Thinking of making a mod

[paintballmaster254]

So I've been wanting to do this for a while and actually started modeling stuff.

 

Basically it is a castle with a quest to get it, but the difference is that I would like for the player to be offered a choice between a light and dark path (the castle will reflect this decition). Then maybe there will be story quest against the other alignment.

 

This is a very short and veage description, I just wanted to know if you guys think its worth trying to get help making this possibe. If you have questions just ask. Thanks.

 

Matt

[Vagrant0]

It's your mod, it's really up to you if you think the work is worth the result. A mod like this IS quite alot of work, especially if you havn't done anything similar yet. Most people don't realize what is involved with even a simple "talk to person A, get item B, return to person A" kinda quest once dialogues, new areas, or scripting are involved. The castle itself, depending on how large/detailed you make it could be a project in and of itself for most people.

 

That said, house mods in general have been done to death for the past 2 years. While yes, they can be very good tools for learning how to mod, and can provide a good platform for expanding into other areas, like quests, dungeons, or scripting, they have been done to death. This is particularly true for castle mods. So if your goal is to make this great mod that everyone wants, you may need to do a bit more searching, but if all you're after is something you can learn from doing, and maybe a few people will bother downloading, then it might be a good idea. This is not to suggest that there may not be some more life in the house mod genre, but most things with potential right now pretty much require new meshes, or very unique features. Do some looking around, see what's been done, and do something else.

[exanimis]

My advice is to go for it. You may not be able to get anyone interested in it but you can learn to do a lot yourself. The more you learn, the more you can put into the mod. This forum is a great place to find answers but it's hard to recruit any good dependable help unless you have something to show that you are working hard to bring this mod to the community. The more you do yourself, the better the chance of getting help.

 

I believe it could be an interesting mod and it's a good idea for a mod.

[paintballmaster254]

As far as Castle mod being done to death, I've seen that and thats why I didn't want the mod to revolve around the castle, only part of it. As far as work myself, I am currently starting to model the interior of the keep, I've finished the outter wall and keep (Dark castle). I've also made a sword and outfit for female character. Also a demon for summoning (modelled and boned, still need to weight). Like I said if no one is interested I will just make it a castle mod for myself without the quests.

 

Matt

[Vagrant0]

As far as Castle mod being done to death, I've seen that and thats why I didn't want the mod to revolve around the castle, only part of it. As far as work myself, I am currently starting to model the interior of the keep, I've finished the outter wall and keep (Dark castle). I've also made a sword and outfit for female character. Also a demon for summoning (modelled and boned, still need to weight). Like I said if no one is interested I will just make it a castle mod for myself without the quests.

 

Matt

Wait. If it's new meshes, then that changes things quite a bit since new meshes, especially if it's a new tileset, are always of interest to both players, and other modders. The castle idea is really only done to death because it ends up being one castle that looks pretty much the same as every other castle.

[paintballmaster254]

Ya I totally agree, thats why I wanted to make my own, the only problem is that my texturing skills are not on par with my modeling skills, so depending on how I want the texture to be I may need some help with that.

 

But like I said if this sounds interesting any ideas are welcome. Otherwise it will just turn into a personal mod.

 

Matt

[exanimis]

You seem to be at the same point as me. I have created all new houses, castle walls, chests, weapons, armor, creatures and races for my mod but until I learn to texture them, I am stuck with nothing that is of use.

[Vagrant0]

My trick has been to see if I can re-use default oblivion textures for most of my new statics (as my team is probably well aware). Depending on how skilled you are with manipulating the uvwmaps, you can get some fairly good results that don't look very much like how they are used elsewhere.

http://thecoloredroomsproject.googlepages.com/ScreenShot74.jpg

With the exception of the floor to the lower left, the statue, and the banner, all other textures are default Oblivion textures.

 

Even if what you end up with isn't the exact look you want, those default textures can serve as a guide for making your own textures, giving you a specific UVlayout to work from to ensure that the same sort of patterns, shapes, and designs are there. It's kinda a cheap way of doing it, but does help resolve the issue of having this blank UVmap, and not knowing where to start, or how to make things look.

[paintballmaster254]

Ya so far thats what I've been doing (changing the color too). But there still maybe/ probably will be a place I will want a new texture. I have no idea how the authors of some of the armors make those textures. (The originals not the retextured ones)

[ihateregisteringeverywhere]

There's a plenty of different ways of creating textures. The simplest would be using stock images of materials you'd like to use and mixing them up in gimp or something similar.

 

You can also bake maps from high-res models, paint them by hand, or paint dirrectly on the models in specialized programs.

 

Or a combination of any of theese. I usualy mix up stocks and combine that with vectors.. or trough vectors(use 'em as masks).

 

I've never seen anyone else do it that way though :D.