Introducing: Community Mods

Modding
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What are community mods:

Community mods are mods, typically large ones, that are made of, essentially, a bunch of smaller mod that can have been made by different modders in the community. Necessarily overseeing the entire modder team (and responsible for it’s overall balance, stockness and internal integration.), so basically mod moderators. This team preferably has all mod skills present: designer, artist, scripter, jack-o-all-trades, and preferably have multiple of them, as life tends to have distracting effect on people. This team can put up a wish list of single-mod-sized requests, and can accept “mod donations” from modders who want to contribute to that community mod.

Why have community mods

These are for the big, big projects that many a modder and many a player might want, but that no modder has the resources, skill and dare to attemp to do. Contributing to a community mod mean that

  • a modder could work on a system/ part of a system that isn’t worthwhile in it’s own mod (because it needs other parts),
  • allows them to take up a system without needing to worry about the entire thing,
  • allows modders to make only the parts they are good at in a system while relying on others with betters skills to do the other parts (think good at scripting, but bad at art making),
  • and allows all mods to be coordinated into one single vision (which is a pet peeve of mine when it comes to having lots of mods, they are often not completely in touch with one-another), through the ComMod Moderator Modder Team. And I mean in touch in all kinds of ways, any way that you can imagine the combination of the two mods causing probelems, from bare functioning to being unbalanced or having plot holes.

Bottom line:

This is basically an attempt to break up giant dev-quality modding projects into bearable chunks, and therby make them more realistic. I know how ambitious I’m being, so I’ll just draw your attention again to fact that there is emphasis on the word ‘attempt’.

Things like these have been done before

A notable example of this is Real Solar System in Kerbal Space Program, which aimed to make KSP have a difficulty more again real life. The main difference I’m advocating for is to have a team that regularly meets to discuss the high level direction, balance internal integration and stockness (i.e. how well it fits withion stonehearths and tries to accomplish stonehearths goals).

2 Likes
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Sounds like a great idea Niko :slight_smile: but are you trying to set this up or ?

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Well, before any project can be announced by anyone, you first need to know if the community is up for it. Are there more things that need to be talked about? How does a CMMMT (Community Mod Moderator Modder Team) handle the subtleties and sensitivities of using code and art from other contributors than themselves, etc. How does such a team communicate amongst itself and other modders (mainly when it comes to documentation, and other detailed stuff) and what types of mod projects would have enough souls’ support in the modding community to form a team which can work on that subject. How do these teams recruit etc. I was after the discussion on these topics.

I understand the title might imply that I was going to set something up, I’m sorry.

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Well currently I still have a bunch of ideas and complicated stuff learning I want to work out on my own but if something arises where I can help a bit I’d chip in :slight_smile: but making hearthlings more viking–will still occupy me for the next few weeks I guess :’)