Ok, last time I tried this it turned into a flame fest. Gonna make the suggestion again. If you have no idea what a Neverwinter Nights module is, don't post.

Anyway, it would be nice to have the option to create a whole new world from scratch and allow the player to choose to either play with their normal Skyrim character or choose to start a new character (perhaps let the modder choose whether to allow importing or force a new character creation). This would allow people who are not hardcoe programmers to make TCs or new experiences using the CS without being limited to adding content to the main Skyrim map. Hopefully it's not too late into development for this, but I do think it would add quite a bit to the available content as well as the replayability of the game.

This isn't going to happen for one major reason. Bethesda doesn't create the CS for modders to use, the simply release the tool that they have used in developing the game.

That was.. the thing... Bioware toolset right? Personally, it doesn't matter. If it was worth the time for bethesda, I would like to see each design side by side, but I'm happy enough with the current construction set. I know how to alter mods, even scripts, just no desire to create mods myself other than tweak or compatibility patches. It might affect the big modders more than someone like me though.

I would love that, but the chances for this being in the game is very low...


:tes:

I'm pretty sure that the toolset is what Bioware used in development. Bottom line, no developer is going to spend time developing an app to make modding easier for the enduser, so what they used is what you get. The toolset worked well with the NWN engine and the CS works well with Gamebryo, so a side by side design is just wishful thinking.

I don't think it would take that much time to implement. They could even use it themselves to make another full blown TES 5 game akin to NV.

This functionality is already present in the existing Construction Sets for TES III & IV; the challenge of creating a new "module" from scratch far outweighs that of setting up the .esp (or .esm) files necessary to play one. And characters are tied much more closely to their save game files in TES than in NWN.

I imagine the NWN toolset was also designed towards building "modules" because that mirrored pen-and-paper D&D's "module" structure. (Didn't it also allow for multi-player scenarios with one person being the "dungeon master"?)

In any event, the TES toolkit isn't really focused in that direction. :shrug:

Yep.


Yep. Multi-player scenarios, with multiple DMs. In single player, characters are also saved locally in a separate directory and can be moved from module to module freely, although specific saved games within modules contain their own character data.

The multiplayer aspect aside, it's a cool idea for TES, but I can't see why characters would need to be portable, really (or why Bethesda would take it into consideration). No offense intended, OP!

I don't particularly need that myself, but it would allow people to design a module that can be played with a character you already have, are used to and want to take with you in new adventures. Would also help with high level challenge modules.

But it would take time that they don't need to spend since they've already got their set of design tools. Any time spent working on something besides the game at this point is too much time spent on the wrong task.

There is just no point to this, the Neverwinter Nights toolset is designed for a certain view point, you won't see things like a clock on the wall very clearly in Neverwinter Nights because of the view point is high up and away from the character, TES is First Person thus it requires a higher level of detail. All you'd get from such a tool is a very generic world that would look rather sparse in comparison to anything done within the Creation Kit. It'd look generated and not very well done, I don't want to see generic worlds with automatically generated trees in Skyrim. Or to put it more bluntly, what works for Neverwinter Nights, works for Neverwinters, what works for Skyrim works for Skyrim.

To me the big advantage of the of beths CS is that it's easy to add something to the default areas OR add in new areas if you so wish

I disagree... The vantage makes no difference (though the NWN engine was made a long time ago). Modern assets have a detailed texture and can have reduced detail versions in the same file, for rendering distant objects. The only reason a texture is unclear in a game like NWN, is that they were small textures. In Fallout 3, when you are up high looking down ~its the same thing as in a game like NWN. :shrug:

TES & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wf_2V7wLkI, and they degrade the art (might even use impostering (I dunno).
Kotor2 had FPP mode for examinations, even though the game was third person.

The point. You missed it.

The OP is asking for a way to make it easier to do Total Conversions, without the need for bit-flipping like in Oblivion/Morrowind.