[page=Introduction]
It seems to me that many of you are starting unoriginal mods based on popular stuff, like the many Dawn of the Dead mods, or anime mods, or anything that is extremely popular at the moment. This is just a small guide for you people.
[page=Step 1]
Ask yourself "Has this been done before?" Ignore all the gameplay features you "will be adding" and what you plan to do, and focus on simply the underlying history/story. Has someone based a mod off of this yet?
If you said yes, abandon your current mod idea. There is no real reason why there should be 4 DOTD mods being made. Ask to join a similar mod's team. You will get much more accomplished and may suggest ideas to the leaders/coders.
If you said no, congratulations! You have an original (Well, not done before) mod idea. God knows we need more diversity in the modding community. God bless you for carrying out your patriotic duty to ModDB.
[page=Step 2]
Research your material! I can't stress this enough. If it is a historical based mod, say off of the Vietnam War, research the Vietnam War! Read about the protests, the civil movements, the hippie culture, anything related to Vietnam. If it is based on external (Not your own) fiction, read the book! Then read criticism, study the symbolism, note the satire, remark on the tone. If it is based on internal fiction, and you have done step 1, flesh out the story into a full blown novel.
[page=Step 3]
The time has come for a features list. More often then not people do this first, and do steps 1 and 2 second or even never. That is an extremely large blunder. You ALWAYS do steps 1 and 2 first, because if you don't, you are just doing another "goddamed clone". Try and include unique features that are not featured in other mods. Instead of doing a "buy" system, do a "salvage" system. Make it similar to what you would want, but different in a way that makes it intriguing.
[page=Step 4]
Time to make the almighty design document. This is a chronicle of all you plan to do with the mod. Without one of these, you are lost. Your mod will never get done. The design document, or "bible", should include the following:
Name
Current Team Members
Platform
Ideal number of players
Description
Features
Current work done
And then annotate at the bottom with your name. More often than not you can skip the "current work done" part, because at this point you haven't done any work. You only really need to include that if you are updating the "bible"
[page=Step 5]
Had you going there for a second, didn't I! There is no step 5. You now have a fully fledged mod idea. You can release the design document to other people to attract interest, or recruit privately, or abandon it altogether. After this ESSENTIAL part of making a mod you are now ready to tackle the job itself.
This tutorial is really an editorial, of sorts. One page would have been enough space for the content. It does lay out some basic common-sense ideas that many young noobie would-be-modders overlook, especially Step 1. This doc may indeed discourage some of the clueless ones from making more mod trash, and that's a good thing. But if someone decides to do a mod without first understanding the basic principles laid out here, this doc isn't going to help much.
Is it me or is it gone again?
Seems Helpful.
--b
I started my Dawn of the Dead T.C mod long before the remake ever came out & when there wasn't all of these mods springing up based on it or zombies in general, as my T.C mod is based on the original 1978 movie & it was an original idea at the time. So I think I can be forgiven that one.
However I have to say that I think that having so many mods on the go at the same time that are base on the same thing is a good thing as it's well known in the modding community that only 5% of all moads ever get finished or released, so at least this way there is agood chance of seeing at least one good mod come out of it, on the subject.
I would also like to add however, that I could never quite understand why so many modders choose to make mods or T.C's on subjects that are already officialy avalible as retail games ( the many Matrix mods for example ), as this seem pointless to me, & the only reason I can think of as to why they would do this is that they enjoyed the game so much that they wanted more of it but it didn't come with modding tool's, so they used another game engines modding tools to instead.
don`t get it