Your thoughts on a community mod

[Tamb0]

Gotcha. On that basis, I'm all for it.

 

 

Some other issues to think about/discuss:

 

- Control of climate/vegetation etc

Any rules here? I think something is needed to keep the world "realistic" i.e not changing from desert to ice fields every couple of cells.

 

- Control of arcetecture/style in cities

Similar to above, do you desire a mismash free for all or would something be in place to at least somewhat unify appearances within each city? Less important than climate/vegetation as if this one ends up an utter mismash it'll only strain your eyes rather than credibility!

 

- Just vanilla content or will including custom meshes/textures ok?

If custom is permitted you'd need to think about whether to limit the res/polys etc or not to keep it runable on lower end systems.

 

 

Not asking you for answers to these questions, just throwing out as many spanners as I can before you set the gears in motion ;)

 

I'll take them 1 at a time.

 

Climate will be cotrolled through the region editor and is fixed in place on the esm. Folk shouldn't have any reason to try and change it.

Same with land textures. Of course, if you want make a farm on grassland, then you'll have to change some of the area into a dirt texture. I've kept the textures in the default worldspace to as few as possible for this very reason.

 

Architecture for city buildings/dwellings should be chosen as the same type of architecture for that particular city. In other words. If a cith is based on Whiterun, then the houses/building should be chosen from statics that begin WR. There may be a few exceptions, depending on the scenario.

 

Custom meshes can be used if the modder wants. the only stipulation is that the meshes do not infringe any copyright. If the meshes are not your own design, then make sure the original designer gives you permission to use them. They'll probably deserve a mention as well, so pass the information back to me.

[Tamb0]

Wow lots of reading there...

 

Umm Op only thing i have to say is it will not look good. too many styles and too few restrictions. Can add anything you want and it will look like donkey dung in your mouth from a view through a mirror. especially 1 cell at a time considering when i add a cabin there atleast 2 cells affected

 

1. Limitations on what can be added in the exterior is the way to go.

2. limited numbers of exterior slots available. (An open world city is best)

3. interior requires the first room to fit the exterior theme.

4. first 5 modders joining get to choose the city theme for vanilla buildings.

 

So with those four guidelines, someone design a village or city that can use the easy buildings to add (farmhouses galore lol, so include districts) in limited amounts. say 20 for that village or small city. that person plops and drops the buildings and adds some foliage and does the ground textures and levels. then offers modders to do the rest(minus 1 place that the first five did not choose) allowing the first 5 to choose the exterior building theme.

 

Once building theme is set the first 5 can start work on interiors. while the one who started the project changes out all the buildings to fit the theme and adjust the exterior to fit. Now he/she gets to begin there interior.

 

Other's join and claim an unclaimed building, PM (not email) and building assigned to them. they can do whatever inside but only have the exteriors "yard" to work with.

 

exterior Navmesh is the sole job of the person incharge of the mod.

 

Merging 20 mods ... asking for failure.

 

Again, this is just to see what kind of interest there is. There will be guidelines set out that will control varios things, including the types of buildings. I was also considering (depending on interest) making a 1 cell exclusion zone around each persons x,y cell. Effectively, by choosing 1 cell, you are actually getting a 9 cell (3x3) block, with yours being in the middle.

 

Early doors yet, just wait and see what the response is

[Tamb0]

Ive added this to the top post -

 

Bethesda Forum modding community thoughts

 

...and some screenshot links to the worldspace

Edited June 20, 2012 by Tamb0

[jet4571]

I would be interested as long as it was given to the community involved in its production. No 1 person in charge of the whole project should be that 1 person taking the responsibilities to implement everyone's dreams and none for themselves aside from small ones. I already did my time being that 1 person implementing and It truly is the hardest thing ever one can do. I did supervisor work with 30 employees under me and it was a cakewalk compared to the 10 modders bickering (herding cats that hate each other and are wet comes to mind). Can you handle all that? i dont know maybe you do not know.

 

Just try it and find out. If it fails give the whole thing to the senior member and go to be the bottom member. no harm done but lessons learned.

[Tamb0]

I would be interested as long as it was given to the community involved in its production. No 1 person in charge of the whole project should be that 1 person taking the responsibilities to implement everyone's dreams and none for themselves aside from small ones. I already did my time being that 1 person implementing and It truly is the hardest thing ever one can do. I did supervisor work with 30 employees under me and it was a cakewalk compared to the 10 modders bickering (herding cats that hate each other and are wet comes to mind). Can you handle all that? i dont know maybe you do not know.

 

Just try it and find out. If it fails give the whole thing to the senior member and go to be the bottom member. no harm done but lessons learned.

It will be a community project. I stated the same thing on the Bethesda forum when I was asked this in one of the posts -

 

if i get to have cell 0,1 can i do the hot air balloon quest? heheeheh

 

and my reply was

 

if it's a community project, then wait and see what the community thinks. It won't be my decision. I am NOT the boss. Probably, just the co-ordinator. I do like the idea though. Do you think you could get it to work ?

 

People who participate will be given a free hand to do whatever they want, providing they stick to some common sense guidelines. ie. No you can't put the Blue Palace in the middle of a field and call it your home.

 

The primary objective is to create another worldspace for modders to populate with their own mods. As stated above, Tamriel is getting a bit crowded with mods (and mod conflicts), so in the long run, I think a worldspace expansion is a viable/better solution. But, in order for it to work, people will want some 'in place' content before they download it and start making their own mods that are specifically for this worldspace.

 

I also think it will be a bit of fun to go and see what the other modders have put inside their own additions. Some folk will just have a simple interior,...that's fine. Other folk might want a huge underground cave system,...again that's fine. As long as we try to keep things in perspective and semi lore friendly.

[gasti89]

I think it would be better to have the contents of the cells in the esm too.

 

If you're planning to do quests it will be a pain to design a good quest just inside your cell. And using other cells may bring conflicts because you don't have access to the contents of the other modders.

 

So i think about a main team of 5-6 world designers who will create the houses/mines bla bla. Then the modders will have about 1-2 days for modify the esm if they don't like the team work.

 

After that you can create your NPC, your packages, your quests in your esp. And while the project grows you'll have more cells available.

[Josephrose]

What a great idea!

 

I think you should only get modders with work to show, that is sexy. Then you should give people anywhere from 1 to 3 cells, depending what they ask for. As long as you trust the artistic craftsmanship of the person, you should be able to give artistic freedom.

 

Focus on quality of participants, not quantity.

 

I like the themed city idea, but once again, I wouldn't be too strict on that personaly.

 

I agree that it would be rad, even with no quests to start. Later on you can hand out more cells to each person, so they can create quests, and encounters of all kinds.

 

Look me up on Steam!, username = Josephrose I have 3 mods on there.

(Hunting Camp - Player Home) (Embersoul Cabin - Player Home) (Cloudscar Keep-Player Home)

 

If you like that stuff hit me up. I would be happy to join your project.

[Tamb0]

I think it would be better to have the contents of the cells in the esm too.

I'm sorry. I should have mentioned in the first post that the esp files get returned when complete and get merged to the master file (esm). The new updated master is then made available to those wanting to continue and do additional content. I think quests are best left until this stage, where we would see exactly what we had, or still needed.

 

If you're planning to do quests it will be a pain to design a good quest just inside your cell. And using other cells may bring conflicts because you don't have access to the contents of the other modders.

The whole quest/additional content would be looked at later. The primary goal is to get a population of modders avatars into the world first. Once that part is complete, we would see what areas are available for additional content.

 

So i think about a main team of 5-6 world designers who will create the houses/mines bla bla. Then the modders will have about 1-2 days for modify the esm if they don't like the team work.

That would put the onus on the 5-6 people to get things done. This will be a community project, so it will be down to the individual to make their own personal area. If they neglect to do so, it simply isn't included in the final esm.

 

What a great idea! I think you should only get modders with work to show,

That's the folk I'm targeting, the modding community (people who actually make mods for other people to enjoy).

 

Focus on quality of participants, not quantity.

I'm not too worried about how fabulous the content is, so long as the guidelines are adhered to. If you look at Skyrim, there are loads of very basic houses, but they make the area 'lived in'. I know there are some very talented modders out there, so after the initial phase of population, it might be a case of inviting some folk to do additional content, based on the quality of the work they had done on their allocated land / cell.

 

I agree that it would be rad, even with no quests to start. Later on you can hand out more cells to each person, so they can create quests, and encounters of all kinds.

That's the general idea, although some folk may want to put a small quest in their initial mod.

 

If you like that stuff hit me up. I would be happy to join your project.

I won't be picking and choosing who gets selected to participate and who doesn't. This is open to all. If you want in, you get in. There's no need to meet any special criteria, except that you must have made a mod for others to enjoy.

 

If things work out ie. enough folk interested, another thread will be started that will let folk sign up and give them further details.

Edited June 20, 2012 by Tamb0

[gasti89]

Well, it makes sense. Even if you'll have to use caution with merging. From my experience it's a pain to merge something that isn't simply an armor or a weapon.

[Tamb0]

Merging will be done using version control. The same process that Bethesda use when making their master files.