Mod Authors - How did you get started?

[MrFuturehope]

7 hours ago, Reginald_001 said:

Perfect time to plug my biography. Make sure to read it in there once it's released.

 

'Memoires of a modder'

By Reginald Underwood

 

Damn! I literally opened this thread because I saw your name as the author of the last post, only to read a teaser lol

[Reginald_001]

1 hour ago, MrFuturehope said:

 

Damn! I literally opened this thread because I saw your name as the author of the last post, only to read a teaser lol

Aww..

 

I started modding in 1989 with something called 'The Final Cartridge' on my commodore 64. Since then I never really stopped. It all got real serious when the Doom & Quake modding scene started to take off. I became moderator and content creator for planetdoom/planetquake, and made some 'big' mods and total conversions back in the day.

 

I was joking but I really could easily write a 300 page book on modding alone, with the 25 years of experience I have with it.

 

Then there was a big hiatus of 8 years due to a failed marriage, after which I saw Seddon's tutorial on creating a companion NPC. (He redid is since then, the original one was from 2017). I followed that religiously and made an NPC called 'Ivy' (named after the VA/AI software I used for the voice). Then I decided let's add some lewdness. Then I realized his way was flawed and created Ivy from scratch with a better TTS, etc.. And then she suddenly had a character and a backstory and well the rest is history.

 

 

Edited April 12, 2023 by Reginald_001

[NuttySquabble]

I had some programming experience but hadn't been developing software for many years. Sometimes I would just write some little thing for my own fun. I began modding when I realized that the game I was playing lacked some features I really wanted and no existing mods provided it. Then I just opened some tutorials, launched IDE and created a crude simple proof-of-concept in a day or two. It gave me the confidence to go on.

[Trippy_the_Squirrel]

Simple.  Played Morrowind on PC, had some (I thought) really good ideas for lore-friendly add-ons.  Learned modding by failing a lot, then looking up how to correct failures on how-to and tutorial sites.

 

Then got with someone who wrote killer fan fiction for Oblivion.  Loved the stories, had to find a way to get them into the game world for others to enjoy.  Failed a lot.  Learned how to correct the failures through on-line help sites and tutorials.  Developed my ideas to create a worthy vehicle for the books.

 

Listened very carefully to feedback from gamers on the modding sites.  If someone cares enough about your mods to give you feedback, use that feedback as a positive tool. always.

Loved the encouragement, accepted criticism, was very gratefull for contributions to the mod.  Still chuffed that people who gave me feedback eight years ago still comment on the new updates.

 

Still love my mod(s), always looking for ways to improve them.

 

Trippy

[MrFuturehope]

3 hours ago, Reginald_001 said:

Aww..

 

I started modding in 1989 with something called 'The Final Cartridge' on my commodore 64. Since then I never really stopped. It all got real serious when the Doom & Quake modding scene started to take off. I became moderator and content creator for planetdoom/planetquake, and made some 'big' mods and total conversions back in the day.

 

I was joking but I really could easily write a 300 page book on modding alone, with the 25 years of experience I have with it.

 

Then there was a big hiatus of 8 years due to a failed marriage, after which I saw Seddon's tutorial on creating a companion NPC. (He redid is since then, the original one was from 2017). I followed that religiously and made an NPC called 'Ivy' (named after the VA/AI software I used for the voice). Then I decided let's add some lewdness. Then I realized his way was flawed and created Ivy from scratch with a better TTS, etc.. And then she suddenly had a character and a backstory and well the rest is history.

 

 

 

Thank you. So... Now I know why you're so good at modding. When I was just a little child, you were already modding! I see now why you're so good at catching interest of the young hearts with your creations. ❤️

 

I think you should really write that book about your modding history and modding itself, maybe even share some of those hardly learned lessons with us, I'm pretty sure it would be interesting reading.

 

Personally, I started getting more serious about modding probably with the original Duke Nukem 3D for DOS. I was creating custom maps, then I started creating custom arts - new textures, new weapons, new enemies. I've read the whole BUILD editor documentation just to learn how to achieve what I wanted to achieve, only to find out it was impossible lol. My goal was to create Stargate total conversion. Yeah I'm a fan of Stargate movies and tv series, I was literally obsessed with the idea of creating some of my custom adventure using those tools provided by 3D Realms, I even created a working Stargate itself, but as you can imagine it was pretty difficult using that kind of technology. I mean, it would have been possible most likely with some scripting, but I never got to learn scripting, so I was stuck with the default features of the game. Sadly, just when I was getting good at it, I had to abandon the project, which is probably good too, because I realized it wouldn't probably lead anywhere, at least not at that time...

Edited April 12, 2023 by MrFuturehope

[Guest]

Well, for me, it started when I met my girlfriend in high school. The only games I played at this time were old retro games, like Super Mario on the NES and stuff like that. My parents were "old school", as they phrased it. I'm not going to go into detail, but I think they meant "cheap and stupid" because they didn't trust new tech. I don't have anything against retro games, but they refused to spend money on anything except beer, guns, and meth.

Anyway, my girl introduced me to new games and games she liked modding, like Skyrim. I was just blown away by what she turned games into and, after my parents kicked me out for being who I am, I lived with my girl where she showed me more games and stuff. After we got our own place, I opened my own Nexus account and she told me how to install and use mods. She doesn't make her own mods, so when it came to making mods I had to learn how to do it myself. I only do preset mods for Skyrim SE and Fallout 4, but I am proud of the ones I've made. I've been wanting to do other mods, but I just can't figure that shit out.

Anyway, that's my origin story.

[Gameplayer]

Art degree, only computer skill was typing, think they taught us how to use floppy disks.  Was not till late in college had to do email even.

 

Read fo3edit manual, took a few days.  Then made my own patch for fwe a mod that used 5 major mods, since these updated it always broke patches that were provided.

 

Made some leveled list mods for fo3edit and ppl still credit my style of leveled list today, my gamer tag "gamefever"

 

Learned bodyslide, built most sliders of anyone was nicknamed king of UUNP.  Built book of unnp took a couple years.

 

Fo4 supported ikaros androids making most all female armors work for the robot up to about 2020 armors.  Those are on loverslab.

 

I attached the hdt physics data point to the female head for Skyrim le so back then we had havik object for breast shake but my method put it on the head mesh which was quickly rolled into bodyslide as the standard.  Was a huge deal sexlab would strip female naked of havik object and her breast would be static!  Given this is a sex site for game mods u might understand how clutch that was.

 

Bodyslide used to have a full female body for first person, made a lot of ppl mad, I solved that problem with ousnious bodyslide at least.  The issue persists because armour modders use the full body instead of arms.  My method stops double body bug in first person, ya a lot of ppl like sex as female char in first person so..

 

I figured out first how to activate first person items, before that we would not see mod added stuff.  Credited under my gamertag gamefever in both Skyrim and fo4.  Made this so submissive players using devious de ices would see their bindings in first person.

[ghastley]

This needs to be read in a Yorkshire accent.

 

“Video games? When I were a lad, computers used punched cards, had 4000 bytes of memory, and tapes were a luxury. I had to compile my first program by hand, because the computer didn’t have enough memory to run the assembler.”

 

1401 Autocoder wasn’t suitable for game writing, and I first used BASIC not on a personal computer, but on a time-sharing terminal on a mainframe computer. There were a few text-based games at that time, and enhancements were done.

 

I had a BBC model B (still do) that was just a little earlier then the TI, and had the same setup for cassette recording. I later added floppy drives, and modded the OS for a home-made light pen. 

 

Serious game modding started when game publishers  released toolkits with their games, as this is what allowed one user to make mods that others could use. I made and published mods for Dungeon Siege and its sequels before moving over to Oblivion when Gas Powered Games sold out. Others in the DS modding community had already gone over to Morrowind, but my timing coincided with the TES IV release. 

 

[DocClox]

On 4/15/2023 at 12:15 AM, ghastley said:

“Video games? When I were a lad, computers used punched cards, had 4000 bytes of memory, and tapes were a luxury. I had to compile my first program by hand, because the computer didn’t have enough memory to run the assembler.”

 

Punch cards? We used to dream of punched cards. We had to enter programs, one byte at a time, using toggle witches to set the but pattern for each byte. Once we had the program input, we had to go work thirty-six hour shift down at mill, because that were how long "hello, world" took to execute.

[ghastley]

7 hours ago, DocClox said:

 

Punch cards? We used to dream of punched cards. We had to enter programs, one byte at a time, using toggle witches to set the but pattern for each byte. Once we had the program input, we had to go work thirty-six hour shift down at mill, because that were how long "hello, world" took to execute.

Toggle switches? We had to plug wires into a board. And hello world couldn’t be displayed on the seven-segment Nixie tubes, so waiting down at t’mill were pointless.

Edited April 17, 2023 by ghastley
Nostalgia