So I have been hearing a lot about this construction/creation kit that PC players get to use in order to mod the game. Is said kit "user-friendly"? Or is it the kind of building blocks that you need experience in game development to use?

Can an average Joe, or Kurt, like me use the creation kit?

I suggest practicing modding Oblivion before Skyrim comes out.
Start small, but to answer the question... It's not really user friendly.
Maybe try a youtube tutorial or two.

ya gotta learn how to use the unfinished creation engine for skyrim

It's not too bad! When I was working on Tantrivaylia I was excited to just get new buildings placed on the spot I picked. Then I got into interiors, NPC's, and eventually advanced scripting and it all just came to me.

I used Tutorials in the beginning. Start with those and get the feel of it. Once I play through Skyrim I plan on finding a spot to put my new castle and am hopeful that the CS will be like Morrowind and Oblivion, just more advanced with more features.

Good luck!

I have the same question, I've attempted maybe 2 or 3 times to get into modding and maybe made it 6-7 pages into the tutorial then practically died from boredom, I just wanna make sum castle.

Once you get past the learning curve, The Elder Scrolls are probably THE easiest games to mod on the market today.

Here is the simple answer that covers most people.

Yes it's difficult.

To elaborate a tad, there are certainly different levels of difficulty depending on what you are trying to do. If you just want to modify / tweak existing parts of the game, that is not overly complex depending on what you are trying to do, if you are looking to create custom content yes it can get extremely advanced.

Is the construction kit user friendly / intuitive?... no it is not, but it is not impossible to figure out / learn either.

Do you have to be a rocket surgeon to learn how to mod? no you don't but you will need to be dedicated and be able to set realistic goals for yourself and be willing to put the time into learning how to mod before you will be creating anything you will be proud of.

Not as easy as creating levels in Doom 3D used to be, for instance.

it totally depends, but for the most part it is pretty difficult especially if you are doing scripts or adding in new models, in fact creating new models can take you like 5 years to learn

it is very user friendly but you do have to use tools like nifskope which is very confusing

If you want to learn, http://tesalliance.org/forums/

It's actually a lot easier than most people are making out here. Really.

going off of the tes construction set for oblivion and morrowind: yeah, probably anyone can use it if they wanted to. but it is far from being user friendly; it'd probably take a little effort to learn. but also, that depends on how in depth you want to go into modding. if you want to put in a daedric dagger that does a huge amount of damage, thats easy. to put in a house or make a cool abode using already existing structure templates: more involved, but still doable if you want to put in the time. making npc's and quests: don't expect to be able to do that unless you really want to put in the effort.

modeling and scripting is an entirely different story.

edit: to answer your question, an average joe (kurt) could definitely learn all of that stuff though. its not easy, but you can do it if you really want to learn. there are people out there a lot dumber than me that know how to mod things waaay better than i can now. just look at all the nvde mods and ask yourself if a person even with the IQ of an "average joe" would spend hours working on that kind of thing. just putting things in perspective... actually, thats a pretty encouraging concept if you think about it.

Fair enough but you really should revise this to point out if you have prior experience. Jumping into modding completely fresh can be a very daunting experience for most. But if you have ever used a construction kit, textured, modeled, scripted, worked with AI routines, dialog etc you defiantly will have a leg up.

I'm just not getting that vibe here.

You don't have to jump in blind anymore. http://tesalliance.org/forums/

Everything you need is covered to get you on your feet in the Construction Set.

A mod is the same thing as DLC. You don't have to know how to mod to use mods. You can download them and have them load with the game just like a DLC you buy from Bethesda only you don't buy it. It's free. I use a Mod Manager and there are lots of great mods by very talented people. It depends on how far you want to go. You might want to learn how to make one.

:tes:

I've seen a ton of threads about mods this last week, but the CK might not even be available on 11.11.11?

I can't say for Skyrim, but if the Creation Kit will as similar to past Creation Kit, then it will be user friendly.
Relatively speaking of course, depending about what you're trying to achieve, and you will still need to understand how the game is built at first to know how to modify it.

Few examples (assumed from past TES Toolkit):

- Adding items on the maps. Very easy, 3D drag & drop, you just have to learn the controls about how moving the item and the 3D camera around.
- Creating basic items, duplicate one existing and modify it's statistics and visual properties to suit your need.
- Creating dungeons, it's also drag & drop building them in a 3D lego style. (not as easy at it seems for beginners )
- Modifying exterior landscape, is like ground molding.
- Creating quests will require you to learn the game scripting language.

One thing important if you're interested into modding Skyrim is to not give up just because you cannot do something in just five minutes. There will be plenty documention and many tutorials to go on.

If you dont plan on changing hardcoded-things, yes. Very easy, after you figured out how to do anything.

point? what does that have to do in regards to modding being difficult or not? Also everything i ever saw was to the contrary doesn't bother me if its not there day 1 I'll be playing the game first.



But we have no idea how similar the new creation kit will be. Even advanced modders potentially have a steep learning curve to hurdle entering Skyrim. I agree the more similar it is to prior TES and FO games the easier it will be for beginners, but there is the potential here for everything to be drastically different inducing right down the the file structure due to the new engine.

Use youtube and google man. A lot of the more intricate and difficult modding will not be something you can just jump into but there will be people who teach you how to use the tool and do things with it. I remember creating a "sword of the sun" for oblivion which did fire damage. They taught me how to place it in the world and everything. That is the most basic of modding and easy to accomplish. You will just need to research and try it for yourself to see just how difficult it is for you.

If we consider the jump from Morrowind to Oblivion, just enough to be a bother, but not enough that you will really need to start from scratch. All that would be needed is a quick re-acquainting and learning all the new features. That doesn't take nearly as long and is not as involved as completely starting over.

Remember, the tools we use to mod the game are exactly the same ones they used to build it. And game developers like to be consistent with their toolsets between games.

I certainly hope this is the case i really do but there is no point speculating one way or the other really, we are going to just have to wait and see. But systems like Radiant Story and AI are new / greatly modified so that's going to be a hurdle to overcome regardless of how much has changed, I also read several places that the scripting has been completely re-written (though i was never able to find official confirmation on this) aside from that everything is going to be a big ???????? until we can dig in and and see for ourselves.

I didn't' mod for Morrowind, I started with Oblivion and FO then FO:NV, not much changed other than minor bits but neither did the engine. Was Morrowind a different engine?

It REALLY depends what you want to do, what trouble you're willing to go through, and what background you have. For example, in Morrowind I fired up the construction kit, built an interior cell with a doorway to the outside, and placed a new weapon in the room with a custom model/texture and stats. This took about an hour of tutorial reading, an hour or two of experimentation and troubleshooting, and a pre-existing custom texture/mesh that I took from someone else's mod. At the time I had practically no experience with coding and was only moderately savvy with computers.

EASIER STUFF
- Making small rooms and linking them to existing interior or exterior cells
- Adding custom gear to the game with pre-existing models/textures.

HARDER STUFF
- Making decent looking rooms and linking them to existing interior/exterior cells.
- Adding NPCs to the game with their own dialog options

WAY HARDER STUFF
- Making quests
- Making decent looking exterior cells

I find modding is far more about skill really than actually grasping the tools. Learning the GECK wasn't complicated, but what made my quest mods so great is I am lucky enough to posses great level design skills, and attention to detail. Along with being able to write out a not-so-bad story and some dialogue to go along.

However what you do depends on what kind of mod your doing too, of course.

Just curious. Thought i'd ask since this is about modding after all. Thanks for your friendly responses as always.

It was an older version of the same engine, back when GameBryo was still called NetImmerse. Oblivion jumped up to the latest version, where NetImmerse got renamed to GameBryo, and various renditions were used for Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Now, however, the rights to GameBryo have been sold off and the company in charge of development has gone bust, so Bethesda can't use the name anymore. Hence the Creation Engine, a heavily tweaked version of GameBryo, was born.