Coming Very Soon: Civil War Overhaul

[Apollodown]

I took a look at your overhaul when I released the trailer: What worries me is that you're replacing the dialogue for all the main characters, which will probably make the two unmeshable.

 

I'd have to know more to give further details about whiterun or fort greymoor - if you still rely on quest CWSiege to deliver the siege, it should be fine. As for greymoor, it is relatively easy to remove its functionality.

 

I was about to list off the major changes made to CW related files, but then I realized, it's pretty much all of them. Major edits to the scripts and aliases or what they rely on may not be compatible.

 

Essentially, if you make any edit to any global, keyword, SM Event or quest prefaced CW - it's probably going to cause an issue.

[behughes]

That is a valid concern. We are planning to redo the voice work for a lot of the major characters. However, this will include a lot of vanilla dialogue, and we don't intend to change anything unless is pertains to the main quest.

However, the Dragonborn's role in Whiterun is the focal point for the first act of our revised Main Quest sequence, so Jarl Balgruuf will probably have the most changes to civil war related dialogue. To be more specific... We had planned to remove the following scenario from all possibility:

 

The player joins one of the civil war factions BEFORE completing 'Before the Storm', eventually arriving at the quest 'Message to Whiterun'. He/she goes to Whiterun and visits Dragonsreach for the first time. Upon delivering the message on half of his/her chosen faction, the PC is FORCED to assist Balgruuf with his dragon problems before Balgruuf will give his/her faction an answer.

 

This scenario is simply ridiculous, but not easily fixed. After playing around with different ideas, we came to the following solution:

 

We plan to create a few "initiation quests" for both factions. They will replace Rikke's bandit-buster quest, and Galmar's ice-wraith hunt, respectively. This will allow the player to join his/her chosen faction as a rank-and-file soldier, complete training exercises and military operations that are appropriate for that rank, and earn the right to do "special missions" like 'Message to Whiterun' and 'The Jagged Crown.'

If the player chooses to complete ALL of these quests before ever finishing 'Before the Storm', he/she is given the first "special mission" - to go to Whiterun in the guise of a freelance adventurer, ingratiate his/her self with Jarl Balgruuf and his court, earn his trust, and sway him towards your faction. To this end, Balgruuf is going to be genuinely neutral, and may side with Ulfric if the circumstances are right. If you manage to sway Balgruuf to the Stormcloaks, he remains in power, and 'The Battle for Whiterun' becomes a defense mission, fighting the Legion rather than the Stormcloaks.

After completing 'Dragon Rising,' the player becomes Thane of Whiterun. With this new title comes respect and trust. From here, the player can persuade Balgruuf to choose a side. After this is done, he/she will receive a message via courier, requesting that he/she return to his/her faction handler for further instructions, thus unlocking 'The Jagged Crown.'

 

After that, nothing else is changed in the Civil War quest-line, on our end.

 

If CWO sticks to the basic quest sequence leading up to 'The Battle for Whiterun,' we are probably OK. Otherwise, I'm not sure... I'm also open to better solutions to the above scenario, if you've got one.

- - - - -

 

As for Fort Greymoor...

I won't say anything more than this: we are converting Fort Greymoor into a town similar to Helgen, simply dubbed "Greymoor." Unlike the vanilla version, it is not a bandit camp. But like Balgruuf, it is initially a neutral territory, occupied by Balgruuf's private army and a civilian population. It will play a major role as the home for a new political faction in Whiterun, and serve as a setting for some important parts of Act 1 of the Main Quest.

 

If it's a simple matter to remove the battle for Fort Greymoor through a patch, I'm all for it. Like I said, anything I can do to make our up-coming mod compatible with yours is good for everyone.

I hope this answers some questions, and doesn't spoil too much.

Edited June 13, 2013 by behughes

[Nudedragon]

This looks awesome. Hopefully compatible with Open Cities, but I suspect it'll need a compatibility patch for the Markarth Battle. Be that as it may, I'm looking forward to this! Did you have to muscle the quest issue you were having in TES5Edit the other day?

[Apollodown]

Oh god I didn't even think about Open Cities. I guess I have to talk to Arthmoor about how he handles it with Whiterun. That'll affect markarth and riften.

 

As for my dialogue issue, I'm still annoyed about it, but that particular situation I was able to work around. And it only applies to the imperials, so whatever(For Talos!)

 

CWO edits CW03(Message to whiterun), and relies on some of its assets.

 

Just a brief look at what you're trying to do tells me you've opened up a serious can of worms. To get Balgruuf to stay in power as a stormcloak, you would need to edit CWGovernment and its corresponding scripts, which I frankly haven't had the stones to do yet, because scary. Also editing the pre-whiterun quests means you have to edit how the game handles them and connects them, which is harder than you realize, and likely would end in you having to edit CWScript. If you do edit CWScript, our mods will NEVER be compatible(I've edited it like all get out and didn't comment because I'm a jerk...a baws).

 

If you make these edits then our mods can't be compatible - the basic idea of what you are trying to do would cut right through my edits, and likely make the civil war uncompletable(that's not a word) or worse.

 

Why not just let Balgruuf skip the blocking dialogue path after a successful persuasion check? I was considering doing that anyway. His dialogue in CW03 goes something like "here's an axe" "I don't want it, have a dragon instead" "I really want you to have this axe" "Speak with Avenicci, tool". So why not just make it go instead like "Dude, I've got an axe for you" "Screw ur axe homie" "(Persuasion)This axe cures cancer and whitens your teeth while you sleep" "ORLY? Lemme check this out then".

 

No muss, no fuss. And don't worry, with CWO you can see Balgruuf get ousted, reinstate him, and oust him again. Or at least I hope, things do tend to get weird the more often you fight in the same place.

[behughes]

Oh god I didn't even think about Open Cities. I guess I have to talk to Arthmoor about how he handles it with Whiterun. That'll affect markarth and riften.

 

As for my dialogue issue, I'm still annoyed about it, but that particular situation I was able to work around. And it only applies to the imperials, so whatever(For Talos!)

 

CWO edits CW03(Message to whiterun), and relies on some of its assets.

 

Just a brief look at what you're trying to do tells me you've opened up a serious can of worms. To get Balgruuf to stay in power as a stormcloak, you would need to edit CWGovernment and its corresponding scripts, which I frankly haven't had the stones to do yet, because scary. Also editing the pre-whiterun quests means you have to edit how the game handles them and connects them, which is harder than you realize, and likely would end in you having to edit CWScript. If you do edit CWScript, our mods will NEVER be compatible(I've edited it like all get out and didn't comment because I'm a jerk...a baws).

 

If you make these edits then our mods can't be compatible - the basic idea of what you are trying to do would cut right through my edits, and likely make the civil war uncompletable(that's not a word) or worse.

 

Why not just let Balgruuf skip the blocking dialogue path after a successful persuasion check? I was considering doing that anyway. His dialogue in CW03 goes something like "here's an axe" "I don't want it, have a dragon instead" "I really want you to have this axe" "Speak with Avenicci, tool". So why not just make it go instead like "Dude, I've got an axe for you" "Screw ur axe homie" "(Persuasion)This axe cures cancer and whitens your teeth while you sleep" "ORLY? Lemme check this out then".

 

No muss, no fuss. And don't worry, with CWO you can see Balgruuf get ousted, reinstate him, and oust him again. Or at least I hope, things do tend to get weird the more often you fight in the same place.

 

At least we can agree that the vanilla version is awkward as hell. "Dragons? Ain't nobody got time for that! Take the f***ing axe, Balgruuf!"

 

As for said "can of worms," I'm really just a writer, not a coder, so I've probably not considered how impractical my solution might be. I look for plot holes, and fix them.

 

Your solution - that is, forcing Balgruuf to accept Ulfric's axe, dragons be damned - was actually our original solution. But for us, that meant the possibility of the player joining the Stormcloaks and making Vignar jarl of Whiterun. Which in turn meant writing two versions of the Main Quest - one for Balgruuf's regime and another for Vignar's, depending on who is in charge when you finally start doing the Main Quest. Of course, that's our problem, not yours :P

 

As for replacing the vanilla "Join the Imperials/Stormcloaks" quests, does this really present any issues? By my reckoning, it just changes a few conditions, adds new content, and bypasses the vanilla quests without changing them at all. Of course, my experience in the CK is pretty limited, so I may be overlooking something.

[Apollodown]

The thing about the civil war is that it is a well-coded work of freaking art. Until you dive in to change stuff, it just looks like another linear quest, but it's not. The entire quest is dynamic - Bethesda just jammed the gears to force you to take one of two routes. When you start to change anything major, such as how quests connect or how dialogue hooks into quests, the options you open up conflict with the hardcoded linear quest iced over the top of it, causing badness.

 

I haven't played with the quests before message to whiterun, but I see them hooking in all over the place. If I had to bet I'd say it would be a long, difficult journey of coding.

 

As for replacing Balgruuf - seriously dude, just write a separate storyline for Vignar. That would be the easier route. I can't guess at how much time editing the initial stuff would be, but replacing Balgruuf I can, and I'd estimate it would take roughly 300 hours to do it.

 

Basically, if you start messing with CW stuff, you will find the ramifications far reaching.

[Nudedragon]

Open Cities as of the latest release handles the civil war battles by using the vanilla cities temporarily, which is how Markarth and Riften would need to be handled. Also, if your mod affects WRDrawBridge01SCRIPT.psc, it will need a patch.

 

Anyway, I don't mean to be pushy about compatibility before your mod is even out, it's just something that seems likely to conflict off the top of my head. Glad you found a way around that quest issue :D

[Kraeten]

Let's wait for the mod to be released before discussing incompatabilities eh? Considering the sheer scope of this overhaul, and it's incredible value, cosmetic mods are of much less import to put it bluntly. No offense to Arthmoor, his work is impressive and I'm sure we all appreciate the time he put into Open Cities.

[Apollodown]

No worries! From your information the two appear to be compatible!

 

@Kraeten thanks for the support! And don't worry, when the slew of user complaints comes in about incompatibilities with this and that, I have a dedicated team of flying monkeys that sorts through it for me. Team! Introduce yourselves!

 

Oh wait, Sven thinks I'm dead. I should let him know I'm not.

[FastestDogInTheDistrict]

This sounds really interesting! I hope it will not conflict with my guards mod! I'll have to check when Civil War is released! :sweat: