Massive Morrowind Skill Overhaul

[megageeklizzy]

I am fairly new to modding, but I have done a few things and would like to know how hard it would be to get rid of Skyrim's skills and skill trees and return to Morrowind and/or Oblivion's skills and attributes. I know this sounds difficult, and maybe it is, but in my mind it doesn't actually seem too hard. Here would be the steps:

1. Get rid of the leveling/skill tree screen and make a new one, or edit the current one to fit the skills of previous games. The best way to do this would probably be to make each skill have its own "tree", which would consist of a straight line with perks that automatically unlock as the skill levels, like in Morrowind and Oblivion. The attributes could go at the bottom of the skill menu to replace the health, magicka, and stamina bars. Players would get a set number of points to spend on these attributes every level.

2. Change other aspects of the game to support the overhaul. That means adding spells from Morrowind and Oblivion to fill up the returned magic schools like Mysticism and adding spears. This step is probably the hardest(or second hardest, next to 3) and most time-consuming, but I would hope to get permission from the creators of existing mods that would do a lot of this for me.

3. Implement the overhaul. This means actually scripting all of the skills to actually work, making attributes change actor values, and putting new keywords on weapons, armor, clothing, and spells. This will mostly just be very time-consuming.

4. Do the finishing touches. This would just be adding new items and spells into the world by hand placing or, more likely, by putting them into leveled lists.

 

So, if you've read all of that...first of all, thank you for your interest. Secondly, what do you think? How hard would this actually be? Do you have any tips or ideas of what to add, or what not to add? Please, let me know what you think of this. I will likely start trying to work on it soon. I'll make updates here as I get closer to figuring things out (or as I get further from figuring things out, as the case may be). Thank you for reading, and I know I've said this, but please let me know what you think.

 

EDIT:Well, it looks like I'll have to make a new levelling menu, as it is impossible to add new skill trees with the vanilla level menu.

Edited July 4, 2015 by megageeklizzy

[megageeklizzy]

Does anybody know how I could replace the vanilla skill menu?

[Anikma]

I don't think you can, and I also don't think you can add new skills. Attributes would be possible but hard to implement. There are already a few Skyrim Attributes mods out there, just google for one of them and take a look at how they've done it.

[megageeklizzy]

I was planning to use this as the backbone of my attributes system. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/13968/?

Adding skills is the problem.

[lofgren]

It's all perfectly feasible provided you only want to affect the PC and you don't mind UI inconsistencies. It's not even all that complicated.

 

If you do want to edit the UI then it is beyond my skill to tell you what is possible and what isn't. You'll need to know Flash, at the very least.

 

If you want to affect NPCs as well then the problem becomes balancing classes, packages, and fighting styles and editing all of the existing NPCs so that they can make use of the new skills.

 

My advice would be to implement it for the PC only. You can fudge it for NPCs and nobody will ever notice or care that they are using different background mechanics than the PC. Balancing NPC combatants would take the vast majority of your time and provide by far the least benefit to the end user experience.

[megageeklizzy]

Okay...thank you for the advice. I think I will stick with just changing the PC, as I really want to make it as simple as I can, relatively speaking. I'll probably add the new items and spells to some NPCs, and maybe even apply the skill changes to important NPCs and some leveled actors. Of course, that's assuming I'm even able to get this mod off the ground in the first place.

 

I've spent all day trying to figure out a way to change the skill menu. I haven't gotten anywhere. Unfortunately, I can't even just delete it from the game so I can make a new system. I think I'm going to have to make a new system, too...maybe keep the skills under magic effects in the magic menu. I think I might be able to use this mod as a template:http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29453/?

 

 

In the next week or so, I'm going to familiarize myself with how these things work - whether it's scripting or using the Creation Kit or whatever else the person who made that mod used.

[Anikma]

It's all perfectly feasible provided you only want to affect the PC and you don't mind UI inconsistencies. It's not even all that complicated.

 

If you do want to edit the UI then it is beyond my skill to tell you what is possible and what isn't. You'll need to know Flash, at the very least.

 

If you want to affect NPCs as well then the problem becomes balancing classes, packages, and fighting styles and editing all of the existing NPCs so that they can make use of the new skills.

 

My advice would be to implement it for the PC only. You can fudge it for NPCs and nobody will ever notice or care that they are using different background mechanics than the PC. Balancing NPC combatants would take the vast majority of your time and provide by far the least benefit to the end user experience.

-_- Believe me I don't think you can create new skills or even edit the existing skill menu layout. Believe me I've tried. The only thing You can do is combine existing skills into one to make room for new ones (as seen in SkyRe).

[megageeklizzy]

I can't believe that almost 4 years after the game came out there's still nobody who's figured out a way around it. Oh well...I'll try to figure out something.

[lofgren]

 

It's all perfectly feasible provided you only want to affect the PC and you don't mind UI inconsistencies. It's not even all that complicated.

 

If you do want to edit the UI then it is beyond my skill to tell you what is possible and what isn't. You'll need to know Flash, at the very least.

 

If you want to affect NPCs as well then the problem becomes balancing classes, packages, and fighting styles and editing all of the existing NPCs so that they can make use of the new skills.

 

My advice would be to implement it for the PC only. You can fudge it for NPCs and nobody will ever notice or care that they are using different background mechanics than the PC. Balancing NPC combatants would take the vast majority of your time and provide by far the least benefit to the end user experience.

-_- Believe me I don't think you can create new skills or even edit the existing skill menu layout. Believe me I've tried. The only thing You can do is combine existing skills into one to make room for new ones (as seen in SkyRe).

 

 

Well if you know how to code in Flash it seems like you could add new perk trees that track to different actor values. That's exactly what the werewolf and vampire lord perk trees are, after all. While you can't add new actor values, there are a LOT of actor values that seem to be totally unused for any purpose, or only used by NPCs (such as Variable09). You can use these actor values to simulate a skill and no user would be able to tell the difference. This is again exactly what the vampire lord and werewolf perk trees do: increment an actor value with no inherent purpose and track the progression by script.

Edited July 5, 2015 by lofgren

[Anikma]

Here is a good tutorial for a script based skill system: http://tesmods.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/tutorial-creating-skill.html?m=1

 

I have never seen anyone create a new skill menu. While this doesn't mean it's impossible it does mean that it's up to you to figure it out. One possible way to track skills would be via an mcm menu as I've seen in many other mods or perhaps as lofgren said you could code something it flash (MAYBE I've never heard of anyone attempting this before either.).