» Sat Feb 05, 2011 9:52 am Since there's no New Vegas mod forum yet, I'm posting this here...
I was looking at Mezmorelda's mod interoperability effort, and it got me thinking, maybe an effort should be started to set some sort of rules for making mods for New Vegas and releasing them to the public. It is not going to solve all mod incompatibilities, but it can greatly minimize them, and those modders who follow the rules can state so in their mods.
Simple things like:
* Each modder has a 4-5 digit/letter tag used at the beginning of every new obejct ID, quest name, etc
* All mods go in a directory named after the tag (ex: meshes/abc12mods/mod1, textures/abc12mods/mod1)
* No vanilla assets are modified, all modifications are added. Ex. if you re-texture an outfit, you make a new object ID and therefore a new outfit, rather than merely replacing the vanilla asset's texture.
* All items added to vanilla containers are added through scripts, rather than directly in the GECK.
What do you guys think?
I was looking at Mezmorelda's mod interoperability effort, and it got me thinking, maybe an effort should be started to set some sort of rules for making mods for New Vegas and releasing them to the public. It is not going to solve all mod incompatibilities, but it can greatly minimize them, and those modders who follow the rules can state so in their mods.
Simple things like:
* Each modder has a 4-5 digit/letter tag used at the beginning of every new obejct ID, quest name, etc
* All mods go in a directory named after the tag (ex: meshes/abc12mods/mod1, textures/abc12mods/mod1)
* No vanilla assets are modified, all modifications are added. Ex. if you re-texture an outfit, you make a new object ID and therefore a new outfit, rather than merely replacing the vanilla asset's texture.
* All items added to vanilla containers are added through scripts, rather than directly in the GECK.
What do you guys think?
Ehh, there are some rather large issues with this.
* Why have a tag used on all items and objects? Most modders do this anyway, (ig for Cube Experimental EVERY object or place begins with aaCube) and I doubt there is any two mods out there that name a new item the same thing and create an issue.
* Most experienced modders do this already something like "Meshes/Gunmaster95/ModName..." so its organized like that. So unless I make two mods named the same thing, there is no issue.
* How would mods like FWE and MMM work if they could not mod vanilla assets? How would you change the strength of all Super mutants in the game, or add items to their inventory. Some mods cannot be made without editing vanilla assets.
* This can be an issue since many modders dont know how, or naturally are very bad at scripting.
While I do agree some mods are done in a very poor manner, and create alot of issues, the only thing I can suggest is that you simply do not use such mods. Perhaps then the person who made it can shape up their act and then people would use their mods again.
