Weemus Posted November 11, 2012 Share Posted November 11, 2012 I'm a software engineer by trade, but I'm new to Skyrim modding. What's the feasibility of making a new game mode in Skyrim? I'd like to make a game mode that would be, on a high-level, like the following: You live in a shop (first floor shop, second floor bedroom). Sleeping in your bed makes the day pass. To get items to sell, you select a dungeon to work through. Everything you find in chests can be sold. Attempting to exit your shop produces a drop-down dialog of selectable dungeons, ordered by difficulty, where better items are found in more difficult dungeons. Selecting one spawns you at the entrance of the dungeon. Attempting to leave the dungeon spawns you back at your shop. That's the general swing of it. Ideally, customers purchasing stuff would be generated NPCs that come in and can be bantered with, who will haggle and etc etc etc, but that I'm fine with that being automated. The real important/difficult thing is the framing of this game mode. Can it be implemented in this way? Can it be initiated by way of a new entry on the Main Menu, or must it be initiated by way of an item (as so many other mods seem to be initiated)? Will there be additional resources needed or useful for this beyond the Creation Kit? I'm sure all of this information is available in the tutorials, but my skim-through wasn't very revealing. Can someone point me in the right direction? What are your thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acidzebra Posted November 11, 2012 Share Posted November 11, 2012 (edited) Can it be initiated by way of a new entry on the Main Menu, or must it be initiated by way of an item (as so many other mods seem to be initiated)? Will there be additional resources needed or useful for this beyond the Creation Kit? I can partially answer this part, the skyrim menus (main menu, save menus) etc are all flash + scaleform (owned by autodesk). I don't know to what degree you could order the actual game engine around from there (obviously some interaction is happening to be able to initiate a new game/load a game/etc and you can even open the console to COC somewhere), but yeah, you will need Adobe CS + scaleform to even begin to alter the menu structure. I've seen the disassembled (.fla) menu files floating around the nexus, but without scaleform they're useless. Sounds like an endless dungeon mod, interesting. Will you also attempt procedural dungeon generation? Attempting to exit your shop produces a drop-down dialog of selectable dungeons, ordered by difficulty, where better items are found in more difficult dungeons. Selecting one spawns you at the entrance of the dungeon. Attempting to leave the dungeon spawns you back at your shop. This is certainly possible with conventional papyrus scripting (all from CK & notepad++), although many people probably wouldn't appreciate their main character being restricted in this way :) Edited November 11, 2012 by acidzebra Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Weemus Posted November 12, 2012 Author Share Posted November 12, 2012 Can it be initiated by way of a new entry on the Main Menu, or must it be initiated by way of an item (as so many other mods seem to be initiated)? Will there be additional resources needed or useful for this beyond the Creation Kit? I can partially answer this part, the skyrim menus (main menu, save menus) etc are all flash + scaleform (owned by autodesk). I don't know to what degree you could order the actual game engine around from there (obviously some interaction is happening to be able to initiate a new game/load a game/etc and you can even open the console to COC somewhere), but yeah, you will need Adobe CS + scaleform to even begin to alter the menu structure. I've seen the disassembled (.fla) menu files floating around the nexus, but without scaleform they're useless. Hum. That sucks. Sounds like an endless dungeon mod, interesting. Will you also attempt procedural dungeon generation? No, unless someone else has already figured that out and I can integrate with it. I'm keeping my ambitions very low for this, or it will never get done. =p This is certainly possible with conventional papyrus scripting (all from CK & notepad++), although many people probably wouldn't appreciate their main character being restricted in this way :) Right. I'll have to figure out some way to isolate this game mode entirely from their main game (IE, removing and storing their inventory when they enter the game mode, probably by selecting a scripted item in their inventory, and restoring it when they leave the game mode). What's my capacity to generate and leverage save files at runtime? Not true Skyrim save files, but my own format to store the information relevant to the game mode (current inventory, cleared dungeons, available dungeons, etc). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acidzebra Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 http://www.creationkit.com/Globalhttp://www.creationkit.com/RemoveAllItems Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Weemus Posted November 12, 2012 Author Share Posted November 12, 2012 Nice. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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