Vagrant0

Politics isn't as significant of an identity as Religion for most people. While yes, there is some overlap here, most political beliefs are based in socioeconomic status, not in how people are raised. If you change that status, the identity changes, political interests change, Religion remains the same. Religion is more than idle beliefs to be shaded with others, it is about faith. Besides the point... Bush is Bush... He's been a joke even before he came into office. People mock him, not because of real political opinion or identity, but because it's so easy and culturally acceptable to do so. Even still, it wasn't posted as a debate, but in the offtopic thread, so people assume that anything said isn't meant seriously. The only reason why the debate was allowed, for as briefly as it did, was because it was moved somewhere else, where the setup and intentions were different. Had the discussion continued in that thread, I'd probably be looking at a strike, and the thread would be quickly closed. At any rate, religion is just one of those issues like veganism, homosexuality, or race which just aren't appropiate to be discussed in any length here. As said, most people aren't informed enough to contribute, and those who are are often very biased in their views. There is no room for debate, only senseless shouting at eachother, it solves nothing, enlightens no one.

I believe the main reason is because unlike the console flame wars are rather pointless as few people really identify as a nintendo purist, or such. Religion is part of how people identify themselves, just as you identify as being an athiest, with that comes anger and frustration when someone says something to challenge your own beliefs. You may not fall into this, but most of the world unfortunately does. Add that to the fact that religious debates are essentially pointless since people will still believe what they want to believe, even when hard evidence is beating them over the head. As some people strongly identify themselves by their religion, when anything somes to question it, it only makes them get defensive. What that ammounts to is essentially two people shouting at opposite sides of a wall without any willingness to listen to the other. Religion isn't something that can be defined through evidence, it is about beliefs. As much as you may feel obligated to change those beliefs, people should be allowed to maintain their beliefs*. Debates about religion in a setting like this (internet aside) just don't solve anything, and only cause people to get upset. You may not care, but I cannot see allowing this to be a good thing. Most people simply aren't informed about their own religion or others for any honest, well meaning discussions to be viable here. If you want a real discussion on religion, what on God's green earth makes you think a gaming forum is the place to do it? Yeah, can see trying to sidestep it any time evolution, philosophy or ethics comes into play... But seriously, how many people are there floating around here that can talk intelligently and unbiased about those things? Most of the members of this forum aren't even out of highschool, yet you expect them to be able to converse in matters that even college students can't get straight. As much entertainment you may have attacking the beliefs of others, which you can probably prove are wrong, it just wouldn't accomplish anything other than getting people angry. *beliefs that violate basic human rights aren't covered by this, and people who maintain those beliefs should be either locked away or re-educated. There is no reasoning for this aside from wanting people to try and get along with eachother. If you're happy wih your religion and aren't causing pain to others, or killing those that don't also believe, that is fine with me.

Well if we really compare it to medevil ish times, weren't toilets just a hole? Granted I don't see those either, but I wouldn't expect to find porcelain. Have you guys been to Crucible? Call me crazy, but im pretty sure those aren't puddles of water all over the place ;) Hmm, ok, I'll give you that one, but what about the rest of the world? Nt so many murky brown puddles... Or does Crucible somehow collectall that filth from other realms?

Nah, that's what the wonderful modify feature is for. You can tag additional information to older posts. Doing so doesn't bump the topic up to the front, so people aren't likely to see it though. The only real point of the bump here is just to get your topic moved up and flagged as unread so that people are more likely to see it. But given how slowly some areas move, there shouldn't be any reason to change anything. Most of the bumping situations I've seen seem related to people not getting answers after a few minutes, and not those topics which are over a day old and havn't been answered.

Has anyone brought up the lack of toilets or people who seem to be providers of food? Wait... Best not to think about that one too much, maybe there's a reason why Bravil specializes in illusion. Or, how Alyied ruins which have been sealed for centuries still manage to have unspoiled potions, food, and recently written books. Even within Pale Pass i've somehow managed to get a guidebook for Chorrol, despite the fact that the whole area has been unexplored in the contemporary era.

If you have $40-$60 to spend, go see about buying a PSone and Kings Field 1 or Kings Field 2. despite the fact that they were made almost 10 years ago, and are a console game, the gameplay and level designs are in many ways better than most games being made today. As a first person fantasy they're still at the top of my list. The PS2 games from the same developer (eternal ring, Kings Field: The Ancient City, and some other one) I fail to remember the name of) feature the same kind of gameplay styles with a bit more emphasis on graphics, story, and specific systems, but would cost a bit more if you don't already have the system. Bethsoft has better free roaming support and npc depth though, not to mention mods. As to the above poster, Morrowind had better combat, you had to decide what kind of attacks you'd be making with weapons (slash, thrust, chop) rather than the block till they attack you and click away while they're recovering. Then there were more weapon types with different ranges to add further variety. Morrowind gave you 700 hours of entertainment with or without mods? Yeah, I can get what you're saying about knowing where everything is after the 10th play through... But that's the same for pretty much everything but Diablo. Eventually, once you've explored everything you'll run out of stuff without adding new things to explore. If those areas change, they have to change in a way where there is always a challenge or something worth all the trouble. Oblivion fails this more than Morrowind because there aren't any special unique things inside that cave, at best you'll find a chest with some yarn and misc. potions. Morrowind got around the whole changing contents issue by having ALOT of places to explore. I only played it for 100-200 hours and I still didn't manage to find half the stuff people mention, when the average game these days only has 20-30 hours worth of content that's a huge improvement. While I still havn't explored every ruin and cave in Oblivion, it's safe to assume that doing so isn't worth the handful of worthless clutter, as that's about all that's out there.

Took me about a month in game time to beat the game, and I took my time. Granted I had adjusted the timescale, but even at the standard 30 to 1 there havn't been enough years that passed to notice anything... As is people still think the emporer still died yesterday and don't know what to do. Or for that matter everyone knowing about it less than an hour after it happened (I tell you they're in on it). Forget getting old, I would settle for NPCs who have some sense of time between events before they talk about it.

Shoulda looked further... People rarely leave towns so they don't know about all those ruins out there. Also I would suspect that there are plenty of adventurers who would be without jobs should the mages guild go and fix everything. Really the one thing you should have noticed is that 10-12 people manage to grow enough food for the entire empire. Figure that one out.

Well, you don't need to get quite that large, but 2-3 times larger than what you have (without just resizing the image) would certainly be an improvement. If you can't see everything important clearly, you really can't expect anyone to work with it. Some of the ones posted I can't even tell what the hell I'm looking at, either it's too small, too blurry, or just a bad view. Also, posting fewer pictures would probably increase the likelyhood of any one standing out and being made. There aren't dozens of people making weapons around here, posting 30 pictures in a short period of time will usually result in the one or two who aren't busy to looking at the list, seeing all the requests from the same person, and losing all interest in taking the several minutes it would take to sort through your list for something they might want to do.

Nah, my guess is that many of the quests which are lacking details is because they were quests added later and were constricted by both the ideas that were thrown around in one of their brainstorming sessions, and trying to do it in the shortest time possible.

Your quoting is a bit off... Anyhow, there are really two easy ways to make sure this doesn't happen. First is secure a budget 2-3 times what you think you need to reduce the chances of going over budget and being forced to cut back on things in order to make up the losses*. Second is build the game backwards, start with the ending and work toward the beginning. This way you can't release anything until you've finished, unfortunately this causes its own difficulties (technical and otherwise), but can make things a bit more interesting since you're essentially just explaining how that particular ending happened, rather than starting with a beginning and having some idea where you want to go. Really though, only with proper planning and a team which is productive and capable can anything complete be finished. Without proper planning, you end up spending too much time on one part that you really like, but not enough time on all those other areas (DB quests anyone (dozens of unique items, scripts and dialogues which are cool, but aren't needed)). *Continued from above*Does that strategy ever really work? You'd think that releasing a game before it's finished would do more to hurt sales than setting back release dates another month. People are more willng to wait a month or two (Or years in the case of Duke Nukem fans) more for that game they've seen mentioned everywhere than to deal with the month or two of a broken game that needs some serious bug fixes. Sure, you still get the group of people who just rush out and buy it on release day, but you lose the sales from people who bother to wait till the smoke clears to see if all the hype was worth it.

Most serious gamers would probable tear through that in a single night. Not to mention that they would charge you another twenty bucks(mabey more) for every expansion, so youd probly end up paying close to one or two hundred dollars for something the size of vanilla Oblivion. A modular game does sound like a good idea, but the best way to do that is probably through mods. That sort of modular concept really doesn't work well when you're trying to do something free roaming like TES. Even doing a mod like a series of several steps just wouldn't work too well until it was all completed. Such a design only makes sense when you have a linear or semi-linear base where one step can be built on the previous, but there isn't much jumping back and forth between them. It just wouldn't be TES without the open world to explore, something which cannot exist in modular form (like NWN). In modular form, the exterior worlds would be dozens of small world spaces linked by doors of some kind along borders, like most MMOs that use the same system, movement across many of these spaces can become annoying as you have to find the right place to cross and there are bound to be invisible walls keeping you from entering areas which are added by a future module. It just doesn't work... There's a reason most MMO's are moving away from that style, it just doesn't play well as there's this sudden border which only the player can cross.

Morningstars, flails, and other weapons with moving chains, balls, or other parts can't be done due to how the physics are setup in Oblivion. It isn't a modding issue, it is an engine issue, without having direct access to the game engine (never gonna happen) nothing of the sort can be made. This also applies to some degree to any other equipped object. On a side note, not to kill your enthusiasm, but you may want to use larger pictures, that show more of what you want, less of everything else. Some of them are simply too small for anyone to work with should they show interest in actually doing anything. If people can't see what you're talking about, they can't really show much interest in doing it. Also, you may want to keep in mind that round surfaces don't typically work well since they can require alot of polygons, which may result in a cool weapon that knocks you down to 5 frames a second when equiped.

I agree, modding adds so much more life to games. The longer games can be played, the longer they hold interest with people, the more copies get sold. This has been true from its early days when modding doom, quake, and a few others allowed a greater variety in gameplay and appealed to a larger audience. Would Morrowind, Nwn, The Sims and many of these other games have the longevity they've had without the modding community? I don't think so. While yes, modders will always find a way (as proven by fable, diablo, and countless others) to mod the game, any official support in the matter does make modding easier and more common (making communities larger, creating more content). Modders work for free, encourage sales, provide technical support, bug fixes, and yet game companies seem to ignore this. Games don't have to be impossible to mod, it's usually by choice of the companies of what is hard coded, and what isn't that modding becomes impossible. Releasing stripped down tools (if any tools), not releasing rights for various exporters, and releasing overly bugged games however makes it impossible to mod. Look at NWN2, despite the fact that the toolkit was included as part of the game, the fact that the game and the toolkit itself was riddled with bugs, errors, and problems stunted the modding comunity who was ready to move from NWN. Only now that some of the bugs have been fixed is there much momentum. If SI and 1.2 are an example of what to expect in Fallout 3 and TES V, Oblivion might just be the last great modding game in the series (arguably morrowind beats this). My only suggestion with TES V is that Bethsoft remembers the modding community that has made their games what they are, but not insist that we fix their games for them. They have a paid staff who is supposed to be able to release a working game with enough content, but what they give us is a playable beta, a construction set, and suggest that we're the ones who have to finish. As conflicting as this sounds, it's simple, people will always be willing to release additional content, but if we're forced to fill existing (and often obvious) gaps, find ways around problems, and do this all for free, the modding community may not be so willing to do the work. Release a good game, and we'll gladly make it better, release a game with bugs and we'll be spending most of our time getting around them or ignoring the game completely (and suggesting that others do the same). *edit* even allowing for easier retexturing (like the sims has), by making meshes that aren't so specific, or are more modular, would do wonders for the longevity of the end game... Something that was present in Morrowind, and missing in Oblivion.

Most requests for armor or stuff that can't be done just with a retexture pretty much relies on one of the few people with any ability to make it to have any similar interest in doing it. That aside, the picture provided doesn't help much as you only see the shoulders/boots. This is the right spot, but as there have literally been hundreds of armor requests, I wouldn't count on anything being done.

It would actually work the other way around. Uber modders make a guild, keep their tools and plugins to members, and charge people to do any modding... Which leads to many bad things I don't have the concern to say. I am not a particular fan of paying for mods or being paid for mods, while it is technically payment for work, as it is a non-tangable media without a face to face contract overseen by lawers, there are usually always problems with it (not that the lawers help much, but are there to atleast keep people honest by comparison). Who controls the rights to the data, the person who paid for the work, the person who did the work, or the company who controls the software needed to do anything with the data? There is no licensing with modding as there is with professional tools. As I understand it, technically everything made within the CS is property of Bethsoft. New meshes are different as they are done with licensed software, even if that license states that they cannot use the software to make money. I'm not up on all the legal stuff, but I think that even if you are paying a flat fee for the work being done, not the product of that work, you still run into some problems. Honestly, you're best off trying to do it yourself, or asking someone to make something close to what you want because they want to, not because you're paying them.

Despite my own dislike for house mods, there is a reason why most people start with them. House mods start out by placing and arranging statics somewhere (be it out in the world somewhere, or within a new interior cell), one of the most basic forms of modding, and applicable to all further modding. Then you link the two together using doors, add furniture, lighting, effects, it's still placing statics, but as these things allow certain adjustments, they require a bit more understanding of the CS. Now you have an interior space linked to an exterior space. From there you can branch off into quest scripting (deciding how the house comes into the players control) or NPC scripting (adding something else to move about the house and do stuff). Both branches focus on different areas of modding, but have enough overlap that once you do one, the other isn't too hard to learn. Beyond that, you're only limited by what is allowed to be done in oblivion and what meshes you can get permission to use.

Even if used just as a creature (something you can kill) there wouls still be a large number of problems with it. For one, there isn't anything in game that looks or moves similarly, so among those few who can do any sort of meshing, they would need to first create the mesh for the creature and texture it. Then they would need to spend countless hours setting up a bone structure and weighting the mesh. Then they would need to make a few dozen different animations (which still isn't possible to the scale that's needed). In short, ask again in 3-4 years, hopefully by then things will be worked out and such things only require a few weeks of effort. Beside the point, they just don't fit with the style of Oblivion. Maybe if there is a mod that adds parts of morrowind, it might work, but that's still many years away.

Technically, the rate of fulfilled requests can't be generalized like that since the vast majority of the requests here are either not possible, or would require a massive amount of effort. In 64 pages, there are maybe only 2 or 3 of them that could be done without any meshing, or years of working on it. I don't know about anyone else, but I normally ignore this area as it tends to be filled with senseless requests that only a few people would give any interest in.

I think someone should take in this project, work on, and if warkirby ever comes back (hasnt logged in since nov 12, 2006) he'll be happy about how much people cared to continue his mod. THis thing is already to good to go to waste. IF it had all the stuff it was gonna have, it would be better. Im sure this is illegal in some way, everthing i suggest seems to be illegal in some way :P . I don't know, has anyone related to this project been heard from lately? They could just be taking a few months away from it, or some of the team members may have been unable to come around do to real life stuff. Even 4 months without anyone on the team mentioning anything about the status is a bit too soon for anyone to just walk in and take over.

I don't flame. However, my statement still stands from what I can tell. You, and a few others click the link, spend probably less than 5 minutes just looking at one example of garbage, look at the stupid little dressup dolls they call "avatars", and announce that the entire site is obviously gay/effeminate, and anyone who goes there HAS to be too. Afterall, that's what has been stated, it must be true. Even though it is, to some degree, there is more to it. My wikipedia links were largly to add some sort of real discussion as the whole gaybashing thing gets old real fast, and only makes those who participate in it look the fool. I expect this sort of lowbrow crap on other forums, ones populated mostly by those same little 14 year olds, not here.

And here I thought people around here had a brain. Mythical Meaning Hippie Meaning (ok, it's wikipedia, but it's not totally off.) Learn to pronounce it right... It's guy-uh, not gay-uh (atleast as the word is pronounced, though I suppose both can be right). And it's a little site where little emotional 14 year olds can whine about their horrible and depressing lives. Like myspace without having to show the world how ugly you really are. Of course this generates alot of spam, little whiney kids need a place to vent too.

For the record, it isn't just spam, it's porno spam, really bad RP spam, idiocy spam, and complaint spam. There's also annoying little 14 year olds everywhere, a vulked up economy, exploits everywhere, and an admin that seems to allow this sort of thing. Not a real community so much as one that tries to call themselves that. Still fun to look at when you're bored and feel like laughing at people's pathetic attempts at making a name for themselves.

You forgot DoubleSwitch and Night Trap, both among the first games to have video cutscenes for most of the onscreen action... They also had a plot, something that has become very rare these days.

Yes! 1,000 times Yes... Sticky this, and make it required reading before posting anything, please. I don't know how many topics in the last month have fallen to atleast one of the above situations.