Arthmoor Posted December 3, 2011 Share Posted December 3, 2011 Live Another Life Misery and despair have haunted you all your life. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, you've been arrested and thrown in the dungeons. Your trial was supposed to be weeks ago, only nobody has come for you. It's been so long since seeing daylight you no longer know what month it is anymore. The dungeon is cold, damp, and worse still, you're running out of food. At least you have that leak in the wall for water. It seems as though you've been forgotten, soon to rot away and die. The eight have forsaken you! Or... have they?Live Another Life provides an alternative means to start the game for those who do not wish to go through the lengthy intro sequence at Helgen. You will be given the opportunity to choose your race and then choose a new life for your character to lead. A wide variety of choices will be available. What you choose will have a lasting impact, so choose carefully or the god may forsake you again!System requirements to be determined once the Creation Kit has been released.Yes, this mod is basically a Skyrim rehash of my Alternative Beginnings mod for Oblivion. With some changes to suit Skyrim.Options AvailableChoose from one of the many options to start your character. As more ideas are fleshed out, this list will grow.Caught Crossing the Border IllegallyFor those who wish to use this to play through the original game start at Helgen, this option will streamline the process to skip the race selection dialogue during the lead up to your execution. All of the tutorial prompts will be removed as well.Immigrated to SkyrimYou will arrive by ship in the port of Solitude, Dawnstar, or Windhelm with little more than some basic supplies, middle class clothing, and a decent sum of gold to start over upon your arrival.Property OwnerYou will start off with the fully furnished house of your choice in one of 4 major cities. Windhelm is not included due to the quest that interacts directly with the house there.Each house will start you off with appropriate class clothing and some leftover cash to spend. There will also be a selection of weapons fitting to the city available on the storage chest in the bedroom.If owning property in a city is boring, or you'd prefer to have access to all of the available hold questing, you can choose instead to own a farmhouse. The farmhouse is situated on the main road east of Dragon Bridge and comes complete with a pair of NPCs to act as your farm hands. Your farm will generate a regular income that you can collect from the farm hands. You do need to come home from time to time to collect it though. Assuming the system makes it feasible, this farmhouse will also be available as a choice to move a spouse into should you get married.Member of a GuildYou will be a new recruit in one of the joinable factions in the game. The Companions, College of Winterhold, Dark Brotherhood, or Thieves Guild. Your starting equipment will be geared toward the faction you have chosen.For the Thieves Guild, you will begin just inside the Ragged Flagon, having just emerged from the Ratway. Talk to Brynjolf to seal the deal.For the Dark Brotherhood, you will begin immediately inside the Falkreath Sanctuary and need only speak to Astrid to complete the process.For the College, you'll be placed just inside the Hall of Elements and will have completed the initial joining phase.For the Companions, you'll begin in Jorvaskr and begin with the mission to train with Varkas.Patron at an InnYou will be able to choose from one of several inns throughout Skyrim. Some are relatively safe, others not so much. Your starting equipment will reflect the relative safety of the inn you choose. Keep in mind, inns are not all located in cities. Some are in small villages, and one is isolated in the mountains.Outlaw in the WildsYou will begin as a member of a group of bandits. For the sake of variety, the group of bandits will be chosen at random. You will begin with standard bandit level equipment. Unlike the Oblivion version, you WILL be inducted into the bandit faction. All indications are that the guards will not be overtly hostile to you. Tread carefully though, you WILL have a bounty of 500 gold in he hold the game chooses.Soldier in the ArmyYou begin as a recruited soldier in either the Stormcloaks or the Imperial Legion. Which one you choose will determine the gear you start with. You must complete the final step of either speaking to Ulfric or to General Tullius due to complcated interactions involved in the underlying quest system.Camping in the WoodsYou are a lone hunter, camping somewhere in the woods. This will start you off with decent low level equipment, a campfire, cooking pot, bedroll and tent. The camp will be somewhere in the forest/hills near Helgen and will serve as an alternative method for witnessing the dragon attack that will not require you to actually be in the village when it is destroyed. Your camp will be cleared once you have vacated it for longer than 3 days.If feasible, this will have an AI alteration to bring (at random) whichever person you would otherwise have escaped Helgen with over to your camp to warn you of the dragon attack. Since this doesn't cause you to choose a side it won't harm your choice in the Civil War later.Shipwrecked off the CoastShipwrecked! You were a passenger aboard a merchant ship on the way to Solitude when the ship struck an iceberg off the coast and then capsized. Make your escape from the doomed vessel, retreiving any useful items on your way out, then make your way to the nearby ice floes. From there, you'll quickly realize it's a LONG way off to shore.The wreck site itself will remain for a time, and then be disposed of later.Starting the Main QuestSkyrim is a lot less linear in this respect. Even if the start at Helgen is chosen, the actual main quest where the player learns they are the Dragonborn doesn't actually get underway until after the first audience with the Jarl of Whiterun. As a result, there should be no real need to attempt to sidestep it.If you choose the Helgen start, this will play out as normal.If not, news of the attack on Helgen will begin to circulate immediately, and any dialogue involving the player saying they were there will be left intact - pretend you're lying about it or something if it helps. Adventurers tell fish stories all the time, and hey, for all you know someone fitting your general description WAS at Helgen and the idiots thinking they recognize you don't realize you're not that person.Helgen will be destroyed as expected regardless of which start option is chosen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mael Posted December 3, 2011 Share Posted December 3, 2011 Out to see!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ysne58 Posted December 3, 2011 Share Posted December 3, 2011 Looks good so far Arthmoor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthmoor Posted February 9, 2012 Author Share Posted February 9, 2012 Prodding this one back to the surface. It's well underway. Although due to a bug in message box menus, the act of choosing your start setup will probably need to be converted into a dialogue system.Also not going to go over too well if bugs with disappearing buildings don't stop being an issue.So many roadblocks, not the least of which are MQ roadblocks that are more or less impossible to overcome since so much of the MQ has to fire before general game mechanics will even function. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hana Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 Will the "owning a house" start prevent you from becoming Thane, or be recognized in that respect? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ysne58 Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 I'm looking forward to this one. As usual, I am available for testing when you reach that stage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthmoor Posted February 9, 2012 Author Share Posted February 9, 2012 Owning a house will satisfy one part of the requirement for becoming Thane. You'll still have to do the rest. It may produce a few awkward moments, and it's not terribly fitting to the situation in Whiterun since you can't become Thane and get the house there until after doing the Barrow quest and all that. I might end up having to remove the Whiterun option if that proves to be too disjointed.I'm also not very happy with how far the MQ ends up needing to be pushed since you have to activate enough of it that the game is expecting you in Riverwood, although I did manage to at least suppress it telling you this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndalayBay Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 Would it be too far outside your thoughts on this to offer a custom house instead? Would give the player a nice starter house and let them still buy the city houses like normal. Some of the houses cost a lot of money, so this might be less overpowered too... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthmoor Posted February 10, 2012 Author Share Posted February 10, 2012 I do have a farmhouse option already, so that's probably about as good as it gets I'd say. I don't really see how a house by itself could be considered overpowered.Were I to go about doing this with completely alternative houses, there's no variety in the parts. It's all farmhouse style outside the cities. Suddenly having access to some rich man's manor outside a city would stick out like a sore thumb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndalayBay Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Unless you did some kind of country manor, then yeah, you'd need to use the city houses. Do you need to make them all available? Just wondering if there are a couple of cities that are easier to deal with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthmoor Posted February 10, 2012 Author Share Posted February 10, 2012 Solitude, Markarth, and Riften were easy. Windhelm is impossible, just like Benirus Manor was in Oblivion. Whiterun is the only sketchy one since it's sale is directly tied in to the main quest, which had to have certain portions started in order to clear Helgen out properly.My farmhouse start works fine, though I haven't written the scripts and dialogue yet to handle the ongoing income. Nor have I looked at what's needed for it to become home for you and a spouse. I might even make it possible to buy that farmhouse even if you don't start there since it's a permanent structure.I still need to change menu methods first though. It doesn't look like Bethesda is going to acknowledge the busted messagebox system so I'll need to change over to a talking activator with dialogue instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ysne58 Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Just having other options will be wonderful Arthmoor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ysne58 Posted February 13, 2012 Share Posted February 13, 2012 I was not successful in recreating the Hard Answers quest restart glitch. I'm giving up on that for now and am about to start testing this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ysne58 Posted February 13, 2012 Share Posted February 13, 2012 I downloaded and installed it two different ways, manually and through NMM. In both cases, when I select new at the start menu, the screen acts like it is going to load and never does.What am I doing wrong? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthmoor Posted February 13, 2012 Author Share Posted February 13, 2012 Same as with Dwip, you'll need to unpack the BSA. It contains edits to vanilla scripting which apparently are not kicking in while packed inside the BSA file. It's not really play-worthy either. I only threw it up so Dwip could see what I meant by message box menus being broken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthmoor Posted February 13, 2012 Author Share Posted February 13, 2012 Ok. The beta copy up now, 0.95, is considered release candidate material. I've got it packed as ESP+BSA on the off chance that it works this way. If someone, or ideally a few someones, could check it and report back.If it hangs at the main menu when asking for a new game, I need to know this. Though I'd still like to be sure the stuff works, so if it does hang, unpack the BSA using this utility.If buildings disappear (the farmhouse mainly) I need to know this. The shipwreck and icebergs below it might pull the same crap. If they do, I'll have to check an LOD box on them to resolve that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ysne58 Posted February 13, 2012 Share Posted February 13, 2012 I will wait for the next version then. Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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