Custom worldspace with quests: Complete worldspace first and then make the quests, or what?

[YouDoNotKnowMyName]

Good evening everybody!

 

As you might know, I am currently working on a little custom worldspace mod (an island about the size of the Commonwealth) that will also have a few quests.

 

I have already done some of the basic of the landscape editing and some of the "exterior architecture", but not everything.

 

So, the question is this:

 

Should I complete the actual "worldspace" (placing objects, NPCs, trees, ...) first and then start working on quests and things like that or is it okay to start implementing things like that while working on the "worldspace"?

 

Could there be any problems later on in the developement if I start implementing quests and scripts while the worldspace work is "ongoing"?

 

 

I ask this because I don't want to re-do the whole thing in a few years because of a stupid thing like this.

[Zorkaz]

Idk as does everyone else. What are you going to do specifically or what's your general idea?

Basically yesno, make the groundworks and add the details later, that's what I made for The Forest and Sombre Mountain as well as the now non-existant Dreamspaces and Halfway Rock Lighthouse. Same goes for my upcoming The Marshlands.

Activators and Actors can be added and detailed later, but the Landscape, Buildings and Navmesh should be done first.

Keep the general idea in mind but in the meantime you might stumble on other things.

[YouDoNotKnowMyName]

Idk as does everyone else. What are you going to do specifically or what's your general idea?

Basically yesno, make the groundworks and add the details later, that's what I made for The Forest and Sombre Mountain as well as the now non-existant Dreamspaces and Halfway Rock Lighthouse. Same goes for my upcoming The Marshlands.

Activators and Actors can be added and detailed later, but the Landscape, Buildings and Navmesh should be done first.

Keep the general idea in mind but in the meantime you might stumble on other things.

 

Ohhh yeaaahhh... the navmesh ...

 

I thought that I was forgetting something important ...

 

I will do the navmesh for the exterior when everything else is done, because otherwise I would have to do THAT again thousands of times ...

 

 

Yes, of course, I have already written out the basic "ideas" a bit and I always have that "documentation" open, just in case something awsome comes to mind (happens very rarely thouh ...) ...

(I found a great way to organize things like this is to make a "personal wiki", just for me and completely 'offline' of course, so that way I can have links to other pages and stuff like that ...)

 

 

I am not going to talk about specific stuff (because I will most likely never publish this, but if I will, it will be a surprise ... :laugh: ).

I actually have a few "scenarios" for this:

• "Alternate start" (pre - war): The player starts on the island, the war happens (no nukes strike the island directly, but communications / supplies get cut off) and the whole "surviving" thing begins ...
• "Escape": Player "wakes up" on the island with no clue how the got there or what's going on there. The goal is to escape.
• "A safe place": The player hears a rumor that there is a safe island that has been mostly left intact by the war (maybe Preston Garvey will tell the player that that would be an ideal place for settlements ...), but when the player arrives, it turns out that it isn't as "safe" as it seems ...
• "FarHarbor-Style": The player gets sent to this island to investigate something and gets caught up in the struggels of the island ...

So I think I will make the mod as an ESM file and have the different "scenarios" as ESPs (or ESMs) that depend on the "main ESM file".

The main ESM file will contain the "basic stuff" that is the same across all the scenarios (like the landscape, most of the architecture, NPCs, ...).

 

 

Well, I think I answered my own question ...

[Blinxys]

In production environments it is usually (almost always) best to go from the general to the specific.

(Doing it in layers like a painting).

So as to not get caught up in the details (foregoing the big picture).

Get your scale/proportions in order and fit things into it (lest you run out of room in the wrong place).

 

If you make your physical environment esm and all that goes on/into it esp/esl(s) even total changes will be easy.

 

(Back to modular construction discussion).

 

EDIT: PS Love the diea of a personal Wiki, why didn' tI think of that. :ermm:

Edited October 11, 2020 by Blinxys

[thousande]

I guess there are no answer for this as every project/team needs to adjust to whatever situation they are in.

Boring answer, but important to repeat. Getting caught up in some religion may wreck the project.

 

Not a game developer, but as I understand it BGSs uses what they call iterative level design and I am sure other studios uses a similar process.

Rough overview: The project is split up in 4 iterations, serious implementation of story/quests starts around the 3rd cycle.

This is not sets of rules written in stone, but guidelines, I guess.

Remember BGS is a team of ~30 heads doing level design over the course of ~5 years. If you are a only one person or a few people the situation may be different. Hammer, nail and all that.

 

As pointed out, no need to go serious with navmeshing early as large and small things will likely change as the world materializes before you or sometimes not :wink:.

If it suits you, create small patches here and there for testing out stuff that needs navmesh. Or just move research stuff to a worldspace / cell / esp.

 

BGS have given a few talks about their way of doing iterative level design.

Here is one related to Skyrim and Fallout 3.

 

I think they still uses the same process. Probably adapted to new knowledge and situations.

[YouDoNotKnowMyName]

Thanks for that summary!

 

Yes, I have a completely separate "ESP" to try stuff and mess around (so the "main project" does not get messed up).

 

Thanks for linking that video, but I probably won't watch it ...

(It's just a personal preference. I prefer text when "studying something", easier to work with and takes up less harddrive space ...)

[thousande]

Not sure how a video hosted and streamed from the internet takes disk space, but here is transcript

;)

 

http://blog.joelburgess.com/2014/07/gdc-2014-transcript-iterative-level.html ;)

[YouDoNotKnowMyName]

I like to download and save everything that I consider "useful".

Just in case ...