Modders needed

[azura84]

As I said already, this is not a mod request, this is a request for modders assistance in developing some insanely large quest lines as well as new zones to house them.

 

I myself haven't been into modding since Morrowind so I am extremely rusty and will probably not even take the lead on development if there is another as interested in devoting time. I don't want to release my idea's online so if you are interested please send me a message or email me. I will have an .txt based outline available to those who are interested in helping, no commitments necessarily but they will be appreciated.

 

To start off, I will need brainstormers, after some initial outlining and planning there will be need for the experienced modders which would help if they were available for some of the brainstorming sessions. I don't expect to take a long time, brainstorming and will probably let each developer have free rein over their section of the mod(s).

 

Email/message me if you want an early outline.

 

 

Thanks,

Kyle - [email protected]

[SinderionsBones]

Fair warning lol: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/618501-sick-of-these-topics/

 

It's a VERY fresh thread. I think it was created like yesterday.

 

Get UN rusty, get it back in your head how long things take to implement(weeks or months for small to mid sized mods with ANY level of quest), make a good chunk of it, and post screenshots to inspire people. Then you may get the attention of some of the people who you REALLY want helping you. I could PM you this, but it needs to be common knowledge. So Sayith random guy #1827

 

Welcome back to modding! I took a hiatus during the Oblivion Era as well :D I don't think this place was that big back when Morrowind Files and the summit (pre-gamespy) were the big dogs lol.

[azura84]

Too true, since as you say these ideas are certain to take months and some even a year or more. I may as well post the thoughts for people to see and take upon for themselves if they like. It isn't as if, I can take credit for most of the ideas anyways, for there is undoubtedly someone somewhere already managing/starting one or more of them.

 

Also as we speak I am re-familiarizing myself with the modding tools and techniques available to me, *career newb insert quark*.

 

Here is the some content I had in mind:

 

• Endgame Quest – meant to be extremely difficult

o Involve dragon priest souls and sub-quests (making them tougher)

 

 

• Hindering fast travel until a form of mounted quest is completed

o Dragon riding maybe, this still seems a bit fuzzy. Dragons I’ve always considered a proud species that probably would not allow it.

o Horse riding (something a bit more complex than purchasing or attaining Frost/Shadowmare)

 

 

• Actual moving caravans, covered wagons, etc.

o Providing bandit raids (like the old western train heists)

o Good provisions to towns requiring assisting caravans on occasion, else goods will not be sold or purchased in those towns.

 

 

• A GRAND Arena

o I sadly found the Arena from Oblivion to be pitifully small. So the real challenge here will be in developing pretty textures and crowds that won’t overload peoples machines, but still be vast enough for a more “Grand” experience.

o Also, I have always felt just doing battle after battle in the arena to become champion was a little lame, so I believe there should be a bit more political questing involved. IE some interesting speechcraft necessity or coercion.

 

 

• Any form of Political Event that requires more than smash and grab.

 

 

• Some complex puzzles that go beyond pulling 4 levers in a proper order, I’ve always thought the Skyrim puzzle challenges lacked a sort of Nintendo genius. Even a dungeon that was a maze could be of greater difficulty than 98% of the current dungeons.

 

 

• We need more economical ideas, something in all the zelda’s, elder scrolls, final fantasies, and most other RPGs has lacked is a decent economy balance and variety. Skyrim feels this way to me, many of the items in this game serve little to no purpose except as harvesting materials for crafting, I think there could be a way of creating alternate values for these items. This is probably something every gaming company has pondered and I am skeptical to be optimistic about a real solution but If nothing else, it is a great balancing concept to keep in mind while developing any mod. Unless your purpose is to just crack a game open and bypass all the work put into making it enjoyable.

 

 

Some of these ideas could take as little as a couple months but obviously others could take much longer with the requirement of construction as well as a thoroughly planned network of NPC's with cognitive quest activation. In my opinion though most of what I have in mind could be created with textures and designs we have avalible to us, so there may not be much (if any) real original graphic designing, which I believe would cut a lot of time out of development.

 

I will be completely honest, when it came to modding Morrowind I was young and most of my creations were no more complex than what Dovahkiin's Hideout is now. So my skills will likely be based in construction, dialog writing, and probably voices. Like my father, I am more the engineer than the architect though so I will need some creative thinkers to help me piece a lot of this together.

[SinderionsBones]

Your work could be dramatically shortened since:

Hindering Fast travel - This is being worked on and nearly complete by someone. May also have been done long ago somewhere.

 

Moving caravans - Look for Companion Cart. Best of it's kind right now. Actively being developed to add more options.

 

Other ideas are good, but vague and useless to consider until you have a deep understanding of some game systems.

However,

 

Grand Arena - There is one: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9380

Probably some more on Steam, but you can't really go wrong with another arena. So long as you can find a suitable place for it and believable place in lore. (Windhelm, because nords are nords for example. Or Solitude, because it has the easiest to make epic architecture kit and it's roman themed anyways)

 

Arena:

 

A partially leveled arena with all the grandeur could be created with some simple triggers, a tiny quest(if even), and a good bit of creativity(the fun part, the world building, where WYSIWYG). If you're setting your sights big, this is where I'd start if I were you. There's no reason you can't complete this part on your own in a week or two (depending on your schedule), no terribly complicated stuff really needed. This can showcase your ability to world build, to yourself if no one else, and bring your modding abilities well back out of the rusty category. When you get the main part built, if you need help with starting/managing some specific encounters, let us know here. Some basic, if chaotic, discussion on encounter stuff is going on here: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/622160-spawning-mob-on-trigger/ I only link since no better sources come to mind...

 

I think you get the point already, but it's true 95% of people you'd like helping out aren't even going to open up a thread like this as it stands. There are tons of vague, grand sounding mod ideas with non skilled people just wanting the work done for them popping up, literally every day (No offense! But that's what this is right now). Put out a polished arena mod(people here can help with the polishing if you ask *specific* questions. Helping is vastly different from 'joining the team' and 'making the mod for you'), and look for help expanding it, and you'll probably be in the position you want to be in with willing volunteers :D

 

My usual excuse. I like to see new stuff happen with modding, so I throw out insight for what it's worth. Like small businesses, majority aren't gonna go anywhere. If a few nudges in the right direction is the difference between a good game play addition and an abandoned thread... well there you go.

 

Look forward to what you get going either way :D

Edited March 19, 2012 by SinderionsBones

[azura84]

You're right, it does sound like a sucker plea, and as I said before I don't even know how devoted I could be to leading a project anyways. So I think for the time being I'll just focus on improving my creative kit skills and creeping around the forums to poke on mods.

 

I was trying to stick with using the Nexus to access mods, but their search function is very weak and I wasn't getting many (if any) real hits. Navigating Steam feels like... playing with windows media center... kind of a weird 'user-friendly' browser that isn't so user friendly BUT it does have a decent search function. Though I still can't find Moving Caravans, I did however find some other interesting things moving along with some of the ideas I was talking about so i'll probably see if any of these guys need some help.

 

* Skyrim Trade Guild - currently in beta form has some real economic promise. Also Dynamic Merchant is a decent start for a good economy.

* Enhanced High-Level Gameplay - is a decent endgame development for leveling, but it's not an actual endgame quest-line like I was looking for, still neat and I'll probably use it.

* Disable Fast Travel - is a rather broken version of what I am hoping to achieve but if fast travel is as embedded in the system as i'm afraid, then this may be pretty difficult. I don't know though, I'm still newb-sauce.

 

We'll see what happens. =)

[SinderionsBones]

LOL @ Skyrim Trade Guild. It does sound promising if the author and his crew keep up their interest after economics finals >.<. If you look at either it's comments, or a forum thread about it, I forget which, it's where I first decided to do the mod I'm working on now. A compliment to having a place to stash your money, if you will.

 

If it's the one I talked with the guy about, the Disable Fast Travel thing is still being worked on, and I think they have a solid plan with a hint I gave them. If it's not... hopefully the one guy will do his. Fast travel is apparently re enabled in applicable cells whenever you change cells. His will soon be using the story manager Location Change Event to re-disable it at every cell change. Hopefully that will work out.

 

The moving caravan I was talking about is Companion Cart - http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=12577 it's still very much in development, I wouldn't actually use it with a companion you don't want accidentally killed in a cart crash, but it's just cool as can be, and great for having a cart to store your stuff in if you don't fast travel. Part of the guys Idea I think, is for it to be a good thing for modders to expand on.

 

There's another one about helpers and companions that has a cart. But all that one ever seems to do is kill me when the cart spawns on top of the player, and make companions get hurt by the cart, and then attack each other...

[azura84]

haha, well i was more or less refering to an escort service that could influence markets in towns depending on whether or not their shipments arrived but the moving carts from those would indeed be a beginning, i guess i just assumed the carts in the game would move but when i think back i don't remember any that do besides the intro scene ones.

 

That Skyrim Trade Guild is a huge undertaking, the bank part not so much and I honestly don't see a reason to develop interest or store gold when plundering is so much easier and vastly more profitable. Not to mention I never seem to find much use for gold at the moment, hence the need to develop more value. Like creating items in the game that need hundreds ingots or extremely rare items from monsters. I really want there to be more enemies like the Dragon Priests where killing them in the beginning is almost unheard of, leveled mobs that require you to attain a certain level of skill before being able to take them down. So I've been digging for them but sofar the only ones i've liked are the semi-difficult to obtain dragon pieces craftable from the Better Dragons + Dragon Weapons mods. Do you know of any discussions of increasing and equalizing the value of items?