MarkInMKUK

Actually, 5'8" tall is VERY tall for a female in a pre-industrial society. Even today, the average female height is slightly below that, and back in the middle ages she'd have been considered a giant! Lovely looking character with a great back story :)

if you run at the native resolution, oblivion generates the image at 1366 x 768 and it displays with no more work. If you run at a different resolution (say 640 x 480), your graphics chip then has to convert that to the full screen res (which is STILL 1366 x 768), by scaling the image, and calculating partial pixels where it's not an exact scaling match, and adding borders to fill the wide screen, which is extra work so slows stuff down. Also the result of scaling lower res stuff looks horrible.

Useful tip - thanks

If it's originally from another game, a direct conversion would be breaking forum rules. A "look-alike" made from scratch would be ok, though, if I recall the rules correctly.

@Telyn - Talking of warding properties, garlic planted on places you interred most characters should prevent them rising as a vampire. Werewolves, however, we'd need wolfbane. It MIGHT make sense to add preventative items to the corpse's inventory to "keep them dead", or at least built the idea in as a later expansion. Accidental production of undead: I suggest that the most suitable way to deal with this is pick up on the "death of an innocent" as used to start the Dark Brotherhood questline. The general concept of "uneasy spirits" fits well with a character being haunted by the ghosts of those he killed without warning, or those with unfinished business. And as a really fun twist, how about rigging it so if YOU kill the adoring fan, you are haunted by him until you can find a way to lay his ghost to rest? Burial practices: Cremation would lead to a minimal number of physical undead, and a lot of bonemeal :) If you think back to the Morrowind tombs, often opening the urn with cremation ash in would trigger a ghost - and that makes sense. Suspected werewolves would be buried with wolfbane, and more would be planted around tomb doors (I'm thinking the old Lon Chaney, Jr. "Wolfman" movies too here). Suspected vampires were buried with stakes through the heart, and/or garlic necklaces, and often a brick between their teeth. Any suspected potential undead were also buried face-down so that they could only dig away from the surface. I believe there's a mod which gives killed undead a percentage chance to rise again - this may be a useful idea too. Mass graves have great potential in a mod with a mad necromancer and a zombie invasion plot - endless waves of the undead raised from the pit. I certainly think there's mileage in adding a "disturb the tomb, disturb the dead" script, with a chance that you will have to fight the occupant if you open a coffin. Plague: The simplest plague to mimic would be Bubonic, as there appear to be plenty of rats around. Maybe a specific "black rat" which carries plague would be a good idea - it could have a specific script added to check probability of contracting it. You could also have a "rat population" script that could check for cats and other rat-killers, and keep the population down if there are cats around (Yes, we'd need to add a variation on a cats & rats mod). Plenty of long-term things to think about, but I suggest nothing immediate, it's too reliant on a "working world" to make it a really good mod. One problem with massed death is the lack of a usable wagon - you have to haul out the dead somehow and currently you can't do that easily. Also the population of places like the Imperial City is way too low for a pre-plague set-up, the density of people is more like a modern housing estate than a primitive near-slum. It's a shame we have no children in Oblivion - kids playing and singing "Ring-o-Roses" would be nicely chilling and drop an early hint as to the reason for a rash of unexplained deaths. Maybe a "Pied Piper of Hamelin" quest to remove the rats from the town? P.S. Is there a prize for the most thoroughly hijacked thread on the forum? We may well be able to compete for it!

To remove the pop-in visible effect, try one of the depth of field mods so that it happens "out of focus", and add a very little fog so that it's also very slightly obscured. Admittedly you won't be able to see the whole of Cyrodiil from the top of a mountain anymore, but it WILL look less unrealistic

Put in a quest to be done in ghost form, where you have to find the items for a resurrection. A good character could have to visit a priest or priestess of a specific Divine, and an evil character would have to visit the plane of a specific Daedra to trigger the quest (or quests - they could well be totally different). Different races could also have different Divines/Daedra they are associated with. For equipment transfer, the stages might be: Player becomes "ghost" and reassign skill points to a pool to be reused. "Ghost" still has everything in inventory at this point. Create lootable body using previous character as physical template, with all relevant gear on it. "Ghost" now has an empty inventory. Menu to select restart or "carry on" option. Restart forces restart in jail (or whatever alternative start location you may have a mod for) "Carry on" Puts you through the character generation screen, and then immediately into a level-up menu with ALL of your skill points to "spend" - this may mean having to trigger several consecutive screens to account for your character's level). Here comes the first problem: WHERE do you place a newly created character with no gear so they are close to the corpse, but safe: given they have no gear, just whatever spells they have by default?

<evil grin> You could integrate the burial mod with a gardening one - many plants grow faster and better if you plant them over a corpse. Traditionally (in some areas of the world) grape vines are planted with a dead cat or dog under the roots... Diseases ... could you check for the presence of a corpse in the cell you are in, and would that give you sufficient localisation to be likely to be infected by it? I also think that a timed corpse decay is good, and maybe 2/3 days after death start to hear flies buzzing if nearby - that's the start of the infectious stage. Once partially rotted, the corpse should maybe have a chance (or an option if a spell cast) to reanimate as a zombie, and once the flesh is gone, as a skeleton. If it's outdoors it should also attract predators if fairly fresh - say a day or two old - so you'd have to fight off wolves or bears to get to the corpse if you need to return to it. And once buried - how about necromancers employing grave robbers to get more bodies? The Burke & Hare mod...

That's one good reason to disable the network before playing Oblivion :wallbash:

If you have installed just Oblivion, and patched it to 1.2.0416, and THEN installed Shivering Isles, you have a sort of mongrel installation. You can't do Oblivion / Oblivion Patch / Shivering Isles / Shivering Isles patch as it just won't work right. Firstly, if you are on Vista or Windows 7, install Oblivion to C:\Games\Oblivion not the default location, it stops UAC mucking stuff up with mods and settings. You need to install Oblivion, then Shivering Isles, then apply any remaining Official patches by selecting the Shivering Isles versions NOT the Oblivion versions, before then applying any unofficial patches. If you do just the Oblivion and Shivering Isles install (and Knights of the Nine as that's part of the GOTY edition), make sure that is patched to 1.2.0416 (Shivering Isles patch, but the GotY edition should already be that version once installed), then run through the tutorial dungeon, you should get a pop-up message about a mysterious island. That shows that Shivering Isles is working correctly. Once you know THAT is ok, THEN continue with unofficial patches, etc. Also if you have added any quest delayer mods like SM Plugin Refurbish, they WILL delay the start of various DLC mods until certain points - I believe this is also true of the shivering Isles quest. If you haven't, then ignore the last bit.

Oh, you almost scared me for a minute :) Yeah im not like that really hehehe *kicks dead body under bed* It's no good kicking it - you need to shift the other ones over a bit to make room :)

Firstly, do you have Shivering Isles installed? That changes the patch you need. Secondly, if you do NOT have Shivering Isles installed, do you have the US or European or some other release of the game - again, that is relevant. Then read this thread which has a set of patch links and a howto posted on it.

UESP Wiki Console Tutorial

Do you REALLY want your enemies to have target-seeking spells? After all, they have the same magic abilities you do. Personally i like to be able to dodge incoming fireballs ... I have no wish to be toast!

This sounds like a fascinating idea. If done properly it would be an immense task though. Reuniting the Morag Tong and Dark Brotherhood would be an epic task, and would take a lot of very complex plotting and many stages to make it a believable event. You'd need to work on having access in the Oblivion world to Morrowind locations, so effectively adding the whole of a Morrowind landmass to the existing Cyrodiil landscape, with a travel method or methods which are believable. That would be possible, of course, because of the hard work of other modding teams, but would be very complex. You would also need Morrowind to eventually have its own side-quests which can be run while doing your main quest, as otherwise the effort which has been put into the landscape and people of Morrowind would be almost worthless. I suggest working out a stage-by-stage plot for the main quest, including locations needed. That will give you some idea of the number of new NPCs wanted, and the number of locations which will need to be populated. Then see if you can work on an introductory part to the mod. You could probably start the mod in Cyrodiil easily enough, and that would make it relatively quick to do. The later stages would then have to be more complex, but the way the intro mod is received will tell you how many people might be interested in playing the finished item. Also a successful intro mod will let you have something to show other modders who you may wish to help.

I honestly can't remember which mod it was, and I haven't found it again since I reloaded Oblivion some months back. It may have been a pre-release one - I remember it was buggy as anything. If I find it again, or a similar working one, I'll let you know. Edit: I think it was probably this mod, but I used it ages back so I'm not sure, I just vaguely remember dragging ladders around by using the Z key. at the time it was Anvil only. The bugginess may well have been other mods I was trying.

Just use the console to set the ingame time ratio - takes about 20 seconds Pull up the console using the ~ key if in the US, or the ¬ key on a UK keyboard (or check your manual for local key needed). Type set timescale to <qty> where 30 is the default, and 1 is a 1:1 ratio. For 12 hours real to 24 in game, use 2, for 6 hours use 4. Close the console again Altering the value of timescale can cause bugs to occur during various quests (e.g., A Brush with Death, Where Spirits Have Lease). Resetting timescale to the default value of 30 fixes the bugs.

If you are installing on Windows 7, do NOT install the game in the default location. Change the install path to c:\Games\Oblivion as this will stop the Win7 User Account Control system cutting in and preventing mods and ini file changes from working correctly.

I didn't aim for any kind of realism on my first play-through, and that was fine, but by the second or third time I was beginning to realise what COULD be done. So now I run assorted realism mods to force me to eat/sleep / whatever, and to some extent the world around me is forced to work that way too. Playing a stealthy character, I'm always on the lookout for mods to add things like climbable walls, upper windows you can enter, etc. I'm running a low level female Bosmer character having just restarted. During the day (when not adventuring) she dresses in "nice" clothing, to blend in. "At work" she currently wears a nightblade armor (I'm running a full FCOM install so get the pick of the OOO armors), which she "liberated" from a dead body in the tutorial dungeon (he was duelling with a mythic dawn assassin in the sewer, and when he lost she shot the victor before she could heal). She always changes back out of the nightblade stuff before interacting with non-enemy characters, as a real person would. She even returns to her house to change if possible, before selling loot off, as a real person wouldn't lug excess clothing around when adventuring, unless they expected to HAVE to be interacting. One mod I intend to try (if I can find one I like) is one to change the way npc's react depending on how you are dressed. Social status should change their reaction, as should armor type - Dark Brotherhood clothing should drop Imperial disposition to a VERY low level ideally, and even if they then see you in vanilla clothing, it should take a long time to recover, if ever. Of course, the problem there is if ONE imperial sees you, they ALL have their disposition changed instantly, rather than the information spreading slowly (say at shift change within a city, or at distance-related intervals if travelling), but implementing such a radical change would (I believe) involve each and every guard being a separate named npc not a generic character as a bare minimum. NOT a simple, easy mod. OK, ok - I'm a pseudo-realism freak.

The Better Cities Imperial City adds a second level to the city, especially in the Market District. But the style of architecture for most of the houses is unsuitable for adding a third or higher storey.

For the economy stuff, having a quiet word with TheNiceOne will probably pay dividends - he might already have worked out how to add in smaller value coins. The clothing we have is late 1300's leading into 1400s at it's earliest - the sleeve as a separate part of clothing didn't come in til nearly 1400. Housing is timber or half-timber in many of the rural areas - but not a bay-type construction very often, so it's a later developed style than about 1650. Before then you'd have a series of cross-sections joined into one structure, each one being raised separately and fixed on with wooden pegs. Thatch is a very early development, so the roofing could be any time. The fittings on doors would appear to be some very solid wrought iron, so could easily be earlier than 1400. Glass blowing for the alchemical stuff would be rather later though, to get the quality of glass shown - Renaissance era maybe? Pick and choose, I guess :)

OK - as long as you have a policy in place :)

A suggestion for any cosmetic mods like armors - make versions for the popular body mods too, as otherwise your entire comments page will be full of people whining that you didn't do them for Exnem's / BAB / HGEC / DMRA / TGND / whatever ... and weight them for BBB or you'll get that faction nagging too

Alternative bod model is the BAB one - that is a long-distance-runner kind of build for the body so slim and lean and no oversized chesticles

Telyn, I think you may do better looking at the Tudor period for a representative economy - other than the Legion, almost everything else fits better as 15/16th century or a little later. Elizabethan/Shakesperean England would probably be a lot easier to research too, given we have so many more records regarding that time. There are a couple of TV series you might want to look for as well - "Tony Robinson's Crime and Punishment" looks at the historical foundation of the English legal system from the Romans onwards, and "What the Tudors did for Us" looks at the impact the Tudors had on modern life, which is a good way to see which items may be anachronistic and which are just unexpected. One thing that may take a little tinkering in the Oblivion engine is coins, and getting the correct "change" in the minimum number of gold, silver and copper coins. Also exchanging coins for higher or lower denomination with no profit or loss on the trade - unless it's "foreign" coins (do Elsweyr/Morrowind/Skyrim coins have a different value and need an exchange rate, hence buying and selling at different costs?) However, if you DO decide on a medieval setting, I'll certainly give it a try - the economic changes and challenges would be interesting to say the least. I'd also love to try and play a Cadfael-type character - an ex-warrior cleric puttering about his herb garden, but also doing detective-type stuff on quests, which a medieval background would be FAR better for than the later setting. Maybe I'll have to learn modding myself... :(