Noob here, so don't bite -- at least not on the first date, please. And I know ... tldr, but please bear with me. My question is a simple one, although it might not have a simple answer. The explanation on the way there is here to show what I see as the single most vexing problem that faces new modders in the Oblivion modding community.

I want to create a mod for Oblivion. I'm pretty good at spinning a yarn and I have some (not a lot) of programming experience. I know I'll need OBSE for this project because I need to do some things that the little documentation I can find indicates that vanilla TESCS can't do, but OBSE can. Now, here's my problem. TESCS is one of the most user-vicious pieces of software I've ever encountered, clearly written "by committee" where the different groups working on it didn't bother consulting with each other when they added features (just examine the Object View and you'll see that someone had no idea at all how to organize things to make objects easy to find). There appears to be no comprehensive documentation for it and the various tutorials I've read ALL make assumptions about things that probably seem quite obvious to the people who wrote them but aren't at all obvious to someone sitting down with no experience just experimenting with the blasted thing for days and weeks on end. I don't want to spend days and weeks not accomplishing anything useful. For one thing, I don't have unlimited time to spend trying to figure out how to use it. For another, I've reached the end of my patience with "explanations" that wind up leaving out crucial elements. Yes, my Googlefu is pretty good. People turn to me when they can't find something, and I can usually find it. I've reached a dead-end with both TESCS and OBSE.

Case in point (several, actually): I'm adding a house to the low-rent area of the Waterfront district. I'm putting in a new NPC who will be a merchant, there, and this NPC will be the primary contact for a series of quests. Nowhere could I find a simple, step-by-step explanation of how to link doors on the static house object to the doors on the interior in the custom cell I created. There were partial explanations, and cryptic mentions of having to search for the teleport marker because it might not be located in front of the door. I finally figured it out for myself, after several hours of pulling my hair out and it's really, really simple. But nobody actually explained it so that it was really, really simple. What constitutes making something simple? Basically, it's a step-by-step procedure -- do this, then do that, then do this thing, then do this to that, then go here and do this ... step-by-step, with no ambiguity and nothing left out, and people-proofed so someone with no knowledge at all of the procedure or even the user interface to the software, can follow those steps and it will work. After all, once you've done it right, and understood what you did, it becomes simple. The problem is that it's already simple to the people who explain these things, and they unintentionally leave things out and make assumptions regarding what their readers do and do not understand. With what I now know about door linking I could easily write a tutorial designed to just explain that process and someone who was using TESCS for the very first time could follow the procedure and do it -- and it would work. Nowhere, though, have I been able to find such a tutorial. Instead, door-linking is partially explained in a number of other tutorials which cover much more extensive procedures, and the linking procedure sort of gets buried and the authors skim over crucial steps.

Next case in point: My merchant has a pet rat. The rat belongs to the domestic rat faction (CGDomesticRat01). The merchant kills the rat. So, what to do? Factions, right? So, I create a special faction for the merchant's pets (she's going to have more than one pet). I also created a faction just for this merchant. Unfortunately, I couldn't do anything with those factions. I figured it would be as simple as dragging the merchant's pet faction into the merchant's faction and then setting the reaction modifiers. Nope. You have to right click on a line and select "new" from a drop-down menu to add faction relationships. That's not intuitive when you've already learned that you drag a faction from the master faction list into the player's faction list to add new factions, there. And there are no instructions that I could find anywhere that said this, but I discovered when I finally decided that different programmers were probably working on that part of the program and that, just maybe, the guy that programmed the drag and drop process for one part wasn't the same as the guy who programmed the right-click and add new part in a different place. It's little inconsistencies in the UI like this that make learning TESCS so frustrating. And nobody seems to have documented them.

Then there's the case of the disappearing objects: I put a door overhang on the house in the Waterfront, and two barrels outside the door. They aren't there in-game, but they're still present in the mod when I examine it with TESCS. In the interior the bed, four chairs, a money box, and a jewelry box refuse to appear in-game. Curiously, the fifth chair does and they're all identical! Indeed, at first, my merchant didn't appear in-game, either. I fiddled and fiddled and now she does (I'm not sure if I had to set her to be a persistent object or not, although she is, now, but that didn't work for the chairs, boxes, barrels, and overhang). If I'm missing something simple, I just can't pin it down and this issue remains unresolved.

Some people say never make a mod the active mod. Others say make the mod you're working on the active mod. Who do you believe? Some people say never save your mod using the Save Plugin icon on the toolbar. Other people say save your plugin periodically (I've never had problems with TESCS crashing, but apparently some people do). Again, who do you believe? And why not use that icon -- or the drop down menu item in the File menu, which does the same thing? I did figure out how to make TESCS periodically make a backup, but, of course, TESCS doesn't bother telling you that it won't create the "Backup" folder in the Data folder if it's not already there -- another little nasty surprise from a piece of software that, in many cases, seems very "unfinished" to me.

I tried to follow a "tutorial" on one of the popular modding sites that was supposed to lead you through the steps to create a cave complex, only to discover when I tried to join the beginning back with the end that there was no way to do it using any of the pieces in the tile set. The end was much higher than the beginning, and there were no "ramps" that could serve as transitions between the two ends -- even though what I did looked like the picture the author of the tutorial included. He just guided the reader through the first couple of steps and then left the reader out in the cold to wade through the plethora of tile pieces -- as though everyone likes to search through a pile of pieces to put puzzles together (I don't). So, three hours of frustration after I started said wading, I was left with a tutorial I couldn't complete, and it remains uncompleted.

So, I added a new house to ICWaterfront3. It shows a big asterisk in the Cell View, now, showing that I've modified it. Is this a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? Judging from what people say about "dirty mods" it is, in fact, a Very Bad Thing. But how do you add a structure to an existing World Space region without modifying it? Am I missing something, here? I read through a tutorial where someone added a new merchant to the Waterfront (on the other side of the wall from where I added mine). He sure didn't mention anything about having a dirty mod, so how did he avoid this? Or did he?

Speaking of modifying objects, just how do you give an object a unique name (not the ID) without editing the base, which seems to create dirty mods? Do I have to first create my own instance of that object by duplicating it? I can't find any explanation, anywhere, that says whether or not it's safe to touch that "Edit Base" button on the Reference dialog. And if it isn't, then why is that option on by default?

The problem is there is no comprehensive guide to using TESCS -- something that fully explains the UI, what all the menu options and buttons do, and, basically, gives you a roadmap for getting around what would, otherwise, be a wonderful and powerful piece of software. Then you get to OBSE, the "documentation" of which is nothing more than a list of its functions. I was finally able to find, buried on some webpage, an explanation of what I needed to do in order to launch TESCS with OBSE extensions enabled (editing the shortcut and adding the "-editor" switch), but, again, there's no comprehensive guide to OBSE -- just stuff that seems to assume you already know what you're doing with it. I need to do some serious scripting. I have a lot of it already written in "pseudocode". I don't learn well by peering over lists of functions until my head starts hurting. I like examples. Studying how other people do things is one of the best ways (at least for me) to learn how to use a programming language. Unfortunately, there's no comprehensive guide to using the scripting language built into Oblivion, and taking other people's mods apart and examining them is a nearly fruitless exploration into frustration because most people don't adequately document their code with comments. Where's the repository of useful scripts? Most other languages have them. There seems to be no such place where people share and discuss Oblivion scripts -- just "tutorials" that, again, seem to be written by people who don't remember what it was like to not know what they were doing when they were first learning, or a few "collections" of scripts that tend to be tiny and strongly focused on what seem to be very author-specific features of his own mod(s).

Am I asking too much when I expect that a tutorial or a "manual", or any informational material, for that matter, be designed with the "clueless newbie" in mind when said material is, ostensibly, intended for consumption by such people? I'm not saying to dumb down the documentation -- just not leave things out that make perfectly good sense to you, but which aren't obvious to someone who's never done it, before. That said ... does such documentation exist, either for TESCS or OBSE, and, if so, where is it? Yes, I know. The canned response to a question like this is "just play with it until you know what you're doing". That's not the answer I'm looking for. I don't want to wait a year to release my mod because I have to waste my time trying to learn something from scratch with almost no useful guidelines for how it works, other than tutorials which just skim the basics, when I know there are other people out there who have already invented the wheels I'm trying to create. I've already broken enough things as it is, and have scrapped and re-built what I have of my mod four times, already. I don't want to become yet another would-be Oblivion modder who gives up because the sources of information needed to solve specific problems in a project aren't available.

Much anger i sense in this one...

This really belongs in the cs forum, but i guess ti will be moved for you soon enough. I know the cs is intimidating, but what you gotta keep in mind is the guides are mainly made by the community. The cs is not a commercial tool sold by bethesda, it is given away freely to the community, they don't charge for it and they don't supply support for it. Could some guides be more thorough sure, but you are expecting people to know exactly what skill level everyone is at. The cs wiki is made up of tons of people not one single person, so it's really unavoidable.

Instead of ranting on about what other people should have done you will get further by just asking specific questions one at time. You will run into scenarios where you have to work around limitations in the cs, if you let it get to you are not going to get anywhere.

i must admit because of your complaining i couldn't bare to do much more then skim through the last parts. Basically your are complaining about the community not being thorough enough when making guides and then asking same community for help. Not a good start.

Criticism is nice but if you, by now, know how to do these things why not add/write about them on the cs wiki yourself? At some point someone has to do it and if you feel the existing ones aren't good enough then step up and improve them. If you are not willing or able to do this OR share whatever imformation you do figure out then please complain in silence. I can understand getting frustrated with inadequate documentation but failing to improve it while continuing to complain is just wrong in my book. :shrug:

P.S. Yes, I also skimmed the last bit of the OP, after a while it became sort of repeative.

-kyoma

Too many quotes, so I switched them to indents. They're all from the OP.



Not entirely sure I agree with this assumption at all. Not going to argue the point, however.



http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Main_Page



http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Category:A_beginner%27s_guide. Featured on the Main Page of the Wiki.



Depending on your definition of "useful", that might just be too damn bad. Modding takes time, and so does learning. Sorry.



I'm curious what you've been trying to do. I don't doubt the statement as a whole, but I'm curious.



Haven't read it, but did you try http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Door_Markers_-_Connecting_One_or_More_Doors_Between_Cells? Also, http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Containers%2C_doors%2C_Havok_objects%2C_and_Enemy_Placement probably would have helped; that one was written by a Bethesda developer.



That particular UI discrepancy does not seem to be documented, no. You could have very easily added it to the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Category:Factions documentation for the next person, but you didn't. Instead you ranted. This is going to become a theme in this post, I'm sure.



Save issues, almost certainly. You should always test mods with a "clean" save, that is, one which does not have any record of the mod. Otherwise, it may not update correctly when you update the mod. Try a fresh save (or try disabling the plugin, loading, saving, and then re-enabling it). If that doesn't work, then I'm not sure what's going on there. A thread in the CS forum would have been appropriate.

However, to address your complaint: Yes. The Wiki does a poor job pointing out the myriad best practices and global tricks like this, because they don't really fit in any one tutorial, they kind of apply every where. It's really, really hard to make sure every new modder sees things like that. Care to explain how you would go about making sure they do? Because I've been working on the Wiki for four years and I have yet to come up with a satisfactory answer.



Who the hell says that? They're either idiots, or you're misunderstanding.



Correct. You could have just looked up http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Active_File on the Wiki, and it would have explained things here.



What? Again, who is saying these things? That's preposterous; I do it constantly.



Do you work on anything and not save periodically? I mean, I do this in Word, I do this in the CS, I do this in freaking Diablo II for crying out loud. This is basic "how to use a computer" knowledge.



Bethesda created the CS for the sole purpose of creating the game world of Oblivion. That's all it was for, and it was programmed to be able to do that, and only that. There are exactly zero features in the CS that they didn't themselves need. Sorry, but that's what you get with free software.



You really want someone to hold your hand and say "OK, now you need caveset_igneous_corner_03, and then caveset_igneous_straight_05"? How do you expect to make mods if you expect them to be written out for you?



Huh, there's no page on the Wiki for "dirty mod". That should be corrected. I know this question is answered in several places on the Wiki, but if the Wiki has a single biggest failing, it's having important information tucked away in otherwise irrelevant pages. Searching for "dirty mod" brings up the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Mod_Cleaning_Tutorial, which presumably would explain things, but it's only the 6th hit. The Search function there is hideous.

Anyway, a dirty mod is one which makes unintentional or undocumented changes, nothing more, nothing less. You intended to change ICWaterfront3, so that's not dirty. If you'd looked there, saw that you had a change in, I dunno, a tavern in Bravil, and suddenly remembered that you'd been kind of playing around and testing there but had not really meant for it to stick and you meant to put everything back, then that's a dirty change, and should be cleaned (in this case, you can probably just hit Delete on that record in the Details section.

Dirty mods are a very bad thing, though, don't get me wrong, but what you're describing is not dirty.



If you change the ID, you'll be asked if you want to rename it, or create a duplicate. Say you want the duplicate. Now you can leave the original alone and do what you like with your copy, including changing the name. You cannot change a base object's name without changing the name of every instance of that object.

Whether or not this is "dirty" depends entirely on whether or not you want to do it, though. Some mods do exactly that - they rename things, or they rebalance the stats, or whatever else. They intend to change the original base objects. Other people just want to have their own unique version, and don't realize that they're changing every copy of it. That's a dirty edit.



The Wiki is linked to from the Help menu of the CS, that I know for sure. Did you even try it?



Correct, because that's all OBSE does. Notice that it's called the "Command Documentation".



Ooohhhhh, so you mean you didn't read the readme? Why am I bothering even responding to you, again? It's all in the readme, you just have to read it.



http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Category:Functions, each of which has syntax, notes, and many have examples. Unfortunately, it's a bit out of date - it only has functions up to v0017 of OBSE, so none from v0018.
http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Category:Useful_Code - hardly complete, but it might help.
http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Scripting_Tutorial:_My_Second_Script



Well, ya see, here's the thing. Bethesda did some documentation, but it was honestly incomplete because they didn't need to document everything - they wrote the program, they were really just using the Wiki to jot down notes to each other. Then they were nice enough to write up some tutorials for us before opening it. Since then, it's been entirely done by volunteers. And by volunteers, I mean there's been maybe two dozen in four years who have put in really serious effort to improving the Wiki as a whole, and a few dozen more who wrote quite good tutorials. And as for long-term commitment to the Wiki and improving it, there have been exactly four such people in four years - JOG, Haama, Qazaaq, and myself. And I'm the only one who has for the entirety of the four years; JOG left Oblivion modding a long time ago, Qazaaq's mostly moved on to FO3, and Haama has real life to deal with. So do I, for that matter; I can't put nearly as much time into it as I once did.

So yeah, as long as we keep getting these really long rants from people who will never so much as register, much less put in any effort to improve the Wiki (and if the Wiki has anything in spades, it's people who notice - and complain about - problems, but do nothing to help), nothing's going to change. It's not going to improve. You're as bad as anyone else, as I pointed out above - you noticed problems, but you didn't update the Wiki.



Well, I've linked you to a lot of resources that I know of. If those aren't good enough, well, then, sorry. They're not good enough, but that's all there is.

Actually, yes.

You're asking too much to expect that it exists at all. Most games have absolutely no tools, let alone documentation.

You're asking too much to have us assume that a "clueless newbie" is writing mods. Mods are written by people who assumed that they'd have to find it all for themselves. The documentation the user community has provided is "things I've found" rather than definitive guides produced by the designers, so it's bound to be incomplete and in some cases, wrong!

This is a game with a toolkit thrown in, not a construction set with an example game. You can only expect documentation and instruction for the game, because that's all you're paying for.

Everyone that has responded has been spot on. All I would add is to reiterate that I have never been under the impression that the CS was ostensibly for new user consumption. Where did you get that idea? The CS is an advanced tool for people who know what to do with it, OR for people who want to learn from the ground up. You're trying to learn the CS while making a mod? Bad, very bad idea. Follow DragoonWraith's advice: go to the wiki and do the beginner tutorials. It is clear from your rantings that you have not done that.

Also, you say you have a little programming experience. With all due respect, it must be very little. Writing software is all about painting yourself into a corner and having to learn on your own how to get out of the mess you've created. If you are this frustrated after putting in as little effort as you have, perhaps you need to reconsider this venture of yours.

In any event, posts like yours above will not earn you many friends around here. You really need to find a better way to deliver your message.

Best of luck.

Chillwill

No, not anger -- frustration. There's a difference, although when you observe someone experiencing one of these emotions it can often seem like the other. I understand what you're saying, but my issue is with "newbie guides" being written which assume that the newbie in question knows more than he really does. Yes, I know that some of these guides are written by experienced modders. The problem, here, is that experienced modders frequently forget just how lost they felt when they were first starting to learn. I've had to deal with inadequately-documented game development tools, before -- specifically for Neverwinter Nights and Starcraft, so I'm not really that new to this sort of thing.

kyoma

I may, indeed, get around to doing step-by-step guides for various functions of TESCS -- but not until I'm thoroughly competent, myself. There are just too many ways that things interact with each other in this game to assume that what I know is all that there is to know about it.

DragoonWraith

The Elder Scrolls Construction Set Wiki was one of the very first resources I consulted. There is some valuable information there, to be sure, but some of my issues actually stem from some of the articles I read when I was trying to solve specific problems. I fully understand that the wiki is supported by people just like me -- fans of the game who figure things out and then add to the data base of knowledge. It's a community effort and I don't expect it to be perfect, but it's terribly incomplete. Again, this is to be expected, and that's not the crux of my problem. It's a balance between documentation and mods. Modders want to be making mods and not writing tutorials, for the most part, so we have a truckload of mods and not much in the way of comprehensive instructions on how to create them.

My issue is with the fact that (as mentioned a little further down in the thread than your post) some people expect every would-be modder to reinvent the wheel, rather than taking the time to document what they know so that those people new to the modding community can benefit from what people have already figured out and then begin contributing without having to figure it out all for themselves.

Yep, I read Door Markers. Tried it and it didn't work, in fact, and I followed every single step by-the-book. That launched me into a search that took several hours and reading and re-reading several tutorials that included some information on door-linking. I haven't re-read Door Markers to see where (or even if) it steered me wrongly, since I did figure out a systematic way to do this on my own.

Again, I didn't add to the wiki when I found out about that little discrepancy in the way the AI creation interface works because I'm still working with trying to fully understand the interface and its peculiarities, before I do anything like that. I'm not going to jump into the middle of the fray, there, until I know for sure what I'm doing and that the advice I give isn't going to cause other problems down the line. I'd much rather create a full tutorial on how to create an AI from scratch and have it all in one place.

Yes, the missing object problem was a save issue. I've been working on that and managed to clear it up. As for how to document all the individual tips and tricks ... actually it should be fairly simple. The wiki needs individual articles on each individual aspect of the construction set. I'm sure you've read well-written documentation for software, before (there really are some examples of this in real life even though they are rather rare creatures). Such documentation systematically explains every single function of the program. Start at the beginning. Make a page for the File menu and document its seven function from Data to Exit. Link the short descriptions of what the Tools, Export, Import, and Preferences selections do to articles that further expand upon those. Continue with the Edit menu, and then with the View menu. In time every single function of the construction set will be documented. That's where you would explain the inconsistency in the UI in Characters/Faction. It doesn't have to be explained in every tutorial that touches upon creating or editing factions after that because someone who doesn't understand the interface can just go to the wiki page that deals with that feature to read all about.

I honestly don't know where I read to not make a file the active file, or to not use the save icon on the toolbar, but I read both of these multiple times in various tutorials. I've probably read every single tutorial that exists on the first ten pages of any Google search for just about any specific modding question that I could pose, in fact, and after awhile they all start to blur together. It was, in fact, the wiki on Active Files that convinced me that it's OK to make a file active and save it frequently, rather than waiting until closing TESCS and having it prompt me to save the plugin.

No , I don't need my hand held to get through a tile set, but the tutorial in question could have explained in a little more detail what parts of the tile set were being used in what parts of the mod. That would have narrowed the search down considerably and saved me a lot of time just dropping things into the Render Window one after another. Again, what might seem second nature to you if you've been using the cave tile set for a year is a bewildering array of puzzle pieces to someone who has never seen them, before.

Yes, I've read the Mod Cleaning tutorial. My problem with it, though, is that cleaning a mod is tantamount to sweeping the dust under the rug. So, my guess was correct. There is no way to change the world without creating a dirty mod. Then you just hide the evidence and everyone pretends that your mod is "clean" because there are none of those ugly asterisk markers in the object list. I wonder how many "clean" mods are actually still "dirty" in the sense that they've altered something in the environment that's going to conflict with other things in the game. "Clean" is nothing but viewing the mod through rose-colored glasses, in this sense, and you have to trust the modder to have not actually deleted that piece of furniture.

I encountered the ID changing thing in my very first iteration of the mod I'm working on. Maybe there's a bug in the software, and maybe I just didn't know what I was doing, but some of the things that I thought I was duplicating I wound up altering, which is why I had to scrap the first two tries. I think I figured it out, though. Remember the rat? Well, I've gotten the house, at least, to work correctly, except the rat kept attacking me, even though I had it set to have a modification of 85 to the Player Faction. Why? It's because my custom instance of the domestic rat didn't replace the actual object in the Render Window -- totally unexpected behavior from the software. Once I deleted that rat and then inserted my new one it responded to the PC correctly (i.e. just ignored him). I would have expected the instance of the rat in the Render Window to have been changed to the new ID when the construction set created that new form. That may have been the problem I was experiencing with global modifications of objects early on.

Yes, I read the Readme for OBSE -- I think it was about 3am, when I was installing it. Could be I just overlooked the part that explained how to launch TESCS. No excuses, there.

As for your links to the scripting functions, that's my primary source of information on Oblivion scripting at the moment. "Useful Code" contains some stuff I may refer to later on, but right now most of that doesn't help with my specific scripting projects. I've been through the two scripting tutorials to which you linked. Again, helpful, but not terribly in-depth.

I understand that "Bethesda" wrote the software. That doesn't mean that the people who wrote the game also wrote the code for the developer's tool, though. Indeed, I strongly suspect that most of the people involved in creating the gameworld, itself, weren't part of the team that programmed TESCS, although I could be wrong about that. I just can believe that a new game developer would be pointed to a workstation, shown the icon for TESCS on his computer screen and then be told "There's your tool. Just double-click and get to work on your project. And, oh ... don't forget your deadline!" There were a lot of people involved in creating the game. They wouldn't have saddled each and every one of them with a piece of software that didn't have comprehensive documentation, I'm sure.

I do appreciate your lengthy response. Really, I do. And in time I'll probably get involved in improving the wiki. Right now, though, I'm still feeling a bit lost about a lot of the things that those of you who have been modding for four year take for granted. There isn't four years of experience documented in the wiki. Of that I'm sure. Nor do I expect you and the other people involved in it to meticulously set to words everything you've learned. As you pointed out, you have a life. So do I. If I didn't then "exploring" TESCS wouldn't be that much of an issue for me. I've re-invented wheels, before. There are just too many such wheels in this monster for me to tackle it in a vacuum, though.

vegtabill

I've already gone through just about every tutorial that I can find -- including those on the wiki. As far as my programming experience, I learned to program in college. I know several versions of BASIC, Fortran, FORTH, LISP, and a number of scripting languages. Learning programming is most certainly not about learning everything on your own. It's about being guided through the initial phases of learning a language ... then you start painting yourself into corners and getting yourself out of the messes. I've written complete applications in VBScript that were used in the accounting department of a company. I'm not new to this sort of thing. My primary issues aren't really with scripting for Oblivion. Familiarity will come with practice, but it would sure be handy to have access to a repository of scripts designed to address some of the most common programming issues which modders face. Sharing a common pool of procedures would make a lot more sense to me than having every single scripter have to build those procedures from the ground up. My real issue with Oblivion modding has more to do with the lack of documentation of TESCS, itself -- something I fully intend to work toward a remedy, once I'm comfortable with it.

I was not intending to ruffle anyone's feathers, and if I did, then I apologize. Understand that I've spent about a week struggling with TESCS. Where I am, now, with my mod I could have been the very first day, indeed, within the very first hour, had I been able to find adequate documentation quickly. I have to wonder how many modders in this community experienced the same issue I have, but just don't remember it, now that they're experts in modding this game. Where would we be if everyone took the time to contribute to the wiki as they learned new things, rather than having to re-learn what other people have learned before them? I've made progress -- even solved a few problems since I made my post. The house is all there, inside and outside, my merchant doesn't attack her pet rat, the rat doesn't attack me ... it's a start. It would have been much easier, though, had the wiki included comprehensive, explicit, step-by-step articles on creating a merchant from scratch (the existing article is OK, but could use some improvement), cloning creatures so that you can edit their properties, dealing with the idiosyncracies of the various user interfaces, etc., and in time I'm sure it will have all that, even if I have to write some of it, myself. I'm just not ready at this point to present myself as an authority on something that I'm just beginning to learn.

Edit: Sorry, Ghastly. I didn't get my response to your post in this, but here it is ...

I have to disagree that that I'm asking too much to at least expect documentation to exist. I'm sure the folks at Bethesda have better documentation than we do, and how long have the fans of this game been modding it? Since a few days after the game hit the stands, right? You guys who have been churning out the mods are to be commended for your hard work. I haven't heavily modded by Oblivion, but I can assure you that I can't imagine playing the game in its vanilla state. There were simply too many things that the development team did wrong, as awesome as the basic game is. Yes, some people think that modders are people who assume they'd have to find it all for themselves, but, really, what's the point of having a modding "community" if you take the concept of "community" out of it. Share the knowledge and we'll all, players and modders alike, get that much more out of the game. Prevent new modders like me from having to re-invent everything, virtually from the ground up, and even the experienced modders will benefit, because then we can begin discovering new things that, perhaps, you didn't find, but that we aren't going to find while we're struggling with the basics that you already struggled with and overcame ... but didn't document.

You're right, though. It isn't a construction kit with an example game. None are. I was involved in the modding community for Second Life for awhile -- stuff not entirely that different than what is being done for Morrowind and Oblivion. It wasn't much of a "community" because many of the modders, there, were making money at it and tended to keep their knowledge carefully guarded -- and the documentation that Second Life's developers chose to reveal was spotty at best. It was the lack of cooperation from other builders and scripters in SL that was partly my reason for leaving it. You guys are doing better, here, but, honestly, would I rather have you explaining in detail how you created your brothel mod, or would I rather have you creating content for the game? Content, of course, if it has to be one or the other. I know where you're coming from, and I understand why experienced modders might take exception to the things I've said, but my issues are real, and I'm sure every single one of you has had to deal with them, yourselves. That's the sad part of my story. If every new discovery was documented then all the rest of the people after that wouldn't have to re-discover them.

I know this is kind of a minor point in the scheme of things here, but I'm not sure you are understanding what is meant by 'dirty' mods. You do have to place some trust in the modder to not make wild edits that cleaning can't help with, but "sweeping dust under the rug" in not an accurate description. There is no doubt that cleaning your mods makes them better compatible with other mods and helps prevent crashing.



Certain mods are going to conflict if they edit the same records. There is no avoiding this. This does not make the mods 'dirty'.

Be that as it may, I find it very hard to believe you have done the tutorials on the CS wiki. I've done a number of them myself, and know for certain that learning how to use doors is very early in the game. I had no problem with it, making it difficult to understand why you say that part was so hard to get info on.


Um, yeah... maybe in a perfect world. Or in college. Not so much in the big leagues, my friend.

Well, sorry. If you have a magic way to convince people to work on the Wiki, I'm all ears, but I've been trying consistently to make that happen for over four years and it hasn't.


Seeing how much effort I've put into the Wiki, I think I can safely say that I'm not one of those people. That said, ultimately, there's going to be a lot of things that you have to learn for yourself.


Which, of course, leads to the problem we already have - all of the important information is found in one tutorial or another, which may not, as a whole, be relevant to someone looking for that one kernel of information.


Yeah, OK. Why don't you? Because honestly, I've put far too much time into the CS Wiki as it is, and I don't have so much more of my life to devote to it as to do that.


[censored]. And very close to insulting. Dirty is only when a change is unintentional. Changes cause conflicts, that's unavoidable; you are only responsible for making sure that you create exactly 0 more conflicts than you have to to achieve what you want to do. Dirty edits are merely those things which have changes to them when they should not.

Conflicts are not dirty; they're reality. You completely misunderstand the term here.


...why on earth would you expect that? You placed an instance of the original Rat in the Render Window... and then created a new Rat. How the hell is the CS supposed to guess you wanted to update the old Rat to your new object? I don't think computers are generally psychic.


Honestly, there's not a whole lot else to it. My Second Script (the First one is pretty useless) covers the basics of how the scripting language works. Beyond that, it's a matter of looking at the list of functions and realizing what capability they give you.


Oh, not the same people, no, but it was very back and forth. "OK, here's the CS, start working." "Sure. Oh, hey, I need to be able to link Parent and Children objects to create a trap in this dungeon." "OK, I'll rig you something by this afternoon" etc etc. I'm very certain that's how the CS evolved. And at some point, yes, someone said "You know, working with this hard-coded magic effect list is really, really annoying." "Yeeeahh.... that's not changing now. You don't even want to know how much work it would take to change that now." I know for a fact that this happened, because I've spoken to developers about it - they actually regretted the hard-coded nature of the magic effect list. But seriously, everything in the CS was designed for use to create the game. Expecting any more is unreasonable.


I have more than four years of experience modding for TES, actually; I modded Morrowind quite a bit before Oblivion came out (one of the few still left, AFAIK). But I work almost entirely in script - and I really do feel that My Second Script and the Functions pages are sufficient for that. That's all I've ever used.


Hah, if only you had seen Morrowind. There was no Wiki. The only reason we even had a list of the functions available and what they did is because GhanBuriGhan trawled all of the myriad Morrowind mod fan sites and literally picked the brains of dozens of scripters, what they had learned by trial and error. Morrowind Scripting for Dummies is 99% of the reason I worked on the Wiki - because the Wiki meant MSfD didn't have to happen again, and I wanted to support that.

Oddly enough, I believe you. I'm not completely familiar with all of those languages, but I'm pretty sure none of them have a real concept of pass-by-reference, which (partly) explains your confusion about the rat's behavior when you made a new version of it.


There's a conflict of terminology here. There are two halves to programming: the mechanical half, which consists of knowing syntax and semantics and APIs; and the hacker half, which consists of being passionate and creative about solving a problem. ("Identifying problems worth solving" is related but technically separate.) Just about anyone can be taught the mechanical half who's interested in learning it, and many college CS programs specialize in this. A reasonable number, though not a majority, can pick up the hacking mindset if it's culturally emphasized; this, sadly, seems less common on campuses these days.

But probably the majority of us here come from the other side. We started as hackers. Learning to code was simply a necessity for us: the best path to our goals. Some of us figured this out in time (and had the budget) to get formally educated, but many of us studied completely different fields or have no degree at all. We learned to code from poorly-written references and half-broken tutorials, by trial and error and persistence.

This is not a value judgement. Just as many who learn to code mechanically don't pick up strong hacking habits, many of us here are comparative weak in our raw programming knowledge because our priority was to solve the immediate problem, not to pass tests or get employed. But when dealing with the culture here, keep in mind that you're talking to a bunch of people who did it themselves. Which leads me to:


Yeah, most of us have reinvented enough wheels that we're tired of it too, and we appreciate good documentation as much as you. But for us, the lack of documentation is not daunting and only trivially frustrating; it's just another rock in the road, we're used to clearing those. And oh yes, we most certainly do remember it! That's why someone complaining so loudly about a little roadblock seems, to us, rather silly. Don't you own a winch? Jeez.

No illusions: this attitude probably contributes to our laziness about producing documentation. Win some, lose some. Point is, you're in Rome... get used to pasta! And has been commented, simple direct questions like "Hey, how do I add a faction relation? Dragging didn't work." will be met with a much more positive reaction. The community is a fine and willing resource, if approached on the right terms. And though your introduction wasn't the best, you're probably not too late to bring it around.

The editor is a slightly stripped-down version of what Bethesda used to create the game. I know this for a fact, because things needed for distributed development like source control were only partially removed from the code. Large sections of the code base are also shared between the runtime and the editor.

Many game development tools, especially ones made in-house like this, have horrible to non-existent documentation. Information gets passed from person to person, they might have had an internal wiki, and the engineers took feature requests directly from the artists/designers. Anything not written down isn't going to get published just for the sake of the modding community. They can't make all of their internal wiki public without going through a long manual editing process to make sure they don't release any too "personal" comments. Finally, a lot of the things that do get through the editing process are badly documented because they are one-off features needed for one part of the game and one part only. In cases like that, most likely the only people who needed the feature and the people who implemented it know how it works.

My suggestion - ask questions on the http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/forum/24-construction-set-oblivion/ when you start to get frustrated. That's the closest you'll get to the original environment the game was developed in.

tejon, yours is an excellent post... I almost feel bad for paraphrasing. If I may, let me add this:

You are absolutely correct about every point (but you don't need me to tell you that). I would like to elaborate on the statement above, though. I am a programmer... it's what I do for a living. I am also a hacker, but in the old sense of the word (no script kiddie here!)

Here's the thing, and it's true in all walks of like, careers, points of view, what-have-you.... I don't care how skilled or educated you are; one day you will run into something that has no easy answer. What you do at that point is determined by the type of person you are. Do you try to figure it out, thereby learning something about the technology as you go? Or do you start asking everyone that will listen to solve it for you? I see this every day!

Here's the best part: those that have the desire and the wherewithal to persevere become the movers and shakers... the ones that guide us down the road to something called "progress". Those that don't? Well, they tend to write things like the OP, and never really do much of anything.

If you want to become good with technology, you are going to have to get your hands dirty. If you are not OK with that, fine. You can wait for others to solve things for you. But don't complain in the process, or claim that things are inferior because you don't get them.

The vast majority of the mods represented here on this forum were developed at least in part in the CS by people actively pursuing a hobby, not a career. Ferryt, is it not obvious to you that you are causing a fuss about something that plenty of people seem to have been able to pick up on their own? Seriously... so many people would be totally willing to help you if you didn't start by attacking the software. I would say think before you post, but either that is one heck of a stream of consciousness rambling, or you did think about it and still made the post. Whatever the case, when anyone asks me for help, and then proceeds to tell me what is wrong with my tools, I am not very likely to want to help them.

deleted

Not sure I want to go there right now.

mcc84 (and DragoonWraith)

What I've read about "dirty mods" boils down to "if there's an asterisk by an object people in the know are going to suspect your mod of being 'dirty'" and "but you can make that symbol go away if you know how". The impression I got, therefore, was that this isn't acceptable unless you hide your mistakes, if mistakes they were. It's all a moot point, now, since my confusion about this has been cleared up, but it serves to better support my contention that things like this need clear, unequivocal documentation in the modding community. You guys take things for granted because you already know it (although I'm sure that at one point in your modding careers you didn't, and were as confused on many points as I might be). I'm entering this without informative preconceptions of what anything means or how things actually work. It's just like the save or no-save, and active or no-active issues I mentioned in my first post. Generally speaking, I'll trust what I read in the modding wiki before I'll trust anything else, but I've enough experience using various wikis for information sources that I know a lot of garbage gets posted in them.

DragoonWraith

Nope -- no way to make people get off their lazy behinds and contribute to the wiki, or to magically create some spare time for those who would like to but just can't find an empty slot in their schedules. I'll do my best to help, but I need to get more comfortable with the tools, procedures, and various tips and tricks, first. Finding information in the wiki can be problematical, even if its there. As you said, it's frequently buried, perhaps as a paragraph or even a single sentence, in an article that doesn't specifically deal with the particular issue which may be bugging you. To be honest with you, the main strength of a wiki is also its greatest weakness. Wikis are search-driven. That means you have to hope that the search term(s) you think of are the ones that the search engine is going to key on. I'm finding very nice articles that address some of my issues on the wiki, but purely by accident. I would have found them almost immediately if there was a way to simply list all the articles in one place. Scanning the titles can frequently be faster than trying to search, revise your search, and so on ad nauseum. Now, if we're talking Wikipedia that's not going to be terribly efficient because there are tens of thousands of articles on that site. Our construction set wiki isn't of that magnitude. Is it a configurable thing (to give a list of all pages by title, perhaps alphabetized, or sorted on a keyword)? I don't know, because I'm not familiar with the inner workings of wikis. If it is, perhaps someone needs to turn that feature on.

As for the UI of TESCS, I've found some articles that deal with it on the wiki. Indeed, all its features may well be documented, here -- I just haven't had time to wade through all the links, yet. That's another problem I have with wikis. In the interest of being concise the S.O.P. is to link, link again, and link some more, until someone who isn't familiar with what they're reading is going to become lost in a quagmire of links that take him far off the path he was following. That's how I've discovered some of the gems buried here. What we (meaning people new to the modding community) need is really a larger article that puts everything in one place -- just like if you were reading paper and ink manual. Yes, I know. That's not the "style" of a wiki. Like I said, above -- where wikis are strong they are also weak. It depends upon what you're trying to find out. Sometimes I like the way the wiki (any wiki) is organized by the network of links. Sometimes it's just pure frustration when you're trying to find something but you don't quite know what to call it (limiting the usefulness of searching) or you wind up with a gazillion tabs open in your browser as you follow all those links to grab vital bits of information before you can continue reading what you started out to read. So, yes. Assuming I become competent with TESCS I'll get to work on manual-style documentation to supplement the wiki-style documentation we already have.

Why would I expect the CS to replace an object with one that I just intentionally changed to create a new instance? It seems self-evident to me. I wouldn't have asked for a new instance of the original rat if I had wanted to use the original rat! It should be obvious that if I create that new instance that it's the one I want to play with, so that I don't alter all the rats in the game. This is common-sense programming. When I make a photocopy of something for my own use it means I don't want to handle the original. Indeed, had I programmed the CS I would force the user to create new instances of altered objects that appear in master files, rather than allow modifications to those objects, just to keep the master files "clean". If all I need is a generic domestic rat, then I won't fiddle with it. If I need to attach scripts, alter the AI, give it a schedule, make it bigger or smaller, or give it a snazzy new studded collar, then I need to be working with my own custom version. Makes sense to me, anyway.

I understand the interactive process you mentioned with regards to the development of the CS. I'm sure that's pretty much how it goes for all game development software, in fact -- at least that software that's specific to a particular game. As someone mentioned, below, Bethesda might even have an internal "wiki", or some other sort of documentation, and I can see how they might not want to release all the information on it for public consumption. I'm just "old school", I guess. I like my documentation in one place, easily accessible by simply scanning through the pages of a book or looking at it's index or table of contents. I write documentation (or at least I used to, since I'm semi-retired, now), although I still do write articles for a website I help run. My style of documentation is to be thorough and methodical and to minimize the necessity to jump around and follow side links to barely-related websites. Like I said -- old school. Am I an anachronism because I like everything all together in one place?

Morrowind ... I never played the game, although from what little I've read it did some things right that Oblivion did wrong. The developers definitely dumbed down the game for Oblivion users. On the other hand, I'll stick with Oblivion. Riding two horses at once can result in some nasty spills. I'm sure it was a much more uphill battle for the Morrowind modding community, too, since it was starting literally from ground level. At least with Oblivion some of what people like GhanBuriGhan discovered can be applied, here. MSfD was a major project. So is this wiki. Things like this complement each other, though. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive. They are different sorts of tools that have their individual strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes it better to use one and sometimes its better to use the other. The hyperthreaded nature of a wiki keeps individual articles small and to the point and if you're familiar, already, with all those things to which they link, then you'll be much happier. On the other hand, if you're starting out "cold" the "Dummies approach" is much more suited to the way most people learn. I'm still in a Heisenburg conundrum, and every new modder experiences this -- knowing enough about something to find lengthy explanations on some aspects unnecessary but needing those same lengthy explanations on others ... neither in the box or out of it.

Tejon

All points understood. To counter in part, though, the fact that most of the people in this modding community being hackers doesn't alter my contention that we have to keep our discoveries secret and make everyone discover everything by themselves. That's why GhanBuriGhan wrote Morrowind Scripting for Dummies, and why DragoonWraith has put so much effort into this wiki. We aren't competing with each other for the mother of all über hacks. We're trying to make a game better. So using that as an excuse for the lack of documentation within the community is really just side-stepping the issue. The reason that the documentation is so spotty is because the modders either don't have time to write down their discoveries, are too lazy to do so, or just don't care that the game would be so much better if all modders had access to the same information and resources.

Yes, direct questions are the best way to get direct answers. If you recall, though, I ended my first post with just such a direct question. The introduction to that was to illustrate why that question was even necessary in the first place. Some people assumed it was an attack on the software, or even the modding community, itself, but it wasn't. There was little in there that was opinion. For the most part, I stated simple facts that showed where the software had problems and where the community is dragging its feet. Even DragoonWraith expressed some frustration at that latter point, with the lack of support the community has given the wiki. The most important thing to learn from what I've been saying is that we don't all have to reinvent wheels when there are already tons of them lying in a pile just waiting to be used -- that is, there would be if people would add them to the pile.

ianpatt

I wasn't aware that TESCS is a stripped down version of what the Bethesda game designers used, but it doesn't surprise me. Frankly, though, that doesn't bother me. I don't need source control features, for instance. Thanks for the insight.

vegtabill

You seem to be putting me in the category of people who don't "have the desire and the wherewithal to persevere". How little you know me. I think I've made a good argument in my posts. Even DragoonWraith has acquiesced to my contention that there is not enough support within this community to document what Oblivion modders are learning and doing, and that has been the crux of my issues, really. I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty. I taught myself HTML, XML, and javascript (still learning that), to make modifications to a message board site I help to run. I never asked people to solve my problems for me. I have a number of scripting problems involved with the mod I'm working on. I'll figure them out for myself, and if I can't, I'll turn to the community for help.

Figuring things out, whether scripting or building, or whatever, though doesn't have to involve approaching it blindfolded and with your ears plugged. I'm not afraid of learning curves. I have a learning disability, in fact, that makes learning things that are simple to some people an almost monumental effort for me. I've got the perseverance to overcome difficulties. It's how I managed to acquire a high school education on my own by studying hard to pass my GED, and then go on get a college degree. However, almost every learning curve can be less steep if the tools you're trying to learn to use are adequately documented. That's been nearly the whole of my issue, here. People keep saying "well we were on our own when we did this the first time, so you should be on your own, too". Wrong! That sounds like hax0rs talking. Like I pointed out, we don't have to keep secrets from each other. We're not breaking into websites and leaving our marks so that everyone can admire our 31337/\/355 and wonder how we did it. Improving Oblivion should be a community effort with people cooperating with each other and spreading the wisdom. You're not getting paid to distribute your mods, so you don't need to try to hide your discoveries. That's always been my approach to life. If you know something well enough to teach it, then teach ... if not formally, then at least by "spreading the wisdom" informally.

I'm not criticizing the individual people in this community, or even TESCS. My entire point has been that the tools and techniques Oblivion modders use can be better documented and that in doing so everyone in this community will benefit, as will the people who just play the game. We all know that the CS has its problems. That's to be expected. What we need to do is to document those problems and include work-arounds where possible or necessary. We all know that not everyone in this community has the time, inclination, or skills to contribute to the wealth of information that's already available, however scattered out it may be, or to bring that information together into a central location. That's also to be expected. Still, we can do a better job at this. DragoonWraith rightly criticized me for not updating the wiki when I discovered the inconsistency in the user interface I mentioned. This is at the root of the problems I've described in this thread -- people not documenting things when they find them. I've never edited a wiki ... another of those things that a lot of you probably take for granted because you do it all the time. Maybe I should take some time off from my modding project and figure out how to do that. Maybe, in fact, that would be good advice for all of us.

Are we all beating a dead horse, now? Probably. I had my say and all of you had yours, with lucid and interesting insights into the problems I perceived. I don't see eye-to-eye with all your comments, and I'm sure few of you completely understand where I'm coming from, either, but we're not all clones of some archetypal modder. I need to get to work. Things are falling into place, now that I've been playing with CS and reading tons of stuff that isn't even related to what I'm trying to do -- just so I can uncover those little caveats that are. I shouldn't have to do that. Nobody should. I think I'll make one of my projects an effort to clear up that little problem, so that other people just getting their feet wet trying to mod Oblivion don't have to walk the same broken, winding path that I'm exploring. In the meantime, I'll quit the generalized complaining, since that's how everyone seems to be taking my comments, and start posing specific questions. I have a lot of them. And they're probably mostly answered in the wiki -- somewhere ... needles in a haystack. My project, I think, needs to be going through the haystack with a metal detector and magnet to collect all those needles and then sort them out.

Thanks for your comments and patience, everyone. I'll be around if anyone still has anything to say. Right now I think I'll look into the arcane art of creating and editing wiki articles.

An asterisk next to an object is suspicious if, and only if, it's an object from Oblivion.esm, and your readme doesn't specify that you intended to change it globally. If there's a new object, no one will bat an eye. If it was intentional (and documented), then people will accept that and decide whether or not they want that change in their game.


I don't think it would be that useful. Also, using the Portals and the Categories are an excellent way to find things - you don't only have to Search.

But if you really want it, it's http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php?title=Special%3AAllpages&from=&namespace=0.


For the most part, I would expect a manual-style documentation to also be a series of links. A page for the File menu, possibly even with links to pages for each option in that menu. A page for each other menu. Etc.

I disagree with your issues with links here. I think they're the most concise and most applicable way to organize information. In fact, a lot of the problem with the Wiki as it stands, IMO, is that everything is buried in huge, start-to-finish tutorials.


As someone who has worked with the CS a lot, I'm telling you, it doesn't make sense. There are thousands of reasons why you might have wanted to use an original Rat and then create a new one. Moreover, it would be terrible design to change something behind your back without telling you. Sorry, you're just wrong on this one.


Everything is supposed to be on the Wiki. Only reason that's not true is because the Wiki never got the community support it could have. *shrug* Anyway, yes, Bethesda certainly did have an internal Wiki, and a lot of what's on this Wiki was copied over from that one (mostly the Function documentation; the tutorials were, I'm pretty sure, written specifically for the public Wiki).


MSfD was essentially My Second Script (as in, literally the same tutorial; you'll note that My Second Script credits him for it) plus the Function documentation pages, all put into a single massive PDF file. I cannot imagine how that would be more convenient than the Scripting Portal that we have.


Yeah, except that this is a hobby. I enjoyed working on the Wiki. Most people don't, or wouldn't. Why should they devote their free time to it? It's not out of some malicious hoarding of secrets, or even "laziness", it's just a matter of disinterest.


Good luck with that.


http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Help:Contents They should help. I wrote most of it; I'd be interested in feedback on any of it.

The Welcome to the Wiki page should have more exposure than it does. It probably would helped you. Don't know how to make it more noticed.

DragoonWraith

You must have Job's patience for putting up with me.

The asterisk issue is obviously a non-issue. I religiously document things, so if I intentionally change an existing object the readme file will indicate it. I'm toying with the idea, for instance, of putting a floor trapdoor under a barrel in Chestnut Handy Stables (the stable outside Imperial City), figuring out a way to turn the barrel into a Havoc-enabled object, so it can be dragged off the trapdoor (thus enabling it to be used), and adding some dialog to Briels Gawey. The official game only uses that place if you have the Horse Armor Pack plugin installed. I don't know if anyone else uses that location in their own mods (probably, but who has the time to read through the description of every single mod ever created), but it shouldn't interfere with anything unless someone moves/removes that barrel in their own mod, puts something else there in its place, or alters Briels' dialog. My mod, though, should make it obvious to anyone installing it that there are changes to the vanilla location. My question -- should I "clean" the mod so the asterisk doesn't show, or leave it there and rely upon a readme to explain the changes? I don't recall ever seeing any such explanations in the documentation on any mods I've examined.

Different strokes for different folks. Thanks for that link to all the articles on the wiki. It's precisely what I need. Remember, sometimes people don't know enough about an issue to know how to ask the right question. Being able to just scan over all the articles (even with just the couple of minutes I took to do it) I was able to locate articles on things for which I have questions, as well as others on things which I didn't even know I had questions about until I saw the titles. Other than the fact that the linked page isn't exactly Firefox-friendly (three columns, of which the right-most one is off-screen and not superimposed over the standard background), this is likely one of the most useful "tools" to come into my possession, yet! It shows that the wiki, which seemed pretty sparse when I first discovered it, is a goldmine of information, most of which is hidden from view.

When I refer to "manual style" documentation I'm talking about something laid out just like a paper and ink document. You don't have hyperlinks in a book. Again, different people have different preferences. When I'm first trying to learn something, I want it linear -- one subject after another, each building upon the one that came before it. Only after I have some familiarity with something does the concept of splitting things up work for me, and then it's my preferred method of navigation. There's room in the world for both. Just to give you a general idea of how jumbled things can get, I'm using two browsers right now. I have two instances of Firefox open, one with fifteen tabs and one with six. I have Google Chrome up and running with twenty tabs open. I have ten different .rtf files opened up, and nine folders open on my hard drive. All this in addition to running TESCS and the occasional instance of the Oblivion game, itself, just to test things out. All this is because of the modding project I'm working on right now (that and the single tab I'm using to access the forum so I can write this). Many of those browser tabs are open just because each one represents a link from something on another page. If the documentation I'm accessing were in manual style I'd probably have only three or four tabs open, total. I'd much rather scroll down a page (or simply use a search feature) to find something, rather than have to jump around between open tabs.

We're obviously from entirely different "schools". For one thing, you already know all this stuff (or at least a lot more of it than I do). This is why I like everything on a "single massive PDF file" -- figuratively speaking, since I detest the PDF format. I'm learning this stuff from the ground up. Until I'm reasonably comfortable with it, the quickest, most efficient, way for me to find information is to go to one single source. I can print out a PDF, or .doc (or, preferably .rtf, since that's generally what I work with), and have a hard copy sitting on my desk as I'm fiddling with the construction set. I don't even need to have Internet access. Indeed, most of my initial exploration with the CS involved no Internet access at all because I was in the middle of nowhere with electricity but no Internet, and little to do once the sun set. Having a "manual" handy would have saved me tons of frustration. People, today, take a lot for granted -- good computers, Internet access ... not everyone has that all the time. I was born in 1975, but I never got to use a computer until I was almost fifteen. I grew up with books. While I'm certainly computer literate, now, and while I can appreciate and use the hyperlink metaphor that is the foundation of the Internet, there are still some things which feel more comfortable to me when they're not broken apart into little tiny pieces and scattered all over the place.

OK, I've scanned over the help files quickly. I might have more to say, later, about specific things, but mostly I like what I see. You did a good job. How to make it more noticed? Simple. You know that box at the top of the Main Page that has the headline "Welcome to The Elder Scrolls Construction Set Wiki"? That's where you need to put a link for "Help", along with something like "New to this site? Then this should be your first stop!" Make it the most noticeable link in that section of the Main Page -- different color, larger type, different typeface ... whatever you need to do to draw attention to it. Most people are going to go to "Help" only when they have a problem because, subconsciously, that's what "help" means in the English language. By re-contexting it you bring attention to the fact that perhaps they should go there first, even if they don't think they have any immediate issues. It might not seem that much of a change in the way you present it, but it's a subtle little bit of psychology that actually does work.

If you clean the mod so the asterisk doesn't show, then you'll have effectively "cleaned away" everything in your mod. The asterisk is not an indicator of something being dirty - it's just an indicator that something's been changed. It's dirty when that change was unintentional - and dirty changes can happen just from working in the CS, they're just part of the game. Which is why cleaning is important - it doesn't just hide the asterisk, it actually undoes those changes. If you undo something that you intended to have in there, you're only damaging your mod. So yes, you should have an asterisk next to the Chestnut Handy Stables, and if you were to clean it away you'd break your plug-in.


Unfortunately, for the most part the titles of articles is not going to do the best job of helping you find things that are hidden in otherwise irrelevant articles. Anyway, have you looked through the category structure? Most of that can be found in categories, usually the Tutorials category.


Even if things are in a linear format (see several of the better-written tutorials; the Working With Nifs series and the Beginner's Guide come to mind), it's often best to have things in separate articles, each one sequentially linking to the next.


Scattered would not be how I would describe it. It should be indexed and organized. But effectively it's the same as a book telling you to see an appendix or some such.


Take another look at the Main Page - it's there, top right, under the main title bar. Seems about appropriate.

:blink: Forgive me for prying, but are you a lot older than I think or is this due to extraordinary circumstances?

DragonWraith

We're on the same page with regard to dirty mods, now. Thanks for persevering with me on that issue.

I've looked through the category section, and it's useful. However, that assumes that whoever assigns an article to a category thinks the same way I do about how things should be categorized. It's pretty much the same thing as when I peruse the list of all pages and have to assume that the people who named their pages think the way I do, too. Assuming nearly always gets people into trouble, though, so I think the two lists are complementary in many ways. There really is no "best way" to organize diverse data and some people can deal with the randomness which you probably think is a drawback to the all pages list. Which approach I take depends upon my mood and needs of the moment. Would you believe that I read dictionaries for pleasure? Sometimes I'm just not looking for anything specific, but, rather, I'm "browsing" -- looking for things which might catch my eye.


Even if things are in a linear format (see several of the better-written tutorials; the Working With Nifs series and the Beginner's Guide come to mind), it's often best to have things in separate articles, each one sequentially linking to the next.


I couldn't have said it better, myself, and we're in perfect accord, here -- except that I would have italicized "often" to emphasize that sometimes a linear format is better than a linked format. Tutorials simply should not use a linked format, except for linking to additional information on a particular subject that is related to something which happens in the tutorial -- optional information not required to do the tutorial. The wiki format is preferable for just documenting features of CS. It's not so good for presenting comprehensive tutorials for beginners, who will then be sent chasing geese all over the place to figure out what the heck the person who wrote the tutorial is talking about. A tutorial should be self-contained, for the most part, only referring to outside sources that are either completely optional, or which further explain details which aren't necessary for completing the tutorial.

If I write a comprehensive "beginners walkthrough" for the CS, for instance, I'm going to have, in linear fashion, a description of every interface in the program, with example mini-tutorials on how to use many of the more important and complex features. I'm not going to piece it together by essentially writing an outline that merely links to things that other people have written, filling in the blanks if there are missing pieces. I most certainly would include relevant links to articles which explain some of the more esoteric and/or advanced applications of those various features, but that material isn't necessary for a basic understanding of how to use the CS. When you write documentation its very important to remember who your target audience is. You need to coddle a novice. An expert mostly just needs links to things because he already knows enough to figure out what he doesn't know. Someone with an intermediate level of proficiency is somewhere in-between those two extremes.


Take another look at the Main Page - it's there, top right, under the main title bar.


Not from what I see, unless you and I are interpreting "title bar" differently (I was thinking about the banner at the top of the page). I see links to "Help" in two places -- at the bottom of the "Navigation" section on the left side right under the banner and at the right under the box that outlines the "Welcome to The Elder Scrolls Construction Set Wiki" section. Should this be sufficient? Sure -- in an ideal world, but the world is filled with humans, who are your primary audience (remember what I said about targeting your audience?). You have to make things "people proof" because human beings are, by nature, lazy, stupid creatures. If you want something to be more likely to be noticed you have to make it look different in some way. It's why, on my website, administrative notices in the middle of threads are frequently in larger type, bolded, and presented in a dark red color that contrasts strongly with the default text presentation.

You were concerned that not enough people were looking at the Help pages (and I imagine you have a way to determine how many times those pages have been accessed). If you want to get more people to use them then you need to make "Help" stand out from the stuff around it, or people are simply going to overlook that link unless they're having difficulty with something. The "Help" pages aren't just for problem solving. You've created a very nice resource for someone who is new to wikis in general, but the word "Help" does not convey this on a subconscious level. It implies "You gotta problem? Go there. You don't gotta problem? Don't go there!"

tejon

Nothing to forgive. I used to have a full-time career, but I've settled down into a career as a housewife, now, although I occasionally do help out at my former job when they're short-handed. I'm still old enough to be a mother for a lot of gamers out there, though. Chalk it up to trying to catch up with a lost childhood.

Well, it appears as though you are well on your way to reconciliation. That's good. There is one point that I think you still have not really acknowledged, at least not more that tacitly. You made a comment to me about how little I know you. With all due respect, my introduction to you was your long diatribe, in which you blasted the CS for being poorly documented and for being built "by committee", and in which you suggested people were lazy. I am sorry, but first impressions actually do matter. Why wouldn't I think you are just another one of the complainers in the world? You introduced yourself by complaining, and have gone to great lengths to try to justify it. Long, eleoquent posts do not disguise this, IMHO, nor are they an adequate substitution for simply admitting you were wrong.

Nevertheless, good luck henceforth. I hope you get the answers you need and can proceed with your project.
veg

Wow..I've learned a lot in this thread.

The kind of documentation that best suits your needs depends entirely on your objectives. If you are a complete noob, then a linear tutorial is definitely the way to go. You need someone to lay out a clear procedure for getting from A to B so that you understand what is required. Once you are familiar with a subject, then information organized in an encyclopedic format is probably going to be more useful. The OBSE command reference is an excellent resource once you are familiar with basic scripting concepts because it is concise; that doesn't obviate the need for a tutorial if you are just learning the subject.

The formats serve different purposes. There is no right or wrong here. The fact that a wiki is essentially an encyclopedia that also contains tutorials just confuses the matter. It is not redundant to have the same information in two places if it will be used in two different ways so the notion that there is a conflict between tutorials and reference articles is just plain incorrect. The problem is not that the information is buried in long tutorials, or that the information is fragmented in numerous short chunks; the problem is that some of the information is in one format and some of it is in the other but that not all of it is in both. You don't use a screwdriver to hammer a nail.

FWIW, I have documented every important discovery I have made on the wiki (along with numerous minor edits). I do not believe there is a single veteran modder on the forums that does not freely provide the best information and insights they have when asked directly. The fact that not all of this information has been recorded on the wiki has more to do with the fact that people are just generally very busy and have to make decisions about where to spend their time. I spend 30+ hours a week modding and 44+ hours a week working. I'm lucky to get a full night's sleep. As it is, this post is coming out of my 'sleep' pool, which is reaching dangerously low levels.

Your frustration is simply a consequence of your inexperience. I went through the same stage myself. Once you are familiar with the territory, many of your complaints will simply disappear. You want to run before you walk, but you can't. Once you understand how the engine works and what it expects, you will realize that most of what you see in the CS is optimized for speed and efficiency. I can work very quickly in the CS now, and appreciate it more and more as a tool every day. That's not to say that it doesn't have it's share of bugs, or that it couldn't be improved in numerous ways, only that most of my initial frustration stemmed from my own ignorance, not from the tool itself. When I was starting out, however, I didn't have this perspective.

In any case, welcome to the community. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors.

If you are using the official OBSE documentation, I recommend my own, http://www.truancyfactory.com/obse_command_doc.html. It's a little easier on the eyes. Be aware, however, that the function index is incomplete. I confess: I've been very lazy.

@ TheMagician, DragoonWraith and all the others who supported the Wiki and any other Oblivion related documentation
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU
You all spent so much time and dedication so people like myself can pursue a great hobby.
I'm modding Morrowind and Oblivion since 7 years, and I'm more than happy with the Information I find here.

@ Ferryt
Don't forget: Modding is not a job, it's a hobby.
There is no time pressure for you to finish your project. Relax.
Take the time to investigate, FIND your information ressources. Discover.
Start small, try to get fast success and gain experience instead of starting big.
(and don't mind these "lines of wisdom": I'm probably older than you are )

Ferryt, you write very well. I hope you do take the time to put some articles together for the Wiki. If you do, please try to understand your audience. While new modders such as yourself would appreciate a step-by-step guide with lots of explanations, seasoned modders or experienced programmers don't have the patience to read through reams of material just to get the answer they're looking for. There is definitely a need for both types of articles and I hope you consider putting something together.

I'd be very surprised if Bethesda ever used the CS themselves to build Oblivion. I know they used a customized version of the Gamebryo engine and I would have thought that that would come with its own GUI - maybe not. I have also found the CS very frustrating to use - there's actually an active thread in the Construction Set forums about improvements we'd like to see. I think some folks are working on some CS enhancements, so you may want to have a look at that thread and see what develops. Anyway you will get used to the interface.

I created my own syntax file for Textpad and do all my scripting using that. Then I copy and paste into the script editor. Having properly highlighted and indented code does make scripting easier, so you may want to look into that. I think a lot of people use Notepad++, so that's another option.

I'm also a professional programmer (systems anolyst, actually), so I have a slightly different take on the CS. I did enjoy this discussion though and found some of the comments by other modders very valuable. As already stated, we're doing this as a hobby, so you have to remember that when you're trying to use the various tools. Ask specific questions and you'll probably find someone who's willing to help.