ORG, TWC, and the Official Forum - what would the ORG specialize in?

[Axalon]

We are, quite frankly, massively blind on the modding sector because we have no one on-staff who is heavily involved in that community.

I think it is important that you/staff can admit that, because then you are at least aware of it and can start to act on it (and seek help as well). Overall, it is not a good circumstance but I’m guessing you already knew that. That said, and as I essentially already said in a previous post, "if they don’t have the necessary skills and experiences on subject X – then they should contact and consult an expert on the matter" as to treat it as fairly and seriously as possible. In this case I would say experts, as in several persons that have a clue what the hell they are actually talking about.

My suggestion to you is thus; try to create and set up an “advisory board” of modders from different games and let them work out and outline possible solutions and plans that they think would be advantageous/beneficial as to turn the tide (or at least towards that end). I would think that 5 people would be advisable. 1 for MTW1, 1 for RTW, 1 for MTW2, 1 for ETW/NTW and 1 for STW2 (the first 3 games are at least possible to mod to a serious degree - I am unsure of the warscape engine, but as I understand it, it is limited and problematic - and have not as extensive mods for it as available for MTW1/RTW/MTW2. I don't know if it is as problematic as STW1. Somebody that works with the warscape-engine can tell for sure. My limited impression is that it has more the character of tweaking rather then true and proper modding - but I could be wrong about that). That way you will have a broad and solid foundation and virtually no game/engine are left behind in the process. As I understand it there are similarities in RTW/MTW2 and ETW/NTW/STW2 while MTW1 is clearly very different from the rest. Anyways, that is my suggestion. Invite selected people to form this board. Needless to say, this has to be people who know what serious modding means and has at least one large mod under their belt to show for (say 2000 files strong or so) so they have solid experience and a proper grasp of the public aspects related to modding as well.

We've tried to rectify this, but have so far been unsuccessful. This has seriously hampered the various efforts we have made over the past year to make the Org a more mod-friendly place. Several months ago, I personally tried to assemble a modding toolkit; essentially, a pack of utilities and files that would be useful to modders for each of the various TW games. The idea was that anyone could download a single compressed file and get all of the important modding tools without having to search for them. The problem I ran into is that I don't know anything about modding. I pulled out every single modding file hosted on the Org, and realized that I have no idea what 90% of them do, let alone whether they are the best tool for that job, or even the most up to date. The fact is, we need help from the modders themselves to do a lot of the more intricate things that would make the Org more modding friendly.

The idea is fine, but I can see your problem. Alright, I can offer my services on behalf of MTW1 and the related tools – as I am the most experienced modder still active for MTW1 anyways (both here and the TWC as well). I can help you sort that out or discuss possible additional alternatives to it because I don’t think there will be 1 perfect solution as there will always be some tools that do not make it. In general I would thus suggest that you/staff/whoever standardize the whole damn thing and have continuity on all games in the treatment of tools, and related guides and treat them as per game and in separate dedicated sub-forums each with all such relevant stuff bunched together and clearly catalogued there. I would probably throw in all related guides as well just to keep everything in one place (for the sake of clarity) and then make sure that the access to that place was thoroughly ensured and visible by multiple fixed links to it in various places. Sort it as per game, a vault if you will. We can then create a “recommended tool-box” as per game while all the other stuff that did not make it to that box is still easily accessible all the same in this place. Do this make any sense to you? Anyways, just thinking out loud and on the fly here…

We have a lot of resources at our disposal that we can open up to the modders, but we don't know how to use them in an effective way. What can we do to get modders to help us with actual improvements?

As I said, I suggest the staff try to set up a “modder-advisory board” of sorts to work out a plan and the details for it. Having non-modders doing it will obviously not be as effective. It’s like having non-pilots cook up solutions for airplanes basically – it's just not optimal…


Anyways, I'll try to do some comments on other posts here later...

- A