"Romance Mod" (if you are into modding, please read this!)

[AngelicOne7144]

@Archangel7144

 

Looking forward to that, seems like a really well thought character.

 

Thanks. Been writing for a long time, so it's as simple as taking about 10 seconds to think about what gender/race/general build of character I want, then a few hours researching the related lore for the background, then it just comes.

 

Mind you, a character that's immortal, and has been in Tamriel since the Merethic Era, before the Exodus of the Aldmer from Aldmeris, takes more time researching the ES Lore than it would with other, younger characters. The veneration of the character was actually intentional, because it tests my ability to formulate a complex and historically consistent origin story than with younger companions. Humans races are easy, since their story doesn't have to cover very much, chronologically. As our concept of humans goes, the ones here are notoriously long-lived, but their youth fades far more quickly. Blessings or curses can cause them to be supernaturally youthful or long-lived, but generally speaking, it's still a simple matter by comparison to covering millenia of someone's past, versus decades or centuries.

 

Now, I just need to get the dialogue ironed out, so that we can begin the process of selecting a female voice actor, and - of course - I'll have to get one of our modders to actually log in for five minutes to read over the detailed outline, and start searching for locations we can tie our quest-line into without breaking anything already existing.

 

To be honest, I may spend some time in the CK today, and sifting through some tutorials, and may even just build a few barrows and tombs of my own, diminishing the number of already existing worldspaces we have to modify to fit our needs.

 

I enjoy working with others, but when I'm ready to start moving forward, and get no immediate response from the modders involved, it makes me want to stab out and learn to do the things I need to get it done. I'm ready to bang out a companion mod - free of sloppy work, mind you - and get some good content out there for everyone to enjoy. I'm pretty passionate about my writing, and so I'm ready to share that passion.

Edited February 9, 2012 by Archangel7144

[cppcooper]

Yes, it should really say who to message in the OP. Just send a PM to Nathan the guy who posted the OP, if you want to join in he is the guy to speak with.

[AngelicOne7144]

Yes, it should really say who to message in the OP. Just send a PM to Nathan the guy who posted the OP, if you want to join in he is the guy to speak with.

 

I've already been accepted to work with the group, but since I joined the development forum posted by Nathan, and posted my progress and rough draft on an initial character, not a single post has been added by any other member. Near as I can tell, everyone just switched off the minute we got a group together.... unless there's simply something I missed, or of which I wasn't informed, regarding where we'd be continuing to collaborate.

 

Of course, it wouldn't be the first time I'd seen a mod die before it ever actually got started. If I'm not entirely mistaken, I'm the only person who did more than try to determine how the group was going to move forward creatively. I guess I'm old fashioned. I saw a dozen posts between team members going on about how to get started on an idea, but only after I'd already completed an entire outline for character, backstory, quest concept, spirituality, and personal ethos for my first companion concept. Don't know if that was throwing the gauntlet down, or if people are just so caught up trying to learn Papyrus or other programs that they haven't even bothered to check the thread in the last week.

 

Guess it's neither here nor there. I'm about to dive into Papyrus myself, and see what I can learn. Then, when I get a grasp of that, it's on to modelling, textures, meshes, and animations. I'm just going to start at square one, like all modders did at some time, and run on my own, as per the advice of a modder I talked with recently who's done over 100 Oblivion mods.

 

Home-building will be a big focus for me at first, as well as dungeons, since world-space design is the only thing I had experience with using the TES:CS in Oblivion. As well, I used to do architecture as a hobby when I was younger, so I like designing layouts. It'll be a good way to learn scripting, since I intend to focus on home mods that are similiar in scope to the Millstone Cottage mod(for those who are familiar with that fantastic and award-winning home from Oblivion) that I enjoyed so much. Having a bed and storage are great, and pretty is what it is, but the ability to actually interact with every element of something to immerse you in it is what really makes a mod-house.

 

Having said that, just know that even if the project founders, and is abandoned, I'll still be working on my immersive companions and trying to do what I can to aid those I find who are working on pregnancy/childbirth mods. Figure if I'm doing companions you're going to get attached to, might as well support the mods that allow that to go even further. Tamago and Hiyoko were alright in Oblivion, but I just feel that it could be done better this time around, because of the additional functionality.

 

I'll make sure to update on the Nexus when I finally do get down to finishing some stable mods.

[Meatbomb]

I have made mention repeatedly of how dialogue, particularly with companions, is either non-existent or fails entirely. My characters and stories are set to shatter that trend, and I guarantee a character that you'll feel compelled to protect...

 

Just be careful with getting verbose. Remember the "Something tail's tale" (can't remember exact name) character for oblivion? Similar "character driven" companion, but every dialogue with him was reading a book. Usually after a paragraph of dialogue you'd be prompted with a single reply option "Oh really? What then?" and on to reading another paragraph.

 

Yes, by the end he was certainly a well-formed character, but it really was a bit much and the replay value was nil. Try to get the depth of character with an economy of text. People don't soliloquize at length in the real world, remember that. :)

[NathanRyan]

we decided that the project would be done whenever we had a free moment and not make it a priority, but i am in aggreeance with you, it seems like ppl are already flaking. no one has been responding to my emails or trying to join the forum (tho i have asked repeatedly, and are about to do so again) but i do lead a life outside of this, then i wont be able to devote an unlimited amount of time to this. but i will be working as much as possible when i get the time and energy. i can only hope the other 12 members of this project will be as diligent.

[AngelicOne7144]

I have made mention repeatedly of how dialogue, particularly with companions, is either non-existent or fails entirely. My characters and stories are set to shatter that trend, and I guarantee a character that you'll feel compelled to protect...

 

Just be careful with getting verbose. Remember the "Something tail's tale" (can't remember exact name) character for oblivion? Similar "character driven" companion, but every dialogue with him was reading a book. Usually after a paragraph of dialogue you'd be prompted with a single reply option "Oh really? What then?" and on to reading another paragraph.

 

Yes, by the end he was certainly a well-formed character, but it really was a bit much and the replay value was nil. Try to get the depth of character with an economy of text. People don't soliloquize at length in the real world, remember that. :)

 

Perhaps what I said wasn't articulated properly.... there will be numerous dialogue options, and my hope is that if the player so desires, they can dig into Miravel's past and character at great length, if they so choose. The general idea, mind you, is to have those options available more at length, and only under certain conditions, probably extending even beyond the end of the quest-line. Much of her development will take place beyond the scope of the quest itself, because of her change in mortality, since in a sense, her life is really starting over.

 

However, the dialogue during the quest will occur with discretion, moderation, and a great deal of choice, allowing the player to be a bigger part of the conversation based on their choices. It's not endearing when someone you're just getting to know keeps prattling on for ten minutes about themselves. That's not my aim. As well, many of the player interjections will cause the opportunity to unlock different facets of the companion's past and personality through dialogue and disposition, and once a dialogue path for a particular topic is chosen, that piece of dialogue will never be revisited again. To hear her response to another line of questioning, in many situations, will require you to replay the quest with another character, and start over. I don't know what quest you refer to, but my guess is that mine is going to be nowhere near as linear as that.

 

I even plan to eventually design my own tombs,barrows and ruins for the quest, and often, the journeys you take will include what I refer to as "open narrative," like in the Alduin's Wall scene. You might be digging through an old burial site, and she'll hit a point in the pathing that triggers a comment by her, regarding something she's seen, or somewhere she's been. Or it could be personally geared. Perhaps you had an interesting conversation earlier, and she'll just remind you that the topic will be discussed again, e.g., you're walking along, and you get into a big fight with a sea of undead assailing you. It might be a particularly tense situation, during which she'll comment, "By Mara, will they ever stop coming? How long can we keep doing this?" And, when the battle finally ends, and you start to leave to move into another chamber, she might say, "You know, if we make it out of this, you and I are going to have a talk about that XXXXX(topic/comment) you mentioned earlier. As far as I'm concerned, you got the last word, and that conversation is not over."

 

Put simply, the goal isn't to take you on a ride, it's to put you behind the wheel of the car. Even if your destination is ultimately the same, you can drive whatever path you like to get there. From what I understand in various literature and tutorials, Radiant Story options will make this a bit easier to deal with. The choices you make will even determine if you remain friends with her, or pursue a romance. Perhaps I'll even make it so that based on your choices, you might get into a physical altercation over certain choices you've made. That could go a number of ways, as well. You're supposed to do one thing, you choose to do something else, and it triggers a response from her, either positive or negative, or perhaps even multi-faceted.

 

This could mean you fight it out, verbally or physically, and who wins will determine the course it takes from there. Perhaps she'll become hostile, and she'll try to kill you, ending the quest in failure, even if you beat her. Perhaps with a moderate disposition, an unarmed brawl could result in a hit to disposition, but the quest would go forward, with desperation and reluctance both attached to your continuing alliance. In this case, I might even script her to eventually leave Skyrim, not feeling you're a close enough ally upon which to bother wasting her life. If you have high disposition, perhaps you'll get into a heated verbal debate, which - if you say the right things - could lead to a "screw and get it over with" scenario, due to rising sexual tensions and the differences in opinion between two very headstrong characters with differing ideals.

 

At this point, it's really just hard to say. I've seen the in-CK diagrams showing how brancing Radiant Story arcs allow for a multitude of progressions, supported via scripts at key points based on any number of conditions. It's far more complex than I expected, but also extremely workable. I'm not exactly an idiot, so I have every confidence that it's something I can do in the long-term. If I run into snags, I'll do what any lucid, intelligent person does: admit I don't know enough about it, and find someone who knows more to fill in the gaps for me. Either way, it's going to take a pretty good amount of time to do this, since it's my first effort, but have no fear: it WILL be released, even if it's not all I'd hoped, as my plan is to finish the character and each particular stage of the quest well enough to always have it in a releaseable state.

 

However, it's my absolute and resolute intention not to disappoint. What I'm trying to do it perfectly possible, from what I understand of Papyrus and Radiant Story, and it's really more a matter of writing worthwhile dialogue that allows the player to select their own personal level of immersion, and learning my script prompts for quest-coding, to ensure that all the appropriate triggers are in place, to advance both the quest and Miravel's interactions as intended.

 

On that note: I am starting with building some basic world-spaces, starting with a player home that will be located in a relatively isolated location, which I will eventually tie to the character and quest. It's significance to Miravel will only be revealed once it's a fully integrated cross-over. In the meantime, once the home is finished, it will become available as a player-factioned home with appropriate ownerships.

 

Eventually, after some more development(which will be a completely seperate and incompatible .esp file)this home will be empty upon discovery, and you will have to procure furnishings from one of the traders. It's also my intention to offer mutlple configurations(likely a third project and .esp to replace the first two), much in the vein of FO3's Megaton home. There will be themes available, which can be purchased in pieces, or as a whole. So if you want the whole place to fit one of the themes, great. If you want one theme in your living room, and another in your bedrooms, that should be doable.

 

As well, it's my hope that the home will be fully scripted, with a level of interactivity that does justice to some of the better homes in Oblivion. Of course, you won't be obligated to use these features, but they'll be there, all the same. My hope is to make them not only immersive, but useful enough to make a player want to interact with the home. It's easy to drag and drop a forge, enchanting table, or alchemy set into a home. Giving it that little something extra, however, makes it far more worthwhile. That extra "something" might even be provided by the work of others, as I'm hoping there will be something like COBL(a.k.a., "Common Oblivion," a great immersion and diversity mod for Oblivion, for those who aren't familiar) for Skyrim.

 

Push comes to shove, I'll probably contact some of the modders whose homes include those types of features in Oblivion, and see if they can help educate me on how to do them myself. My guess is that as time goes on, I'll pick up the bits of coding experience I need to do some more advanced things.

 

To summarize, this mod is not on hold, but its companion aspects will only be VERY basic if I should decide to release ANYTHING within the next two to four weeks. I'm at home with my daughter at the moment, so I have some time available, but my family comes first, along with my pursuit of a new job. This stuff takes a lot more time than most people know, which is why there's always so much whining on the forums and in the comments pages of mods. What most people don't understand is this isn't like flipping a light switch. It's more like inventing a better lightbulb. You have all the tools you need to do the job, but that doesn't mean it's a simple matter to assemble them in a way which allows the bulb to emit light when someone else flips the switch.

 

I'll be continuing work, and will update here and post any mods I feel are worth sharing, provided they're in a satisfactorily finished state of development. I'll roll them all into one later down the road, piece by piece, until I eventually have the entire project finished. There is one more thing I'd like to note:

 

If you don't like what I end up making, I don't care. If you have a polite suggestion, that's great, but I pretty much have this laid out the way I want. I always appreciate good ideas and feedback, but selfish as it sounds, I'm not trying to please anyone. I'm doing this because I like the idea: that's right, this is for me.

 

If others end up enjoying my work as much as I did, then so much the better, and I'll be glad that they did. It will motivate me to continue to do this, and once I get through the first run, it will get easier each time I make a new mod. And, of course, if they don't like it, they can use someone else's, or stop being lazy and make their own.

 

Thanks again for voicing that concern, however. I really DO appreciate that sort of constructive speculation and criticism, because it helps solidify and concrete my vision of my own work. Learn from the mistakes of others, as they say.

Edited February 13, 2012 by Archangel7144

[Meatbomb]

Archangel, this all sounds really excellent. I wish you success - that kind of "bushy tree" of potential dialogue will be much more interesting to play through, but also exponential more work to design, build and test! Good luck, look forward to seeing it.

[Recaldy]

If Skyrim Online would hurry up there'd be interessting things to look forward to. :x

[AngelicOne7144]

@Meatbomb: Yes, it will be a lot more work, and a lot more quest-cleaning, to make sure it all works the way it's supposed to, but I think that the payoff will be worth it. Still not very good at scripting, so I've got a lot to learn before I'll be able to do this proficiently. Will likely take months, at least, to get all this sorted out. Thankfully, like Oblivion, people are going to be modding and playing this game for the next 10 years, so I'm certain I'll have time to dial it in. Bethesda's games offer a ton of replay value, in particular when the modding community gets their hands on the property, and starts adding their own flair.

 

The biggest obstacle at the moment is that the CK doesn't work properly - there are a lot of things that are supposed to be simple to activate, like adding a new character to the marriage faction, which I still haven't been able to get to work - so there are a lot of extra steps necessary to achieve things that should be basic and rudimentary, like mod merging. Merging of files and mods is integral to developing independent aspects of more complex mods, i.e., merging your house mod into a companion mod, and merging a companion/house mod into the quest mod you've been making for them, which is pretty much what I was hoping to do.

 

As a result, Miravel's quest aspect has been temporarily postponed, because I don't want a dirty mod, hiding a bunch of unused resources, dialogue, and events, while I'm trying to build them in the background. Really bloats the files, and doesn't provide any more playability or content. For the time being, I HAVE made her a companion, and am presently searching the forums for a way to build the marriage faction into her character. May well have to give her a quest, since that seems to be the only way of which I'm presently skilled enough to do that I can get her to ACTUALLY be a part of the faction. For whatever reason, adding her to the faction, and even activating that faciton, does not offer her the dialogue.

 

You can do the console workaround("addfac 19809 1") to get her to offer the dialogue, but after setting the factions and a high enough rank in the CK build for her to be a marriageable companion, she still refuses to offer the dialogue. I'm nearly certain I've set these properly, and the relationship rank works the way it's supposed to, but the faction refuses to properly apply. Presently have messages out to a few of the more experienced modders to try to find out what magical recipe will actually make this work without having to complete a quest on her behalf.

 

When the bugs are all worked out, and heavy production starts on creating all the other NPC's and quests for her, and her long-term mod is complete, this will be easy, and will likely even offer a custom series of events before and after matrimony, to make it slightly more personal and slightly less anti-climactic. In the meantime, the basic Miravel companion is available on the Nexus.

 

Miravel Tel'Nar - The Rose of Valenwood:

 

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=10201

 

It was just updated to offer a unique class and custom combat AI suite that allows her to dual wield and switch intelligently between her bow and blades. There appears to be a bug with her default Elven Daggers, but it's a minor one that seems built into the game. It's a pseudo-duplication bug that shows her 2 daggers as double-equipped in her main hand. I'm not sure if this changes with the new dual wielding update, but it's a bit annoying, so I suggest taking them away and giving her other blades to replace them. Even with daggers, she's devastating in close-quarters combat, and performs finishers and decapitations regularly.

 

This skill is augmented by her use of Elemental Fury, which drastically increases her damage output for 15 seconds. She's pretty devastating, in part because of her circlet and ring, which increase archery and 1H damage by 30%. If you want to nerf her a bit, just remove those two. I recommend leaving her amulet equipped, which improves her stealth in sneak mode by 30%. Very handy for those covert situations where you need to be discreet.

 

Going to start on setting her up for some quests(starting with a basic one initially, just to force the marriage faction dialogue, since that seems to be a dependency), and work on the larger quest-line that will eventually be the complete mod. In the meantime, if you enjoy beautiful companions, who are extremely capable in combat, she's quite a sight to behold in battle.

[NellSpeed]

You can do the console workaround("addfac 19809 1") to get her to offer the dialogue, but after setting the factions and a high enough rank in the CK build for her to be a marriageable companion, she still refuses to offer the dialogue.

From my own fiddling around with the CK, I'm pretty sure the problem isn't the faction. Instead, it may be the voice files... unless you've already assigned her one of the default voices (and of course, checked the conditionals) in which case it should, in theory, work-- which would mean it's just the CK being flaky.