I've got a question regarding how to work several people on one plugin? Is it possible to merge different plugins or somehow work on the same plugin at the same time? I guess there are several mods out there where a lot of people have been involved and I'm just wondering which way to proceed with such a project?

The only ways are either merge plugins from each person, or pass around a single plugin to be worked on one at a time.

There is no way to work on the same plugin at the same time. That functionality was removed from the CK for legal reasons.

I see, thanks for the answer! How does merging plugins work? Some program that offers that functionality?

What kind of legal reasons were behind the removal of the functionality? Just interested =)

legal reasons? that's nuts! first time I'd heard that.

There is no easy way to work at the same time really so far as I know. The best implementations were either complicated setups with version control (look it up) or doing a few things to get around the problem of duplicate ID's when you merge updates to your mod.

If you can, at all, just pass a current version of the mod around and only have one person edit it at a time.

I was going to write an implementation of the thing for just allocating ID's to different team members, but... I confused myself a few times and decided not risk passing on bad instructions lol. Every time you add something, or even add a static out in the world, the CK gives it an ID number, it's auto incrementing, and must be unique in your plugin. This is why you can't just merge plugins edited simultaneously(without manually changing a ludicrous number of ID numbers). The theory is, if you use up a few hundred of those ID's.. say.. putting 400 apples somewhere, then save a copy as a special copy for someone else to work on, then add 400 more, and make a copy for a third person to work on, you will be able to come back later in something like TESVsnip, and take only the changes added after the apples and add them on top of whatever was added to the original mod (up to 400 ID's used per, see where I'm going with this?). It's confusing, error prone and not foolproof. It may be a terrible method actually. I just heard of it, and have had some success in closed tests with it.

So yeah, pass it around or do by yourself >.< Merging is also more of a manual operation in something like TESVsnip (it's on nexus) it's usually not a simple process. Read up about it before even attempting on your precious mod files.

Thanks a lot for the reply. Sounds quite tricky then, guess we'll have to divide the workload in some other fashion. Once again, thanks!

I'm part of a group working on a fairly large project we're hoping to have to Alpha version in a few months... given the limitations of the engine (lack of version control, 1st party merging, etc), we have had to develop our own system for keeping everything organized.

What we have done in our current pre-production team of 3 (1 set dresser, 2 system designers):

• We setup an FTP that our entire team shares with version folders
  
• We use a wiki to keep track of EVERY asset, change. Our Lead System Designer/Project Lead also documents the milestone requirements, Game Design, etc.
  
• Our Art Director created a custom worldspace that follows a simple naming convention like "KewlModWorld" and this would allow him to keep working on the world the entire time
  
• Each version of "KewlModWorld" was converted to an .ESM so we can have plugins run off of it
  
• One Lead System Designer created a package called something like "KewlModScript" that was the container for every NPC, item, object, keyword, major script, etc and extended off of the "KewlModWorld" that he primarily works off of
  
  • Also, we just pass independent files like scripts to each other without their packages
• Since we were developing for an Alpha milestone, we started separating major quests and mechanics into their own package named stuff like "KewlModQuest1" which borrowed material from "KewlModScript" package
  
• Each System Designer would jump on and off of these, so everyone is able to work on different sections without stepping over others
  
• As we complete each quest, we manually merge them into a master "KewlModQuest"
  
• When we reach a large Pre-Alpha milestone, we don't even worry about compiling the packages together and instead just generate a single Archive File for distributing
  
  • This is likely to be the case on public releases too, except we will likely only have 3 packages: World, Script, and Quest. Yet, the archive they're contained in is a single file

That's because you haven't been around long.

I don't know all the details, but there's something about their version control system that caused them to have to take it out from every editor they've released to us since Morrowind. IIRC they use some third party stuff which they cant give us.