LE Really hoping this is a simple, easy request... just need a notification message at random intervals.

[SmedleyDButler]

I wasn't originally going to ask for a mod to be made, but honestly I can't make head or tail of creation kit of the couple times I've tried myself, and I'm hoping someone can help me out or at least point me to a tutorial that would let me make something like this myself. I honestly don't know how difficult this would be to create or make, so if what I'm asking is actually difficult or complex then please let me know, and I'll drop it.

 

What I want is a mod which will simply generate a notification message of some kind at random intervals. At the most basic level, just a text message that comes on screen any time from an in-game day to maybe three or four in-game months which just reads "A disaster has happened in Skyrim".

 

The idea behind this was that I have a character party trying to do charitable things to help with the civil war in Skyrim, that there are regular disasters happening which my adventuring party will go and help clean up without taking sides. If you want more detail, I actually had a much longer post about this here: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/4605315-looking-for-a-solution-to-a-charitygold-sink-problem/ where I wanted to know if there were existing mods that generated random events that I could just use instead (and if someone here CAN suggest an existing mod that I can use instead even though the message or effect be for something completely different, I'd appreciate it, but I haven't found one).

 

Now, a full "Skyrim natural disasters mod" would be a big complicated mod beyond my skills and probably beyond the skills of most modders (though apparently Chesko is actually making a mod like that as a replacement/upgrade to You Hunger?). So because that's not going to happen, I was just going to RP it myself using out of game tools and such, just roll for a result on an excel table to see what the natural disaster is, where, how much damage it did, who is affected, etc. A bit clunky, but workable.

 

Depending on how much help I can get with this, there's maybe the option of doing more, but I don't know how much coding or trouble these would require:

 

- Having the message be delivered by a courier instead of just being an on-screen text notification (this would be the coolest thing to add)

- Having the message indicate which hold or town the disaster took place in

- Additional in-game randomly-generated details of the disaster (what kind of disaster, who is affected, who's trying to help or ask for donations or food or materials, how much damage, etc.)

 

The last one would be the most complex, I imagine.

 

But at the end of the day maybe that's all too much work for someone and asking for something more complicated gets me nowhere. All I really need for this idea is an IN-game widget which will randomly generate a message every now and then. If I can get that somehow, I'd be grateful. Or even a suggestion for an existing mod which randomly does *something* harmless over a similar time frame which I can just pretend generated such a message.

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

[redrakiton125]

http://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Category:Tutorials

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65163/?

[SmedleyDButler]

I understand you're trying to help, but easy-to-find links to the most basic tutorials is something I did look up for myself. I was rather hoping for advice more specific to this particular concept.

Edited June 27, 2016 by SmedleyDButler

[Fantafaust]

I'm not sure I understand what you want, exactly. Just random messages? If it gave a specific area, when you get there, nothing will have happened, because you don't have an event generating the message.

 

I'm just not seeing the utility of this, I guess. :/

Edited June 27, 2016 by Fantafaust

[SmedleyDButler]

In a perfect world, there WOULD be events, or rather, the aftermath of an event - when I arrive there might be burned or damaged buildings, people in tents, graves, whatever. The effects would be dynamic and randomly-generated. And if you donated enough time and money, you could fix these problems so the city or town would be restored back to default.

 

But that's not going to happen. I can't create a mod that does that and no one is going to do that for me, nor would I expect them to. So I have to RP it a bit if I want to play that way. Maybe it's going on "in the background" maybe the homeless are being temporarily housed in a temple or somewhere it's not immediately obvious, whatever, I'll just rationalize it. Again, this isn't perfect and I have to roleplay it instead of the game actually laying everything out for me, but as far as I know, that's about as good as I can get. There's no genuinely working mod that creates random natural disasters or random destruction from the Civil war which can be repaired, or will spawn groups of refugees in tents.

 

Now, I can handle a lot of stuff the old-fashioned way, just by having a spreadsheet of effects and using RNG to determine the "effects". They won't be visible when I go to the affected area in game, I'll just have to use my imagination (gasp). Or if I really want, maybe I can spawn stuff via console & placer. Make a tent city, etc.

 

But I need something which creates a random in-game trigger for me to do this, as that's the one thing I can't do with spreadsheets. I don't want to decide "Okay today is a disaster day." myself, I want it to be a surprise as I play. So maybe there's a different mod that creates events of some kind that I can just say are actually disaster prompts. There's actually a mod that's an example of something kind of like that, "Earthquakes in Skyrim" (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32288 ) but that thing is crazy, it generates earthquakes every two minutes! Never mind that the interval won't work for me, I don't even know how anyone can play like that... :confused: I also saw the newspaper mod, Black Horse Courier Reborn (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59450 ), but the reviews seem to indicate that mod is extremely script-bloated (one guy tried to uninstall it and he removed over 2000 orphan scripts, holy crap) and extremely buggy, so I think I'll stay away from that one! Other than those I haven't seen anything that fits the bill yet, but maybe someone else here can suggest something.

 

However, if there really is no workable option using an existing mod, then maybe I need to make something myself (which I'm really not sure I can, as simple as the idea sounds) or ask nicely if someone else could.

Edited June 28, 2016 by SmedleyDButler