http://www.elderscrolls.com/ubbthreads/sho...o=&fpart=1&vc=1
A link to the old thread, which should be read, its perfect to know whats ahead of you.

And heres my post, for the ones who wished to add something new to this.

Introduction:
Ive been thinking about writing this for a very long time now. Beacuse there are apparently many people who wants to start own tc's whilist maybe not even half knows the amount of work, the manpower to pull it of, or what a Tc really means. This will walk through my thoughts on the subject.

The work needed:
You will need to make one whole new continent, and add it to an totally empty plugin. This can apparently be done by lovable programs, I believe one of them is called Mgen, anyways, with alil work they can make most landscape, and sometimes, even basic texturing for the whole landmass, this speeds up ALOT. But still you will probably have to Landscape the massive continent, and retexture alot, not to mention that you will need to vertex paint the landscape, atleast a big part of it.
Give every exterior the models, that you want placed, remember that everywhere you turn in the world, should be worthy of a screenshot. And everything should have an explanation, Why is it grass here, why is this log here, why are there 1000 people in a city with only 3 houses? you get my meaning i guess. Give the exteriors proper weather. Since its a Tc after all you will Need New models, new textures, new clothing, new armour. For that you need both a handful experianced modellers. and a handful of good texturers, that should all be dedicated, so that you may progress well, and fast. Extensive planning is needed. To quote no less the creator of Sea of Destiny, and newly realeased Exile, Clone...

"If you fail to plan before making your TC, and just go placing stuff. You will end up at a point where you don't know what to do next. Before you even open the editor, plan for a couple of days on what your goal is with your TC. Planning before hand will pay off during the process of creating it."

Clone learned this lesson while he was working on Harvest Tide, which was unplanned, and sooner thereafter, he didnt know what to do with the beutiful island he had created.

Plan very well, know exactly what you want. But dont be so numb to not se the limitations of the engine, balancing this is very hard. Sometimes, as a leader, you just have to give up on some ideas, beacuse they are impossible, or you dont have the manpower to do it.

Dialouge: for a Tc you will need a total new set of Dialouge, besides, for knowing exactly what people in the world speak of, I surely hope youve written alot of lore for the project already. or are you really that certain ? In my tc, ive started writing a description for every single npc ingame, i know them, i know their personaleties, I know their future and past, i know everything i need to know about them to be able to tell you ingame what they are.

Quests:In these days, quests are all required to be very deep, with spectacular Plottwists, and adventurous, and sometimes fearsome. Sucseeding with having these interesting quests, is very hard indeed, some people have the imagination to pull of the most fantastic quests, like Lightningfliks Horror mod, it is surly brilliant, or other deep Quest mods, like Black Queen Chronicles IIRC. The quests of today is has high expectations from the community.

Scripting: for this youll need scripters, people who are wholeheartedly devoted to write a few hundred lines of script per day. And who knows, the ideas in your head might be doable, but requires dedicated scripters, and seeing the community as it is today, not many people are ready to dedicate. But most of them seems happy to help out a bit here and there.

Interiors: making every single interior ingame, breathing, and stunningly well placed, without needed to ask yourself, Is it a house or something else? Distinctive look, Realistic feel if its not fantasy feel your aiming for.

Light: lights helps the world, beacome what it is. And what it isnt, Darkness will hide the things that you want hidden. And having proper lighting everywhere you turn, is indeed hard.

Gameplay: Balanced with an well planned Main Quest, every class, and feature will have to be judgefully weighted in the hands of the leader, to maintain the fun in Replayability. Having balanced toughness of the game at every single moment.

Final notes: As a leader, keep everybody working. if you leave anybody out of sight, they might get bored, or they might quit it, stop leaving updates etc. Take care of your teammembers, and help them out whenever you can, after all your the leader. Remember, you cannot hoverver rule over anybody, beacuse you dont pay them, as far as I know.

And for the really serious creators, as myseld, i sit with 3dsmax ALOT, and nowadays, when i create something, I myself require proper concept for all the advanced stuff. You want a new armour from me ? Give me an Fron view, Side view, And back view concept, and ill concider it. If the Concepts are clean, and no dimension of the art is larger then the other, then i might accept it. Im strict about my work, and I wont work with any advanced model, unless you give me very good concept. So keep in mind, that your workers might require things from you.

If the post above has scared you, then I suggest you shouldnt work with a Tc, beacuse here comes the scary part. A tc need its own Unique feel, its breathing, its living, All work put into it should be swirling in the air, and you should get obsessed by the beatifulness perfection of the work youve done. If you dont feel happy about it, then youve somewhat failed. Other then that, you should ask yourself, like Blizzard employees always do. ~ Are we having fun playing this ?

And besides all of this, in a Tc you should have a few extra nice and spiffy new features, in my opinion. New and original.

Now i want hoping to discourage anyone, if your vision is clear, and if you think youve got what it takes, its worth a try . All I can say is that i hope youve now learned that its a looong way.

After all what is it worth? concider, whats it worth for you to make this "TC" Do you want to play it yourself ? Do you want people to admire your work, or both. You should always Aim towards doing it for yourself, do not expect everybody in your team to stand forever by your side. If they fail should the TC fail? hell no, take the things in your own hands, get new personal who will help you. But in the end, Do it for yourself, dont expect anything from the public, untill its realesed. A tip would be to realease a bunch of small mods first, so people may thrust you.

All I can say now, is Happy modding, Happy Tc creating.

//Mireneye leader of the TC Kynskavion
"percentage finished chapter one 15-30% finished, over 1,5 year in production, and 3 years of history.

Figured I would bump it with my old post from there...afterall I do believe the archive is only being kept for a limited time...

For those who do not know me I have been working on a single project since September of 2002. The name of the project is Secret of the Nerevarine and is based upon the future of Morrowind after Dagoth Ur is destroyed. In and of the true term of Total Conversion (TC) Secret of the Nerevarine (SotN) falls short of the label even though it will be released as one because it alters just about every exterior cell of the original game as well as adding over 500 more exterior cells, plus will alter almost every existing NPC etc. etc.

So with that in mind I would like to offer my experience with the creation of SotN to those who are thinking about doing a TC or even a large scale addition/expansion to the original landmass etc. As I stated I began to work officially on SotN in September of 2002 I also began keeping track of the time I spent in the TESCS (the construction set) I keep track of my time in the editor because I have other plans regarding a future project and wanted to keep a tab of the time I spent. Anyway, that tally is now over 2,300 hours of time I have spent working on SotN in the TESCS alone. NONE of the time I have spent in Paint Shop Pro making retextures, nor the time spent on my Website, Forums, these forums, Summit forums, researching writing, etc is included in that time. My last estimate of total time spent on JUST SotN alone exceeds 3,500 hours.

Now in that time what have I been able to accomplish. I have only done over 1,300 exterior cells, added only 450 basic NPC’s, and achieved 4 things that I have yet to see anywhere else, though a few months ago that number was higher, but people are creative and no matter how well you keep your secrets other people WILL come up with them and very likely release them before you ever finish or even come close to finishing your work. At any rate I have done over 8,000 retextures, and placed only about 50,000 references in the exterior esp file I have as the primary file right now. So in 2 years time you can see I have not done very much and have a long way to go just for what I can do.

I do not own a copy of 3ds max so for a long long time I tried desperately to get people to make models for me, it took over a year before I was able to get some done specifically for my SotN project. Model makers are few really and even fewer are the model makers who can truly create masterpieces so they are in HIGH demand and very hard to come by. Making models takes time and when making someone else’s vision of a model they want it could try the patience of anyone. Hundreds of hours can be spent by a model maker just getting a single mesh right so if you can’t make them yourself expect this to be one of the hardest things to get in your TC and have a very distinct clear vision of exactly what you want with drawings or edited images etc that can as clearly as possible express your desire, before you approach a model maker to help you.

What I have left to do in SotN will likely take me another year and another 1,000 + hours just in the editor alone. So as you can see from my experience it will take you time. I began SotN as a single modder and after a time gained a couple people that I thought would be of help, but you see when you work on your own vision of something it is hard to pass the passion of that vision on to others and so soon those who offer to help will wander away or loose interest in the project you are doing. I have had the extreme good fortune to gain one other person in my project that has thus far been willing to see my passion through all the rest have come and gone (with the exception of a few supporters who contribute their undying support to me and the SotN Project) But one other person who contacted me asking if they could help. That person just so happened to be a model maker and a luckier day I have never had during the entire making of my project. So Zyndaar and myself continue to reach for my vision and dream and have many months left to go before the file will even be close to an alpha release.

I simply share my experience with SotN in the same spirit as C_Minereye started this thread, as a way to show you what it can mean to realize your dream. The editor is powerful but it also requires finesse and patience as well as devotion and determination to find a way to make your dream possible even if they say it can’t be done. But you also have to be ready to admit that some of what you may wish to do simply can not be done so you will also have to learn to adapt your dream to fit the abilities at your disposal....Anyway this is an enormous post so I will close with this...

If you do not have the patience to read the above post entirely you may wish to reconsider doing a TC and if you have not read every post in the thread linked in the first post entirely you should NOT do a TC at all.

I, like C_Mireneye, do not wish to discourage but simply better inform and prepare people with understanding. Not all mods need to be a TC if this thread scares you from doing a TC by all means don't let it scare you from modding. Many of the all time most famous mods have been simple 100 hour construction time masterpieces. House mods, furniture retextures, faces, clothes, etc. There is plenty that can be done and appreciated far quicker by the masses then a TC.

[/babble]

Take care all, see ya in a year to try and recruit beta testers LOL

I had typed a post full of good advice, but I accidently pressed a button which refreshed the page and wiped it all. Now I'm annoyed and not typing again.

Here's also some incredibly great advice on modding from a game developer named Josh Sawyer. If you're working on anything larger than a house mod, you need to read this.

whewww! very informative, C_Mireneye thank you.



Thepal:



I've done that before...so annoying. Now I type all my stuff on notepad first...that's if it's more than a paragragh

This post has been edited by sunsi: Sep 20 2004, 12:24 PM

Plainly Excellent guys. Theres really little more to say... Wish this thread could be kep alive somehow better.

I hope we will get to see a few Tcs finish this year, however, as we have racently seen even the biggest most anicipated ones can fall, due to simple copyright matters not double checked.

You have to remember everything you use or do, you must know about copyright issues, you must keep in mind to give credit.

And still be able to lead, and comprehend the team. And in the same time show love and dedication to the project. Do you really have these critera and time ?

Happy modding.

C_M would you mind me running a mirror of this thread on my forum since this one will likely "prune" this if it falls to long? I would of course include a link of your profile here with your post when I copied it over there etc I just wanted to find out if you would mind first.

Also Brillo I would like to add that link over there as well and since I didn't know of it till you pointed it out would link your profile here also as the one who provided the link...

Thepal I would not mind bringing yours over from the old thread as well since it too is likely to go away soon...

oh and bump

Ofcourse you have my approvement, fellow modder. I wish for about anything that helps the community.

1)It's always the plumbing that fails.
2)Everyone is a genius and especially gifted, no gifted person likes to be the plumber.
When in doubt refer to rules 1 and 2

I dont know about if everyone is a genius, but id say, everyone has the potential of beeing one, whether he wants or not, is up to him.

Thanx I started it and will ad to it with more of the old posts etc as I get permissions. Take care!

TW

Ofcourse.... I quote my Favorite Psytrance band Infected Mushroom.
~"Take what we can, and bring it back home!"

So, take what you can and bring it to us.. =)

Yeah man!!!! Cities of the future rocks!!!!!!

hmm, now, I have few advices to you guys...
keep your staff busy!!! this was one of my mistakes, only me and another team member did almost all the work... so you should make the team member to do their part before they loose interest.. and I'm sorry for this, my biggest mistake in my TC...

also, always have some kind of 'plan B' in your main quest, sometimes you can't do everything you planned, you need to have a premade alter version of the main quest before you start inserting the quest's dialog and building the special places for the quest, cus if you get stuck - it might take a hell lot of time until you will establish yourself a decent altered MQ, I'm lucky that I don't have to use my alter version of my TC's main quest... so I will use it in another mod...

AND, about the modding itself... clutter clutter clutter (I wonder where I've heard it too many times) it is important to add life to your places... which luckily I've learned during the make of my TC... and the best thing to use to add life to your environment is proper lights, lights can make a bull city into a magical 'jaw dropping' place...

Those are my two cents... I hope this helps...

Wonderful input. Personally its Lights, Colors, Living and all else combined, which create its total glory. All is ofcourse as important as another, you need to have proper quiality balance =)

MAKE SURE IT'S LEGAL! MEMod recently found they could not make a TC of Middle Earth after 2.5 years of work! Now the team I am on wonders as well.

Lucky i came up with my world, and with all that myself. It will on the other hand be others who will get problem when copying my world... Im going to copyright it someday, when I feel I can. =) to make sure that its mine. =)

haha

J/K or ? maybe not...

This post has been edited by C_Mireneye: Sep 21 2004, 09:56 AM

Ok, Ok, 'tis a new day and the annoyance is gone. So I will try to remember what I was typing.



I guess I shouldn't make a TC then I have a really short attention span and skip sentences (or paragraphs) here and there. Kinda like how I mod

I can not imagine myself working on a mod for 3500+ hours. I don't think I could last that long. Which is why I came up with a new invention: Speed Modding (<- said in a loud echoing voice) (kinda like speed-dating, except anti-social). At the moment I work maybe 10 hours a week (probably less) and I am still making rapid progress on my TC. Of course, I'm only working on a small part of the TC (landmass is about 1/20 of the full world size) so I might just think I'm doing better than I am

Anyway, here is a guide to Speed Modding for all you girls and boys out there:

Step 1 - Learn the Construction Set in and out and learn how to use it the best possible way. Use Ctrl-D to duplicate objects when you need the same piece for a room, much better than Copy/Paste because it will be at the correct height. Select a cluster of objects and copy/paste into another cell if it needs the same stuff. No need to reinvent the wheel. Learn what Flatten and Smooth do when landscaping and use them to speed up terrain editing. This step is getting huge so I'm not going to give tips for everything in the TESCS.

Step 2 - Steal other people's hard work whenever possible. If you need a cow, use Cait's. If you need a certain type of sword, search for one that has already been made because it probably exists. Need a complex script? See if someone else has already made one that does the same. The more work other people do for you the faster you will mod. (Note: Always get permission to use other people's stuff. Permission is usually given in the readme, so check there first)

Step 3 - Be creative with objects. Need a wall that is actually 3D but you find none exists? Rotate a 3D floor onto its side and just retexture if it needs it. Ooooh... instead of explaining, I'll show. http://www.etherealsoftware.com.au/qfg/sheriffhouse.jpg <- Go there to see how throwing together objects that are meant for something else can remove the need for new models (I've since updated that room with stolen models (see Step 2) that work better)

Step 4 (Texturing) - Need a new texture? Find out if one already exists that is like what you need, even if it is the wrong colour. It being the wrong colour can quickly be changed in almost any image editing program. For example, in Photoshop 7.0 you just go to the Image->Adjustments->Hue/Saturation menu and move the slider bars to get the shade you want. Higher quality textures can be found in various texture packs released by other people (see Step 2)

Step 5 (Modelling) - Need a new model? First, check if there is something already usable, even if it needs retexturing (retexturing = generally faster than modelling). Second, see Step 2 once again. If no appropriate model is found, then if you are a modeller, or have one on your team, then you/they can create it. If not then someone may make it for you if you ask at the official forums, especially if it is an extremely simple request (remember to say please and thankyou )

Step 6 - If you get bored, work on another part of the mod or take a break. If you're not speed modding, then you should do other things you should be doing. If you continue modding slowly, then you'll have to do those other things eventually anyway. So you might as well do them when you are not... Speed Modding! (<- said in a loud echoing voice)



Disclaimer - Speed Modding may result in partial or total insanity. Do it at your own risk.

Im in a Mix between speed modding and perfectionism. It works best for me. =)

Bumpin tis up, grab a bag of chips, sit and enjoy, eat your hips.

Yer, I'm giving my TC my all!
Now that MeMod is dead, I feel like I have somtin to live up to!

I agree with you to 100%
I dont want to do this but 18th bump in my career.

A post from the old thread.

Ill give you a tip, since ive been having all kinds of trouble with the team. Keep everybody working, Plan their work, no deadlines needed, just keep contact with them to check it. Besides that, disciplin is needed, motivated people, and as a good leader, you should give constructive criticism to most of the work your modders do. Be ready to discuss all matters of modding, even if its an area you dont fully understand, you should atleast know what they are doing, even, if you dont know anythnig about scripting, you should know what your scripter described he created, and how.

Also, the team members you will find at these forums, are probably almost going to beacome kinda like your friends, atleast its a good approach, to g et to know them more then on the surface, this might be good, so you will always know and will alwys be able, to ask them, and know, if they have time or no. A honest team is good, with a strong leader, and good friend. is excellent

As always, making sure people see this.
Always awaitin new opinons on it. =)

Wow, cant imagine that this thread is still here...
I was thinkin that 'new' people around here would need to know all knowlage saved up here.

Cheers.

lol, this is one OLD thread

Took me a while to find... But lets not forget the mainsubject.

Thought I'd just add to this a bit.

I just started a TC about a month or two ago and I made the worst mistake in the world. I began without almost any idea what I was doing. I had began with a little idea of a plot but that's all. Nothing else. And so now I'm fairly stuck. I'm recruiting new members, writing the basic info such as history and why there is this and that there as C_Mireneye described above and I'm also landscaping. If I could I would put the whole thing on hold until I figure out the whole mumbo-jumbo stuff but I can't because Oblivion draws near and what goods a TC for an old game when everyone else is playing the new one I ask you? That's right, nothing. It's basically already forgotten.

So what I'm really saying is never ever ever start a TC until you've got almost everything down on paper. Like the history of a town and basic info on simple stuff like fauna and flora. And info on why this race builds architecture like that. The idea given by C_Mireneye of writing down the history and personalities of each NPC is great. If you know absolutely everything in your TC then there’s only about 90% chance of successes for you. The other 10% is made up of patience and cooperation of your team. Properly a few more but I can't remember what they are.

So whatever you do never make the same mistake I did. I may be alright since it's only a little TC with most of the Lore being Morrowind Lore but i still have less then 50% of success and even less that I’ll get it done before Oblivion is realised.

Project Leader of The Life of a Slave
Less then 5% complete.

Thanks for those wise words. About 5% is nifty progress for 2 months.
Now when I moved to my own teams game. I realised that the Modding world was rough and fun in many ways.. But that making your own game is even more difficult. I moved not beacuse losss of interesting in modding... But beacuse, I was'nt satisfied with what the MW engine could do for me and my team. I want to fully unleash my artistic ability, and to work with my team and continue untill im done. With our own engine we do not have such a thing as it beacoming an outdated game if you keep 'in the loops' so to speak. Im not encouraging people to try this thou.

The work I do now, is double the work I did when modding. Or will be.
For each race theres atleast 25 sets of chairs tables and everything... Each city has 3 classes of buidling styles... Given that we probably need a few extra... Not to talk about plants and trees.

Storywise, well my story has been in development for as long as Ive created this. Its only defining itself more and more. And I have yet to really make the advanced notes upon the flora and fauna and that is how they are used throughout the world and so on...

Creating a new world as you do in a TC, is'nt easy... -"You need a reason behind everything", and that is something that is immensively hard to do. So far it has taken me 2 years to develop the story to the point where the mainplot is finished... Some characters done, ALOT of material about how the world works, why it works that way, and most histrory som politics...

As you know, not all games needs to be like this. But after all, if you want to make a RPG, you better base it upon something.

Good luck all TC leaders, creating a living and breating world. And Never ever Give up your Visions.

Thy You can archive a vision.. But not a dream.