MarkInMKUK
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Posts posted by MarkInMKUK
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Realism discussion point - Guns / Cannons / Gunpowder / Rockets
I've just been watching a TV programme (Time Team Special: Wars of the Roses) which reminded me that field artillery was actually in use in Britain by the 1460's, albeit in a primitive way. Furthermore, and competent blacksmith could actually turn out a 2" / 50mm bore cannon in well under a day, just using a forge, hammer and anvil.
Meanwhile, the Chinese had been using rockets for ceremonial purposes for thousands of years, although not usually as a warfare device. The Western world adopted rockets and almost instantly turned them to weapon use.
So...
What level of development of guns / rockets is likely / acceptable within the confines of Oblivion? Are Alchemists likely to be developing gunpowder? Who, if any, within the game are likely to be working on guns or rockets? Would Dwemer ruins turn up some form of gunpowder-based weapon (remembering the use of explosives in mining) and if so, who would be using them.
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If you want to be able to add mods to Oblivion, with SI, you WILL need a disk release or the Steam version of Oblivion. The Steam Deluxe version comes with all (I think) of the DLC modules, the Disk "Game of the Year" comes with just Knights of the Nine, and you would need to either buy and download the others, or hunt down a copy of the Knights of the Nine CD which had all apart from Battle horn Castle DLC included.
We don't support "downloaded from somewhere" disk images and will give no help to people who use them.
As for the .7z files, a recent version of Winzip or Winrar would extract them, or download 7zip (free) which creates them)
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Generally, the most nearly "correct" load order can be achieved by downloading BOSS (Better Oblivion Sorting Software), updating its masterlist.txt, and running it. It'll organise the files into an almost certain-to-run-ok order.
When you get more into modding, you'll probably also need a tool called Wrye Bash to handle two mods which both alter the same item or aspect of the gamne play.
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The hi-res textures minimiae the colour difference, but the change in colour is due to the way Oblivion renders the face and body differently. Nothing will completely remove it. There is a neck seam minimiser which adds necklaces to hide the join line - that can help a little
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Talking of the Braveheart moment - a much earlier version occurred to me - a scene right near the end of one of the British "Carry On" comedies - "Carry On Up The Khyber". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8atKXFZefA the scene in question is at about 5m40.
Regarding encumbrance - the "Nailed to the floor" approach is another immersion breaker. Once you hit a ceretain level, a sliding scale of apeed drop would be far more realistic - heck, I can actually lift and stagger with 200+kg (440+ pounds) of steel pipe, but probably can't manage normal walking speed much over 80 pounds load for any period of time, and a flat-out run requires no encumbrance. Coupled with the "Inventory as a backpack" mod, that set of effects would make things much more immersive. I haven't YET dug into the depths of the "Real fatigue"-type mods to see what they do in that way - it's possible it is already scripted. If so, adding your slowing down effect when wet would be relatively easy I would think.
Speaking of clothing,there is a mod out there someplace which begins to affect npc reactions to you based on what you are, or are not, wearing. Again, I haven't yet tried it, but it would seem a sensible one to add. Being arrested for public exposure, or propositioned on street corners if you are in "skimpy" clothing, would seem very much in keeping with immersion.
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I've seen a mod that makes them have a sort of silver layer over them ... but nothing that looks realistically damp for clothing - it might look semi-ok on bare skin.
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Getting the beggars under shelter is one thing ... getting the shelter to stop the rain coming through is another.
Now THAT would be one of the best realism improvers out there. I know there's one mod that tried to do it, but failed. Workable umbrellas maybe?
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Hi Telyn,
Good set of mods - I foresee a happy hour or two downloading and installing tonight. Hopefully with some work we can overcome the game's inherent bias towards making AI stand for "Absolute Idiocy".
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There is already a Dwemer skyship. That might be a good starting point for what you are describing.
Expand that a bit - have a trading network using the skyship or ships. Then add in pirates with the same technology, and you have your combat situations.
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This mod adds a gauntlet weapon.
For the styling of the glove, you'll need to look around - I think I may have seen a Wolverine-type claw set someplace, but it may need the modder's permission to convert from Fallout to Oblivion format.
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The noise problem would be pretty much a whale-only issue - they are the only creatures I'm aware of that use subsonics to communicate. I just prefer geothermal on the grounds that it's relatively unobtrusive - surface buildings and power pylons and that's more-or-less it.
... and that's despite the fact I work for a company more likely to benefit indirectly if they go the wind farm route.
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Wind farms tend to raise a lot of opposition. For starters, the noise generated by the turbines is propagated down the support and resonates in the water. Given Japan's history of wanting to continue whaling, anything that adds low frequency noise to the area will tend to frighten off whales and as such may cause protests. That's in addition to the usual complaints about ruined views and danger to shipping / wildlife / whatever. Then there's cable to bring power to shore. And how consistent is the wind? It's an intermittent supply at the mercy of weather conditions ... and also very unlikely to be tsunami-proof, which may also be a design consideration.
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A few thoughts on "Difficulty"
I've been tinkering around with assorted mods which alter the balance of the game. The problem seems to be that they apply a global change, which doesn't really make sense. So most of this applies just to vanilla Oblivion.
For example - the tutorial dungeon (which everyone has done). Enemies - several rats, 1 Zombie, 8 goblins, possibly Mythic Dawn assassins if you are fast and aggressive enough. On easy, rats are a simple kill, and the zombie falls to three or four arrows or a couple of fireballs. On medium, rats suddenly take at least TWO arrows to kill them? Now come on, an arrow is designed to kill an unarmoured man, ideally with a single shot. Is it REALLY reasonable to take TWO to kill EVERY rat you meet? Maybe the occasional rat you'd miss hitting it cleanly, but it should at LEAST slow the damn thing down because it's pretty badly injured. But no - they comme galloping up to you at full speed trailing an iron arrow that should weigh in at half as much as they do. As for the zombie - that's getting tough by this stage. I try very hard to let the rats take it down for me first.
So - is there a better way of scaling? Maybe give rats high agility so they can dodge stuff, but still be killed easily with a direct hit. The zombie should be tough to beat, I agree, but it should STILL slow down if half-cooked and turned into a pincushion. What does the game engine allow us to do to make these more reasonably balanced enemies.
Then there's the goblins. The first two are pretty easy no matter what settings you use. However things become a little ... odd ... in the main cavern. With no mods, I can sneak and snipe any or all of them on easy or medium, and generally take only two, or maybe three, arrows on hard. But ... why the heck don't they ALL respond when the first one sees you and screeches a warning? If the legion guards can know you have committed a crime in another city, surely a goblin should at least wonder why another one is either screaming "Look, there's a human/elf/orc/whatever", or dropping on top of him full of holes and leaking blood.
Open for discussion and ideas.
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This image has a dragon crossguard - is this even remotely close to what you are after?
The problem with a hand-and-a-half/bastard sword having this style of hilt is the need to swap from one to two-hand use - and the dragon tail getting in the way during the changeover, also limiting the ways you can turn the sword once you HAVE got both hands in place. Try wrapping some wire around a stick to approximate the hilt, and then try to swap between single and dual hand, and you'll soon see the problem.
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That's usually caused by a download manager trying to grab the linked .php file which runs the download process. Turn off any download manager for this site and see if it fixes the problem.
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Judging by your use of English, although very clear and precise, you're not a native speaker, but if you are buying the Game of the Year edition I would strongly suggest the English language version for maximum compatibility with mods. Other localised language versions sometimes throw up some very odd errors with mods, and English language mods are most likely to work reliably as they are the most extensively downloaded and complained about if something is wrong. Also I don't know whether the Downloadable Content official expansions (referred to as DLC mods) are all available in other language versions, and some mods use those as pre-requisites.
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Firstly you don't appear to have the unofficial patches installed - they do a lot of bug fixing and are highly recommended/essential.
AA/A-cup stock clothing replacers exist for the HGEC body - just take a little finding.
Download and use BOSS for the load order, making sure you update the masterlist.txt to the latest version first. It will give you a nearly perfectly optimised load order, unless you specifically want to override it.
Big quest mods - try The Lost Spires or Integration: The Stranded Light
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And as a general point for anyone else reading this, it was originally about the Fukushima incident, so to bring it back a tad: Given that the development time of a new technology can be decades as a best case, what *current* alternatives are there to nuclear power for Japan?
As I suggested earlier - given Japan's position on a subduction zone edge, it should be ideally suited to geothermal power. The technology is about as robust as any available, is inherently safe apart from the usual dangers inherent to all power plants (steam leaks, etc), and is also a fairly mature technology having been in use in Iceland and similar areas for decades.
Obviously there's a scale consideration - this will be a massive series of power plants to replace what has been damaged, and to allow for future expansion - but at this point what has the power company got to lose? By building what is perceived as a "green" power source using a renewable resource, and using the very natural resource which gave rise to the previous accident, their publicity department could make this a very acceptable alternative.
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Watch out - my ideas can get dangerous!
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Plenty of those around. Some are less compatible than others, so pick and choose carefully. Reading the comments forums for ones you like will tell you how easy or hard they are to get to behave.
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Remember the golden rules of modding:
(1) Install one mod at a time, and test it still works.
(2) Backup the data before any major modding spurt.
(3) CAREFULLY read the howto for Wrye Bash, and if in doubt, ASK. A dud Bashed Patch can seriously knacker your gaming experiences.
(4) Even the BEST rig can be brought to its knees by Oblivion and mods. Unique Landscapes / Better cities / QTP3 and the Anvil Waterfront can turn into a slideshow on ANY PC, especially with any additional mods which add more stuff there like alternative start mods.
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Start with the patches!!!!
Install it to C:\Games\Oblivion, NOT the default place
Install Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine. Install any DLC modules. It should already be at v1.2.0416, so no more official patches are needed.
Install the Unofficial Patch, the Shivering Isles Unoffisial Patch, and the Unofficial Official mods patch.
Then onto mods proper:
Winston Earle's Oblivion Crash Prevention System (WeOCPs)
Fastexit
3GB Memory Patch.
One or more of those may need OBSE v20 - that was next on my list anyway.
Finally install Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM) and Wrye Bash.
Save a backup of the whole install, and that is the best place to start installing other mods on top.
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Thanks for the update, Drake. That sounds incredibly useful, it would mean custom skeletons would be possible for each beast race ... wonder whether different ones for male and female would be possible too, as current setups compromise on body proportions a bit (ignore me if that sounds like cloud-cuckooland stuff).
Optimised skeletons would ultimately lead to possibly enhanced races - imagine retractable claws on Khajiit paws rigged to an additional set of bones ...
Darn, you lot are clever. All I do is spout ideas, and you make them HAPPEN.
Shame I can only give one kudo to each, and I already did that.
Mark
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Well, there's a few clashes I can see at first glance:
Claudia's Little Secret clashes with some of the CM partner's scripting - if you read the CLS readme it covers that.
It also may have problems with the animation replacers, so if it does funny things that's why.
Salmo the Baker is known to cause unexplained CTDs too - have a good read of the warning messages in the BOSS output.
Check compatibilites between some of your files - you seems to have several files together that all do the same thing, and it's possible they clash - the three persuasion overhaul ones for instyance. Look carefully at the FCOM install guides for them.
Update your masterlist.txt file and re-run BOSS, it may sort the more recent stuff into order. I'm pretty sure SM Cute Elf should be WAY further up the load order than it is, for starters.
Then the fun REALLY begins... because someone else will have to advise you from there
can you only do one? exenize or robertize (male)
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