Shredator

Sorry again for the absence. My videocard has started sporadically crashing my computer, without any apparent pattern and no matter what I happen to be doing at the time. Not expecting the first few crashes, I've actually lost quite a few hours of work and got a little frustrated. I'm planning on ordering a new card (tomorrow?) which should clear up everything, but I'm a little hesitant to jump back into 3d until I figure out a solution for this. I'll definitely contact you when we have content ready to be tested, as well as those who've posted in interest to a beta previously. Dialogue work would be great, but we will need to find a good way to do it. Game dialogue (in the style of Oblivion) works in something of a flowchart fashion, allowing the player to have some control over the direction of the conversation. The only way I can really think to do it is a graphical flowchart showing which conversation leads to which. Making graphs for ever y bit of dialogue would be a bit of a waste though, any ideas? A1 - B1 > C1> B A2 > B2 A3 > B3 > C2 > Quest - - - - - > C3 > Backstory > Quest A1 Then fill in dialogue like this perhaps? Not too much work, but still a little annoying. A2.... Yamcakes- Definitely, your skills should be an excellent addition. We'll have lots of room for retextured enemies, whether to make slightly different variations to keep groups from appearing redundant, or making entirely new enemies with the same mesh. I can't even tell you have awesome concept art would be, if you have a few steampunk ideas you'd be willing to put to paper. In both cases, I'd love to have you in our little team.

You're right, Oblivion does do very well on a go-touch-things-on-your-own basis, which as you mentioned is why the game has almost no cutscenes in vanilla. Thinking about it, it probably would be better to leave the short entry cutscenes out of the mix. I would still like to consider one or two others though, at times the player isn't present, to help better tell the story. The two I'm thinking of are the fight leading to Cassandra's death, and the death of her parents before the storyline of the mod, which I think would help tell the story a little more personally. Then again, it would be a big investment of time, and quite a few other things take priority before I'd even be able to start on any such project. We'll see when we get a little further along I guess.

I'll admit, Starcraft has taken a fair piece of my free time lately as well. Back to progress though, I'll see what I can put together over the weekend. Also, I'm considering a few cutscenes for the mod (with luck, fully rendered rather than relying on the game's engine). Would anyone here be familiar with changing a video to the .bik format the engine uses? Being able to render then convert would completely free me from the limitations of the game engine, as well as make the story much more involving (something most Oblivion quests really lack). Still speculation, and it would take a lot of work, but we'd really be able to make an impact with all of this if it's possible. Edit- I've researched a little more into the .bik format, aka Bink Video, and it looks very promising. Bink has an add on for Adobe Premiere that handles conversion, so I can convert from essentially any format and put the video into Oblivion. So, we should have the option of fully rendered cutscenes, as well as video taken from within the game (for example, a camera pan of Oldtown the first time your character enters to show it off a little, or possibly a short video of some of the harder puzzles as the player enters the room). Very promising.

I thought Crowhaven sounded familiar, now it all makes sense. In that quest, if I remember correctly, the Gray Prince's father's journal only goes back a generation or two- I'll need to check it, but it would be easy to say they were there for less than 200 years. I'll write out a little of my idea for crowhaven- As I think I mentioned earlier, the time portals open at a relative locations in the past to where they were cast in the present, and appear at the nearest possible place when the closest location is filled. Layla creates her portal inside the windmill, and appears within the windmill in the past. The villain uses Crowhaven dungeon as a base of operations in the present day, which is where he creates his portal- he doesn't research the area well enough though, and doesn't realize that the tunnels under Crowhaven weren't dug yet 200 years ago (we can even say that the vampire family from the Gray Prince quest dug them, to have a place to hide their vampiric nature). So, instead of his portal appearing from far underneath Crowhaven, it appears in the next closest place- the bottom of the mineshaft (which will probably be completely collapsed in the present day). I think we should be able to safely add another secret tunnel to Crowhaven's dungeon, without interfering with the current quest. I'm not 100% on how world edits work, but it seems workable. Your idea about the time limitations is definitely one we can work with. At the beginning of the mod, Layla goes to Oldtown with the intent to live the rest of her life there, so it would make sense for her to keep being from the present a secret to avoid becoming an anomaly. The people discover that Layla and the player are from the future further into the mod, since Layla doesn't close the portal like she originally planned, but even in the end only a few know. Funny Kieran, I was actually planning on a clockwork bow already. It's only been mentioned in the character bios, but Cassandra fights using a custom bow, which will be pretty steampunked. I'm hoping we'll be able to work out complicated morphing for it (such as cogs spinning as the bow is drawn), but with the morphing troubles LHammonds was having, I'm not sure if it will be possible. I don't think we'll be able to work in your last idea though, Tibato, for a few reasons. First is the nudity, since I'd like to keep this a fairly T rated mod, but that could be covered easily enough. The people are the real difficulty, since zombified people mean missing people. The sealed mine means people can't be taken in, and the plane of Hircine is devoid of mortals, so they couldn't really come from there. On the other hand, we could do a similar setup using beasts instead. I'm thinking of a weird oasis like room, with light pouring through a crack in the ceiling and plants growing around the walls. Simple herbivore animals, like bears and elk or such, could roam around contentedly, but a small mechanical trap in the center of the room would release the spell when you get to close. We may even be able to try having vines come to life, by making some sort of plant beasts appear with the spell.

Very cool gauntlets, especially the 2nd.I'll see if I can make one, or something similar, to put in the costume lineup. Oldtown won't be HUGE, but it will be bigger than the modern village. I'd say around 8 house sized buildings and a large building or two, but it's always changing. Don't worry about it too much though, we can make adjustments as we move forward. Don't worry about the past's landscape looking exactly like the modern's either- in fact, it would be best if it were slightly off. Coastal changes and weathering would definitely happen over 200 years, so there's no need for perfection. Oh, and I really like your Claude idea. Really, a little more depth and involvement of the modern city wouldn't be a bad thing, so a few simple bios for NPCs there would help.

Yep, just simple people, farmers fishers and perhaps an innkeeper. I like the idea of an Anvil commuter too, we should be able to work out an AI path for them as well. There will definitely be a forge or two within the city, yes, as well as a big lava-powered forge in one of the puzzle dungeon's branches.

Sorry I've been off. I live in a small town with only one isp, which means they feel like they can do whatever they please since people are forced to buy from them anyway. So, the internet has been down completely since yesterday, and they never apparently felt obligated to do anything about it until now. Anyway, for filesharing- I have an account on a site called Mediafire, which is essentially the exact same thing as 4shared. Mediafire is just a hosting and sharing site with a single file limit of 200mb, but it seems like it would be adequate for what we'll need. We also have the option to upgrade an account for a month or two, or just fall back on the Nexus. Very interesting post on the Weird West, Phayze, very informational, I'm guessing the WIld Wild West would definitely fit into that category. I think steampunk cyborgs might be a little high-tech for this mod, but we can probably do magicly-possessed mining machinery within the mine. In the story the mages Layla and the antagonist are able to establish only one time portal each at relative locations to the present time, Layla's in the windmill and the antagonist's in the mine (which, I think, will be near his hide-out in the present day). Since the antagonist's influence in the past will be incidentally sealed within the mine, he puts some time into breaking through the doors created by the villagers to keep the beasts within the mine using the steampunk equipment. From the distance between the village's location and Anvil, wouldn't a contiguous city be a little huge? That might be a little hard to fit into TES lore. I like the old idea of Anvil and Oldtown being business competitors though, with Oldtown industrializing to compete and Anvil sticking to more traditional methods. As the people in Oldtown begin creating new and original machinery for mining and fishing, they discover they have a passion for such creation and start to design machinery for many more elements of their lives. I wouldn't say industrialization has to mean a large city, since we won't be getting into factories or mass production much if at all. Instead, every piece to every machine is hand-crafted within Oldtown, to build machines designed for specific purposes. Hmm, underground steampunk culture... (ideas). We've discussed what happens to the people of Oldtown that makes the steampunk city of the past become the simple village of the present- the current idea is that the introduction of magic through the storyline inspires the people, and they go on to change the world in other ways (i.e., founders of the Arcane University). I'm suddenly wondering about the possibility of them taking their research underground- two hundreds years of magic-fueled steampunk creation could result in an incredible hidden modern-day city, which could be discovered as a sequel to this mod. The size and scope of the technology would be a lot greater than is planned for this mod, and would really open up some cool possibilities. Definitely a possibility, but I'll probably keep my attention on this for now. Somewhere between 5-7 buildings in the modern villages should be plenty, within the story it's a fairly small and insignificant city to Cyrodil. Finally, for the monsters. Within the story, the antagonist opens a portal to a plane of Oblivion to summon monsters to destroy the city, but is cut short when in response the people seal the mine shut. In TES lore, all of the Deadric princes have their own realms (as an example, the Shivering Isles are the Sheogorath equivalent of Dagon's Oblivion), all very different and relevant to the prince's personality. The antagonist opens a plane which isn't opened in the normal game of TES4, which results in monsters not yet seen in the game. Looking through what's known of the prince's realm, I think Hircine would work pretty well as the prince the antagonist follows. His realm is described as one huge hunting ground filled with all sorts of vicious beasts which hunt down trespassing mortals, so the villain opening a portal to that plane to cause chaos and destruction seems pretty logical. Hircine is also the god of Lycanthropy (people turning into beasts, most famously werewolves), so werebeasts of any sort would fit in really well. Essentially any predatory beast would fit into that context though, but here are a few ideas- Cloverfield Beast Sand Thresher Here are tons more, if any of these happen to catch your interest. Search 1 Search 2

Corthian - The architecture will (like everything steampunk really) need to be a careful blend of all of those elements. The way I see it in my head is most influenced by industrial and Victorian, but western can be modified to fit as well. Perhaps an aesthetically Victorian design, with underlying pipes, steamwork, and cogs running throughout to be visible in certain places. Western buildings can probably be modified to fit in, since western is just an evolution of Victorian anyway. Tibato- I'm liking the layout, things are definitely coming along nicely. We'll be able to work out custom flora and general vegetation to fill things in a little later, but I really like the way things are looking right now.

I don't know much about it, I missed it as well. A toe or two stepped on it seems, but it should all be worked out now. You're right though Corthian, it's definitely time to get something visible organized, specifically the Steampunk village- we'll be able to work outwards from there. Really sorry about my sudden disappearance. My brother's wife had pregnancy complications in the middle of painting their new home, so they really ended up needing help all at once. It looks like we'll be able to finish everything tomorrow, and I'll be back to my computer with everything on it either late Thursday or Friday morning. The writing on the story has been very stop and go, from running into various story conflicts and unmade decisions. Simply, there's a lot more work to be done on it, and the little things have sunk a lot more of my time than I'd set for them. Instead of finishing it all at once, I'm going to try to organize and post the important parts as soon as I get back, to establish things a little more solidly for those working on story. A little organizing of the site so it's actually useful, and hopefully I'll have time to start meshing out a few concept buildings. Tibato should be back soon, so I'll try and get with him to talk about a basic layout for the city so we can assign locations to things as they're worked on. By way of visual progress, basic building exteriors would probably go further than anything else at this point, we can worry about interiors a little further down the road. Specific buildings appearances aren't terribly important yet I think, but I'll try and put out a few ideas when I'm able.

Thanks for sorting that out Myrmaad. I was offline for the drama, so I can't really respond to any of the hidden posts, but let's keep the politics to a minimum. Corthian- Fixed! Brilliant, as always, very nicely put together. Sarac- interesting picture, like an entire engine put into a helmet. You'd need some serious neck support for that one, I think :rolleyes: Uk- we can definitely still use custom creatures, and can really fit just about anything into the context of the mod. If you feel like making anything specific, then by all means, it would definitely help the mod. Tellra- It's always nice to meet another Steampunk junkie, thanks for the post! The posted interest from you and others, even where you can't directly contribute, confirms that things are moving in a positive direct- much appreciated! Thanks everyone, for the work and input. I'll be sadly offline quite a bit for the next few days, but at least I'll be able to work with the text of the mod. I may not be able to respond immediately, but I'll try to keep up as well as I can.

Skye is right Corthian, you did forget a P in there :ohmy: Best of luck with your new team Stealt, I'll be interested to see what you guys are able to accomplish. Organizing and moving over characters was actually one of my first priorities for the forum, so the help is appreciated.

Very nice! We should have a character to fit that jacket perfectly, and if not, there's always room to create one. I'm working on moving content over to a new website I've setup, which is my first priority today. It has a forum, photos and link pages for collected references, a news page that we can use to describe the project to potential members- pretty much everything we'll need but hosting, which we can upgrade to if using the Nexus doesn't work effectively. Would you guys be interested in a listed member page, where everyone can list what aspects of modding you're capable of? It would help keep who is working in what area, and make an easy help list for questions and projects. The site is www.steampunkoblivion.webs.com, though there isn't much there yet. Suggest anything you think it lacks- the site options are very easy to work with, and I can probably add anything it doesn't have already. Edit- I missed your weapons edit on page 10 Phayze, but I really like the idea. Let's plan on the brigadier being our second item creation person, specifically for weapons. Also, about your character Gloria. I've written more about it in the story, but puzzles were built into the dungeon for one general reason- to differentiate between monsters and humans. For one, two people are believed to be trapped in the mine, and the engineers wanted to leave a way for them to get out if they survived. Later, they decided to segment the mine as they sealed it, hoping that at least part of the mine would sustain usability. The point though, is that different NPCs worked in different parts of the mine in the sealing, and as such there are different puzzles throughout the mine based on who planned and built them. With a music character, I'd really like there to be at least one puzzle based on music.

Ah, I guess I was mistaken about Shadow Softworks. A simple site like yours should be just the thing to keep everything organized, but a full site I can edit on the fly will probably be more important in the long run. Thanks again, I'll keep your offer in mind if other avenues don't work out.

I think I'm going to have to backtrack on myself a little Stealt. Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the offer, and we could make it work, but I think it would be best to have a dedicated site for the project. Shadow Softworks is a great group, and I've no doubt they'll be able to utilize your offer better than we'd be able to share it. I wish you the best with your work, but must respectfully decline your offer. For the team, thanks for you patience. I haven't been able to respond very much to your recent work, but it's looking great. Between tonight and tomorrow I should be working on a simple new site to store what's finished and plan what's not. With recent decisions and developments, I've rewritten the story from the ground up. I'm leaving gaps in the story, between some of the basic framework developments, for more personal development by any of the writers that are interested. I've also reconsidered, and would like to make Voice acting for all of the characters a higher priority for this mod. If you have a good quality mic (or ideally can access a recording studio), consider lending your voice or even voices of friends to some of the characters. To anyone reading this not yet involved, there's definitely room on the team for you as well. I'm happy with how far we've come already, and look forward to taking this all the way.

That would probably help Steal, let's try it and see how it goes. Your site wouldn't happen to have file hosting capabilities, would it? That would be helpful, but we can use the nexus otherwise.