LE Couple of house mod ideas

[Rivaan]

Sorry if either of these have been suggested before, but I would love to see someone run with them.

 

The first would be a simple home in the form of the small biosphere ship from The Fountain. Unless someone is keen on accuracy, an "inspired by" feel should suffice. An enchanted ring (reference to the Queen of Spain's ring?) or spell could be used to grant access. Not too sure about how to get back.

 

I envisioned a tree (re-sized and recolored Sleeping Tree? Eldergleam?) in a clear bubble with water at the bottom. Perhaps a stone platform or grassy spot with sleeping roll for the player to rest. A lantern hung from the branches could provide light.

 

Not sure what to do about containers. If one were to live an acetic lifestyle, a simple large sack and/or satchel could do.

 

The environment outside the bubble would not be accessible. Since it is in space, perhaps it would look the same as the skill tree background? Fog might be used to give the appearance of going through a nebula.

 

The second idea isn't much, though it would be a little more labor intensive. All my notes say are:

 

Castle in a book

Reading book teleports you inside

Object in castle teleports you out

Quest to complete story unlocks new areas & new sub-quests.

Read found pages to proceed.

Activate to read, sneak-activate to take book.

I had no ideas on the nature of the quest, but it would most likely be a mystery of some type.

 

 

I know I said a couple of house mod ideas, but this was stashed in my notes too, so I'll leave it here:

Beehive management

bee breeding/ queen rearing

craftable beehives (Hearthfire?)

honey harvesting / flower based flavoring

(yes, I know about Better Bee Hive, this is different)

[DrNewcenstein]

The Treehouse in a Bubble sounds easy enough. Wasn't that a movie with Hugh Jackman? I seem to recall seeing something like that not too long ago.

 

 

The "Castle In A Book" is also very do-able - sort of like Myst. My brother and I were discussing a similar mod idea a while back where you have an abandoned house that contains a doll house. You activate the doll house and teleport inside of it.

But for the Book, I'm thinking you could make something like Kolb And The Dragon (Choose Your Own Adventure), where you "begin" the adventure not just by reading the book (like with the Black Books), but rather you have to click a specific button indicated on the "Start" page.

From there, you could "live the book" with message boxes that pop up telling the story - "you see a long hallway with 2 doors, one on the left, one on the right. Which door will you open first? (A) Left, (X) Right". Your choice has a specific result, just like the book, but there's no going back and making the other choice instead - you make the choice and live with it. If it's Death (scripted event), then you go back to the start.

 

However, that's just how I'd do it - some may find the dialog windows too annoying, as well as the lack of backtracking, and the scripted deaths.

 

 

Not even going to think about Beehive Management. That's something you do on a SmartPhone IMO, not an Elder Scrolls game.

[DrNewcenstein]

Ok, so I actually started working on the Fountain-inspired one. I'm using the sphere from Azura's Star, which has a nice effect of 2 layers that rotate in opposite directions. I've got a small island surrounded by water, with the Gildergreen and a bedroll for the player, with one lantern hanging from a branch, and a knapsack at the base of the tree.

 

Couldn't find the Skills Menu Imagespace for the environment, so I used the Dreamstride Imagespace. Not that it can be seen from inside the sphere, though.

 

I'm unable to get the sphere to be transparent enough to see out of it. Probably just as well since the environment map is set up so that there's nothing below the horizon, and it'd look odd.

 

For getting in and out, a Ring could be used, and set it up like the Wooden Mask that takes you from Labyrinthian to Bromjunaar: put it on and you go there, take it off and you return.

 

Still got some tweaking to do - can't yet interact with the knapsack, see about setting up the transport system, set up some Critter spawns (Butterflies by day, Torchbugs by night), add some leaf particle emitters, and try to make the sphere not look so much like Azura's Star.

 

Only question is about the size of it all. Right now, the tree is centered and the sphere is just bigger than the tree. If I remember the movie, that was about the scale of it, but the tree was considerably larger than the actors. I may have to scale both of those up a bit, unless you want this as just a one-person sleeping cell that you can pop in and out of. If you'd rather have it as big as the Eldergleam, lemme know.

[DrNewcenstein]

Ok, here it is.

 

http://newcenstein.com/SkyMods/TheFountain.zip

 

Unzip it into your Data folder and activate it in the launcher. It is reliant on Dragonborn, however, for the lanterns in the tree.

 

 

I did not scale it up huge like the Eldergleam, and it's not big enough to climb (not like you could anyway since people in TES universe can't use their hands for anything but food and weapons).

 

The knapsack by the roots works, and is set to not respawn so you can safely store stuff in it.

 

You will have to get Kyne's Amulet from Helgen Keep. It's on top of the open chest by one of the beds on the Imperial side of the cell (when you follow Hadvar), so you can get it at the start of the game, even if you follow Ralof into the Keep.

Put on the amulet and you'll be whisked away. To get out, simply fast travel anywhere. Seemed like the best way to do it, since you can get there from anywhere by simply putting the amulet on.

 

You will not teleport out by simply removing the amulet.

 

Thanks to IsharaMeradin for helping sort out the script on the amulet.

[Rivaan]

I'll try it out now, thanks for the effort.

[DrNewcenstein]

GAAAAAH! Brainfart!

 

Turns out I forgot to include the 2 key elements - the sphere mesh and the script.

 

So here's a link to the correct version. Sorry for the suck:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/download/1000115265

[Rivaan]

Sorry, haven't been able to reply right away, loving the mod so far.

 

There are a couple ideas that I had to address some problem areas.

 

When swimming around, I noticed that I can exit the bubble. An invisible wall around the sides could fix the edges, and a stone floor under the water could deal with the bottom of the sphere. I don't think the top is a problem.

 

Also, I was wondering if the shrine could moved over by the knapsack and imp stool put in its place? I like poisons :D

 

This is awesome. Thanks again!

[harvengure]

For the castle in a book, my thoughts are why do a castle in a book when you can have a castle in a painting. It was done in Oblivion.

[DrNewcenstein]

Sorry, haven't been able to reply right away, loving the mod so far.

 

There are a couple ideas that I had to address some problem areas.

 

When swimming around, I noticed that I can exit the bubble. An invisible wall around the sides could fix the edges, and a stone floor under the water could deal with the bottom of the sphere. I don't think the top is a problem.

 

Also, I was wondering if the shrine could moved over by the knapsack and imp stool put in its place? I like poisons :D

 

This is awesome. Thanks again!

 

Glad you're enjoying it. I was able to get a better texture on the interior - a nice starfield. Looks better than the grody bump-map on it. CK was bugging me about the item not having a Normal map, and I threw that one on it to shut it up :lol:

I'll see about doing the barriers and move the shrine around front, and add the Imp Stools.

 

 

 

For the castle in a book, my thoughts are why do a castle in a book when you can have a castle in a painting. It was done in Oblivion.

 

Because it was done in Oblivion :P

And actually, it was a painted forest, not a castle. But that's just picking nits :lol:

 

Expanded Winterhold Ruins used a painting as a teleport thing as well, but that sent you to a crypt in the city itself (saved a ton of backtracking).

 

Not many people remember the original Myst, so the book idea would be something unique to Skyrim, especially if you had to collect pages of "the story" to open new areas. The last page you find would be the exit.

[DrNewcenstein]

v1.2 is up

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/55441/?