57 replies to this topic

[WarRatsG]

MACHAERA UNLEASHED

Foreword

Hi

Basically, this mod is going to be about a sword (funnily enough) that the player can upgrade indefinitely, but with a story behind it too. I can't really say too much about it just now, it's still basically planning and concept phase. I have a basic story in mind, but it's more the features that I am going to discuss just now, so here goes.
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Description

An Ayleid Complex has just been discovered beneath Lake Rumare. Unknown, untouched and unlooted, there is a secret treasure hidden inside. A sword, capable of absorbing the souls of those it strikes, enhancing it's own power with their energy. A sword called Machaera.

Machaera has it's own vast array of powers and abilites which are gained and enhanced by absorbing the souls of your enemies. As it absorbs the memories of the soul, it's personality develops too. You can upgrade it's base damage, it's weight and speed. With soul gems, you can also improve the enchantments. The weapon even shapeshifts - you can change the sword into any weapon you want.

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Features

-A brand new sword set of weapons to enjoy, with their own unique meshes.
-It's power is limited to your play time. You can:
-Increase Weapon Base damage
-Weight
-Increase Weapon Speed
-A interesting story behind the weapon's creation.
-Machaera has a will of it's own, and a few tasks to complete. Since it helps you out, it would only be fair for you to help it out.
-Hundreds of enchantment slots: Now you have a use for all those petty soul gems.
-Buy perks for the weapon with the points you earn from killing - for example, improved poisoning allows you to use improve the effectiveness of the poisons you use. Each weapon has it's own perks, so the dagger for example allows poisons to be used twice.

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Where you come in

Basically I need help with certain areas and I need to see public interest for me to continue. I don't want to pour hours into this for 50 views.

The areas I need help with are:

-Ideas for weapon enchantments: There is technically a limit; 200 enchantments. 20 types with 10 tiers each. I am looking for more unique ideas for these. Something a little different from Fire, Frost & Shock damage. I already have a basic twenty that should work fine but does anyone have ideas?

-Ideas for player enchantments: another aspect of the weapon is the ability to draw power from it. Basically when you equip it you gain abilities and/or spells. Again, I have a few in mind, both based on vanilla powers and some unique ones (such as slowing down time for a short period) but does anyone have some decent ideas?

-Optimisation: I can script, but optimising isn't really a speciality of myne. Look at the implementation section to see what I mean.

-Meshes for weapons: I can't really model, as I've never learned how. I could learn but I wouldn't be skilled enough to do the main selling point of the mod justice. The rest I can bump from vanilla, although it would be great to have some skilled and kind modellers one pm away.

-Any new concepts: Obviously, I'm still in planning for this one. If I get help with coming up with new ideas and concepts for the mod, it's definitely something I will pursue.

Thanks people, any feedback is appreciated.

Edited by WarRatsG, 28 July 2011 - 06:42 PM.

[CTRLALTDETH]

Interesting concept, but i think there needs to be a limit on how many enchants can go on it, within the range of the mid 20s. or perhaps make it so enchantment costs go up in even increments per enchantment. So the first enchantment will cost the normal base cost, the next will cost double, then triple. ect. this will add more balance and difficulty to a weapon that otherwise has no limits.

And of course don't forget to make multiple versions for different play styles, aka a one handed blade as well as a two hander.

Additionally there is a mod out there that i am yet to play, it's about a sentient weapon that can take on different forms, so you can have a bow, a blunt weapon, a blade, one handed, two handed, sword/shield combo. If we can make this mod an extension of that one, not only will it make story writing easier. It will make for a better ultimate weapon. Granted enchantments will be harder to work, seeing as it's probably just a script that changes what weapon you have. Maybe make it so when the weapon shifts into a new form, it will make note of how many enchantments, and of what strength they are, so it will then prompt you as to what enchantments you want on this other form, then save that info.

...If enchantments of the same type can stack then it may become a problem if someone keeps enchanting this weapon with the same enchantment over and over, it will become ever more over powered.
Sure it sounds fun, but there is a good chance it will get over powered to fast. This is likely to be a very difficult balancing act.

Also thank for the supportive comment on my own mod request, glad to see you enjoyed my idea. Here's hoping we get to play each others request in the near future.

Edited by CTRLALTDETH, 30 June 2011 - 11:39 PM.

[WarRatsG]

Thanks for being the first to comment

Just so you know the mod you are talking about is called "Sentient Weapon" and can be found on Nexus. I've downloaded it but am yet to try it. I don't really want to make my mod an extension of it but I like the way you think

As for your constructive criticism about overpowering, there is technically a limit to how much you can enchant the weapon. it takes 200 grand soul gems to fully up the weapons power as there are 20 types of enchantments each with 10 tiers. I don't know about you, but I've never even had 30 grand souls in any savegame. Plus each tier builds slowly, and not all of them do damage. I was on this forum looking for scripted enchantments that are maybe a little more unique, like flinging someone across the room.

As for the physical capabilities, they grow slowly as well. Plus if you just work on getting damage you will have an extremely heavy, slow weapon, meaning you have to work on the other statistics.

A swap weapon script wouldn't be too difficult. There are plenty out there to use as templates.


In all honesty I might scrap this one. It's on 2 sections of forum and had 2 people reply to it over 2 days, and I'm not wanting to pour hours into something that only gets 10 views on the Nexus.

I don't much skill in advertising well I think :L

[Erenussocrates]

I have an idea which I will use for one of items at my recipe mode too. You can give sword a critical strike enchantment which occurs x1.5 more damage by %10 chance on a power attack. You can improve percentage by improving it's enchantment. How is it?
Also mode seems pretty interesting and promising, I can assure you I download and test it when first version is done.

[MarkInMKUK]

Remember you DID post it midweek, and most people who are occasional visitors are more likely to have a look at the weekend. Give it a week or two before writing it off.

Edited by MarkInMKUK, 02 July 2011 - 04:59 AM.

[nosisab]

The Afinity Sword has some those concepts scripted

I tried to make the weapon not too powerful (and noticed I failed again in calculating it's power at greater levels, mainly with mods that change the leveling system... the weapon made my level 25 character a demi-god which makes me think about including a device that allow reducing it's damage output at player's criterion).

The main difference in concept is Afinity does not use any "offensive" enchantment... like one soon learn to avoid using that uber lightning strike or paralyzes on a liche, just as example ... instead of this the script calculates the magic damage output based on several factors, like the player and foe difference on level, certain player's attributes and skill... and apply directly on his health... And it is "smart" enough to specially hate certain kind of foes... increasingly from evil to undead to what it is specially nasty (as dictate by Meridia herself). It's magic damage can't be absorbed or reflected and bypass physical and magical defenses...

So, other than the enchantments, it uses the concepts you talked... but does it dynamically... it activates as soon enters combat mod and the use of potions/spells/enchantments that enhance skills and/or attributes (positive or negatively) can slightly modify the damage output or the critical chances. Only the reach and speed must be treated in separate, because it can't be changed on an equipped weapon, so it becomes active only after the player equip it (the newer script take care to do the unequip/equip part silently when need, so the player does not even notice it happening). on higher level of speed, athletics, acrobatics... the sword can become as nimble as a light dagger and get the reach near that of a halberd..

Notice the physical damage acts as vanilla (albeit the weapon appears on the inventory as having 0 in the damage, it adjusts as soon enter combat mode) the reason for the 0 output was "Meridia" wished not the weapon used to assassinations and evil purposes, and even after some changes it still refuse to apply the whole power on non evil NPCs.

It's "criticals" includes a minor which beyond increased damage push the enemy aside... good to scape being surrounded... the second is a one hit kill, much like the Mehunes Razor (although does not uses the original effect). Finally, when it fulfills it's original purpose (try killing undeads you summon or find elsewhere) it will gain a new name and 2 more powers... one is soultrap... the second is almost outrageous in that already powerful weapon, it can absorb a fraction of the damage delivered and refil the players health with it (again, it's not the vanilla "absorb health" effect)...

That said, if something in the scripts is of your liking, feel free to use in your mod at will.

PS: everything in the mod is prefixed by RWL, making it easier to locate in CS, the scripts, quests, objects, enchantments... and so on.

Edited by nosisab, 02 July 2011 - 06:17 AM.

[razorpony]

I believe that instead of Addspell the command you would want is AddEffectItem. You could start with a base custom enchantment then simply add effects or increase their range or intensity with ModNthEffecttemArea and ModNthEffectItemMagnitude. I haven't used these myself but I've been thinking about making a similar evolving weapon so I'm interested to see what you come up with. One other thing to note, I've noticed that enchantments set with OBSE don't always get saved in the savegame so keep it in mind and test it out after reloading a save. This may have been fixed on more recent OBSE releases, I'm not sure.

RP

[nosisab]

One thing to keep in mind is the weapons purpose, if it is meant be be cheating (what can not be the case, since you are interested in it evolving), plain overpower or just powerful but somewhat balanced.

The last case is the harder to achieve in an evolving weapon. The vanilla game implements something like it in way of leveled quest item, where actually one is stuck with the weapon power on the level it was acquired; that can be changed using mods, which are based on getting the actual player level and removing the previous version and adding another, adequate to that level.

Based on your original description, Machaera would not be an evolving weapon indeed but an adjustable weapon. You'll need to deal with many menus so the player can modify it's characteristics. You must be aware there is a practical limit of 6 secure enchantments you can add to the item at same time, so the amount of Soulgems will not help there. Remember the soulgem is lost once used, so you must decide how the idea will be implemented (the weapon can't keep soulgems, only the enchantments created with them)... So it seems your idea is bypass the enchanting phase and applying them directly on the weapon, I never tried this way on OBSE, so I can't say for sure how it behaves (I mean if they can be kept as were applied on CS).

The other approach is a mix of razorpony suggestion and the concepts you can find in the Afinity mod I talked about in the previous post. In this last, instead fixed enchantments, you just need to script the desired effects to be applied on hit. Surely this last is much more dynamic and avoid all the complexity either to mod or to actually use them in game.

Although I opted to avoid "hostile" effects, they are easy to implement. The reason to avoid them was stated too... nothing is more frustrating than hitting an enemy with reflect spell/damage... with something like paralyze or BIG damage value... the player is serious candidate to become history...

So Affinity does not do large amount of damage, but Always does it's magical damage... even to those nasty OOO and MMM monsters with extreme physical and magical defenses... I have seen one only gargoyle make short work of a bunch of ogres, just because they couldn't be hurt due to their defenses... same for magic. Still they are hit and hit hard by afinity and if the player manages to live long enough, it can win even in low level... if she/he's "lucky" he can even disable them for a little while or kill them in an unique hit.

The scripts uses many resources, the reason I'm pointing the mod so you can get the ideas as they were actually implemented. Anything found in the scripts is free to use, without need to ask for permission or bureaucracy. If wishing to give me credit, good, but even this is free will.

[WarRatsG]

I have an idea which I will use for one of items at my recipe mode too. You can give sword a critical strike enchantment which occurs x1.5 more damage by %10 chance on a power attack. You can improve percentage by improving it's enchantment. How is it?
Also mode seems pretty interesting and promising, I can assure you I download and test it when first version is done.

Thanks for your support, and when you say "how is it" are you asking how can the percentage be improved with the enchantment?

Remember you DID post it midweek, and most people who are occasional visitors are more likely to have a look at the weekend. Give it a week or two before writing it off.

I guess so, I never really thought of that, thanks :L

I believe that instead of Addspell the command you would want is AddEffectItem. You could start with a base custom enchantment then simply add effects or increase their range or intensity with ModNthEffecttemArea and ModNthEffectItemMagnitude. I haven't used these myself but I've been thinking about making a similar evolving weapon so I'm interested to see what you come up with. One other thing to note, I've noticed that enchantments set with OBSE don't always get saved in the savegame so keep it in mind and test it out after reloading a save. This may have been fixed on more recent OBSE releases, I'm not sure.

RP

How did I miss that? Thanks, I will test this out sometime soon. If you do make your own weapon good luck to you.

The Afinity Sword has some those concepts scripted

I tried to make the weapon not too powerful (and noticed I failed again in calculating it's power at greater levels, mainly with mods that change the leveling system... the weapon made my level 25 character a demi-god which makes me think about including a device that allow reducing it's damage output at player's criterion).

The main difference in concept is Afinity does not use any "offensive" enchantment... like one soon learn to avoid using that uber lightning strike or paralyzes on a liche, just as example ... instead of this the script calculates the magic damage output based on several factors, like the player and foe difference on level, certain player's attributes and skill... and apply directly on his health... And it is "smart" enough to specially hate certain kind of foes... increasingly from evil to undead to what it is specially nasty (as dictate by Meridia herself). It's magic damage can't be absorbed or reflected and bypass physical and magical defenses...

So, other than the enchantments, it uses the concepts you talked... but does it dynamically... it activates as soon enters combat mod and the use of potions/spells/enchantments that enhance skills and/or attributes (positive or negatively) can slightly modify the damage output or the critical chances. Only the reach and speed must be treated in separate, because it can't be changed on an equipped weapon, so it becomes active only after the player equip it (the newer script take care to do the unequip/equip part silently when need, so the player does not even notice it happening). on higher level of speed, athletics, acrobatics... the sword can become as nimble as a light dagger and get the reach near that of a halberd..

Notice the physical damage acts as vanilla (albeit the weapon appears on the inventory as having 0 in the damage, it adjusts as soon enter combat mode) the reason for the 0 output was "Meridia" wished not the weapon used to assassinations and evil purposes, and even after some changes it still refuse to apply the whole power on non evil NPCs.

It's "criticals" includes a minor which beyond increased damage push the enemy aside... good to scape being surrounded... the second is a one hit kill, much like the Mehunes Razor (although does not uses the original effect). Finally, when it fulfills it's original purpose (try killing undeads you summon or find elsewhere) it will gain a new name and 2 more powers... one is soultrap... the second is almost outrageous in that already powerful weapon, it can absorb a fraction of the damage delivered and refil the players health with it (again, it's not the vanilla "absorb health" effect)...

That said, if something in the scripts is of your liking, feel free to use in your mod at will.

PS: everything in the mod is prefixed by RWL, making it easier to locate in CS, the scripts, quests, objects, enchantments... and so on.

One thing to keep in mind is the weapons purpose, if it is meant be be cheating (what can not be the case, since you are interested in it evolving), plain overpower or just powerful but somewhat balanced.

The last case is the harder to achieve in an evolving weapon. The vanilla game implements something like it in way of leveled quest item, where actually one is stuck with the weapon power on the level it was acquired; that can be changed using mods, which are based on getting the actual player level and removing the previous version and adding another, adequate to that level.

Based on your original description, Machaera would not be an evolving weapon indeed but an adjustable weapon. You'll need to deal with many menus so the player can modify it's characteristics. You must be aware there is a practical limit of 6 secure enchantments you can add to the item at same time, so the amount of Soulgems will not help there. Remember the soulgem is lost once used, so you must decide how the idea will be implemented (the weapon can't keep soulgems, only the enchantments created with them)... So it seems your idea is bypass the enchanting phase and applying them directly on the weapon, I never tried this way on OBSE, so I can't say for sure how it behaves (I mean if they can be kept as were applied on CS).

The other approach is a mix of razorpony suggestion and the concepts you can find in the Afinity mod I talked about in the previous post. In this last, instead fixed enchantments, you just need to script the desired effects to be applied on hit. Surely this last is much more dynamic and avoid all the complexity either to mod or to actually use them in game.

Although I opted to avoid "hostile" effects, they are easy to implement. The reason to avoid them was stated too... nothing is more frustrating than hitting an enemy with reflect spell/damage... with something like paralyze or BIG damage value... the player is serious candidate to become history...

So Affinity does not do large amount of damage, but Always does it's magical damage... even to those nasty OOO and MMM monsters with extreme physical and magical defenses... I have seen one only gargoyle make short work of a bunch of ogres, just because they couldn't be hurt due to their defenses... same for magic. Still they are hit and hit hard by afinity and if the player manages to live long enough, it can win even in low level... if she/he's "lucky" he can even disable them for a little while or kill them in an unique hit.

The scripts uses many resources, the reason I'm pointing the mod so you can get the ideas as they were actually implemented. Anything found in the scripts is free to use, without need to ask for permission or bureaucracy. If wishing to give me credit, good, but even this is free will.

Thank you for your kind words and your wisdom. You do raise a lot of issues and I have solutions for a few.

First off, no it's not a cheat. It will become a god sword if you play enough - that was the idea, you *earn* that power instead of just get it. It really stemmed from me not being able to put a decent enchantment on a sword with 1 soul gem, and when I tried other mods it became overpowering. The main problem I am facing is how to prevent it from becoming too powerful too early.

I have 3 system I have devised, based on each section you can improve. A combination of kills and blade/blunt level earns points for the physical aspect. As you upgrade one of the 3 physical aspects, it's cost increases, plus working on damage alone adds weight and slows the weapon down. You might get a 100 damage weapon, but you will also have it weigh about 500 and move at 0.00005 speed of a normal weapon.

Enchantments aren't technically vanilla. It comes through a series of menus and are combined into one scripted enchantment. My initial idea for this enchantment was script heavy but you and razorpony may have come up with a much better solution for it. They probably won't all be visible in the menu but it takes tens of thousands lines of script out of each combat. As for your mention of avoiding offensive enchantments, that is something I have been trying to do as well. I have lined up 20 vanilla enchantments, but I am looking for more unique ideas, such as erenussocrates' critical hit idea and your "knockback" idea, to replace the ones that could be overpowering when maxed out.

Thank you for your support and suggestions, and yes, if I use your resources I will credit you.

[Erenussocrates]

I have an idea which I will use for one of items at my recipe mode too. You can give sword a critical strike enchantment which occurs x1.5 more damage by %10 chance on a power attack. You can improve percentage by improving it's enchantment. How is it?
Also mode seems pretty interesting and promising, I can assure you I download and test it when first version is done.

Thanks for your support, and when you say "how is it" are you asking how can the percentage be improved with the enchantment?

Lol, no, I asked if you liked the idea or not xP Meanwhile, are you serious about helping me on my project? I'm coming up with items since last night.
But a few minutes ago computer froze and I had to restart it, when I was back my saved notepad containing over 40 item ideas are now reduced to half, I am so pissed right now I can even crush this stupid computer lol