The Secrets of Trade

Path to Coronation

Greetings,

At the moment, this is largely meant to be a recruitment thread for a project taking shape over at The Wormhole. We will probably maintain a topic here soon enough.

I, along with the projects head http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/user/1994759-darkgenius/ were thinking of holding off on making such a thread till we had more real good stuff to show, eye candy and whatnot. I think I'd like to gauge the interest modders might have, on the concept alone for a bit

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You've sat down at a table in an inn. You've got your mead or drink of choice. The bard plays his music, you consider your options. You've got adventuring down. You may or may not be filthy rich already. You may even be favored by gods and men alike. What you don't have is a way forward. Power is what you need. They acknowledge you, pass you trinkets, give you titles. What does it really get you? They're just in the way, that's what they are. You deserve to have the life of kings. They're in the way.

Over your shoulder, you overhear an off duty guard. In his wrinkled dirty uniform, a disgrace really, he gulps his drink and confesses to his neighbor. "I don't even know what I'm gonna do. By the gods. I owe him ten times what I have. Why did I ever even go to that bloody pit."

Above the rest of the conversation this stands out to you. He's one of them. In your way. He needs money? Maybe he'd be open to providing a few favors?
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"That's right, you work for me now. Cough it up!" You demand from a shopkeeper.
"You won't get away with this." They reply.
"You run along to your guards if you like. They work for me. You wont last long if you make a fuss. I'll be back next week for twice this."
"You thug!" He cries
"Heh."
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"I have a job for you" You declare, approaching a fellow you've heard is down on his luck.
"Yes?" He says, his face brightening.
"I need you and my friend Ulfgar here to keep an eye on that shop over there. Some other places too, Ulfgar knows where. I'll pay you 200 gold a week."
"Sure!"
"That's a good lad."
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You've had enough, you won't be robbed by them again.
"Dalam! We're taking their fort. Those thieves from last night were from there, I'm sure of it. Besides, if we wait much longer they'll be after the hideout my man Belic has down near there. Gather the troops, we move as soon as we can!"
"I've got the men from here, and I can have more within an hour." the Lieutenant at your side replies.
"Make it happen, no reason to make it a fair fight."
The Lieutenant retires to his horse with a wicked grin.
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"Scouts report back the toll checkpoint is under attack sir."
"They're attacking *MY* checkpoint? MY base? Round everybody up. We leave none alive save one. I want to know why, who."
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"We've cleared to the very door of the fortress sir. We still have considerable forces here, though we've lost many. Shall we continue?"
"Yes, of course, and I'll be leading the assault." You reply.
"As you wish my Lord."
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On one level, this is something of an RP mod. You can setup an... operation, if you will. Right now we're working on the 'Dark' side of things. An operation is anywhere from bribing guards and blackmailing/extorting people, to running a bandit fort, to gathering your troops to take other forts and locations from the ragtag band holding them, or from your enemies.

On another level, this is an introduction of RTS elements to Skyrim in a more dynamic, but lore/vanilla game friendly, way than has been seen before. You, or your enemies, own locations and employ/command troops/workers. Some types of locations can be upgraded, as you would expect, to provide certain benefits. If this excites you at all, something even more exciting may be that we haven't finalized any such things. Unlike the lower level enabling work, the workings of the broader game(RTS level) are still in the concept phase. It's open to input, especially from anyone willing to try and help implement.

::Warning: Possible technical content::
We are currently well into finalizing the lowest level enabling constructs of this, and nearly to a good starting point with the interactions of all these things. We're well along in creating the framework, if you will. Making it possible, with a few function calls in a quest/dialogue/script bit, to unleash a platoon at your command, absorb a bandit gang and/or their hideout and it's benefits into your ranks, unleash enemy/Jarl retribution for your actions. The substance, the heart, of the game play has yet to be even finalized, though we've got a good idea of it.

This is a major mod. Major in several ways. It doesn't *just* add all these features. It's designed to be expandable in different ways, by people with different skill sets and ideas. The whole mod is built around having a set of independent features dealing, in a standardized way, with the tracking of the RTS portion. Above that, it's meant to let you make a great location for a battle or event/job of some sort, then integrate that location into the mod(and by extension, the players world/experience) by simply placing a marker or two, putting a script on it, and setting some properties. You may recognize that this is, in a way, exactly how the engine is intended to be used more or less. The lower levels are just there to provide support to those above. It's designed to change/give more options to your gameplay(even your modding), while interfering as little as possible.
::/technical content::

What we need now, or in the *very* near future, are people to join us in making this mod. We've got our team lead http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/user/1994759-darkgenius/ who runs around like a crazy person and keeps things moving, and we've got a few doing general things right now.

CK related work to be done(job openings):
I've split CK skillsets in three groups, since that's how the mod is set up.
World Editing: This could, or could not be a large part of our mod, depending on what people we have and what they want to do. This wouldn't require, necessarily, a knowledge of anything much more advanced, just how to place stuff in the game world (and hopefully a passable eye for aesthetics ) High end of this would be being able to do the stuff in the bethesda CK tutorial videos.

General Modding: This is anywhere from world editing, to working with quests and dialogue(very limited scripting knowledge included for quest flow). We need people that can do this stuff, no doubt. Anybody that can do some of these things, could help us flesh out some of our 'added features'. This means helping work(sometimes write/design if you so choose) out dialogue and setup mini quests enabling such things as extortion, black mail, random attacks, random and scripted encounters and consequences. Eventually we'll be connecting the dots on our main 'campaign' like quest(s) as well to tie it all together. Help wit this would be almost required for anything to be done timely You don't need comprehensive knowledge of everything everywhere, just how to work with basic quest stuff and dialogue really.

More advanced modding/scripting: Good knowledge of how to get what you want to do done in the CK and with papyrus. I'm going to the Creationkit.com papyrus reference every five minutes, and reading and rereading the ObjectReference Script and ReferenceAlias Script pages and such all the time. Knowing all possible options isn't the thing here, but being somewhat comfortable with the place scripts have in the skyrim engine and all the basics of the more common elements of the different form types is what we're looking for. If you even understood those last few sentences you could probably be useful lol.

Non CK related work to be done:
Voice Acting: It seems like we may have a good team of VA's already, more than we can use with what we have actually lol, but that doesn't mean you can't bring a unique voice type to the mod.

Sound: Create your own position by giving us some ideas? Custom sound effects can add a lot to the unique feel of some of our gameplay elements. Keep us in mind or let us know you're around and we could supply you with our own requests if you prefer it that way.

3D Modeling: This is another one of those, it would be awesome, but not required things. We have tons of ways to use custom armor potentially. Unique models for anything from castles to scepters would not go unused. We have one person working at this, but they'd be the first to admit it would take some doing to get some thing good.

Retexture work: Again, someone's working at this, but someone experienced or at least comfortable with retexture work would be most welcome. This isn't an essential thing, but we have at least one person who's going to work at it regardless, so we'd be happy to have help!

3D Animation: *cough* yeah right... I hear it's possible to add animations thesedays though? Well, if by some random chance someone could do such a thing for us, there are quite a few custom gestures and such that would go well with this. DarkGenius would have more input, but there you go.

Remember: In case it's important to you, those that get in on the ground level get to help with the design/concepts as much as the actual modding We've got a good bit of the real groundwork done. We've got some motivated people and it would be great to have some more!

Contact:
Reply here, drop me or http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/user/1994759-darkgenius/ (Nexus link)a PM here, or head over to http://thewormhole.nfshost.com/forum/index.php?action=forum. if you choose that route, you'll have to make a member account, then post in a forum explaining that you would like to join our forum group. A PM or reply here is more than fine though.

He put out a lot of material here at the nexus forums: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/860788-wip-the-secrets-of-trade. It's a bit insane though, plus it was in mod *request* with a [WIP] tag >.<