MarkInMKUK

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.

Watch out - my ideas can get dangerous!

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.

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.

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.

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

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

EN probably stands for England - it always rains here :)

Those who have hijacked this thread on a "realism" discussion apologise, and have moved the realism mods discussion to Keeping it Real. Normal service on the roleplaying thread may now be resumed. Sorry once again Mark

Now if you're burying 'some of your own work' you should need to be careful around that spot in the future. To incorporate some of MarkinMKUK's idea (and I was ROTFLMAO on reading your post Mark) some time down the road you're picking flowers (or better yet some of those not so common so you can't pass them up grows where someone has died Cairn Bolette) for alchemical purposes and you forget you planted Alval (who so pissed you off with his arrogance you didn't even wait for the DB contract to 'cash his chit') right there. Look out behind you ... he's not happy!! :tongue: Give a man an idea and you'll perk his interest for a day. Teach a man to mod and the whole world will cease to exist for him for days at a time. Sorry Mark ... couldn't help myself. Plagiarism is my sin, but I've loved your sig for some time now. There, I think we're up to date now!

Before everything else - if you are on Vista or Windows 7, use BBen46's uninstall/reinstall guide and move Oblivion to C:\Games\Oblivion, not the default install path. Then make sure Oblivion is patched to v1.2.0416 - any other version may well not work with your mods. Then you are ready to try and fix the problem if it still remains: Firstly, download and install BOSS, and use it to sort your mod order. Generally, if you have more than one mod that changes a given area, the newest file date will win. BOSS alters this by changing the file dates so that the Oblivion game files are the oldest, then the mods in a specific order which is known to give minimal problems. Secondly, download and install Wrye Bash. It's a bit complex, but allows mods which affect the SAME area to be merged to some extent and work together. Use the help file to work through making a Bashed Patch 0.esp file, and allow it to set THAT active and deactivate any mods it has merged into the patch. That should sort out the problems, unless there is something you missed in the readmes.

Highohall - if you take a look at the Claudia's Little secret mod, the author has managed to do scripted animation sequences with an invisible viewer - that method may work as an alternative for you for making movies. That would let to play and re-play stuff until you had it exactly as you wanted, camera angles and all.

I think to see the activity cycles more clearly, you'd need to have a longer day length. That is, of course, not difficult but we'd have to check what quests it broke - I know there are a couple of time-sensitive ones from reading the UESP. Day cycles wouldn't apply underground necessarily - rats in sewers or caves should stay at a single activity level, or on random 24 hour cycle for each rat or group of rats (set per spawn point?). We had a discussion on seasons in a different thread - it would take some work to give a seasonal look to Cyrodiil. It's possible, of course, that the planet has next-to-no axial tilt, hence the very limited effects of seasons. That would change the whole suggested pattern above, removing the seasonality. However, many of the plants we see in-game require a cold spell to germinate properly, and the broadleaf trees often require a dormant period to grow well, so maybe seasons should be a thing to look at. There is the Enhanced Seasons mod which adds seasonal effects to the game - could be a useful starting point.

Idea for basis of realistic creature interactions: Hunters - Predators and Prey system Probably based on a resource-per-cell system, with cells allocated a resource by location (height, type of ground, presence of certain vegetation, etc) 1: "Manna" - bottom of food chain - a resource that self-regulates if no predators are present. This is "food" for the smallest prey animal we select. The quantity of "manna" should vary with season, with a minimum mid-winter, increasing through spring to a maximum at late summer, then a decrease in autumn back to the winter level. 2: "Vole" - lowest (possibly visible) food chain animal. Voles breed at 8-week intervals producing litter of 8 more voles which can breed at age 16 weeks, once weather is warm enough (Spring/Summer/Autumn?/Not winter). Each vole consumes X amount of manna per day. If food supply drops below X per vole per day, some form of culling mechanism must operate to reduce the number of voles. 3. Predators (Wolves) - hunt and eat voles. Predator must have supply of Y voles per day to start to breed. Breeding pairs needed. Breeding once per year, litter of two pups takes 6 months to rear. Mother requires additional voles per pup (Y x (month number/6) per pup?) to bring pups to independent size. Hunting for voles - adults must have time to hunt for food - hunting animation needed. Weaning pups - pups may start to hunt themselves at some age - pups then take voles and mother's requirement drops by number they catch. 4: Other prey - Ideally wolves should, once in larger number packs, hunt other animals such as rabbits and deer. Both of these have seasonal food supply based on grass, and breeding should follow above vole pattern but slower and smaller litters. Interaction with humans: Wolves more likely to attack humans if hungry. Wolf can survive on 80% of Y for winter months, but will become progressively more aggressive as time below 100% of Y increases. If vole population drops below 80% wolves will randomly become starving, and will die in 1 game week. Remaining wolves will have less density of population compared to density of voles so should be able to eat better. If attacking human, wolf will accept dropped meat in place of attacking human as its immediate "prey" - one meat joint will restore "normal" aggression to wolf for 24 game hours, after which aggression slips back to "correct" level over next few days.

Please read this first:- This topic is for general discussion of things which we feel would enhance the "realism" of the Oblivion world - not just cosmetic improvements, but the underlying processes which would allow things like politics, social relationships, trade and ultimately the life and death of the npc's and the player to have real meaning. This may involve all kinds of discussion - from planning the location of a castle or village, through construction or layout of a house, to the relationships between Khajiits and Argonians in Cyrodiil. Comparison with real-world examples are also encouraged, and discussions of the reasons behind those real examples is even more encouraged. Links to relevant mods are encouraged, but should be given with a statement of WHY the mod enhances the realism of the world. If you disagree, feel free to say so, but only if you present an alternative for discussion which you feel would improve the mod. While this thread may eventually lead to the making of a mod or mods, it is not here for people to request a mod to be made - we already have a forum to do that. Some of the initial posts will probably be copy/pasted from a previous thread which was inadvertently hijacked by this topic - this is deliberate so that newcomers can follow how we got to where we are now in the discussion. The previous thread can be found HERE for those who want to follow the complete version. Finally, check the whole thread occasionally - sometimes stuff may be added to a specific earlier topic within the thread, maybe by adding to an existing post to clarify something. Check "date edited" for any posts with an edit mark. (Like this one)

Pssst - Telyn - Try Kalekos Smaller Moons

It's telling you what it assigns as tags for Wrye Bash to integrate the information into its bashed patch. It means you should then run Wrye Bash, and build the bashed patch, which will then disable the mods it has integrated and mean that oblivion is loading less data files and should therefore be more stable and faster. Read the readme for Wrye Bash first though as it can also make the game more flaky if you blindly click boxes without understanding stuff.

BOSS is Better Oblivion Sorting Software - it sets the load order of most mods into a known-to-cause-minimal-trouble order by adjusting file dates. You also probably need Wrye Bash (which is a more complex install but really DOES help long-term) to allow you to merge the effects of certain mods to be sure you know what order they are being applied in. When you download BOSS, be sure to update to the latest masterlist.txt - this is updated frequently and should ensure more recent mods are correctly sorted. once run, read the output file and look for errors and warnings, and where possible correct them. I haven't added links because i'm squeezing this into my break at work and don't have time to hunt them down.

I'm English, and am old enough that I was brought up using feet and inches, until age 8 when we officially swapped to the metric system. Much as I agree it's far more logical, and I use it every day in drawings at work, I still THINK in feet and inches for heights of people or room dimensions. What's really odd is I happily use metric for almost everything else, I cook happily in g and kg, I work in °C not °F, and I've never had a problem working in metric currency. As for conversion, I have an Android Smartphone and run an app called Realcalc which converts almost anything to almost anything else perfectly - saves SO much head-scratching!