Bethesda Game Full-Conversions Thread

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Bethesda Game Full-Conversions (Forums : Development Banter : Bethesda Game Full-Conversions)		Post Reply
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Owhalen	Jun 20 2012, 10:17pm Anchor
Owhalen	Hey, I'm new to the whole idea of full-scale conversions of games. I was curious as to how well Bethesda games such as Fallout 3/NV or Skyrim lend themselves to full conversions. I know of several story-altering mods in Skyrim that change, remove, or skip entire core parts of the storyline, but I'm curious as to exactly how much can be altered and whether or not a full conversion would be possible/practical on any of the Bethesda games.
feillyne	Jun 21 2012, 3:06am Anchor
feillyne	Pretty much everything can be altered, a full conversion is definitely possible but very time-consuming.
formerlyknownasMrCP	Jun 21 2012, 11:22pm Anchor
formerlyknownasMrCP	They can do it, but I'd argue there are far far better platforms out there now to mod TCs on. You'd only want to TC on their games if you were experienced with their tools enough, if you're not I'd argue you'd be better off going with a standalone engine as you'll find the tools are much nicer overall- though you'd have to implement your own database management.
feillyne	Jun 22 2012, 4:53pm Anchor
feillyne	Well if you made a total conversion based on your own intellectual property and completely your own assets, perhaps you could strike a deal and sell it on some heavy royalty-based license. Some publishers go for such a solution if both IP & assets are your own and money's involved, and if you have time to negotiate. And it's likely that you could still have a free mod version available even if you'd be selling a more polished version as a video game. (If you're going for a totally noncommercial project, the only way to have it enjoyed by everyone would be an indie project but then you would have to forget about Bethesda's tools because most likely they wouldn't agree to a free indie-based TC.) Edited by: feillyne
formerlyknownasMrCP	Jun 23 2012, 1:25am Anchor
formerlyknownasMrCP	and I wouldn't expect Bethesda to co-operate with indies anyway, they've got a history there of not playing nice. I'd just steer clear of em.
feillyne	Jun 23 2012, 3:58am Anchor
feillyne	If money's involved, they could reconsider. You don't need to expect them to be honest, though. But IMHO, they would go for a commercial indie paying huge royalties to them. Edited by: feillyne
formerlyknownasMrCP	Jun 23 2012, 1:34pm Anchor
formerlyknownasMrCP	feillyne wrote:If money's involved, they could reconsider. You don't need to expect them to be honest, though. But IMHO, they would go for a commercial indie paying huge royalties to them. They've never come across as the type that'd agree to a royalty though, they'd likely sue you at even the suggestion of using their IP for profit, even if you included them in on it. And their hacked up version of Gamebryo apparently isn't for sale either so yeah, I doubt they'd co-operate.
feillyne	Jun 23 2012, 1:39pm Anchor
feillyne	It's something different than a suggestion, meant rather some serious negotiation if an indie developer could pull something like that quite diplomatically. But you're right about the Gamebryo part - I completely overlooked that. But it's still about an indie made with the Creation Kit without access to the source code / engine itself, without buying it, so they keep it closed. It's along the lines of somebody makes a successful TC mod -> negotiates with Bethesda if they'd do a commercial release of it with most profits for them -> Bethesda publishes it, indie developers get something out of it (but if they succeeded by any chance, they'd get very little little it seems, by all probability) That could also change their attitude towards indies if that would make profit for them, sadly. Everything has its own merits and also flaws - but as you suggested, all of this would be highly improbable at best... yet hardly impossible (everything is possible if you have means and some luck). Edited by: feillyne