Monthly Modder: CrayonKit

Another Fallout 4 settlement needs your help – to look fantastic!

Thankfully CrayonKit and the Creative Clutter modding team have the new workshop items you need.

This month we’re talking to CrayonKit about his workshop mods, and some group projects he’s involved in. This includes Do It Yourshelf, originally created by Dinozaurz, which has a fantastic modular decorating system, and the massive Creative Clutter mod. This is just a small taste of the many projects he’s been involved in! You can learn more on the team’s website. Here, I’ll mark it on your map.

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Many of the mods you’ve worked on expand the Fallout 4 workshop, how do you go about designing such an incredible array of variations?

Creative Clutter is unique in that it's a mod created by an entire team of people, so the variation comes from the different members. We all just make what we want and add it in, no themes required. All the other workshop mods I've worked on had a specific theme and intention from the beginning, whether it be expanding a Creation Club pack or something else I wanted for myself. The simple answer is that an idea comes to me and if I want it bad enough it eventually happens.

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What sort of goals do you keep in mind when designing these mods, especially to keep the larger packs in check?

When I first started playing Fallout 4 I had a potato for a computer that could barely run the game on the lowest settings. I'm always mindful of lower-end hardware users and console users as a result. So things like polygon count, texture quantity and size, preserving precombines, menu structure, and other optimization approaches are always forefront in design. MsRae is our 3d modeling expert and she is particularly focused on lower polygon count and using existing game textures whenever possible to reduce texture footprint.

Having a specific theme for a mod also tends to help keep mod size in check. We’ve had to make a variety of adjustments to Creative Clutter over the years to try to remain console friendly in terms of size. We converted and resized all the textures to the format that compresses fully on Xbox, we’ve adjusted the workshop menu to improve loading times, and we’ve also removed content that we felt was too much in terms of polygon count.

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You’re involved in several group projects, any tips on collaboration?

Good interpersonal skills, conflict resolution and perhaps most importantly understanding how to keep volunteers motivated are definitely critical to leading a team of mod authors. Leading people who aren’t paid to listen to you requires flexibility, organization, a low drama/toxicity culture, highlighting the strengths and supplementing the weaknesses of each team member, and leading by example in terms of work ethic.

The start of any group project includes deciding on the project roadmap: rough schedule, the things we collectively want to achieve, and assigning tasks to the person best suited for it. I’m personally particularly fond of checkmark to-do lists. We then use whatever software tools are necessary to keep us organized, share resources, tutorials, WIP files, and communicate as well as have fun and play. Several of the Creative Clutter team members play ESO together to socialize and relax.

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Any upcoming projects or updates you can share with us?

I’m nearing completion on a new mod themed around The Castle in collaboration with Robboten (of Snappy Housekit) and Bionicyardiff (of Raze My Settlement). It repairs the Castle wall and also has a workshop structural kit made by Robboten that will work with Snappy Housekit or standalone so you can build using the Castle architectural style. Not to mention a few other bells and whistles. The primary motivator for this project was to take the opposite approach of all other Castle repair mods. Instead of replacing the Castle wall with a repaired mesh we just cover it. By not breaking the precombines we don’t need to rebuild them, thus having a smaller mod size and improved compatibility with other mods.

There are also some updates that I personally plan to introduce to Creative that are going to be adding a significant amount of additional content and size. Therefore we’ve made plans to split some of the content out into a separate mod entirely and will be making even further adjustments to the menu structure to ease loading times. MsRae is always working on some new project for Creative and has been learning animations.

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What is your favorite part of modding?

Banging my head on the desk in frustration. Wait, no, that’s just the most common part of modding. I like working with great people, being creative, and learning new things. I love seeing the joy of my users when they use my work and the creative ways they use it beyond what I could think of. I enjoy sharing what I know with new mod authors or simply seeing a mod someone made that could benefit by something easy for me to contribute and just surprising the author with it. I spend a lot of time socializing with other mod authors and like connecting authors together that can benefit from one another’s knowledge.

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Any mods or authors you'd like to recommend?

• Arthmoor (Unofficial Patches)
• Bionicyardiff (multiple mods)
• Kinggath (multiple mods)
• MunkySpunk (The Bleachers: A Diamond City Story and others)
• Oddlittleturtle (multiple mods and most importantly load order help for Xbox users!)
• Robboten (Snappy Housekit)
• Steve40 (CWSS and others)
• And of course, anything made by a member of the Creative Clutter team!

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