Mod use and mod visibility

[InSidious 237]

Perhaps this is just a personal moan, but...

 

I think mod downloads have declined quite a lot, and mod use has gone down similarly. I'm not sure the actual player-base is all that much smaller; just take a look at the kotor subreddit for an idea of how many players there still are - there's a fairly high traffic there, even if not the kind of madness you might have seen on LF in '05/06. But I note fourteen threads from the last day or so.

 

Similarly, on Youtube, there are more than a few users putting up videos of KotOR runthroughs (though, again, the number of viewers seems to be pretty low). The steam community again has a fair traffic.

 

It seems to me that the "issue" for KotOR modding is, essentially, twofold:

 

1. Nowhere now has the same critical mass of mods that KotORFiles had. Goodness knows, we've got a fair number of mods here, but ~300 for both games just isn't the same as a site that had somewhere in the region of 2000 files (even accounting for multiple uploads/outdatings, that was still a lot.)

 

I count 40 of my mods up here. I know others, like ChAiNz, have embraced things here, too, while others are either uncontactable, or don't want their mods up on a site like this for whatever reason. One of the things KotORFiles used to do was to go out and request permissions from modders actively; even if they hadn't been seen in a long time, or had retired years ago. It wasn't central to how we built up (between, roughly, mid-2006 to mid-2008, it was the only KotOR upload site around, IIRC) the catalogue we had, but it was important in emphasising it  was the place to get KotOR mods. I'm not saying that would be an easy, perfect, or necessarily very whole solution, but it might help.

 

The other thing that sustained KF while it was still going properly (and I'll admit that at least some of the issues - prior to the technical collapse in 2011 - were to a greater or lesser extent the fault of my lack of interest and sticking too rigidly to our policy of mod reviews) - was a critical mass of commenters/users. Part of this was about the turnover of other content - I'm specifically thinking about the weekly poll and the picture of the day (which were a pain to do, but kept the userbase coming). If you build it, they will come, etc. We tried other things, as well, from time to time: I remember Marius at one point wanted to have a series of 'interviews' with modders, for instance; though building material like that was always more difficult.

 

I know first-hand that this kind of thing is a grind, is exhausting, and frankly a huge time-sink, but it does help to build a community up. I realise pretty well everyone is busy, and I know that, partly because of the eccentricities of the Filefront "back-end", and partly because of the work itself, this kind of thing was a huge pain and took up a lot of energy too. But I think something like this might help to make this place a bit more used than, at present, it is.

 

I realise it's a huge ask, so I'd suggest the "team" for any such effort should be pretty big, but with a fairly clearly-defined hierarchy and, if necessary, set of roles. The necessary point would be to keep stuff rolling over.

 

And for this (and this is where I've been building up to)... DeadlyStream needs a front-end website. At present, you access the mods via the forum, under a tab. It's... not the prettiest, nor is it the most accessible, way of doing this. I suggest keeping the forum as is, but adding a download site front-end more like KotORFiles had (though for goodness' sake, with a less absurd layout/organisation!). But elements that this would have would probably be:

 

- recent uploads

- Picture of the day

- Weekly Poll (or similar)

- Featured mods

- Mod of the Week

- Top 10/20 most downloaded files (?)

- Recent posts (e.g., drawing users' attention to recent KotOR retrospectives, etc.).

 

On no account whatsoever do I think DS should adopt KotORFiles' mod reviewing policy. It was insane; at the height of the site's popularity, the sheer volume was overwhelming. But it might be nice to have a review, say of the mod of the week and/or the week's featured mods. By my reckoning, the output even at a relatively "slow" period like the moment is enough to at least support a MotW series. (And if we could get some basic tutorials up, etc., so much the better. The more the site is active, the more activity it will generate, and the more modders will appear and produce mods).

 

All of this is a (partial) way of addressing my second point, which is...

 

2. We're not reaching the players. As I half-noted above, the players aren't where the modders are any more. We've stuck to LF, to here, and (to a certain extent) to KotORNexus and to Filefront. The players all appear to be on places like reddit, the steam forums, youtube, tumblr... in short, more recent platforms. To a certain extent, we need to put more of a presence out there, too, to draw people here, though without point 1, I'm not sure they'll come.

 

I suppose what I'm saying is that we need a website, and we need more mods here, and we need to be out there, drawing people back to the website. I know, it feels like a lot of work for what is, essentially, a pair of pretty old games. But, if the work is spread enough, and the back-end design is elegant enough, it might give this community more of a fighting chance.

 

I don't mean this as a moan, or as a criticism of site staff or current policies. Just a few thoughts on how/where this site and the community could move forward.

[Rece 63]

I agree. I feel like the community has gone down so much due to either problems with games on newer systems, or just people getting bored... I would love to see this site having a huge selection to download from. Maybe even getting mods that were taken down from PCGameMods (Of course you'd need the authors permission for that even though most of them are gone) But I like what IS is suggesting. I also think that the community would need promise of great upcoming mods. This might sound stupid for me to say, but I think the community needs big mod projects. Adding huge things to the game. Maybe even making mod packs that combines all of a modders mods together or something.

 

Edit: Also as for the mod reviews, what about having youtubers review the mods? And then the to could promote eachother. I.e: Youtuber promotes DS, vise-versa

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

I think Xuul has the right idea going with Kotor mods on youtube. Rece too, great review of the Force powers too, as Full Force mod was scripted all by me

 

I'm all for bringing Kotor to more popular platforms as I think It'd be a great idea, but I think a lot of the issue is that in terms of new content to play, we haven't really produced a whole lot of quality content mods in the 10ish years we've been around. Don't get me wrong, what we do have is amazing and a labor of love, but the efficiency is just terrible for making large scale mods. That's why I want to work to change that by creating a more integrated toolset. It's hard to though when I'm already balancing time between work, school, free time and this.

 

At any rate, I think if people are up for it, and dedicated enough, we should formulate some sort of plan to revamp Kotor popularity. Seems the TSLRCM hype has gone down, but something to bring it back up would be nice, nicely timed with jumping on Twitter, Reddit, (Tinder? lol) and other places

[Rece 63]

Yes! Tinder so that we can find kotor fans alike to date right? I'm just kidding, but getting out to social media and spreading the word through friends and other gamers/youtubers or even twitch(ers?) Woould be great imo too

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

Yes! Tinder so that we can find kotor fans alike to date right? I'm just kidding, but getting out to social media and spreading the word through friends and other gamers/youtubers or even twitch(ers?) Woould be great imo too

 

Again, would be nice to have some new content to play through as it seems people have these games memorized by now.

[Rece 63]

Again, would be nice to have some new content to play through as it seems people have these games memorized by now.

Well, although this is only a small bit related. I've been thinking of doing a youtube video with a couple of modders or maybe a lot of modders on say, a skype call or something and have everyone discuss there plans for their new mods or something, and have people come up with ideas for possible mods and then have these modders collaborate over who could do what part of the mod. You know, basically a discussion about modding. Have them all work on one big mod that maybe the community wants or something like that.

 

Edit: Although I know that'd be very difficult

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

Haha, that sounds great... just don't have me be the moderator as we tried doing a "modcast" of TSLRCM and M4-78... and the M4-78 audio was absolutely terrible, which I actually ended up losing anyways.

[Rece 63]

Nah, I'd be running the show. I'm just kidding. But I think it would just be fun to do that with different modders, and split of tasks for a single huge expansion project or something. Also to have maybe some community members suggest a storyline mod or something as added content or something. Like, one person do the textures, another the modules, someone with items or something like that.

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

Nah, I'd be running the show. I'm just kidding. But I think it would just be fun to do that with different modders, and split of tasks for a single huge expansion project or something. Also to have maybe some community members suggest a storyline mod or something as added content or something. Like, one person do the textures, another the modules, someone with items or something like that.

 

It sounds good in theory, but I fear this has been what's been tried before with modding teams, and it's hard to keep focus on a project with so many different people. I don't know how much it would work better now, but I'm convinced that if we build up the tools enough to make it super easy to do, maybe we can get a few more people in on the action.

[Rece 63]

It sounds good in theory, but I fear this has been what's been tried before with modding teams, and it's hard to keep focus on a project with so many different people. I don't know how much it would work better now, but I'm convinced that if we build up the tools enough to make it super easy to do, maybe we can get a few more people in on the action.

Sounds good Yeah I would think that it'd be a bit tough considering there might be a lot of people. If we PM a couple of people about the possibility once most mod tools are improved, we could contact specific people for specific jobs about the mod or something. Even if the mod would take a long time to complete. I think it'd be worth it in the long run

[InSidious 237]

I agree. I feel like the community has gone down so much due to either problems with games on newer systems, or just people getting bored... I would love to see this site having a huge selection to download from. Maybe even getting mods that were taken down from PCGameMods (Of course you'd need the authors permission for that even though most of them are gone) But I like what IS is suggesting. I also think that the community would need promise of great upcoming mods. This might sound stupid for me to say, but I think the community needs big mod projects. Adding huge things to the game. Maybe even making mod packs that combines all of a modders mods together or something.

 

Edit: Also as for the mod reviews, what about having youtubers review the mods? And then the to could promote eachother. I.e: Youtuber promotes DS, vise-versa

 

Well, thanks for the support.

 

The technical issues certainlly haven't helped the games' popularity, but I still think the major issues are (1) that the games are old (which VP touches on below); (2) that we aren't reaching the players, and (3) that we need a more accessible approach. No. 1 we can't do anything about; two and three, though....

 

As for promise of great upcoming mods, the trouble is that most "great" mods take a lot of time and energy, and so predicting release (or even providing regular updates on progress) isn't always possible. There are plenty of big mod projects in the works (e.g., Revenge of Revan, Rhen Var, Quanon's Nar Shaddaa project), but updates on their progress are necessarily occasional. Mod packs are possible, if you can get the modder to agree, and thoe might be another possibility (although I wonder how many players are going to want all of a modders work in one package, or even most...)

 

Youtube reviews are a nice idea, but my experience of stuff like youtube videos and podcasts is that they get even less engagement than text posts. Even now, there's a huge amount of KotOR material on YT, but very little of it has more than a handful of views. Still, it's worth a try...

 

 

I think Xuul has the right idea going with Kotor mods on youtube. Rece too, great review of the Force powers too, as Full Force mod was scripted all by me

 

I'm all for bringing Kotor to more popular platforms as I think It'd be a great idea, but I think a lot of the issue is that in terms of new content to play, we haven't really produced a whole lot of quality content mods in the 10ish years we've been around. Don't get me wrong, what we do have is amazing and a labor of love, but the efficiency is just terrible for making large scale mods. That's why I want to work to change that by creating a more integrated toolset. It's hard to though when I'm already balancing time between work, school, free time and this.

 

At any rate, I think if people are up for it, and dedicated enough, we should formulate some sort of plan to revamp Kotor popularity. Seems the TSLRCM hype has gone down, but something to bring it back up would be nice, nicely timed with jumping on Twitter, Reddit, (Tinder? lol) and other places

 

So, a kind of marketing campaign? If we did it right, it could work; though we'd need something big/new to draw people in...

 

You're right that the amount of new content over the last 10 years hasn't been huge, but I think actually listing it would make for a slightly surprising read in terms of the amount that actually has been released:

 

A Lost Sith in a Nameless World by FrantFire

Brotherhood of Shadow: Solomon's Revenge by Silveredge

Challenge Sith by Mindtwistah

Czerka Commando by evarmint

Dark Side Romance Resolution by Strudel Man

Davik on the Ebon Hawk by Mindtwistah

Jedi Fight Training by D27 Star Admiral and Canderis

deathdisco's lightsaber forms for K1

Motta's Secret Love Story by Mindtwistah

Revan's Choice Beta by DarthJebus05

Tatooine Job Office by TimBob12

The Lost Apprentice by Marius Fett

The Romancing of Bastila by Darth Shan and swfan28

Two Alternate Endings by Kristy Kistic

Recruitable Kay by Inyri

Knight of Alderaan Beta Jedi Master 76

RedHawke's Story mods

Tomb of Exar Kun by deathdisco

Yavin IV by MotOR/Kainzorus Prime and Master Zionosis

K1RP

My lightsaber and force forms mod

Zombie planet by Lit Ridl

Sleheyron demo by SithSpecter

World war 2 new area beta by SithSpecter

Quanon's Temple mod

Tomb of Jesset Dal'Kest by Darkkender

 

This is just a list of stuff I could either remember or find quickly on KotORFiles, which adds a significant amount of new material to K1. I think part of the problem has been focus, and a tendency for individual modders to release quite small mods, rather than group efforts (which perhaps inevitably have never worked out that well...). So again, I think part of the problem is collating what exists and directing people to it.

 

 

Again, would be nice to have some new content to play through as it seems people have these games memorized by now.

 

I can think of one project which is close to completion for K2... but on the subject at hand, the last couple of months have seen the release of The Jedi Masters 3.0, my lightsaber forms mod, and K1R. I think all of those count as "new content", but the interest level still seems quite low, unfortunately.

 

 

Well, although this is only a small bit related. I've been thinking of doing a youtube video with a couple of modders or maybe a lot of modders on say, a skype call or something and have everyone discuss there plans for their new mods or something, and have people come up with ideas for possible mods and then have these modders collaborate over who could do what part of the mod. You know, basically a discussion about modding. Have them all work on one big mod that maybe the community wants or something like that.

 

Edit: Although I know that'd be very difficult

 

Sorry, but that sounds like a great way to raise false hopes/expectations. I applaud the sentiment, but we have enough difficulties with finishing the projects we've got... As for community projects... we've tried to get collaborations going in the past, and they just haven't worked that well. The project for K2 I mention above is a good example. It's passed through the hands of about half a dozen modders now, all of whom have fixed a little bit and passed it on because time and enthusiasm have waned (or skill hasn't gone far enough, or a dozen other reasons).

 

 

Nah, I'd be running the show. I'm just kidding. But I think it would just be fun to do that with different modders, and split of tasks for a single huge expansion project or something. Also to have maybe some community members suggest a storyline mod or something as added content or something. Like, one person do the textures, another the modules, someone with items or something like that.

 

My experience of community suggestions is that they tend not to be great. If it's more complex than fighting an evil dark Jedi and his legions of minions, it tends not to come up in community discussions for some reason. As for splitting up tasks... again, we've tried a lot in the past, and what tends to happen is one person disappears and leaves the project pretty much dead in the water and/or requiring significant reconstruction. Plus, people work at different paces, etc.

 

 

It sounds good in theory, but I fear this has been what's been tried before with modding teams, and it's hard to keep focus on a project with so many different people. I don't know how much it would work better now, but I'm convinced that if we build up the tools enough to make it super easy to do, maybe we can get a few more people in on the action.

 

 

Sounds good Yeah I would think that it'd be a bit tough considering there might be a lot of people. If we PM a couple of people about the possibility once most mod tools are improved, we could contact specific people for specific jobs about the mod or something. Even if the mod would take a long time to complete. I think it'd be worth it in the long run

 

OK, so shall we add modding tools to the agenda? I agree KT is now temperamental and creaky, and often not great for the purpose of what we want to do. Though I still think the main problem is the workload itself, the lack of interest in executing other peoples' ideas, and the problems with online collaborations.

 

Plus, to be honest, I've found that a lot of the ideas for storyline mods that float around end up being quite dumb, to be honest, and to lack any real depth or replayability. That doesn't just refer to released mods either, but to works in progress, too - the projects all tend to be very linear. And the dialogue is usually terrible, too.

 

Still, perhaps if we drew up (1) a list of existing added content mods for both games; (2) a list of existing projects for both games; (3) a clear idea of where toolkit issues lie.

 

For my part, I can provide a list of K1 and K2 mods I'm currently working on, or have ideas for/have been sitting on for a while. But my experience of announcing projects like this is that it comes with (1) zero useful help, and (2) an expectation on the part of the reader that they will get to see progress now and a release in maybe a week.

 

And this kind of illustrates the problem that these kinds of things would take a huge amount of work to resolve in any useful way. Whereas a website front-end and an increased number of mods uploaded here would help resolve some of the community issues with a lower intensity of work required from individual members.

[Rece 63]

What if there were some way to continue the story after MaLachor, and follow any comics or books that are based around the same time? Hell, maybe even follow some stuff from ToR (Even though that game is horrible IMO) I know anything now adays is tough whether it's a collaboration project or not.

[stevo456 0]

would it also be possible to take the assets from kotor and use them with the tsl version of the engine considering they run off the same one it should be plausible I mean if fallout 3 and new vegas can be merged  with a mod then why not kotor and tsl

[Rece 63]

That's true. My friend was also telling me about a mod that combines multiple oblivions and skyrim together u believe.

[stevo456 0]

yes its 2 mods called skywind (for morowind and skyrim )and skyblivion (for skyrim and oblivion)

[DeadMan 103]

would it also be possible to take the assets from kotor and use them with the tsl version of the engine considering they run off the same one it should be plausible I mean if fallout 3 and new vegas can be merged  with a mod then why not kotor and tsl

Well, main problem with merging K1 and TSL is that it violates their EULA, so it's considered illegal and not allowed in most KotOR-related modding communities.

And even if it were allowed, there's a lot of technical difficulties.

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

Would it also be possible to take the assets from KotOR and use them with the TSL version of the engine? Considering they run off the same one, it should be plausible I mean if Fallout 3 and New Vegas can be merged with a mod then why not KotOR and TSL,

Please read this thread regarding this site's stance on porting. Feel free to discuss this in PMs - but not publicly.

 

Back to the actual topic at hand: as  As Tyvokka is the site owner, I've asked him to provide commentary on this thread on Darth InSidious' suggestions. He's mentioned a few comments to me via PMs but it would far more beneficial to address these comments in a public forum.

[Tyvokka 198]

As I have discussed a bit via PM with others I do like the idea of a site revamp, but this takes both time and money which at the moment are both hard to find . But I do plan on this happening once Invision Power Board v4 comes out(RC is out as of last week) as I don't want to make a new theme/layout just to have it recreated in a few months time. I think really what we need in the community, it a more active news / content section, as fresh content does seem to keep the masses coming back and in addition I probably should get the twitter bot working again as that seemed to help SEO quite a bit. But I agree with most all of the suggestions here, it just will take time and man power to implement . Hopefully we can make it happen in the short term. 

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

So, a kind of marketing campaign? If we did it right, it could work; though we'd need something big/new to draw people in...

 

You're right that the amount of new content over the last 10 years hasn't been huge, but I think actually listing it would make for a slightly surprising read in terms of the amount that actually has been released:

 

 

This is just a list of stuff I could either remember or find quickly on KotORFiles, which adds a significant amount of new material to K1. I think part of the problem has been focus, and a tendency for individual modders to release quite small mods, rather than group efforts (which perhaps inevitably have never worked out that well...). So again, I think part of the problem is collating what exists and directing people to it.

I was more referring to story/total conversion mods. We should get a tally of all of those mods and see what that comes to. Those seem to be the mods that most people want to play. Sure the occasional enhancement is great, but I think people want new experiences from the game. TSLRCM and M4-78 brought new actual experiences to the player. 

 

 

 

My experience of community suggestions is that they tend not to be great. If it's more complex than fighting an evil dark Jedi and his legions of minions, it tends not to come up in community discussions for some reason. As for splitting up tasks... again, we've tried a lot in the past, and what tends to happen is one person disappears and leaves the project pretty much dead in the water and/or requiring significant reconstruction. Plus, people work at different paces, etc.

 

C'mon we could have created at least one good Kotor III mod out of all of those suggestions. Statistically speaking, one of them should have been successful.

 

OK, so shall we add modding tools to the agenda? I agree KT is now temperamental and creaky, and often not great for the purpose of what we want to do. Though I still think the main problem is the workload itself, the lack of interest in executing other peoples' ideas, and the problems with online collaborations.

 

A way to ease up the workload is the idea. If I want to place coordinates in git file, it always comes down to using the whereami armband and copy/pasting all of those values into the git file... it's just terrible. Much like the map editor, I want to be able to add just an assload of characters to a module, I should be able to do that super fast and super easy. If I want to make a trigger, that should be super easy. There are just a ton of things in Kotor modding that should be super easy to do, but just end up being a pain in the ass to do.

 

 

Still, perhaps if we drew up (1) a list of existing added content mods for both games; (2) a list of existing projects for both games; (3) a clear idea of where toolkit issues lie.

 Yes.

 

 

And this kind of illustrates the problem that these kinds of things would take a huge amount of work to resolve in any useful way. Whereas a website front-end and an increased number of mods uploaded here would help resolve some of the community issues with a lower intensity of work required from individual members.

 Yes, true. I however, have no idea how to ramp up the website nor how to do web programming required for the massive archiving of these files. Making the new tools is what I want to do and increasing our mod output will certainly help.

 

What if there were some way to continue the story after MaLachor, and follow any comics or books that are based around the same time? Hell, maybe even follow some stuff from ToR (Even though that game is horrible IMO) I know anything now adays is tough whether it's a collaboration project or not.

 

I like this idea and have proposed it in the past, but the fact of the matter is that there's not much else to do after Malachor. Even if you were allowed to go back through the game and finish up missions, there's not a whole lot going on.

 

As I have discussed a bit via PM with others I do like the idea of a site revamp, but this takes both time and money which at the moment are both hard to find . But I do plan on this happening once Invision Power Board v4 comes out(RC is out as of last week) as I don't want to make a new theme/layout just to have it recreated in a few months time. I think really what we need in the community, it a more active news / content section, as fresh content does seem to keep the masses coming back and in addition I probably should get the twitter bot working again as that seemed to help SEO quite a bit. But I agree with most all of the suggestions here, it just will take time and man power to implement . Hopefully we can make it happen in the short term.

I would be willing to donate for site maintenance/revamp/upgrades, for what it's worth.

[Fair Strides 509]

I agree with VP on all counts. In particular, I am able and willing to shell out some money toward this, but I need at least a rough estimate to get things started...

[Rece 63]

I'd be willing to maybe pay some. But first I still need to get FS his game

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

I agree with VP on all counts. In particular, I am able and willing to shell out some money toward this, but I need at least a rough estimate to get things started...

Why not sell t-shirts with some Deadly Stream logo via Café Press or Zazzle and raise funds that way? At least the consumer will get a physical item for their contribution.

[Rece 63]

Why not sell t-shirts with some Deadly Stream logo via Café Press or Zazzle and raise funds that way? At least the consumer will get a physical item for their contribution.

 

I would love that! I'm always looking at Deadlystream at school when we're using chromebooks every so often, and people are always wondering what this site is. Also in my first period today I discovered about 4 people who used to play kotor. I  showed them one of my videos and one of the mod lists for it, and they never knew that there was so much to add onto the game. I told them to check out this site so I think we might have 4 new people in the kotor community

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

Why not sell t-shirts with some Deadly Stream logo via Café Press or Zazzle and raise funds that way? At least the consumer will get a physical item for their contribution.

 

While that sounds great, I would want to make sure all my funds go directly to running the site, personally.

 

However, designing a high-quality DeadlyStream T-shirt would be awesome. Show off some solidarity for us Kotor peeps.

 

I wonder what logo we would use though without any copyright or patent issues.

[Rece 63]

I think it'd be cool if the t-shirt was black, with the Deadlystream logo and maybe some pictures of a mod or something like that. I could whip something up in gimp and see how it turns out (Although my image editing skills aren't the best) If someone could send me a fullscale image of the deadly stream logo that'd be great

 

 

Also what would the resolution of the whole image have to be?

Edited March 4, 2015 by Rece