Starting a modification

**giskard** · 10-12-2004, 19:01

Good Advice Duke.

Let us not forget that not all mods need to be big mods. A person may want to simply change a minor aspect of the game. In my case I seriously thinking of tracking down the Public order routines used in the campaign and fixing them so the player him self causes a revolt by not doing something rather than the revolt happening when a city reaches a certain size.

What ever people intend to do there are other considerations.

1) How big will your final mod be ?
2) Who will be hosting it for you and will the size of the mod cause the site to run out of bandwidth before the end of the month.
3) Are there are ways you can reduce the size of mod, eg by using Nvidas DDS tools perhaps on your TGA's etc.
4) Packaging and installation, how can you make it fool proof so even a noob can play your mod. Tracking down some of many freebee installers like the click teams install cuts down a lot of problems in this area.
5) Promoting you mod, you have to be a wiz are promoting stuff and making it sound cool without actually lying about it.

When the time comes for beta testing and feedback I have this advice for you.

1) Good testers dont grow on trees, be nice to them.
2) Take everything they say seriously no matter how outragious it sounds. I have found they are often right.
3) As you develope a list of does and dont's based on their feedback, post them as a list so your beta testers can learn them too. An informed beta tester is a better beta tester.
4) Name your generals after your beta testers, give them something to talk about and have a laugh over when the mods done :)
5) Remember beta testers have lifes too, so dont bombard them with new betas every few days, give them a chance to gather info on several bugs before releasing an update. Releasing an update to fix 1 bug at any stage of develope is often more annoying for players than not fixing a bug at all. Wait until your sure you have all the known issues fixed before releasing an update. Unless one bug is paticularly serious.

Giskard

**Silver Rusher** · 10-12-2004, 20:32

DJ, your link 'list of mods' doesn't work.

Just an observation. Is the list being made? Will it be a post in the forum? Or is it already somewhere on the ORG but the link is just wrong?

**tombom** · 11-13-2004, 07:35

Just expanding slightly on Step 0: there is no point starting a mod if you have no idea about modding and have no motivation to learn along the way.

**Myrddraal** · 12-15-2004, 17:43

Thats very negative, when I started, I knew nothing, as I'm sure you did tombom...

**Molleby** · 12-28-2004, 01:04

Hello to you all.

I'm pretty new to this site and the whole community in all, so please forgive me if this is the wrong place to post this.

I've read the introduction guide and thought about this little project I have (a parallel project I work on when I'm not modding Europa Universalis)

For about 6 years I've been creating a fantasy world of my own for roleplaying purposes. With time I've created a full 6000 year history, a mythology, a geographical world etc. I've included (stolen some would say) elements from everywhere from Tolkien to real history to Warhammer to all sorts of religions. I've included just about every stereotype of fantasy to including new stuff, like an proto-industrial revolution, etc. I want to make a full mod for RTW out of this, but I'm not in a hurry. If it takes a year or more, so be it.

What I have for a starter is plenty of maps of the world, enough to make a working map for the mod. Factions, units and so on are also done, that is, I have it on paper idea-wise. I figure that if I do the map first, make the factions work and so on, that would be a good start. I don't know how to do units, but from what I've seen so far, there are plenty of units in the communities to "steal".

So, if I leave the unit graphics alone for the moment, and concentrate on building the world itself, what elements should I be aware of? The map itself I know I can do. Question is, once I finish the map, what then?

**Myrddraal** · 12-28-2004, 15:28

Well I guess the obvious thing would be factions then units. At the end of the day, you want a mod with good gameplay. My personal oppinion is get a 'skeleton' of the mod working. Basically a map and factions, and some units. They don't have to be balanced. Then once you've done that, you can play around to your hearts content with stats and stuff to make the game fun.

PS, not really the right place, but I suppose if you can't make your own thread...