Hello all,

I've been tinkering around with mods created by other authors for years now. I've always felt that customizing mods to suit my tastes for personal use has always been the way to go. It has helped me learn about how mods are created, to use the various editing tools (GECK/CK), and use Nifskope to a limited degree.

I was just curious to see how many of you follow this same approach, or if you prefer to make requests or suggestions of mod authors to make the changes for you.

Let's discuss it!

Cheers,

N~dles

I started out like you and tinkered with other mods created by people and learned the same stuff as you. Nowadays I just make my own mods from scratch while still tinkering with other mods to suit my tastes.

If it's a minor change I'll do it myself. Of it's massive change using scripting or dialogue I will request for it to be done. I'm not really "fielded" in the GECK so for big changes I can't really do it myself.

Most of times I like mods as author created them, and now most of mods are supported by MCM, sometimes I do minor changes, only once have I requested a feature and that was to enable snow in whole wasteland instead rain in wasteland and snow in Jacobstown, I did try to do it my self but I failed.

I agree with you guys about mods that use complex scripts, however using this tutorial: http://www.cipscis.com/fallout/tutorials/beginners.aspx helped me immensely with making changes to them. Everything I edit is on a small scale (like changing activation keys on FOSE or NVSE mods without MCM compatibility), as to not completely unhinge and bork my install.

N~dles

I usually just change things myself. I don't like asking other people to change small things just because I don't like it. Aside from that some mod authors aren't all that friendly to make those sort of requests anyway.

Scripting is scripting, its not simple, but people can learn. Though if someone does learn, they should also learn how to make organized scripts, a lot of people just write whatever they want regardless of how messy it can get. Messy scripts are probably the cause of a lot of CTDs. It is just not about writing stuff, you have to think about its structure.

I'm a helpless baby when it comes to editing mods.
Granted I'm sure I can learn if I put in time, however school and sports drain me and as it is I already spend an hour aday installing and uninstalling mods
Fortunately most mods fit my taste so im happy

I edit as needed. bunsaki does all his mods for female only so i enable them for males when I play. its a pain when he updates the esp haha

As a modder, I have thoughts about this.

On one hand I'm totally fine if people edit stuff I release, for their own tastes and their own game.  When I release my ME mod, for example, someone might decide to make the M8 Avenger super overpowered and fire explosive peanuts.  That's their prerogative and wouldn't bother me in the slightest.

On the other hand... I do have a serious problem with people who make tiny changes to a significant or popular mod and then release it with their name on it.  That frustrates me immensely.

For instance lets say I make 'Mass Effect Weapons Pack by Tesvixen' which contains ports of all ME guns, authentic sounds, icons and careful balancing.  I spent weeks working on it.

Someone downloads it, takes an hour or so and edits the stats a little to suit their tastes, then re-uploads it as "Mass Effect Weapons Pack REBALANCED by ModStealingJerk".  

It isn't until you read their Readme's Credits section that you see that I'm actually the chick who ported the weapons/sounds etc to begin with.  And on top of that, they've named 'their' mod in a way that suggests it is somehow better or an improvement over my own.  That stuff annoyed me before I even modded myself, and now that I do mod, it straight-up pisses me off.

@ Tesvixen - I'm no stranger to having my work 'appropriated' by others, and redistributed under different authorship. Many years ago, I was a fairly prominent texture artist for a game called IL2, I went by the screen name of Casey1976. A bunch of us like-minded 'skinners' (as we liked to call ourselves) created our own website and shared our templates, skins and tutorials based on our experiences with creating these pieces of 'art' with that community. Here's a sample of one of my skins...

P-38 NMF:

The 3D models that game used were essentially flat, featureless slabs...no normal maps, no bump mapping, we're talking very primitive stuff in the early 2000s. So, all the highs and lows, weathering etc is built as a 'fake 3D' effect in Photoshop on individual layers...some of my templates grew to be as large as 80 MB with 600 - 700 layers total. We're talking weeks, if not months of work to create all that detail from a set of line drawings.

Now, we had similar 'rules' about our content to what VGU has here...ask for permission, give credit and never ever claim ownership of something that is not yours. If you don't follow the rules, we'll skin you alive    .

Needless to say, my stuff got stolen by several people over the 7 years I was involved with IL2...I finally got pissed and I quit the community for good (at least my templates got pulled...the skins are up at the website still. One of my buddies talked me out of nuking everything).

This is EXACTLY why I don't redistribute, or ask to re-up somebody else's work that I've edited...it stays on my hard drive and will only be used by me. I know exactly what it is like to have somebody else take credit for something I spent weeks or months working on....and it's the most abhorrent thing in the world IMO.

Okay...that was a cathartic rant! I feel better now.

Back on topic!

N~dles

Ugh that sucks Noodles.

About 10 years ago my ex-husband and a friend of his did a big Predator/Alien mod for Morrowind, and a lot of the meshes/textures in it were created by my ex, from scratch.

To this day, there are people who use those meshes in their own mods, never asking or contacting him. It doesn't get under his skin like it used to (has been a decade, after all) but it still chafes his butt a little.

Back on topic, if there was something about a mod I didn't care for or thought I could improve, I'd probably do it myself, rather than than contact someone and say 'hey great mod but I don't like this, could you fix it k thx'.

I'd never upload that change/fix though.

If mod author Alpha created a good mod but than someone (Beta) saw even greater potential of that mod and did some adjustments, it would be cool if beta asked Alpha to add his tweaks to the optional downloads of original mod, this would only benefit to the community. But if Beta uploaded whole Alphas mod with that additions like "rebalanced" or "reworked", that only shows low respect to original author (Alpha) + mod page must gain popularity from start, and Alphas is already popular (has endorsements or whatever).

There is also one more thing players don't like to download hundreds of different mods and than combine them to make one mod work, that is why Apple was successful, you plug it in and it works, ismple as that.

You know, I'm sort of doing that with someone else's mod, with their permission of course. I'm updating it but some would say it is also being improved. I'm rewriting the entire mod, because it was just unmanageable the way it was. Part of the reason it is so broken is because of that. I can understand why someone would say "improved" or "rebalanced". Maybe they don't even say it intentionally, I was going to call this mod "insert name here" "remade" and not because I thought myself better than the original author and even if I did, how could I say that without being a hypocrite, I mean I did stand on his shoulders (and many others) to learn what I learned.

This thread has actually given me ideas about how I will go about this once I'm finished working on this mod. I never intended to name myself as a co author or any of that non-sense, always thought the only author should be the original author. Now however, I'm not sure what I'll call the mod, once it gets released, but it certainly won't be "remade"

@ ArgusMercenary - Well, your situation brings up an interesting issue...if an existing mod has become 'broken' or outdated by official patches, DLCs or advances in the script extender or lack of support in popular UI mods (MCM)...and permission is given...then why isn't it okay for you to take authorship of the work you're putting into it? It's not like you're just editing a line of script, adding a blue texture and calling it your own. If you're rebuilding it from scratch to be compatible with current installs...why not call it your own, with a 'based on' caveat in the title/description referencing the original work.

I don't see a problem with that...what Tesvixen was referring to was more of a blatant act of 'changed an armor color, made the gun do 5 billion points of damage and now it's my mod' type of stuff...not a thoughtful and considerate rebuild of a non-functional mod, like what you're working on. I don't know what your project is, but I'd support you in your endeavors just based on what you wrote above.

Good luck on the mod...hope to see it soon!

N~dles

You could say that, still I'm not the "owner" of the idea. The original author did come up with it, and did a lot as well. I feel he still deserves most of the credit. Even if it is remaking everything, I still changed his stuff because I thought mine did things better. Thankfully, the author was okay with it, which was one of my worries. Hopefully I can finish it up soon, I'm almost done with the hardest part.

Still don't want to make the title sound like something pretentious or "superior" though, so I'll have to check for titles.

@ ArgusMercenary - It's so nice to hear that you and original author found agreement regarding mod that is I'm presuming outdated or even potentially game breaking. Basically you are resurrecting, making 2014 version of old mod, bringing it back to community so everyone can enjoy it, and that is the way to progress.

My previous post was very general... There is to many variations of mods in terms of how complex they are, and same applies to changes that can be done on those mods.

that depends on the mod. I'm a noob with scripts, but for the most part the changes I want to make are simple geck stuff. But I'm not working on re-creating a "better" version of a mod, I'm just changing stuff so I'll enjoy playing the original mod more.
I only request fixes or updates.