This would be rather interesting and something that I for one would love to see.

It is not unheard of for modders to request donations on thier own websites or for the continued development of mods, I know of a few modders from the F03 community who do this in regards to mod requests, nor is it unheard of for someone to seek investors or donators for the development of a game.

I think as long as your able to continue on as planned with releasing a working mod even if its just the basics that should develop enough interest from the community to garner some support but wether or not it would be enough is hard to say, I know that I would gladly support this and that I will contribute to your efforts as I am able but sadly I am facing my own financial crisis of sorts and would not be able to donate nearly as much as I could have a year ago. Sadly I think I am not the only one in this position but there are certainly those of the community who no doubt like the idea of your mod who are not facing such trials themselves.

The bad part of going this route is that if there is not enough support to last through the long run you could then face risk to your own reputation should you not be able to continue develpment.

So I think that bottom line is that this is the tough choice that you alone have to make and to wiegh the risks on taking, our input wether negative or positive should not be the deciding factor at work here as we have kinda become the fan base of your mod and our opinions are kind of biased torwards we want this freaking mod.

Thanks for the input. I'm pretty much leaning on making the initial mod full featured and just charge for my voice acting. This I think would be legal, plus leave some incentive to buy the voice files. I can always make the voice files free later down the road if I want. Its just something I kind of want to try out of necessity.

For example, I did a search on the Romancing of Eyja, and it comes up in hundreds of google entries. The mod was so successful, that game sites hosted it without my permission, etc. Just to draw traffic to their site, which is monetized by ads, registration forms which lead to email lists and direct marketing, etc. So its kind of BS that all these gaming sites make money from our hard work when we are the ones who should make something from it. And I can tell you that Unholy Darkness has MUCH MUCH more content than any DLC. Way more. Their biggest one isn't even close. I mean, I'd say knights of the nine has more quest stuff, but Unholy Darkness has so many game play changing powers, new vampire areas, new models, textures, graphics, effects, sounds, etc... it is just too much stuff to just give away when frankly, I'm in this mess because of Unholy Darkness. I'm not going to go into details, but when you mod until 6 am and then sleep half the day away, you aren't making any money at your RL business.

So that is why I've been reluctant to start modding again. I love it so much that I lose sight of bigger things like work, house cleaning, working out, etc. So I was just hoping that maybe by selling the voice files, it would make up a portion of the money I lose by working shorter days, etc. I'm not hoping to go full time at modding and retire, lol. Basically trying to fill that void of work I'd miss. Its kind of a crappy situation because I love to mod, love giving you guys cool stuff, love all of it. But it seems like every time I mod, my RL falls apart.

ahhh the creator has spoken lol

as the other posts say I totally understand your position. and it does not seem unreasonable that you should ask for payment. I think you should probably set a rough number for what you would charge or how much a donation should be. First set up a poll and see how many people are willing to pay and then from there set a price. That will ultimately decide whether you will get support or not. Most are having financial crisis now including myself, I would say don't charge any more than what we paid to get from Beth though. (20 dollars or so) Although if there is lots of support then you don't even need to go that high. Many people watch this thread but not everyone is a die hard fan just yet. However if you are making promises of



then that could greatly sway some people. Especially since many people including myself paid out the ass for some gay horse armor, if you can show that this is an expansion, which you can (pictures/videos/developing posts) alot of people may be enticed to see your opinion. They paid for dlc before why not another one now. If Beth came out with one I'm sure people would hop all over it. You just need to show them how to think about it.

O and mabe it wouldn't hurt to get some of the bigger modders out there to help and support you too. campaigning or encouraging your project. skycaptain/jojjo/sinblood/simyaz just to name a few. perhaps incorporating some of their works and giving them a percentage? people will only get unique made items from them by dl your mod

Speaking from the point of view of a fan and supporter, i would be down to donate for the mod. Just set something up on yours website with paypal or something. I feel like a lot of us who follow you would have no problem with donations

I think you only have to worry about any .esm's or .esps. Theoretically, IF you you require a subscription or donations to access a download section, and said download section allowed people to download additional .esp's, then you could be construed as selling said files. Your own intellectual property, (voice files, sound effects, textures and meshes) should be okay to sell, but meshes, textures, and sound effects would have to be be designed without using anything from the game itself. However, Since users are used to free mods, you'd probably only see money from your more devoted fans.

My recommendation to you:

Assuming you do not have your own website, set up a new forum. This forum should be capable of cultivating a small modding community for itself.

Set up the registration system in such a way that a subscription account (called a friends of madmole account) is very visible when selecting what kind of account you want to register as, while the ability to register for free is available, but less prominent in its display.

Convince advertisers to advertise on your site.

Go to every site you know of in which someone has uploaded your mods without your permission and get as many of them taken down as possible. Have someone else advertise that the mods are available on your own site.

Set up, via paypal or whatever, a donation system.

Hmm... Well, personally I hate it when someone is charging for something that is supposed to be free (ugh... die, "The Sims Resource"! ;>), but objectively your dilemma is understandable. Were I to vote, my choice would be the option #1 - as long as the base contents of the mod are provided free of charge and voice files, and other optionalities are, well... optional, then everyone should be happy, and if I finally resolved my paypal issues, I might even buy something myself.
Still, this option has one, huge drawback - if the files leaked (and eventually they would), then the whole system would become pointless.
I therefore suggest leaving payments as completely optional - as Darth said before. This way you would avoid the legal problems, should Bethesda get bored and decide it's time for some law-time, as well as spare yourself the leaking issues, and unpleasantries therefrom. This is how most 'private' MMORPG servers survive for a few years - voluntary payments under the threat of closing the server until there's enough donations for another month.

The truth is, you cannot really make a fortune out of modding (Well, unless you participate in Make Something Unreal and such... and win...), and you cannot appease everyone, should you decide to try. Voluntary, symbolic donations are the best approach you could take - you have enough fans to actually make it work, and I believe that alienating some of them because they cannot or will not pay can only backfire.

All in all, DarthRavanger has a point.

I'm not out to make a fortune, just simply to exist and mod without regret that I should have been working on paying gigs, or gigs which have potential to pay etc. But frankly, I'd rather make oblivion mods than try to make a casual game or whatever I could to make money. I don't think donation systems work well because very few people donate. But if you ask for money in exchange for something of value, most people have no problem buying.

I'll probably only charge somewhere between 2 and 5 for the first voice pack. If it goes over ok, and people like the mod, I'll make another episode with the covenant/rogue quests and see where things go from there.

I'm not really worried about leaking, because if I'm adding new value with updates with new quests, then you get return business from your loyal fans. Its more of an honor system between the fans and the maker/modder. There will always be people who pirate things, but there will also always be people who refuse to pirate and support the authors.

I don't think there's a need for polls. Price will be very reasonable considering the amount of value there is. Are the voices worth 5 bucks? probably not, but is the whole mod (which is free + the voices ) worth 5 bucks? I'm willing to bet on that based on the success of my threads/videos so far.

Anyhow, enough on this. I'm going to get back to work on the mod and hopefully have some nice juicy screens pretty soon and get things rolling again.

Rosethorn's Vampire Lords Manor is coming along very nice. I've created some elite guards for it, and a butler character named Cliftius Gravius who will serve his master well. While Eyja cleans the upstairs, this guy takes care of the secret Vampire Lords Manner below Rosethorn Hall. I really liked how he came out and I hope to tie him into a few quests. You know how when you visit count Hasildor and you have to wait? Well as the player becomes a powerful vampire I want this guy to come and get you when there are visitors, etc. It should really add some flavor to the feeling that you are powerful and visitors will seek your audience, rather than just barge in like the theives guild quests were handled.

I plan on giving him similar functions that Eyja has, but all geared to serve a vampire. For example, he can fetch you a blood potion, or even go out and grab a random victim for you to feed on, as long as its dark. I want him to feel like a trust worthy old dude who looks after his master, provides random insight, etc.

http://downloads.4drulers.com/Oblivion_Mods/unholydarkness/Cliftius%20Gravius.jpg

I gotta say Madmole I would pay for this anyday. Thanks for all your hard work. your mod will change the way vampires are played on oblivion for ever!!!!

cliftius looks great, especially in that clothing. I think you nailed the character. He is my favorite so far. And as the post above thank you for all your hard work.

and regarding the small fee I'd be happy to pay for it when the time arises.

I'd pay for this mod, looks awesome.

DarthRavanger's ideas seem very good.

Combining that with the fact that you know so much about the vampire world and have so many ideas:

Heresay! Thou Art A Vampire!!! A vampir! A Vrykolaka!!! A Vampyre!!! May a wooden stake be driven through your heart! The power of Christ repels you!!!

Jk... :goodjob:

And madmole, the mods coming along great! If you ever solve the money issue, I highly suggest you add some of his ideas later on as "expansions" of sorts. Again, just suggestions, not demands, just like everyone else.

I agree with DarthRavager as well, I am sure that people will donate to support you with this awesome project (Bethesda should hire you, seriously).

Thanks for the support. I can't wait to get it done and get some real feedback!


Glad you like him. I want to make his mouth a bit bigger and more drawn yet. He looked pretty cool in the CS but after the game made him all happy talking I wasn't quite satisfied with him. A bit more and he'll truly be perfect. I can't wait to give him some work packages to make the manor feel alive with undeadness



Thanks! I've gone the whole advertising bit. It just doesn't pay squat, and usually if you do make some money, the advertising companies penalize you or close your account, etc. Its bs. I'd rather just sell products to my customers direct than mess with ads. Create a real value and sell it, not hope for a third party to provide dividends. I agree with alot that he said though, but my experience with advertisers has been bad for the most part. The obtrusive ads usually ruin the fans experience at the site. So I just want to focus on creating value with my mods and then monetize those for just a small affordable amount, then get repeat business with expansions. Thats the best way to build a business from what I've learned.

I really liked OM nom noms post too. but it was so long I didn't know where to start/end with a reply, lol. I'll just return to it after I get my current todo list done and heavily consider what I can add from his great list of ideas when I'm ready for new stuff.


I've applied at Bethesda a few times, but honestly think how ruined the tes5 experience would be if you worked on it? It would be cool working there, but its almost cooler playing their games and making cool mods with freedom to do whatever your imagination comes up with. I'm looking forward to getting this mod out and seeing how it does.

I would gladly donate for this or any other mod I was looking forward to this much.




If you ever throw up a donation thingy, I'll definitely toss some money in the hat.

Doubt the hat is going to be that big. Guess you could try, if you are good at something, don't do it for free, and this mod has a lot of fans after all, but wouldn't Fallout 3 modding be more "productive"?

I would definitely pay for a whole vampiregame, including a storyline and quests and such, but since i am not playing oblivion anymore(like most people, who completed it once), i dont consider buying mods for it

Probably not, but who knows. My romancing of Eyja mod got half a million downloads and this more epic than that, but I'd say that mod was released probably at just the right time for a lot of downloads.

As for fallout 3, I took a look at the number of people browsing forums and so far there have been more people in the oblivion modding section than FO3. If this mod is well accepted I was considering making a vampire mod for FO3, but we'll see. Oblivion still needs a dark brotherhood epic expansion and since all the others are STILL vaporware, that might be my next project.

Most likely I'll skip FO3 modding and go right into TES5 modding since its supposed to come out this year. I still have to finish playing F03, lol.


You won't have to pay for anything, you just won't get the ALL the voice over work if you don't pay/donate/buy whatever. I'm probably going to include dialogue for key moments even in the base free version.

Fallout 3 will pick up in the future as it gains a more cult following but as of right now Oblivion is where its at. Dark Brotherhood expansion sounds like a great goal and it ties in with vampire culture as well. I can't wait to play a vampire using this mod but to be honest I wouldn't bother with in in F3 for the same reason the Sandman perk is a waste... not enough people, people rarely found sleeping.

Well maybe its just my own personal opinion, but Oblivion to me feels like a better haven for modding. With magic, classes, so much lore, game history, and more diverse settings, it just seems like a better sandbox for modders. Plus with OBSE and all the resources, to me I'd rather mod for Oblivion at the moment. That could change, but I doubt I will bother modding for FO3 as long as TES 5 comes out this year as planned, I'll just jump right into it and skip FO3. I'm already looking forward to a romance mod for the next elder scrolls game, as well as a vampire mod, etc.

I think the modding community for Oblivion will always be bigger than that of Fallout 3.


Fantasy has a larger fanbase than post-apocalyptia, and Elder Scrolls has always struck me as a bigger game than Fallout, though Fallout definitely had its rabid following.


And I can *definitely* say that the mods I've seen for Oblivion tend to be more impressive in scope than the ones I've seen for Fallout 3, though I enjoy both communities and games actively. As a way to recoup expenses, from what I've seen, Oblivion is still the better bet.

Madmole: Whether or not you sell the voice acting or just do completely voluntary donations, I'd definitely donate 5 or so dollars to keep you going. I hope that enough people feel the same way that you can finish the mod comfortably.

I appreciate your support and everyone else's.

Rosethorn Hall's secret underground Vampire area is coming along nicely. I've added a dungeon area where you can keep prisoners, and it comes with one. I gave her a blood stained tattered dress so it looks like she's been rotting down there for months and gets fed on and never cleaned up, lol. I think its pretty cool.

http://downloads.4drulers.com/Oblivion_Mods/unholydarkness/Unholy%20Darkness56.jpg

dungeon looks awesome, you could probably release the house modifications alone and get thousands of downloads haha. Keep up the good work.

Thanks! I need to make it look more custom rather than a borrowed cell from another part of the game yet by dressing it up with details and custom lighting, etc... and then make them all purchasable from Silian. Lots of work but once thats done all I really need to do is get the custom vampire attacks working (skycaptain gave me great details on how to do it) and then add in the butler functionality (easy) and then its basically ALPHA. I'd like to get you guys a playable beta before March. Then I can fix bugs and work on adding in the covenant/rogue questlines/places/etc.