Hello World

Some introductions are in order.
This blog is created to document of the development of a standalone massive mod, Hoddminir.
The project started some years ago with a pen and paper DnD role-playing game where I was the gamemaster, my first time as one I must add. I put massive amounts of time into the world design. Drawing maps, writing the history, thinking up interesting characters and rewriting DnD rules to fit the world I wanted. And I loved it :)
Nothing beats the completely unexpected behavior of your players exploring your world and making it their own. But nothing last forever, today most of the gaming group has moved, to different cities, countries and hemispheres (!). And on my computer is a huge folder of an entire world just sitting there, full of ideas.
Well, what to do?
What if I made the world in a computer game...
But I know nothing of programing, so I started out in Never Winter Nights 2, it had a pretty nice Tool Set for making mods. After a lot of frustration I had manged to learn enough to make nice areas, but the limitations of the game made me give up. I wanted some thing that felt alive.
And here is were TES4 Oblivion comes in. No more small closed areas, but beautiful big world to explore and nice NPCs.
I downloaded the Construction Set, a modding tool developed for Oblivion, and started playing around. It was hard. But I am now starting to get the hang of things, largely with the help of an excellent Wiki.
Now I'm working on a height map and testing it out in the game, learning about LOD meshes, textures, maps and unfortunately the limitations of Oblivions Construction set. My idea of a HUGE world looks to be impossible in Oblivion, but it can handle a big one, with some workarounds. And then there is TES5 Skyrim, the new game that will come in November. From what I have seen it looks amazing, with nice thing from a modders point of view, like running water, actual falling snow, real-time conversations with NPC and occupations for players and NPCs. And of course there will be a Construction set for Skyrim.
For the first time ever I can't wait for the Swedish rainy, dark and cold November :)

/E