Modders/programmers/online artists and ArmWrist pain stories
Short version: So anyways, tell me readers... What is the hardest, most difficult on the hand-tendons project you EVER committed yourself to on a computer? It doesn't matter if it's modding, programming, art, some project in a non-Bethesda game, or something I didn't even guess of. Whatever projects you've done online, that resulted in significant aching of the arms or hands, tell me about them, I'm in the mood to read other peoples stories of similar experiences right now.
So uh, tell me your stories of similar experiences, and we can... Idk all be members of the aching-limbs-from-excessive-work-with-a-mouse-and-keyboard-club?
I'll start: So... I'm... So close, extremely close to updating a mod of mine... It took me I think, weeks and weeks and weeks, maybe even about a month or two doing all these updates. The mod in question took over 6 months of my life to develop in the first place, with EVERYTHING being hand placed, by myself.
Including creating an entire world that was close to a mile in real life if all the cells were connected together (judging by my calculations anyways)... Navmeshing it... Was all such a pain. No the mod itself isn't the main subject of this, it's about doing repetitive work on the computer, especially stuff like navmeshing and getting aches afterwards.
And now... I actually had to split an interior cell that if stretched to irl size if I'm not mistaken would've been 600-700 feet irl, into several different cells cause of memory issues, and then I added some SEWERS to the mod, to make it more like Morrowind with uh, optional safer routes contrasting to optional dangerous routes. And then with the sewers I again... Had to navmesh a huge amount of space so they'd approximately be the same size as the exterior in length, and further more... I took a little inspiration from Fallout 3s sewers, with lots of debris, clutter, and ramps to keep it from being a boring walk straight forward.
And I'm bad at math and could be mistaken, but those sewers I navmeshed were like... I think about 1 fifth of a mile... Something being super long along doesn't cause handaches, it's something being super big COMBINED with twists and turns everywhere, which I suppose is worth it to make level designs more interesting, although... My arm sure does have some noticeable pain from all of this.
On top of that WHILE diving the cell I had to find 22 containers in it, and manually move them somewhere, so they wouldn't get deleted, cause some save games might be RELYING on those containers. So that made it extra challenging separating the whole mega cell into more efficient smaller ones. It actually ended up looking better imo cause of more control of lighting, and I guess I learned the hard way it's often a bad idea trying to make a super long interior cell, unless maybe you make it very narrow so it isn't like a memory black hole. And then on top of that I had to alter 270 yes TWO hundred and SEVENTY NPCs, cause I made a lot of them horrifically overpowered, altering countless stats, adding spells, removing spells.
To make matters WORSE the CK often crashes after editing so many NPCs just cause of it being buggy, so I had to reset the Creation Kit many many many many times while doing this, and clicking tons of popup boxes to get back to work, and that probably didn't make my wrists feel any better.
And then on TOP of that I had to re-add various xmarkers for the NPCs as a result of splitting up the cells, which was a massive pain... Having like 48 of them in one huge cell, that on top of being huge is a confusing maze as well. Also the mod added three optional factions kinda like the Great Houses from Morrowind only more... About lets just say, running from sunlight, and an obsession with blood. And I made one of the tree factions homes, way too small in comparison to the other two, so I expanded it massively, again being very careful to save containers and stuff.
Fortunately it could've been worse, sometimes duplicating a cell makes the navmesh not work, but this time, I got lucky and avoided that, so I didn't have to start COMPLETELY over. Ugh so many lessons learned the hard way. Maybe it aches cause I've been doing so much lately, but... Now I actually get to take a break from all that. Oh yeah and to TOP THAT ALL OFF, my computer desk is also a bit high for me... An issue never resolved to this day, so that makes this all... Even more strenous.
And... After all that... Between my left wrist and left elbow... I have quite, a most unpleasant aching sensation. I'm pleased to say... It's almost all finally over. But... Oh Azura my wrist or arm, or arm thingy or whatever it is... Aches so badly. It reminds me of how my mother got carpaltunnel from non-stop sculpting and my brother getting carpaltunnel from non-stop keyboard playing. I put this in General->Community cause the subject isn't actually about modding Skyrim in particular, just about hand aches from doing certain projects on the computer.
As my arm keeps aching... As I type this... I wonder if there will be any responses with similar stories. After having experienced this, it's now a subject I'm interested in hearing other peoples stories about.
