I've ran into this discussion on IM and other boards many times before, and decided I should bring it up. Personally, I take as much time as I need to make something as great as I can, and the stuff I make is usually pretty big, but I've been argued that time for modding is not unlimited, since one would not want to spend forever making something.

Now that brought for interesting discussion, what do you do, and what do you think about mods, their size, and how long it takes? Would you spend forever to make something, or do you just want it finished? This is what I'm interested in.

So, spill your thoughts, nobody will bite (I hope).

Where's the choice "I waste my time posting polls instead of actually getting releases out"? :slap:

Hey, I just released SWG's Skies v3 on Thursday! :facepalm:

I thought you knew? You're only allowed friday's off.

Well I am still modding... I just finished another Ayleid mesh. :ninja:

Anyways, let's get back on topic, I don't see you releasing anything!

There's a limit - usually, my patience and interest.

I think they are pretty great, if I do say so myself! Most of my mods don't end up needing updates, and the updates I make usually aren't due to bugs in the mod. I try to make my mods as polished as possible.

Regular size, on average. I have some small ones, I have some that have a lot of textures in them. I have some that make large sweeping changes to a specific facet of the game, while other are very small, very focus changes (such as a texture replacer).

The only "huge" mod I'm working on at the moment is the Armor, Weapon, and Clothing rebalancer. Setting up the enchantment costs is not as much fun as playing Titan Quest.

I spend a long amount of time on regular things, and come out with something pretty crappy. :mellow:

We never went off topic. <_<

Since I've never posted a WIP or RELz thread, why would anyone expect that I would?
Having released something or not shouldn't matter - the amount of time and attention to detail still applies when modding for one's self.


[edit]
Having announced a WIP, one should have some sort of timeframe in mind for release. It's wise to have some work accomplished on the mod before announcing. In these ways success of actually releasing would be increased.

Quality of a mod, the attention to detail and dirty refs cleaned, should always be striven for before initial release - afterward, any missed compatibility issues that may arise can be handled with an update. In fact, continued support of a mod after release would inherently escalate it to the 'amazing' level if it wasn't already. B)

Like any art form, the time of gestation will be different for everyone.
But, I do believe that you have to set boundaries for yourself, or you just keep working/testing/revising the same piece of work over and over. That usually doesn't lead to much improvement, and can often be detrimental to what you've made.
I am in this predicament now... I must release soon or I'll end-up never finishing my own mod because I can never reach "perfection".

I think my skills to make a creative/fun/aesthetically pleasing mod can be just as good some of my favourite mods. They inspired me, the least I can do is show it in my own mod. Although, I am still learning and won't be blowing minds anytime soon.
I know what I've made is not the typical "First Mod Consisting of a House in Seyda Neen" and I'm proud of that. (not that there's anything wrong with those mods)

My ESP is about 1.44 mb in size. You can decide if that's big.

rant over

I really should be modding, right now.

50%+ I do is trying to push what I know or apply new knowlege. Even http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1023471 was applying a different (imho better) method of loading data into a class and trying to improve my (poor) ability at writing unit tests.

I'll get an awesome idea, work on it a little, then hit a snag and quit. Always happens. Really big mods, too.



And I never tell anyone about a mod I intend on releasing. That way, no one is disappointed. However, having people on you about it could be a good motivating factor to get it done. I should try that sometime . . . =]

When I started working on Kragenir's Death Quest for Oblivion I expected it to be a 9-12 months project. As time passed we added new things to it, and didn't stop adding new things to it, and in the end the mod wasn't released until almost 3 years.

So I tend to take my time and really finish things. Of course if you keep adding new stuff that's a problem.

And the larger the project is, the more bugtesting has to be done too.

Anyway I'm never taking up something of that scale again. But I'll never rush releases.

Funny how the most "useful" mods I've done for my own game took a couple of minutes at most. The more involved ones that I spent months on generally came to a bad end due to some technical hangup.

This year I wanted to learn new things in modding such as creating factions, quests learning how to do dialogue and basic scripting - so it has taken me much more time than usual - I still gave myself the goal of finishing it within a year and I guess if i stopped coming to the forum so often to read what everyone else is working on I might be able to stay on schedule

I much prefer working on doable mods - faces and clothes were of a size I had the time to do - were enjoyable and could be released in a fairly tidy state.

I'd rather have mods in my collection that have had some quality time spent on them rather than ones which were good ideas but just thrown together quickly.

There has to be a certain playoff in terms or size and quality.

A modder could go away and toil over the most perfect massive expansion forever but if it never got released because it was always being toyed with then it doesn't really help the community in any way. for goodness sake morrowind is still being fixed by the code patch and it has been around for years!

i think that modders have to sacrifice some quality for time, for example I could decide to make 3000 new tree meshes for a forest but i wont, and no one would because it would take far too long for the increase in quality.

In short, good mods take time, but better a released mod than an never-finished mod.

I tried to figure up how much time I spent making DNGDR & its def over a 1000 hrs! ........ My wife got real mad @ Me a few time during that "obsession"

Is it "Amazing"? ... that's for all you guys to decide .... I know I'm proud of it ...... it was fun to make & it is great when players PM/email Me
about their experiences with it.

The quality measures were meant to be the modder's opinion. For example, some may think some of my old mods are great (SWG's Skies v2) but now I think they svck. :shrug:

I usually get some mad insane idea, and go out thinking that I'm going to make the best mod ever. I spend about 2 days working on it religiously, and then.... I just kind of lose my steam.
And that unfinished mod sits in my data files folder forever!

When I modded, I liked to take my time. But I also liked to show people progress, so some things I might label as finished even though in reality they could be better.

-------You should add a "depends" choice -------

Because I have worked on many different scaled sizes of mods. The only really big one I ever worked on (seriously) was Attribution's Share. But I think I have done the whole range of sizes you listed.

In short though, there was never a time limit when I modded. I kept going 'til I liked it.

I spend an extremely long time making small crappy things.

of published stuff, I consider to redo one iron armor replacer, sure enough,it does exactly as stated but today I could wish for some cool effects added to it.
And since my internet improved I could do it in one pack...anyway nothing I lose sleep over.
And then it is this "fun" mod, it works,are clean and all but need tidying up with renaming and organizing,on the other hand it works for me, and for my one betatester and I don?t care about the rest,unpublished it is, so I guess I do some tidying and gives it to my beta tester and over with, not really interested in pleasing the crowd honestly

I don't rush things when modding - Heck, I've been working on RoHT since 2007 :wacko: But there's definitely a limit. I've reached the point where I simply want to squash the last remaining bugs and release it.
So my answer is: I'm taking "Quite a long time, but there's got to be a limit." I have certainly pushed my limits with this one, so I regard it as a "Great" achievement, and considering RoHT's scope (23 quests total), I consider it a "Big" Mod ("Huge" is reserved for something like Tamriel Rebuilt in my opinion.)

B

I think I'm the one that should be ashamed the most here. Modding for about 5-6 years (maybe even more, my counter stopped at those numbers) and I still have no clue about scripting and pretty much anything.

I had an ancient site with exactly 10 mods but I lost it, and I have lost that and lost all my progress on some mods that went on for more than few years of work (one mod for even 5 years). Some would say it's not some loss either since it was only landscape.

Ever since, I never ever released a single stuff. I had few WIPs here, but also mods that or I lost them again, or lost interest for them.
So yeah, I'd say forever, but I do have to say that I'm very pleased with landscaping i can make, some work was pretty epic, some was already very used and mainstream but oh well, everyone have their downs and ups.

Except those 10 mods and landscaping, there was only one mod where I tried to make texture replacer on my own, for glass stuff but it ended up with utter failure and no one liked it I'm not too sad about it either, I svck at making texture and it takes me like an hour to make some minor detail lol

I don't think I'll ever release anything at all, since my only obsession is finishing that damn 5 years lasting mod I lost, but every time I decide to recompile all the resources I used I get frustrated about it and give up. Same goes with those other wips, I start doing them, and for those I don't lost, I usually hook up on that lost mod again and start work on it again, but I get frustrated about loosing it after 2-3 days and I stop working on it, but also on the mod I started before that.

So I'd say I'm the most useless member of this society :rofl:

Anyway, I voted for

"Quite a long time, but there's got to be a limit."

"Okay"

"Huge"

I would guess that its pretty much limited by the modder, for instance, while I'm not a "modder" in that I have nothing that I have released, I definately do mod, whether it be adjusting a script, adding a house, changing an npc's clothing to better suit their position or class, changing creature level/difficulty, whatever the case may be.

I will normally find something I'm not too terribly pleased with, open the CS, create a mod/patch to make it more appealing to me, play the game for a day, a week, or even a year(all the while creating other patches/mods in between), but then decide that I could have done that one lighting mod I made better, reopen that esp in the CS and fix it up again, add infinum.

As long as there are true "modders" out there, creating new interesting meshes, sensational textures, or even better animations, I will never be 100% content with the changes I have made to my own personal game, and no, I don't consider that a bad thing, as I enjoy toying around with things in the CS, and I like the feeling I get when I "FIX" an issue with conflicting mods, or change something to make it all seem to blend better, because the result is almost always a better overall experience while playing the game.

Most of the "mods" that I have created, are patches to make mods compatible, or to incorporate aspects of one mod into another, without drastically changing any of the original artist's work, and the only reason I have never released anything, is because I am inherently too lazy to get the permissions to do so.

While I'm at it writing this unintentionally long essay, I would like to thank every one of you real artists that have beautified, made more difficult, and more fun, my game of morrowind! :foodndrink:

Closed by request.