LE Help needed for: Immersive Saving Mod (ISM)!

[Akurosan]

Hello citizens and modders of Skyrim!

 

One thing that has annoyed me ever since I was playing Skyrim is that you're allowed to save at any time via the "quicksave" or the "save slot" function.

The problems of a "free save funtion" which come up for players who are interested in more immersion and difficulty:

 

- You are picking a difficult lock. 10 lockpicks break during the process. You decide that's too many broken lockpicks and reload. During the next try only 2 picks break. You're satisfied and quicksave, then you continue gaming. I mean come on... That's cheesy!

- You're trying to steal the expensive, valuable orcish armor from those orcs in the camp. You fail 5 times, but hey - no problem. You can quickload as often as you like until you're successfull. Where's the difficulty in that?

- You run like a madman through the dungeon, activate a trap and get killed. (Hopefully you have the "more difficult traps addon *G*). No problem - just quickload. Where's the punishment for that? Where's the thrill in exploring a dungeon if you can quickload at any time?

 

I guess you get the idea... Now here the question arises:

What if you could save only under certain cirumstances, e.g. if you have to make a "little sacrifice" for every save?

 

Introducing:

 

My idea of a "Immersive Saving Mod (ISM)"!

 

The plan:

 

The Dovahkiin can purchase powerful magical artifacts called "Orbs of Time" (buy from the College of Winterhold or create them by crafting, for example one charged soul gem and some other ingredient) . These orbs grant you the power to scribe your fate into the flow of time and therefore return to those previous states whenever you want to. However, this comes at a cost...

Either those orbs costs a considerable amount of money (could be an excellent goldsink!) or give you a debuff while using etc. etc.

 

Technically spoken:

1. Normally saving is disabled in Skyrim (just like in the intro sequence before the execution in Helgen)

2. Every time you use one of those orbs, one orb is destroyed in the process, but afterwards saving is enabled for 10 seconds. During that time, you can quicksave or use a save slot. After 10 seconds, saving gets disabled by the mod again.

3. Voila! The result:

Now you won't save every 2 minutes, before picking every lock you find, before every battle, before every stealing attempt and so on, because you would need dozens of orbs to do so, therefore becoming completely broke!

You would only save before dramatic events and really difficult fights in the game and when "leaving the game".

 

The result:

 

Exploring Skyrim would be a completely new experience, because you need to plan your next steps very carefully, fight efficiently, explore every corner of a dungeon with great care and so on. -> Pure thrill and fun!

 

Unfortunately I'm not good at Papyrus scripting, so I need someone who helps me with those scripts. I bet that would be a quite easy thing to do for any experienced modder/scripter.

One could start with the script for the Skyrim intro sequence, where saving is disabled, too.

 

This mod would just need some simple script (and a global variable?)

That script could be attached to the item "Orb of Time". If you "use" the orb (e.g. like a potion) you "set its powers free", the script activates, destroyes one instance of the item and enables saving for 10 seconds. Afterwards the script disables saving again. Done!)

Who could help? I would be very very grateful for you help, as it would make the Skyrim experience of me and many people much more thrilling and rewarding!

[Brutii]

Or you could just not save and load as much? Isn't that easier?

[Akurosan]

Or you could just not save and load as much? Isn't that easier?

 

Ohh come on, I bet you know by yourself that one always tries to cheat himself :)

It's like having a bowl filled with chips in front of you while saying "I won't eat any of those tasty chips", but in the end you can't withstand the temptation and the only way is not to buy them in the first place.

The same goes for the saving option in Skyrim for many people. Even if you say "Hokay, I'll try not to save *that* often", your finger is way too fast on the quicksave key :)

 

By the way, I don't think a mod like this would be difficult to create at all - like I said - I guess a simple script attached to an item would do the trick. The problem is that although I'm quite experienced with the CK, I have no clue when it comes to scripting or setting global variables...