Creating a fund to support modders and creators of new maps.

Periodically, these discussions about some kind of fundraising for modders pop up. But there are no noticeable results. On the other hand, I see people who, with varying degrees of success, earn something from this endeavor. This genuinely makes me happy, because I understand that thanks to this, modding for the fifth installment won't die out completely. As a person who has more or less stepped away from modding, I want to and can honestly express my opinion about monetization. Firstly, donations are good, but there is little faith that it will work, and even less that it will work well. Regarding commissioned work, comrade Nargott correctly noted that this entails responsibility. Speaking for myself, it turns out that you take a small amount of money, feel bad about it, work a lot, and in the end, you don't really earn money and don't enjoy the mod. But, my sample size is limited, essentially 1.5 commissions. So, it might be different for someone else. In short, this scheme is not interesting to me as a modder. Begging, for example, for 5k per month of work, and still feeling like the worst scoundrel, plus then living under the pressure of the obligations you have taken on. No, thank you, that's not for me. Maybe it works for small mods that are easy to make and where the author doesn't bother with the details. For example, Hunnick. I have a very good opinion of him as a person, and I am impressed by the number of mods he has managed to create. But what doesn't impress me is their quality. I like to do everything as well as possible, as much as I can, and to fuss over the details. With Hunnick's mods, I see at least three or four things in each one that need to be fixed or repaired. And that's extra hours, or even days of work. The fact that Hunnick makes mods superficially and with flaws allows him to release them in such large quantities. And I will reiterate, I am not judging him. I'm just saying that we have different approaches, and these approaches have different advantages and disadvantages. So, Hunnick's approach is still quite suitable for monetization. A mod every one or two weeks. But my approach – a long, tedious creation of a large, high-quality mod with attention to detail – is very, very poorly suited for monetization. Because, frankly, it simply costs a lot of money and requires a lot of time. Here are some things that I would like to do. Screenshot 1 Screenshot 2 Screenshot 3 A normal, well-made city of Nagas, with normal units and heroes. How much time will it take? Objectively? Probably 6-8 months. Most likely, even more. I have a job, and only 3-4 hours of free time after it, after all. And in that time, I also need to eat and wash. How much will such a mod cost? You can imagine. Would you be interested in spending half a year working until late at night, sacrificing sleep and social life, and a lot more, in reality, for... well, 10 thousand? Screenshot with Kreg Hack Then, I've seen a lot of hero models from new mobile games in the Might and Magic universe. I would like to add them to the fifth installment. But the devil, as always, is in the details. I won't go into them too much. I'll just say that if you take the skeleton from the original models from those games, it turns out very bad, and a normal export/import of the hero skeleton from the fifth installment is not possible now. And this skeleton needs to be rebuilt from scratch. This is actually good, because you can create a universal skeleton for a hero, under which you can conveniently create a large number of different animations and adapt different animations from the game. This is the right approach, with attention to detail and with an eye to the future. I think the disadvantages of this approach are clear? It's long and expensive. As a result, I spent 3-4 weeks with the hero models and the Naga city. I realized that I hate myself, the world, people, I want to sleep and die, and if I don't stop this, it will stop me. So all the work was deleted. And I won't just return to this task. By the way, I was a little offended for this. Once again, I heard "you should have released it in open access." And I try to explain that what I am showing is not a finished, raw work. It looks finished, but it takes a lot of time to appear in the game. In this form, these developments are already in open access. Take archivers, open the games, get the files. I have always written which programs to use for what and have not hidden anything from anyone.

Added 8 minutes ago
Here, you can also add that for the end consumer, the player, paying tens of thousands for a mod is complete nonsense, and I naturally understand this. And that fundraising, attracting donations, community management, advertising, all this is a separate complex job that would have to be done on top of modding and the main job that allows you not to starve. But I won't go into this too much. So, a huge wall of text turned out.

Added 5 minutes ago
Just for the record, if there is a son of an oligarch here who, for some reason, plays the fifth Heroes in 2022, and who really dreams of seeing a really well-made Naga city in this game, or something else made with meticulous attention to detail, then I am open to offers from this person. I won't be upset if he wants to give me "a lot of money".))