jeffrobot

You realize you are talking about multiple new mechanics/systems, that will probably need to be pretty complex in order to be satisfying? This sounds like an incredibly ambitious mod. Do you guys have the experience to take this on? If this is your first mod, I would suggest going for something a lot smaller. Like maybe implementing just one of these systems, outside of the Becoming a Jarl idea. I say this because most new projects never get off the ground because they are too ambitious. I don't have any experience modding, but I have worked on a few tiny Flash games. If you guys are aware of how much work this will be and I'm being rude, my apologies.

First, thanks a ton for doing this. I really like the idea of the community collaborating on stuff. I checked out the Dawnstar guards. I'm not really sure what the differences between them are. The all appear to spawn guards with varying weapons and sexual organs. I didn't see anything that was consistent. Is anyone else finding this for the other guards?

This guy is spamming the modding forum with his cheats.

That's a cool idea. So you're kind of talking about applying some sort of debuff to the character after death, that they have to work to remove? I like that, though the implementation could get pretty messy, depending on their save/load code. Since you'd have to go back and edit their saved file to include the fact that they had died and had this new debuff. The only reason I say it might be hard is because I heard a dude who was on QA for Skyrim say they had a lot of save/load bugs earlier. Might be messy code. Or it might not be an issue at all. Id like to hear Manshooters thoughts on the idea.

all NPCs have a "responsibility" attribute that basically measures their willingness to commit crimes. Maybe you could base their likelihood of attacking you off of this?

I agree that ultimately it comes down to the players self-control, so technically it's a non-issue. But I will say this - I am the most "hardcore" of all my friends playing this game, and I still sometimes give in to the "I dont know if I can do thiiiss........*F5* woooooo". You make a good point about crashes, too. Do you have any ideas about making players fear death a little more than they do in the game currently?

Hey Manshooter, You mentioned people would be saving a lot more while using TRO. This is a big flaw IMO. Quicksaving is one of the most immersion-ruining elements of this game, and I think it helps defeat TROs purpose. For example: "Hmm, that group of bandits up ahead looks really deadly. I'm not sure if I can take them.... oh well *F5* lets do it! leeeeeroooyy jeeennkiinnss!" Realism would be assessing the situation beforehand, making a calculated decision of whether or not you want to fight this battle. But with quicksaving, you dont have to think at all, you can charge into any battle just to figure out if its managable or not. Also, you can brute force your way through fighting impossible odds by just quicksaving mid battle whenever you score a lucky hit or whatever, and eventually, after dozens of deaths, prevail over your opponent. These are both things that seem to defeat the point of TRO. I'd suggest, and I think a few other people have suggested it in this thread or on the forums, getting rid of manual saving altogether. You save when you sleep, and maybe when you enter/exit a building. Not only does this eliminate both of the problems I mentioned above, but it adds something new that is very important for this mod - a healthy fear of death. Dying = loss of progress, so no one is going to be messing around pretending to be an unstoppable hero. Every enemy will make them just a little bit afraid, which would be awesome.

Hey I was about to be a hater of this mod. Its really overpowered. You get to slow down time to make people easier to hit, and you also deal extra dmg 8D ?? But not everyone wants to play like I do, and Im sure I could enjoy jumping through the air every so often too. Anyways, the point of my post: of someone was to make this mod, they could easily make all the different aspects of the mod choices for the player, thats how code works. For instance, in the options menu you could set: can jump in air? y/n time slows while in air? y/n deal extra dmg? y/n And so if I wanted to be able to slow down time but not deal extra dmg, I could. So I support this mod, as long as the coder remembers to make it in the above intelligent way.

Hey guys, I want to gauge interest on an idea. Right now it feels like most of the reason I do anything in the game is for better loot. I go into dungeons because I expect to get something from it, when I complete a quest I expect to get something from it, when I go exploring up on some random mountain top, I'm hoping there's a treasure chest with some loot in it. And I think I could enjoy the game more if that wasn't the case. What if, for example, we replaced 75% of the good loot in the world with journal entries from those same people you would normally have gotten the loot from? A journal entry that said something meaningful, and helped bring that character to life in your eyes. Like, I go into a bandits den and kill the leader. Instead of finding an item, I get to read an entry from his journal, and learn about him and why he was there. So hes no longer just a nameless NPC mob, he's now some dude in the world I killed. We could get a little more complex, and maybe create overarching mysteries that you can only piece together by reading the journals of enemies from multiple dungeons/areas. To make things feel more connected and give you incentive to keep going through dungeons. There could still be quests for better loot, but it would require a little more purposeful action to find it, ie you hear about some awesome sword (maybe from a journal of someone you killed!) in a dungeon not too far away, so you head over there specifically seeking it out. Not all places would have it. The search for better loot ultimately ends up feeling really hollow and pointless to me after a while. Its like, I get better loot so I can get better loot... so I can.... get better loot... why am I doing this again? It holds out attention cuz Skyrim is so awesome though, but I think eventually most people will feel this. So instead lets make lets make the world feel more real and make your actions feel more meaningful. And I know just a bunch of journal entries is kind of lame - I think we could do a lot cooler stuff towards achieving this goal if we really thought about it. I know a lot of people, maybe most, wouldn't like this idea, but I'm also pretty sure I'm not alone in thinking it'd be cool. Let me know.

The horse idea sounds cool? Any other specific ones you've thought of? I've been doing some thinking about interesting new kinds of magic myself. I know that NPCs in the game have a "responsibility" attribute of 1 - 100 that determines how likely they are to commit a crime - I think an awesome spell would be one that manipulated an npcs responsibility. Turning good people into thieving criminals - how cool is that?

This mod would be a lot of work. If you want to see it made, I would try to distill it down to the most basic/essential version you can. Like, cut any features that aren't necessary to creating the proper feeling. For instance - leaders. I don't think you really need leaders. If a wave of barbarians/bandits are attacking me, I think I would just assume they have a leader, and also that I wouldn't necessarilly be able to tell which one of them is the leader. I dont think it would look weird for them not to have a designated leader. Also, the morale system - necessary to creating the feeling of massive armies in Skyrim? I'm not sure. So I would keep distilling your idea down to its most essential parts, because each of these features you're talking about potentially represents weeks if not months of work, so cutting them can make a huge difference - probably the difference between your mod being made and it just being so much work it never gets done. Anyways, it's a cool idea. It would definitely add a lot to the game.

Ironically, I think the transform-to-rabbit spell would be the most op. Transforming anyone to a rabbit would basically be like changing their hp to 10 and removing their ability to attack, right? Hey OP, I know the idea of animal transformation is cool, but from a 'game design' perspective, what would you say it really adds to the game? As you said before, it is very similar to the illusion spells? Do you see it as creating a different playstyle, or recreating the illusion playstyle?

At least for online mutliplayer, its definitely more of a case of "you have to rewrite the entire game" to handle it. I think not quite so much for local multiplayer. Don't really know though, I've only dabbled in Flash game development. I'm with you on totally wanting it though. Maybe someone will figure out a way.

This could be pretty cool. I think the coolest thing by far would be transforming into a dragon and terrorizing towns. Not sure how much fun turning into a draugr or spider or whatever would be though. Being an animal would be cool too. You could just wander around, looking for grass, trying not to get killed by something. Speaking of which, what about turning some of the transformations into their own little game types? Like when you turn into an animal, you could increase the spawn rate of hunters and wolves or something.

Yeah, that's not a bad idea. I don't think it would be too hard to do, though that depends on how much info about a given model/asset the CK gives you. Then again, maybe there's the option to add physics to things in the CK, then you could let the player set things up anywhere, and if it's on too much of a slope, it just falls over. Man, wouldnt it be kinda fun if your bedroll ended up sliding halfway down a mountain and you had to trudge out into a blizzard at night to find it? Better not stumble across any bears or trolls.... :D

I think another cool thing, that a few people have mentioned, would be the ability to set up camps in the wilderness. You could start little fire, lay out a bedroll, put some pans over the fire, cook stuff, do.... something else maybe? Write in a journal? : ) If you wanted to do this really simply, like without animations, you could just: select the bed roll from your inventory, use it -> screen fades to black -> fades back in, the bedroll is on the ground. Its like you took a few minutes to set it up. You could do the exact same thing with the fire and cooking stuff. And it'd be really cool (and also probably not hard to do) if butterflies/torch bugs were drawn to your fire. That'd give you something else to do before hitting the sack. This all raises the question - should enemies be able to see your fire, and if so, what should that lead to?

Very cool idea. Explosive potions could serve as a sort of initiation to combat.

Hey guys, So I was dueling a Draugr Death Warlord (or something) the other day, and was trying to dodge his attacks with my sneak roll. I noticed that he can adjust the direction of his attack, mid-swing, at instant-speed to catch me as I roll past him. In other words, if he begins his swing while you're standing in front of him, and you roll past him, he turns with you, mid-swing, to guarantee he still hits you. Couple problems with this: It's not realistic, so I think it should be addressed by this mod (I'll try to address i myself in a little standaloner). It makes dodging a non-option in combat, severely dumbing things down and limiting your options. To fix this, and make rolling a viable option, I say we reduce the speed at which a guy can turn (probably based on what type of enemy he is).

I like the idea of sheathes that increase draw speed.

As a quick fix, you could use console commands to remove your "x3 sneak attack dmg with bows" perk. Forget the exact command but theyre all over the nets.

Great mockup! I had this idea too. It would definitely be a nice touch.

About a 99% chance this is doable. Probably not very complicated. Probably the more difficult aspect would be setting the console command or ui option, though I actually have no idea about that.

Because if they could, things like bears and giants would be too difficult to kite, and they would slaughter PCs, especially bears. I'm thinking it's not Besthesda programming stupid AI, its them dumbing the AI down purposefully because they needed to give the player a way to fight these creatures. Obviously it's not the ideal solution, but worse sacrifices have been made when crunch time rolls around. So maybe fixing this isnt a horribly complicated AI/pathing problem as I had presumed, but something a lot easier, like maybe switching a boolean somewhere. I think a nice balance would be enemies could travel over difficult terrain, but maybe they moved slower.

Hey thats a great idea. Then the wolf could have the cute animations the dog has, and really endear himself to the player. This is probably the route I'll go, thanks. To the other guy: yeah I'm definitely waiting for the CS. I dont think its possible to make new quests without it. I'm just doin a little planning ahead.

Hi modders, I want to make a mod for Skyrim, but have never modded anything before (though I know some game programming and have worked in Unity). I'm starting with something small - a quest where you find and nurture a cub of wolf babies, that grow up to become wolf companions. I've read in the Oblivion CS wiki about quests, quest stages, NPC AI packages, and have begun diagramming all that stuff, but I have no idea how I'll do the assets. Since there isn't a wolf companion in the game (that I know of) I guess I'll have to import the wolf and its animations into the AI companion template (probably the wrong terminology here). My question is - given your experience with Oblivion, do you think that will be hard, or relatively easy? And is there a section of the CS that I should read to prepare myself for it? Thanks in advance.