Deleted1790188User Posted June 24, 2012 Share Posted June 24, 2012 Hello! I recently made a batch file for an alternate start, which I'm enjoying. The only problem I have with it is that Helgen is stuck as being before it was destroyed, which annoys me as it doesn't match what the people say, and it's filled with the actors stuck in positions and trying to kill each other. I've tried using setstage and completequest commands to no avail. Is there any way I can have Heglen be destroyed in my file? Thanks for any help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrock1991 Posted July 10, 2012 Share Posted July 10, 2012 I would really like to know as well. I absolutely hate the vanilla "start" to the game, and pretty much always go with an alternate start by using the coc console command from the main menu. However when you do this, the whole intro sequence in which Helgen gets attacked by a dragon never takes place, and the town is just left with a bunch of NPCs (including Hadvar, Ralof, Ulfric, and Tullius) just standing around awkwardly or trying to kill each other. I would really love to be able to play the game from an alt start, yet still have Helgen in its "destroyed" state, including the bandits that move in to the ruins. If anyone knows how this might be possible, I'd really appreciate it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coldreactive Posted July 10, 2012 Share Posted July 10, 2012 (edited) You need to replace the helgen tamriel cell with the destroyed one. Literally, deleting the helgen cell and then replacing it. Also make sure that the quest is set to complete already for unbound and whatnot (including the report to riverwood quests), or else you'll have weird issues later. Make sure to set tullius and Rikke in the Solitude castle if they aren't already. You may need to use the CK to load up an instance of tamriel before the helgen attack to do all this. Manually editing the entire game flow is what you really need to do with a modification like alternate start. It's time consuming, yes, but well worth it if you do it right. For instance, you could wake up at the destroyed helgen (via the blurry fade-in wake scene that the abandoned shack uses. Since there are other mods that use it. or, you could do a dream sequence with a free camera and strange zoom-blur effect showing the destruction of helgen by alduin. This will allow the normal quest to take place, without you actually being a part of it. (Make sure to have a placer dovakiin NPC follow your trail through helgen as it gets destroyed, or else hadvar / etc. won't move around like normal. To do this, you need to re-script the event so that hadvar / etc. know that your placer NPC is the dovakiin.) You should fade out to black then wake up the alternate start character before your placer NPC gets to the cell change block at the doors of the helgen fort though, as it may cause issues if you don't. As a note, you can have the scripted event trigger the fade out to black scene when the placer NPC hits the cell change block rather than the cell change occuring. Free camera can be controlled while all this scripting occurs too, but make sure that you put a camera bounding box around the town so that the camera can't exit. If you're having problems getting tfc to cause render updates to textures, you might want to change the free camera to be the actual PC instead, this will force the render updates to occur. Just toggle no clip instead to get the tfc effect, and then toggle it back off when the scene is done. (Make sure to disallow the camera to go third-person though.) To make the main questline viable again, you will need to set a new script that the PC triggers to start the quest to report to the jarl. This could be tied to the dream sequence I mentioned earlier. Instead of having the riverwood quests be completed like I said earlier. You could instead create a new quest that has you talk to either (or both) the NPCs that you would talk to normally. Telling them about the dream, and then they'll tell you to go to the Jarl, who will then tell you like "Helgen? You had a dream about the destruction? Impossible. You'd better tell Faringar right away. He'll want to know every detail." Or something. Edited July 10, 2012 by Iyeru Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrock1991 Posted July 10, 2012 Share Posted July 10, 2012 Awesome, thanks a bunch for the help. Going to start working on this tomorrow. Kudos to you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coldreactive Posted July 10, 2012 Share Posted July 10, 2012 (edited) I wouldn't recommend just deleting the cell though, it could have serious impacts. You'll need to constantly test the cell replacement. it'd probably be a good idea to start a topic saying you want people to test your alternate start. Also be cautious on publishing it to the workshop, as Steam has removed a lot of alternate start mods. (According to steam, the mods violated Bethesda copyright.) Edited July 10, 2012 by Iyeru Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SFBryan18 Posted July 10, 2012 Share Posted July 10, 2012 My guess is that all the changes at the beginning are according to a script, so if you looked at the script, maybe you could just have all the changes occur all at once. I don't know how to write a script, but they look pretty complicated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrock1991 Posted July 10, 2012 Share Posted July 10, 2012 (edited) Alright, so I'm currently looking at Helgen in the Creation Kit. There don't seem to be two different Helgen cells, just one that is sort of a combination of both. For instance, the cell that I'm looking at has Hadvar, Ralof, Ulfric, Tullius, horse carriages, and all that other "pre-dragon attack" stuff, but it also has things like bandit poles and rubble, which is all "post-dragon attack" stuff. I'm going to keep playing around with it. Edited July 10, 2012 by jrock1991 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flobalob Posted July 11, 2012 Share Posted July 11, 2012 I posted a reply in a similar thread here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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