[Maddy Paul]

We went over this. It would feel like one big stitched together mess rather then a big mod.

It depends on what the agreed-upon focus of the overall team is. If it is quest and story content, then as long as nobody steps on each others' toes, what's the problem? Look at the mission content in the core game. There are multiple themse scattered all over multople locations, and they most are completely unrelated. The player doesn't mind. It's something new to do.

I personally think that a group dedicated to producing volumes of new content seeded throughout Skyrim would be something welcomed by the player community. New gameplay mechanics can be fun and all, but without new content to apply those mechanics to, what good are they?

[James Shaw]

What you said is more what I mean G.B Jackson. It can start small and grow as more people contribute, I think it could be done and fun. Here's what I propose we do. Let's come up with some ideas for themes and vote on them in another thread. Then anyone interested in the theme that gets chosen can contribute to the mod, and we'll have a Group Project thread to show one another what we're working on. Even if its only three people, we could make something fun and take suggestions and help from the forum and put out a community project.

Here are my theme suggestions:
The Dwemer, unlocking the mysteries of their disappearance and perhaps finding the Numidium.
The Thalmor, stopping the Aldmeri Dominion from dismantling the empire and perhaps mantling Talos
The Falmer, discover a hidden enclave of Falmer that aren't transformed into the hideous things we know, but are still in their elf forms.

[DAVId MArtInez]

The wizards stumble across a Dwemer ruin high in the mountains, where a huge, inscrutably complex machine sits, pointing at the sky: an immense cone with fins like a fish.

As Archmage, of course, the Dragonborn is notified of this, and when s/he arrives, finds that these ruins alone of all Dwemer ruins contain references to Secunda, the second, smaller moon of Nirn, along with lot of very complex mathematics.

And, of course, the honor of activating the device SHOULD go to the Archmage. It's probably not dangerous. Probably.

Do you know where I'm going with this? I think you do...

[Leah]

Here are my theme suggestions:
The Dwemer, unlocking the mysteries of their disappearance and perhaps finding the Numidium.
The Thalmor, stopping the Aldmeri Dominion from dismantling the empire and perhaps mantling Talos
The Falmer, discover a hidden enclave of Falmer that aren't transformed into the hideous things we know, but are still in their elf forms.

Of those I like the Falmer idea best. But TBH I think race is overworked as an issue in TES games generally, and Skyrim in particular.

My suggestion would be Bards. I think a lot of people were disappointed that the bards college quest line is so rudimentary. But if there were travelling minstrels and theatre troupes, rallying the troops on the front line, spying behind the lines, etc, it could all make sense.

[Guinevere Wood]

Do you know where I'm going with this? I think you do...

To the MOON, Alice!

[Adam Baumgartner]

There was a thread that mentioned rebuilding helgen. Rebuilding other smaller cities could be included too. You could even tie in rebuilding one or 2 cities to however the revolution ends.

I'm about 1/2 way through the main quest in my Helgen Rebuilt mod. I've begged for help especially in the writing and story department, but have gotten little to no response. I would love to have a person or two to collaborate on the story with. As it is now, I have pretty much written about 1/2 of the story, so they would have to sort of blend in with what I've already been writing and modding towards. But there's still a LOT of my story incomplete. (Basically the 3rd act is unwritten) I sort of know where I want it to end, I've just not decided how to get there. Should anyone want to contribute PLEASE shoot me a PM. I also want to have 3 to 5 side quests after the city is rebuilt. I have a rough outline for one of them called "The Witches of Eastmarch", but I've been working on the main story for the most part.

Also, if anyone has any dungeons they've built and are looking for a home for, I'd gladly incorporate them into Helgen Rebuilt. I will eventually also like to have some retextures done of the standard guard armor and I'll most likely need some retextures of a few weapons from the 3rd era mod I would like to use for rewards. If anyone can help, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Here's my thread:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1313928-wip-helgen-rebuilt-project/

[Emilie Joseph]

I think this sort of thing needs a bit more of a common theme, or a common goal.

We are hosting an initiative that's similar called http://www.darkcreations.org/forums/forum/119-beyond-skyrim/. This is a collaborative effort among several provincial modding teams to use a single heightmap and to share resources and team personnel. We are hosting most of the individual teams, but the German High Rock team is also participating even though we aren't hosting their project.

So this kind of thing is possible and really helps getting large projects going and keep them going. But I think you do need a common goal and I don't know of many other projects that would fall into that category.

[Joe Bonney]

It depends on what the agreed-upon focus of the overall team is. If it is quest and story content, then as long as nobody steps on each others' toes, what's the problem? Look at the mission content in the core game. There are multiple themse scattered all over multople locations, and they most are completely unrelated. The player doesn't mind. It's something new to do.

I personally think that a group dedicated to producing volumes of new content seeded throughout Skyrim would be something welcomed by the player community. New gameplay mechanics can be fun and all, but without new content to apply those mechanics to, what good are they?

You miss the point.

A committed team that is payed, like Bethesda can produce a lot of quality content that all fits together despite their inherent differences. That is what they get payed to do. Modders, on the other hand, come in a wide range of skill sets, so getting 20 people to make 20 themed places would yield 20 vastly different results. So putting them all together in one mod would just look like a mod compilation rather then one big mod.

Community projects have been brought up before. They rarely work out as planned. The best mods have almost all been done by a single person but they seek out contributions of various forms. Like the Reclaming Sancer Tor mod for Oblivion. DarkRider made it himself over 3ish years, and I did some model edits for him. The reason this works better is because its one person with one vision rather then 20 people and 20 visions.

[CxvIII]

You miss the point.

I didn't miss the point. I've noted it and i choose the standpoint that if a group wants to come together and TRY to make it work, why discourage the effort. Maybe things will work out. Maybe they won't. But nothing ventured is nothing gained. As long as nobody is press-ganged into service and as long as they can leave at any time with no hard feelings (it's supposed to be a fun project), then I don't see the problem.

I will concede the point that coordinating a volunteer-based team project is a logistical nightmare, and whomever would step up to such an undertaking had better be on the ball, or the project will drift into tangents that are both unexpected and undesired. I would recommend using Skype's conversation system. It's free and it keeps a running log of all text chats for all participants. One need not be online to catch the feed as it comes. There are plenty of utilities out there that make coordinating over the internet efficient. It's still a headache, but it is manageable.

I won't discourage anyone from attempting any challenge. But that does not mean I won't point out the difficulties to overcome and possible outcomes to try to avoid.

[Danger Mouse]

I don't see why this couldn't work. The team would just have to plan the main things carefully before starting to make anything. There would have to be some guidelines to follow and make sure everyone involved gets the big picture. Communication is the key. One wouldn't just start making random dungeons, meshes, dialogue and scripts without the whole team agreeing with everything. I don't think it would be that bad if the group would be informed of the overall progress all the time. Keeping it simple, close to vanilla and loyal to the original game and the lore should be enough to keep it together. If things would seem to work, it could be taken a bit further.

[Sxc-Mary]

I don't see why this couldn't work. The team would just have to plan the main things carefully before starting to make anything. There would have to be some guidelines to follow and make sure everyone involved gets the big picture. Communication is the key. One wouldn't just start making random dungeons, meshes, dialogue and scripts without the whole team agreeing with everything. I don't think it would be that bad if the group would be informed of the overall progress all the time. Keeping it simple, close to vanilla and loyal to the original game and the lore should be enough to keep it together. If things would seem to work, it could be taken a bit further.

But the planning phase is the issue. Getting a large group of unpaid people that are here in their freetime to agree on one thing would be troublesome.

Sure it's not impossible, but it's very unlikely. The ONLY large(ish) modding team I can think of is SureAI, and I'm pretty sure they're all good friends in real life, and I think they all work in the trade. Not to mention it's only like 6 people.

I just don't see a large group of like 15+ people working on one mod working out. Yes, if it did work it would be incredibly awesome what was made. But there's just too much that doesn't line up.

But of course you guys are always welcome to try, just heed our warnings.

[Dark Mogul]

15+ people would be a dream come true, but I don't think its what anyone here is suggesting. I think what we have in mind is more of a modular mod built around a common theme. Then anyone who wants to participate can, and only as much as they want to. If the project gathers steam, maybe more people will be interested and join in later. Certainly making one single mod would be more than difficult, version control alone would be a nightmare. What I personally had in mind was more of a series of quests, each designed by s single contributor, with other content like companions and special weapons thrown in by people who are good at that sort of thing. It could take on any number of forms, but I don't see why it COULDN"T work.

[Vickey Martinez]

You could borrow an idea from Open Source projects and designate a person who knows how to work version control well to be in charge of handling the merging of esp files submitted by individual modders into a single Master file Granted, it requires a lot of trust to be placed on a single individual, but it also ensures that everything works together well.

[Tyrel]

That seems like an issue for well down the road though. Right now I think we should focus on having a theme in mind.
So far the candidates seem to be :
Dwemer, Thalmor, Falmer, and Bards.
I have some ideas for each of these, particularly the Dwemer. They have always been a bit of a mystery, and I think it would be cool to explore it. Also, they already have extensive dungeons, many of which have no real purpose other than sitting there looking pretty. We could build content around these dungeons, spice them up and add a new storyline about the Dwarves. We could include blueprints that allow the player to build automatons out of the dwemer rubble you find and Soul Gems, include something I'm calling the "Dwemer Slaver Sphere" (basically a dwemer themed "pokeball" that has a chance to capture enemies permanently. I've already abasically built this.) and build whole new dungeons for the later missions. Basically, it would be a Dwarven Archaeology mod focused on story but with a few special features, perhaps special forges that can build unique dwemer weapons and creatures, rival archaeologists, and unhappy natives.
Think Indiana Jones...but TES.

Just an idea, but I get all tingly when I think about dwarves.

That came out wrong.

[JD FROM HELL]

they already have extensive dungeons, many of which have no real purpose other than sitting there looking pretty.

That is a very good point.

We could include blueprints that allow the player to build automatons out of the dwemer rubble

Or, or - musical instruments!

[Sami Blackburn]

Well, if it does get off the ground, consider me definately interested. I'm currently busy with my own project, but should have that finished up in roughly a fortnight (then i'll just be sitting, twiddling my thumbs, waiting until the dialogue bug gets fixed before I release it!)

I'm an interior designer at heart, but have been known to dabble in other areas aswell (mainly retexture work in photoshop, but I'm also starting to learn the dark arts of papyrus scripting)

So when this project gets to a point where it needs some interior work, give me a call.

I like the "Indiana Jones meets Dwemer conspiracy" idea, but am not too bothered with what the final choice is. I would love to actually work as a dev in the future, so I don't mind "design this how we want it"

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread to see how the discussions go

- Hypno

[ezra]

Although it would be great, I don't think it will work out well unless a large group of modders share almost the exact same vision.

The MERP team is pretty big (30-40 developers at the moment), and the vast majority of our team has a very similar vision of what we want MERP to be like, yet we still have a lot of discussions of how to approach things. I don't want to think about what would happen if our visions of MERP would be less coherent. The main reason for this shared vision is ofcourse the elaborated fantasy world that Tolkien designed. A community project needs such a strong framework, or either there will be lots of fights or like others already said it will just be a ton of mods stitched together.

[Fanny Rouyé]

We wouldn't be doing anything on the scale of MERP. So, it isn't really comparable.

[JLG]

I'm pretty good at being angry. I guess I could be the resident pissed off guy in the group. You could all tell me about what issues your having and I can turn around and collectively [censored] about it for all of us.

[Kieren Thomson]

We wouldn't be doing anything on the scale of MERP. So, it isn't really comparable.

Scale isn't the problem, the amount of contributors is. If you're going to have a very large modding group, they are all required to want almost the exact same thing from the mod or else it becomes a mess. Like Echonite said, for companies this isn't an issue because their developers get paid. Modders don't want to work on a mod if they don't agree with the plan.

[Tamara Primo]

For all those that believe a community effort would be folly, please allow me to refer you to Tamriel Rebuilt:

http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/

[Mr.Broom30]

it becomes a mess.

Maybe we have different toleration levels for mess, or maybe we're thinking of different types of mod. Take the 'Interesting NPCs' mod, for example. I think it could only benefit from having a variety of modders working on it, and I don't think the result would be a 'mess', since the whole point of it is to add diversity.

[Samantha Wood]

Like I said, it wouldn't be one huge project. It would hopefully be a lot of mods stitched together. If the seams are tight enough, amazing clothes can be tailored together. Okay, basically all we'd need to do is make a job list. Anyone who wants to be dedicated to a job can be if the existing members of the group agree that their work is good. For example, I think I make quality companions, and would be better at it now than I was when I made Creeper. I'd submit a basic mockup of what I want to build (a cool companion) and if the other group members say it sounds smart, we discuss how to integrate it. Maybe everyone makes a small tweak to what they're doing, just to make it feel more cohesive. It could just sort of be an organic project, not one top-down driven, but bottom up. It wouldn't be anyone's primary focus if they didn't want it to be, it could be a sort of thing that if someone has an idea for it, they can submit it and potentially be credited as "part of the team". This might sounds a little Utopian, but I think if even five of us get a start on this within the next few weeks, we could have something amazing inside of a half year. I'm about 10% done with Torment right now, by myself after a few months between classes. And for that I have to build every little item to work with my combat system and levelling system and spellcasting system, color schemas, etc. If we basically just don't screw with the rules of the game, work should go about 10x faster.

Jobs I think are necessary:
Interior Designer, people like Amethyst Deceiver
Scripter: I'm a fair hand at it, but I know there are people who know Papyrus like their own child.
Writer(s): This would hopefully be collaborative, but I think we would need one person with final say unfortunately. Hopefully someone who knows the Lore very well. Maybe you design a quest, and they do small edits to make them all blend together well. The main storyline as a rough outline would be decided first, and then the specific parts of the questline would be assigned to people (who probably volunteer for it).
and Voice Actors: I'm a fair shake at this myself, but I would need some help (particularly female help) to do it and not have it sounds like the same person is voicing every Nord actor in the entire game oh wait this is Skyrim that is apparently acceptable.
Dungeon Architect: Not someone who bothers with every little thing, but who pumps out rough skeletons of interesting looking dungeons. Interior designer could potentially do this as well, if they wanted to.


And it wouldn't be as much work as it looks like, because as I said, for things like Dwemer there are already plenty of dungeons to potentially expand or modify to add storyline to. Almost no one ever touches vanilla dungeons, so we'd be compatible with nearly anything.

[Emilie M]

I'd like a 16x16 quads world that covers more or less all the possible environments.
I mean some kind of worldspace that has continents (small ones), isles, marshes, deserts, mountains, plains, ridged rocky landscapes and smooth hills.....

I've already worked my way in World Machine 2.2 to be able to build hand made, ready-to-use, highly detailed terrains.

Using TESAnnwyn we can actually build worldspaces ~30Km per side, which is like over 4 times the longest distance in Skyrim.

To give you the idea of the sizes, I think Mortal's marshes are about 1/3 of a quad....maybe less? One quad is about 1.87Km.....

[Bambi]

Why? What would you be doing with your world that would be accomplishable, interesting, and immersing?
That just seems like the lofty huge sort of goal that gets early starting groups into trouble.