This is a thread out to all of my fellow modders on the forum. The CK has been out for a while, and all of us have been working on various projects. Some are still modding, some aren't. So I was curious to see where everyone is at mentally, emotionally, etc now that the CK has been out for quite some time. Are you enjoying modding still? Are you finishing up your projects? Let's all write in this thread how we are currently doing in the flow of things right now.

For me, I've been working...very hard on and off with modding. It's been a lot more difficult than I expected, and some things are starting to feel more tedious, but still fun. I don't mod as much as I was before though since time is odd. I think I'll be able to pull out the hard part of the mod I'm working on then I might take a bit of a break. I'm still having fun though (just not as much as in the beginning).

How about you guys? How are you all doing?

Doing ok. Still waiting for the navmesh fix......

Yeah I'm doing it too ..

I'm doing fairly well. My mods have been largely scripted so far, so I don't really feel the NavMesh bug.

However, I do NOT appreciate the new system of scripts being permanent additions to the game. I really don't think Bethesda thought that implementation through very well, because it causes a huge host of problems for modders when, say, you remove an OnUpdate() script from your mod and even though the game detects it missing, it still tries to update it. Papyrus may be more powerful than the older TESScript iterations, but it is also a lot dumber.

I also don't really understand why the scripts are stored externally now. Was there really a need for that? What was wrong with keeping them in the plugins?

Other than that, I do appreciate the improvements to statements and functions, and once you get past the complexity of Properties, you will see just how useful those are down the road, as well. Opens up a lot more possibilities right out the door.

I'm....alright, I left for a while and left alot of projects hanging, I thought the feelings of not liking to mod Skyrim was absurd (stated by some modders some time ago) as to how modding wasn't fun anymore until I got hit with that feeling. Gave skyrim in every shape and form an utter break, I'll get back too it in a bit.

I'm feeling good, I'm just at a point where I've built a very stable, well-liked system in Frostfall, and I'm afraid to touch some of it for fear of breaking it. It's reached a stage of complexity where I have to read my own code comments to figure out how things work, because I don't remember why I wrote things the way I did

But I'm going to have to if I want to implement some of the changes that I've been planning and promising. It's just intimidating to overhaul already functioning systems. Since most of what I do is in a Notepad++ window, I don't feel like my tools are lacking.

I'm still having fun modding. I've pretty muched learned the CK as well if not better than my several years had given me in the GECK, so I'm all up to speed. I work for hours every day on my current project.

Though I must say, it's really hard doing so much work with so little input. I'm here to get a job with Bethesda, and I think what I'll enjoy most about that is the collaboration. Working alone is really hard because there's nobody there to discuss what you're doing with. Not from a design standpoint. I have testers, and they're great and they give me input, but I'm not working with them. I can't wait to get that job and be part of a team.

That will make game design the most fulfilling thing in the world for me. But right now, it's a gap in the experience.

That said, I'm still having a lot of fun and will keep making things until the day Bethesda hires me.



EDIT: Haha, I had http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emeSBD8DvCc playing in the backround while I wrote that and it made it seem so much more dramatic.

I am doing pretty good. Very frustrated at the interminable wait for the Nav Mesh bug fix so that I can get moving on my main project, Unique Taverns.

But in the meantime I have been doing some personal projects like building myself a little farm outside Riften and now working on a hotel near Solitude. I am also working on Enterable Windows as that is not Nav Mesh reliant. I have been playing the game, a lot more then I thought I would. Usually I do a pretty quick playthrough and get to the modding as fast as possible, but Skyrim has svcked me in and I still think it has massive modding potential. But I am worried about the lack of tools (no TES5Files, most programs not Skyrim compatible or broken etc...), the bugs and lack of updates from Bethesda. It has been months since we last had an update and the community is streets behind where we were with Oblivion at this point.
And it all shows as well, I have had to make most things that I want in my game, because they just are not available, like a child companion.

So at this point I am enjoying modding, as far as I can mod with the current bug and tool restrictions, but I am really wanting to move further ahead in modding and have the tools and resources available that will allow me too.

My projects still mostly paused right now because I'm busy with last exams and last projects of my first year at uni And kinda addicted to diablo 3 the last couple days as well...

In a couple weeks though, many weeks of summer holidays, that will be tons of modding time

Im doing all right slightly tweaking my mod, but mostly i feel like the creation kit is lacking is some ways making moding a bit harder then it should be.
Snapping is a joke (mostly in solitude pack), i find myself looking for seems and flickering more then anything else.
Lately i found myself feeling that modding is more of a chore then fun.

I'm having fun .

After I started to recover from the first shock over Papyrus, I'm modding and having a great time trying to make a companion like Vilja for Skyrim. But I'm lucky, because I'm not working alone. If I had, I think Papyrus would have become too overwhelming! At the same time, I'm slowly beginning to realize that Papyrus actually "thinks" like me; as I have never been good at scripting, I have tended to do whatever possible to keep the scripts short and to use other ways than scripts whenever possible. And that seems to be a good strategy with Papyrus.

I do find it a lot more tedious to mod in the ck than in the Oblivion/Morrowind CS. In particular it's so time consuming with all the properties one has to add to script fragments attached to dialog. But, at least the lipsync is working! (so far...). And I so much enjoy watching Skyrim Vilja "grow" day by day.

In Oblivion I truly enjoyed making new houses. But in Skyrim, I find it downright boring... I did one house while beta-testing the ck, and this was mainly to see if the tutorial worked as it should. Since then I haven't ever felt tempted to do another. Maybe simply because with a refurnished Breezehome and my own cottage outside Solitude, I have no need for any more homes and in Oblivion I usually started by wanting a house in a particular place, with a particular view. Places with lovely views in Skyrim tends to already be occupied...

What I do feel concerned over is how other modders are doing... This forum is not at all as populated as it "ought" to be three months after the release of the ck! I mean, when I started to mod Oblivion in the end of 2009, 3,5 years after the release of the game, there were in general 80-100 people online on the forum. Here, it's often less than 50. To be compared to the Morrowind mods forum, that has often like 25-30 people online! After ten years!! (Oblivion mods forum tend to only have 6-10 people online). So, where are the Skyrim modders? Retired, or somewhere else? I first thought that maybe they were at Nexus, but although populated the forum it isn't overly crowded, and there doesn't seem to be much activity going on at Steam Skyrim forums.

Now, if we could just wish for a TES5Edit, a TES5files (packaging WIP-versions is a horrible chore) and cures of the more appalling ck-bugs... And if there were a way to mod without having to be online and connected to Steam all the time...

Serious enjoyment, for the next 2-3 years, although there are a few things that sometimes would make me throw the CK by the window. Like everything about Anims. Far worse than with the CS, and i can't see the benefits. Scripts not saved in esp. = awful too. And the new poll system is also IMO an Epic Fail.

On the other side, there are kolossal improvements since Oblivion (like FormLists, Keywords, Magic Effects & Projectiles, and above all Aliases) which are really making Skyrim modding awesome. So i feel great.

Still enjoying it for the most part. The https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23NavMeshBug is preventing me from doing the bigger things I wanted to do, so I ended up doing some different stuff instead. Papyrus isn't as intimidating as it once looked in the beginning, but it's habit of latching on to stuff in your save and never letting go is annoying.

Still procrastinating from learning Papyrus, started a script-free project instead.

I have to learn scripting !!!
That tells all I guess....

As soon as I've completed the new 'final' stage of the STVC project - which currently consists of finishing the paperwork & shooting/editing the demo and tutorial videos - I'm taking a LONG break from all things Skyrim apart from being one of the QA testers for "Falskaar".

-Get out there in the summer sun, party with friends, ride the 'Beast' (Honda VTR1000 sp-1) and watch pretty ladies

When the winter nights draw in again, when I've forgotten enough to make it all seem fresh again, then I'll be back. Maybe we'll even have a decent DLC or two by then. Not holding out much hope of having all the bugs sorted by then though!

Blessings to all.

TBH I haven't even thought of starting to mod Skyrim as yet so I can't comment too much about the current state of the CK, but only on a quick look see Papyrus seems a world away from either MW or Oblivion.
Guess I'll get used to it once I start working with it though.
Once OOO 1.35 is finalized perhaps then I'll turn some attention this way.

shingouki - If modding is becoming tedious or not fun any more it's time that you put the tools away and just play the game for a time until you get your appetite back.

I've been having fun, although I will admit that much of the fun has been the challenge of figuring out how to do things, solving the puzzles of the CK and Papyrus. Like Emma, I'm making a companion mod. It's taken a few months, but I'm now at the point where I've got all the main new functionality that I wanted to create worked out, and can concentrate on the story aspects. Fortunately the basic functionality required for companions isn't much impacted by the more serious CK/engine bugs. But if anything, modding has made me more respectful of Bethesda, more tolerant of the bugs. It's only when I sat down to write conversations that could take place at any point across a dozen different questlines that I really started to appreciate how much work it is to cover every single base, and started to understand why Bethesda let some things slide in terms of how much the world reacts to the player's actions.

I'm waiting for more resources to use and waiting for some bug fixes.

Hopeful for the future, mainly because of the programmers in our mod community (SKSE team, shadeMe) who are fixing/expanding the game and the Creation Kit beyond awesomeness.

The only things that bother me right now are:

- Broken Tree LOD generator in the CK.
- Still no proper nifscripts for exporting models.
- NavMesh bug (not that big an issue for MERP because we have our very own ESM files, but I still want it fixed for vanilla mods).


Once the above three are resolved I will be very optimistic.

I left around the time it was released, and am just now thinking about coming back. I really haven't given it a real shot yet.

That's a good observation that I myself have noticed as well. Without a doubt part of it is the unstable CK and the new stuff added; and, as many know by now, Skyrim was a disappointing game to some and God knows how many of those were modders who left for good. The modder @747823 who did the Realistic lighting mod for Skyrim left the modding community because Skyrim was no longer appealing to him anymore and downright disappointing.

Is strange that even now in MW, I can take a stroll and say, "I would like to do something in this corner and such...put a rock, a well, etc. In Skyrim, I feel really uninspired to do anything. I'm scratching my head as to why.

Need.... more...... hours.... in.....day......

A big lottery win and no more job commitments would help free up some more time for modding, too.


Agree entirely with Emma's sentiments. Agree too that the Modding population does seem a little thin...

Yeah... I joined in in mid '09, so I haven't exactly been around for a long time. But the modding scene does seem so small. It saddens me, as my works are only just getting to where I've always wanted them to be, but there seems to be so many fewer people using mods out there.

I wonder what happened. I honestly think a lot of people swapped to the workshop, then hated it and just quit alltogether. Though I hate to point fingers like that...

I actually http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1351510-i-feel-likethe-modder-ranks-have-shrunk-a-lot-since-oblivion/page__fromsearch__1 a while back, since it was bothering me too. The forums feel almost...dead now, thats why I'm making this thread too.

I miss seeing all the hustle and bustle, and I'm wondering why everyone is so scarce. Hence why I wanted to know how all of you are feeling.

Even though I might not have talked to everyone on the forum, I feel like if you're a modder you're my brother/sister in arms, and I worry about you guys too.