Kjorik's Rest: a player home mod for Skyrim

So with the completion of the basic tutorials for the Bethesda Creation Kit, comes the proper start for my first mod Skyrim. It will be a Nordic-style player home called Kjorik's Rest, where I will hopefully be consolidating my favourite aspects from several other player homes, into one!

Yesterdays work made the the exterior and the entry hall for Kjorik's Rest. Here's some of the screenshots from the mod so far:

Kjorik's Rest view from the side, with the Western Watchtower visible behind it in the distance. To the right is some of the buildings that surrounds Whiterun.

The exterior of Kjorik's Rest, showing the gravel path leading up to the entrance.

The door into Kjorik's Rest. The grass visible through the floor is an artefact left over from terrain painting, and will be removed!

The entry hall of the Kjorik's Rests interior.

Looking through the grate at what will be a short hall of stories before a puzzle door that will act as the main entry (proper) into the home.

The claw for the puzzle door. In time, this pedestal will be activate-able so the puzzle door will lock. Then you can just leave the claw on the pedestal as shown, or take it with you as a key!

Gotta have Easter eggs somewhere..... This hidden pullbar opens up a secret passage to the dev area, where I will be testing scripts and setups.

The false wall pulls back to reveal the entry to the dev zone!

And finally, a veiw from inside the dev zone, currently empty! It's basically just a copy-paste of the entry hall, minus most of the doors!

Well, that's my progress so far. I'll hopefully get back to it during the midweek once my work is done!

Finished the tutorial!

So my very first baby steps into TES modding have finished with the (hasty) conclusion of my version of the Lokir's Tomb. Lighting and AI dynamics are still a bit fuckled, but I don't plan on using combat AI in my upcoming mods, and the lighting issues are due to the unfortunate and unforeseen location of the main corridor (Skyrim can only render 8 shadow-inducing lights at once, regardless of if those lights are obscured to the viewer by wall or not).

So here's the final round of pictures from my finished dungeon. Here's the tomb's exterior:

I didn't want to be too invading into my game, so I used a simple Nordic Guard hut as my entrance, slanting the door to make it fit into the entryway. The entrance is located just opposite Riverwood (the tutorial says that the coordinates that it gives - which I used - should take you opposite Whiterun, but that's not where I ended up!).

Given there was only 2 lights in my previous instalment of the mod, I beefed  out the lighting of the cave, corridor and rooms with torches and fire pots:

Finally, I added some eerie atmosphere to the final boss room and it's entryway:

So that's it! My first, very small, not particularly well-functioning dungeon. Am I going to release it? Hell no! It adds nothing to the game at all, however it has served it's purpose in introducing me to the creation kit.

Now it's time to move on to my first proper mod, a Nordic-style player home! I would say updates to come soon, but at the time of writing, the Creation Kit wont open, so that is pending fixing. Hopefully soon!

Cities: Skylines - First Impressions

So yesterday evening, I sat down to start what seems to latest version of video game crack: Cities: Skylines. Then, at 4am, I suddenly realised that I forgot to go to bed, and then instead of actually going to bed, I decided my new metropolis needed bus routes up the wazoo! So it's good. It's forget your dinner and neglect your children good!

Looking at some of the other Steam reviews, the comparison to both SimCity and the Cities series. Many centuries ago, I remember thoroughly enjoying SimCity, so last year I went ahead and bought the latest SimCity, which was an utter disappointment: I ended up giving up on the game after just a couple of hours. However, I'm a great fan of citybuilders (Anno 2070 taught me that much), and I did really enjoy the Cities XL series.

Cities:Skylines, plays very much like a simplified version of Cities XL 2012 (which is the last one I played), which has it's pros and it's cons. What I like is that they've simplified the city zoning structure so you don't need to micromanage between low, middle and upper class housing, instead relying on low and high density zones and a levelling, which works pretty well. One of the main things I really enjoyed about Cities XL was the ability to trade with AI towns and other towns that you have built, allowing maps to become connected, which allows you to make towns tailored to a certain need, so you can export it to other towns. Trade is present in Cities: Skylines, but it is entirely automated and you cannot trade between maps, which is a little disappointing. If you enjoy city building with a high degree of micromanagement, I'd probably recommend the Cities XL series over this, but the simplification does make Cities: Skylines easier to play. I'll cover everything when I do a full review (I am currently ill and cannot speak).

Overall, Cities: Skylines has made positive inroads with the concept, providing a great fun and easy to use piece of software. Any game that makes me forget to eat, drink and sleep is definitely a worthy investment. At almost half the price of most current titles, I can see a lot of bang for your buck! Hopefully, I'll be back next week to do a proper review!

Bringing a dungeon to life...

... literally! Continuing my tutorials of the Bethesda Creation Kit, its time to make the dungeon come alive with baddies and effects. My first attempts at putting AI enemies into the dungeon have not gone well, with my Draugr gleefully standing on top of his coffin, before slowly stepping off at the moment the coffin dramatically bursts of. Then there's the other, patrolling AI, that seems content just drawing and sheathing his weapon as opposed to actually moving about.... At least the navmesh is working well enough that you can successfully stab them for their hubris!

With the inclusion of AI into the dungeon, I needed to add some more rooms. I basically copy pasted the first room, and extended the hallway to facilitate the rooms, also adding in a downwards staircase.

At the bottom, the hall narrows into the final boss room (I have subsequently added a gate).

Finally, there was the application of of lighting and light templates. I've not added many lights yet, but you can definitely see the altered feel of the dungeon. The two pictures below show the entrance to the barrow and a skylight in the main corridor.

So that's my content creation from the past few days in a nutshell. I have a few more tutorials to play about with in level design, before I move on to scripting tutorials. Then I'll be starting my own mods proper!!!

I'm a modder! (VERY beginner, though)

So yes, as per my post yesterday, I've now taken up modding - in lieu of my Hibblejayvlog series. The series might come back in the future if I get the time, but for now I have no plans.

I'm currently planning on working on 3 mods for Skyrim - the logical choice, since that's where I've been spending the majority of my free time lately! At the moment, I'm nowhere near starting any of them, I'm just working my way through the Creation Kit tutorials. So to start with, I've made an extremely small Nordic barrow. Here's what I've done so far:

 This is the cave, looking toward the barrow entrance.

 The main entrance to the barrow, showing off the fire.

 Inside the main corridor, looking back at the main entrance, showing off some rubble and furniture scenery

 The remainder of the main corridor

 The door into the main chamber.

 Some Nordic urns with randomised loot.

 I made an alchemy station in a nook of the main chamber. Showing off some neatly placed ingredient satchels and some levelled potions above that (the potions vary with player level).

 Experimenting with the Havok-settle function in the creation kit, I made a basket filled with leather.

 The altar inside the main chamber, showing object (coins) and levelled item (the bow at the top of the image) placement.

 The loot containers inside the main chamber. This was an exercise in altering the loot inside the containers, and playing around with locks (the strongbox is locked).

 

My bowl of potions. This was to allow a slightly destructive environment: the bowl is non-static so can fall off the altar, dropping the potions across the floor.

More content to follow, once I've made it, of course!

I'm a magnet!

It seems I've become an ambulance magnet of late, in the last few days. Today alone, I passed no less than 5 with blue lights & sirens, 8 in total, 3 battenburg police cars and another 4 marked police cars. Add that to the past few days of many more ambulance, police and fire tenders, and I've probably seen more emergency vehicles than I have done warm meals in the past week!

No more Hibblejayvlog...

For the moment I will be discontinuing my vlog, and scaling back on reviews. I'm not getting nearly as many views as my other content, so I'd rather focus my (rather limited) time on other pursuits, such as mod making and programming. If they views start picking up, and I get some time, I may consider starting them up on a regular basis again.

For now, watch out for other content!