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GOKSTAD SAILABLE SHIP & PORTABLE PLAYER HOME - a mod by SLuckyD
(Prequel to the upcoming epic, 'Stone Unhenged' mod also by SLuckyD)
[SUMMARY]
ADDS an authentic, sailable Viking ship; as well as a place to sleep or store loot safely, and a few NPCs (some of which may join you as companions). ALTERS NOTHING VANILLA SKYRIM (but places NEW things in the Skyrim worldspace, without changing anything).
Player will (tentatively) have the option to build a new ship, or fix up a wreck, by commissioning a shipwright. Once finished, it'll cost money to maintain & repair, as well as to staff when in use; but provides a 'player home' as well as 'vital services,' and a stylish means of fast & protective coastal transportation.
The ship may also be upgraded in various ways, all of which have tangible, non-cosmetic benefits to the Player (apparati/etc). Additionally, following what I hope to be the success & popularity of this mod, I would foresee and encourage cosmetic improvement add-ons, such as different sail or shield textures, different dragonhead meshes or nameplates, etc... hopefully with some quests attached to their procurement in-game.
[STORYLINE]
Gokstad: pronounced GAWK-shtahd (rhymes with "hawk's plaid")
- A farmer named Leif Gokstad has opened a new shipwright, and has placed advertisements at inns & taverns all over Skyrim. He'll be offering ship building & repair services at his family's little farm/building by the water, directions included in the fliers.
"Farming this far north? My illustrious ancestors must've been daft settling here. My family is starving... we buried one.. one of our children.. just last week. I HAVE to do SOMETHING or we'll all perish like.. like my little boy. PLEASE.. I'm fully qualified for ship-building, taught by my father, Eric, who built for Harald Fairhair. PLEASE commission me to build YOU a vessel - it'll be the finest this dreary land has EVER seen! PLEASE.. I'm begging you.. it would provide my family enough money to get through this long, hard winter. I fear you're our only hope.. few - if any, are willing to voyage out in those icy waters. But you! ..You have the look of adventure and strength, of leadership and courage, you're no farmer... what do you say? Will my wife and little girls survive the year, due entirely to your mercy?"
- The following portion of the mod will not be enabled initially, as this is the PREQUEL to my STONE UNHENGED mod. Once that mod is released, this segment will be enabled for playing: After completing the main quest to obtain/build the Gokstad, Player is presented with the OPTION of 'sailing' it off into the sunset (at Player's leisure), with his/her companions... in 'search' of the Lost Continent of Yokuda. Upon arrival there, Player must complete a minor, yet essential, questline to be able to return Skyrim. Once that 'unlocker' questline is complete, Player may sail to and fro Skyrim-Yokuda at will (instantly btw... not some goose-chase out into nowhere).
[FEATURES]
- Custom voice-over dialogue
(written, acted, recorded, and mastered by SLuckyD)
- Custom meshes & animations
(all created from scratch by SLuckyD)
- Skyrim-integrated lore & questline; some of which includes real-life details about the Gokstad, Viking culture & mythology/religion, and even aspects of modern current-events (all researched, compiled, incorporated, and/or written by SLuckyD)
- Ship is 'propelled' by thirty-two fully animated oars, which get stowed when the sail is unfurled... for faster means of travel.
- Scripted WIND, which actively affects the ship's speed, and SHIFTS constantly (as real wind would); as well as the means to discern its direction (ie: a 'tell-tale' flag atop the mast)
- Ship's sails are animated to flow in the wind; and will change position (depending on the ship's heading, relative to the current wind's direction)
- Both of two types of 'encampments' will have facilities, all sold at the shipwright separately, for 'vital services:' alchemy, enchantment, whetstone, tanning rack, and workbench. While camped on land, Player may partake in smelting, smithing, woodcutting, and cooking (as well as the others).
- Simple, easy to use interface would almost be like riding a horse (WASD, spacebar, etc - basic controls PLUS a couple non-nilla hotkeys for special actions/features (which I don't wanna give away)
- Scripting for a 'pillage command.' Once encamped... some crew members armed to the teeth will follow Player wherever they're led (dungeons, wilderness, OR towns) - slaying/stopping on command (hotkey), and will only attack civilian friendlies when provoked or player does first.
[*** NO RAPING, and I DO NOT condone/give permission for adding it to my mod or to use any of my work in a mod which does ***]
- Script to send crew members ashore to sell loot, obtain resources, hunt, or forage (very convenient for the ruler of all Skyrim, nice eh?). The pawn-loot script will use the Player's stats for buying/selling as well as enhance those stats by usage (if this is at all possible... to use an NPC as a full proxy for the Player, guess we'll find out soon enough)
- my Gokstad ship is modeled full-sized (EXACT 1:1 scale) after one of the oldest intact Viking long-boats (its namesake, the Gokstadskipet in Norway). Some details had to be inferred as I mainly used technical drawings made by the on-site archaeologist in the 1880s, which were incomplete due to parts of the ship being destroyed over the previous 1000+ years (eg: the bow's dragonhead, mast), or the location/usage of something particular being ambiguous or completely unknown (eg: the rigging, storage of oars). When possible, I used footage of modern sailing vessels and replicas of this exact ship (as well as the actual Gokstad in Norway's Viking Ship Museum ) to formulate a realistically working model which functions as a sailing vessel would/should (in my opinion).
- Custom 'loading screens' (related to this mod only... not changing Vanilla Sky's, such as only when Player enters camp)
- Engineered to be performance-oriented; scripts, meshes, etc are all tested and found not to affect fps at all (testing done on an i5core 2.27ghz, 4gig ddr3 RAM, NVidia 350m w 1gig VRam, Win7x64.... a decent laptop when purchased in Spring 2010).
- HOPEFULLY, and this is VERY tentative, I'll be able to include a CUSTOM SOUNDTRACK, using music from various recording artists (of whom I'll be asking for permission to use their work)... all of whom are extremely talented, mesmerizing, and every other blurb-phrase imaginable. In the very least, I'll be able to include my custom sounds (recorded and mastered by me), as well as some music/recordings/videos I obtained from YouTube/etc (about which I can't say more without giving away the surprises!!). The YouTube/etc media will all have links set up to the hosted pages (only non-copyrighted/'free' videos will be used); any copyrighted materials/resources used will be fully cited and credited with near-top billing.
Recording Artists I'll be petitioning: Hel (the Swedish band, now called Origin of Tales), Ranarim, Hedningarna, Garmarna, Faun, Corvus Corax, & Helium Vola. Any other suggestions will be taken into consideration... especially if permission has already been obtained! A sudden boost in activity for these EXCELLENT ARTISTS through Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Facebook/MySpace, etc may help convince them (or their rights-holders) to grant permission for use in this mod and Stone Unhenged... FREE PUBLICITY. They are deserving of our attention and patronage REGARDLESS. (I have SPECIFIC tracks in mind for specific times/actions/etc... I'm not seeking unlimited rights to their entire catalogues.)
- Another tentative aspect to this (and the Stone Unhenged mod) would be cut-scene animated movies... about which many people requested more of for Obliv, but Skyrim seemingly fell short of delivering (although Bethesda made a noticeably effective effort to put those 'cut-scenes' directly into the gameplay, using scripted dialog and actions, etc). These, if I get around to completing any of them, would be used as EasterEggs... depicting real-life footage of a certain boat, photos from an archaeological excavation at Stonehenge (or wherever), or fictional animations depicting an in-game scene which, to bring it to the level of Bethesda integration, would require a lot of time and skill (scripting, scripting, fiery-hoop-jumping, scripting, etc)... and I/we are doing this for FREE.
Again, these EasterEggs would be meant to give the Player an idea of what the place they just ransacked/slept inside of/ran past looks like in REAL-LIFE, as well as any history or interesting stuff pertinent to whatever location they are found in. I intend to include these anyway, initially as books/tomes one can read (with stillshots, diagrams, etc) and/or little 'tourist plaques' which the Player could walk up to and activate (such as in real-life at American National Monuments, you know the inclined granite slab at waist level with writing etched into it explaining what native culture was ruthlessly slaughtered there or how deep the Grand Canyon is). I'd love to incorporate little, seemingly random, reality checks throughout the semi-real world I've created.
[TECHNICAL DETAILS]
- EVERYTHING IS CUSTOM, as to prevent conflict with ANY other mod and/or Vanilla Sky (objects, global & script variables, NPCs, worldspaces, etc). Nothing in SkyNilla is moved or altered.
- Scripts are optimized for speed, effectiveness, and simplicity; and are designed and used so as to run only when absolutely needed (then STOP RUNNING). Too many Obliv mods used certain commands in their scripting to keep creating 1000s of new items which never get erased, scripts which keep running and never end, or several other ways which poor design may lead to savegame bloat, reduced performance during gameplay, and even crashing the game outright.
- Custom meshes (non-Vanilla) are optimized for tri-count expediency, while trying to maintain maximum detail whenever possible. I've created all these nifs from scratch (in 3DSMax 2010 and Revit 2012) and used absolutely ZERO cut & pasting from Obliv meshes. [That last statement may need to be revised, unless the NifSkope people have gotten NIFs to work without ANY copy/paste.. eg: shader flags. I haven't checked into this since I put out the Bullseye mod.]
- Adds several new objects (statics, activators), and makes copies of existing objects (unique reference id's, etc) if they are to be altered for the mod's purposes (to avoid conflicts with other mods which may do the same thing.. a notorious problem with Obliv mods)
- Adds an internal cell (for the encampments) in which Player may safely sleep/store loot. This is actually a single cell, that uses some of the ship's meshes, which if Player is on land, are scripted to 'drop' below ground level... thus creating the illusion of one tent on a ship, and the same tent on a piece of land (which is more than likely to be the actual case back in Viking times).
Player may drop/store something on ship and it'll still be there if camping on shore, WITHOUT requiring the use of extensive scripting to jockey containers and items and what-have-you (every line of code in the script potentially causing some fatal crash or permanent loss of that oh-so-sentimental Hide Armor you've had since almost getting beheaded in the beginning).
It's no palace, but is intended for what it is; a small place for sleeping/eating/healing, dumping loot from a nearby dungeon (instead of leaving it or having to make 40000 trips across Skyrim), and the vital services (as I call them).
- Adds several scripted NPCs (custom dialogue, some are future companions). These NPCs are not nearly as intense as Bethesda's, in fact they are pretty much hollow people... with dialogue enough to be pertinent to the questline (without overly increasing the mod's download size), and prevent the huge vacuum so many Obliv mods would leave as Player encountered well-written, silent-movie captioning. It used to make my day when a modder had voice-overs... my whole week if they were actually done well.
- Setting up land-camp will require a generally flat area (scripted to test for it), and takes your crew a couple hours of time-lapsed gametime to set up/break down... for seamless immersion/realism. (in other words, you give the command and you'll instantly be in the camp, but time will have passed... or maybe something similar to the wait command)
- Inside the encampments there'll be something (item, book, or whatever) the Player can activate in order to change the mods variables: such as the ship's max speed, toggle the wind on or off, how frequently the wind changes direction or 'gusts' (yes there are gusts of wind I'v scripted to happen randomly at certain timed intervals), how far the wind can change at a given time/gust, no tent or sail while out sailing (for visibility reasons), etc etc... Basically, any variable which the scripts call upon, and is stored as a global, may be customized for each gamer's personal delight, a mod-trait which many will agree with me is of the utmost desirability. [Who DOESN'T like to tweak?? Nobody reading THIS I'd be willing to wager!]
- Script for 'pillaging' will include heavy AI packages for the actual looting - the NPCs will really scour the area for everything (if not in danger or on the move).
- While encamped, unseen crew members are 'out doing chores,' like getting wood, mining, foraging, hunting, etc (but may not actually exist, much less perform these actions in Tamriel worldspace). They then 'return' with their findings either at spaced intervals or when the ship is boarded again. (this accounts for their not actually being in camp.. saving on fps/performance; may be scripted so some crew actually DOES go around the countryside) Perhaps the longer you stay in camp, the more they bring back?
- The oar animations, which currently have no actual rowers/oarsmen, were originally meant to be explained away as being the Einherjar (spirits/ghosts of slain warriors who are commanded by Odin) who are invisible (only for this aspect of my mod, other aspects in Stone Unhenged they'll be real NPCs).
This doesn't really fly with Skyrim (Player not having been subjected to the SU storyline yet, thus no contact with the Einherjar). So I find myself compelled to create some kind of way to 'hide' the oarsmen while they row (thus saving the # of tri's and moving meshes it would take to have THIRTY TWO NPCs all rowing like Oxford crew), such as a SEMI-authentic tent enclosure. [There really were such things employed on Viking ships, but what they looked like and how they were erected/fastened to the ship remains a mystery (though a good picture from the late 19th century of a Gokstad replica sailing in Chicago has a good depiction I think).]
So I'll make a tent-like thingy, but that'll cut visibility from the stern (the original place for Player to be located during sailing) so as to necessitate the Player taking the role of 'navigator' in the bow (as opposed to 'helmsman' at the stern operating the rutter). I thought of having extremely reduced-poly oarsmen for authenticity (actually they'd be 1 or 2 animated statics, then copied, not full-blown NPCs); having their backs to Player (now located in the Bow) makes it easier to pull off such a digital illusion (no need for facial geometry, hands, etc)... maybe eventually, but the tent for now.
- [POSSIBLE addition] Bar-wench/stable-hand promiscuity in encampments (during pillaging and/or based on amount of recent loot?). The actual animations would be done by someone other than me if any are included, that's more time than I want to invest in this aspect... Though now having mentioned it - I suspect fierce public outcry should it not be incorporated. Player/crew goes into local pubs to pick them up - they come along WILLINGLY to camp.
[******* Again NO RAPE. General violence, theft, and murder are bad enough to have fun with (as well as allowing some people to vent excessive aggression and hostility safely/semi-constructively). These things, in my opinion, could potentially be justified under VERY specific circumstances. Whereas I believe there is no known circumstance (short of unfathomable duress, itself being a far stretch) which could justify the extremely damaging, intimately personal nature of rape, thus I cannot give permission for it to be added to my work or for my work to be used in any such context. *******].
Gokstad: pronounced GAWK-shtahd (rhymes with "hawk's plaid") is/was the name of the farm where the Gokstad Ship was found at the time of its (re)discovery in the 1880s. Unimaginative scholars, as they are wont to do, referred to the ship (and innumerable other findings throughout the centuries) by the place where it was found. The word itself derives from two words, which literally translate to "Cuckoo Farm."
SLuckyD: pronounced SLUH-kee-DEE' (rhymes with "plucky fee"). "Slucky" or just "Sluck" (if you're into the whole brevity thing) is the online alias for an upcoming modder to watch for (unless I'm recruited to work somewhere which eats too far into my free time...
[SEMI-SPOILER DETAILS BELOW]
- (tentative) Once Player finds the shipwright, he/she may buy a new ship (takes less time, but really expensive), or is allowed to salvage the wreck of the (whatever boat that was for jah-ree & sis) once it's been cleared.
- Having commissioned Gokstad (the man) to work on a ship, Player is sent around Skyrim to hire at least 5 people to do the labor (tree-cutting, hewing the lumber, caulking, feeding the workers, ironworking the nails, ropemaking, etc). A couple laborers from each city is available, though the more player contracts, the faster it gets done (and a few of them have specialties which Player will be wise to seek out above the 'commoners').
- Player is THEN confronted by the shipwright about the keel & mast (either broken on the salvage, or need them period). Player must search out trees tall enough for the keel & mast (2 specific trees which have been scaled/placed strategically, maybe a 'treasure map' for easier hunting), off wherever the best forest in the land is; with a 'treehugger' guardian (like a Dryad, or other nature creature). While gone, Player's wages for the workers still accrue, as the workers agreed to help - though not their fault work has stopped; causing this to be time sensitive.
- Once the keel & mast trees are found (scripted workers come chop & haul it away), the ship is finished (eventually), and some of the workers offer to become your crew - for a cut of the future spoils. [the wrecked ship which was to be 'fixed' is actually left as is following it's having been 'deemed unsalvageable...' hence Vanilla Sky is still left untouched, though some purist modder would probably write a diff questline/addon mod for that part, I dunno about this aspect yet]
- If Player has slain a dragon, he/she is approached by someone (scripted NPC) who is willing to mount the head & tail (for a fee, of course) so that it may be used/displayed on the boat (replacing the standard 'ghetto' one). (these would use actual Skyrim meshes, and should look CHOICE)
- If the player has either three houses, some arbitrary level of wealth, or has become a thane; a new head/tail may be commissioned by a famous sculptor (scripted NPC who seeks out Player to make offer). The sculptor will carve them out of branches, supposedly from the Yggdrasil (very expensive, as this is the Norse 'tree of life'), then guild them in the purest of Skyrim gold (which Player must provide gold bars/ore for?). This upgraded head/tail (sold separately?) allows the boat to sail straight against the wind at top speed, as well as prevents/eliminates damage from running aground too hard (or from attack).
- Both the upgraded head/tail and the real mounted-dragon ones, but not the ghetto ones, cast an area effect of extreme/high-level fear (for the largest allowable radius)... other such 'boons & benefits.' Ghetto version still casts fear, but more mild/lower level (still huge radius, as a boat this big/intimidating is kinda hard to miss within said radius).
[This is ALL subject to change, or not come about at all due to unforeseen circumstances. The concept(s) is/are my intellectual property, and I reserve all rights.]