Monthly Modder: Tinuvia and Myrmarachne

When creating a new mod, some modders will inject something way outside of the world of the game.

And then there are modders like the team of Tinuvia & Myrmarachne (Bethesda.net, Nexus) who are continually working to deepen and expand what’s already there, such as the factions and their looks in Fallout 4. This includes supporting and creating add-on packs for existing mod expansions, such as the massively popular Sim Settlements mod, which included Tinuvia in the dev team.

Through their prolific output, the team has remained devoted to keeping their mods “lore friendly” to the world of Fallout for players who can never get enough options for looks and loyalties for their various playthroughs. With mods ranging from faction specific power armor, clothing and settlement kits to collections of clothing to give your Wastelander a fresh look, they’re always looking to give players more content to keep their game fresh.

What got you started creating mods??

For Myrmarachne, it was Doom editing utilities because he wanted to build a wooden boat. For Tinuvia, it was a desire to build digital clothes realized in Skyrim.

Tinuvia, you were a part of the Sim Settlements modding team and you have both also made mods for it. How does that work compare to creating smaller standalone content?

Tinuvia: We're sort of like a satellite orbiting around the warm glow of kinggath. With Sim Settlements he has been meticulous in setting up opportunities for other mod authors to tie into and expand on his core. We've felt joy and gratitude, growing as mod authors in the generous and helpful Sim Settlements community. Since we're the addon pack authors that have been around the longest we've felt a need to pay this forward, whether in helping new addon pack authors get their feet wet or showcasing new game mechanics kinggath has added for addon packs. At the same time, making our standalone mods has been liberating in that the risk of breaking things is less, and we can be completely free in style and functionality. The best of two worlds!

The "Atom's Glory" and "Grease Rat" clothing sets both fit in very well to the Fallout aesthetic. What in the world of Fallout most excites and inspires your mods?

Tinuvia: Thank you! Being lore-friendly really means a lot to us. Finding our outfits on a raider or child of Atom should hopefully feel like a happy surprise while not taking you out of the game experience. I remember standing in Riverwood with Lydia, all decked out in modded glory and feeling like Priscilla Queen of the desert, beautiful, but out of place. I loved those mods, but they suddenly took me out of the immersive game world.

Myrmarachne: Fallout for us is about finding joy in bleakness, whether the Fallout 2 experience or planting a few measly carrots between the cracks in the pavement in Fallout 4. We draw a lot of inspiration from The Art of Fallout 4 book, and even more from the game itself. Modding, it makes you appreciate what a monumental undertaking the game is from a design perspective. And we discuss the aesthetics A LOT. It helps tremendously that we have each other. Tinuvia can nudge me in bed at 4 in the morning and ask, "Is that shoulder patch lore friendly?" The coherence of it all is what is most inspiring. We tend to pull in different directions – I pull towards outrageous nudity, wearing tea pots on your head and putting slippers on brahmin, and Tinuvia has a background as a dress maker and looks more for practicality and function. We meet in the middle. Or just override Tinuvia for the tea pot and slippers. Weeeeee!

In what ways have your art and/or programming skills most improved as a result of creating and collaborating on mods?

Tinuvia: Myrmarachne has improved as an artist by making efforts to have his work integrate as smoothly into the world as possible, especially regarding the color palette. I have developed as a programmer from a strong need to make things interactive in our mods and not just pretty. I've also strengthened my troubleshooting skills, I think few players realize that the large majority of a mod author's time is spent testing the mod, making sure it works for all kinds of players, bug testing reports and trying to weed out incompatibilities with other mods, or just answering players' misunderstandings in best practices in modding your game.

What resources have been most useful to you both in your development?

Tinuvia: The thriving community around Bethesda's games means you can most often find a tutorial or tool for what you want to achieve. Kinggath's Bethesda's Mod School is excellent in describing not only how-to, but the underlying structure of Fallout 4. Outfit Studio by Ousnius, Nifskope by jonwd etc and not least xEdit by Elminster etc are some tools we use all the time. But a lot of it comes down to reverse engineering the Fallout 4 forms, quests and scripts themselves to figure out how things are done. And here we are truly grateful to Bethesda for sharing the Creation Kit and even its source code. Having dipped our feet in making our own games in Unity and realizing what a daunting task it is to make everything oneself, we thoroughly appreciate the playground of the Creation Kit and adding to an already existing game. We've both nurtured a dream of becoming game developers and this has felt like steps towards that goal.

Do you have any favorite mods or mod authors that you'd like to recommend?

Myrmarachne: True Storm and The Mobile Mechanic by fadingsignal (Bethesda.net, Nexus.)

Tinuvia: Anything by the Sim Settlements community, of course! (Bethesda.net, Nexus.) Jayserpa (Bethesda.net, Nexus) is a Skyrim mod author that I admire greatly – they have that excellent ability to enhance the game in a way that you don't notice it's a mod. And the whole presentation and set up of their mods is so brilliantly user friendly and compatible.