How disappointed were you with your first mod?

[Awachi]

Only half-joking.

Assumes you went into it not knowing the eventual limitations and compromises in store.

[subtledoctor]

I was super proud of it. 

Looking back though, it was awful. 

[Sam.]

49 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

I was super proud of it. 

Looking back though, it was awful. 

I feel this is likely a common theme dating back to the dawn of BG modding.  I certainly feel this way.  A while back, @CamDawg posted a link to an interview with one of the early-er (1st or 2nd generation?) modders (or hexers IIRC?), but a 30 second search didn't turn it up.  I found it entertaining and insightful.  Maybe he can link to it here.

[jmerry]

Well, I'm only at the point of working on version 2.0 (current status: bug-hunting) of my first mod, so - not disappointed yet. I'm still generally at the stage of "Hey, I got that working!" or "OK, maybe I don't know how to do that yet, but I'm sure it can be done".

Give it a few years, if I'm still with this scene then.

[jastey]

All my mods focus(sed) on dialogues mainly so I didn't hit any engine limitations with my first mod. (But with when making one compatible with the old BG1 engine. Talk about limitations? Try classic BG1. Oh fun times.)

But I had a modding project only recently that came out of nowhere and then occupied 4 months of my whole free time just because I need it to make my mod NPCs in SoD react to game events more reliably. This was the most frustrating modding experience ever, especially since all players get to see ingame is one, two sentences of the coalition officers that make the experience more consistent.

[The Artisan]

I’m a writer at my core. Modding is only one of various mediums I use to write. And I believe the effect of my first work can be even greater than something gameplay-related.

My first attempt at writing an NPC mod was, I believe, sometime during 2012-13. The idea wasn’t too bad, but I was still too inexperienced to have any sort of direction in writing. Then Sirene for BG1 was completed during 2015. Somehow she became reasonably successful and is reasonably well known among mod users. But she’s also become the entry point for new viewers of my writing, which is something of a double-edged sword. For legacy and time reasons, her writing will probably never be changed, so the first thing many people will experience is probably going to be the quality of my writing in 2015. I don’t think my skill at writing back then holds a candle to what it is now, so there is a constant feeling like my past work is holding me back.

To be fair, the fact that I haven’t finished any BG2 content for anyone but Sirene probably plays a big factor, and I probably missed my time for when completing my work would have had a bigger effect.

[Graion Dilach]

One of my visual programming exams was to write a program which allows five frogs to leap and then measure which one jumped the highest. During the middle of the exam, even the teacher seen my tests that my solution was working and was way more polished and ahead of the majority of the class, because I animated the five frogs, they jumped in sync and there were miniature details I even cared about... that I was actually playing my game by then. However, one of my last minute changes broke the program and I ran out of time to actually find that regression. The teacher even returned my submission and told me that if I can find my bug within 5 minutes, I get an A, otherwise an F. I found it.

Why is this story relevant? Because this is how all my WeiDU mod releases feel like; last minute changes I assume safe breaking things left'n'right.

Edited March 2, 2022 by Graion Dilach