope to see your mod posted some day!! :D

[Rukil]

Thanks any advice is appreciated ^_^ ill be looking over those, i was doing a bit of wiki diving last night, till it started to give me a headache :P I think its probably gonna take me a while to get started on this, but I will be sure to put up a link here as soon as I have something people can test.

 

I also feel kinda bad I've been using the nexus sites since I was in high school (for morrowind) this login has no releases on it, but i only had like 3 on my old one, like I'm just taking from you guys and not adding anything, gonna change that!

[DarkeWolf]

No problem, like I said, I wish I could be of more help than that, but this is areas that I havent explored yet, so to speak.

I can go ahead and say tho.... bookmarks. They are the godsend of modding this game. So anytime you have to crosslink to a new tutorial, bookmark it in your browser for easier finding it. :wink:

LOL oh yeah, asperin and patience also help out!

You'll find that a lot of these tutes for working with the toolset (or toolcrap as some of us prefer to call it) seem incomplete, and make you go read a completely seperate tut for the info that you need. It means hopping around back and forth. But once you get it figured out (if you make it that far, lol) then its ok.

 

Again, good luck. And if you have any questions, feel free to post them. Sometimes answers are long in coming, but we do try :wink:

 

Well, there's always going to be lurkers on every site. But its really cool that you're taking an interest in doing some work with the game. :smile:

[Rukil]

Hmm well update: I actually managed to make something, even though its just a simple weapon adder, however the weapon is exactly as I wanted and the script worked perfectly (bonus!) especially since I'm used to needing to edit the script 5 or 6 times to get it to work properly in the TES games, the weapon I will be hanging onto as an item to be seen in the quest, working on figuring out how to make a room now, when I have that and some enemies I will make an alpha release, well see how it goes if I can get that out today.

 

Though, what is the convention on alpha/beta release numbers, I know usually only once it passes beta does it get a 1.00 number, but are betas like 0.20 or something and Alphas are 0.02 versions? Or does it really not matter at all?

[DarkeWolf]

Congrats!!! Getting it to work right on the first try, is great!

Personally, as long as you can keep track of your versions, thats about all that really matters :wink: