Me the Modder

So, anyone that knows me pretty well knows that way into the mod scene for PC games. I love to download and install them, as well as do some minor tweaking on my own. I love everything about mods. From visual enhancements to bug fixes to restoring cut content to new quests and areas that extend the life of the game. I love it all.

Something that's been in my brain for years now is that I should be one of the people that makes these mods, specifically, the mods that tell new stories. I'm a published author, and I'm a developer (C#), so I've got some of the basic skills. I've made a few false starts in learning various toolsets, but I'm at a point now where I really wanna start to get serious about it.

I've been looking at a few different toolsets, and I think what I'm going to do is learn the basics of a few, and then pick one, and focus solely on learning it inside and out, while I slowly build out my mod.

At the moment, I'm considering:
 - Creation Kit (Fallout 4)
 - Divinity Engine
 - Dragon Age Toolset
 - NWN Toolset 
 - Ark Dev Kit

I think, for my first time out, I'm looking to build a fairly linear story that'll last the player several hours and feature some combat, some dialogue, and at least one branching decision. Eventually, I have a few larger stories in mind that I want to tell, including a full-blown Fallout campaign.

The new Creation Kit just kinda jumped out at me, since a) I love the game, and b) based on the prolific nature of mods for Bethesda games, the Creation Kit must be at least somewhat easy to work with.

The Divinity Engine is attractive since a) I love that game, too, b) I love the way it looks, and c) the 3/4 view might be really fun for combat, and d) turn-based battles tend to be my favorite.

NWN and Dragon Age ... there's a very mature, albeit somewhat dead community there. And I'm a BioWare fanboy at heart. It really sucks that they stopped being supportive of mod scenes. Also, the Dragon Age toolset is the one with which I'm the most familiar. And I've heard the NWN toolset is super-easy.

The Ark Dev Kit is the Unreal Engine editor, and if you've not seen UE4 and Blueprints and whatnot, holy shit, it is awesome to work with. I just bought Ark, don't know a lot about it, but I'm getting on a private server with some friends soon, so we'll see what's what.

I'll be starting with either the Creation Kit or the Divinity Engine first. We'll see.

Anyone that has experience with any of these that wants to share some feedback, I'd love to see some comments or DMs from you.

I also wanna get back to streaming a bit more again on my YouTube channel. Maybe Tuesday and Thursday nights, starting next week? I dunno. Tonight, I wanna get my game dev stuff up and running and start playing around.

Anyway, I need to get creative again. I love telling stories, and while it would be cool to work in prose again, this looks like a great new way for me to reach people.

Any thoughts from any current modders are appreciated, especially those that do it while working full-time, and being a spouse, and a parent.

I plan to keep posting in here to talk about my progress.

-Blaine

currently digging: the new RHCP record, the new Garbage record, Witcher 3: Blood & Wine, Dishonored, Game of Thrones