LE Rebuilding Skyrim

[SwiftRosenthal]

Jace_1991's Western Watchtower Rebuilt and Whitewatch Tower Camp? Edga's Whiterun Rebuilt? How about paying ingame to restore all of Skyrim's human ruins and cities to their original condition (or close enough)? Roads too - remember all those knee-high walls along their edges? How about gentrifying Markarth's Warrens or Riften's Ratway or Windhelm's Gray Quarter?

 

Here's how it would work ingame: After becoming a Hold's Thane, you go to the Steward and find a new dialogue option, something obviously infrastructure-related. Then you scroll through the list of (non-natural, non-Dwemer, maybe non-tomb as well) properties in that hold that you've already cleared, then another list of possible renovations for that property. The least expensive individual renovation should still cost at least as much as buying Proudspire - on the other end, Labyrinthian and Winterhold should each cost at least half a million Septims, probably closer to two [million], because they're huge and nobody alive knows wtf they originally looked like. Renovated properties should replace hostile spawns with new NPCs of appropriate social classes (residents, artisans, merchants...). Furthermore, with each renovation in a hold, the available funds and stock for every merchant in that hold, as well as the number of NPCs and buildings in the hold capital and any villages, should increase, reflecting the increase in overall prosperity. (Maybe after becoming Thane you have to wait a bit longer: until the hold is both captured by your side of the civil war and no longer threatened by either the opposing side or, you know, dragons.)

 

The script is already there, for the player houses and Ragged Flagon and Dawnstar Sanctuary - it would just need to be found and repurposed. The other difficulty I see is of course the textures and meshes for each stage of renovation - for each combination of stages - for each property, but I'm not crazy enough to ask anyone to do that all at once. Also all the new NPCs would have be created and named and given dialogue and and and OK this would have to be a multi-year collaborative effort. But it would be awesome and (more importantly) we could start playing it as soon as the first building is done.

[SwiftRosenthal]

Unlike the houses, renovations shouldn't be immediate. You may buy every part of a newly-cleared fort, but you'll still have to wait at least a couple months for it to be completed. Occasionally you'll get a courier from the worksite alerting you to some crisis, usually bandits/Forsworn, Draugr (tombs only), or a dragon, but sometimes some vital thing has gone missing or been stolen and you have to track it down (but being Guildmaster has benefits!). You can't fail these mini-quests, but you must do them. If you don't, construction will pause indefinitely. At least it won't regress, that would be too frustrating.

 

Additionally, the player's experience in this pseudo-questline should differ depending on an Imperial or Stormcloak victory. The Empire is obviously modeled on Rome, and the Romans are known for being amazing engineers, so the startup cost for each renovation would be noticeably less and construction would progress more quickly and with fewer issues. Stormcloak characters instead get a larger cut of the new tax revenue produced by each renovation. After reaching a certain % of the total possible tax revenue from each hold, the player can use their economic power as leverage against the local Jarl and replace them with individuals who are less corrupt or more competent or both. Yes, that means Imperial players won't have to tolerate Siddgeir or Idgrod or Maven; the same goes for Stormcloaks and Skald, Korir, and the Silver-Bloods. Stormcloaks can go one farther, however. After renovations across Skyrim are about 80% completed or 7 holds are completely renovated, the player can choose whether or not to directly challenge Ulfric the same way he challenged Torygg - better for him to die a martyr IMO, or insert TDK reference here - and become High King/Queen him/herself.

[thapagan]

How about some small mining tool sheds, a vendor that sells pick axes and has a "camp style" forge work table, and grind stone at some of those remote mining outpost.

 

I would also like to be ableto rebuild winterhold (4 house...?) and have the courier drop off the rent, or maybe a college bookstore.

[Kurron]

I'm very interested in this idea. I suggest putting together a short list of what you'd need in a mod team, specific roles etc... personally, I'm willing to do anything I can to help - though my capabilities are limited to basic scripting and AI, I'm pretty good at level design and organization. I'll keep checking in to see if there's anyone else interested.

[SwiftRosenthal]

How about some small mining tool sheds, a vendor that sells pick axes and has a "camp style" forge work table, and grind stone at some of those remote mining outpost.

 

I would also like to be able to rebuild winterhold (4 houses...?) and have the courier drop off the rent, or maybe a college bookstore.

This idea is almost entirely macromanagement, more like the restorations in AssCreed 2 and its expansions (I was really disappointed at not being able to do this to the Roman landmarks in Brotherhood) than Minecraft. It's about time the Dovahkiin gets to be in charge of something without having to do all of the groundwork him/herself. Besides, why else do peasants exist if not for doing stuff like this? ;)

 

I'm very interested in this idea. I suggest putting together a short list of what you'd need in a mod team, specific roles etc... personally, I'm willing to do anything I can to help - though my capabilities are limited to basic scripting and AI, I'm pretty good at level design and organization. I'll keep checking in to see if there's anyone else interested.

I'm gonna try to work out an outline of everything that needs to be done over the weekend. Almost all of my modding experience before now is in Paradox games, and always just small-scale edits. (Their games all use text files for the vast majority of their data... it's just as great for modders as it sounds.) And since I've had Skyrim itself for less than a month, right now I'm not really good for anything more than ideas. The obvious first tasks though after initial organization are a) locating the script the game uses for decorating places one area at a time and b) sorting every dungeon by type (natural/Dwemer/tomb/fort/mine/other) and Hold.

[SinderionsBones]

One thing that should massively simplify your project (If it's not what you're already doing, it doesn't sound like it is):

 

 

 

It's how, with likely one script line, an arbitrary number of in game items are activated/deactivated (appear dissapear, as in, get rid of old stuff, build new stuff)

 

In the editor, go to the interior named WhiterunBreezehome

 

Off to one side are these goofy looking red x's. These are what are put in place as what are called 'Enable parents' to certain parts of the homes decor. When a script Enable this goofy red X, all the things that call it their 'Enable parent' are also enabled (visible). There are a bunch of lines to various things throughout the house, these are visual representations of the links to the items it will enable. For example when you enable .. i forget the exact name, but the x that says something about bedroom 'BreezhomeBedroomEnableMarker' or something, it enables all the things connected.

 

To make this work, things like, the bed, the chest in the room, the side tables all have it marked in their reference windows, that their enable marker is that X.

 

If I remember correctly, i'm too lazy to open the CK up at the moment, there is a checkbox there so you can also make it an inverse enable marker, so it will be disabled when the X is enabled. This is how the spiderwebs and other clutter are hidden.

 

See where this is going?

Do the first action to start the rebuild - enable "FortnameOutWithTheOldExterior" - disables old stuff (inverse enable parent), optionally, enables some construction looking stuff.

(Optional step) enable "FortnameOutWithTheOldInterior" - disable stuff inside, add construction stuff, or just enable new stuff and block door from outside for now.

 

After set period, or other actions - enable "FortnameInwithTheNew" - disables construction stuff (assuming 2 enable parents can be linked.. I think they can..alternatively, just have new stuff cover construction stuff) and enable new shiny exterior, including door to updated version of interior :D

 

You could then, in the construction kit (instructions based on having basic knowledge of how stuff works in there):

 

This is to simply have an old version, and a new version that instantly switch. It sounds like that is what you were going for.

1. Create an XMarker, or a unique named version of it for your fort or whatever, and place it near the exterior.

2. Set it as initially disabled.

3. Select one of the exterior pieces of the fort you wish removed or changed, and set it as an inverse enable parent in the edit window.

4. Press 1 1 to hide it.

5. Repeat 3 and four until you've hidden all the parts you wish to upgrade, include clutter in this, anything you don't want around after upgrade.

6. Put in everything for the new place, setting the enable parent of each to your Xmarker.

7. Do something similar for the interior. Putting another Xmarker as the inverse enable marker for all of the old stuff, hiding it for a clean workspace, and putting new stuff in linked to the Xmarker as their enable parent.

8. In the appropriate dialog or quest section, set the Xmarkers to be enabled onload of the cell, or enable them directly, or however they do it with breezehome. (don't worry about this part, it will be trivial if you ask on the forums I'm sure, or, if you dig and see how they do it with the player houses, maybe with a global variable check or something :D)

 

 

 

No input on the disabling of respawn from ingame. Never tried to access a location via script in game... I suspect it can't really be directly messed with. Who knows. But if all the associated baddies (boss etc...) are 'disabled' by your disable parent when they do respawn, it's not like they could get at you anyways lol.

 

Look forward to seeing a bunch of rebuild-able places soon!

[SwiftRosenthal]

(If it's not what you're already doing, it doesn't sound like it is):

LOL no I'm not at that point yet. I haven't even opened the CK yet (felt like an idiot trying to find it on Steam). I haven't even beaten the main quest or completed either civil war yet. Even if this mod was completed and installed I couldn't actually take advantage of it for at least 20 more gameplay-hours, and I abuse fast traveling like, uh, something that gets abused a lot.

 

Not that your post wasn't incredibly helpful though. (Er, will be, once this gets to the "I'm actually making this right now" phase.)

[Shadowfoxx]

I am interested in this. Along with this, adding new monsters? items? Easter eggs? Edited March 17, 2012 by Shadowfoxx

[Shadowfoxx]

Oh, by the way. I have some good models. Monsters, Knights, Ships. I also have a very secret idea..an idea..so small..yet so famous...I must keep it secret until approached by a mod. Would take little time.

[SwiftRosenthal]

I want this to be as seamless with the regular game as possible, so I'm not looking for anything that isn't reasonably close to the economic focus. The political angle in my second post was merely a combination of that and the fact that the Silver-Bloods and Black-Briars and others in-game are unapologetic about using their economic power for political purposes - so why shouldn't the player be able to do so too?

 

I do recognize however that with a lot of areas (caved-in ruins, Winterhold, Ilinalta's Deep, Whiterun's walls...) the layout is so far removed from the in-story original design that whoever has to work out what they look like after renovations will have to simply make stuff up instead of "merely" extrapolating. Which does fit with lore, I mean it's not like the in-story archaeologists, architects, and engineers would have any idea either.