MarkInMKUK

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I think it's inherent in the P version - the amount of slide towards downhill is not even remotely immersive, it just assumes that you'd slip down a slope if standing still, and applies the same slip even if you are walking and would, in reality, compensate for the slip automatically.

We've got an ongoing thread in the mod discussion section entitled "Keeping it real" - it's not just a list of mods, but also a discussion area on what each of us feel would add or does add to realism - please feel free to chip in with your viewpoint over there

Not so sure on the Morrowind mods which influenced Oblivion, but I believe Duke Patrick's Archery mod has influenced the way Archery works in Skyrim.

I suggest checking your Active Effects tab first in case you overlooked something. If no joy there, post your mod order in spoiler tags for the experts to have a look at.

The problem comes about because Bethesda may not hold the absolute copyright of the items in their games - they may well only be copyrighted [have licensed materials from another source] for use IN the game they were designed for - part of the problem of subcontracting design work. You can use anything IN the game, as long as it's shipped as part of the game. Unused bits in the BSA are fine. You cannot directly export/import a model from another game, nor directly convert it. That applies both to Bethesda's games, and those from other studios. You CAN re-create a model based very closely on one from another game, from scratch, using the usual tools. You could also use an existing in-game model, modify it to look like the one you want, and use that. Don't make it TOO perfect a copy, though, or someone will claim you directly exported it. Tweak it a bit - put a little originality in :)

1b (Hex) = 27 (Decimal) Handy hint. Open Windows Calculator, select "Hex", enter number in hex, select "Dec" and see the equivalent.

From the little I know about modding:- To change the mesh/texture side for a sheathed weapon is probably not TOO hard. However, once you start to trying to DRAW the weapon, you have to have a specific mirror-image drawing/sheathing animation for your opwn character to use, and if you equip a left-hand-sheathed weapon, it'll then be wrong for drawing THAT. There may also be links to the bones in the skeleton so that the sheathed weapon moves with your body - every one of those references has to be tird to the mirror image bone so that the sword moves correctly when sheathed.

"Red" in Bash means you are missing something which the file needs - or the thing it needs is being loaded after not before. Use BOSS to sort out your load order, then see what Wrye Bash gives you. You may well need to build a Bashed Patch - use the Wrye Bash pictorial tutorial to learn how.

If the water supply had REALLY gone, you'd expect problems for the inhabitants of the Imperial City - more ale consumption, rising ale prices, more public drunkenness (due to more ale), and probably additional random rat attacks due to them having been driven out of the sewers due to lack of water. Trying to create the necessary mini-ecosystem for even that is a load of work for someone :(

Hmm ... how about a mod to add thousands of hourly-respawning empty green litter bins with a "Keep Cyrodiil Tidy" logo... No, I'm NOT serious!

If you are worried about where she came from, open the console and click on her. The first two characters of the ID shown in the console should be the module she was created by, in load order, in Hexedecimal (use OBMM or Wrye Bash ro see the load order). So if the string is 0C012345, you are looking for the 12th (0C=12) module in the load order.

Dump them into a respawning chest

Readyboost is, in effect, a very fast virtual memory. As you run out of conventional memory, data is swapped out to hard drive - the "page file". What Readyboost does, near enough, is swap to the much faster solid state drive instead. If you plug a memory device that is too slow (such as a USB 1.1 drive or an old, slow memory card) it won't let you use it for Readyboost as the internal drive is faster.

I like the "Let the people drink" mod because of the drinking implication - would love to see it actually cause real problems once the water dries up but that would make it far more complex. You'd also have to set the starting point for the quest very carefully so your character could actually survive the quest if it was installed at the start of a new game.

Mention of a stream reminds me - no horse troughs in game!

I second that - it sounds like a great idea! I assume it's only a "realistic" thing to add if you have a cabin near a stream in-game - somehow it's not something to add to the waterfront hovel! One possible addition - an Ice Chest for frozen food, and someone cutting ice from local mountain top and delivering it to make a primitive 'fridge. Maybe a very expensive magical version available once you've earned enough cash - a great reason to keep dungeoneering!

I like the way you think! The idea of off-the-peg vs. made-to-measure is a good one, and would add an air of realism which is somewhat missing at the moment. Making yourself into one of the "gofers" would be a good move too - would expand some of the merchant quest mods nicely. I wonder if TheNiceOne fancies complicating the heck out of his nice neat "Enhanced Economy" mod...?

I was thinking further on the stuff above, and came to the conclusion that one thing really missing is the food trading / cooking aspect of life. Currently NPCs just exist, they eat respawning food (if anyone ever bothered to even add that to the AI script) and they wander a pre-determined path every now and then to give the appearance of interaction. How about this as an idea: (1) To a market area: Add several (say 3-5) food traders (possibly only on specific days - maybe even different ones). Their inventory can be respawning at first, maybe later leading to a proper food growing / selling mod. (2) To accommodation / characters: Add recipes. Add store cupboards with dry foods. Add perishable food storage and "Best before" dates for perishables. (3) Add to each character (or family group) a number of mouths to feed per day, and a budget. (4) Send said character shopping for food when stocks are low. (5) Add regular cooking / eating times into the daily routine. An ideal time period to catch NPCs at home is during the time they need to cook - and a better time to chat than at mealtimes maybe. From this idea:- (A) A beggar, for instance, once they have money will probably immediately go buy food, eat it, and then return to begging. Once they have eaten (say) twice in a day, they will save the money and buy food the next day. (B) A commoner will buy food for their group when they can afford it, checking all local traders to make the best use of their money, and will haggle for the best bargain. Their recipes will be for cheap but filling food, and they may need to buy from three or so separate traders to spend their money wisely. Excess money MAY be used to buy "staples" for the storecupboard to build up a buffer stock for favourite recipes. © A higher class citizen (or servant thereof) will work with higher status recipes, and tend to favour the more up-market merchants, and will order their requirements several days in advance from (probably) just one main merchant. The merchant may then source those requirements from other lower-class traders, and add his markup. At the end of a day, the amount sold will be re-stocked with a slight bonus quantity of the items - say 5% oversupply. As trading continues, the items being traded should show up as more common stock, maybe even at lower prices as they hold more stock and may even have over-stocked. Overstocking will result in smaller re-supply orders, and consequently a fall in stock held - driving prices a little higher. A dynamic economy should result. Obviously a vast simplification of a working system, but it could be tried in (say) a village with four or five houses, and maybe a couple of regular food traders. Of course, then we need a person who is gifted at scripting AND feels inspired by the idea enough to work on it.

Check your installation folders again - if you still don't have extra textures you may still be being nobbled by the UAC under vista or Win7. As mentioned above, install to <driveletter>\Games\Oblivion, not ANYTHING where windows is playing around with user access.

Suzy - it's worth checking your laptop CAN play Oblivion - it will crash on many laptops just because the graphics can't handle Oblivion. Your graphics card in the laptop needs to be either ATi or nVidia for starters - Intel graphics won't cut it You could also try Oldblivion to ease the strain on the graphics card.