On Modding

[Domi]

I guess, most of us get asked these types of questions and advice sooner or later by people who would like to make a mod. So, I was writing a reply to someone about it, and found that I was doing it before, and decided to make a longer write-up from it and post it kind of thing. Because I did not yet try a purely quest mod-making (which I am contemplating), this is mostly about an NPC making process.

 

First and foremost, I suggest to appreciate the amount of the workload, know your strength and weaknesses and work on schedule. Some people can work w/o deadlines etc, I can't imagine how.

 

The Workload

 

What you will need to write for a romanceable NPC in BG2 in SoA so your characters do not appear "underdevelopped" compared to other modern characters you are looking into something like:

4+ banter with each BioWARE NPC (usually easy)

100 + in-game interjections

-obligatory content (Tree of Life, Hells interjections, Bodhi Abduction, Epilogue, etc)

-Player-initiated talks, no standard here, but I think about 20 "flirts", and about 15-20 event dependent talks.

about 40 talks with PC, I would advise to keep some of them "friendship" and available for everyone (10-15), some sequential lovetalks for the romanced person only (perhaps 20), and some tied to specific events (about 10). In my case, with Kivan, I put a bulk into the 'event-dependent' rather than sequential. Kulyok did a very high writing load by going 30+30+ about 20, I think scheme, writing 30 talks for each of the romances, and 20 for friendship, all of them different, I gather.

 

I'd say you are looking at about 3rd of that content when you are talking ToB.

 

Do not forget about editing. The mod requires multiple proof-reads, unless you are naturally very good with grammar, sentence construction and are very attentive.

 

You'll need to estimate what are the particular difficulties that you will encounter with your particular NPC. Are they surmountable? The two that I would not advise trying to tackle in are the NPCs of the races that are not included in the game (unless you want to use a short cut similar to the sub-race mod, that is not completely attractive) and introducing a new avatar for a joinable NPC.

 

What is an example of an over-ambitious mod, that will not likely to be completed by the first-time enthusiastic person?

 

A mod that adds more than 2 NPCs for the full duration of SoA and ToB in one shot, all of them developped to a modern SoA standard.

A mod that adds many new areas tight with content, and quests that are more complex than expanded Fed-Ex in nature (go there and find this)

A mod that has a story arc for an NPC that requires multiple, conflicting character development for the same NPC and involves lots and lots of quests.

 

Strength and Weaknesses

 

Writing

 

One of the biggest limitations in modding is ability to write fast, a LOT and all sorts of content. Kulyok's Xan is 7,000 lines SoA, but with 2 romance tracks. I think that Amber with her few quests and Player 2 options, is over 20,000 lines in SoA. My Kivan with his relatively limited romantic content and Deheriana only in ToB is between 7,000 and 8,000 lines. A line is anything from one word to a paragraph, just whatever your character say in one shot.

 

Writing in Code

 

Learn right away how to write D-files, and do all your writing in D-file structure, to avoid lots of frustration with trying to figure out what option goes where a few months down the road when coding. Prepare to the fact that writing and testing will be the most time consuming tasks, and testing will be a an exercise in frustration.

 

General Coding Aptitude

 

NI coding and scripting is generally easy for trivial tasks. If you can't figure it out, my advice is - do not mod or join someone who asks specifically for a writer only, if his/her ideas sit well with you. With anything else you are taking a huge risk.

 

Top 10 ugly things in Modding

 

-Voicing. From trying to find a voice actor to tagging the files, to obtaining good quality it is the single biggest pain in the butt I ran accross in modding.

-Writing, writing and writing so much that your computer keyboard stops talking to you in a week

-Boredom. After you have written those five "real cool" lovetalks and banters that came easy, you look down at the field, and discover that 99% is unplowed

-Testing. It is as trying as it is necessary.

-Feeling that "nobody gives a damn" about your mod

-Release the mod only you are 100% sure that it is done. Don't do "beta's", "one-day NPCs", "to be expanded later" etc. It's evil.

-Dependency on other people.

-The time between the starting of the project and the completion. It is a long-term commitment. If you put a few hours in every day, that will probably get you to about 6 months in development.

-Not being able to do exactly what you want due to the lack of resources, engine or human limitations

-Compatibvility with the mod X that you have never heard about

 

The top 10 things NOT to worry about are, since they are waaay easier than they seem:

 

-Adding new items

-Adding new CRE's

-installing your mod

-making new kits for acceptable classes within the limits of Cam's tutorials

-prompting banters

-adding interjections

-finding hosting for a ready mod

-finding help if you ask a particular, very specific question

-mass-creating TRA files.

-not sure

[Grim Squeaker]

I'd say those estimates of content were a bit high. 4+ banters would be ideal but unless you've got the banter accelerator you aren't gonna seem em all. I'd say 2+ is a minimum for a finished mod. Event dependent talks I don't find are that common. I mean, you've got the standard interjection ones like tree of life, first changing into the slayer, but you really don't want the NPC yelling their opinion every time something happens. 40 talks with the PC? Maybe thats okay if you've got a lot of event stuff filling in some of them, but personally I think 30 lovetalks is something seriously to be proud of.

[Domi]

Yes, it is high, yet that's the amount of content I am seeing in the mods which were just released or will be released shortly. I liked it, because it creates an NPC that actually feels "alive" no matter if you romance him or her or not.

 

I think that event-dependent talks vs sequential are a matter of a personal preference + character nature. For me it seems more natural if Kivan reacts to what happened and his talk refers to an experience the PC and he just had to explore a certain subject rather than Kivan breaking into a talk on the same subject out of the blue just because the timer had expired.

 

The introduction of the event dependent talks is a huge plus from the stand point of making the romance last through-out the whole game, as opposite for that sequence that expires mid-game. It authomatically targets the individual player's game speed, without him or her feeling that the timer is either too slow or too fast. The talks happen as things happen. It just works better for me; I understand that some people would prefer a sequence.

 

4+ banters would be ideal but unless you've got the banter accelerator you aren't gonna seem em all.

 

My suggestion here is again to tie the banters into the game events. I did not do much of it in Kivan, and I regret it.

[Drew]

This isn't necessarily a "bad thing", but when a mod NPC has more content than a Bioware NPC it kind of stands out as mod content. Some modders, I imagine, would prefer to avoid that.

[Bri]

This isn't necessarily a "bad thing", but when a mod NPC has more content than a Bioware NPC it kind of stands out as mod content.  Some modders, I imagine, would prefer to avoid that.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It all depends on one's preference. That is why if someone is writing a module, they should be fairly upfront about what the content is going to be...and how it is going to be presented.

 

Then, if there are those who want mods essentially indistinguishable from the core BG II game, they can find them. And it gives them little reason to complain with other mods that were upfront about what they intended to show.

[Zyraen]

I think a good collection of event based interjections mixed with banters are good, but I don't think much of multi-choiced love talks, I guess, mainly because I'm not a very pro-PC romance person ^^;; Either that or I just dislike the complexity of a multi-choiced PC-Banter.

 

I would agree more with Grim about the figures though - you don't need that much quantity of chats (though in general the figures Grim highlighted are good) to make the character alive, it is really about how well-defined the character is and how to bring the "life" of the personality across in a clear and interesting fashion.

 

What is an example of an over-ambitious mod, that will not likely to be completed by the first-time enthusiastic person?

 

A mod that adds more than 2 NPCs for the full duration of SoA and ToB in one shot, all of them developped to a modern SoA standard.

A mod that adds many new areas tight with content, and quests that are more complex than expanded Fed-Ex in nature (go there and find this)

A mod that has a story arc for an NPC that requires multiple, conflicting character development for the same NPC and involves lots and lots of quests.

Should I be happy to have done this for my first Mod? Though I didn't do ToB and I didn't do multiple conflicting character development, but there are lots of quests and 2 NPCs and new areas (or at least, many new ARE files, hehe)

[Kulyok]

Kulyok did a very high writing load by going 30+30+ about 20, I think scheme, writing 30 talks for each of the romances, and 20 for friendship, all of them different, I gather.

 

It's 46/46/46 + ~5 available for all paths, player-initiated included.

 

But I'd agree with Dave that quantity is mostly irrelevant. Annah has very few banters, and yet she is more alive than more mouthy custom NPCs. Kelsey remains an etalon, though he has 'only' about two banters with each NPC.

 

And, really, everyone writes different things at different speed. It took me two weeks to write an NPC-initiated romance track, but six weeks to write three banters for each Bioware NPC. (Five, or, in some cases, nine, actually, but, um, never mind).

 

I'd say that one thing that can seriously spoil your modding process is dependency on someone whom you do not fully trust. So, learning .d and .baf basics, coding and alpha-testing yourself, and asking for advice instead of asking for a coder is probably a good idea.

 

 

(Oooooh, it sounds so cute and patronizing! Go me! )

[Domi]

Should I be happy to have done this for my first Mod?  Though I didn't do ToB and I didn't do multiple conflicting character development, but there are lots of quests and 2 NPCs and new areas (or at least, many new ARE files, hehe)

 

Yes, yours is a very rare case, though note that I put in "more than 2" joinables

 

As for content, I am not saying what people should do, but what they actually do nowadays. Please, note that it is not a quantity vs quality issue. An NPC can have a very little amount of content and all of it could be bad. If NPC has little content and it's good, guess what the author will be asked almost immediately? To do an expansion.

 

There is a consistent and undeniable tendency for the modern mods to be geared toward the characters that have more content rather than less content. The chattier NPCs is a matter of a personal preference, but I think that only the one-dayers are now made with BioWARE-comparable amount of content.

 

I think that this comes due to two factors: coding generally became a trivial thing, and that the players' feedback seems to always favor more content than less content. Even if a custom NPC is about 10 times chattier than Cernd. The autor of a modded NPC faces the choice: either his/her NPC will have more content than BioWARE's or less content than other customs. And as more NPCs are coming out, it will be more and more easy to put together a party of modded NPCs, and then they will be inevitably compared against each-other.

 

There are already tricks to make it through Baldur's Gate with a mixed party that talks a lot. For example, in my case, having Aerie romancing PC and Haer'Dalis in the party in addition to customs, I felt no difference between the custom and original NPC content quantity-wise. Though, I have to say that Xan still managed to stand out a bit.

[Bri]

And there is a reason a lot of people do enjoy the 'mouthier' NPCs. One of the reasons I still consider BG I and II far and above Neverwinter Nights was the internal dynamics having a large number of NPCs gave (or at least it seemed that way).

[Domi]

Heh, you can surely count me in that camp as well, LOL! I think that as modders we don't have the limitation that makes BioWARE work with the formula that more content per NPC inevitably leads to less NPCs to chose from.

[Senka]

But you cannot add content infinitely - even "etalon" Kelsey is, to say the least, annoying due to numerous pointless dialogues which tend to occur in the most unappropriate moments. Imagine real-life people who wander for several months and constantly chat with each other - they must be either insane or they will eventually kill each other (or both).

[Domi]

Actually, RL people do chat a LOT when they are locked in a small parties for prolongued periods of time. Especially if they are young, anattached, adventurous etc. There will be romances, quarells, little dramas, everything like that developping between them. It is a matter of safety to make sure that people are capable of standing each other when they are sent to a remote destination all together for prolongued periods of time w/o means to communicate with much of the other world. As for what each player considers annoying in his or her own game - well he or she has that choice of the NPCs with different level of integration (from Cernd and one days to Xan, which is in my experience *the* chattiest NPC ever made) and how that integration is handled (ie spontaneous, sequential dialogues or event related ones, or even most of the dialogues coming from the player initiated menues)

[Bri]

But you cannot add content infinitely - even "etalon" Kelsey is, to say the least, annoying due to numerous pointless dialogues which tend to occur in the most unappropriate moments. Imagine real-life people who wander for several months and constantly chat with each other - they must be either insane or they will eventually kill each other (or both).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Domi is quite correct. Most people, if they examine their life real closely, unless they are the most hidebound of people, do talk often...and sometimes on the stupidest subjects.

 

Of course, that depends on the makeup of the group, but when you get down to it, most people are fairly gregarious. Of course, after a certain amount of time...one would either get used to that person, or kill them. I mean, there is a reason tours of duty in the Antarctic tend to usually only be for 6 months. Even an adventuring party has the release valve of hitting the nearest inn.

 

That said, a person is also limited by the source material. I try to work within the limits of what has been established by the core game, but this only succeeds to varying degrees. I mean, it is fairly easy for a person to know all the sundry details of their character (such as what their favorite pastry must be), while the core BioWare ones are only painted in broadstrokes (Korgan is a violent sociopath who likes money, but is mainly interested in the fight).

 

That said, I do think it behooves the person to at least tell you an idea of what to expect in the module...which most do by telling the sheer number of dialogues, or showing a variety of the type of sample dialogues there are.

 

Heh, and I would agree that one has to make sure it isn't firing every five minutes. But...I do like trying to make a wide number of banters which would fire in random order, so that all won't be the exact same.

 

A bigger problem than banters though is the case where the NPC says something on almost every quest. Del SoA was so bad with this we ended up splitting it into fourths or whatever, and a random number would be uploaded (Unless you went with the option of 'upload it all' (It was my fault I know, though I didn't realize how much I had up while writing at the time)

[Senka]

Well I am not saying they won't talk at all, but after some time they will eventually have nothing to discuss. Then again, in RL people tend to matter about important things more and about unimportant things less. So they will mostly discuss tactics, plan shopping, routes, think about making money, etc. If you think this background discussions should be explicitely included in banters, go on, but this would be quite boring.

[Domi]

Heh, to be honest, I see nothing boring about NPCs discussing the latest events in the game world, or the thoughts they had had because of what just came to pass before their eyes. In fact I find it more interesting than the NPCs feeding PC his or her background a talk at a time or repeating the talk on the same topic with small variations ad nauseum BioWARE's way.