Making a Mod - Best Practices

This article is long, but taking the time to read it might help you save a lot of time when making a mod.

This article is designed to give modders things to keep in mind while creating their project. Remember that these are just guidelines intended to help you – you don't have to follow them, but they may teach you something useful.

Starting Out

Scoping Out Your Project

In order to make sure your mod gets released, it is extremely important to make it under a manageable scope. This means that you must avoid being overly ambitious. Creating a project that is too massive will likely end up getting cancelled. Many modders may come up with interesting and big ideas that sound doable on paper, but later realize that it is a lot more work than first anticipated.

The best way to combat this is to create a limited scope from the start. It is much better to be conservative and create a project that is smaller than what you think you can do. A small project is better than a cancelled project.

If you would like to create a big project, it is best to first create a small one, which will give you an idea of how big you can go in the next project. Two small projects will teach you more than a single big one.

Tip: Don't plan your project with play time or the number of levels in mind. This will end up in having a lot of content left to make and no ideas for it. Instead, gather your gameplay ideas and design around that. It is easier to add onto a complete project than fill an unfinished one.

And remember: quality over quantity. Players will enjoy a unique and well crafted mod even if it is short more than one that is artificially expanded just to be long. You will also have much more fun and satisfaction if you can finish a project before it bores you.

Examples

Here are some cases which might help you scope your project:

• It took FG, a commercial studio with more than a dozen workers, 5 years to make SOMA (25 maps). If your mod is going to have even 3 times less maps and only a little voice acting, the development process is still going to be very long and hard.

In experience of modders:

• Carefully detailed, 3-hours-long mods with about 12 maps take 2 years to make (single, experienced developer)
• A 40-minutes-long mod with 2 big maps took a month to make (in a team with prior experience)

Collaboration

Working on a mod alone is entirely possible, but it is recommended to assemble a team. Whether you need help with level design, programming or something else, it is a good thing to work in a group.

That said, do not assume working in a team is always easier than working alone; there are upsides and downsides.

Upsides:

• Teammates can concentrate their skills in a particular area (level design, programming, writing, etc.). The resulting output might have higher quality because of this.
• You get to combine the best ideas of many people.
• Others will notice things worth improving which you might miss.
• Teammates can push each other to improve, which results in not settling with mediocre effects.
• Teammates get to learn from each other.

Downsides:

• You will get less creative control
• You might come across conflicts in creative vision and the way the project is heading
• Some people may not work, or may not know what to work on.
• Incomparably more time will be spent on organisation.
• Deadlines need to be set - without them, the project will come to a stall.

Having a team requires managing it and making sure work is actually getting done, which is a considerable challenge.

Idea: If you are going to work in a team, make sure to create the mod idea together. An unfortunately popular phenomenon is people joining a team, getting a sneak-peek at the mod and losing interest. Creating the mod premise together can help keep the members invested.

Your first instinct might be to invite anyone who wants to help - however, a good practice is to keep the team small. Adding more people to the team does not mean more work will get done. The more people you have, the more time gets spent managing them.

Remember, if you can't get people to work on your mod, even having someone to only give you feedback is very helpful. Furthermore, participating in public discussions about modding can help you and others learn. This can be done in the modding channels on the FG Discord server. Share your work and ask questions!

Mod Design

One of the most useful questions you can ask yourself is "Why should someone play my mod?" It's a hard question, but if you can answer it well, you're on the right track. Think about what other mods are out there, and what they offer. Does your mod offer something new to the players? Is what you offer enough to interest players who are busy playing other mods? Even if you cannot answer this question, just thinking about it will probably help your mod.

Compete With Gameplay and Story

Do not just focus on classic horror, be creative and make mods with interesting story and gameplay. It doesn't even have to be horror to begin with. The issue with horror games is that it's very hard to make something unique and interesting for players to engage. Horror cannot be repeated, which is why it is recommended to break boundaries. You don't have to worry about the commercial viability of new gameplay styles or bizarre stories, you can try out truly new ideas. Most mods cannot compete on a content level (maps, models, sounds, etc) with commercial products. They've got teams of artists with years of experience. Beat them with your gameplay and creativity. Players will play a mod that has very little in the way of new content, but has interesting story and some new gameplay thrown into the mix.

Understand the Engine

You really should read the documentation of the game you want to mod. The thing you'll learn most by doing so isn't whether you can do X with the engine, but rather how X should be done so it works well. There will be multiple ways to achieve what you want to create, but only one way would be the best and correct way to do it, without affecting too much on performance, code problems, and other risky stuff. If you learn how to code properly, then you can avoid bugs later in the development of your mod. If you learn how to create materials properly, you will have an easier time altering and adding new materials in the future.

Managing development

When working on a mod, it is important to keep track of your and other's work, while making sure everyone knows what left to be done, what is already done and more. The following section provides tips, links to useful tools and guides which will help you to manage the project.

Keep in mind these are very important even for one-person projects! Keeping track of work always gets one far - it helps you plan and remember things.

Setting up a Scrum Board

In short, a scrum board is a board used for keeping track the team's development progress. It is used for:

• Creating tasks
• Assigning tasks
• Tracking what is already done
• Tracking what needs to be done
• Tracking what is being worked on
• Tracking bugs

One of the free tools which provide that is Trello

Version control

There is nothing worse than not being able to track your work or recover older versions of your project.

Systems such as Git help to keep track of changes and back them up. Whenever you commit your work, a snapshot of the work is saved. In case something goes wrong, you will be able to go back to any older commit. Commits are stored inside a repository.

One of the most important feature of Git is collaboration. Working on all sorts of files with multiple people will get messy very fast if you just send them back and forth. Git allows multiple people to work on the same project simultaneously, and (after setting up) requires only a few clicks to upload your work and update the work of others. It also helps you resolve any conflicts when multiple people edit the same file.

Read more about Setting up an Online Repository.

Online Presence

You will most likely start sharing your creations before the mod is published. Here are some things to keep in mind.

Learn to Take Criticism

To do: This still feels condescending. Find a way to write this in a brief and neutral manner.

When sharing your work online and with your team, criticism will be inevitable. If someone did not like what you made or suggested a better way to achieve something, there is no reason for you to get angry. Take constructive criticism to heart, and ignore (i.e. don't reply to) malicious comments. How to tell them apart? Good feedback will usually give you hints on what you have to improve. Bad feedback will only say that something is bad.

Taking suggestions from other people doesn't make you less of a person, quite the opposite.

Remember, no matter how harsh, criticism has the purpose of improving your work and its reception further down the line. Think about it like this: You can fix something and improve it now and for the whole mod, or face the same criticism when the mod gets published and after you have already committed to the mistake, making it harder to improve.

Unfortunately, lashing out against criticism is a wide-spread phenomenon. Keep in mind it will affect how others perceive you, especially if it happens in your development team (which will impede development).

Advertising your mod

Make your pages presentable

Your mod page (be it on Steam, ModDB or elsewhere) is the main place where people learn about your mod. A pretty page shows that you care about your mod and hints that the mod is created with care. And vice-versa - messy or bare-bones pages will discourage playes from downloading your mod. The next sections will give you some hints about making a nice online page for a mod.

Idea: Create mod pages once you have a considerable part of your mod to show off and write about

Catchphrase and title

Like in usual game marketing, the first sentence people read about your mod is the most important. It should convey what's unique about your mod, why people should play it and catch attention. Same goes for the title.

Logo

This is an image which will often be the first thing people see about your mod. Make it interesting and unique; don't use generic fonts.

Tip: Using the Amnesia font and/or white text on a black background is the most popular type of logo out there. While it is clean, functional and simple to make, it will blend in with other mods and tell players that your mod is similar to many others.

Trailer

If you have video editing skills, making a trailer will catch people's attention. Making a good trailer goes beyond the scope of this article, but here's some general advice:

• Show the most unique parts about your mod
• Avoid generic music
• Avoid overly bombast slogans (i.e. things you see in AAA game trailers)
• Other than that, trailers are less recognisable than e.g. logos. You can take heavy inspiration from other trailers.
• Use nice fonts
• If you have a logo, use it
• If you can't edit videos well, keep in mind that a bad trailer might do more harm than good.

Screenshots

This ties in to the previous section. Screenshots are (next to a trailer and a catchphrase) in the first 3 most important parts of advertising your mod. Make sure to take screenshots with interesting elements and composition. Also be sure to correct them afterwards.

Mod description

If you managed to catch someone's attention with your logo, title and catchphrase, the next thing they will do is either see the trailer and screenshots or read the description (depending on the website). Regardless of that order, the description helps to convey any information which couldn't be put in the rest of mentioned techniques. This usually includes the story and certain gameplay features (in HPL usually you can't show them without spoilers, so it's better to describe them instead).

Here are some guidelines to make your description more interesting and encourage people to read it:

• Avoid walls of text at all cost. At the very least, divide them into paragraphs.
• Put your catchphrase somewhere on the top of the description.
• The shorter the description, the better. Avoid verbose language. That being said, don't cut information, and don't make it too short!
• Use formatting! Titles, bold text, etc. make the text simpler to read.
• Use lists! They also make the text much easier to read, and can greatly shorten the description.
• If it's possible, use HTML to make your page unique. Set a background image or colour, change the font colour, add shine to it, etc.

Getting out there

Once you have your mod page (or even better, multiple ones) set up, you can do much more to make your mod known. Share the page links on various services, for example along with your best screenshot. Publish updates to keep the attention of followers. And once your mod is published, maybe send it to some YouTubers?

Finishing

Before the mod gets released, it should undergo a series of procedures which will make sure the players have the best experience possible. Remember, first impressions matter - having something broken on release can impact the way your mod is received.

Playtesting

Make sure your mod was tested by other people just before release. It might be surprising, but sometimes things will break even if you can play the entire mod without bugs on your set-up. You can also install a clean version of the game and check if your mod behaves properly there before getting playtesters.

Playtests should be performed on the final versions of the mod. Don't let team members play from their personal versions of the mod! Many hours can be wasted on finding bugs caused by incompatible versions, or realizing the reported bug is already fixed and the playtester had an outdated version.

Tip: Ask Playtesters to take notes. This will get you more bits of feedback.

Bugs and Changes

A complete list of all bugs and changes should be maintained along with their current status. Preferably this should be done in services like Trello. After each playtest, new bugs and necessary changes should be added, and assigned to team members. When a team member has fixed a bug or change, they should submit the new content to the team leader, who should verify that it is fixed and then update the status on the bug list.

Cut or Defer Broken Features

The hardest and unfortunately necessary part of publishing a mod is cutting features. Don't be scared to remove unfinished features - often it can be easier to do that and make sure it doesn't break anything than actually make the feature work.

Beware of feature creep. Make sure feature ideas actually add to the design of the mod and aren't there just because they are cool. It can be surprisingly easy to keep adding features to already existing work instead of actually pushing the development forward.

Cutting features will save you unnecessary time wastes and stress.

Post-Release

So you have released your mod, and soon enough rating and reviews started popping up. Your mod may or may not have been successful, but what comes next is up to you. The best approach is to learn from the feedback you get, see what worked and what didn't, and improve it for the next time. Talk with players, get involved in how they experienced your mod. Don't be afraid if it takes more time than usual to make your next big mod. Good ideas take time to brew, especially for horror games.

Knowing what to fix, what to change, and how to listen to your community is a continuous learning process.

Good luck!

See also

• Category:Modding