I'm working my way out of the official tutorials, reading those forums, playing TESIII and IV, using the CS, digging into uesp.net, studying the imperial library's bookshelves... I'm having fun, I want to contribute as soon as possible to Tamriel

Now, I'm curious about the process behind mod creation. So, are there documents/blogs/posts from the members of the community about how to work out a mod in a proficient and productive way? I mean, apart from the already useful tutorials and faqs, is there some sort of bird's eye view of the whole process, along with tips and do's & don'ts that a newbie has to know in order to be very productive right from the start, maybe avoiding all the common known errors a starter is expecting to do?

Below, I'll give a couple examples of what I'm referring too, just to better explain myself.

- version control at http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Version_Control : are you guys using it? I'm asking because I was reading about merging mods and was curious about what's the proven way to work on distributed content here.

- What about planning? I was reading that "Oblivion Mod Maker’s Manual" and it says to "First and foremost; write down every single addition, change, or deletion you make to", that in order to be able to trace what you do and catch bugs along the way. What's you take at planning and design a mod then? Any proven methods from the masters here?

- I was reading the extremely interesting forum achives at tamriel-rebuilt.org, silgrad.com and the likes and was thinking: are there any stories/postmortems/anolysis worth reading that you can point out for me?

and so on, I hope you get it. So, apart from specific informations about doing specific things, any suggestion for indispensable readings?

Help me became better at helping you with mods.

Thank You

you should check out Tesalliance.org (tutorials and other stuff about modding)

I think this would be on-track with that you're talking about.

For large mods such as total-conversions or other provinces, I'd say an order like this would be effective: Landmasses, Races, Architecture, Clutter/Equipment, Sound compilation, Assembly/NPCs/Scripting, Quests/Storyline.

You need a basic area in which to work, so landmasses are where you begin. They make a nice place to test things, too.
Additional races are a fairly contained segment that goes a long way. Once you have those out of the way, you never really have to look at them again.

Architecture is next, as it's the most important part of where players go. All the rest of the content happens inside and around buildings and such, so you need another base in which to work. It's also very self-contained. Once you finish basic housing and places, you don't have to do much with them again after that.

Clutter and Equipment is where most of the hard content is added. More and more of this content can always be added, and there's no end to what you could include. Whereas races and architecture are easy to find a "finishing point" in, there can always be new clutter or equipment.

The sound effects you require will be derived from what you need them for; all the other things mentioned before. And assembling everything together depends on having everything. Sound and other sorts of effects should be last, and completely finished before you move on to everything else.

Putting everything together and scripting the basic stuff (NPCs and their schedules, and their housing) puts a lot of life into your world. It is necessary to have this world before you make the story. When everything is in place, then you have a place for the story to be in.



Following these steps one at a time, and completing each step as best you can, I think, is the best way to complete a large project. All the loose ends are tied up immediately when each step is completed. This means that if you ever abandon a project, somebody else can come in and finish the project without any hassle.

Interesting. If I did that I wouldn't be able to finish half of my mods at all O_O Well, for me it simply wasn't enough of time for such things besides some thinking about various ideas, messing with the tools and working on actual mods.

modding is an organic thing i think, and while you do have to have plans (especially for larger mods), i don't think its possible to plan out everything you will do. some of the best work i've seen is completely spontaneous. in hammerfell, for example, a modder found a land rift stretching several cells and chose to turn it into a gorgeous cliff wall instead of simply making it match the planed landscape. so, my advice would be to have a rough plan and improvise as you go along. how detailed the plan should be depends on what you're doing: if you're making a house mod knowing that its in Cheydinhal is probably enough, but if you're building a whole new island you have to decide where it is, what architecture you want to use, etc. likewise, you should know what you're making changes to but a list of absolutely everything is really not needed.


heh, i've done several fairly extensive posts on the subject, which i could probably dig up if you're interested. really though, i don't believe large mods like that are worth studying unless you're doing something similar (i.e. not a house mod or a new set of armor).

I didn't even know about that option until a couple of days ago, and I sincerely doubt it's been used for any but the largest projects... and probably not them either for quite a while, since TES4Edit can do all the splitting and merging you'd ever want. And speaking of TES4Edit...


...it allows you to see every addition, change and deletion you've made. It even color-codes them. Fastidiously keeping track of it all yourself may have been necessary for certain projects when the CS was the only tool available, but not anymore.

So the long and the short of it is, http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11536.

Regarding techniques... the primary focus of my mods is gameplay mechanics, so the details of my process may be a bit different than what you'd use for landscaping or quest design. But in general, I'd say start at the end and work backwards. Basically, look at your goal and ask: what's the biggest thing preventing it? Say you want to make a player home. Okay, why doesn't your home exist? Because you don't even know where it is. Find a good location. Now why isn't there a home? Because it hasn't been built. Figure out how to put the architecture together, do so. Now why isn't there a home? Because homes are not empty rooms. Add some furniture, put a few paintings on the wall, etc. Keep asking "what's missing?" and work your way down to smaller details until you're satisfied.

Interesting!

I play the game and then wonder "hey! I wish this or that was right here so I could do this and that...!"

Except one thing. Story building, or quest building with a story, where it really helps getting the characters and the story right first before wondering about things.

But then again, you're doing the same thing. Incredible, I do just like Tejón

Both of these things apply mostly to large team based mod projects, not so much individual projects that I'm more experienced with so I don't know of how much help I can be. This is the first time I′ve heard of Version Control.

What kind of mods are you interested in making? New dungeons, or a city, or a couple of quests, or just a nice player house? Or something else entirely?

I think there are several stages in which things need to have been planned. In the case of a landmass adding mod, I do think it's very important to have at least a rough plan of the terrain's layout, the location of the largest settlements, etc. before the actual landscaping work starts, so that you don't end up with a weird looking landscape because you just made stuff up as you went.

Then there are things like quests. I would write a quest out completely (and consider how do-able it is) before you start adding it, but you don't need to have every single quest the mod is going to add fully written out and planned before having even opened the Construction Set. Naturally long quest lines need more planning in advance, but short independant ones not as much.

For our Kragenir's Death Quest mod we made quite a lot of stuff up as we went along (just quests, no new landmass involved) , but it was always split up into pieces. In the case of quest lines it′s a good idea to have at least the general goals and plans around the quests sorted out. The mod's main quest consisted of 4 parts, and we already had a very simple outline of what the conclusion of each part would be. While I was working on adding part 1 and 2 the quests from part 3 were still being written. I didn't start part 3 until it had been written out completely, from start to end, just in case we'd run an issue that would make us change our minds.

And of course the most often given advice is starting out with something small first. You'll get the chance to make mistakes and learn from them, without those early mistakes screwing up a large project you'd have spent a lot of time on. Also you'll find out about what stuff is do-able and what isn't. Always good to know before you start a mod project. Tejon's advice is good here. When you have an idea you need to wonder, what is the biggest thing preventing it, and can something be done about that?

Great resource, thank you.

I'm mainly interested in helping out with running projects. Large ones such as Tamriel Rebuilt, (ex TR's) Hammerfell and overhauls ala OOO are what thrills me and moves me. Playing & dissecting them makes me wanna contribute to finish and/or expand those worlds.
Lore is the other factor. Epicness and Lore (possibly) together, that's what made the Elder Scrolls' experience so incredibly good for me .

Ah yes, that TES4Edit is a great piece of software worth of torought study.


That's a somewhat great recursive approach, very interesting.

Interesting views, Hammerfell is a great project. Right now, I'm working on small things first to learn as much as possible. With work and a bit of luck, I'll be able to contribute to large projects as soon as possible.


Yes, please, If you have any pointers it will be more than useful. Archives are huge .