Tutorial request: Combine tutorials for a basic all-in-one

[hibbs02]

Howdy,

A couple of months ago I tried to build a simple encounter.  All in all I spent six hours of searching the forums and got as far and building a new scene and getting an NPC into it along with a portal into a house with a chest.  I gave up when I couldn't find any understandable/updated tutorial on creating a battle and no one answered my question.  I wanted to come back and give it another shot to find out that now the mod section has split off into a whole other website!  That pretty much seals it for me.  It was hard enough to find stuff on ONE site.

Here is my request.  Could someone put together, maybe even by just collating some existing tutorials that you know where they are, a newbie tutorial guide covering the basics.

creating a new location/town/scene using basic items
making passage
making chest
inserting npc
dialogue
quests
inserting combatants
inserting combatants that fight in the scene only after a conversation and trigger

I think with these basics put together a newbie could make just about any encounter they would wish and it would be a good start on making a larger mod as these are the fundamentals.  I spent SIX HOURS on the boards just to make a scene/passage/chest/insert npc (5-10 minutes work if you know what you are doing) and gave up after a few hours of looking to insert combatants.  That is kinda ridiculous.  Everyone says "search" but 90% of the posts were outdated or just unfindable.  Also, how are you supposed to know what to search for unless you already know how to mod already so you know all the jargon?

Anyway, if anybody takes on the job or knows of a guide like this then I'd really appreciate it.

 

[bryce777]

Unfortunately that's all fairly hard to do on a relative scale and would be quite a bit of work.  If you try to do anything semi different fromnative it takes a lot of effort.

 

[hibbs02]

Well, first off all this stuff is foundational.  You can't do anything unless you can do this type of stuff.  It is a huge barrier to entry to have to spend 15 or 20 hours, at least, to find the info to do this basic stuff that an experienced person can do very very quickly.

Secondly, one of the big problems in M&B is lack of content.  Now, I don't know if this is possible.  But could you have 20, 30, 50 people make a variety of quests and encounters and fold them all into one mod?  Would it be incredibly difficult if everyone sent the appropriate files to put 400 encounters/quests into a mod.  I know it would take a while but would it take 2-3 minutes per encounter or an hour?

Because if it is fairly simple then you could have a lot of lesser modders taking these basic tools to build an encounter.  Send the files off to a triage committee along with recommended level and the committee member plays the encounter and is maybe willing to make an easy fix or two if necessary.  If the encounter makes the cut they fold them together and send sections of ten or so to the final person who sticks it into the random encounter section.

If it is closer to 3-5 minutes to fold in I'd be happy to make at least 10 encounters or quests (example, reach level 10 and the next merchant offers the quest.)  And I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see a bunch of random encounters folded into something like Band of Warriors.

Look at Oblivion.  The map is dotted with shrines, many associated with quests or minimum requirements that lead essentially to dungeons.  Once you have these tools, and maybe a resource pack with some shrine scene objects and/or zombies, ghosts, skeletons then you could have people like me put together lots of "dungeons" with associated quests fairly easily.  And once you have the system going if someone like Yoshi deigns to contribute one then you know it will be an awesome one.

Just an idea but even if the hundreds of encounters idea isn't possible I would still like to see this basic tutorial put together.  I'd almost certainly never make a big mod but I'd certainly be interested in putting together a quest line that takes you through an hour of play or two.  Perhaps I'm wrong but it seems that that would be fairly simple with this basic info.  If the mini-modder is a good story/dialog writer it would be lots of fun for the M&B community to play as a diversion.

 

[Orcus]

Hibbs, if you are just basically good with modding, i would mind the faintest to help you create 100+ encounters!

 

[bryce777]

Well, first off all this stuff is foundational.  You can't do anything unless you can do this type of stuff.  It is a huge barrier to entry to have to spend 15 or 20 hours, at least, to find the info to do this basic stuff that an experienced person can do very very quickly.

Secondly, one of the big problems in M&B is lack of content.  Now, I don't know if this is possible.  But could you have 20, 30, 50 people make a variety of quests and encounters and fold them all into one mod?  Would it be incredibly difficult if everyone sent the appropriate files to put 400 encounters/quests into a mod.  I know it would take a while but would it take 2-3 minutes per encounter or an hour?

Because if it is fairly simple then you could have a lot of lesser modders taking these basic tools to build an encounter.  Send the files off to a triage committee along with recommended level and the committee member plays the encounter and is maybe willing to make an easy fix or two if necessary.  If the encounter makes the cut they fold them together and send sections of ten or so to the final person who sticks it into the random encounter section.

If it is closer to 3-5 minutes to fold in I'd be happy to make at least 10 encounters or quests (example, reach level 10 and the next merchant offers the quest.)  And I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see a bunch of random encounters folded into something like Band of Warriors.

Look at Oblivion.  The map is dotted with shrines, many associated with quests or minimum requirements that lead essentially to dungeons.  Once you have these tools, and maybe a resource pack with some shrine scene objects and/or zombies, ghosts, skeletons then you could have people like me put together lots of "dungeons" with associated quests fairly easily.  And once you have the system going if someone like Yoshi deigns to contribute one then you know it will be an awesome one.

Just an idea but even if the hundreds of encounters idea isn't possible I would still like to see this basic tutorial put together.  I'd almost certainly never make a big mod but I'd certainly be interested in putting together a quest line that takes you through an hour of play or two.  Perhaps I'm wrong but it seems that that would be fairly simple with this basic info.  If the mini-modder is a good story/dialog writer it would be lots of fun for the M&B community to play as a diversion.

What I am trying to tell you is it's not all that easy.  Some parts are, but a lot of the stuff you mention is a lot of work to do.  How many scenes that turn into fights do you see in mods?  Not a whole lot.  The most popular mod by far, TLD, has absolutely none of several of these. No passages, no extra chests, no quest changes, hardly any dialogs, no changes to how combat takes place.

creating a new location/town/scene using basic items - start game in edit mode (start game in edit mode and windowed mode and press crt e within a scene). It's a huge pain in the ass but not difficult.
making passage - each one corresponds to a menu entry in the game menu that brought you there. So clicking on it makes you go to the new menu item...which should generally means puts you in that scene (if that's what it does). This is placed in edit mode
making chest - copy the zendar chest, the way it's set up, in module_troops
inserting npc - just copy another troop in module_troops.
dialogue - look at other dialogs and copy them. Easy in one sense but easy to mess up
quests - have not done these
inserting combatants -  This depends what you mean.  Into a peaceful scene?  That is difficultish.  You must make a whole new mission template and then add them as reinforcements.  Completely beyond a beginner and pretty hard to start out with.
inserting combatants that fight in the scene only after a conversation and trigger  - basically same as above, and you will notice few mods do this sort of thing at all or did not back when I was still playing others' mods

 

[bravesirknight]

Well, first off all this stuff is foundational.  You can't do anything unless you can do this type of stuff.  It is a huge barrier to entry to have to spend 15 or 20 hours, at least, to find the info to do this basic stuff that an experienced person can do very very quickly.

This is just one of the realities of modding I think. Unless you hit the jackpot and someone makes some great tools, which you can't predict, then you have to expect it to take a long time to make your mod, and lots of learning. (keep every good reference you find bookmarked/saved somewhere so you aren't losing them when you need them later.) I think the first good thing you can do if you're going to mod is decide that you're going to finish working on something no matter how long it takes.

 

[Apollon-04]

Howdy,

A couple of months ago I tried to build a simple encounter.  All in all I spent six hours of searching the forums and got as far and building a new scene and getting an NPC into it along with a portal into a house with a chest.  I gave up when I couldn't find any understandable/updated tutorial on creating a battle and no one answered my question.  I wanted to come back and give it another shot to find out that now the mod section has split off into a whole other website!   That pretty much seals it for me.  It was hard enough to find stuff on ONE site.

Here is my request.  Could someone put together, maybe even by just collating some existing tutorials that you know where they are, a newbie tutorial guide covering the basics.

creating a new location/town/scene using basic items
making passage
making chest
inserting npc
dialogue
quests
inserting combatants
inserting combatants that fight in the scene only after a conversation and trigger

I think with these basics put together a newbie could make just about any encounter they would wish and it would be a good start on making a larger mod as these are the fundamentals.  I spent SIX HOURS on the boards just to make a scene/passage/chest/insert npc (5-10 minutes work if you know what you are doing) and gave up after a few hours of looking to insert combatants.  That is kinda ridiculous.  Everyone says "search" but 90% of the posts were outdated or just unfindable.  Also, how are you supposed to know what to search for unless you already know how to mod already so you know all the jargon?

Anyway, if anybody takes on the job or knows of a guide like this then I'd really appreciate it.

I totally agree with you, i want to try modding, but have no idea how, and spent a very long time searching on how  to do it, but many informative links where outdated. I wanted to know more about making weapons, armor, cities, etc. Can someone please try to make a newbie modding system? please?

 

[Orcus]

Use the module system documentation. It's actually really simple. I'm 11 and i read it, followed it, and now i know how to mod.

 

[bryce777]

Use the module system documentation. It's actually really simple. I'm 11 and i read it, followed it, and now i know how to mod.

Well, that is pretty impressive I think.  It is a lot of work to do the modding, though some of the things are not too hard.

 

[Orcus]

Yeah, but all it takes is reading, writing, and about 120 terabyte brain memory... And i got a good advantage: 149 IQ processor!

Anyway - pretty off topic - does anyone want to start some mod here? Just any mod, come up with ideas, be creative. I am currently learning better to model, and now i know how to texture. I expect to be soon to learn adding items in game.

 

[Hellequin]

I'm with Orcus - the docs got me up and running pretty much from dead stop.  That was at the beginning of December; Schattenlander (and my modding days) have yet to celebrate a two-month anniversary.  Yet look what one can do in that time; Schattenlander's got huge amounts of stuff no other mod has ever done, and I'm still adding to that.

Guys, before you complain that it's too complicated, sit down with Winter's docs and actually do the tutorial.  Don't just read it and pretend you understood, or complain you didn't; sit down and type the actual things Winter's suggesting.  Because it's much, much simpler than it looks at first, and unless you've done the virtual kinesthetics of going through the exercise, your estimate of how well you'll understand it is almost certainly inaccurate.

If you don't have the time, or the patience, to go through that exercise, then frankly you're not going to get anywhere with your mod, either.  Attention is a currency - spend yours.

PS: Orcus, if you're looking for things to put your modeling and texturing skills to work on, I've got tons of cool stuff that I don't currently have anyone to model.  I guarantee you I can give you things to try for that'll stretch whatever skills you've currently built up, and then things that'll challenge what you learn from that.  Who knows, maybe eventually you'll be credited as the guy who did the 200' dragon in Schattenlander, the encounter you can't even find until you've played the mod for a month.   PM me if you're interested.

 

[DJNad]

I do agree with Orcus and Hellequin here....

but what about the sections at which the docs finish??

I wanted to start making my "new_town" or whatever it was operational, and then the tutorials stopped. Are there any more tutorials or are we supposed to just work it out for ourselves??