» Sat May 28, 2011 6:22 pm I've been dinking around with my Morrowind install again, ripping out a handful of mods that I didn't care for and adding in some new ones, and tweaking a few others so they (a) work the way I want and (B) play better TOGETHER with others, and I noticed something.
I don't want to name names or point fingers, this is NOT about dissing someone else's hard work, which I truly respect.
One of the mods I was looking at is a great/major older mod, hall of fame, countless downloads, etc. I was having a weird compatibility issue, and in looking at it closely, I was amazed at how junked up it was! There were dozens of objects that were incompletely implemented (partial sets in mod, with meshes but no object references), objects added by the mod but never implemented in the actual game (no leveled list, NPC, or in-game placement), scads of weird random bits and pieces included in the mod that weren't even clearly related to its main theme, etc. SO, since I was already hacking the poor thing up to fix a compatibility problem, I ripped out all the stuff that wasn't actually being used, and then ran MentalElf's Tesfiles tool to re-package only what was necessary. In addition to reducing the ESM file to about 50% of its original size, I also cut down the overall package archive by the same.
Some of those cuts were a matter of preference (things I just didn't want to use), but a significant portion were just broken junk that wasn't necessary (or even used!), or (what looked like) some in-progress stuff the creator never got around to finishing. The point of all this is, NOW there's no way a mod would be likely to get to a release status with all those uncorrected issues. Tools have been developed that make it easy and efficient to get things clean and keep them that way. Modders and users routinely CHECK stuff to make sure its clean, and will help other folks do the same with their own work (usually politely
. While many of the great and amazing ideas have already been done, the actual quality and standards of released mods today are MUCH higher than they were "back in the day."As the topic says, we've come a long way!
I'm just a hacker, tinkering with the amazing work great modders have produced. I'll doubt I'll ever create anything enduring like the many mods I play with. Even though I do occasionally have a "what were they thinking?" moment when looking through a mod, I still have the highest respect for those who truly create, and remain grateful for the chance to enjoy their work (free of charge, even!). Without all the great and ambitions modders, tool-writers, artists, and, yes, loud-mouthed tinkerers like me, the community would never have gotten this far.
Pretty damned amazing for an "old" game, ain't it?
Rochndil, who still needs to pull about 10 new mods from 100-odd hall-of-fame downloads to merge into his current MW build...
