Clockwork

One day you look up and see a beam of light in the sky, off in the eastern reaches of Skyrim. This light reaches down and marks out a piece of ground at the foot of the Velothi Mountains; the site of a recent landslide. An ancient passage under the mountain has been uncovered; haunted by a strange apparition and leading to an unusual structure secreted among the mountain peaks: Clockwork Castle. Isolated from - and forgotten by - the outside world, the castle has not seen a living soul for a century or more... yet it is still inhabited.

'Chlodovech Castle' began its life around two hundred years ago, built by a very successful merchant family from faraway High Rock, according to the latest fashions from that province. Heavily inspired by Dwemer technology, all kinds of machinery and conveniences were later added to the manor; and over time it instead came to be called 'Clockwork Castle'.

Just what happened to this family? Who now resides in Clockwork Castle? Why does the apparition in the tunnels hound you and keep you from leaving? How can you escape the castle? These things can be discovered by playing Clockwork.



Summary

Clockwork is a quest mod for Skyrim set in and around Clockwork Castle; a full-featured player home. Four quests are planned; the first unlocks access to the castle plus some of its features, and each subsequent quest unlocks more features. The castle itself has an aesthetic largely new to Skyrim; influenced by steampunk and Victorian art/design. This ties into its backstory - and its new (voiced) NPC type. Read on for some more information on the mod's planned features.



New NPC Type

These are the Gilded. Just from looking at them it's obvious that they're Dwemer in origin, but what are they, exactly? That is a mystery to be solved in Clockwork.
- http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/images/60908-1338102464.jpg
- http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/images/60908-1338102575.jpg
- http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/images/60908-1338102723.jpg
- http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/images/60908-1338102784.jpg
- http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/images/60908-1338102850.jpg



Quests

Four quests are planned, as mentioned; each with an associated 'dungeon'. The first (and possibly the last) in particular are intended to have a horror theme (as in scary - not grisly, especially). We'll see if I can pull that off. The middle two quests are intended to revolve more around steampunk themes. Steam-power and machinery.



Clockwork Castle

Containing all the usual player home conveniences you might expect - beds, storage, crafting stations, weapon/armour display, etc - plus more besides - Clockwork Castle aims to be a useful, believable and (hopefully) beautiful place for your character to live. The first quest is considered to 'unlock' the castle, as it involves actually reaching it. See below for more information on what can be found in each part of the castle.


Main Hall

The Hall is the central hub through which all other major parts of the castle are reached.
- http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b300/jlollback/Skyrim/castle_mainhall01.jpg
- http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b300/jlollback/Skyrim/castle_mainhall02.jpg
- http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b300/jlollback/Skyrim/castle_mainhall03.jpg
- http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b300/jlollback/Skyrim/castle_mainhall04.jpg
- http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b300/jlollback/Skyrim/castle_lightfitting01.jpg
- http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b300/jlollback/Skyrim/castle_lightfitting02.jpg
- http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b300/jlollback/Skyrim/castle_chair01.jpg
- Home to numerous http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b300/jlollback/Skyrim/castle_painting01.jpg, each with a http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b300/jlollback/Skyrim/castle_painting02.jpg to learn the name of the artist and artwork. (Also found in other parts of the castle.)
- Contains shrine to Zenithar.
- Adjoining http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b300/jlollback/Skyrim/castle_dininghall01.jpg; seats ten.
- Adjoining http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b300/jlollback/Skyrim/castle_kitchen01.jpg:
--- Useable cooking pot.
--- Food storage, notably in a 'http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b300/jlollback/Skyrim/castle_kitchen02.jpg' open to the freezing outdoor air.
--- Food-sorting option (to be confirmed).
--- Running water and kitchen sink pending.


Master Bedroom

The Master Bedroom incorporates a modest study, plus limited storage and display options for your most treasured items.
- New bed model.
- Adjoining Private Bathroom:
--- Metal bathtub (my http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/images/13275-1190813654.jpg from the http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/13275/, though I'll give it new textures). Will likely give temporary stat bonus of some kind.
--- Simple vanity and sink.
--- Running water, including rudimentary hot water system (think a fire under a metal tank, with pipes leading in and out).
--- Lavatory (of the simple 'hole in a wooden plank' kind).


Work Room

Generous stone room where the majority of crafting activities take place.
- Unlocked by second quest (merchant services also unlocked at this time).
- Crafting stations: Forge, Grindstone, Smelter, Workbench. (Tanning Rack and Woodcutting Block may be here or outside.)
- Fans and vents in ceiling to remove poisonous fumes of various kinds.


Mages' Study

Part library, part study (especially for magical pursuits).
- Unlocked by third quest (or perhaps simply the crafting stations).
- Crafting stations: Alchemy Lab, Arcane Enchanter.
- Alchemy ingredient sorting: one-button sorting of all ingredients in inventory into single container (probably looking like large array of small drawers).
- More storage; perhaps dedicated potion container, for example.
- A number of bookshelves: display ones or the container variant - or maybe both.
- Connects to the Glass Garden:
--- A large terrarium on the roof, full of plants to harvest for alchemical ingredients (or food).
--- Empty until third quest completed.


Display Hall

A Hall dedicated to displaying weapons, armour and other treasures. Full of mannequins, weapon plaques, display cases, etc.


Basemant

Comprised of several utility rooms; some just full of machinery, others more immediately interesting and useful:
- Travel Room
--- Activated by fourth quest.
--- Allows teleportation to cities in Skyrim.
--- Allows teleportation to Recall Point designated by 'Teleport to Clockwork Castle' spell/power (learned after completing fourth quest).
--- [Tentative] Device that can sort items from inventory into containers in appropriate areas of the castle (potential categories: food, alchemy ingredients, soul gems, crafting resources).
- Storeroom
--- Lots of containers for storage.
--- Perhaps some containers labeled (armour, weapons, potions, 'to be sold', etc) to aid organisation.


Living Quarters

Accommodation for everyone who is not Lord/Lady of the castle.
- Rooms of varying size and quality:
--- Large rooms for family members and guests.
--- Smaller rooms for more important castle staff.
--- Dormitories for general servants and guards.
- Laundry Room
--- Generous stone room with running water.
--- Communal bathing facilities (http://www.clawfootbathtubwarehouse.com/images/eatandbathe.jpg).
--- Communal lavatory (several holes in a larger wooden plank).



Comments and suggestions are welcome. I'd be particularly interested to hear what sorts of features people would like to see in various parts of the castle. I'd recommend reading the Development Commentary section below first, though.

Development Commentary

Here I go into a little more detail on where I'm coming from with this mod; what I have in mind and why - that sort of thing.


I'm probably best known for my Fallout 3 and New Vegas mods: http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/mods/3388, http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/39651, http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/36152, for example. Before all that though, I made a mod for Oblivion called http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/14714/. I mention this because Clockwork is in some ways a spiritual successor to Hoarfrost Castle; they are both quest mods based in Elder Scrolls lore, with quest rewards revolving around gaining ownership of - and improving - a player home. (Clockwork is not a sequel to Hoarfrost Castle in terms of story though; just to be clear.)

There are other similarities: the general interior layout of the castle is similar in both mods. If you've played Hoarfrost Castle, you should feel at home in Clockwork Castle.

There are also some notable differences. First is quest number and structure; Hoarfrost Castle has seven quests, with three in the middle able to be completed in any order. Clockwork has four planned quests in a linear storyline, though these are intended to be longer, more involved and more interesting than those in Hoarfrost Castle. Production values are planned to be higher all-round in Clockwork, really. On the art front, for example, I became a lot more comfortable modelling and texturing for gamebryo-engine games (Oblivion, Fallout, Skyrim, etc) through working on mods like WMK/WMX and DTO, so... there's a lot more custom art in Clockwork than Hoarfrost Castle. One other note on quest structure; a key part of the player character's motivation is that they're trapped in Clockwork Castle and its immediate surrounds, so the player is locked into completing the quest line once it starts (as in some of the official DLC for FO3/FNV, for example), in order to escape.

The second notable difference between the mods is voiced dialogue; Hoarfrost Castle has none - just text - while Clockwork is planned to have full voiced dialogue.


Voice

The only characters (with speaking roles) encountered are the Gilded; the new NPC type. The reason for this is that their voices are generated by voice synthesis - also known as Text To Speech (TTS). This may seem like a cause for concern for some, but it's actually been the plan all along to use TTS, and many aspects of the mod grew out of the early decision to use it. (Eg: story, setting, quests, characters, art...) The characters using it are written with it in mind, to the point where I think it would actually be difficult for a real person to give a voice performance with the delivery I have in mind. Not everyone is as talented as the voice actor behind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glados. (Not that that's the precise delivery I have in mind.)

In any case, http://www.badongo.com/file/27171427's the result of a voice test for people to download if they're curious. The first file in the archive is the raw TTS output, and the second is the same audio after I've processed it a bit in Audacity. The idea is basically for it to sound like it's coming out of the Gilded as seen in those screenshots above; so it should sound recognisably unnatural and have a metallic echo/vibrance to it. At the same time it needs to be intelligible (not processed into messy oblivion); so altogether that's what I tried for in that test. If anyone out there is a sound wizard and can come up with something that sounds better (and can describe how to do it in something like Audacity), go for it. The less steps the better: I'll have a lot of lines to generate, and the batch-processing stuff in Audacity at least is fairly limited.


Art

There are a few reasons I decided on the steampunk and Victorian influenced art direction. The story and setting revolve around Dwemer technology and the way it influenced a particular character living in Clockwork Castle; an inventor of sorts. 'Of sorts' because his inventions mostly involved taking existing Dwemer designs and re-purposing (or even just relocating) them so that he could make use of them himself. Dwemer technology in the Elder Scrolls is itself very steampunk - a genre/movement/etc that often incorporates Victorian-style art and design.

With that in mind, representing the 'latest fashions' of High Rock (as mentioned in the intro) as Victorian in style was a natural choice. The province of Skyrim is depicted in TESV as being relatively wild and uncivilised (compared to Cyrodiil as depicted in TESIV, for example), so a Victorian style was a good shorthand for the sensibilities of a wealthy family from a (potentially?) more civilised place like High Rock. Of course I don't know exactly what High Rock is like; I believe it hasn't been depicted in a game since TESII - Daggerfall. I do think there's enough wiggle room there to say that - for the sake of this mod - something Victorian-style was in fashion somewhere in High Rock around two hundred years before the events of Skyrim.

Anyway. Having said all that, I also just really like Victorian art and design.

You'll probably note that the tileset in the screenshots posted (at the time of writing) is basically a retex of parts of the Solitude interior tileset. This is only used in Clockwork Castle; it doesn't replace the existing Solitude interior tileset.

Moving on to where the art is coming from. I'm using a lot of resources in the public domain. For example, there are a lot of resources out there (presumably) aimed at architectural work that contain high-poly 3D models. I'm using some of those as a starting point for things like the new chairs, light fittings and picture frames. It's certainly not drop-in-and-use, though; essentially they're used as reference and to generate normal maps for the low-poly model. I need to create the low-poly model and then the textures - and then get it all into Skyrim - myself.

A few notes on the paintings. They're all classic paintings from the physical world - all of them in the public domain. Beyond just liking them a lot personally, the paintings are there to break up blank walls and because it's another aspect of Victorian interior design; lots and lots of paintings. I've taken care to select paintings that look to me like they could believably have been painted somewhere in Tamriel. When it comes to the 'read the plaque to learn the artist and title' feature, I've also changed some of the titles to not explicitly reference things that exist in the physical world and not in the Elder Scrolls universe. The credits for Clockwork contain the full original titles of the artworks, though. Speaking of which, for anyone who's interested, here's the list of paintings included at the time of writing (more to come):



Locations

The 'beam of light in the sky' mentioned in the intro is planned to be a simple mesh (with a visible-when-distant variant) to attract the player to the entrance to the tunnels that lead to Clockwork Castle. Once the player reaches it, the first quest kicks off and the beam of light disappears.

Ostensibly, Clockwork Castle is somewhere in the northern part of the Velothi Mountains; the mountain range on Skyrim's eastern border with Morrowind. Somewhere that can't be reached on foot - overland, at least. Outside the playable area of the game (by default). I need to decide between actually placing the Clockwork Castle exterior in the Tamriel worldspace, or creating a new dedicated worldspace for it (like the major towns have). I need to look into it more, but it seems like the latter would be better compatibility-wise... and in any case the player is not (supposed to be) able to just walk from the castle back into the normal Skyrim exterior anyway.

The idea is that the castle is surrounded by sheer drops and cliff-faces, and obscured by clouds and fog so you can't see too far away from it.


Features

Beyond the usual player home features (crafting stations, display mannequins/plaques, etc), I've mentioned some more out of the ordinary things that may not have an apparent use in vanilla Skyrim. For example, the running water in various parts of the castle. The idea with that is that by default it's just there to add to the sense of place, but if you're also using a mod that (say) involves the drinking/bottling of water for the sake of hydration, the running water can be used for that. Hopefully without any required compatibility patches.

The same goes for other unusual features. The bathtubs can be ignored as set dressing, possibly used for a temporary buff if I end up doing that, or hooked into a 'personal hygiene' mod if one pops up. The 'cold room' in the kitchen will do nothing on its own, or (hopefully) do things like keep food from spoiling if you're using Imp's More Complex Needs. Hopefully that will be as simple on my end as adding a keyword to the appropriate containers, or something, rather than requiring a compatibility patch. Imp, are you out there?

Similarly, the Living Quarters may be an area you never need to visit for gameplay reasons, but if you have a number of followers, there will be room for them to stay there.

Onto item-sorting, using alchemy ingredients as an example: there's been a trend - going back to Morrowind at least - for sorting scripts to sort each ingredient type into their own separate container. To perhaps be blunt, I've never found this useful. Maybe in Morrowind - at a stretch - but ever since Oblivion, inventory is viewed as a simple list, where you can easily find things in alphabetical order. It's even easier with SkyUI's various sorting and filtering features. In contrast, having to look over a huge array of identical or near-identical containers to find the ingredient you're after is quite inconvenient. So - like in Hoarfrost Castle, I'm planning a simple one-step 'sort all ingredients into container' system. I'd be interested though to hear people's views on this stuff; in particular what sort of items you'd like to be sorted, where you'd like them to be sorted to, how they should be categorised, etc.


Progress

My plan is to make the castle first and then do the quests/dungeons/etc. So far I've done the physical appearance aspect of the new NPC type (several suits of non-playable armour, effectively), plus most of the Main Hall interior cell, including (obviously) all the art that required. It feels like it's taken a long time to get to that point, probably because it was front-loaded with a ton of required art, and I don't consider myself a great artist. Turns out co-ordinating a consistent art direction across a whole bunch of detailed meshes, textures, level design, lighting and screen effects is fairly difficult and time-consuming! Who knew.

Fortunately, most of the art made so far forms a base that will be used across the rest of the castle interior, so the other cells shouldn't take as long. I'm also planning to use mainly vanilla tilesets when making the dungeons, so there should be a lot less time there spent on art. Anyway, I'll keep this thread updated with what I'm working on.

Oh - and that question? That question someone's going to ask even after I say this? You know - THAT question: "When's it coming out?"

When it's finished. (It's not a case of keeping anything secret; I just don't know myself when it will be.)

This looks like it will be a fantastic mod, Antistar.

I especially love the design of the castle and artwork within. The quests required to be done are a bonus. A lot of thought has been put into this and I'll be keeping my eye on this project for sure.

I think this will be a unique and interesting mod Good luck!

Oh thank goodness someone actually providing a little backstory as to why a place exists I know I'll be checking this one out soon

Looks incredible.

I loved your Hoarfrost Castle for Oblivion, can't wait to see what you come up with this time!

Oh my god, do want do want do want.

That's a really good retexture of the Solitude (?) castle tileset. It really fits in, unlike many other retextures.
Keep up the work!

Does this mod actually include any clocks?

http://i861.photobucket.com/albums/ab180/metallicow/AbaloneClock.png
http://i861.photobucket.com/albums/ab180/metallicow/MagesGuildClock.jpg
http://i861.photobucket.com/albums/ab180/metallicow/ClockCloseup.png

TES Alliance
Learn about Clockworks and Theory here:
http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/topic/1916-class-4-clockworks/