I wanted to thank everyone who has been supportive and given advice with my mod up to this point. The point of the Alpha phase was to mostly 'fill in the holes' that Serana had with her dialogue as well as use other dialogue options that she had that weren't implemented in the main phase of the mod. There wasn't much risk involved with the mod during this phase as it just consisted of busy work as well as implementing and removing certain conditions.
The Beta phase of the mod will change all that.
Here, I am going to be taking risks with what this mod can do and how much I can re-utilize her dialogue to make her a well developed NPC. You can begin to see some of the things I am going to do with the release of Version 0.4 of the mod.
One of the things that I will be doing with mod is adding the requirements of Hearthfire and Dragonborn. While I might lose some people with this, I feel that to get the best out of Serana, I really should be using all of the DLCs. I might be also be requiring the use of the unofficial patches that come with each of the respective DLC (user feedback will determine this) (for the sake of making people happy, I won't make the unofficial patches mandatory for this mod during BETA phase).
I was planning on taking a break from this mod to work on other projects but I figured that I would start prepping the folders where I store my sound files for the Beta build of the mod (Yes, I do keep a script of the mod):
But one of the things I wanted to start toying around with is having the player talk to Serana beyond her normal dialogue. I wanted to have her give a response depending on what stage of the Dawnguard Questline you are in as well as if you kept bugging her by asking the same question. I also wanted to try and see if I can ask her about how feels about a certain area as well as ask her about how she feels about Ulfric and Elisif. But for right now, I want to make sure that I am able to do what I want with the dialogue (plus it gives me an excuse to try out the BRTH Waifu mod). For the sake of testing, I did set up two conditions for during the final quest in the Dawnguard line and a line of dialogue after curing Serana.
As you can see, the template completely works.
One of the other things I am going to introduce is make Serana be mostly quiet when sneaking. When I say mostly quiet, I mean she will say a few things that I considered quiet or something related to being caught (i.e. "Damnit" or "Oh no..."). Essentially, I am going to try and make Serana as immersive as possible. This means I will need feedback from people to help make this mod the best that it can be.
So please contribute with any ideas or suggestions. But just keep in mind that I will be requiring the following files from Version 0.5 and beyond, please tell me what you think about the new requirements:
-Skyrim
-Dawnguard
-Hearthfire
-Dragonborn
7 comments
Now, to the matter of the article itself...
The UKSP is a fantastic patch that repairs countless bugs, both superficial and under-the-hood, that improve both gameplay and stability. It's effectively an absolute must for anyone playing on the PC version. There's literally zero reason not to use it unless you enjoy a fundamentally broken and incomplete gaming experience. Personal taste is one thing - if you don't think it's necessary for you, you're entitled to pass on it of course. But arbitrarily deciding that it isn't worth using either because one has never noticed problems without it or, even worse because they somehow managed to break their game because they don't know how to mod it and blame it on the most endorsed mod on the Nexus, is naïve and arrogant to the point of obscenity.
About 99.99% of the problems people complain about re: the Unofficial Patches aren't actually the fault of the patches themselves. Rather, the majority of the problems reported with it arise when a mod overwrites a fix made by the UKSP. Let's say mod X carries forward a fix from the UKSP. Then say the UKSP team discover they've made a mistake with said fix, and correct it in an incremental update. Now the changes that mod X made also have to be corrected, else the UKSP's corrected fixes are being overwritten by a now out-dated mod X which is carrying over broken or incorrect data from a previous version of UKSP. But because the UKSP claims to have fixed it, when someone experiences the bug in question they don't realise it's because of mod X's interference, they just hop onto the forums and swear off the UKSP without looking into the problem.
Basically, there are three types of UKSP users: those who understand and appreciate it for what it repairs in the vanilla game; those who are not aware enough of how extensive it is to realise what repairs it makes that are generally un-notable to many players and decide not to use it (or not to use it anymore); and those who believe it's the cause of all their modded Skyrim woes because they don't understand how mods in Skyrim function and interact with each other.
There's nothing wrong with using the UKSP as a master. In fact it's a good idea in a lot of cases. You just need to be sure to keep abreast of changes made by UKSP, and update your own mod accordingly when they change something that you might need to carry forward. v2.0.0a is stable enough to have not needed any incremental corrections to its own fixes since November 2013, so you could probably safely use it as a master for the beta version. But ultimately the ignorant and misguided malevolence towards UKSP amongst many users in the last year means you could very well deal with a lot of flack for carrying forward any of its fixes. If you've already made yourself the same fixes it does, then it comes down to whether you're willing to have the UKSP debate with uneducated players every week for the foreseeable future.
As for the DLC dependency, I say go for it. The DLCs are not new, and have been on sale for pennies on the dollar countless times now. If I could afford them at full price, then anyone else can afford them on sale. I myself would be thrilled to have more interaction with Serana on Solstheim, as there she becomes very much more like some of the flatter, more boring followers (read: every single other follower in the entirety of the game and its DLCs) the game has to offer. Now, if you want to provide both a Dragonborn edition and a non-Dragonborn edition that's 100% up to you, obviously; but I'd posit that it's better to cover the larger DLC than to simply ignore it to avoid people complaining.
Bottom line: please don't limit your creativity because you're worried people might whine. Do what you feel is the best choice for your mod, and tell the whiners to walk.
As I stated in the other comments on here, I am going to opt out of it during the BETA phase as isn't needed for what I am planning on doing during this phase. When it comes closer to the LIVE version of the mod (Version 1.0+) I will probably bring the USKP debate back as I think that ultimately, this mod SHOULD be in line with it.
Using all three DLCs ultimately where I was going anyways because you are right on the aspect that all three DLCs have been on sale numerous times and not to mention the Elder Scrolls Anthology edition pretty much has all three DLCs already in it. At this point, there really shouldn't be an excuse for owning all three DLCs after three years.
As for the optional Dawnguard only DLC version of the mod or stuff like that, I think that I will just gear the mod to having all three DLCs as a requirement, no multiple files for Dawnguard only, Dawnguard & Dragonborn only, etc etc etc. At this point, you really should have all three DLCs.
Curious as to why they would need to be a must have, as I have played multiple play through's and never had any issues with Serana with either Dawnguard or DragonBorn.
I tend to use them in my playthroughs as it does fix some of the quirks that happen in the game. I think it smooths things out, but I am aware people don't use it. Ergo, why I wanted to see what people felt about adding those requirements. I have a feeling that people would be okay with adding the Hearthfire/Dragonborn requirements but I think the unofficial patches are going to be a no-go (I'll most likely drop the requirement).
I am basing it off how I play the game, which is why user input in this mod is highly recommended as I can adjust my input on things properly. I do like Serana as an NPC and I know a lot of other people do as well. Which is why I welcome all kinds of input.
actually the unoffical patches are usually the first things I install when modding a game. I mean, they are supposed to fix things, right? So I don't see any harm in using them. Judging from the amount of endorsments, they are pretty popular.
Maybe you should give them a try, ranya.
On another note ...
I really like the idea behind your mod and at the moment I'm torn between playing now with the aplha or waiting for the beta. But I think I'm gonna wait, the changes you mentioned are to tempting and I don't want to miss out on those when I play Dawnguard.
Very, very promising!
This doesn't mean I won't recommend them to fix quirks in the game. But for the sake of this mod, I won't make it mandatory.
As for the rest of what you are saying, molekulargewitter, I seem to be getting the common consensus, lol (about when to start downloading this). The big aspect about the BETA phase is pretty much going to be custom dialogue trees and fleshing Serana out a little more. The cherry on top of the BETA phase (if I can get it to work) will be allowing Serana to be cured on both sides of the Dawnguard line and fixing the Second Chance dialogue that is already there. But since that won't be until around 0.9-1.0, most of what the LIVE phase (1.0+) will already be in Version 0.8.
So I would honestly say, if you were going to download it at an ideal point before LIVE phase, it would probably be Version 0.8. At that point, I would have most of my wishlist done as well as few requests from users implemented in. When will that come out though...I would say around July (I kind of want to give a few weeks for each update now, just for the sake of polishing). Version 0.9 and 1.0 would most definitely be Curing Serana on the Vampire side and correcting the Second Chance dialogue for curing that is already there.
Thanks for making this mod!