I know for a fact that they used the CS. It had slightly more features than the one we have, and some stuff has been stripped out/dumbed down (see IanPatt's post), but it was almost exactly identical.

Want to learn the CS? Go to TESA, link in my sig. We have CS basics classes, that will put you on the road to understanding how things work.

vegtabill

We'll probably never see eye-to-eye regarding the reason for my "diatribe", but I'll give you a nutshell version of that reason. It wasn't to complain just to be complaining. It was to point out a very real issue that anyone coming into the modding community "cold" is going to have with regard to documentation. Comments by anyone to the effect of "get over it because we all went through that" do not justify the shortcomings, and just serve to punctuate my comment that just because one person had to struggle doesn't mean the next person has to struggle. Our civilization was built upon the concept of "cultural transmission", where the wheel doesn't have to be independently invented by every single person who has need of a wheel. I've since learned that I'm not the only one who thinks the way about this that I do, and the more I use the CS the more I'm convinced that it could have been make much more "people-friendly". However, this can be said for virtually every game-design tool I've ever used. They aren't made for public consumption, but just thrown out to us once the game designers are through with it. I'm still finding things I don't like about the CS, and I still think it was designed "by committee" -- that much is obvious when you see the inconsistencies in the UI in various sections of it. If the people writing those sections had been communicating closely with each other then the UI would be consistent from section to section.

Why even bother which such a lengthy introduction to a question that I stated in one sentence after it was over? Simple. It was to show that my question was a valid one, based upon real issues, and not just empty complaining.

As for my comments about people being "lazy", well, I stand by my guns. This isn't to say that everyone is lazy, and I never said, or even implied, that. My point was that there are a lot of modders in this community and I'm sure that many of them have time on their hands which, if they had the incentive, could be used to improve the documentation on the CS -- or even the Elder Scrolls in general. On the flip side of the coin there are people within this modding community who have given much more than their share to the community, and for that, I'm grateful.

TheMagician

Thank you for your comments. I can see that you do understand my point of view, here, and you even restate some of my concerns. If we've learned anything from this thread is that there are two large groups of people in the modding community. The one which seems to be the primary one taking place in this conversation is comprised of the experienced modders. I don't think there's any question that people experienced in something take many things for granted that may be completely baffling to newcomers, and I think everyone needs to remind him/herself of this fact. The other main group is made up of those newcomers who come in not even knowing enough to ask the right questions. For these two groups to get along its necessary for the experienced modders to resist the temptation to look down their noses at people who might be asking what they consider to be stupid questions, and to remember what it was like for them when they knew next to nothing about modding. It's also necessary for the newbies to be willing to listen to what words of wisdom the experienced modders have to offer. On the other hand, if you know it, then don't talk down to the people who don't, and, above all, don't just ignore pleas for information, however basic you might think that they are.

There are sources of information, but those sources are incomplete, at best. Try to find what it means to check the "Persistent Reference" box in the Reference Window. Go ahead. Really look, and don't just send me to "the wiki". I looked there. The wiki doesn't have an article on "Persistent Reference". It has a number of articles which mention "persistent reference" in a context that assumes the reader already knows what that means. Try Google. You won't get any better results. The closest a newb is going to come to any kind of "explanation" is that "persistent reference" refers to a reference that is persistent. Gee, thanks. I'm glad we got that little detail cleared up. It was really beginning to bother me. Why didn't I think of that answer all by myself? This sort of circular logic is typical among "experts" in anything. I've run into the inclination to offer explanations of things in my own area of expertise in a similar manner, which is why I try to be fully cognizant of the level of expertise of anyone to whom I'm trying to teach something.

Yes, my frustration is a consequence of my inexperience, but understand that I've modded for several other games, as well as having done extensive building and scripting in Second Life. I'm not new to this sort of thing, but my experience with the CS has been a bit more vexing than it has been for those other venues, and that should speak for itself. The CS, as we know it, is not a polished product, by far. There's a reason that several forums have CS wish lists. No, my complaints won't disappear once I'm familiar with the CS. If that happens, then I've forgotten my "roots" as an Oblivion modder, and shame on me if that should happen. Just because I've figured out some irrational idiosyncrasy with the software doesn't mean that the reason for my initial issue with it has disappeared. Someone else is going to come along and run into the same difficulty because the software is extremely unlikely to ever be "fixed" to the satisfaction of the people out here in cold, cruel world would like. Bethesda is looking forward, not backward (at least I hope they are), and there will be a new CS for the next part of Tamriel they decide to give us.

Sure, ignorance is at the base of my frustration, but that's exacerbated by some of the illogical design decisions made by the team which created the software we're using. Without doubt, one of the main sources of difficulty of any beginning modder is finding the objects they need. There's a sort of classification scheme, but it breaks down in a number of places, and seemed to have been totally ignored in others. It doesn't help that some objects are misspelled (the word "briedge" for "bridge" comes to mind), which would make any search function built into the CS miss some things. Why is there a "tree" subcategory under "tree"? Shouldn't there just be a "plants" category and ALL plants, including trees, would be found there, perhaps sorted out with regard to where they can appear in-game? Try to find "fence" parts without just doing a brute-force scan through the entire "Static" category under World Objects. Why aren't tile sets clearly sequestered under a "Tile Set" category to keep them separated from objects you place in-world after you've created your dungeon or castle? There was clearly nobody "in charge" of the game designers' inventories or how they were naming or classifying the various objects they added to the game. I may, in fact, forever remain "ignorant" about how to find stuff I'm looking for. Frequently, I'll go where I think it should be only be told (metaphorically of course) "This is not the stuff you're looking for." Sure, in time, I'll learn where all the things I use the most are located, but what happens if I need a bale of hay, and I've never tried to find one (I think there's only one in the CS)? Will I find that under "Farm"? Maybe I should, but you won't find it there.

fore

Don't take this wrongly, because it's not a personal attack, but but your advice is pretty much the same as saying "You're on your own. Just jump in and swim to the other side because that's the way I had to get there. And, by the way, I'm keeping the life preserver with me, so don't ask for it. Just take your time drowning." Yeah ... that was a bit cynical, but I'm really hearing this a lot from the modding community -- not the whole community, since there are little pockets of it here and there who don't believe that every newcomer to Oblivion modding should blaze their own trail through the forest. I have been investigating. I have been discovering. As for starting small, instead of starting big, that's not how I function. I never have, because I'm making up for lost time. You might think you're older than I am, but don't count on it. I could, conceivably be a grandmother at my age. That's not to say that I expect to croak, tomorrow, of course. I'm not quite that old!

I build things in small parts, but that doesn't mean that they don't all fit together in time. My current project is little more than a new merchant for the Waterfront District -- a building, an interior, an NPC, and a small quest. It's a small project. It's complete, except for some additional AI work I need to do, and creating the quest line. However, that small project fits into a very much more expansive project, even though it could exist on its own. So, yes, I've started "small", but my vision is much broader than that. The fact that I'm familiar enough with the CS to get to where I am does not, however, mean that I'm any less frustrated, even though I may not be frustrated for me. I know other people have the same issues, even if they don't have the courage to get up in front of the experienced modding community and talk about those issues. I suspect a lot of those people just quietly give up. I've seen it happen in other modding communities. This one isn't any different.

I remember what it was like when I decided to become a content provider for Second Life. Be grateful that the Oblivion modding community isn't like the cutthroat SL building/scripting community, if you could actually call it a "community". The best "modders" there (they don't refer to themselves as "modders" because adding your own content to SL is part and parcel of being there), are insanely jealous of their creations because most of them make actual real life money from selling it to other SL users who don't have the skills to create their own stuff. You can pay upwards of a hundred U.S. dollars for some objects, which the provider in question has to do absolutely zilch to duplicate for you. Trying to learn SL scripting from the wiki was well-nigh impossible unless you were already nearly expert in javascript (which has a similar context). It was a rare individual willing to tell you how he created that little tiny gem, much smaller than the in-game construction set would allow, and Heaven forbid asking someone how they scripted that clever particle effect. We're doing better, here, I think.

andalaybay

I fully understand the need to keep a target audience in mind when you're writing instructional material. If I write an article for the wiki it will be tailored to the people most likely to benefit from the wiki style of presentation. However, tutorials have no place on the wiki, as has already been implied by comments from other people. Either that, or the wiki needs a separate section just for linear, step-by-step, self-contained tutorials, but still with links to additional, supplemental material from various wiki articles. That, I think, would be the best of both worlds -- a place for beginners to start, and then to progress to the efficient way that the wiki works for experienced modders, but it won't work if the experts step in and start re-writing every tutorial to fit with their own ideas of how material should be presented, thus turning that carefully-crafted beginners' resource into just another relatively incomprehensible wiki article.

There are several plugins for various editors for the CS scripting language. I'm looking at them, but, frankly, I've never been much one for those sorts of things. I tend to prefer formatting programs by hand, and always have. It's the way I learned to program, and I've found that auto-formatting sometimes does things I don't want to do. I have my own style of indentation, for instance, that differs in some respects from the way a lot of people (and auto-formatting editors) do it. Still, I have an open mind about such things, and might actually find that I like one of them.

HeyYou

I'm there and have had some time without Internet, except for some sporadic, very short "windows of opportunity", to work on the first Lesson of the basic modding tutorial. I'm sure I'll actually learn something in the succeeding lessons, although I already pretty much knew everything for Lesson #1 from my own struggles with my pet project.

Before I post my thoughts, I'd like to say that I don't disagree with your anolysis of the problems inherent in using the CS: it's true that for new modders the way objects are organized in the CS seems somewhat arbitrary, that the wiki documentation could be improved, and that the CS is unpolished and contains bugs. And, yes, more experienced modders sometimes take things for granted. An unfortunate side-effect of human nature and sometimes a by-product of the desire not to insult another modder's intelligence. Sometimes we leave out the details because we are afraid of appearing to be looking down our noses. Please understand that I mean my comments to be taken as kindly teasing. I fully sympathize with your situation, having been there myself only recently.

But I've modded for other games as well, and in comparison, Oblivion is a sweetheart. I might even go so far as to say that the CS is the teletubby of modding. Try creating a new NPC, complete with AI routines and dialogue for Half-life 2. You need, at a minimum, an experienced modeler, texture artist, animator, and C++ programmer. And Valve has a modding community as large as Oblivion's with many very experienced modders and tons of documentation and new mods coming out every day. Oblivion modders just have no idea how easy they have it. It's the principal reason I've stayed.

Would we like to see improvements in all of these areas? Of course. Are we being lax in our duties to our fellow modders? I don't believe that any of the serious modders are. Most of the really experienced modders are either too busy trying to overcome engine limitations or creating something really tremendous out of the blood, sweat, and tears of their peers to make equally substantial contributions to the documentation. DragoonWraith is a notable exception in that he is somehow managing to do all three.

I would love to see your contributions in this area. I write tutorials myself, and I devote a great deal of attention to making sure that every fact is correct and that no step has been left out. It's hard, it's time-consuming, and it's tedious. It is like modding in almost every respect. I encourage you to turn your obvious literary virtuosity toward this noble and worthwhile end. If you're not too busy working on your mod, that is.

I think I run into exactly the opposite problem. I don't leave out details and sometimes get accused of being condescending for pointing out what might be obvious to most of my readers, but I know isn't going to be obvious to all of them. Am I wrong in my belief that, for the greatest good, it's best to err on the side of giving out too much information than too little? Perhaps. But all too often I've seen instances where a document was rendered all but useless to part of its intended audience because the author left out some important details that he considered self-evident because he forgot that at one time he didn't know them, either.

They weren't taken harshly. I have a pretty thick skin, anyway, so it's very difficult to get me riled. Just don't forget how you got to where you are, though, and your contributions to the modding community will benefit that many more people -- namely the ones who are starting out as clueless as you did before you even heard of the CS.

Oh, I'm in complete agreement with you, there. After Neverwinter Nights, Starcraft, Star Trek: Armada, and Borderlands, and after considerable experience as a content-creator within Second Life, the CS is a dream to use, in spite of the various things about it which I find to be aggravating.

Been there, did that, gave up. I'll leave HL2 modding up to the people who are already experts. There is some incredible work out there and it would take me a very long time to come anywhere close to what those people are doing.

Well, those with no previous modding experience with other game might not appreciate what we have. I don't know of any other game (at least nothing relatively recent) with a complete construction kit. The game developers invariably leave out important things -- such as the ability to script events, for instance. The CS is a complete package. I haven't looked into it, since I'm really not interested in this scale of modding, but I imagine you could use the CS to create an entirely new world with all unique content. Aside from HL2, I don't see this in any other game.

As I already said, though, given the choice of having one of you guys write tutorials or create new content for the game, I'm going with new content. I know what it's like to have a real life, too. It wasn't that long ago that I worked from eight to fourteen hours a day and was on-call 24/7, including through holidays. RL responsibilities have to be figured in, too. Even with my new job taking care of the home while the "providers" in my family are out bringing home the bread, I don't have as much time to spend with my hobbies as I'd like. I haven't actually played Oblivion (or any other game) since I got interested in modding for Oblivion. Studying up on modding for this game is taking up all my gaming time.

If I wore a hat it would be off to him, too, but I get the impression from some of his comments that he's not entirely happy with having to be the main pillar of support, here. That's understandable, too, and I can accept that he might not be able to devote as much time to particular aspects of this community as he, or other people, would like.

Do you know I learned to survive on my own? I ran away from home and never looked back, spending the next third of my life on the streets. Do you know how I learned to swim? I jumped into the deep end of a lake and started dog-paddling for my very life to the other side (I suppose it helped that I was being chased by three dogs and it wasn't a friendly chase). Do you know how I learned the German language (at least being able to understand it, since I'm mute and can't actually speak it)? Through an intensive immersion class in which not a word of English was allowed to be spoken in-class. I never finished secondary school, having dropped out before ever reaching high-school due to a serious accident, but I studied on my own, mostly in public libraries, to get my GED and went on to work my way through college. Yeah ... I guess I do things the hard way, but in the end its the hard lessons that tend to become the strongest foundations. I'm learning to mod in Oblivion the same way. Sure, I could have started out with a simple house and no frills, but I got interested in modding for this game because of a vision for a sweeping quest-driven story, and that's where I've started. I've always been better at creating stories than in playing in them, anyway.

You can be sure that I'll be contributing. I can't work on the mod continuously. Things like that tend to burn me out, although I can be pretty tenacious if I have a deadline to meet. Like someone else in this thread said, though, I don't really have a deadline to get it finished. I just have a sense of urgency to press onward because I fear that if I don't I may just wind up leaving this project behind for a better one that I'll think of in the future. For me, the clock is ticking even though there's no sword hanging over my head. I'll work it out, though. Right now I'm doing the TESA tutorials, because I think I can pick up some valuable skills, there. Then I'll get back to my main project and put those skills to work. And ... I'll be posting here, and maybe on the wiki, as well. At the moment, though, I don't feel I have enough knowledge to post with any authority. I'm learning new things every day, frequently related to things I thought I already knew thoroughly, only to find out that I don't. Like you, I'm a stickler for correctness in details, so I can't justify writing something that I think is complete, only to find out, later, that I left out important details simply because I was unaware of them.