River Sailing: An Idea

[Yali]

Having recently tried out Side's Sailing Ships mod, I realized how enjoyable and immersive sailing a ship was across the shores of Tamriel with nothing more than my keyboard.

Since Argonia is strongly river based and paths may often fall into mists of the murky swamps or be simply overgrown/un-maintained, then why not implement some river boats/gondolas that one could navigate much in the same way Side777 programmed his ships (U to accelerate, J to slow and backtrack, H to steer left, and K to steer right)?

I think this would heighten the realism and immersion of the environment as well as make traveling a hell of a lot more easy and not to mention enjoyable, as well as spur on the sense of adventure.

Any thoughts?

(EDIT: Sorry, wrong forum. Could the mods move this to Sticky Guar?)

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Navigating the marshes is something that's come up a few times, especially recently. There was the idea of using a canoe in the same manner as a rideable creature, one of three rideable slaughterfish mods: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10479 , http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=17720 and http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=9166 and one of two 'ride-a-ship' mods: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29688 (your own suggestion) and another called 'Mountable Ships' by Dirtie Hippie (this one was set to 'hidden' by TesNexus staff for some reason).

The waterways of the Black Marshes are not very well modded so far. Although the Everglades are very wet, actually doing the height mapping for wetlands is quite time-consuming...and we haven't quite encountered our wettest areas in the beta regions so far. This means that this topic is one that has been laid aside but thanks for the heads-up about this as it's helped us to sum up the options (as mentioned above). When I work on a wet region, I'll bear this in mind. =)

[Deeza]

That's a good point, as if we were going to do this we'd need to make sure the various bodies of water were connected.

[Koniption]

Such sailing mods are best left as optional to player, I think. I mean, the sailing mods that players have available right now, are best off having a compatibility patch made instead, from the sailing mods' end.

If we include such sailing scripts on some of our boats in our mod, and then it's duplicated in the actual sailing mod that some users like to use in vanilla Ob (or SI), it might cause issues.

I think we should wait until our mod is released, then let the modders of other such mods decide if they want to make their sailing mod compatible with our mod.

We don't want to overburden ourselves with special effects and features, that can be added by other separate mods later on.

Koniption

[Deeza]

Good point. I was thinking however of something specific to your canoe models...

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Yes, I got the distinct impression that this would be something best off on the back burner for now.

[Koniption]

Originally posted by Deeza
Good point. I was thinking however of something specific to your canoe models...

CLShade of the Craftybits mod, made my canoe both craftable and sailable...

YOu craft the canoe from stuff, then set the clutter version in the water, and then activate it somehow, and it becomes a sailable ship that the player actually controls. CLShade is not actively modding currently, but Setsuna at The Wormhole forums seems to be taking charge of things over there and knows a lot of scripting.

Maybe Setsuna can be turned to for advice on how best to go about things, regarding a working canoe?

KP

[Ibsen's Ghost]

That would be good. :yes: As I say, it's not a high-priority issue right now but it would certainly prove useful in the long-term.