I'm working on a Stealth Overhaul mod at the moment to make the Sneaking gameplay in Skyrim more like true stealth games such as Thief. Part of that overhaul involves slightly decreasing the relative value of the Sneak skill in detection calculations and significantly increasing the relative importance of environmental conditions such as lighting.
One of the really fun parts about games like Thief for me is that sticking to the shadows really matters. In Skyrim, it doesn't feel quite as important whether you're well-lit or not.
Part of the reasoning for this, I suspect, is because in games like Thief you typically have more Shadows to make use of and you can affect the lighting conditions more substantially as a player. If an area is too well-lit to sneak through, you have tools or abilities at your disposal to put out the lights.
In Skyrim, unfortunately, the only impact the player can have on lighting is to cast a spell, equip a torch or on the frustratingly rare occasion; snuff out a torch sconce.

To fix this problem I want to work on a mod to make all light sources in the game extinguishable by the player; Or at least as many as makes sense.
This would mean allowing players to 'activate' candles to snuff them out, make every torch in the game extinguishable (or lootable, like the sconces), and so on.
Eventually it would be nice to implement features such as knocking out fire-based light sources such as torches or campfires with frost magic.

I think that doing this would...

A: Add significant immersion to the lighting system in Skyrim. The engine is capable of fantastic lighting displays, but giving the player so little ability to interact with the lighting just doesn't do the system justice.

B: Allow for Stealth gameplay closer to that of an actual stealth game by making the sneak skill a modifier for success rather than arguably the most important factor. Similarly to the above, the game's stealth and detection system appears to be quite well-designed, but the actual variables involved don't allow it to really shine as a stealth-oriented game.
Hiding in plain sight (or in light) is perhaps justifiable from a lore/magic/fantasy perspective in the Elder Scrolls setting and allowing the stat/skill to dominate results makes sense to some extent in an RPG, but it isn't to my taste from a gameplay perspective and I'd like to strike a better balance that relies more on player action and judgement and less on power-leveling Sneak to 100.

The end result should hopefully be an improvement in the satisfaction factor of playing stealthily, but it really hinges on allowing the player to interact with lighting; So that's what I'm mainly here to discuss.

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So, how do we go about it?

I suspect that this will be difficult if not impossible to achieve until the CK is out, but I've been looking at a few things in SkyEdit for now. The activatable Torch Sconce object seen throughout some dungeons demonstrates that the very behaviour I want to achieve is already supported in some way by the game, which is very promising.
That sconce object is an Activator named RemovableTorchSconce01 in the game as far as I can tell, but according to SkyEdit it doesn't have any scripts attached to it; So I have to assume that either SkyEdit can't show me the full information on the object yet (since Activators are not editable in the version I have) or the behaviour is controlled entirely by the object's function as an Activator.

The best approach would probably be to replace existing light sources (such as candles, torches, etc) with Activator objects so that the player can simply activate them to snuff them out.
I suspect that features such as frost magic snuffing out light source flames and the like will require the kind of extended functionality provided by SKSE or ScriptDragon; but until we get our hands on the official CK it'll be hard to say for sure. I'm familiar with C/C++ so I'd be comfortable going down that route if necessary.

So what's the purpose of this thread? Mainly just to brainstorm ideas and plan the best approach for creating this mod.
I believe in producing modular mods for Elder Scrolls games, since I think the .esp plugin system really lends itself to that; So even if my opinions on the stealth side of the game aren't to other people's tastes it'll still be good to have the activatable-Light-source mod available as a standalone mod to improve immersion even for those who prefer the vanilla stealth gameplay.

I definitely support this idea.

I'd like to suggest making all the light sources suspended by a rope be droppable in the same way oil lanterns are. I've seen plenty of ancient Nord braziers hung by a thin thread and was disappointed I couldn't affect them in any way.

I also want to suggest that lightning magic should ignite oil in the same way fire does.

Something like this would be fun. It could potentially involve hundreds of hours of work, though. You probably noticed there's often a very low incidence of obvious light sources being the actual source of light in a room. A room lit by a candle might have the candle on your right and the light coming from your left. A room with a lot of candles might have one big point light in the middle to try and approximate what the candles would light without introducing a performance loss (and also to make building the area faster).

You might find you need to rethink the lighting of many of the dungeons almost entirely for this to work. If you end up doing something like that it would be cool to have an optional esp to turn shadows on for all the lights that should be casting them. I say optional because it will probably grind weaker systems to a halt or melt them into smoldering heaps of slag.

One thing that always bothered me is that you can't distract enemies by throwing items into a room, so that would also be a nice feature for a stealth overhaul mod. Arrows can be used to distract, but it's just not as cool, and you might as well just shoot the guy anyway.

While it;s kind of the opposite of what you would want in a "stealth overhaul" mod for lighting, I always wanted to be able to light fires and candles with my fire spells. This would probably happen about the same time that you implemented frost spells extinguishing fire. There are already a couple mods out the modify the number of light sources everywhere, so I would start by talking to them. Eliminating the "fake" lighting and making the "real" lighting brighter seems like it would be a must for this mod anyway.

Oh please for the love of Nocturnal get this done

My Argonian will love you forever haha

Edit: I looked at the object in question with TESSnip and used this page to decipher the records: http://newcontent1.uesp.net/wiki/Tes5Mod:Mod_File_Format/ACTI

Seems like it's just an object with a script attached to it. So it looks like all this needs is to recreate every light source you want changed as an activator and possibly modify the script to account for differences in objects. Doesn't sound overly difficult, just incredibly repetitive and dull.

Just let Bethesda add in extinguishing lights in a patch surely this is easy enuff to do?

The biggest issues I can see with implementing extinguishable torches in a meaningful way is that it would require the redesign of nearly every dungeon = alot of manhours of labor.

It also not just torches btw. You also have:

candles
braziers
campfires
glowing mushrooms
dwemer sconce lanterns (unknown power source)
regular laterns
chandeliers
mage lighting (dispellable? no "dispel magic" spell currently)
etc, etc

good luck, but wouldnt this only work with real-time lights in the game? you wouldnt be able to change lighting properties dynamically if it is surface baked

Thanks for the replies and feedback.
I'm aware of the distinction between light sources such as 'actual objects' like Torches and simple 'light' objects placed to give specific lighting & colouration to an area. Personally I would be content with giving the player control over the 'real' light sources and leave the invisible/artificial sources as they are.

I'm hoping that it can be achieved by editing the light source objects/props themselves or through some kind of batch-replace, but I won't be able to get into the meat of the project until the CK is out.

I started a thread a few weeks back asking whether it would be possible to use a script to replace static torches in dungeons with ones that can be activated (as are seen in a few places in vanilla Skyrim) rather than replacing them by hand in the CK which would be a very tedious job, and Reneer (who did similar to replace the purely decorative training dummies in OB with ones that you could actually use) kindly answered that yes it would be possible and probably easy enough to do.

Here is the URL for that thread:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1301046-question-light-sources-that-you-can-activate/

It might be worth contacting Reneer about that particular aspect to ask how he did the training dummies in OB. Hope that helps

I would love something like this.
I always get annoyed that I cant put out lights, be it blowing out a candle or snuffing a torch.

I would envision several different ways to do it, for example, a gust of wind from afar (magic) should be able to do it. Or maybe you could knock over a candle with a well placed arrow.
I would love to stand in the middle of a room and cast a spell to snuff all lights..
I believe there where water arrows in thief right? A bit of a stretch I would think..

I would also like candles torches and lanterns to be able to be lit..
Combining this with a mod that removes ambient lighting and fake lights would be utterly wonderful.

I've been working on a mod like that for a while now... mostly just making models and textures, things like that. Expect to see a release shortly after the CK is released.

This mod sounds great. What I would also love is more shadow-enabled light sources in interiors. In skyrim there is usually a single light source in a house, and all the rest of the surrounding rooms have no shadows due to the major shadow enabled lightsource being in another room. Setting all light sources, or more light sources cast shadows would improve the look of the game 10 fold.

its completely doable. if forgot where but early on there was a torch that you could extinguish. i was so excited thinking that all of them in the game would be like this but apparently bethesda only did it once and never again. kind of like one of the early quests the npcs actually walks and shows you where to go but then it never happens again. the more i played this game the more it seems like the release date was WAAAY to rushed.