Edit: After talking with a friend I've decided to go through with the idea. My discussion thread can be found here: http://thenexusforums.com/index.php?showtopic=80629

ALL serious thoughts and ideas are welcome and considered.

/edit


I'm still alive! For the few that probably care Misitair City has been put on nigh-permanent hold since I can't think of bloody quests. Anyway, I thought of a new mod idea and let me say first off that it will be very conflicting with many mods out there!

As for the idea, it's a city building mod. The city would be in [undisclosed location] and would originally be nothing more than a pallisade wall (perhaps if there's interest I could get someone to make a pallisade wall pieces? Or if there's one out there already...) a few tents, and some folks. The player would need to meet certain requirements to become the owner of this city, maybe by level, fame/infamy, or perhaps a long quest chain for someone of importance.

Anyway, after becoming the mayor of this town a Construction Master would appear. You would talk to the construction master and tell him what kind of building you want. THEN, you would have to choose where to place the building. The building placements would be controlled by activator markers of sorts (maybe a wood pole or something of the like) and once you choose where to place it construction would be underway.

Now, my main problem with such a thing is the construction. Bethesda doesn't have half-built buildings or anything like that so I was thinking that in the least it would force the player to 'wait' for howerver long it would take the building and then poof it's there.

Now, depending on the buildings you place would also depend on the kind of people that live in your town. If you build say a black market building of sorts thieves will appear. If you build a barracks, soldier will appear, blah blah blah. You could also control the population of the town by choosing the houses, which would give you more civilians, but less military men. More military buildings means less civilians... think you get the point now.


So, it would be a LOT of work, especially for one such as myself who doesn't know the first thing about making custom models so I would be forced to work with what I have, nor am I the greatest when it comes to scripting (though I DO know how the construction would be handled)

But, would there even be interest in a mod like this? I could easily see it conflicting with a TON of other mods because I would probably have to significantly alter the terrain of the area, remove trees rocks, and the heights of the ground, which will of course conflict with any mod that places something there.

So, no interest at all? I don't want to waste my time on a mod that people wouldn't even consider seeing as the Quest for the building placement would take me years to do since I'd have to cover every single possibility in terms of what buldings the player decides to place and in what order (unless I force the order upon them.. hmm)

you've only given it 4 hours,not everyone is awake all at the same time...patience

Wow I must be more tired than I thought (36 hours no sleep WOOT!) cause I coulda sworn I posted that a lot longer than four hours ago...

Wow, 36 hours? My best is probably only around 24. Your mod idea sounds cool though.

well moving houses around could be done using as examples scripts from Imperial Furniture and/or Redecoration .A modder resources containing Pallisade walls exists HERE so you won't actually need to place markers everywhere



Half built building exists in Kvatch Rebuilt - you could ask permission from the creators to use their meshes

A pretty big problem would be linking doors but it could be done,using doors that are already linked and add them after the building is "finished" using scripts from Imperial Furniture.

for changing the half-built buildings with completed ones you can you use a replacing script, something like :
(I will not use the script language )

if get days passed > x
Id_of-half-built-home.disable
also you should get position and set position (I think that those commands exists in Oblivion Scripting Language)



Hope this helped...at least a little bit
I wanted to do the same thing in the city that I'm working at , but I'm too lazy to do it , so I wish you the best of luck

Sounds like a great idea, id be happy to help out with texturing the house models to give your town a more unique look if you want.

Wow, thanks Alex. I'll check out that modders resource as I was originally planning on giving the player the ability to upgrade the walls from wood to stone. I'm still trying to figure out how to pull off the construction. There's tons of ways to do it. One thing I realized is if I give the player the freedom to choose what buildings to build in whatever order they desire I would (to my limited knowledge) need to make a seperate part of the quest for every possible combination of build order so they couldn't build more than one of the same type. But, that's only because of my limited knowledge I'm sure there is a way around it.

If anything, I could 'force' the order upon them and then they just choose WHERE the building goes. Another thing I ended up thinking is the requirements per building. Would it be just gold? Or perhaps see if I can include resources of sorts that must be placed in a chest or in the players inventory along with gold (to pay the workers) before construction can begin.

Dragon: Thanks for the offer but I'll have to give it some thought first. For one I don't even know if I have the skills to even begin something like this, but if it does work out to the point where having uniquely textured buildings would work, I'll keep your offer in mind.

ooh lol fair enough. good luck with getting the scripting sussed out!

The main problem with this is really controlling everything, and linking up interiors. The easiest solution would be to do something akin to how the Ravenrock mining camp was handled in Morrowind, Where the placement of most things is predetermined, and the player works toward, or decides when certain things are made. Some variation could be done by having a choice between two buildings for some spots, although, the consequences of that decision may be hard to determine. In this way, rather than doing alot of moving around and adjusting with scripts, most thigns are either enabled or disabled where they are... Which ends up making things like doors, packages, and overall city planning, a heck of alot easier. By doing this, you can also setup variations on exterior decoration using parenting. This method is also much better in that ground textures cannot be changed in game, so setting up paths between buildings doesn't lend itself well to variation.

As for the location or implementation of such a place, this is really best done within a new worldspace since many of the good, open, areas of Tamriel have enough land conflicts with other mods at the moment. Setting this up on some island somewhere, only reachable by boat, could also lend itself to providing a means of getting people there, or why the town exists.

Thanks for the island tip Vagrant. I might actually do that instead of what I was originally planning. I had to move the city elsewhere because I didn't learn about the Priory of the Nine until later (it was RIGHT on top of the center of my city!)

And the island idea would be great since it'd give me the freedom I need in terms of size and shape and all that. Plus, like you said, I wouldn't have to worry too much about the conflicts it could create since I would have to do some SUBSTANTIAL terrain editing.

One thing though (I'm an idiot sometimes) is how do I make an island worldspace? I've never messed with anything else save for the Tamriel and Interiors haha

Just define a new worldspace, load it in the render window, and use the landscape editor to raise land. You can adjust landscape sensitivity (or something) within the options tab which has grid settings. Increasing it can make it easier to raise/lower land quickly. Decreasing it can allow for more subtle changes in the terrain. As you are only going to be having a smallish island, use of the heightmap editor is not suggested since it generates cells for all the loaded quads, and can be rather difficult to get things like land heights down. Although the landscape method may be more time consuming, for a smaller area, the results usually always end up being better. All those extra cells also add to the file size of the mod.

36h! Pshaw! I could do that in my sleep. Oh, wait a minuite...
I went from 7am on a Friday to about 8:30pm on sunday once. Many cans of Boost (it's cheaper than relentless) and a huge headache.
Mod idea sounds great.