I thought I would list some questions regarding the Creation Kit that I hope the Devs may be willing to address.

-How different is the new Creation Kit as compared to the previous Construction kits?

-Will there be a steep learning curve for a modder that's familiar with the old tools?

-When designing the Creation Kit did you look at other developers tools sets and see what design features they included that may have been beneficial and attempt to incorporate similar design into the new kit or did you just develop it based on previous designs and as your specific needs arose?

-Is the new engine and toolset designed around the same master file/plug in concept that is used in earlier games. If so has there been any enhancements to that design to improve compatibility? Such as the mods OBMM or BAIN provided?

-Are there any plans to provide community support for the Creation Kit? Such as video tutorials, WIKI, location to submit technical questions, etc?

-Most developers use professional tools in creating games. Most modders are unable to get access to these expensive applications. Has there been or do you expect any efforts to provide support for the freeware tools most modders use such as Blender, GIMP, etc.?

-Now that you are using a new engine you have been able to avoid using some middleware softwares such as Speedtree. Do you think this will allow modders more access and ability to alter parts of the game that were not possible before due to licensing restrictions on the middleware?

-What parts of the Creation Kit do you think has seen the most improvement or changes?

I hope so, Fallout: 3 did, and it's useful for me, the casual modder (that just wants a simple dungeon and junk). They also had a website for Fallout: 3 and Oblivion. Fallout's had tutorials and explained different commands and functions. I'm not sure if Oblivion's did or not, but the website did give information on the commands.

If it isn't too hard for them (it probably takes a lot of work to do that), I would want it, it's helpful.

As a student in collage studying animation and game design I understand how frustrating trying to figure things out on your own and it is always necessary to ask someone else for help. Lets face it, you can’t know every thing so you will need to ask for help. So I would imagine eventually someone will make a wiki for the Creation Kit.

I personally hope there will be in-depth video tutorials because when your schedule does not permit a lot of free and requires a lot of energy, having good video tutorials can help you pick up skills faster so you can then start modding.

As for software I believe there was plug-ins for Blender, 3D Studio Max, and Maya for the previous engine kits. The big issue was getting plug-ins for 64bit systems and for the right version of your software, which was an issue I ran into when I tried to get started. :facepalm:

I'm assuming we may get a wiki and hopefully some videos for the new kit. I hope the devs are willing to address a few of my questions in an upcoming interview or something. The biggest concern I have is how different the new engine is and how it's going to effect Blender users. If we are getting completely new file formats and Bethesda has only developed tools to work with 3DS Max or whatever applications they use and it's left up to the community to develop tools for Blender I'm afraid it may take a long time before we are able to be productive. I understand that Bethesda is most likely only going to have time and resources to develop tools for their specific needs but it would be nice to have an idea of what modders will be facing with the new kit.

All your questions are insightful and would provide great and tantalizing info about the new and returning features of the Construction Kit.

As such, we're not allowed to answer any of them. Sorry! Keep up the noble struggle of waiting!

Ooh, you people are tricksy. Tricksy little elves!

Ohhhhhhh thats a crash and burn if I ever did see one lol

Nice try though

:clap: :clap: :clap:

Absolutely classic! Love it!

I am flattered for just getting an acknowledgment. It at least lets us know that someone there is keeping an eye on the craziness in these forums...and I have to admit I did chuckle out loud over your reply. Now back to :banghead:

This part here leads me to believe that the learning curve may not be as steep as some might think.

I was just getting ready to create a preemptive reply since I knew it would be coming.

NEW AND RETURNING FEATURES IN THE CREATION KIT - CONFIRMED!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm guessing they'll be a time that Beth will reveal in detail more info about the Creation kit or the engine itself.

:hehe: I couldn't resist. Sorry.

I love Bethesda, but their inability to give an insight on what I think will not spoil the game AT ALL is beyond me.
Why not? Why can't we have this information? I do think you guys like dangling carrots and then smirking because
only you guys know the answer. Really SICK people you lot are. ^_^

The announcement of the Creation Kit was a huge day brightener to a lot of fans. We can wait more .... but we'll be "white knuckling it" in anticipation.

Bethesda fans are ..... well... Bethesda fans! What the Construction Set means for Elder Scroll gamers is akin to ..... what the Super Bowl means to football fans.

I really couldn't come up with a better anology. Don't keep us waiting for long. You don't want your customers to die from the stress of anticipation.

*sigh*... Bethesda had to make the game with something.

Yes. But the fact that they intend to release it to the public .... that was what we where waiting for.

Is there still possibility for Script Extender for Skyrim?
How much script functions added to new game?
How many functions of engine hardcoded?

Those are good questions as well. I speculate they are included in the confirmed new features. :wink_smile:

The script extenders are third party, with no (or very little, in a few cases) first party help, and would require actual effort to lock out. Script extenders are always possible, and will probably be made regardless of how good the scripting engine is, simply because it can always have more functionality, even things that nobody would think of until they were needed.

One thing that people need to realize about the script extenders is that they are not trivial things to produce. The first version of OBSE came out four months after the game released. FOSE and NVSE were able to come out quicker becuase it was the same engine. With a new engine, we may be set way back as everything will need to be figured out again. Hopefully the other parts of their engine will remain the same and make the job easier.

Make it open-source. That's an order! :toughninja:

Bethesda - I'm not gonna ask questions about what the Creation Kit might be like, but let me just share my thoughts on this topic with you...

I know or at least believe that making the Creation Kit easy to use for casual modders is one of your major concerns. That's a nice goal but it will inevitably lead to constraints regarding modding capabilities, which will result in less creative mods. Modding or content creation for games in general is no casual thing at all, so I think customers can't expect to use a set of tools for that purpose, while keeping the learning time extremely low.
I'm not asking to make things more difficult or something like that but I hope that the Creation Kit will be more open to modders with alot more functions available than the Construction Kit for Oblivion has had for example. And since you've confirmed that Skyrim comes along with not only a new but an Engine belonging to the company itself, I'm sure that this shouldn't be much of a problem in terms of copyright issues.

For example... It would be nice, if we would at least get some functional importers/exporters for meshes, particle systems and all that stuff...

The Oblivion Construction Set was just too restricted for me. I was tired of working with HEX-like editor tools like NifSkope just to see my mesh/animation whatsoever not working because some stupid Flag,which no one knows what it does anyways, was set to a wrong value. No offense to the guys who made NifSkope... we should be grateful... but it's just an annoying thing to waste your time with such technical stuff, when you rather wanna spend it on matters regarding creativity and the game content itself. That's the reason why I've quitted modding for this game and moved on to the UDK. Now I'm not expecting the new Creation Kit to be anywhere near the capabilties of the UDK, that would really be too much to ask for.

So it pretty much depends on what you want...

An easy to use but maybe more restricted Creation Kit with the possibilty of alot of mediocre or at least identical looking and feeling mods...

or

a harder to use Creation Kit with much more functions and capabilities and many more unique and creative mods.

I definitely prefer the second choice.

Anyways, I hope you can take this into consideration at least.

Greetings from germany...

Or something as the editor in operation flashpoint/arma/ama 2, where It could be easy to make a simple quest/NPC/world, but if you want more, you will need to work more. In operation flashpoint/arma, you can create your own script ( take a look at MFCTI for operation flashpoint ! it is a rts in operation flashpoint. Now, bohemia interactive put this mod on arma/arma 2 : It is called "warfare" ) or you can create a mission in two minutes. The choice is yours, but every body can try to make something. It will be more easy to make a mod if everybody can do something than if only good modders can do something (that is why A LOT of mod stop )

"Harder" doesn't mean "better". You can add a lot of functions which are very understanding for everyone (as in the arma's editor for example).

Yeah.... Nifskope better have disappeared as far as this game is concerned. Trying to meddle with it stopped me from creating anything decent as far as new meshes go for the entire 5 years I've been playing/modding with Oblivion. THANKS A LOT NIFSKOPE! :brokencomputer: