[WIP] The Master's Apprentices.

Post » Tue May 03, 2011 8:18 am

Let me guess...you crawled your way up the guild ranking system doing mission after mission after mission only to become the leader of....absolutely nobody. No longer will the skilled mages and swordsmen of Cyrodil sit idle in their mage towers, playing with their magical chests, or skulking about their fighters guild halls like a bunch of has beens. Oh no...they were once great heroes, living legends even, people want to learn from them...and now they can.

This is not a quest mod.

Features

The Ability to recruit apprentices and train them to be Warriors Mages and Rogues.
Issue your orders and send your students out on missions!
Each of the three classes may rank up from their missions or die in the field.
Mission types will vary and each of the 3 classes will specialize in a certain area.
Send your warriors to complete contracts, your rogues to steal, or your mages to bring you soulgems....(or corpses for you necromancer types)
Each Class can do the others missions with varying results and degrees of success. Choose the right apprentice for the right mission!
Not all training is equal. Keep a careful eye on your mage apprentices while training them...their mistakes could cost them their lives!
Those who live long enough will eventually become your greatest students and most valuable assets...,and those that die may yet prove useful!


This mod is still a WIP. I've created this thread to showcase what I'm trying to do. If you're interested in this mod, feel free to leave comments and suggestions as I'd love to see both.
If you want to help I could always use a hand, just let me know what kind of experience you have!

I started work on this mod a few days ago and I would say it's about 15% complete so far.


I'll update this as I go along!


Edit

How the mod works so far!

The Player can go to an inn and post a request on a bulletin board or some such object. How long it takes for someone to answer is random, but will be inside of a week. Once they spawn, they will find their way to you, and then the training can begin! Apprentices in the game are called students.

Students can be trained to become a subtype of the 3 classes (Warrior, Mage, Rogue). The first subtype for a warrior is a Brawler.

When training a student to become a warrior subtype, the player must spar with the student and defeat them. Once this is done the student will offer his sentiments, and leave to go buy a weapon. He will then become a brawler. Mage types will have to be trained differently. ( So far rogue types can only be trained the way warriors are...if anyone has a good idea for training rogues differently from warriors let me know.)


Brawlers are basic, rough around the edges, kind of fighters. They sport a single handed weapon of their choice and sometimes come equipped with shields, two handed war hammers, axes, or claymores, but rarely are they so bold. Since students are ill equipped to handle any task given to them, they are the only type of apprentice that can be trained without experience. Brawlers will require real world experience however.

If you want your brawler to be anything more than an eager ruffian, then he'll need to be given some responsibility. Send him out to fulfull a contract to prove his worth, or secure you an item you need for enchanting. Send him to go make some money escorting a merchant; but he'll need to do something worthy of his skill level. You'd never want to send a brawler to do something suited to a well trained swordsmen though, for instance, sending a brawler to go find you a black soul gem. If you did something like this you'd likely see him turned into a zombie...but what you do while training your students will decide whether they live or die, along with their own skill sets and abillities and weapons and attitudes, of course.

If your brawler lives, he'll come back, and you can trian him some more, if he's ready.

But not all students are created equal. Some students will be tough, eager to learn, advance quickly and surprise you with the results they can achieve. Others will be languid and slow, and won't be well suited to fetching black soul gems from necromancer lairs but can be put to use doing smaller tasks. You'll know when you have a prodigy or a lazy bum.


Apprentices aren't just good for doing their own missions, you can drag them along to help you do yours! (but I haven't really figured out how I wana do this yet.)

At the moment there is no companion share features, they can be ordered to follow you, or guard and area, or patrol an area. They will come to your aid if your being attacked while they are guarding.
Their armor so far is dependent on their rank and what kind of armor/weapons they get is random but appropriate for their skill level and rank, so they don't all look the same.






Mod Completion
90%
User avatar
Georgia Fullalove
 
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Joined: Mon Nov 06, 2006 11:48 pm

Post » Tue May 03, 2011 10:36 am

That sounds awesome, and gives a reason to become a leader of a guild.
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Stacey Mason
 
Posts: 3350
Joined: Wed Nov 08, 2006 6:18 am

Post » Tue May 03, 2011 10:40 am

Status Update.

Several apprentices have been made so you don't see the same one each time you begin looking for an apprentice.
Each of the apprentices can now be trained once
First level of mage training is in the works/nearly complete.

To do list in order.

Add more possibilites for training.
Add Rogue Training
Add Higher levels of training
Begin with the mission scripting.
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dav
 
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Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2007 3:46 pm

Post » Mon May 02, 2011 9:32 pm

This is a really neat idea. Will be an instant DL when it is released :D.
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Rachel Cafferty
 
Posts: 3442
Joined: Thu Jun 22, 2006 1:48 am

Post » Tue May 03, 2011 1:57 am

Awesome idea, great way to extend on the guilds.
Will these aprentices be companions or just npc usable for the missions?
If Npc, will you let them be guided by a standart companion system like CSR or CM?

Good luck on this!:)
User avatar
Rachel Tyson
 
Posts: 3434
Joined: Sat Oct 07, 2006 4:42 pm

Post » Mon May 02, 2011 8:19 pm

Hey guys, thanks for your interest, and questions!


So far this is how I have it working.

The Player can go to an inn and post a request on a bulletin board or some such object. How long it takes for someone to answer is random, but will be inside of a week. Once they spawn, they will find their way to you, and then the training can begin! Apprentices in the game are called students.

Students can be trained to become a subtype of the 3 classes (Warrior, Mage, Rogue). The first subtype for a warrior is a Brawler.

When training a student to become a warrior subtype, the player must spar with the student and defeat them. Once this is done the student will offer his sentiments, and leave to go buy a weapon. He will then become a brawler. Mage types will have to be trained differently. ( So far rogue types can only be trained the way warriors are...if anyone has a good idea for training rogues differently from warriors let me know.)


Brawlers are basic, rough around the edges, kind of fighters. They sport a single handed weapon of their choice and sometimes come equipped with shields, two handed war hammers, axes, or claymores, but rarely are they so bold. Since students are ill equipped to handle any task given to them, they are the only type of apprentice that can be trained without experience. Brawlers will require real world experience however.

If you want your brawler to be anything more than an eager ruffian, then he'll need to be given some responsibility. Send him out to fulfull a contract to prove his worth, or secure you an item you need for enchanting. Send him to go make some money escorting a merchant; but he'll need to do something worthy of his skill level. You'd never want to send a brawler to do something suited to a well trained swordsmen though, for instance, sending a brawler to go find you a black soul gem. If you did something like this you'd likely see him turned into a zombie...but what you do while training your students will decide whether they live or die, along with their own skill sets and abillities and weapons and attitudes, of course.

If your brawler lives, he'll come back, and you can trian him some more, if he's ready.

But not all students are created equal. Some students will be tough, eager to learn, advance quickly and surprise you with the results they can achieve. Others will be languid and slow, and won't be well suited to fetching black soul gems from necromancer lairs but can be put to use doing smaller tasks. You'll know when you have a prodigy or a lazy bum.


Apprentices aren't just good for doing their own missions, you can drag them along to help you do yours! (but I haven't really figured out how I wana do this yet.)

At the moment there is no companion share features, they can be ordered to follow you, or guard and area, or patrol an area. They will come to your aid if your being attacked while they are guarding.
Their armor so far is dependent on their rank and what kind of armor/weapons they get is random but appropriate for their skill level and rank, so they don't all look the same.

I'm not sure what companion system your refering to, but if you have any suggestions let me know!



That's basically how this mod is going to work in a nutshell but there are many more surprises to training and missions that I won't spoil here!

Any suggestions/comments are welcome!
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Rachyroo
 
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Post » Mon May 02, 2011 6:40 pm

I might ask...if you might do a simpler thief type apprentice. I know the Rogue is basically a thief, but would you consider making an apprentice for the non-guild types like me? I'm a freelance thief and I would love to have an apprentice/partner to help me in my endeavours.

But an idea on how to help advance whatever rates you're using to judge how much the apprentice "learns" during missions, at least for Rogues, is time spent sneaking and locks picked. An ability to make your apprentice pick a lock would be very, very handy and a good way to add "experience" to their meters.
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Haley Merkley
 
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Post » Tue May 03, 2011 2:46 am

Don't worry, this isn't just for the guild master types. Freelancers can still do their own thing seperate of any guild. Rogues are thief type characters - but I suppose adding another class isn't out of the question, but I don't think I'm going to add that in the inital release though because 3 Subtypes is more work than I bargained for and making them each unique is tough, so adding another class is going to have to wait. But I definitely like the idea of being able to tell them to pick locks, I think I will definitely add that.
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Francesca
 
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Post » Tue May 03, 2011 1:19 am

After many hours of bug squashing and learning from my stupid mistakes - and after a short break, the first level of mage training is now complete. I will be moving on to allowing you to train rogues, and then begin scripting the missions.
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Noraima Vega
 
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Post » Mon May 02, 2011 8:04 pm

All the menu's are now accessable from one spell! A few pieces of bad coding have been taken care of. Everything is runningly smoothly. I'm now going to start scripting the tasks you can send your apprentices to do. All the minor set backs appear to be solved.

Unfortunatley I'm not adding rogues into the inital release - too much coding at the moment. Once I get everything running smoothly with warriors and mages I'll update it to include rogues.

Any one have particular items they find useful to have in abundance? Let me know and i'll script missions to retrieve such popular items.

That's all for this update...time to script some more >.<
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Matt Fletcher
 
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Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2007 3:48 am

Post » Tue May 03, 2011 1:05 am

Mod is almost ready for an Alpha release

This update brings.

A new training system.

You use the old system of training until you advance them up the ranks twice, then the new system kicks in.
In the new system you can upgrade a warrior's armor/weapons and train their skills, or specialize a mage in either Conjuration/Necromancy/Restoration as well as upgrade their stats.

Four Missions to send your students on
Completeing any one of the 4 missions awards them points that you can use to upgrade their abilities and armor. They will also bring cash back that they earned on their missions.

The Four Missions are all legal missions and include.

Protecting a local store from bandits.
Escorting a merchent out of town
Collecting on a local bounty
Competeing in the arena.

You can send your student to do any one of these missions any time you want, and their chances of success will be calculated based on skills, stats, and armor value. Mages get different calculations.

To come
More customization and training for npcs.
illegal missions. The rewards will be larger, but you may get a bounty put on your head if the student that was caught isn't loyal!
Ability to order your mage students to perform necromancy to summon you permanent undead minions
Ability to order your mage students to summon daedra as permanent minions.
Missions to send your students to find specific items for you such as soulgems or expensive armors
Ability for necromancer students to corrupt soulgems for you.







I'm also in need of some testers since this mod is coming into a playable state. I need people who are somewhat knowledgeable or good at finding bugs
If your interested, let me know and send me your email address
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luke trodden
 
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Post » Tue May 03, 2011 5:24 am

Is this still a work in progress?
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Alexxxxxx
 
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Post » Tue May 03, 2011 6:26 am

Looks good, looks like it will go perfectly with my Initiative mod. Do they return to a specific area or to you? If to an area, could you make an option to set a base? Then you could turn a building into a guild!
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Sherry Speakman
 
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