I see your point but I disagree. In my opinion the mods that can extent the life of Skyrim are those that enhance gameplay.

Take combat for instance; hitting an opponent that is performing an attack animation will not interrupt it. Blocking a swing just before it lands is not rewarded. Hitting the back of an opponent doesn't deal more damage. Spells cannot be send back to their original casters with a well-timed ward spell, dual-wielders cannot block, traps cannot be stored in our inventory and be reused later...those are some of the annoyances that I used to have with Skyrim's combat. Then I discover mods like Deadly Combat, Deployable Traps or Throwing weapons. Those mods overhaul combat in such a way that Skyrim FEELS different, because suddenly, all the enemies I fought and all the dungeons that I cleared can be approached differently. In my opinion this adds much more to the game than yet another dungeon or another quest or another piece of landmass.






.

I honestly think that people after playing over and over the same quests , DLC or not they will bore and drop playing , what will keep interest on skyrim is not another manga extraboobed version of a female armor or another supershiny cool new sword ... actually I think there is an overload of those stuff ... what will keep interest on is new land and new stuff to do ....

and this stuff you can't just do in Skyrim , you could in Morrowind , you could in Oblivion , not in Skyrim ....

Different strokes for different folks, I disagree entirely, I couldn't care less about how my character blocks or whatever. My point in answer to the other guy's post was that you shouldn't discount other peoples view points and assume that everyone thinks the same as you do and rudely dismiss what constitutes a vast portion and yes I am sorry but 'the heart' of modding.....quests, dialog, new lands, new models etc.... I call it the heart of modding because it makes up a massive bulk of the sheer act of modding in the CK. Btw, new models are what make that fancy new armor and weapons everyone likes.

Many, many, the vast majority of mod users want new content, that is a fact and I can't believe that is actually being challenged in this discussion.

Funnily enough it is actually mod users, not mod makers who are coming along and saying, 'well I don't use these types of mods and don't consider them remotely worth while or important, so all of you modders stop complaining that you don't have the working means to make them.' Completely illogical and it would be a different case if we couldn't alter combat or spells or retexture.

Load order: An ESM will invariably load before an ESP, just as a flase-flag ESP (ESM flag ticked/ESP file extension) will load before any normal ESP.
ONAM List: http://i.imgur.com/VaIrx.png which lists exclusively overridden Skyrim.ESM cell children. The CK does not create ONAM lists currently, so the only way at this time to acquire an ONAM list for an ESM flagged plugin is to use *Edit, but given it is not prepared for all of Skyrim's record types, getting an ONAM list into a Skyrim plugin is a PITA, but works http://i.imgur.com/XFRca.png to ensure the overrides work as intended. The second pictured plugin, More Interactive Items, was crashing when another mod happened to edit the same cell until it was masterupdated/ONAM'ified. Some but not all tests of the infamous NavMesh bug were resolved by such ONAM'ification. Evidently, this is part of Beth's version control system as the relevant coding is evidently in our CK, but not currently utilized. Given Beth has stated that the issue will be resolved, I can only imagine they'll either set the public CK up to be able to edit masters and ONAM'ify them when applicable or set things up such that ESPs also get ONAM lists.

but what is an ONAM list?

But the OP is a mod maker..(I consider Modelers mod makers..)
That person is not alone in his thinking - we are of course the minority which would be the correct thing to say. I don't care about the quests. Don't even care about the main quest, hah, the only part that even mattered was "releasing" the you know whats, and I stopped there so "they" can be in my game. I've seen the whole landscape, but I always enjoy going through it all each time I play. I don't even care for quest mods as too many things can go wrong with them. New landmasses? Do I care? No. If anything, I just want MORE enemies to kill and there's already plenty mods out there that fulfill this desire. I always have something to do.

Now before you bust out with your trademark sharp tongue - don't misunderstand this as me saying "I don't care about the current state of modding because I dont need much to enjoy the game" which isn't true. I think it's sad that this is like the first time I've come to the Skyrim mod forum THIS month, and maybe 2-3 times last month. Where as I've had 400+ posts in the oblivion mod forum. No I don't like it that the [censored] up CK is so limiting that people here can't do what they want to do, so that the modding community can thrive as it should be.

I think it's pretty serious that the age-old navmesh bug hasn't been fixed yet, and I think besides that, Bethesda ought to provide at the very least a fix for the LOD bug and a NIF import/export tool to at least one of the popular formats, or at the very least proper documentation on that damned NIF format.

It's not that I think we should go and boycott Bethesda for this; they made what's easily one of the best games in our time and allowed us to mod it with the CK, hosted these forums, and so on, but after such a huge success with a game that, from a pessimistic estimate, provided a turnover of around billion (10^9) dollars for Bethesda, they ought to spend just a tiny bit of their workforce to fix these bugs that stain what's otherwise a fabulous game.

Bethesda IIRC already has the navmesh bug fixed, but had to remove the fix because it broke other things. So we should be seeing that fix again hopefully by 1.6


Skyrim modding is only 6 months in. It has a long way to go before its caught up to where Morriwind or Oblivion are at, but it does have a hell of a jump start. You are just being impatient. Hold your horses, and let the tool makers get things in order. Be happy we even have Nifskope, albeit limited in Skyrim functionality, but without it, we would not have a lot of mods we currently have. God knows its let me do some things in its less then ideal state.

They cant release a nif exporter for legal reasons. Their exporter is linked directly to the editor and uses 3rd party add-ons that they dont have the rights to release.

I am not even going to respond to that completely unwarranted remark.

I know the OP is a mod maker, and yes I consider modellers mod makers too.

Everyone has their different preferences and styles of playing and that is fine. This has gotten far off the original topic which was the OP asking if it is worth making large scale mods. If you don't agree that quests, lands, new models etc are important or worth it, fine. The point is that lots of people do like these, they are as every bit as important as texture replacers and tweaks and consequently the needed fixes and needed tools are every bit as important.

I thought they were developers, as in they can write a new one to work around that legal crap. And at the very very least they can provide the required documentation so that a free software developer can write what they don't want to.

It's a TES4 (header) subrecord, a list of any and all overridden cell children (ACHR, PGRE, PHZD, REFR, NAVM, LAND) native to a plugin's master(s). Look at the pics. The listed forms are overrides in the plugin bearing the list. Somehow they help the engine's ...object permanence. The Pitt.ESM was the first official plugin to get an ONAM list. All applicable Beth ESMs since have one.

Im not going to pretend to know all the mumbo jumbo behind it all. I'm just saying what i know. They probably dont have rights to release anything on the format. no one can say for sure.

For what's worth, from a business perspective, I'd say they've tried and are trying a bit more because it helps with the "Long tail" of the game. Which is just BS parlance for "how long the game continues to sell well". If there are a bunch of mods, then people get to see those mods, who might not have the game, and go "oh that looks cool, I think I need to buy this!"

Which is why bringing mod support to consoles as well would be a brilliant move! Unfortunately, and at the moment, Microsoft and Sony (especially Microsoft) are far too tight fisted around content control on their consoles. Did you know it costs and average of $40,000 just to patch a game on the 360 now?

Fortunately for those on consoles, there's a large shift towards "open (more developer control) content support is better!" and "games as a service." In other words, games getting constant updates makes them sell more (see Team Fortress 2, League of Legends, etc.). And so there's a big pressure on Sony and MS to open up their, stuff, to allow more developer updates and control, for faster and cheaper, for their next consoles. So that they, too, can get games like HON and Farmville.

Long order short, yes it is worth it for Bethesda to support big scale modding. In fact Skyrim could offer good lessons for them for the next Elderscrolls, especially if they want mods on the consoles.

From a legal standpoint, you can always circumvent a copyrighted or even patented piece of software by writing an alternative one. There are a lot of issues with patents (number one is that they shouldn't even exist), but these issues are about large corporations stabbing each other; they aren't going to affect a NIF tool.

There's absolutely no reason why Bethesda cannot crate and provide a NIF tool of their own for Skyrim.

Except that I would assume it would take a very large amount of time to code their own NIF packages from scratch; and I honestly doubt that legality. If I write software, and own copyright, that doesn't mean you can write identical software just because you wrote it yourself.

Even if Beth could just code their own, I would think that would take a huge amount of time and money. So what? A very small chunk of the modding community can mod more easily? It's simple effort - gain balancing. It wouldn't gain them anywhere enough for them to put in the effort. Which I understand. Now, if they stopped making games (For whatever reason) and were all sitting there doing nothing every day, I assume they would go right ahead and do something like that.

As one of his mod testers, I can confirm this mod will be a great extension to the game.

This is only true to an extent. There are laws against creating things too similar to something else as long as it is not a fundimental design of the... thing. This is why LEGO cant copyright the brick design and why MegaBlocks fit perfectly with them. The design was rules to be fundimental to the design of the toy, and thus copyrighting it would effectivly be a monopoly.

Since the only thing keeping Bethesda with the Nif format is ease of use, they are still bound by many legal limitations that would prevent them from releasing much, if any information on the format structure.


Exactly. If the time investment isn't worth the gain, then they wont do it. Bethesda is a business, first and foremost, so if its not worth the cost, they have no reason to do it.

As an example. Given that Morrowind going on 10 years old and still being talked about and modded for, its safe to say, the editor is cost effective.

Editted... confused myself. Deleted post content.

Patents should exist, but should not be a barrier to halt progress. Being a member of Anonymous you should know that. Anon believes that innovators do deserve pay for their work even if it is being copied by another as recognition of such work being popular amongst consumers, but under no circumstances should the innovator be allowed to monopolise the innovation.

Pirates are the ones who believe Patents should not exist, not anyone who allies themselves with Anon.

Pretty much this. Every Bethesda game gets better and has more support, yet we're still flooded with people who complain. In Oblivion custom animations weren't even possible. Me and a programmer hacked into it and got it working. Other limitations were overcome with OBSE and other innovations.

It takes time for good mods to be made. I'm redoing all my best mods from Oblivion into Skyrim, but it might take a year or two. Not a big deal, but with this stuff you have to be patient and find creative work-arounds to pull off the features you want.

The whole idea of a patent is to give the inventor the ability to monopolize the invention and make money off of it. If you want to use the invention (even if you create a version blindly yourself using no other implementation for reference) you have to get permission from the patent holder... and that's done through a license which typically costs money.

Yes, you can write software that does the same function. It's allowed by law, and if copyright or patents are used to prevent this, you can fight in court for it. (Not that a petty NIF tool would be fought for.) Of course, small developers don't have the money for trials, so they get the butt end of the law, as usual, but this doesn't affect Bethesda and this doesn't affect a mere NIF import tool.

Huge? An import tool? No man, that doesn't take long and doesn't cost much. Depending on the complexity of the NIF format and features they want to import, this could rank from 40 to 200 man hours. That's cheap for any software developer, and pocket change for Bethesda.


Which is exactly the reason why you can write a program to deal with the same kind of data transformation that another program does.

I doubt it's patented, and software corporations hardly ever got in trouble for posting file format information.

But keeping the quality mods coming is keeping free content coming to a game they sell while others develop or extend for free. Even if corporations are amoral (of course they are, and this is why they are pests but that's another topic), It's a smart business move to support people who create game content for free. (I hope you realize Bethesda see us all as idiots who work for free, even support and bugfix their game for free.) That's why they released the CK and supported it to some extent, and that's why it'd be even smarter to provide the necessary tools, unless they want mods to stick to texture replacing and sword editing.

Patents should exist because...? Because big corporations, that's why. Big corporations (and here I'm using "big" as in "much larger than Bethesda"), as well as patent trolls (a well-known cancer of technology and other industries) are the only ones who ever made a profit from them, the only ones who can work unencumbered by them due to their large portfolio to exchange, the only ones with the money to fight for them in court, and use them to fight their competition (rather than coming up with a better product), and the only ones who can't get really bullied with them. Patents, especially software and business method patents which is my area of expertise (though they probably are similar elsewhere) are cancer in an on itself, as few things ever harmed technological advancement as much. They hurt small developers, they prevent small developers to become large, they hurt, slow down or completely destroy competition, they are used instead of competition, and as such they are directly against users' interests. They're unfair and unrealistic as you can't prove you're the first to do do something — the first what? The first to file it? To do it privately? In your country? In this planet? What about people who already did that in their personal projects? And on top of that they are terribly implemented, piss on prior art, allow corporations to file anything and bother checking prior art only during multi-million dollar trial procedures which small developers will never be able to afford, and allow for utterly [censored] registrations (e.g. Amazon's one-click check-out) which can't be worked around, thus fueling monopoly in various sectors. Do I need to continue?

No, Anonymous doesn't believe in anything because it's not a group, an organization or a religion. You do. Anonymous people are not particularly aligned with patents, on the contrary, many people who work anonymously appear to be against. Nevertheless, I'm not your personal army and I'm not going to think, say or do something regardless of how loud you or anyone else would claim Anonymous does. I'm also not a member of Anonymous; when did I sign up? I'm somebody who wrote "A_for_Anonymous" in the username field, that's all. You don't understand Anonymous.

Anon is a group whether or not you want to think either way, tasks are coordinated, members in contact etc etc It's a group where anybody can join, they can change a companies policy but not the definition of the term 'group' in the dictionary. The whole "we are not a group" thing was created by the young members of the Anonymous group who don't understand how to speak properly.

Heh, tasks are coordinated and members are in contact within specific groups. It just so happens that people from these groups act anonymously, so in some groups people are anonymous. It also happens that I never coordinated with anyone else, concerning tasks I may have done or not. I may have helped changing a company police as much as you did. And if it's not a group by the dictionary definition, then it's not a group.

The only thing that's technically a group we can talk about here is the set of people who use Anonymous names or related aesthetics (e.g. a Good Guy Fawkes mask). No ideology is a defining property of this set.

Yes it does, if you just mean functionally identical. If you mean literally 100% identical, the contention that you wrote it yourself wouldn't hold up in court (because it wouldn't be true, except for the most trivial of programs).