If you are going to offer a mod,

1) Good for you! God bless you. Good show!

2) Always include precise, step-by-step install and uninstall instructions in the readme.txt. Please.

Thank you.

Place them in the data folder. Very simple. But, yeah, there should be some instructions for people who don't know how.

I don't know about that. People absolutely should be born with that knowledge. It's like feeding yourself.

Agreed should be born with the knowledge of installing mods.
Sadly still have a friend that has me do it for every game he has for the PC

I want to be the first kid on my block to be wet-wired. Until then, knowledge has to be passed the old-fashioned way.

Place in data folder. Delete anything the mod came with.

Its not rocket science. Its no harder then changing a light bulb. Contrary to popular belief, computers are not difficult to understand. Hell, they use the same naming mechanic as papers. Folders and files.

To all those saying it's obvious...

Not everyone who plays Skyrim is good with computers. Personally, I've never modded a game, and before looking on these forums, wouldn't have known how to. However, I think every mod should have a description, as there'll always be someone who would have downloaded, but doesn't know how to mod.

Note that the first Skyrim mod I installed, had a nice readme file, and the file to be copied did not go in the data folder. It went in the interface folder. So... yeah.

Ok, so not every mod is installed in the data folder, however, the vast majority are. So for those odd ones out, then yes, I can understand the need for special instructions if they are not normal. 99% of mods, one the editor is released, will be simple /esp mods with maybe some meshes/textures folders which all go in the data folder.

It just requires some tinkering sometimes. And if people weren't lazy half the time, this really wouldn't be an issue.

The interface folder is inside the data folder.. But you have to extract into the main folder, OR data folder depending on how the author packaged it. (Mostly).

Some things like d3d9.dll also goes into the main folder.

That's true. In fact, the latest mod I just installed involved manually editing the skyrim.ini file. People are not born knowing where that file is, either.

A fellow here was offering a mod that involved editing a hidden file. Oh, great and powerful wizard of OZ, give us a break.

Don't just be a good person. Anybody can do that. Be a truly good person, and do good things in a good way.

Don't just offer a mod. As praiseworthy as that is, it is not enough. Explain how to use your mod. Please. Thank you.

The d3d9.dll is rarely something people have to deal with in Bethesda games. In fact I only had to mess with it with New Vegas before the lag issue was patched.

Ideally, every mod author should package their mods in a way that makes them ready to simply be extracted into the data folder. It is a long standing modding etiquette that really only new mod makers fail to do. Proper file structures has been a long standing topic.


@ToolPackinMama: As i said, which you smoothly left out, once the CK is out, 99% of mods will be drag and drop into the data folder. Editing the ini is a rarity. Its only an issue now because all the mods are not normal from the way most modding will be done given the lack of a proper editor.

If your mod is like most mods, then copy-paste someone else's instructions into your readme.txt. It's Not Rocket Science. Anybody could do it.

Neither is reading stickies, which will eventually hold all the information to installing mods, yet people don't do that either.

This isn't my first tango in the modding scene. The community is still shifting gears to Skyrim. Once the CK is released, things will start getting more established. Nothing is official right now, so trying to set ground rules for readme requirements is kinda silly. The modding vets will know what to do when the time comes to release mods. So sit down and hold your horses and let things fall into their place before you start making a ruckas about what we should and should not do.

I think if I were going to request something about how Readme's should be done, it would be this:

- Remember that your readme will probably open in Notepad. Notepad, by default, does not have word wrapping. Thus, limit your line lengths to 75 or 80 characters in width.

- Stop using special characters. It looks great in PDF documents; all other forms require the PC to have those special fonts and symbols installed.

- Use Notepad documents for "Quick Setup" instructions only, because otherwise it becomes difficult to read; documents that are difficult to read means that people won't read them, so it won't matter if you provide a simple fix for "But my wufflebunnies have no textures!" complaints, people are going to sooner send a thousand messages asking the same thing.



But as Echonite pointed out, this is kinda moot.


That siad...

I do have a more pressing request from the modders in the community, because this became a big issue with some of the more attractive mods in the Oblivion community:

For the love of Talos, do not bundle extra races and non-canon crap into your mods that you know are largely downloaded for other reasons.

( I'm looking at YOU, beauty pack mods. ) There's nothing wrong with providing cross-mod support, but please keep the extra support in patch form. There is nothing more obnoxious than cycling through 15 races that have never appeared in a TES game just so my character can have slightly bluer eyes, or because I feel that your birthsign system worked great.

This is probably the #1 thing that killed ALL INTEREST in some of the major overhaul-ish mods out there that otherwise would have garnered my worship and support, like MMM and others -- it started out wonderful, but then I start seeing D&D stuff or creatures or features that Do Not Belong and I feel... meh. :/ This is not to call those mods bad, just that I feel that they took away from my own personal experience and others may feel the same.

I stopped doing that because i ended up confusing more "new" people than actually helping them.....

there'll be a thread with instructions pretty soon.. i'll just link to that in future readmes