Modding Total War: The Future...

[Bwian]

Ahh, the joy of modding :)

Trust me, none of the issus raised at the start of this thread are in any way unique to modding in this game, it's a universal issue.

Organising:
When you have people free to contribute to a forum, you are always going to get a bit of a mess. No reflection on the moderators! You get a good focused discussion thread, or a tutorial thread, and people will post comments. some good...some utterly off the topic. You can't really do it without having a set of threads, locked, containing the sum total of useful knowledge. It requires someone willing to trawl the forums, and condense down what they find. They also need to be willing to actually follow the tutorials and information, and check it works. Ideally.... you want an expert modder....with plenty of free time...

Too Many Mods!
NO NO NO NO NO! How can you have too many mods? I know most never get finished, but I think saying we have too many is missing the point. You have to consider WHY people start these mods. They want to make something partly for themselves, and partly because they see all the top class mods getting praise and attention, and want a slice of that! Nothing wrong with that.... we all have to start somewhere.

What we DO need to do, though, is push some of the points that have appeared in threads about starting mods. Mods that fail early do so because they are poorly planned, poorly thought out, and done by people who lack the basic skills needed to complete the Mod. A simple 'checklist' thread would be a good starting point, but not everyone will bother to read it

People need to be made aware of the barriers:

You want new models....learn to model...find a modeller FIRST...understand the tools you will need. Don't expect to re-skin a couple of peasants and expect a skilled modeller to turn up to make you wonderful fantasy units.

That aside...I don't see how ANY mod would qualify for hosting without some definite quality content available for testing. Doesn't have to be an actual Beta, but it should include DEFINITE proof that your concept is workable, and that you have the team in place to deliver. Those sort of guidelines should ensure people do the work before asking for hosting.

A good point was raised about IP for mod content. Personally, I don't see why anyone should give away their hard work if they don't want to. If they have made the mesh...the skin...thetext files, it's down to them what happens if the mod folds. Thats Mods though....what I never understood is why new modders always dive into a full blown mod!

Why not just make a few units! Add them in as random mercenaries for a bit of fun! That's what I did. I made some skeleton warriors and played with them as mercenaries. They didn't have a huge impact on gameplay, and were a bit of fun. This sort of thing should be encouraged. If you make more of those....you might end up with the beginnings of a mod.

When it comes to rescuing other mods, though, I see that as a real non-starter! I would not have the enthusiasm to finish off someone else's mod, and would never be able to find the time. Take the Wheel of Time mod...I nevr read the books, don't have an interest in the story, and would never pick up the mod..or, in fact, play it. It's nothing to do with quality, but purely down to having no interest in the subject matter. If anyone was that enthusiastic about it, and was willing to take on work, you would hope they had already joined the mod.

This whole topic is a bit of a minefield. You cannot impose rigid order on a forum, nor chain modders to a project.....it's been tried before...and everywhere I saw it tried, they failed.

The best we can hope for in a forum is a solid and sympathetic Moderator team, who can skim off the cream of thoughts and ideas and...preferebly...build a Guild of Modders website, where they can host all the news, tutorials, tools and experimental ideas once they have been proven in the forge of forum posts

[Dol Guldur]

Thank you for your comments. There is no doubt much wisdom and truth in your words, Bwian. Forum organisation, for example, is a nightmare - it is highly unlikely anyone would have the time to get it as it should be and, as you say, such a person would need certain knowledge and such a person is likely working on something far more important to them.

In saying that there were too many mods I did not wish to put across the idea that the enthusiasm and creativity should be in any way curtailed, only that forum owners should be more rigid in what they host and the way they classify.

One way to organize the tutorials/discoveries would be to have a section divided into different areas: campaign map, units, battle map, tools, interface, audio, animations, etc. and then a link to a discussion thread. I have tried to set this up with my own tutorials to keep the tutorial thread clean and easily researchable. The discussion thread would include a link to the tutorial of course.

I did like the idea someone started of a subject tree - but, again, lot of hard work on someone's part.

[Makanyane]

Originally posted by Bwain:

Too Many Mods!
NO NO NO NO NO! How can you have too many mods? I know most never get finished, but I think saying we have too many is missing the point. You have to consider WHY people start these mods. They want to make something partly for themselves, and partly because they see all the top class mods getting praise and attention, and want a slice of that! Nothing wrong with that.... we all have to start somewhere.

Additionally please be aware that many people trying to create their own personal mod are not doing so in the mistaken belief that they can necessarily improve on the existing mods, but rather, like myself, are just trying to learn how to do it!

Please continue to help us out, hopefully occasionally things can be learnt from resolving our errors, and some newbies can eventually learn enough to go on to help with the major mods.