SinderionsBones

My first thought is of course it's filling, because it's not optional. The script fragment wouldn't fire if the quest didn't start, and the quest wouldn't start if the non-optional alias wasn't filled. My second thought is does the location store text? I'm confused by the 'none' since filled ref aliases will return something like [aliasref] or something like that when you put them in text without storing text. I'm not certain what a non text storing loc alias would display. Try clicking 'stores text' just for testing. You would also need it if you're doing something like putting <Alias=Fragment01Location> in a note or something. Alternatively, try something like: If(Alias_Fragment01Location.GetLocation()) Debug.Notification("Well, it's not empty!") else Debug.Notification("Wow, it's rly empty >.<") endif

EDIT: Gah, horrible screenshots lol. You just really like the armor resource we're apparently using from a whitcher mod? That's not something we made >.< Even Arcadia from whiterun is there from a silly quest bug I let stay since it was hilarious. Heyo, hadn't checked up on this thread recently. Yah, stuff is coming together. I wouldn't use the phrase "nearing release phase" but the part about nearing lots of stuff to test is reasonable. Tons of work to do before and after that starts. We're going quite RTS style, but with a solid focus on immersion and staying true to the vanilla game, not gimmicky stuff(as cool as the work on that stuff is) We still don't have any active modders other than myself right now. We've gotten like 2 or 3, but nobody seems to survive the jump from here, over to the wormhole forum >.< At the moment, we're heading towards enabling the player to oversee, from the ground up, a bit of an economic and, out of necessity, military power in regions of Skyrim. Many RTS style elements such as resources, upgrades to various things, and various bonuses are the focus of gameplay. Many upgrades/bonuses come straight out of vanilla style questing, exploration and such. *My* intention at least, is to have at least one storyline pulling all together with you. What level you start at, and where you end up would be based on that storyline. At the moment we're dealing with the "enabling" portion fused with the RTS elements. TL;DR: My concept of this mod is all quite feasible, even in small chunks done over time. It doesn't always go perfectly with DG's version, but I defer to him since his version usually ends up more interesting/thematically dark and novel. Putting the two together usually yields an idea that sounds really fun to play imo :D

2) One easy solution is just make it a normal book and have it teach the spell via script. It sounds like you might be messing with modifying vanilla scripts? That's a bad idea generally, just FYI The others I don't have an answer for at the moment. If you give your specific intent (3) may be easier to answer though :D For (1) I'd check how torch arrow and special effect arrows get their event stuff for hitting the target. It may or may not be perfect, but I'd imagine it could at least be made to work. Also the perk for blocking that keeps arrows from doing damage may be a good starting point to finding for a hook to an event that could give the effect of arrows flinging away.

I do tend to make long ass posts lol. You get to play more as a bad guy, and possibly eventually, a good guy, or neutral guy too. Thieves guild and Dark brotherhood are there. This is more. You build your potential organization from the ground up. You can still, however, just stick around or go back and play as a thug, club owner, body guard, etc... You can go back, having earned a position of head of a grand organization, and just run a hideout, a fort, or, when we start adding other alignment bits, a store, temple, guard outpost etc. You manage many henchmen during all this. Among your first actions, upon deciding to engage in nefarious activities, is to hire some muscle. Confidence is high, this will all certainly be voiced (as in we have several voice actors and a guy generous enough to manage that for us) That is the basic functionality of it all. On top of that, once the above works fine, I, at least, would like to add layers of meaningful quests, then maybe more detailed dialogue, possibly new locations and more advanced, active support of other mods that could benefit from the added features. That's easy enough, but I'd like you to be able to swing your sword before we start inlaying the gold. As I say often over at the wormhole, technical details in abundance are available upon request.

I didn't come up with the term coronation lol, that was DarkGenius. I'm not even sure exactly what that's about. You can theoretically, if we scripted out a 'campaign' for it, which we probably will, at least take over the 'underworld' in skyrim, including overpowering 'syndicates' from other provinces. Until(if ever) we work on some of the other associated alignments (good and neutral, we're full speed on the evil one right now, it will be a separate mod at first) the cross over into legit rule would be somewhat limited. My intention at least, though there's nothing implemented like this so far, is that your evil/good/neutral status is independent, thus yes, you could be an truly evil king exalted by your subjects, or at least look good till you had enough power to secure some sort of rule yourself. I'm not a fan of the idea of being able to do that, but who knows. This mod, as it stands(this alignment), is limited to sticking to nefarious means to achieve your goals. You can't do that so well and still maintain the goodwill of a whole province, at least I'd hope you cant.

I'll be putting up a new version on the other site tomorrow, a few iterations after that I'll probably put up a WIP version here. Gotta have some eye candy first :D

I'd expect stuff like Unity draw the people that would otherwise spend their time modding, since when you're done making stuff with that you actually own it and have a standalone game lol. There's a bit of overhead, but not a lot considering the benefits. I know I may very well move into that sort of thing and never look back after I take some of my current stuff as far as it can get. It really is kinda disconcerting that "Modding" is now basically defined as someone making new models/animations or retexturing. Gameplay content is a seperate, strange portion of "actual" modding. Having started modding in 2002 with Morrowind, it's very confusing at times.

The Secrets of Trade Path to Coronation Greetings, At the moment, this is largely meant to be a recruitment thread for a project taking shape over at The Wormhole. We will probably maintain a topic here soon enough. I, along with the projects head DarkGenius were thinking of holding off on making such a thread till we had more real good stuff to show, eye candy and whatnot. I think I'd like to gauge the interest modders might have, on the concept alone for a bit :D ------ You've sat down at a table in an inn. You've got your mead or drink of choice. The bard plays his music, you consider your options. You've got adventuring down. You may or may not be filthy rich already. You may even be favored by gods and men alike. What you don't have is a way forward. Power is what you need. They acknowledge you, pass you trinkets, give you titles. What does it really get you? They're just in the way, that's what they are. You deserve to have the life of kings. They're in the way. Over your shoulder, you overhear an off duty guard. In his wrinkled dirty uniform, a disgrace really, he gulps his drink and confesses to his neighbor. "I don't even know what I'm gonna do. By the gods. I owe him ten times what I have. Why did I ever even go to that bloody pit." Above the rest of the conversation this stands out to you. He's one of them. In your way. He needs money? Maybe he'd be open to providing a few favors? - "That's right, you work for me now. Cough it up!" You demand from a shopkeeper. "You won't get away with this." They reply. "You run along to your guards if you like. They work for me. You wont last long if you make a fuss. I'll be back next week for twice this." "You thug!" He cries "Heh." - "I have a job for you" You declare, approaching a fellow you've heard is down on his luck. "Yes?" He says, his face brightening. "I need you and my friend Ulfgar here to keep an eye on that shop over there. Some other places too, Ulfgar knows where. I'll pay you 200 gold a week." "Sure!" "That's a good lad." - You've had enough, you won't be robbed by them again. "Dalam! We're taking their fort. Those thieves from last night were from there, I'm sure of it. Besides, if we wait much longer they'll be after the hideout my man Belic has down near there. Gather the troops, we move as soon as we can!" "I've got the men from here, and I can have more within an hour." the Lieutenant at your side replies. "Make it happen, no reason to make it a fair fight." The Lieutenant retires to his horse with a wicked grin. - "Scouts report back the toll checkpoint is under attack sir." "They're attacking *MY* checkpoint? MY base? Round everybody up. We leave none alive save one. I want to know why, who." - "We've cleared to the very door of the fortress sir. We still have considerable forces here, though we've lost many. Shall we continue?" "Yes, of course, and I'll be leading the assault." You reply. "As you wish my Lord." ------ On one level, this is something of an RP mod. You can setup an... operation, if you will. Right now we're working on the 'Dark' side of things. An operation is anywhere from bribing guards and blackmailing/extorting people, to running a bandit fort, to gathering your troops to take other forts and locations from the ragtag band holding them, or from your enemies. On another level, this is an introduction of RTS elements to Skyrim in a more dynamic, but lore/vanilla game friendly, way than has been seen before. You, or your enemies, own locations and employ/command troops/workers. Some types of locations can be upgraded, as you would expect, to provide certain benefits. If this excites you at all, something even more exciting may be that we haven't finalized any such things. Unlike the lower level enabling work, the workings of the broader game(RTS level) are still in the concept phase. It's open to input, especially from anyone willing to try and help implement. ::Warning: Possible technical content:: We are currently well into finalizing the lowest level enabling constructs of this, and nearly to a good starting point with the interactions of all these things. We're well along in creating the framework, if you will. Making it possible, with a few function calls in a quest/dialogue/script bit, to unleash a platoon at your command, absorb a bandit gang and/or their hideout and it's benefits into your ranks, unleash enemy/Jarl retribution for your actions. The substance, the heart, of the game play has yet to be even finalized, though we've got a good idea of it. This is a major mod. Major in several ways. It doesn't *just* add all these features. It's designed to be expandable in different ways, by people with different skill sets and ideas. The whole mod is built around having a set of independent features dealing, in a standardized way, with the tracking of the RTS portion. Above that, it's meant to let you make a great location for a battle or event/job of some sort, then integrate that location into the mod(and by extension, the players world/experience) by simply placing a marker or two, putting a script on it, and setting some properties. You may recognize that this is, in a way, exactly how the engine is intended to be used more or less. The lower levels are just there to provide support to those above. It's designed to change/give more options to your gameplay(even your modding), while interfering as little as possible. ::/technical content:: What we need now, or in the *very* near future, are people to join us in making this mod. We've got our team lead DarkGenius who runs around like a crazy person and keeps things moving, and we've got a few doing general things right now. CK related work to be done(job openings): I've split CK skillsets in three groups, since that's how the mod is set up. World Editing: This could, or could not be a large part of our mod, depending on what people we have and what they want to do. This wouldn't require, necessarily, a knowledge of anything much more advanced, just how to place stuff in the game world (and hopefully a passable eye for aesthetics :D ) High end of this would be being able to do the stuff in the bethesda CK tutorial videos. General Modding: This is anywhere from world editing, to working with quests and dialogue(very limited scripting knowledge included for quest flow). We need people that can do this stuff, no doubt. Anybody that can do some of these things, could help us flesh out some of our 'added features'. This means helping work(sometimes write/design if you so choose) out dialogue and setup mini quests enabling such things as extortion, black mail, random attacks, random and scripted encounters and consequences. Eventually we'll be connecting the dots on our main 'campaign' like quest(s) as well to tie it all together. Help wit this would be almost required for anything to be done timely :D You don't need comprehensive knowledge of everything everywhere, just how to work with basic quest stuff and dialogue really. More advanced modding/scripting: Good knowledge of how to get what you want to do done in the CK and with papyrus. I'm going to the Creationkit.com papyrus reference every five minutes, and reading and rereading the ObjectReference Script and ReferenceAlias Script pages and such all the time. Knowing all possible options isn't the thing here, but being somewhat comfortable with the place scripts have in the skyrim engine and all the basics of the more common elements of the different form types is what we're looking for. If you even understood those last few sentences you could probably be useful lol. Non CK related work to be done: Voice Acting: It seems like we may have a good team of VA's already, more than we can use with what we have actually lol, but that doesn't mean you can't bring a unique voice type to the mod. Sound: Create your own position by giving us some ideas? Custom sound effects can add a lot to the unique feel of some of our gameplay elements. Keep us in mind or let us know you're around and we could supply you with our own requests if you prefer it that way. 3D Modeling: This is another one of those, it would be awesome, but not required things. We have tons of ways to use custom armor potentially. Unique models for anything from castles to scepters would not go unused. We have one person working at this, but they'd be the first to admit it would take some doing to get some thing good. Retexture work: Again, someone's working at this, but someone experienced or at least comfortable with retexture work would be most welcome. This isn't an essential thing, but we have at least one person who's going to work at it regardless, so we'd be happy to have help! 3D Animation: *cough* yeah right... I hear it's possible to add animations thesedays though? Well, if by some random chance someone could do such a thing for us, there are quite a few custom gestures and such that would go well with this. DarkGenius would have more input, but there you go. Remember: In case it's important to you, those that get in on the ground level get to help with the design/concepts as much as the actual modding :D We've got a good bit of the real groundwork done. We've got some motivated people and it would be great to have some more! Contact: Reply here, drop me or DarkGenius a PM here, or head over to The Wormhole. if you choose that route, you'll have to make a member account, then post in a forum explaining that you would like to join our forum group. A PM or reply here is more than fine though. He put out a lot of material here: Original Forum Post. It's a bit insane though, plus it was in mod *request* with a [WIP] tag. So here's a new thread.

Howdy, decided this needed "Recruiting" in the topic title lol, so moved to a new thread: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/891619-wip-recruiting-for-the-secrets-of-trade-path-to-coronation/ happy modding!

I wrote a multi-paragraph post on how perfect skyrim and the CK were for just getting right down to business and showing off good game design principles and other things your degree program might be particularly sensitive to. Then I decided to check up on Unity... I'd heard of it, but assumed it was costly and not a whole solution... it's nuts lol. I didn't even know they had all those features nowdays, and for free unless you *want* more? TBH, I'd probably just go that way... at least depending on assets available for free. I see your argument related to combat system and UI too. Not that it matters, but IMO, it comes back to what do you want to *have* when you're done. Just a project that got you your good grade, or another real game under your belt(since you own it... at least I think...). It could be something you can point to later as a good, well rounded game you made, or as a Skyrim mod. I'm no industry insider, but unless things like unity have some stigma attached, I'd assume the former is better. If you're 100% happy with just having a skyrim mod, and churning something out quick that shows you know your higher level stuff(principles, and whatever else), there's nothing like the CK for sure. Nothing. It sounds like you're almost a compulsive game making guy anyways lol. Maybe there's no particular need to have one that's tied to the requirements of your senior project. Think Mozart or Skrillex (compulsive creators both. Used in the same sentence because it's insane to do so). They could do some jazz or pop music for a particular purpose, take a shower, and be on their merry way.

Sounds just awesome. Nice niche to put it in too, the arrested part :D Looking forward to it.

does it *still* do that? lame. yeah, it's attached to the terrain, but I'm not certain there's a way to edit it. Last time I encountered this I ended up being able to just not edit or cover over the problem areas. The next thing I was going to try was messing with bunches of settings on the terrain there. I think I remember hearing someone talk about a thing you had to do once in the CK to get it to regenerate rocks and grass and such based on the terrain. I'd check the official forums.

That Requiem mod sounds interesting. Depends on what type of hard you mean. There are a lot of different sorts. Just more numbers on everything? or requiring some skill/strategy?

Isn't everybody supposed to pretend they hate Wow if they go to a skyrim site or play skyrim? I'm confused now. Isn't self hating wow player still the only way to go most of the time?

1. According to some script comments, most things check if the player is in the CWImperialFaction or the CWSonsFaction. 2. It looks like the quest called simply CW tracks your civil war progress in a very general way. There are probably several others that do it better, and better track specific parts. 3. Same idea as 2. You'd have to familiarize yourself with the quests a bit. 4. And this is also a general recommendation: Look through the script CWScript. I think it will answer a lot of your questions. That's all from a 5 minute glance in the CK.

This is still going on at the CraftBits place. Should prolly make a WIP topic when we get some of this first bit done :D We could still use all sorts of people though. Knowing how to load up a mod in the CK, maybe edit a few things in the world, should be all that's necessary to start with for modding this. Art assets, voice acting, and more advanced modding stuff would certainly be well used too.

Ya, there's not really any such thing as a 'stand alone script' in Skryim. It sounds repulsive at first, especially if you're a programmer, but once you understand the system it's way better this way for the purpose of making mods for this engine. Your script has to be on something, and it has to have a real representation in the world (a reference) to have any meaning for the most part. Quests, once started, count as this, and are great ways to run stuff once you understand them to a point. Dozens, possibly even the majority of actual quests in the game are hidden quests existing purely to manage things transparently. Edit: just glanced again at the quests... the vast VAST majority of quests are such transparent management quests lol. To the point it almost seems like they could make it a separate form type and make the actual 'quest' a more simple thing lol. *almost*

Makes me think of the first scorpion king movie lol. Dodge this!

Ok, I said I'd post some stuff, but I don't think I'll bother doing it here :D it's on the craftybits forum thing. I think all interested parties are there anyways. It's pretty much an adaptation of many common skyrim conventions to suit fitting in this boat load of features.

As requested, one of two planned posts here :D I'll post the second one tomorrow after I put what I have in some form reasonably displayed here. (Just some charts and stuff... nothing fun) This sounds a bit insane lol. I kinda like the general idea though. The common thread is something I think could be really fun, both to mod and to play. There's so much written here that the common thread would end up different for any given person reading it, I'll give you that. I'm seeing the player interacting with with good, bad, and neutral elements of Skyrims population learning and eventually mastering Skryims "Secrets of Trade". As my first submission, I'd like to put forward a bit of structure to bind it all together, just one such idea. One of any number of possible ways to find a good starting point. If someone leads, mostly just says 'hey do this, because it fits here in our plan'. I'd love to come along. That's arguably more important, more precious, than any given modding skillset. I'm not even worried about how finished it gets really, or how fast. I just don't do the leading, pulling, pushing thing for now. I can do quite a bit with the CK, would be nice to get this thing somewhat structured so it can start rolling in one form or another. - SinderionsBones

Navmesh. Here's how to do it :D It tells NPC's and followers how to move around in your cell by telling them where it's ok to walk. They're not smart enough to do it on their own. Luckily it's reasonably easy. Edit: link was wrong

For your specific needs, there's an event you can put on your 'certain item' http://www.creationkit.com/OnContainerChanged_-_ObjectReference OnContainerchange should set you up with what you need for that. It's basically high level access to the hook you're talking about. It pops when the item you set up the event on, changes containers. You're given links to the old and the new container, so you can just make it stay in the old one. I forget if this will interrupt the little text thing saying you looted it or not, but that may actually be something you can work with to get your point across :D Your particular example of "Your hands are bound" is from a particular function that disables that. The hook itself is at a lower level than papyrus for that at least. You could edit the global container script, but that's incredibly messy since, no need to do that for this at least. You may be able to get the same global effect from something with SKSE, I haven't caught up with that yet, since last I was modding it was too poorly upkept. It's great now though, so don't hesitate to browse the same site for an SKSE solution if you need more and are you're still looking for that. I'm still warming my papyrus scripting back up after a several month absence from modding, but if I remember correctly, you can also add this effect easily if you know the container in question. It doesn't sound like that's the idea here though. Happy modding :D

Bah, got it working by doing it more or less one by one, who knows...

Just wondering if anyone has any tips for me in this situation. I hope it's just a silly button I'm forgetting to press. I'd hate to have to blindly copy *all* my old data, scripts and source folders over, but that may be my next step. I'm trying to move a mod I was working on from my old laptops steam folder to my new computers folders to continue development. I haven't touched it since late march. - When I moved it all, .esp into the /data folder, scripts and sources into the scripts and source directories, I can't get it to work right either in the creation kit, or in game even with a clean save. - The scripts don't load in the Creation kit for any of the quests or items. I've messed around with everything I can think of. Is there a simple... find scripts command or something like that? - On the very latest attempt, my 'resident' quest that just adds some stuff to the player inventory worked, but nothing else did. Even my dialog stuff wont show now, despite it working when i had only the .esp moved and not the scripts >.> I'm so confused lol, any insight would be greatly appreciated. I wish I'd have put a version up on the workshop lol, it's already good enough for like a beta version (it's the spy games mod I'm talking about, the one in my sig we didn't finish up). Then I could just re download and keep going >.<

Hey, I have a question. Is that lame bug where any model bigger than like, a barrel, or small walkway, has a tendancy to simply disapear for no reason? I think it was like, a tendency to just not render some random things with more than some number of polygons or whatever. It was one of the main reasons I just kept getting too annoyed to keep modding in skyrim. If it's still around, is the only way to help it still to make an esm? if that's even a fix. Thanks in advance! I've come back to skyrim for now, but I don't want to bother with certain things or aspects of mod making if this lame bug is still wreaking havok lol.