Mod Interest(Advice and Market Research)

[sgt.davis]

OK, I honestly have no idea where to put this. But thought this might be best.

Note to moderators: Before moving this to The Armoury please read what this is about And how can I add a poll to this thread?

Some of you might know about Cold of War, some not. But I have come to a crossroad. So you can maybe consider this kind of an advice seeking/poll/market research thread.

Here are the options I'm looking at:
1. Cold of War: Shattering Fronts - This mod is set in the future in a new Ice-Age. The world's alliances and countries are completley different than imagined and a massive war is raging for survival. I continue with this option and make this mod.

2. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R Project - This mod is set in a post-apocalyptic situation. There are safe zones all across the world. The outside world is riddled with mutants, anomalies and Stalkers. Several factions have emerged here and there and often skirmishes erupt between them. Based on Metro 2033 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Or I can take this option and leave Cold of War. I need a better name though.

3. Do my best to try and create both mods.

4. Stop modding and forget about it. And rather just do little side things.

What are your interests? And what would you guys advice me to do?

[Muad'Dib]

No. 4. Maybe you should try animating. The modding community is in dire need of more animators.

[sgt.davis]

Problem is, I have 3DS Max 10. And it can't be used for creating animations for CoH. Should have probably mentioned the problems accompanied with some of these things.

[Celution]

By making a thread like this, it seems to me that you aren't that interested in making a huge mod anymore. To be honest, after seeing the CoW thread since 2009 and no actual progress has been done I think you were a bit too ambitious with CoW, which ruined your motivation to work on it. Sweeten has kinda the same thing at the moment with the Russians in N44.

If I were you I'd either make one of the first 2 mods, but scale them down a lot. Instead of super detailed squads with individual squad members and abilities, try making it more general.

Or, start your own Mod Add-on thread and make cool stuff like special weapons, abilities, upgrades, buildable structures or anything like that. I actually would go for this option because The Ammo Box is kinda dead lately.

[sgt.davis]

Thanks @Celestial! =) I WAS way too ambitious! I had these dreams about it. I would still like to do it but the interest for me is just not so big as it should be. I just kinda lost motivation yeah, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R mod however... I just don't know where to start this time. I don't want to go the same way as with CoW. That's also why I'm asking about the interest in such kind of a mod.

[Lethal Dosage]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is one of my favourite shooters at the moment, seeing a RTS on the CoH engine for it would be great, but it is incredibly ambitious. I'm always rather sceptical about new-ish modders who join the forums declaring some big project. 90% of new modders who come on here with the intentions of doing something big never end up making their first release. They have big ideas, usually little to no skills specific to CoH modding, and they usually start asking for people to join their team before anything more than the idea is fleshed out. It's because that they don't have the skills to do most of the work themselves, don't have the contacts here to get help, and aren't able to convince others to join a team and do the work for them that result in all those mods failing.

Davis, you've been around a while, you stuck to your idea and really put in a good start on your own. You also immersed yourself in the forums learning everything you can, and have become something of a fixture in the Armoury (that's a compliment by the way ). Your a good example of how to stick with it, learn everything you can from the forums, and learn everything you can from experimenting in the Mod Studio (learning by trial and error). But it's not only the lack of base coding skills that cause mod concepts to quietly fade away, its that many of these mods require making much of the models, etc. from scratch, and thats a huge amount of work, the community sees that and most avoid getting involved in it. Pretty much everyone here is caught up in their own projects and don't wish to get involved in some other big project. The best way to get things done is to get started learning the ropes both on these forums and in the Mod Studio, learn everything you can and put it to use in a more humble project. Eventually you'd become known around here and start to make contacts, and joining an established mod (involving a number of known modders) will also help you learn more and gain closer contacts. Eventually you'll have the skills and the contacts to make your grand mod concept a reality, and nothing will be able to stop you.

Davis, you've come a long way, and you've got some skills and some contacts (although you can never have enough), and your known around these parts. My advice is to keep at your old project (Cold of War), and if you've lost interest in it, then take a break, help out a good mod team for a while and improve your skills and get to know more people. Take Celestial's advice and start doing some little add-ons like celestial and i have, that will allow you to play with any ideas you have that are unreleated to your mod, will probably help you learn more about the Mod Studio and the other tools, and will help you become better known around here. Plus the Ammo Box is kinda dead... You don't know how many breaks i've taken from Cross of Iron, and i don't know either. Usually its when i've gotten really into another game, when i've gotten burnt out on modding, or simply when i've run out of things to do on the mod and have to pause to wait for one thing or another. Hell, at the moment i'm helping out another team, and working on my own fun little Snow Battle mod. Now i'm having fun modding again and it no longer feels like a chore, and i'm finding that i'm once again have ideas for my mod and doing little things here and there in it.

Summary
Sorry about the long speech, you'd think i was trying to get elected president of the moon or something. To sum up, take a break, maybe work on something that is quite different for a while (instead of a modern-style mod, see if a WW2 team wants some help), and you'll soon see your interest going back to your Cold of War project after a while, probably just doing little things here and there for a bit.

[sgt.davis]

Yepp, it IS ambitious. Like I said in the other poll thread, I was WAAAY too hasty with CoW.Think I should follow this advice. I'm glad I made these two threads.

Go for it! The moon is not as far away as the sun. And it does still play a role for us down here. I don'y mind long speeches, had MANY of them the past couple of days with this other girl on Facebook. Got a little tiring after a few days though

[Muad'Dib]

Signed. Join an MOD team or make some tank models that no one has done yet. I suggest joining the BFMK mod. We already have a lot of people working on German and Allied tanks, maybe the Pacific Threater is where you need to be. Forget about all the ice and snow, think about a warm tropical beach somewhere in the Pacific...

Also, give animating a try with the Object Editor. Like I mentioned before, the community needs more animators.

[sgt.davis]

Animating with the Object Editor? I thought that has to be done in 3DS Max(in that case its a no go, I have 2010).

Yeah well, I guess I'm attracted to it. Living in South Africa and never seen snow(except on a mountain when flying to Cape Town once) or ice(except in the fridge or hail.)