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Lakeview Manor Revisted - WIP


mrpdean

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Typo's in the topic title are never a good thing :blush:

 

*revisited*

 

_________________________________________________

 

Hi,

 

I've been working on recreating Lakeview Manor to be my perfect player home.

 

Keen to know what people think of it.

 

My basic idea was that the house is really old and has been passed down through generations of explorers, scholars and craftsmen, each contributing to the house in some way.

 

I tried to keep it within the realms of plausibility though I'm sure it's not strictly lore friendly. Everything used in the house already exists in Skyrim. For example there is a "steam powered" aspect to the house that is based on tech borrowed from the Dwemer by past generations.

 

All feedback, comments and suggestions welcome.

 

Some noteworthy features include:

 

Enhanced/modular furniture. With the vanilla furniture pieces there is usually only one (sometimes no) cupboard/drawer that open meaning only one container per furniture piece.

In Lakeview Manor Revisited, everything that looks like it should open and that you should be able to store things in it, you can. For example, the vanilla noble desk has 4 static drawers, none of them open. With my new modular furniture system, you can have all four drawers as working containers. Or you can mix and match container drawers with static drawers etc. I'll be releasing these modular furniture assets as a separate modders resource soon. Basically it means you can have A LOT more storage without taking up valuable floor space.

 

Toggle-able candles: Every light in Lakeview Manor can be extinguished and re-lit by the player. It's also possible to set up an AI package to get an NPC (say your Warden for example) to go around extinguishing candles in the morning and re-lighting them at night). There is enough ambient lighting in most parts of the main house to not need candles burning on bright days.

 

Working plumbing: Including taps, a bath, and toilets.

 

An attic: Containing enchanting and alchemy stations, With no load door.

 

A comparatively realistic fish tank: This is probably the most implausible feature but then again all the elements already exist in the world. Glass, wood, water, fish etc so in my mind it's quite conceivable that someone could have had the idea to create a fish-tank. I'm sure others will disagree though.

 

A boiler room: Providing the steam to power some aspects of the house.

 

There is a bunch of other things as well but I won't list them all here. Instead you can check out the video walk-through of Lakeview Manor Revisited (working title only): http://youtu.be/U5SbxIikFhI

 

Thanks.

Edited by mrpdean
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I really like the first impression. Esepcially the toggle-able candles and your modular furniture is pretty nice. Also the Exterior isn't as 'full' as other housemods, another fact I very like.

Some rooms seem to be a bit empty, but that's just the WIP I guess. Keep it up and I'm gonna definitely give it a try, once it's released. (:

 

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By the Hist. I opened the link expecting something small, but this. This blew my mind. I'm not too big on house mods, but... I could spend all day in this house. It's wonderfully incredible, but yet... It doesn't overwhelm the player. Tell me, when are you going to upload this incredible house?

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Hi, I had a look at the video and there is some really nice features. Love the working sinks, baths and toilet.

 

One piece of constructive criticism (please remember this is coming from the point of view of being older my eyes aren't as good as they once were) I would personally prefer a lighter environment. I love the idea of toggle-able candles but I would like to see either more candles so it isn't so dark or more distant light. I get that you are possibly trying to be true to lore by having it just the candles but it would make it difficult(at least for me) to navigate.

 

Again, I love what you have done...gardens are nicely laid out.

 

Certainly one I will be watching.

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By the Hist. I opened the link expecting something small, but this. This blew my mind. I'm not too big on house mods, but... I could spend all day in this house. It's wonderfully incredible, but yet... It doesn't overwhelm the player. Tell me, when are you going to upload this incredible house?

 

Thanks for the kind words. I'm hoping to release it very soon. I'm probably at the stage where it would be good to get some willing volunteers to text the mod out and report any bugs or make suggestions for improvements.... if anyone is interested in helping me out that would be great.

 

However, I should warn people up front that because this mod makes significant changes to the original hearthfire version of lakeview manor, it does require starting from a clean (no hearthfire) save to function properly. That is, you need to reset Hearthfire in your saved game. Unfortunately there is no way around this and it's due to the way Hearthfire was implemented and is not specific to this mod. Other mods that also make substantial changes (basically removing or even moving original hearthfire assets around) also have this requirement.

 

This doesn't mean that you need to start a whole new game over again (though that is always a good option). From my own tests it's possible to make a suitably clean (no hearthfire) save even when you've previously had hearthfire enabled. This is done by following these steps (with Hearthfire being the mod that you are temporarily 'uninstalling'): http://arwenevecom.ipage.com/Skyrim/Skyrim-Tips.htm#Clean_Save

 

I realise this will put some people off trying the mod which is why I made such a full tour video of the mod (though didn't show everything entirely) so that people could make an informed decision as to try it out or not.

 

I always make regular backups of my Skyrim saves anyway and if you do this then there should be no harm in trying this mod as you can always revert back again.

 

 

 

One piece of constructive criticism (please remember this is coming from the point of view of being older my eyes aren't as good as they once were) I would personally prefer a lighter environment. I love the idea of toggle-able candles but I would like to see either more candles so it isn't so dark or more distant light. I get that you are possibly trying to be true to lore by having it just the candles but it would make it difficult(at least for me) to navigate.

 

Thanks for the feedback and I take you point. In truth I've spent quite a bit of time adjusting lighting levels over the course of developing the mod and I'm still not entirely happy with it. The main problem is that lighting (and in particular interior lighting) can change so dramatically depending on what lighting mods and ENB's people are running, if any. I'm my case I'm using RealVision ENB and Realistic Lighting Overhaul, though it's RealVision that is making the most difference to the lighting in this case. Without RealVision running the lighting is quite a bit brighter.

 

What I'll probably end up do is uploading two version, one with the lighting balances for vanilla Skyrim and another that has been tweaked for ENB lighting, though even then it varies a lot between different ENB's.

 

 

 

One thing I'm wonder at the moment it was people are looking for in terms of storage. In particular storage of alchemy ingredients. I think there are over 100 ingredients in Skyrim. I was thinking of making separate storage such as little jars or a cupboard with lots of drawers etc for each ingredient but I'm now thinking that might be overkill?

 

Also, what do people think about auto-sorting in general. Personally I wouldn't use it (takes away from realism of the game to much imho) but I know some people won't consider a house mod that doesn't have it. Also if I implement auto-sorting then I'm basically making the call as to where each item should be stored and I'd rather leave that up to the player. Similarly, I originally start labeling each cupboard for what I thought should go in it, but I've since reverted to general activator labels e.g. "Open cupboard" as opposed to "Open armour cupboard" because, I didn't want to prescribe what should be stored in each cupboard.

 

Anyone have any opinions on this?

 

Thanks.

Edited by mrpdean
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I have a few problems with removing Hearthfire, specifically the fact of family. It wouldn't be fun to lose the whole family thing in my eyes. I've worked hard with getting a full argonian family together. That's my only problem with this.

 

Other than that, I don't like auto storage. I prefer being able to store things manually. Although, auto-storing your miscellaneous and ingredients would be VERY convenient. It would also be cool to be able to apply names to certain cupboards in-game, to help with storage.

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Thanks for the feedback.

 

Regarding the family, I did test this myself a while back and I don't recall any major problems. From memory the kids simply returned to their original locations and were able to be adopted again. I think I told the wife to go move to her house and so she remained married. It was a while ago though so I'll test it out again over the weekend.

 

Being able to name cupboard in-game would be nice but I'm not sure 100% sure it's possible. Will double-check though.

 

*edit*

 

actually according to this it might be possible: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49523/?

Edited by mrpdean
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One piece of constructive criticism (please remember this is coming from the point of view of being older my eyes aren't as good as they once were) I would personally prefer a lighter environment. I love the idea of toggle-able candles but I would like to see either more candles so it isn't so dark or more distant light. I get that you are possibly trying to be true to lore by having it just the candles but it would make it difficult(at least for me) to navigate.

Thanks for the feedback and I take you point. In truth I've spent quite a bit of time adjusting lighting levels over the course of developing the mod and I'm still not entirely happy with it. The main problem is that lighting (and in particular interior lighting) can change so dramatically depending on what lighting mods and ENB's people are running, if any. I'm my case I'm using RealVision ENB and Realistic Lighting Overhaul, though it's RealVision that is making the most difference to the lighting in this case. Without RealVision running the lighting is quite a bit brighter.

 

What I'll probably end up do is uploading two version, one with the lighting balances for vanilla Skyrim and another that has been tweaked for ENB lighting, though even then it varies a lot between different ENB's.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the response...I've only just starting playing Skyrim again and I'm still sorting through which mods to use. I haven't yet gotten around to looking at lighting mods. I will have to check out both those mods.

 

I understand that lighting can be difficult and can even be affected by monitor settings, again thanks for listening and responding.

 

Pen

 

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