New modder with a few ideas. Need a good place to start.

[clp120591]

Hello Nexus! Longtime user, but infrequent poster. Today I change that.

 

I've recently become interested in modding for Skyrim and I have a couple of neat ideas, but I'm not exactly sure where to start. I've looked at some basic tutorials, but nothing encompassing specifically what I'm looking to do. I would appreciate it if someone was able to show me in the right direction if I listed my ideas, so thanks in advance for your time.

 

For me personally, Dragons seem a bit underwhelming in Skyrim. They don't have quite the same impression on the world as they deserve, so I had a few ideas on how to improve them. First and foremost, I want to add a staggering AOE to multiple actions the dragons perform that don't include them already. Actions such as taking off, low passes when flying, and hovering above ground should emulate the amount of air their wings are pushing towards any actors that are present on the surface. Second, as it stands in Vanilla Skyrim currently, almost all NPCs attack Dragons on sight, regardless if they are prepared to do so. I'd like to give Dragons a weak passive fear aura, something that would affect normal townsfolk, traders, or anyone else that would make more sense to flee than fight. This would add a much needed level of immersion in Dragon battles that Vanilla Skyrim lacks.

 

To anyone who finished reading this wall of text, thank you again for your time. Hopefully one of you will be able to point me in the right direction.

[David Brasher]

These mod ideas are very advanced and not easily supported by the Skyrim game engine. I recommend that you pick easier projects for your first mods.

 

You could make a mod in which you edited dozens of factions and the aggressiveness and confidence stats of hundreds of NPCs so that they would flee dragon. I know that it would work. But I am not so sure that the fear aura idea would work, because many spells like that only work when the Player Character casts them. Actors are divided into two classes. The Player character, and everyone else. It may not work to try to use a spell to make an NPC afraid of another NPC which is part of the same class.

[clp120591]

Well, I wanted to do something along those lines. Is there a way I can edit those values you mentioned so that it only applies when involved with Dragon encounters?

[deadfables]

Maybe you could dig around in the SKSE files, now that it has Papyrus capabilities, and explore what options it could give you. I'm being indefinite because I don't know much about scripting in Skyrim, but I do think that your idea of a 'fear aura' for dragons is a great one.

 

I do not know for sure, but I got the impression that the shouts that dragons use are different than those the player uses - a different FormID or something - which means you might be able to add an effect to all the dragon-only shouts that is similar to the Nord racial power, Battle Cry. Thus making the fear aura kick in only when the dragon is actively engaged in combat with something - which might cut down on bugs.

 

Just brainstorming - hopefully something in there was helpful.

 

SKSE Link

http://skse.silverlock.org/

 

Comic your idea reminded me of

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/image.php?id=21916

[dfac364]

This is a great idea and i will definitley being looking for this mod in the future, also i think what deadfables said is a pretty solid idea, even if the shout is scripted to work only when the player uses it changing the script for that should be fairly simple since im assuming it would just be an "if" condition, and if it turns out to be more complex than that you might be able to get fg109 to help he always seems to have a confounding knowledge of scripting Edited May 29, 2012 by dfac364