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[VixenRouge]

This is a mod concept I've been thinking about for a while but I've no modding experience.

 

Concept:

• When you start a new game you directly choose your race, name and birthsign, eventually if your character is more into fight, magic or stealth.

• Then the players will be asked if they want to choose the type of family they want to be born in or to let the stars decide (random).

• Then the player can start living their childhood and have the possibility to grow up when sleeping (with a 3-year time lapse)

• At the beginning the player being a child has really weak stats that increase by growing and doing certain actions/quests.

• According to the player's behavior they can get closer from some factions.

• When turning 20 the player can leave the town and start discovering the world.

• If they're arrested in the Imperial City they're given the choice to start the main quest or not (the only problem with this is that it may change the story, I think it's better if Uriel dies on the right day even if you're not there to see it. Else it could be possible to refuse to take the amulet and leave it to Baurus?)

 

 

How it would work:

• The childhood would be spent in a brand new town featuring various social classes from beggars to nobles, and its nearby surroundings featuring elements like a camp, a fort and an Ayleid ruin.

• Maybe making several towns would be needed to fit a maximum of family possibilities for the player according to their race. Of course certain races can't attend some types of family, I don't see a Khajiit being a landlord's heir in a castle.

• I think human races could adopt other humans (like a Breton adopted by an Imperial) and maybe other races in certain cases (like castle janitors could adopt beasts and grow them to "help" at work)

 

 

Gameplay restrictions:

To prevent the player from wandering worldwide and starting quests and eventually time paradoxes I thought about two things:

• First, Fast Travel is disabled, under the pretext children are too weak for this

• Second the children will be told not to go in the woods surrounding the town area for they're full of wolves, and they shouldn't try to pass indeed...

 

 

Available families:

 

Noble places

• Landlord in a castle

• Castle guards

• Castle janitors

• Rich family in a manor

 

Popular places

• Rich people in a great house

• Middle-class people in a house

• Priests/monks in a priory

• Lower-class people in a modest house

• Peasants in a modest house

 

Poor places

• Poor but hardworking people in a shack

• "Social case" people in a shack

• Beggars in the street

 

Wilderness

• Marauders in a camp

• Marauders in a fort

• Mages in an Ayleid ruin

• Vampires in a cave

Note that the random family choice would be set to make middle-class "normal" families more attendable than exceptions like noble family or vampires.

Also for the vampires I think it wouldn't make your player a vampire from the start, if we consider vampires are undead then your character couldn't grow and staying 5-year old forever would be annoying.

 

 

Factions and quests:

Whatever family you end up in the way to faction isn't closed, it may be harder or easier but still possible.

 

The different factions should count normal citizens, poor citizens, rich citizens, nobles, guards, marauders, dissident mages, vampires and wild beasts (maybe others should be created for more interaction).

 

The quests should give you the chance to get easy access to the Fighters, Mages and Thieves guilds and the Dark Brotherhood. Ideally I'd like the player to be able to open their own shop if they want and sell whatever they want there (potions, healing services, illegual stuff...) and to be able to tame a beast that would become a companion.

I also thought about the possiblity to become best friends with an NPC that would become a companion.

 

The actions asked to do to fulfill the quests would have course be adapted to a child's abilities. For example, to reach the Mages guild you could be asked to pick ingredient to make potions, for the Thieves guild it could be to draw guard's attention so an elder thief can rob something...

 

 

Mod making needs

 

• Children meshes (for childish proportions)

• Children skin textures (no big muscles for children)

• I guess this means skinmesh, rigging and animation

• Level building for interiors and exteriors

• NPC creation

• Voice actors for children and adults (ideally)

• Writing down dialogues

• Lots of script

 

I can model and texture meshes, try to do some level building in the editor (I haven't used it much until there, is there a goddamn snap?) and write dialogues/develop backstories but for the rest I'm incompetant.

 

If you think this is doable don't hesitate to give feedback and/or volunteer if you have ideas of how to realize this.

If you think it's not doable don't hesitate to give ideas about how to make it doable.

And if you have questions, advice or whatever, go on.

[shadowace]

This would be pretty cool..I'd love to help but I'm currently weighed down with current mods..

[VixenRouge]

I can understand, this would imply lots of work... But well, the idea stays there, I started thinking about it a good year ago, if it waited all this time it can wait more XD

[Ranokoa]

This is a good idea. Very nice one at that. Although I can not give you my fullest of intentions and even smallish medium jobs would probably take a few days as I also am weighed down I would love to help IF and WHEN you get a team going. But because of the vast size required I would still get a fare share of work done no matter how long it takes. I should probably stick to the easiest and fastest and apperantly most needed part of this mods creation, interior design, as I really can't afford the dedication to absalutely essential to grow assignments. I'm a novel righter (figuratively) when i want to.. or get sleep... and rather efficient. As well, I have good experience in project team leading, from way back when to a smaller amount now so I could help you get started with team management and development, incentives and forum setup.

 

I suggest starting out by requesting of mercery at scrollstudio.com for a forum. As for him to fill in the essential forum setup and you could even look at Fort Death forums for referance, although I would refraim from going too in depth as such as fort death forums until you at least get the cities "shaped" with interiors. Not cluttered but at least there.

 

My suggestion to anyone who reads this, this could be done, it will take as my signature quote says "trail and lots and lots of error ~Vagrant0" but it IS doable. As far as the "growing up" meshes are concerned i DONT know if that is possible to switch body mesh all of the sudden. I suppose looking at the begining of Fallout3 for referance can work as the two mods are extremely similar in construct, HOWEVER only referance. Do not TAKE scripts or anything like that cause that is more than likely.. probably even probable, illegal. But if they did it there it COULD be possible here.

 

If not there IS a way around this. YES i love to EMPHASIS things. Making the children mesh an un-unequiptable armor and or clothing that controls correctly to movement. As the child grows up the armor is changed and force-equipted. When you get "armor" in the mod when growing up it will be actually either unused slots that cover those areas, such as Ring 1 Ring 2 Necklace and Head to overlap the other armor, or BEST YET and most efficiently actually just edit the armor mesh to fit over the child mesh and make it 1 mesh, then when you equipt the armor your primary childbody armor is either taken away, and given back upon unequipt (quest scripts to detect when done) or the body armor be called "Unarmored" or something, so they can switch to a frow but never be techniqually unarmored.

 

Someone with more knowledge on this could be much more useful. This is just how I in my inexperience sees the possibilities. But yes i will help, No i will not until the team and project are at least together and underway, and no I can not dedicate full time to it but will definetly get a lot of work done. I could easily just sacrifice more TV time as this would more than likely be just as entertaining. I am, however, unwilling to spend any less time on Fort Death and Project Oblivion once it starts, but as I've learned multi-projecting is possible, just frustrating at times.

 

Be well, sleep well, fight well, live long.

~Ranokoa

[VixenRouge]

@Ranokoa: I'm glad to see such enthusiasm.

As I plan to lead my own team as a pro in the future I wouldn't refuse sharing your experience. I won't hide I'm exigent and that if I see flaws in a work I'll point them for sure. However I'll also try my best to help fix the problem, I'm for constructive criticism.

 

This forum looks interesting indeed, thanks for the link. I'll consider registering when my Internet connexion gets better tomorrow (and it will, may I need to kill the b4st**d who's downloading abusively)

 

I'm sure there's a mean to do this, even if it may imply creating a specific function for this. Until there I had thought about sort of creating a sequel of game beginnings, a first one to start the play with character creation, and the a new one each time you grow up allowing you to check your chara didn't turn ugly while growing and eventually do some quick plastic surgery. Still I'll remember about your idea, no option should be left away until the right one is found.

 

You seem able to involve yourself a lot in projects, that's a good thing =]

I'll update this if I get news.

[Germandeathkittiez]

There are a few things I'd like to add here:

1. I just can't really see Conjurers in those Ayleid Ruins having families... they just seem more like intellectuals who were on a research project and then made temporary camp to rebel from the Mages Guild.

2. I'd also like to add Necromancers and those people who live in that Ayleid Ruin who you find and kill if you want in that Daedra Shrine mission. These'd all be under Wilderness.

3. Another thing, how about if you're Argonian having the chance to be born into the Shadowscale Assassins.

[VixenRouge]

Good points.

 

1. I wasn't sure myself about those mages having sorta "family life", until there I had thought about making it a possiblity as hard to get as being adopted by vampires. Plus I'm worried about the idea of kids actually living in such a dangerous place as an Ayleid ruin (those guys were nuts to make such traps everywhere)

 

2. I didn't play this mission myself, only somewhat recall when my girlfriend, she's braver than me. Can you describe what you'd wish in further details?

 

3. That's a great idea. One village could be located somewhat near the Black Marsh border and you end there if you make your character an Argonian born under the shadow.

[grmblf]

Hi ppl, this looks pretty interesting, just two comments:

 

- Is it necessary to begin as a child? Setting the player's age bar at the youngest point, and also setting complexion to the lowest value actually makes it looks like a child (well, not a little boy, but still a young and inexperienced one). I use to play OOO, fatigue mods, un-levelers, and other stuff that makes things more difficult, but sometimes I find that in the firsts levels it's excessively difficult for my character to survive, so I do some "training quests", (basically I go where I have a quest and I know the enemies will be leveled) and when I'm more experienced I go back to those caves I had to escape from, etc. So for me this would be the perfect kind of "aternative starting", not starting at level -5, so to say, but actually starting the moment the game starts (when you're already a young boy/girl, you've grown up but you're still unexperienced), so the "family" would aid you in your firsts steps you take on your own.

 

- I'd really like to see the same place being used for different starts, so lets say in the same town you can start as a thieve or as a militia soldier, so your tasks and the people who you talk to and how do you talk to them would be completely different from one beginning to another.

 

I can't compromise myself with this but if you want I could help with some ideas for quests, dialogues, etc, even if you make it starts when the player is a child.

[VixenRouge]

It's true the character maker can allow creating kinda childish faces, so I thought that it would be up to the player to set it to create their child character's face and only the body would have to be created. After I'm thinking about creating specific body meshes for children for they have different proportions than adults and are usually less muscular. It's hard to be clear about how character creation should happen as I don't know exactly how it is programmed and what can be changed or not...

 

However the problem you're talking about with such mods is one of the reasons I thought about this one. I tend to think the beginning of the game isn't credible, when you've got your player supposed to be an adult, a poor level 1 guy that however manages to help Blades to fight assassins... it sounds wrong to me. So one of the purposes of this mod could be to start as a level 1 child, level up and really start the game with a higher level - not level 20 or what, maybe just level 5 or 6, but yet I think it's more credible for an adult.

 

 

The same places should be used for different starts indeed, I think there will be several villages (I can't tell yet if they'll be close to each other or not) with different families featuring different social classes and less or more different races. You should end up in a village or another according to various parameters but choosing to became a warrior, thief, mage or whatsoever will be up to you anyway, you will just have to find a way to end up being what you want to be beyond adversity like we do irl. Maybe your parents will hope you become a noble warrior, or maybe that you become a peasant like them... deceiving them or not will be your choice.

 

Help on this would be great, yes, it's something I like to work on but considering the amount of quests and dialogues that are to be created... Yep, help would be appreciated. After, I understand you have a life so if you have time to help, it's welcome, if not, it's okay =]

Thanks for your interest yet!

[alex2avs]

until it grows we can use a setscale command to make the character smaller.

 

An idea(if it's not discussed already) : making gold : how about trading different things (like sweet rolls) with other kids.

Hmm ? How about that?