http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmi78dSdit0

Download
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=33127|http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/files/file/548-the-northern-front/

http://hypocrisy184.blog111.fc2.com/blog-entry-57.html - special thanks to catkai

"The fifth sees an opening
His sword is thrust so true
He underestimates the warrior
He takes him for a fool

Magnus saw the blade incoming
And blocked it with his shield
Now the fifths sword and insides
Lay strewn across the field"

The Northern Front is a large, multi-path quest mod where the player buys information from a mercenary contractor and decides them self what they will do with their newly acquired knowledge. There are no quest markers, no obvious hints and no linear "go here, kill this, get this" quests. The player will have to use their wits and skill to make a profit in this shady mercenary business. Everything you would expect to be able to do, you will. Will you gather information, and follow up leads through word of mouth and paper trails? Will you use stealth, infiltration and espionage to work alongside the shadows in achieving your goal? Will you use your charm and sharp tongue to strut your way to a profit? Or will you cleave first and ask questions second, simply cutting down all those who get in your way...

This mod offers all of these paths. All quests have multiple endings and rewards. Decisions you make in some quests will have direct effects on others. You get to truly play as your character would, and not just as the common quest would restrict. This is the main focus of this mod - quests that are original, fun to play and force you to think and decide on the best way to proceed

The mod is largely voice acted due to the help of some very talented actors. I hope you enjoy

Additional esps: simply replace Northern Front.esp with one of the following to activate it

- reduced NPCs will reduce the number of NPCs in the Northern Front camp for a moderate performance boost

- optimizedESP will remove all unecessary NPCs, objects, lighting and decorations from the Northern Front camp for a significant performance boost

Requirements

OBSE v0018 or above

Conflicts

Fully compatible with Open Cities and Unique Landscapes

Please report any conflicts you come across in this thread

Recommended mods

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16622

Whilst the mod is largely voiced there are still some parts which lack voice acting. This mod is a must if you wish to solve things diplomatically as you will have a lot of talking to do

Features

New camp and inn in the North of Cyrodill
New, diverse NPCs, each with their own personalities, distinct behavior, quirks and voices
Many new quests, each with multiple endings and paths to completion
New, powerful artifacts, for you to obtain however you see fit
A diverse and interesting story twisting itself around the main quests
Many new self written and lore integrated books related to the mod including:

The Legend of Marchosias, On Marchosias, Manual of Cavalry, The Adventurers Bestiary, The Warriors Bestiary, The Graverobbers Bestiary, Tamrielic Cryptids, Follow Me and Him - Penumbra


Screenshots


http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/4-3.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/7-3.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/9-3.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/11-3.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/23-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/26-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/27-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/32-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/33-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/35-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/39-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/42-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/46-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/59-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/60-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/19-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/30-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/38-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/40-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/44-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/56-1.jpg | http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc70/freekc99/57-1.jpg

Special thanks

All of the actors who offered to help bring this mod to life
TESAlliance for teaching me pretty much everything I know about modding (and for putting up with me asking questions in the shoutbox every 5 minutes when I got stuck)
Grond for helping me out with writing when I was starting up
Bethesda for creating the game and making the CS available

Credits/Resources used

Waalx' Realswords: Bosmer
Mr Siikas Siege Engines
Mr Siikas Durzog
Xia's New Amulets
Armory of the Nordic Warrior by pale_rider

Voice acting

Arvidius - Sebastian, Heironymous Lex, Francis, Tramond, Irroke the Wide, Dunmer watchman, Ragnar, Imperial Legionaires,
Trailer voices, Baug, S'razirr, Lord Vincentus, Cardok, Neroveus, Various Dunmer mercenaries, Ogier, Pranol, Bravil Guard, Arban

Odahilys - Claude Maric, Brucetus, Bourion, Various Dunmer mercenares, Sevarius Atius

Onsasaki - Sarynce, Mufala, Pravus, Scarab, Malakai, Runs-into-Flowers, Kushluk, Various Dunmer mercenaries

Roddy - Beezum, Yarglek, Urbul gro-Orkuld, Owyn

Theonlylifeseeker - Sentalus, Xhaferi

Vereta - Brother Harker, Aluman, Vassier, Angalmo, Panicked Mercenary, Khanate, Waleran, Dolgarogg, Kralus

----------------------------------------------

Changelog

1.0.0: Added voice acting, lots of general bug fixes from beta
1.0.1: Removed unnecessary resouces, added reduced NPCs patch
1.0.2: Fixed minor conflic with MMM

Great news, downloading.

Congratulations on the completion of this mod. It looks to be much more innovative than the usual suspects. :goodjob:

Congrats on and thanks for the release. Seems very nice. :foodndrink: I have a couple of questions (don't I always...):

1. Packaged as is it's needed to repackage it in order to use BAIN for install, so that's a bit unconvenient. This is an issue I've been meaning to post in the Wrye Bash thread rather as it's a common way of packaging mods, so it would be nice if BAIN picked it up (i.e. NorthernFront-33127-1-0.rar/The Northern Front/Data etc.). Just wanted to point it out.

2. It comes with resources from DarN's UI. Does this mean that it requires it? No issue for me as I do, but won't it mess with the UI for those that don't? The files seem to be identical with the DarN ones so I'll run install missing files.

3. It conflicts with MMM as both use siika's Durzog models with the same install paths. In NF the meshes seem to have been altered as they are mismatched, so it seems I'll either have to swap MMM's to NF's or the other way around, which seems like it might be a bad idea in both cases.

EDIT:

TES4Edit finds these errors. Might be unimportant so I'm just reporting it:

Parameter #2 ->                   Parameter #1 -> Found a NULL reference, expected: QUST                Above errors were found in :CTDA - Condition              Above errors were found in :Conditions            Above errors were found in :Log Entry          Above errors were found in :Log Entries        Above errors were found in :Stage      Above errors were found in :Stages    Above errors were found in :MISHnfquest2 "Godspeed Under Grey Skies" [QUST:0100B0BA]  Above errors were found in :GRUP Top "QUST"            Parameter #1 -> Found a NULL reference, expected: ACTI,ALCH,AMMO,APPA,ARMO,BOOK,CLOT,CONT,CREA,DOOR,FLOR,FURN,GRAS,INGR,KEYM,LIGH,LVLC,MISC,NPC_,SBSP,SGST,SLGM,SOUN,STAT,TREE,WEAP          Above errors were found in :CTDA - Condition        Above errors were found in :Conditions      Above errors were found in :[INFO:01057F9C]    Above errors were found in :GRUP Topic Children of HELLO "HELLO" [DIAL:000000D2]  Above errors were found in :GRUP Top "DIAL"Above errors were found in :[01] Northern Front.esp

Also:

[Removing "Identical to Master" records done] Processed Records: 4206 Removed Records: 116
[Undeleting and Disabling References done] Processed Records: 4090 Undeleted Records: 27

This looks like one of the more exciting mod releases in some time.

The camp by Dragonclaw Rock is very taxing for older rigs, not that surprisingly as it has c. 15 NPC's rather close together. But there seems to be some other issue as well. The first time I went there the game CTD'd so I ran a defrag and after that it didn't crash, but I get graphical issues with some textures popping in and out depending on distance and which direction the PC is facing: http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/18688/1239723.jpg. Guess that might have caused the CTD as well.

Gah, I'm an idiot. Nope, DarNUI is not required to play the mod. Thought I had a clean install when I did the final test run and packaged it but I must have left DarN installed. Thanks for pointing it out

Durzog problem is just an unfortunate coincidence, I'll change the file paths now

Scoured over it with TES4EDIT myself, as far as I know all above errors are harmless but if someone spots one that's not please let me know



Thanks for letting me know, I'll release a reduced NPC patch which gets rid of a lot of the wandering mercs

Updated, list of changes:

- removed DarNUI resources accidentaly left in
- additional cleaning with TES4EDIT
- added a Reduced NPCs patch that significantly reduced the number of wandering mercenaries in the camp for increased performance

Working on the Durzon/MMM conflict, should hopefully have a fix out tonight

Sounds really cool, will download

Good. I'd just come on to mention the MMM conflict--glad to see it's being dealt with, and so quickly, too.

Uploaded a new version which should resolve the conflict with MMM

This mod looks very promising and really professional but I've got a specific question regarding the remarkable amount of freedom it offers:

Does it make use of quest items that cannot be dropped or sold?

In contrast to some others who want the pure role-playing experience, I quite like the use of quest items to avoid having quests in your journal that might no longer be completed because of having dropped or sold a certain object. Another alternative would be to remove the quest automatically from the journal once a relevant item gets lost without being retrieved for some time.

I guess I have to try this out anyway, so thanks

There are two quest items used in this mod. They're not like Umbra or the blade you get in the DB quests where you're stuck with them forever, they're both objects you have to hand over later on in the quest to proceed (if you choose the route to obtain the items.) You're not holding onto either for more than a couple of minutes

Made them quest items to prevent people from breaking the mod and making the quest unfinishable. #1 rule of modmaking - people will always try and break your mod just to see if they can

Perfect

Had a couple of people message me saying they're having problems not being able to start the first quest

Listen closely - Sentalus doesn't offer you a quest, he offers to sell you some information for 100 septims. If you don't have the gold the dialog won't show up (it'll just be not interested/that is all, ect.)

You can return, get the money and restart the dialog if you don't have it on you at the time

Got another question concerning the missing voice files mentioned in the description.

Is it really crucial to use Elys Universal Silent Voice?

I remember, there were some mods reportedly incompatible with it (don't know for what reason though). So I'd like to know whether it's only some greetings or rather quest-related dialogue that isn't voiced.

It's not entirely necessary I suppose. The unvoiced characters are a handful of minor male characters (who are currently being voiced by a new member of the team and will be patched in soon) and female characters

Now seen as this is a mod about big ugly mercenaries and not elf babes, the ratio of male:female characters is pretty heavily tipped towards male. Still, even some minor female characters have important things to say and there are a couple of main female characters that come to mind who you really will need to listen to closely if you wish to get the 'best' endings in some of the quests

Really it's just a question of wether you think you can read fast enough without using Elys Universal Silent Voice. I'd still heavily recommend it. My hope is to one day get the female characters voiced, but as it stand I've had auditions from 20+ male voice actors and 0 female. Turns out they're a lot rarer :twirl:

Good to read that you're still completing the voice stuff (at least the male voices). I think, there might be some female voice artists on the forums at tesalliance, although they could be busy with other projects, but that would be one place that comes to mind when someone's searching for female voiceovers.

Which ones would that be? Never heard of that (which doesn't mean it's the case of course, but I'm always a bit skeptical when it comes to vague reports like that).

My 2p here: I don't think what you've done is a terribly good implementation. There's no way for a player with < 100 gold to know how to start the quest. I don't talk to NPCs I've already talked to that don't have any more info for me, except by accident, and I don't think I'm alone.

Instead, it would have been better IMHO to do the vanilla thing of giving the NPC a rebuttal line, basically saying how he's not willing to part with the info for less than 100 gold. This tells the player two important things: he has more info to give you, and you need 100 gold to get it. The player can then return with the correct amount of gold, instead of leaving the starting of the quest up to pure chance.

I'm pretty active on TESA, already asked the female VAs on there, no luck at the moment due to other commitments/projects they have or various other problems. Posted on some other voice acting forums a while ago, got a huge response from male VAs but again none from female. Might start looking again, now the project is actually finished and released I think it might attract more attention. Personally I'm pretty sceptical about joining large unfinished projects myself and I've put work into so many things that just don't see the light of day, I'm guessing VAs feel the same

Until then I think Elys mod works fine, haven't heard about these conflicts myself



He explains in great detail how the handling of buying information works before you can accept the quest. The last thing he says before you can accept the quest is him asking for the 100 gold. You can then state that you don't have the money and he will tell you to return later, or you can simply exit the conversation altogether

I don't know why two people messaged me stating that they couldn't start the quest, I'm guessing they just skipped through the dialog or something

Gonna play this mod anyway since there aren't many quest additions to Oblivion that offer real choices and consequences on the outcome and most of the vanilla quests are pretty linear as well. (Servant of the Dawn and Five Blind Mice are probably the only mods with a similar approach)

Take a look at some of Simyaz's work, he makes some pretty incredible quest mods

Ah, my misunderstanding of your previous post then. Ignore me.

No worries, I probably should've worded it better

Also the next update will add voice acting the remainder of the unvoiced male roles. They will be voiced by some of the guys who have already voiced character in this mod and the newest team member Aranas, who has shown me some very impressive work so far