Survey on modding, looking for modders Fallout 4

[Architeuthis]

Hi Fallout 4 modders,

I am a master student with the University of Groningen currently writing my thesis on PC modding. My goal is to investigate the effects of modding tools in mod making. In order to collect the necessary data, I have designed a survey that is being distributed among a variety of modders who were active for games that were released with a set of official modding tools. Fallout 4 thus qualifies I believe.

Who am I looking for?

I'm looking for anyone who has used the official mod tools to create a mod. The actual game and content of the mod is not important.

Filling out the survey will take approximately 5 to 10 minutes of your time, depending on your answers. As a token of my gratitude I will randomly award a number of steam credit gift certificates among the respondents.

If you have any questions regarding the survey, please feel free message me.

I would really appreciate your help!

-link to survey-

(survey was created with google forms).

PS The exact same survey was also placed on the Fallout NV and Fallout 3 forums (as well all Elder Scrolls nexus forums). I apologize if this comes across as a bit 'spammy', but I figured this would be the best way to generate response from the entire Fallout modding community. You will be able to indicate whether you modded for more than one game (Fallout or otherwise).

[Athanasa]

anyone who has used the official mod tools to create a mod.

 

Please elaborate on what you mean by "official tools". I imagine that most people that 'code' for any mods use some other software to actually write the code. Does it then ONLY count as part of the 'official tools' if they plug these codes into the game via the interface of a 'official mod tool'?

 

Also, please define what counts as a "mod", especially for games like ARMA. Yes, there were the actual mods, but you could also make custom playable missions (some of which could be simple, others could contain complex coding on top of the vanilla 'put stuff here, shoot it') - would those count as mods too? While the mods actually modified mechanics, objects and whatnot, the missions provided the way to interact with the changes introduced by the mods. Mods were nothing without missions to utilise them. Missions created to use mods were often dependant on said mods.

 

 

 

Using ARMA as the example, I could make a mission through the official mission making tool within the game. I could then write a script to run in that mission to modify how the mission worked above vanilla values, writing this script in a text editor of my choice. This is where your definition of "official modding tools" gets finnecky:

1) I can call the script to activate by using an in-game trigger object

...or...

2) I can tell the game to run the script by calling it directly from code of the mission, without using the official mission editing tool.

 

Functionally, both achieve the same result - my creation of an in-game trigger object causes the line of code to appear in the mission file. However, if I have triggers galore I probably don't want to be using the trigger objects in the editor it'll become a visual mess to deal with. Also if I want the triggers to move / spawn dynamically I want to do this by code, not the editor.

 

 

In ARMA's case, it allows users to create missions and has a nice, simple coding language. Hell, it's so moddable that it spawned DayZ. Most of the magic for DayZ occurred within text editors, not the official mission editor tool.

 

[genolune]

I think the person means any .ESP or .ESM files made with the Creation Kit as well as any other files used via the other tools that come with it like Archive2, etc.

[Architeuthis]

 

anyone who has used the official mod tools to create a mod.

 

Please elaborate on what you mean by "official tools". I imagine that most people that 'code' for any mods use some other software to actually write the code. Does it then ONLY count as part of the 'official tools' if they plug these codes into the game via the interface of a 'official mod tool'?

 

Also, please define what counts as a "mod", especially for games like ARMA. Yes, there were the actual mods, but you could also make custom playable missions (some of which could be simple, others could contain complex coding on top of the vanilla 'put stuff here, shoot it') - would those count as mods too? While the mods actually modified mechanics, objects and whatnot, the missions provided the way to interact with the changes introduced by the mods. Mods were nothing without missions to utilise them. Missions created to use mods were often dependant on said mods.

 

 

 

Using ARMA as the example, I could make a mission through the official mission making tool within the game. I could then write a script to run in that mission to modify how the mission worked above vanilla values, writing this script in a text editor of my choice. This is where your definition of "official modding tools" gets finnecky:

1) I can call the script to activate by using an in-game trigger object

...or...

2) I can tell the game to run the script by calling it directly from code of the mission, without using the official mission editing tool.

 

Functionally, both achieve the same result - my creation of an in-game trigger object causes the line of code to appear in the mission file. However, if I have triggers galore I probably don't want to be using the trigger objects in the editor it'll become a visual mess to deal with. Also if I want the triggers to move / spawn dynamically I want to do this by code, not the editor.

 

 

In ARMA's case, it allows users to create missions and has a nice, simple coding language. Hell, it's so moddable that it spawned DayZ. Most of the magic for DayZ occurred within text editors, not the official mission editor tool.

 

 

 

 

I think the person means any .ESP or .ESM files made with the Creation Kit as well as any other files used via the other tools that come with it like Archive2, etc.

 

Thank you for your interest in the survey. Yes, the definition of what actually constitutes a mod is a bit problematic as it can be quite large in scope. For the purpose of the study I tried to define it as 'the practice of creating custom content by modifying the base game through the use of a set of modding tools'.

Ingame mission editors are a bit of a conundrum. While they certainly allow the user to create custom content, they are often separate from the more elaborate ‘external’ tools. In the case of Arma you have the ingame mission editor and external modding tools.

Generally, mission based mods are smaller in size and scope than the mods that add new assets (models, textures, sounds etc.). Of course, this doesn’t always hold true, but the study is making this assumption (and has clearly listed it as a limitation to the research design). Arma 3 is particularly interesting because it so fittingly highlights this issue.

My primary interest lies with the external (not ingame) official mod tools supplied by the developer or publisher (e.g. the creation kit for fallout, creation/construction set for TES games, Assembly kits for Total War and arma 3 tools for Arma 3) from the perspective of open innovation.

From my understanding, sometimes third party (community developed) modding tools offer similar functionality to the official modding tools and in practice complete replace them. I tried to control for this fact by investigating the presence and usage of third party mod tools. But yes, as long as the official tools were used in some capacity during the mod process at least once it count (as I’m interested in how these official tools were perceived).

I hope this clears some stuff up, but I’ll be happy to further elaborate on it.

[Architeuthis]

Also, if you happen to know fellow modders who would fit the profile (modded for a game using an official modkit), please send them a link to the thread/survey. It would really help me out!