Recently I have installed Nehrim and am at a halt as I don't understand enough german to play!

But this made me realize the power of Oblivion modding!

I was thinking what would it intail to make a "total conversion mod" I don't mean like "You will need models and the world space etc. etc. etc." I mean are there any special steps you would need to take?

Would anyone be intersted in making one?

Unless you are already very skilled in modding, don't attempt to make a total conversion. A total conversion takes YEARS of dedicated work. Look at Nehrim, it's the first total conversion ever to be released and Oblivion came out in 2006. It takes an entire team of dedicated modders to make a total conversion, and if anyone leaves the team, it can leave the group crippled. The chances of completing one are slim.

I'm in agreement with Allstar here. It's not an easy thing to do. Total conversions of any game usually take 1 year minimum (that's complete smooth sailing, with a capable team), and some have gone on for half a decade or more. Nehrim was in development for almost two years, with a capable team.

And as for not getting far, they predict the English patch to be release in July/August 2010, as well as the German Voice Acting.

Another Total Conversion to look forward to will be MERP, which brings the LOtR Universe to Oblivion.

I was simply asking what would be needed to start off a theorictal total conversion?

Would I use the empty CS or something of the sort?

You'd need the CS, and from there you'd have to pretty much empty everything related to the main game itself, without destroying it. That or you'll have to change pretty much every aspect of it, including disabling the main quest, having the player start out somewhere else (as per Alternative start), creating new world spaces for the total conversion, and modifying scripting and sequences for your own quests, items, npcs, etc, etc. You'll have to do all the work. Pretty much creating a game within a game.

There are a lot of things you have to keep in mind when making a total conversion:

1. Most players are very attached to the mods that they use, and total conversions will break a lot of mods (or make them useless). Consider all of the mods that depend on vanilla races, classes, birthsigns, factions, locations, leveled lists, etc., etc., and you will start to get the idea. You are either going to have to adapt your TC to these mods, duplicate them, or hope that the appeal of your TC outweighs the investment players have in many of their favorite mods. Some mods will work just fine, but when you really start taking them apart and examining them you will realize how many of them have built-in dependencies on Tamriel.

2. In all likelihood, you are going to have to create an enormous number of assets (models, textures, music, scripts, etc.) in order to differentiate your mod from the original game. Unless you have very talented people assisting you, it can be hard to maintain the same quality in these assets that players come to expect from specialist modders who spend all of their time perfecting a limited range of skills.

3. Unless you are using a licensed product (like LoTR or a provincial expansion to Tamriel) you are going to have a very, very tough time convincing people to give your mod a chance. Licensed products have built-in audiences that provide a much broader base of modding talent and fans to keep everyone's spirits and energy up. If you go your own route and try to create something completely original you will find yourself doing two jobs: creating a compelling world for players to get invested in, and creating an enormously complex mod. Not a lot of people are up for the job. Not surprising, though, since you don't see too many people accomplished in two or more fields outside of modding, either.

4. Support for TCs is minimal, unless, again, you are using a licensed product. You are going to have a tough time finding people to help you work on your mod; in fact, you'll have a tough time finding anyone to even reply to your WIP threads. There are modders on this forum that can attest to that. That doesn't necessarily mean that people aren't interested, only that, early in development, there won't be much for them to say, and most modders won't want to get involved. Be prepared to go it alone for a very long time and be willing to produce an enormous amount of work before other people start getting interested. Give yourself at least a year of regular updates before you start generating any interest. Getting impatient or discouraged before then is premature.

5. The bare-bones technical details follow mostly what Hades Drive said: create a new worldspace, change the chargen script and charactergen quest to start your player off in the new world space and change pretty much every other object in the game. There's no need to use an blank esm ('empty CS'); that will just complicate things and provide little or no benefit. There's a http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/WorldBuilding_101 on the CS wiki if you'd like to find out more about it. (Bear in mind that there are many ways to create a heightmap and that the process explained in the tutorial isn't the only way to do it.)

Best of luck.

Btw, I think Nehrim actually took 4 years.

Well thanks for all of this input and you guys sure wrote a lot, it seems quite intersting but I have a question when using a "licnsed product" other then "TES" would this even be allowed?

WIth copyright and such?

I am aware of the sheer amount of effort that would have to be undertaken and I will most certanly check out that tutorial.

Thanks for all the help!

This is one of the problems for modders using licensed products. It really depends on the holder of the rights. Most of the time, no one bothers you (LotR Universe is a good example. Several games have LotR conversions, one of the most prominent ones being Third Age Total War, for Medieval 2 Total War).

But there have been cases where people have come down hard on modders (A TC mod for C&C Generals, which made it Starcraft, got blasted down, for example).

Untrue,

Mount Archon was the first Total Conversion

Dont try to start with a blank ESM its pointless and you'll just end up trying to re add things taken away. Dont try to make a total conversion unless you have years to spend on it, have no problem working on every aspect of it alone if necessary. You also need to start off with some kind of an intention, a plan. Just making a TC for kicks and giggles will probably last a few weeks or maybe months if youre lucky. You have to be entirely 100 percent, totally committed to it as just getting a short way into it then dumping it will just hack people off, especially if theyve contributed to it.

Join an existing TC. Go to MERP or my mod Mesogea, or one of the others. Some such as Mesogea and Merp have truly vast lands (got to say mine is bigger and size counts - oh how immature of me....) and you can find yourself an area nearly the size of the current Oblivion world and work on it within the constraints of the mod. Constraints are relative to the mod by the way, with MERP youve got the entire world of Tolkien and if there arent enough creatures and new things to make and do there, then come to Mesogea where you can take part in creating the mythology, history, lore etc.

So many choices, you dont need to re-invent the wheel.

Well garsh (Mickey Mouse on in the backround!) this has sprung into a rather large topic and I'm glad. This is a nice plethra of information and I will be sure to check yours out!

Thank you everyone!

I was thinking about this (purely theoricaly- do I look mad?) the other day. I seem to remember Nehrim uses a seperate .exe but uses mods added to the Oblivion data file to trick Oblivion into running it. I always wondered how they did that. It seems what you guys are suggesting is making a mod that rips out Oblivion and rebuild it, rather than a Nehrim style seperate .exe.

In fact, even MERP/Adventure Middle Earth or whatever it was called at one time even had some rough spots. I can remember a time when it was completely shut down. Maybe Turbine or whoever was sending them nasty letters finally realized a LotR mod for Oblivion wasn't really taking away from their MMO customer base for LotRO. :shrug:

I think Tolkien would have approved, were he still living. He kinda left the stories open at the end of the LotR trilogy for someone else to add their part to them.

Anyway, good luck if you do try to do your own TC, you'll definitely need it, esp if you haven't done alot of modding before. MERP has been in development for years to accomplish what they have managed to do so far.

You could always join a TC team that fits your creative style. Thehttp://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1078181-relz-wipz-mesogea-thread-v-back-to-work-then/ mod seems to be fairly promising, with the (huge!) land and much of the history/lore of the world already in place. There is still plenty of room for new ideas, I believe. The creator of Mesogea seems to be fairly open to new creative ideas for races (no true beast-races or TES-specific monsters), location designs and pretty much anything else I've seen discussed on the boards. I am seriously considering doing some work on it (at least a tomb/dungeon/town quest, etc.) eventually... when I can find that "Round to it" that I seem to have misplaced! :blush:

Thanks I will try to follow along with that!

Btw: is there a link to the Nehrim English Beta?

They post their updates on their moddb website http://www.moddb.com/mods/nehrim-at-fates-edge

The English version isn't out yet.

MERP has never had any sort of nasty letters from any company

It could have been the Morrowind version then. I distinctly remember a pretty ambitious Lord of the Rings-based mod being shut down at some point though... I didn't mean to imply that it was the current incarnation of MERP, but people have been doing LotR stuff for TES games for many years now (for obvious reasons) since shortly after Morrowind came out.

Actually, I believe this was it: http://www.3dfolio.com/jge/MeMod_Project.htm

MERP is looking very nice so far, btw. I was glad to see another mod based in Middle Earth was reincarnated again.

I realise that I'll have to have three separate installs for Oblivion in the future, or rather three different comps to play it on, just so I can play my current, MERP, and Mesogea .