Pisces on 17/4/2004 at 00:50

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I am sort of bored, after years(2) of experiance modding I feel like listing all the newbie mistakes one can make which makes their mod horrible and deleted within seconds. Luckly the expansions show us very good examples of what not to do.

EDIT: There are some gramatical errors to do with double negatives and stuff but I can't be bothered proof reading this all, hopefully you will get the idea from what sounds right and wrong.

-Make legendary items. If the PC wants to cheat then they can do it themselves and do not need another temptation. Over powered items will make it look out of place too.

-Easter eggs. The occassional one will be acceptable but there is a fine line between funny and turning the mod into a complete novietly mod which is likely to be deleted. It is just easier not to have any easter eggs at all or you can do what the people at Bethseda did, create 'test' cells which aren't acessable to get it out of their system.

-scripting: doonce. To make a script not repeat forever(which you normally want) you add at the start of the script
if ( done == 1 )
return
endif
Then after the effect happens add set doonce to 1. An example of when this doesn't happen is in Tribunal, the dark brotherhood guy repeatily talks to you and you can't leave sometimes.

-add items with scripts. The scripts are normally meant for a certain item, if you add an item with a script then the script will work on that item as well so you might find it randomly appearing and disappearing while doing a different quest.

-saving items. If you haven't changed anything, saving it will likely cause errors and increase the mod size. Only save if you purposely changed something and acknowledge that it will change every item like it. But if you have changed the "extra data(like placement and owner etc) then you should save.

-Save new items. If you change an item's stats appart from the extra data then give it a new ID and make a new item unless you want everyone of those items in the game to change.

-Scripting: menumode. Add to scripts that occurs over a period of time:
if ( MenuMode == 1 )
Return
endif
This will stop things moving while paused, if you go into the chamber of song(main quest) in bloodmoon and pause at the musical pipes then you will notice that the sounds keep playing and the steam randomly pops to each one. This is what happens when you forget.

-placing scripts on corpses. Bethseda is really bad at this. If you place script on a body which can be disposed of then it will stop running. This happens wrong twice in tribunal and once in bloodmoon; I will use the bloodmoon example. When werewolves attack the skaal the scripts to count how many werewolves have died are on certain werewolves so if you kill and dispose of their bodies in the wrong order then the script won't run and it won't count as killing all the werewolves and you can't progress to the next part(really annoying). So you place the script on the werewolves to add one to the counter when they die then add a script on an item which can not be disposed off(like the well or door) which will give the journal indexs etc once the counter reaches a certain point.

I got to go eat lunch, I will add more later. feel free to add/comment.

Z on 22/4/2004 at 20:47

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Not really a technical thing, but still bears mentioning as a newbie mistake:

If you have a house/building mod, please don't put it in Balmora!

I must say I feel quite strongly about this. I suppose there might be some exceptions, but by and large so many building mods are stuck in Balmora when there is no reason why they might not be somewhere else. Places like Ebonheart and Sadrith Mora, for example, seem to have almost none by comparison (although I suppose those particular places are harder to work in)

The main problem with that is compatability. To illustrate this point to a MW modder friend, I made a point of downloading every single mod with "Balmora" in the title
from Morrowind Summit and enabling them at once. Now, I doubt anyone would actually do that for real, but still. It's a nightmare. You can't go anywhere. Whole streets are blocked off by odd walls, the bluffs around the town a hive of spectacular castles all bleeding into one-another. Caius's house, for example, was almost impossible to get to thanks to an array of wall improvement mods, mysteriously missing bridges, and the like. The original Good Place To Stay Mod, which I personally used as my stronghold and hadn't actually realised was activated, was completely inaccessible save via the console, as it's entrance in the hillside was swallowed by several castles, fortresses and cathedrals all stuck together. And an alarming number of the townsfolk had fallen into the Odai.

I considerd sending in some screenshots of the scene as a Pic of the Day to some of the sites, but I couldn't find a camera-angle which showed it all. Even using the Frame Optimizer to remove draw distance, the engine can apparently only show one cell and the cells immediately surrounding it, and that still wasn't enough. It was kind of beautiful, actually, in a weird, Escher-like way.

:erg: That went on for a while. Seriously, though. Please. I want to get into my house.

Z

37637598 on 24/4/2004 at 02:55

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http://www.freewebs.com/zich/ScreenShot%200-edit01.bmp

Griff on 24/4/2004 at 13:48

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Very nice pics :), but y did you post them? :)

Griff on 25/4/2004 at 20:31

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no more questions :)