Senior design project

[krazy83]

Hello Modding community,

We are a group of seniors that love the game of Skyrim and LOVE using some mods. So we felt only right to ask our professor if we could do a mod for Skyrim as our senior design project. (To complete our BA in Computer Science) The idea that we have all agreed on is to make a new light armor with complimented weapons.

 

The Game Plan

• First pick our new material (narrowed it down to Mithril or Blue Corundum [sapphire])
• Make the new armor and weapons from scratch, and texture (hopefully using Mudbox if possible)
• Create two mines to get the raw materials needed
• Create a new material spot available at any forge, and recipes for the items
• Implement all of these and test the hell out of it till it is perfect.

The Problem

 

None of us know where to begin with any of this. After watching more than our fair share of Youtube videos and doing enough tutorials for us to understand the process of "replacing" existing items in game, we really wanted to start from scratch. Even though the process of replacing would be a Hell of a lot easier, it will neither challenge us, nor help our grade. I'm sure that we are not really breaking new ground with this, so are are expecting a flood of advice and help from everyone out there. ;-)

 

Our credentials are short when it comes to value for modding but, here goes:

• Advanced experience in 3dsMax and Maya
• Novice experience in Mudbox
• No (real) experience in Nifskope or Photoshop (we suck)

We are very versatile group, and we are not even sure that any of this is even possible without "replacing" or using existing items. But any help and advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you all for your support,

PV A&M Seniors

[Zonzai]

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Creating_an_armour_for_Skyrim._Part_1

 

That should give you all of the information you will need to create the armor. Right now it is not possible to add a new category to the crafting stations. They seem to be hard-coded into the game. What you can do however is create a new crafting station.

 

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/12409/?

 

The above mod adds new crafting stations. All you need to do is go into the CK and add items to it. You will have to get the Creation Kit off of Steam. And then look at how some other mods are set up (any changes made by an activated mod have a * by them). You can potentially create a crafting station from anything. You could even make your own.

 

To make a mining node you will have to copy and edit the existing ore veins. They can't really be created entirely from scratch. You can easily replace the texture and even the model of the ore vein though.

 

https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop

 

For texturing, you will really want photoshop. There is a reason professional texture artists work back and forth between photoshop and 3ds. You will need a dds plugin for a decent normal map anyway.

 

At some point you will probably also want to get your hands on a BSA unpacker. There are several on the Nexus. This will allow you to see the game's models and textures and edit them directly. And for armor you will need to make sure to equip a maximum compatibility skeleton for your armor or people with a lot of mods will encounter CTDs.

 

You can also get creative. As an example that I am familiar with, what I did with The Art of Magicka was make many special items craftable only after unlocking certain perks. Your professor probably won't know how easy it is to do that. The CK allows you to easily make any perk unlock an item at a crafting station of your choice. Using the same system, you can use a book to teach characters a new perk to learn to craft the item. I'm sure there are better things you could do too. Good luck. And please post your final project up on the Nexus.

[krazy83]

First of all Zonzai, HUGE fan of AoM! Absolutely beautiful work.

 

Back to the task at hand, we have one of our members now in the CK making our mines, and we will probably just change the color of some of the existing ore veins to work for that. (thanks for the tip) I did however have a few questions about some of the other points.

 

We thought of making a new perk in the smithing tree (between Glass and Dragon) and allow it to be reached with a smithing skill of 90 and have the Glass perk. (possible?)

Secondly, we are using the FallOut3 Archive Utility for the BSA unpacker, works for us but is there a more preferred one? And finally, we do have an old copy of CS2 Photoshop, but is that version of Ps enough to make fantastical textures? (And by fantastical I mean like the textures in AoM)

Lastly, thank you ever so much for all your help :-)

 

Sincerely,

PV A&M Seniors