The Locked
Puzzle Dungeon
Level Designer/Scripter
ENGINE: Creation Kit
LANGUAGE: Papyrus
DEV TIME: 7 Weeks
GAME MODE: Single Player
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Level
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Level Design Doc
Scripting
Trigger System
The core technical system of the level is the system of binary doors. When I began scripting this system, I tried saving the global state of the doors in a single master script which had the benefit of centralizing control of the doors in one location. This ultimately proved unnecessary. Creation Kit already contains a way of passing events from a single master object. It was much simpler to store "state" in each door and lever, rather than creating unnecessary architecture.
To accomplish this, I simply made the blue doors begin the level open and the red doors begin closed. When levers are activated by the player, the trigger activates a master object that in turn activates all the doors and triggers in the level. This causes the doors swap their open and closed states. and for all triggers to swap their color.
Master Activator Object
Door Script
Lever Script
Staff of the Architect
My most difficult technical problem in this project was creating a staff that could activate levers from a distance. I tried many approaches to this problem before ultimately finding a simple solution. I simply made my staff cast a custom spell that spawned a custom projectile that I could reference in my lever. If the lever was hit by my custom projectile, it would activate itself as if the player had done so. While this solution is simple on the face of it, it took hours of pouring over Creation Kit documentation to figure it out, since Skyrim obscures the projectile type behind layers of other object types.
The magic effect which spawns my projectile, which is referenced by a spell,
referenced by my enchantment.
The enchantment containing the spell that spawns my custom projectile,
which is placed on the Staff of the Architect.
The simple script for detecting my projectile.