I'm not sure which part you're referring to when you say "Using GECK?" I know there's a few FF7 models on the nexus, I was planning on making my own. I've often found that by the time I've assimilated other's work into my project it would've just been quicker to make it myself (unless their work was intended for my project, of course). Also, I already have a materia model I made: http://i365.photobucket.com/albums/oo94/JigsawPieces/shinraBldgMod/materiaRaw_02.jpg The other orb-like materia would've been easy enough to make, I expect.
Well circa 2009 someone added the
models at least to Oblivion. Granted it's a bit odd to have in a Med evil fantasy game but hey ...
And yeah, the Mako Dawn mod for Fallout 3 is currently not under development. I was the developer 
I'm working on releasing the project's files so that if anyone wants to continue it or use the resources they can.
I commiserate it's difficult to do all that work by oneself.
FO3 and Oblivion used different versions of the same engine, Gamebryo. I'm pretty sure they built FO3's functions on top of Oblivion. I can't speak for Oblivion modding since I never did any but I found FO3 modding to be relatively easy once I figured out what I was doing. It was actually the first game I ever modded.
Modding Oblivion was quite easy (hence why so many did) however Skyrim's engine is not as easy and they made getting the resources to do so ... even more difficult than before. A bit disappointing. There is one
Nehrim total conversion for Oblivion that is fully functional (it's a completely new game). That being said depending on a game released in 2006 for your entire mod is a bad idea (LOL).
Oblivions engine does have numerous limitations. The newer engine (GECK was the editor they released to the public for FO3) in FO3 has improvements (mostly in paths for creatures except at distances it has issues with the rotation matrix, which is really weird as Skyrim had that same issue with dragons, nothing like watching them fly backwards and spit fire out their ... <cough>). Erstwhile. As I said it's interesting work.
The resources themselves aren't that difficult too make, I believe the most difficult portion of making such mods is handling the scripting. I had a hard time following Oblivions odd script system. Heck if they had used XML it would have been easier to follow (that's a joke as XML was never intended to be used for 'programming'). I modified several scripts and made them functional, I can understand why Oblivion had so many quirks in it, the script part of the engine wasn't the best.
If you are familiar with FarCry 2 it had a very interesting system for creating areas. Granted it has a limited set and you are very limited as too what you can do, the modification of the actual set isn't too bad. I remember the tools they released for NWN made adding buildings etc relatively easily. They basically made brushes of building sections that could easily merge into each other.
Your layout approach has a good bit of merit, except that if you have 8 pizza plates placing individual structures over and over again is a road trip to an asylum. My thinking would be more like this, place large distinct structures first then go to smaller ones as you need too. After the large structures, it would be simpler to algorithmically place them (IE let the computer do that work) and then adjust afterward.
I digress a bit. You did a LOT of work, and that is nothing to make little of. It's unfortunate that it can be quite discouraging going it alone.
Cyb
