|
|
 |
Preview of the TES Construction Set
Based on Hands-On Experience
Yes, yes, so I've been playing around with a preview build of the TES Construction Set for about a week or so now, who wants to touch me? Despite my strong urge to lock the CD away in a dark, dank cellar, and refer to it exclusively as "My Precious" while hunched over rubbing my hands together, a condition of my receiving it was that I write up a preview and let all of you people reading this know what a great and useful tool it really is. Unfortunately, even though the preview build of the editor I received included 100% of the game's content, I have been forbidden to do an expose piece, going through each and every list and revealing every creature, item, and quest in the game. Rather, I'm going to give an in-depth overview of the editor, and try to explain what goes into making quality content. So, on with the show.
Well after playing around with it for a week, I can assure you of one thing. The Elder Scrolls Construction Set makes it fabulously easy to create utter, pure crap. Never have I come across an editor that makes it so easy to produce works of such staggering crappiness. Forget WorldCraft and QERadiant and all those tools which make the user work and slave over their crap for hours on end; The TES ConSet allows one to throw together random, clashing pieces creating a functional crappy something in as little as five to ten minutes. Just look at this total crap I built myself in about five minutes:
The lesson here is that like any powerful, creative tool, all the way from QERadiant to the paintbrush and canvas, practice makes perfect, and generally speaking, creating something that looks good and is functional takes three components: planning, practice, and time. So while I fully expect that raging rivers of crap will flow from the fingertips and mousepads of budding mod authors as from an army of diaperless newborns for a month or two, I also expect that quality will ramp up very quickly. Thankfully, the editor also makes it very easy to create works of staggering beauty, as are evident in the creations of the Morrowind artists and designers revealed thus far. So in this preview I hope to give nascent mod authors and people not in the know a taste of the fantastic abilities of the TES ConSet as well as a few pointers on good design straight from myself: a person who has used the editor both as a fan and as a Bethesda clutter monkey, junior grade.
|
|
|
|
|
