Modding Total War: The Future...

[Lusted]

I agree that we do not need more fragmentation

I always try to link to whatever tutorial is best when answering questions at TWc, most of the time i link to ones at TWc because im lazy, but when i have the time i link to ones here as well. Having information shared better between the sites can only help the community, as information is easier to find.

[Dol Guldur]

These different sections - would you propose they be in different forums or just different sections within an index thread?

Thanks for the kind words.

As the Scriptorium is now except with more divisions than 2. And with tutorial and discussion kept separate. And I think Moderators should be able to delete those "tutorials" that are not really tutorials at all. Snippets of information or improvements to tutorials (when not the author) should be posted in the discussion thread for that tutorial and then the author can update the original tutorial . If he does not then the information is still in the linked discussion thread for researchers to find.

I'd be quite detailed with the forums. For example:

campaign map - editing (TGA files, creating and editing the map)
campaign map - coding (map-related text files, descr_regions, descr_strat)
campaign map - misc. (mercs, resources, wonders, etc.)

Or for buildings:

tech tree - EDB (EDB, EB)
tech tree - TGAs (cultural building folders, descr_ui)

Each of these (and many others) would have a list of tutorials within them, though hopefully not so many (due to their specific nature) that would make research hard (by having multiple pages).

I know some files will overlap, but not in the context of the tutorial. The DS file would apply to some tutorials in both the building forums for example

[Bwian]

I have been toying with the idea of making a 'get you started' kind of website for modding. Now might be a good time to throw it together, since I am not currently able to do any modelling work!

It is a REALLY good point about outlining the time it takes to do something. Even for an experienced modder, it is impossible to put a complete mesh in game in less than an evenings work .... assuming you are going to make 4 levels of detail anyway ;). This might help to give people the sort of man hours a mod actually sucks up. If...say... making a unit model takes 8 man hours, then you know the sort of workload you would have for 20 units. If you only have one modeller, then you are looking at 160 man hours to make your meshes. Since a full blown total conversion may have 80+ models...

DJ also made an interesting point about mod failure. Whilst it could be a toucjy subject, some mods fail because the TW engine just won;t do what the modders needed it to do. This sort of knowledge has value to the community. If you find the AI can't play the game....the animations don;t work if you do X,Y or Z .... that sort of thing. Would save people going down the same blind alleys! I mean... how many people tried to make WW2 mods only to find that you can't make effective modern guns and the formations were too inflexible!

[wlesmana]

So what we need is NOT a guild or more rules but a newsite with articles and research materials (on modding, not history). Basically a pool of relevant information with little to no noise.

Heck, maybe "retired" or inactive modders like Bwian could man it as he can safely say he has no attachment to any project and could give a fairly unbiased point of view.


No, I don't agree with the "too many mods" point of view. Modders are not employees. We work on whatever we want to. Not a lot of people want to work only as he's told. He has his own visions and ideas too. Saying that all similar mods should work together is like saying no one should mod RTR, SPQR or EB and instead they must strive to join or not at all. See, if the difference in "vision" is small, they'd just mod an existing mod. If the difference is large, they'd make their own, even if the setting is the same. Saying modders should not create another mod that is similar to an existing project is the same as saying companies should stop making WW2 shooters game because goddamn there's a truckload of that already.

[Epistolary Richard]

As I think I can say with some confidence - no one here has any problem with many many _completed_ mods. It's the huge number of uncompleted mods which release absolutely nothing which what they're trying to avoid.

So what we need is NOT a guild or more rules but a newsite with articles and research materials (on modding, not history). Basically a pool of relevant information with little to no noise.

This and Bwian's suggestion is interesting. Assuming for the sake of argument that we could make improvements to the Scriptorium along the lines that Dol Guldur suggests - what kind of additional material would be of most use to modders?

[Sundjata Keita]

Well this suggestion didn't really fit into any of the spin off threads so I decided to go back to the original. You are talking about making it easy for modders to help each other and trying to make the forums more organised so questions can more easily be answered. Well how about in the modding questions forum people start putting the program/area they are asking about in the question.

When people title threads things like "need a little help" I dont have time to read through all of them. Especially seen as most I dont know the asnwers to because they are from areas I know nothing about. If they titled the thread "Modelling Question: need a little help" then I would be much more inclined to look at the thread and be able to help. If everyone added prefixes to the titles telling us what the question is about it would make it a lot easier for those trying to asnwer the questions.

It is simple things like this which can make the forum a lot more organised and easier to read.

Regards,

Sundjata

[Lentonius]

I think the scriptorium is one of the best ways to avoid un-nessecary questions.

I see many many questions being answered in the Modding questions section, and they are useful answers being given that would widen the scriptorium. Yet I feel that a good way to prevent the 'usual' questions, are to collate answers from various questions and put them in the scriptorium. This would make the scriptorium more used, as to be honest i feel that there are still many things clear to experienced modders, that newbies cannot find out unless they post a question.

[Epistolary Richard]

Well this suggestion didn't really fit into any of the spin off threads so I decided to go back to the original.

That's ideal - as more topics come up people can just spin-off more threads to focus on them more specifically.

If everyone added prefixes to the titles telling us what the question is about it would make it a lot easier for those trying to answer the questions.

That's an interesting idea - there are couple of ways for that to work, either we can encourage people to do it themselves and the moderators pick up those who don't (and make it clear to people that their thread names can change because it can be seen as unnecessarily aggressive or 'over-moderating'), or there is a way to require a prefix (but that would take a lot of admin time, even if was technically possible and then we'd have to determine the list of prefixes that would cover the options).

Which one would be more in line with what you were thinking?

Yet I feel that a good way to prevent the 'usual' questions, are to collate answers from various questions and put them in the scriptorium. This would make the scriptorium more used, as to be honest i feel that there are still many things clear to experienced modders, that newbies cannot find out unless they post a question.

I'd agree with you - though collating this knowledge is not something that you need to be a staffer to do. So, how would you suggest encouraging members to do it?

[Epistolary Richard]

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.

So what we need is NOT a guild or more rules but a newsite with articles and research materials (on modding, not history). Basically a pool of relevant information with little to no noise.

Forums really aren't flexible enough to organise tutorials & discoveries in that way - aside from the large number of mostly inactive forums it would create, more importantly it'd be very difficult to cross-link a tutorial that was relevant to several different areas effectively.

That kind of functionality, however, is possible through a links manager - which a couple of staff members have been working on. As a result of this conversation we've added a Modification Guides, Tools & Tutorials section as a first step to building on the ideas expressed here.

This is the first time a section has been opened to the public, so before I make a larger announcement I'd appreciate it if the people involved in the discussion can have a look around, try things out and see if there are any problems to fix or if the process is unclear anywhere before it officially opens.

Not all tutorials are added from the Org yet, the rest will go up over the bank holiday weekend by staff, so if you want to try adding a link then link up to one on another site, I'd recommend TWC as there are plenty there not yet linked in.

[Dol Guldur]

It is a great resource. I will think about suggestions for additions/improvements but for now I can see that you need a section dedicated to the Tech Trees which is wholly missing from your lists:

Tech Trees - details relating to the creation or editing of each faction's building trees, unit recruitment, bonuses and on-screen building names and descriptions.


The TGA aspect of the buildings might come under 2D artwork, though to be consistent you do have a section on unit cards. You'll have to decide under which section to put the graphical aspect of the trees.

EDIT: Also, where would research go? I do not necessarily mean player research of unmodded factors (such as the effect of roads on trade) but the research associated with modding (such as the hard-coded mins and maxs for all files). Though the former is also useful to modders as the effect of the modding can be more easily ascertained.

EDIT 2: How about a thread listing each graphical component and referencing the specific save format for each, dimensions, borders, layers, whether it is compressed or not, tga or dds extension, location in directories, where ingame they appear, will they work unpacked, etc.?

[Geoffrey S]

Looks good; it's a solid, easy to navigate collection of modding resources and could be very helpful. Hopefully people visiting will check there first before asking questions that are already answered.

[Epistolary Richard]

It is a great resource. I will think about suggestions for additions/improvements but for now I can see that you need a section dedicated to the Tech Trees which is wholly missing from your lists:

Tech Trees - details relating to the creation or editing of each faction's building trees, unit recruitment, bonuses and on-screen building names and descriptions.

Good suggestion, the missing links from the Org are from the Scriptorium sub-fora so the unit/building side and campaign/map side are not properly developed yet. They'll be fleshed out in the next couple of days.

The TGA aspect of the buildings might come under 2D artwork, though to be consistent you do have a section on unit cards. You'll have to decide under which section to put the graphical aspect of the trees.

Unit cards are highlighted because there are simply so many questions about them - I think building cards could probably be wrapped into them as well with a small change of title.

EDIT: Also, where would research go?

At the moment, I think research is happy with the tutorials - it gets marked with a 'Research' prefix, such as here. When MTW2 comes around and research hots up again, we might well add a research category for those who want to get involved.

EDIT 2: How about a thread listing each graphical component and referencing the specific save format for each, dimensions, borders, layers, whether it is compressed or not, tga or dds extension, location in directories, where ingame they appear, will they work unpacked, etc.?

that's quite a bit of work - that information is mainly embedded within tutorials and how to's where it exists at all. Would people really use a central reference rather than referring to a tutorial?

Hopefully people visiting will check there first before asking questions that are already answered.

When it gets officially released we'll add a link to it at the top of the Scriptorium.

Looks good, I think I'll wait and see how 'the staff' place things before trying to add links.

Don't forget I also want to test out the technical and 'intuitive' side of it - so feel free to mark any test posts 'Test' and I can ensure they work and then delete them.

The ones from TWC I was looking at linking could go in a few places (guess that's the idea of cross linking) for example:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=44952
is about changing faction icons in photoshop so possibly 'factions' but it's really more to do with using photoshop so maybe 'tools' instead, then again the alpha and .dds issues are the same as with 'skins'
(now you know why I have problems with online support menus!).

That's a good example - in this instance I would say 'factions' for the reason you stated, 'user interface' because it deals with the faction buttons on the UI, maybe also 'units' because people might consider them 'unit banners'.