Modding Total War: The Future...

[Epistolary Richard]

1. Specialists

We've seen a great deal of aid to mods generally by those who have focused on specific areas of modding and provided various tools, packs etc. to the Community.

I agree, I think we've been very lucky in that a few talented people have been able to do a great deal for the community. The only concern is of course that there are so few, should they drift away then we'll be rather stuck.

1. Modding forums generally have not be archived or organized in such a way so as to make easily accessible modding information. This results in *many* newcomers (or even long-time members who cannot find a lost thread) asking questions that have been asked before. This wastes countless amount of time and energy of forum readers and those answering the questions (as well as the time of those asking the questions).

I'm always interested to hear suggestions as to how information can be better presented. Currently we have the tutorials forum, an Important Modding Index thread in Modding Questions and, of course, people can stick and unstick threads for their own view. But I agree that ease of access is very important. What improvements would you recommend?

The challenge is always the balance between presentation and maintenance - ideally you want all the information immediately obvious to the eye without the need for any regular maintenance such as manual moderator involvement which leads to delays.

I remember a Rome wiki was started, but failed to catch much interest.

2. Too Many Mods

So many mods start up and then fail. If forums were a little more cautious in offering mod teams their own subforums this would I believe make people think more about how realistic their endeavour is; it would likely see more people joining up with stronger mods.

I would propose higher minimum criteria for mods to be accepted for hosting; though of course anyone could still put out an advert for putting together a team.

I think there are quite a few matters tied up with 'too many mods'. One is that when a mod fails much of the material made for it is lost. Equally, there is a 'time delay' between creation and distribution and also increasingly with complete mods the modding community has become more conservative over its IP.

I would think that some ground could be made on all of these fronts by re-emphasising creation of 'building block' material that can be compiled into mods.

Say a skinner makes a new skin for a Spartan then if he is just making it for himself he can immediately release it - and he will be more likely to agree to others using it in other mods. Contrarily, if the skin is developed for a long-term modding project it may be months before it is released, if at all, and the modding team will most likely be that much more defensive about its re-use (as it is seen as 'special' to their mod) than the individual (who just wants his work to be used).

This is not to get on the case of 'big mods' especially those TCs who's stuff is so individual to be of limited use to anyone else. But even those can potentially benefit from being able to share models and skins as placeholders or for to fill in factions which they aren't concentrating on.



I think the question about IP is a larger issue so I'll split that off into it's own thread. Generally - and this applies to kagemusha's comment about larger mod teams as well - I think more focus on completing bricks rather than struggling with houses will only be of benefit to the community for whom - after all - the only upside is if something is actually released.

The Hosted Mod question is slightly separate to my mind and one worthy of more focus - so I'll split off that topic also.

If we could get a cooperating group of modders across all the major TW boards, helping to create tools, write tutorials and finish mods i think it would be great.

Some of that is relatively straightforward. It's easy for different forums to have links into each others tutorials for example. Tools tend to be the creation of a motivated single person so are less given to co-operation, but when made can be equally shared.

Finishing mods - a kind of modding International Rescue - I think would be very difficult to pull together. What you would need would be a group of experienced modders prepared to down tools on their own projects and fix up another mod whose own team didn't have the motivation or skills to finish it.

The general idea of a Guild that you mention is one which is unfortunately somewhat fraught with pitfalls and we've seen a few well-meaning attempts. The first question I have always asked is 'How is this collective different from the wider modding community?'

If it's seen as selective then it's open to charges of exclusivity, if it's open to all to join freely then you have to wonder how it really differs from the whole modding community. Collectives that need to be organised tend also to be viewed with suspicion as a 'power grab' by the organisers (completely ludicrous of course - what power is there in an online gaming community?
Also there's ultimately there are no punitive sanctions to make any member actually do anything