How does jailing work?

[darkjaffar]

Hey all, I'm pretty new to modding and I figured I would work on small projects to get started. Various little castle projects, just using vanilla stuff, and the like. Nothing that has involved scripts or modeling. I decided to step it up just a bit and make a simple mod that reimplements Daggerfall styled courts as a dive into scripting. For those who don't know, or remember, in Daggerfall when you are caught doing something illegal such as stealing or resting in an area of town that isn't an inn (yeah, that was against the law back then. Man, I accidentally got arrested so many times for this...) you would go to a court where you could plea innocent or guilty. If you plea innocent, you can either debate or lie. The court will decide your innocence or guilt and you will be, or not be, jailed accordingly.

 

While sounding complex, it should be quite simple, if not done fancy. I figured I would do this by making a duplicate of the Imperial City Palace Elder Counsel Chambers and, when you pick "Go to Jail" you would go there instead to stand trial before the Counsel. From there, the relevant menus would pop-up, as they would in Daggerfall, then you would be redirected to jail (nearest to where you were arrested) or be placed outside the Imperial City Palace a free man, or woman. If I wanted to later, I could make it fancier with courtrooms styled for each city instead of just the palace, if people were interested in something like this, but the basics won't require much.

 

But for the life of me, I can't figure out how they even get you in the cell to begin with. I started with Bravil. I wanted it so if you would have been sent to the Bravil prison, you would go to the copied Imperial Palace instead. There is a little jail bars shaped thing and a door marker. I tried just moving the jail thing to the location I wanted (as you can't move a door marker outside the cell without modifying the door's teleport) and popped a Bravil guard in the head with an arrow, but that didn't do anything other than get me put in Bravil's prison, which wasn't a surprise. Clearly the door marker is what needs to be moved, but I don't know what door it is tied to. I tried looking at all the doors in the cell with no luck (but I could be wrong) Would this even be the way I want to implement something like this? Also, what other jail scripts are used in the process of a regular jailing sequence. I've only found extremely small scripts in vanilla that have to do with jailing, so I'm certain I am missing a script or two that probably should be understood to avoid problems. Suggestions and advice would be nice.

 

Thanks.

[jefe323]

not sure if this is what you are looking for or not, but it might help you:

 

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Jail

[MarkJDK]

Also, http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Jail#Crime.

[darkjaffar]

Thanks for the replies.

 

Ah. the prison markers themselves are doors. I see. Thanks. That does solve that issue. I can get players that would have gone to Bravil's dungeon to go to the "courtroom" instead, only, they seem to consider this a jail break or something as when I got near a palace guard I forgot to erase, he attacked me on sight. Either that or maybe I wandered too far from the jail marker, or something. I wonder if it will matter though, as I intend to have the room mostly empty, with only AI-less npcs sitting in the chairs as if they were the judges/counsel. You would only visit the area only momentarily as you would then be quickly be rerouted based on the results, either to a real dungeon, or outside. My worry is what happens once I teleport you into a cell. They may attack you once you teleport into your cell from losing a trial... Hm. I'll have to look into that too.