Hi. I've been working on a mod that basically just cuts off the MQ. I would ideally like to have an alternate start where you start the game on a boat off Anvil but character creation is a bit beyond me. So the next best thing is to start the game as normal but the Oblivion invasion never happens. I altered the journal entries for "Deliver the Amulet" quest to reflect a character who frankly thinks the emperor is nuts with all his "chosen one" ramblings and has no interest at all in being a hero. Not exactly perfect no, but it is the best I can do.

What I've done so far is lock the door to Weynon Priory and deleted all the evidence of the Oblivion invasion around Kvatch (Kvatch just burned down in a fire long ago). Two small problems so far is I deleted the oblivion gate but I can still hear the sound. I assume there is a placeable that generates the sound like in NWN 2 CS but I can't for the life of me find one in the list. Also I need to delete all the characters in the area but I can't find some of the civilian NPCs at the camp. Specifically Athrelor, Boldon and Hirtel (who runs up and down the road). I've checked in the tents but they're not there. Where are they? There's not much point to the mod if they're still there talking about the attack.

When I deleted the gate and NPCs I got a lot of warning messages, and when I load the mod in the contruction set I get a lot of errors but the mod seems to work ok when playing, but to be honest I don't know if I've broken anything important.

Thanks very much.

And if there's anyone with more experience and knows how to do the character creation and would like to collaborate with me let me know. I have a pretty neat idea for an anternate start.

I think you should have a look at http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11495. It starts off doing precisely what you want to do: dropping the player off at the Anvil docks to start the game, and re-rigging the MQ to give the player more leeway on starting it. You could either learn from it by example, or just use it, in the case you don't go forward with your own plans.

I am pretty sure the stuff you are doing right now is game-breaking, unless you are also planning on rebuilding the main quest & all the oblivion gate quests & all their scripts to account for all these deleted objects (which are referenced by those quests and scripts). I don't want to deter you in any way, but I am sensing a dangerously wide gap between your existing modding knowledge and what you'd need to have to make this sort of mod. It is the kind of project that would make any novice punch walls and give up (perhaps not just novices). Not simple at all, at least in creation, as your topic title implies. If you already know what you're doing, please ignore everything I just said - but otherwise, please save yourself cumulative weeks of frustration by going through the tutorials to learn some mid-level modding stuff, like quest building and some basic scripting, before attempting this.

All that said-

There are placeable sounds, yes. They are found under Misc. in the object list. In the CS render window, they look like little red speakers. Open the cell you want to remove a sound from. In the cell window, you'll see the list of references contained in the cell you're in. If you can't see the sound in the render window, check for it in this list. Double-clicking it from the list will bring it into view; alternately, you can right-click it from the list to get a context menu. If it's not in the list, then it could be that the sound you're hearing is attached to a light or activator that is still in the cell.

For your wayward NPCs: Find them in the object list. Right click one, and choose "Use Info" from the context menu. That will list for you all objects that refer to that NPC, including scripts and quests and cells. Double-clicking a cell from this list will load the cell with the NPC in view. You can do this for any object, not just NPCs.

And erm, as I've said, I'm pretty sure you've broken a lot of things. Whether or not those casualties are acceptable or not will be up to you, of course.

Character creation is only three script commands. "ShowRaceMenu", "ShowBirthsign", and "ShowClassMenu". Peek at the mod I linked you to see how to use them.

Good luck!

Thank you very much for your reply. By broken do you mean I've broken the game or just the main quest, because that's the idea. I want to completely remove the main quest. Will the changes I've made affect anything outside the main quest do you think?

Yes I used to play with that mod you mentioned, but I looked at the details and it seems to make a lot of changes that don't seem to have anything to do with what it supposedly does. I don't know if it's an issue but I'm quite wary of it. It also doesn't cut the main quest off. I tried to determine how do do what he did by looking at the mod but it's beyond me.

I found the NPCs thanks for that, but I can't find that gate sound. There are no red speakers in the render window where the gate was (I deleted it) and no sounds in the list. I deleted everything in the vicinity of the gate and it's still there. I really need to get rid of that.

Thanks again. :thumbsup:

I'm pretty sure you have a very high chance of breaking other parts of the game by doing this unless you know exactly what to do. One simple example/advice: You talk about deleting stuff - and that's a good way to ensure that your mod will not work well with other mods. Instead, you should disable things.

There are one or two main quest delayers available, maybe you should take a look at these?

Oh well. Thanks for that. I'll look at some other mods as you guys have suggested because I don't really know what I'm doing.

Thanks again.