where to store and read mod ideas

[eugene]

hello fellows. I could not decide where to ask so bear with me about its location.

I was going through some of my old files and notes I was keeping for various modding ideas. I had various and different ideas in my mind when I started modding and realized I can mod. I found that even I had started some of them which I dont remember at all. I am not active in modding anymore but also I have done some stuff which are not usable. It would be waste if I delete them from my computer.

What do you do with these ideas? Is there a (online) place you keep them for future reference? Do you keep them hidden from others, in your computer, and let them disappear eventually? My main idea is to keep them and prevent their deletion but also store them at somewhere in case they are used by someone else or one day I keep it and complete eventually.

Same question can be asked for opposite direction. If I want to grab some ideas in the future for mod ideas, is there a place I can have a look on "abandoned" ideas and use them in my mod (in the future if I come back)?

I think the content that could be useful would be dialogues, quest ideas, incomplete scripts etc..

Example: I had a NPC mod I started when I started my first mod. after I worked on this new mod I switched to something else (factorio) and now the effort there is abandoned. I checked the scripts which are elvish to me now but still there is something inside. I am surprised that I have even went ahead and created 3 banters per vanilla NPCs plus some friendship talks designed. I lack inspiration to continue at this point. but as you can guess I dont want to delete these things and make them forgotten in case I need in future. too little to continue, too much to delete.

this is the paradox I have. I can put them in a random online place but unless you look for these specific things at specific locations, no one shall be able to find them. also I had problems about finding ideas for friendship talks (I have planned 16 but I have written only a handful). so it is going to be incomplete and dull if I publish it like this. you would not eat raw meat, that is the point. If I read some abandoned ideas of others maybe I can work out some dialogues for the mod and continue with the inspiration. that is the main question above. where to look at?

[temnix]

I also tend to move from one idea to another without finishing. Worse, I tend to get so inspired that I take the mod to about 60% through - and then I have another idea which, I imagine, will be small, temporary departure.  Implementation turns out to be more involved than I thought, especially because I can't bear to release it without extra features and bells and whistles, all of which have to be done by yours truly, there being no one else to help; and in that mess of new work I make a discovery about the possibilities of the engine that gives birth to another idea, which makes me start another mod. I don't so much abandon mods for lack of inspiration as for too much of new inspiration. Unfinished mods string along behind me as untightened knots, one inside another.

I used to blame myself for lack of patience - YOU SHOULD HAVE JUST SAT DOWN LIKE A STONE GOLEM AND FINISHED IT! - but now I understand that this falling-out is only natural, because the process is unnatural. Looking at my own situation and reading other people's mods, I realized a few things:

• We get exhausted because we are each of us a one-man band. We plan, we write, we design, we code for the mod, we sort and arrange and tidy, we have to find the graphics and sounds for our new features, we have to test all this for bugs and balance. In any software company these are full-time jobs. A project head hardly ever does routine programming, and the artists and composers, the testers all have completely different responsibilities. In small companies people sometimes multitask, but that's only possible for smaller-scale games. Bigger ones, with high production values and good budgets, require professionals. Think of Vampire: The Masquerade or Morrowind. They only came together because talented people pooled their strengths. If Jeremy Soule had to write the lore books for Morrowind... if Vampire's physics testers recorded the voices of NPC... They would all be probably bored to death and tired even before the ultimate flop. I realized the importance of help (though it should have been obvious enough!) only recently. I was lucky to find an excellent bug and balance tester for my current mod, and I literally felt a load being taken off my shoulders, leaving me to do what I'm better at.
• Because everyone is pushing his own ideas, there is very little actual communication about our plans and projects either here at G3, or at Spellhold, or at Beamdog's. People just drop by to ask a question, then quickly retreat into their obscure fantasies. There is also a harmful individualism around, the notion that everyone has his own game and that what modding is for is making customized, almost solipsistic universes. That's nonsense. Modding is just world-making from a ready base. Although it can't ever be fully original, there are bigger and better possibilities than balance tweaks or soapy shromances. But we don't talk, and when we do, it's each shouting out of a window of his own impregnable fortress... For you it may be better to stop thinking of yourself as a complete auteur who does it all and join somebody else's project. Then it will be your project also.
• Many mod ideas are compatible. A lot of the concepts we develop as separate projects can just as well be combined. If one modder is making knights and another is making lions, let them come together and publish a Knights & Lions mod. Even if there is no connection internally, a tandem of features, finished, is better than two separate concepts so small as to be almost unnoticeable and perhaps, to many people, not worth downloading. In my opinion, the purpose of modding is enriching game worlds, it doesn't matter with what. A mod does not need to be a world classic for all times, seamless and atmospheric and meaningful like a freaking "War and Peace." Just make some good stuff, some fun stuff.
• Old-timers are pretty much through with these games. They are too tired. This does not apply to everyone, but it's only natural that after 12 or 20 years of playing a game and making content and following updates and versions - all too closely - people will up and move on to something else. And it is better to really quit than to hang around as a jaded jade jackdow, a sphinx of quartz from a Chinese museum and piss yellow urine on new ideas that do well up - because new modders come in; not knowing what to do with these innovations, too stuck in the rut, too confused, also proud of past achievements, of forum recognition. Because of this exhaustion the environment on all three boards is desert-like, with very little movement, as if to preserve remaining bodily fluids in the scorching sun. But if nothing moves, there is no reason to explore either. Among long-time modders nobody really wants anything from these games anymore, and that's the truth. Stagnation perpetuates itself, keeps fresh people out. Because whatever your ideas may be, it's important to find appreciation of them, support, admiration. Somebody has to say that they are damn cool, otherwise you have to go on willpower alone, and what is the point if, your mind reaches ahead to tell you, there will be as little interest in the finished mod as in the discussion? But this is a warped perspective. The usual suspects on these boards, the people most likely to respond, don't represent players. Topics get many more reads than replies, which means there is interest in everything with a grain of newness being said, and trust me, players would be happy to play something original, oh yes! But the boards with their prejudiced "old guard" and meddlesome, often stupid moderators drain all of the joy out of the process. And joy is the only juice in the motor.
• Jungle guerillas keep fighting the Enhanced Editions. By the will of the gods it so happened that the Age of Bioware is over and Beamdog rules. Has ruled for several years. Many modders haven't grasped the notion, though. They don't understand that whatever future these games have (and maybe they will never be updated any more, but we can still use them as a form of adventure toolset), that future is in the hands of Beamdog. The Enhanced Editions need to be embraced for their technology and their troublesome changes rolled back, bypassed, managed. Most can be, and those that can't - fuck 'em, we can live with them, if we get more in return. But there is so little enthusiasm left in the old timers that they simply don't bother to discover just how much more powerful and flexible the EEs are, to be worth the effort. Instead they harp on about the great classic interface and how it made more sense for Safana to have a scimitar proficiency than wakizashi, as if that's more important than having adventures. Most only have a vague notion of what can be done with the new toolset if one is creative and perverse enough. The EEs are the way. If you don't embrace a new technology that actually opens doors for you, instead of wasting your time, as so many do these days, why bother with modding? So they sit back. One can, of course, make perfectly fine quests with monsters, dialogues and rewards with the familiar powers of the old engine. But I want to say this: a mod may be an adventure and a journey for players, but modding itself has got to be an adventure and a journey for me. And I can't travel on the spot. You too will be more motivated if you make mods for the Enhanced Editions.
• This ain't Shakespeare, anyway. And there are few Shakespeares around to butt heads with, too. No matter how high you reach with your ideas, don't expect a mass of people to understand and share your enthusiasm, especially if you do reach somewhat above the least common denominator. Converting arrows +1 to arrows +2 is understandable enough, if too boring for description, but for everything else... These boards are visited and these games are played mostly by people of a certain kind, with a certain level of education. Years have passed, and they have dumbed down the masses. That's a fact. Count yourself lucky if your players have read Fritz Leiber instead of just Joan Rowling, and that's still not Eddington, not MacDonald or C.S. Lewis; and all that is still only fantasy! If you have aspirations to character drama, to poetry, to something beyond flashing swords (not that I don't enjoy flashing swords in their own right), only few and exceptional people hereabouts will meet you half-way and understand you and work with you. And those exceptions don't amount to a scene, alas.

Now to practical advice. I can't tell you where to put up your ideas - perhaps in the Tutorial section, if you can present them cogently enough. Your understand, of course, that particular dialogues and bits of unfinished scripts and scaffolded quests that only you know about can't interest anyone. Finish some, then they might. Combine your ideas, in most cases it is possible. Or cannibalize old stuff for new inspiration. That happens all the time. For example, a couple of years ago I spent quite a lot of time on a mod I was going to call "Uncommon Elements," with unusual spells and quests. After I realized that it's not worth the effort to really write anything for these people, I let the quests wither, but I made a number of spells. They were left to sit in the folder. Now, some more unfinished projects later, I'm well on my way with another mod, dead-set on completing it in some satisfactory manner, and I simply pull up some of the old stuff. What doesn't fit the new framework I simply redraw or toss out; who cares? Unfortunately, the best variety of modding work is still only the creation of fanfics, and there are no or almost no people on any of the three forums who have shown much originality, curiosity and creativity to help make modding anything better than a waste of time. But perhaps a little something worthwhile will be created, nonetheless. My best advice to you is, focus on the ideas that still interest you, don't overreach, don't rush; meanwhile, ask around about what others are doing, and perhaps it will be interesting enough for a rejuvenating miracle.

And hell, boast! Tell us what you've been doing! Make us want to suck you off! Make us want to service you with our mouths in adoration!

Edited August 29, 2019 by temnix

[InKal]

I know nothing about how to mod but that doesn't prevent me from having ideas. One mod idea preciesely, based on one of my favorite movies, japanese classic The Sword of Doom. 

Mod is named The Axe of Doom and it's about Korgan killing everyone starting with Anomen and ending with you, the protagonist. Ye'd best change yer tune, fer me axe is itching fer a swing or two an' I be nae likely t' stop it!  

Idea is perfect! Maybe there is one problem, mod speeds tha game maybe a little too much, like chopping Mellisan head off first time you meet her triggering the epiloge buty what can I do? Don't like it, don't dowload it, hahahah