LE Tips you would give to a new modder

[Natterforme]

Lets see what else we can add.^^

 

Once you have made a mod that you are comfortable with, advertise! Screenshots are a great way to get known and build up your associations with other modders. Use screenshots of your mod in action to build attention and show off its unique features. There are several quality Youtube channels dedicated to reviewing and advertising Skyrim mods. Dont be afraid to PM them and ask for a mod review. Who knows, they might have already started! Some of the larger channels might not cover your first mod, but there are several smaller channels that most certainly will. Once you begin to make a name for yourself, then people will come to you asking for their videos to be hosted on your mod page! It happens to me all of the time.

 

When you update your mods in a meaningful way, write an article on the changes and features with a splash image. This is a handy way to let others know that your mod has been updated without adding a new file to the newest files section!

 

 

-Natterforme

[Grimoa]

Excellent tips, Natterforme! The "mod selling" and "advertisment" is something I still have to learn myself.

 

I thought about adding tutorials to the tipps, but there are already several pinned topics concerning tutorials in the Mod Talk. I guess we should avoid repeating that information?

[demidekidasu]

Yeah - If it's all been said and done before, no point really :)

 

However, this thread has turned into a really great thread. I think most of us can probably learn something from what has been said in here, whatever your degree of experience!

[Grimoa]

I didn't mean to stop anyone from adding more tipps. Keep them coming!

Just thought since there's already a collection of tutorials we don't need another one. I tried to see what tutorials are mentioned in the pinned topics, but... that's a lot. It's actually so much it's probably difficult to find anything specific. :mellow: So... this is not my htread or anything... If you want to recommend tutorials, please do!

[littleork]

A tip about what Janus said about mod teams.

 

-If you are a mod leader and you have a few people working with you, make sure to check on them to make sure they do what they came in the team to do and even more if they never worked in any team before. ( I have a few mod testers that were suppose to help me with my mod but I ended up doing all the testing myself anyway).

[clintmich]

Natterforme added a good one! This aspect often gets overlooked more times than not. And, it is actually very important if you want your mod to do well. With good advertisement and exposure, mods will be successful, and get lots of downloads and endorsements. If no one has done a review vid of your mod, make videos of your own, and upload them to youtube yourself. You never know who will see them. Months before my mod Super Skyrim Bros was released, I uploaded a few sneak a peek vids to youtube. PC Gamer, Kotaku, IGN, and a few other big gaming web sites saw these vids, and featured news articles on my upcoming mod. Then when I actually released SSB, these websites did a follow up story on it, with download links to the mod embedded in the articles. And they included my mod author name. COOL! Super Skyrim Bros went viral, and made the hot files on Nexus for a week straight.

 

Do not overlook Advertisement!

 

clintmich

[nuska]

Presentation.

 

When you release a mod out in the public, you'll probably want people to pick it up and play it and even come back to drop in their opinion on it. Good grammar and proper punctuation as well as clearly written specifics on the mod's functions will help give your work the look of someone who knows what they've just released.

I instantly skip over mods that have vague, poorly written descriptions and insufficient screenshots - if I don't get a clear idea of what it does, why should I download it? Also recognise the subjectivity of tastes - almost anything titled with 'Better Something' rarely is really an improvement for every user, especially with visual mods.

 

And even a bigger one that's particularly important in the development process - don't fear breaking something.

In fact, DO break things. Take them apart and see what makes them tick, then put them back together. Some of my most valuable learning experiences have been doing something in good faith that I was doing it right, ending up having it break horribly, scramble fixes together under pressure with 2000 downloaders with broken files and finally get it out working. It's a little scary but nothing hammers it in better for the next time you do it.

[Ironman5000]

Two things I stick to get the best out of modding,

 

1 - Do what you can be as familiar as possible with a variety of modding tools not just the CK such as Nifskope, Gimp/Photoshop, Blender (if you can wrap your head around it), and Tes5Edit/TesVsnip. Not only does it greatly expand the quality of your mod but it will help out in long run for troubleshooting any problems in the future.

 

2 - Compile tutorials from as many sources as you can - look at Wiki pages, uploaded nexus tutorials, youtube videos, forums, and of course the utility pages to learn the basics. Even if it is something you may not be immediately using it's worth geting anyway because the page may change or get deleted at a later date. I personally document everything I find and compile everything in it's own folder for future reference.

 

The more you practice this the more you learn, the better your mods, the wiser you are :biggrin:

[ArronDominion]

Here are some things I have been noticing, or recommend as I continue to mod in Skyrim.

 

Conceptual phase:

 

1. Don't immediately dismiss any idea. - Since this is more of the brainstorming phase, ideas are needed to focus a mod. Start with everything that you think should go into the mod, and worry about weeding out the impossible or ones that do not make sense later.

2. Determine if the mod will be lore-friendly or not. - Being lore-friendly requires some more research into the past events of the Elder Scrolls history, as well as finding the right tools to help make the characters/places/events believable. If you do not care, your idea has a lot more freedom to evolve in your direction.

3. Create a conceptual plan. - This is not as important if you are creating a house mod or adding a new weapon to the game. If you are creating a quest line, faction, or something more elaborate, some sort of conceptual plan is helpful. Any word processor is useful for creating the concept, I personally use MSWord. The bigger your project, the more thought out you might want the ideas in writing. Here is an example of one I have done for my W.I.P called League of Extraordinary Heroes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O9FpWKbxTPFfznc_YUcZRAwt-w7zZ9HLq-wHstzqDJ0/edit

 

Implementation phase:

 

1. Start on the strongest idea first. - You are more focused on a particular aspect in the beginning, which you will want to work on. During this time, other ideas will pop up to push the mod forward.

2. Stuck? Don't be afraid to look for help. - Whether it is a tutorial or another modder, having such a resource can do two things. 1) You learn something new about the Creation Kit and Skyrim to assist in your future modding ventures. 2) Clear a roadblock that is preventing your current mod from moving forward. | The modding community is quite extensive, with the Nexus forums and Bethesda's Creation Kit forums, the Creation Kit wiki, TESAlliance tutorials, and probably some other resources I have not touched yet, to help with modding woes. The more we help each other out, the better quality our projects are, and the experience one modder has learned can be reinforced and passed to other modders.

3. I have never done this before. - Modding is all about experiments. Poke and prod, and you eventually figure out a systematic way to do something. Worried about ruining your project, create a different mod to test out the idea, then implement what you have learned in yours.

 

Release phase:

 

I do not have the most well known releases, but some general tips which are useful for promoting a mod.

 

1. Create screenshots that capture your mod. - People love to preview a mod before actually trying it. If you can show something in a screenshot, do it. The more they see, the better they can evaluate it.

2. Have a well thought out, detailed description. - A mod with little images can compensate with the use of a description. Explaining in detail what is done, with a bullet summary of this, will generally give a good idea of what your mod does.

3. Have video capture software and hard drive space? Create a video for Youtube. - A video can do a lot to capture a mod, and spark interest. It can be hard drive intensive, had a few videos go over 1 GB. Once you have it uploaded to Youtube, you can post it in your mod on Nexus/wherever else it is hosted, you can post this to your favorite forum community, etc. Here is one I have used: http://www.bandicam.com/

 

Post-Release phase:

 

Probably one of the more important phases here. Community will give feedback, some of it good, some of it positive, some negative, and some that just does not work. The way you react is important. Some of the better improvements or additions in my mods came as a result of the feedback given. Listen to the comments, weed out the ones that do not provide useful information, either by responding to ask for more input, or going off a more-detailed comment.

 

I am new, where to start in CK:

1. Creation Kit tutorials - http://www.creationkit.com/Category:Tutorials

2. Look for youtube tutorials regarding to what you want to do, I.E. "creation kit how to make a house" in the Youtube search.

3. Use the Creation Kit wiki as a continuous source. - I always go back to the Creation Kit wiki to double check functions or events that are needed for a script, or as a refresher on a particular concept covered in one of the tutorials you have already done.

4. Check the Bethesda Creation Kit forums or Nexus forums if you are still looking for a starting point. - Another modder will usually come in and clear up some confusion, helping encourage your experimentation and involvement into the modding community.

 

Other random tid-bits:

 

1. Voice actors:

> Be connected - The more community connections you have, the more likely you will have someone offer to lend their voice to your mod. For my Skooma Bear mod, someone from a Team Fortress 2 community was really interested in the mod, so agreed to do the voice acting.

>Be understanding - Voice actors are usually not paid to lend their voice, so be understanding of their real-life commitments and perhaps their lack of understanding on what recording methods they should use.

 

2. Mechanic changes:

>Each update can remove a particular function - Be watchful for a particular function or feature disappearing, this will lead to a potential patch in the future. The most noteworthy was the long-considered dialogue bug, where dialogue would not initialize on start game enabled.

[Natterforme]

Developing a plan is very important for seeing your mod through to completion. The old saying," If you fail to plan, you plan to fail," rings true here. For my planning stages, I use Notepad ++ for organizing my ideas and thoughts. I usually write down what I want the ultimate goal of the mod to be, and whether it is personal or intended for the public. If my intention is to improve an aspect of the game or fix a bug, I list down all of the problems that I can think of that fall into the relative category that the mod would cover as well as ways that the game can be improved or fixed in these areas. I use the wikis and other sources to find related bugs and known problems that others have experienced and I research if the problem has been fixed, either in a mod or in a patch. I also check the Unofficial Skyrim patch to see if it has already been addressed. If I find that the problem has not been patched, but has been fixed in a known mod, I look for that mod to see how fully that mod fixes the issue. I also look to see if other mods have already addressed my concerns and, if they have, to what extent. It can be very frustrating to lean that your mod has already been modded or patched before you even began working. Once I know that what I am doing has not already been done before and I have made a list to address my concerns, I categorize it to group the issues based on its difficulty to fix or change and tackle the small issues first. It gives me a feel for how hard the overall project will be to see through and warms me up to address the larger issues with a better understanding of what is wrong or what is it that I want to change.

 

After I have sorted out the problems on paper, I begin to list the potential additions and improvements that I wish to add to the game. These too are sorted based on difficulty to complete. As I go into the toolsets and begin to work on the mod, I am continually marking off to-do items on the lists and making observations and making notes for when I learn something that could be useful in the future. I often use these notes on future projects and am constantly referring to them. As they are completed, I add the changes, additions, improvements, and bug fixes to a list of completed tasks. This makes it very easy to write up the readme file later, as I can have everything compiled together in notes from start to finish and I can easily say what I have or have not changed in the mod. Ultimately the goal is to complete mods by staying on track with an organized set of goals which are realistic and obtainable. It also lets me know when I am done with a mod and can safely move on to the next one :P.

 

-Natterforme