Nobody noticed this?
Todd: "This is a bunch of our level designers, putting together areas for the game. And you'll see them working with our tool, the Creation Kit."
Or do you think "the creation kit" is just a general term for their new editor?

Weather or not we can get Model exporters for 3d software depends on what they include in the game in terms of middleware.
This time around they have there own engine so it will likely use there own model format.
But if they use a third party physics engine they will likely not be able to release a model exporter.
Since it will likely not use nif files we would have to start over from the beginning, having to create our own exporters and nifskope like tools.

Why mod it before even playing it???

More functions like OBSE for Oblivion.

Hopefully they will have looked at some of the 3rd party developments like the Mod Manager and OBSE and Gecko(sp?). Would be nice if they could get some of this functionality in without depending on a modder to make them.

a console version... (wont ever happen i know but still)

I vote for that, give us it early. /sarcasm

You need the whole game to start modding.

I want MUCH MUCH MORE freedom in make dungeons, caves and such. I hope the new Construction Kit is more flexible with what you can do to how a dungeon looks. I want to be able to do things like rip the floors up and re-texture walls, change the shape of pillars, drill holes in teh walls and do all that kind of stuff... on the fly. I'm probably just dreaming tho.

If we have the full file format documentation, it's not that bad. I guess I can throw together a quick exporter for static (textured) meshes in Python for Blender in a day or so, as long as the documentation is complete and understandable. Skinned meshes (creatures and so on) would take maybe a week to three ...

No offense but you should have probably tried harder. I taught someone to use nifscope that had problems distinguishing between a shortcut and an exe (no, I'm not kidding).

There are a lot of tutorials out there for nifscope. And nifscope can do a few things that Blender or Max can't simply because while Max/Blender are geard to general purpose modelling NifScope is geared towards working with nifs specifically.

That being said we don't know if they'll still use the nif family format (nifs, kfs, egts etc.). They might since they're familiar with it (been using it since Morrowind all the way to Fo3 and NV) but on the other hand the engine is new so they might have chosen to make their own custom file type.

The ability to make a mod on a computer, and then transport it to my 360.

I just hope the interior cell pieces are actually modular. No crappy single-model interiors like Oblivion, please.

They were. Sure some of the rooms were combined into a single mesh but the parts used to make up that room were still available.

This.

Oh, I know, a world editor where you can edit more than one cell at a time, ridiculous...

I would like to see the ability to import mods from Morrowind and Oblivion Construction sets and automaticly have them ajusted to working with Skyrim

Modular sets only work with blocky buildings. If you want any sort of complex architectural stuff, like Oblivion did, you can only get it through shells.

It'd be pretty cool if textures on a model could be changed within the CS. The ability to scale an object on an axis would also be nifty.

You mean there's a difference? :huh:

(that was sarcasm people)




Perhaps. As long as the meshes/textures etc aren't made by Bethesda, this could come in handy. They didn't allow us to import their MW meshes into OB and I'm sure it will be the same for Skyrim. I'd love to see some of the awesome swords users made imported into Skyrim though.

Not going to happen... you can thank Microsoft for that...

A few little bothers to add to the already good list going here...

* Easy/intuitive to use (Modders from previous CS/GECKs can start working right off the bat, new users can learn quickly and easily.)
* Quicker exit (Why is it so sloooowww?)
* Modify the mod author & description (I haven't been able to do this in Vista, need to use 3rd party programs like TES4Edit or TES4Gecko.)

Edit:
* Bring back the ability to use an esp as a master to another esp. (Morrowind had this, now we have to use tricks in WryeBash.)

Yes, I noticed this in the video released yesterday. Also, the level designer's monitor was visible slightly out of focus, but it looked somewhat similar to the Construction Set UI.

One thing I'd kinda like is the ability to edit things in "layers". Something that's been a bit bothersome for me when trying to edit pre-existing locations is that you sometimes have to zoom in really close to an object because there's some beam of light or what have you overlapping it and the editor tends to select that instead of the thing you want to edit or move. Or perhaps if anything the ability to "lock" certain things temporarily from being moved around and/or edited.

As much as we'd all like to see the ability to create mods for the console versions-the problem is that it would be very difficult to implement-at the very least they'd have to place restrictions on things like custom content. They could potentially design a special version of the editor for the console versions but even then they'd probably need to police the content to some extent-plus I think it wouldn't be a particularly easy thing to do to begin with. That wouldn't at all be worth the effort because unlike the Construction Set it's not something they'd be creating for themselves to begin with. You could point to things like Halo 3's Forge, but that's entirely different since it's designed for stand-alone multilayer maps and not actually adding new content to the main game world.

I would like to see something where Bethesda interacts with the modding community and holds some kind of contest or something or selects certain mods, contacts their creators and then ports certain mods to the consoles as (ideally) free DLC. I have no idea what the logistics of that would be however I'd imagine it'd be easier than working out a way for us to port DLCs to the consoles directly or creating specialized modding tools. Whether or not they could reasonably make such DLC free could depend on the size of it I'd imagine.

Do you guys think they'll still be using the .nif format? .nif after all is NetImmerse which is owned by Gamebryo (and they are no longer using Gamebryo). They may end up moving to MD5 or something. Whatever they use, I hope they just include a tool to convert from .obj files. These are the standard Wavefront objects that you can create with any 3D program.

As for the CS itself, I hope they add a full-blown scripting language with far more of the engine exposed at runtime through the API.

Another pipe-dream of mine is for them to eliminate the whole cells and worldspaces debacle. I want every last building, cave, dungeon, etc to exist in the same zone with no loading doors between them. This means buildings cannot have non-euclidean geometries (interiors with a greater volume/different shape than the corresponding exteriors).

Thanks for all the responses, people - got a good list going here. But don't stop! If we keep this prominent enough, the devs will notice

1) Some kind of framework for importing and handling custom resources and their directory structures from within the construction set would be nice (but hardly necessary). Don't know how (un)realistic it is to hope for an .obj import feature and model settings in the CS (like an integrated Nifskope)...

2) Multiple views/render windows in a single instance of the CS.

3) User-named, incremental auto-save option.

4) Ability to change/set new keyboard shortcuts.

Aargh, yes, MUST HAVE... The amount of work I've lost to power surges/failures... :flame: