MarkInMKUK
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Posts posted by MarkInMKUK
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Regarding the bone structures in lizard legs, at the moment I think the cosmetic improvements are enough to make Argonians "feel" more right, without massively adding to the modder's work load. Obviously having a more reptilian hip/leg/foot shape would be ideal, but that would drastically increase the required mesh alteration work, as all of the lower body stuff would also need to be revised and scripted to change.
The same comment more-or-less applies to cat bone structures and the Khajiit. My cat at home often pops up onto his hind legs to look at something or to cadge food, and if you based a Khajiit on his proportions you'd need to stretch the body to about 50-60% longer, and reduce the legs accordingly. Whilst being more anatomically correct, it would probably look VERY odd in-game.
As regards the download of Drake's mods - I have re-grabbed them and checked with two virus checkers, and they are valid and virus/malware free. I strongly suspect the poster with problems has got another underlying error which caused a crash, possibly an earlier version of the archive extraction program which doesn't fully support the archive format, or possibly trying to extract to a system-protected area (Vista and Win7 have all sorts of quirks related to that problem).
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Just to toss in my usual comments - do you have a separate sound card (helps with sound-related stuttering), and have you either turned off antivirus or at least turned off "on access scanning" - the antivirus in particular will knacker fps on Oblivion as it is continually accessing dozens of files.
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Also check your antivirus. By default a lot of programs are set to "scan on file open" - with a program like Oblivion which continually accesses data files that's a real recipe for stutter. Set it up to ignore the Oblivion and OBSE processes except for the main scan (after all, you DO still want to check for viruses - just not while trying to play).
Check your CPU speed - a fast single core will easily outperform a slower dual or quad core FOR OBLIVION - it's a single process program and as such it doesn't make much use of the extra cores, just needs raw GHz.
Also try the Quiet feet mod - footfalls can really screw your speed up if you are using an integrated sound card.
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Try Growlfs Body Resizing Mod - it uses variable skeletons to adjust heights
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Windows 7 install - WHERE did you install Oblivion? If it's the default place, under c:\Program Files, that will stop many things working, possibly including patching the executable.
In any case, Look up bben46's uninstall/reinstall guide, use that as a guide to clear up any saved information like registry entries and ini files/save games, and move the installation to c:\Games\Oblivion before trying any other tinkering.
Generally, if the official patch for SI won't work, then you need to fix that before trying every other mod under the sun - if your car has a flat tyre, adding bolt-on spoilers and go-faster stripes won't help it move any better.
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A few comments:
Where in Cyrodiil do you want to put this castle/town? You'll need to make sure it integrates with the landscape wherever you site it, so that's an important decision. Compatibility with things like Better Cities and Unique Landscapes is also an important point.
Transport doors - you'll need to define each and every place they end up, as you would presumably want them to work in reverse too (it could be a long walk back otherwise), so pick unused doors in each and every destination - or every destination without a door will need to have one added.
Portal to the SI - you therefore have to make it dependent on SI being installed - or have to have a handler than scripts things to that connection doesn't even TRY to exist for a non-SI setup.
NPCs - define EXACTLY what each one is doing every day for a week - the modders will need that information to write AI scripts.
To define this mod well enough for someone(s) to take it on, you're going to need to put in a lot of work yourself. Draw up your castle plans and town plan, work out where each and every passage goes from/to, design walls that would be thick enough to fit a passage into, think about relative heights of structures, think about where water will come from for the moat, etc. As you're thinking of a dock, maybe a self-contained new island would be sensible, just off the coast - but then where do you get fresh water from? You have umpteen NPCs so you need to define each one properly - where they live, what they do, who they talk to, where they walk and at what times of day. Otherwise you might as well have a heap of console codes to do the npc functions and save several man-months of work.
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If you find yourself tinkering with mods a lot, give mTES4 a try for the inevitable reinstalls. You can easily run multiple configs and setups, and try new mods without borking your current installation
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"You have my ear, citizen. My specs keep falling off now!"
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Pure speculation follows (unless someone out there HAS tried it)- If you spend a LOT of time on it, you MIGHT be able to rig full suits of armour into both the lower and upper body slots, and make one of them sit "over" the other one. However, I don't know whether it's ever been tried, and it may take a LOT of work. The outer armour would have to always be bigger than any possible "inner" armour, so you'd have to rescale every suit of outer armour, AND do some clever scripting so that if it was on the top half it would be "standard" mesh size, and on the bottom would be "bigger" mesh size.
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That sounds like a mod order problem. If it used to soom, and now doesn't, then something else may be using the same hotkey. Look at the mods you have, and see if any of them have alternate hotkey assignments.
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Suggestion - given the original Shivering Isles cover art, how about armour which is flesh coloured and covered with distorted screaming faces, possibly with stitched-up gashes and cuts on them? Add solid black eyes like an Iron Maiden cover art, or a fractal pattern on the eyes, or something equally disturbing... Then add bits of torture equipment or vicious looking piercings a little like the "Lord of the Rings" Orcs...Add a blood-coloured wet-looking background to the faces, and maybe hair still attached to the faces... and that'll be plenbty disturbing and mad.
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LHammonds - true, it IS fantasy related - but I'd STILL prefer my sword not to break if something got snagged wrong... :(
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Nice screenshot - mysterious and hinting at things to come. I can't mod myself, but I'm looking forward to a playable version
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If you have the Direct2Drive version you will have problems with some mods, especially those which use ONSE as it won't run with the D2D version of Oblivion. You may do well to buy the full Game of the Year version, or the Steam Deluxe version, and follow the recommended install guides (especially if on Vista or Windows 7)
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Did you also install the unofficial official mods patch?
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Hi Razorpony - I guess it's true! I also get twitchy about many of the armours people upload - they often seem to be designed to guide a sword to the most painful or damaging bits of the wearer's anatomy. I'm too much of an engineer for my own good, perhaps.
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I agree with Razorpony - they are "cool looking" swords. However, if they were real swords, with three of them you'd be adding in features which would render them either awkward or potentially breakable in use.
Referring to the image above:
Top row, left-hand sword: The blade would have two almost inevitable break points, at the point where the blade narrowed to half width, and again where it returned to full width. The saw-tooth effect between those two points would be a further source of weak points, and would be a swine to manufacture, and especially to clean. The change in width would also snag on armour badly, and the sawtooth area would hang up on cloth and leather.
Top row, third sword and bottom row: The pointed areas on the blade would produce a potential fracture above each point. They would also tend to "hang up" in on opponent, snagging on bones, leather, cloth and armour, leaving you unable to defend against a second opponent.
The hilt designs, however, look very functional, and the styling on the pommel and guard look perfectly ok to me. Maybe restore the full blade width on the first sword, and try a Flambergé effect along the edge of the other two sword blades rather than the points.
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I think we've established that there's no obvious existing ruin you can use. Therefore you, or someone else, is going to have to create it from scratch. Time for some planning to define the scope of work.
First, draw a map of your proposed ruin.
Then work through your plot, marking on it all of the points you NEED to have accessible, and see just how much of it needs to be accessible, and how much can be "seen but inaccessible" or "totally inaccessible but there by implication".
If your mod planning is done well, you could probably get away with a map. and maybe 15-20% of the structure needing to be built, plus a large area which is enclosed by accessible parts but inaccessible (it's a ruin - think blocked passages and rubble , tree roots, gates that are jammed, etc.)
Think about how you would build it if you were filming it, and how many bits you would actually NEED to make to convey the entire impression. Also many cities or built structures are repetitive - how many identical-built houses does a typical town have, or how many identical office rooms in a tower block. Finally, think levels - several levels and having to move from one to the other can give the impression of a very extensive place, for the addition of very few extra cells.
Once you have your proposed plan broken down that way, look for parts which can be used to fulfil those required areas. How many "great halls" do you need, and can you "borrow" the layout of an existing ruin to get the great hall, maybe moving just entrances and exits to make it unique. Staircases are also very generic - see what you can re-use. Also bear in mind lower sections may be flooded, and have roaming slaughterfish, thus reducing access to those areas at first.
By breaking a massive job down into manageable bits, you can make the mod gradually, get people to play test it "as far as you can go", then expand the area in an update as you build more sections. You are far more likely to find modders who will make an individual custom area to fit a known map, as opposed to ones willing to spend months making a city-sized mod to a very vague overall plan.
Good luck!
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If you are using an on-board sound chip, you might also try a separate sound card. The "Quiet Feet" mod helps a lot, especially with integrated cards, but moving the sound off the motherboard reduces the strain still further.
Also, if you do a bit of digging around, there's a problem with EAX sound on Windows 7 (it's not natively supported) but some of the card manufacturers have released patches/new drivers to allow EAX to work, and if you select a card with an available patch it can improve in-game sounds a lot.
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If you look at the "Underdark2 series of mods, some of the underground stuff in there is pretty big. You may pick up some design pointers from there or, if it's for your own use, change them to be the ruins you need.
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Short answer - No.
Longer answer - The game does not have a weapon type which can be easily modified into a lance. If you DO modify an in-game weapon type, you will change EVERY one of that type of weapon into one using lance animations - imagine using a dagger like a lance :(. The game does not allow more weapon types to be added. Also you'll need an animator to create all of the lance-use animations, and also effects like lances bending on impact or shattering.
Likely result: Not likely to ever happen.
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Hi Razorpony,
Been there, done/doing that! As long as the "Fallout" bit doesn't refer to "fallout of bed" you're fine!
Us Oblivion fans can wait - it's not like we can't PLAY the game in the meanwhile. Just take the time you need and let us know what help, if any, us totally inept and unskilled types can give you.
Mark
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Razorpony's still plugging away at meshes for the Khajiit race - I'm sure he'll tell us when he has something we can install and test.
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Just a comment or two here... mostly based on UK Copyright.
NO-ONE can stop you exporting and converting an object FOR YOUR OWN USE. However, if you then make that object available to others, THEN you hit the copyright area.
A point of commercial relevance - if a company (Say Bethesda) pays a second company to develop an item FOR A SPECIFIC GAME (e.g. Oblivion), then the subcontract company reserves all rights to other use of that item. If Bethesda then wishes to use the same item in , for example, Fallout 3, then they would have to pay a licensing fee for the additional use of that item in the second game. This occurred when Oblivion came out, and modders wanted to use items from Morrowind - the licensing agreement meant that Bethesda were legally obliged to refuse permission to export / import objects, scripts, etc.
The problem REALLY comes in where you have two games with very similar capabilities, and hence have to minimal work (or even no work at all) to export the object. At that point you have "stolen" someone's intellectual property rights, and passed the result along.
As an alternative, using someone else's design and re-creating it from scratch is plagiariam, but as you have only used their concept and not their information, it is arguable that you are not infringing copyright.
If, however, you start with the original object, and then add to it to convert it for a game capable of more complexity, you are into the really murky area which, in paper copyright terms, would be the "fair use" section, limiting you to reproducing not more than 10% of the original publication. Yes, you are adding to an object using your own labour, but you are still using the original item. At that point, you would be infringing copyright unless you could prove you had added more than 9 times the original amount of content. That's nigh on impossible to prove, so here (and many other places) there is a blanket ban on "exported/imported conversion" work.
Sneaking and noise
in Discussion
Posted
I tend to play sneaky characters 0 a stealthy approach, a shot from concealment, etc.
What I'm wondering is whether there is a way to make npc's respond to sounds, such as opening doors or gates (think the nasty screeching iron gates in the tutorial sewers), and then a way of adding noise-removers to the game (oil can to oil hinges, etc). It's always seemed odd that nothing responds to a screeching gate, yet you can be spotted through a pile of logs in near darkness visually.
Any suggestions?