MarkInMKUK

A good mix of stuff huh? On the surface it looks fine, but dig deeper and the cracks in their implementation start to show - but thankfully the modders are here to paper over many of the cracks

I tend to get the message when I've taken a pot-shot at someone in a dungeon and skewered a poor orcish adventurer. Not the best way for a stealthy but "good" character to behave, so I now try VERY hard to identify my targets properly first.

From a practical in-game viewpoint, the only place you MIGHT get problems with Exnems and HGEC is if you have a really extreme sized lower body, and use an exnems top clothing option and a HGEC LL-sized lower one, things might clip a bit. Basically, hands, feet and heads fit between the two, the body just fits between those and bulges more or less depending on size chosen. A large top half and small lower half is less problematic as the upper clothing will conceal the join at the waist. Of course, if you replace a H or K cup top body with an Exnem's bikini top, you WILL see a massive chest size reduction, as you've effectively made the character about a B-cup.

You might want to have a look at whatever they do in Two Worlds - that has animations for the player which represent the stages between walk and gallop - that might be a good basis for the "player animations" section. With npc's, it seems to me that you'd only need two speeds unless you start playing about with their AI to introduce more - so a walk and a gallop would be all you'd need.

If you are after increasing realism, you might want to keep an eye on our mod thread entitled "Proper" khajit and argonian bodyshapes/animations" . We're trying to improve the bodyshapes (and creating matching clothing) so they look more like beast races and less like "men in makeup". While not directly linked to the things you list above, some of the ideas at work may come in useful for your improved werewolf section. Wildlife - one thing which is massively unbalanced in vanilla Oblivion is the ratio of predators to prey animals. Obviously it's hard for the system to render dozens of creatures all the time, but having things like rabbits that form groups and then ALL run for cover as you or a predator approach would add a lot to immersion. Also bird alarm calls (even if you don't see the bird in question) when a non-concealed predator is around would be a useful heads-up for danger approaching, or could trigger increased wariness in your enemies if YOU spook the birds. (If you DO put rabbits in, PLEASE make them move like rabbits - one mod adds them and they hop when running, but WALK when moving slowly and rabbits just DON'T do that!) As far as the arena goes, it might also make a good place for formal duels - adding a way for upper class characters to settle disagreements in a formal way. There's also a small discussion thread which touches on aspects of economic realism here - you may find it interesting and it might spark more ideas - or help to rule some out. I also recall a thread a while back discussing "blocking animations for magic" - not sure whether that ever came to anything but it might be useful to look at.

Now THERE is an idea for an extension to the DB quests - be visited by Sithis himself in a dream to reveal the Night Mother is a fake. Your mission would be to find and rescue the true Night Mother, and arrange the swap back without the rest of the DB becoming aware - so you'd have a search and rescue mission, the true NM as a escortable companion who you had to protect, a stealth mission with assassination or kidnap, and even possibly a way apparently "kill" the Night Mother while leaving her and the organisation intact (might in turn lead into a mod that expands the Imperial Watch attempts to close the DB down)

Offtopic: Nice to see someone else who actually uses the correct plural for "agenda" :thumbsup:

@David Brasher - most of the information is culled from the book I recommended to Telyn a few posts back - it's just a very boiled-down version of a few chapter summaries. The rest comes from watching history- and archaeology-related programmes on TV - mostly Channel 4's "Time Team" and Tony Robinson's "Worst Jobs in History" series, plus reading a few well-researched historical series like Ellis Peter's "Cadfael" novels. History is fascinating stuff, but not always directly applicable to something like Oblivion. Because there's no "cause and effect" in the game world, there are some very odd happenings - like why are there sewers but no drains for storm water or toilets? Where does the sewer water COME from? All you can do when thinking about a mod, and aiming for realism, is which aspects of the approximate time period are relevant, and which just get in the way. In many ways, Nehrim is far closer to a "real feel" for the RPG world. Probably because it IS a total conversion mod, and the choices have been based a little more on realism and less on console-based hack-and-slash. I'm just hoping that Skyrim allows a more realistic feel to the game world, without wrecking the gameplay or story in the process.

Part of the problem is that preferred animations are a very personal thing. Everyone is going to want a different mix of items from that list to make their own preferred setup, and that makes for installation complexity. Plus you are wanting to custom define levels within "sneak", for instance - that means a script has to run and check EVERY character in the game for EVERY level you define in animations and select the correct one, both for npc s and yourself, and change those on-the-fly as characters and yourself change their settings. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it is a LOT of work for someone, and that may be why no-one has done it yet

It's a little outdated, but there's a good guide here for improving vanilla Oblivion step by step. I suggest read it in conjunction with the suggestions here and try things out step by step. @dallen86 - I hadn't spotted the inclusion of AWLS with All Natural - maybe I have an earlier AN version. I know it has the Natural Interiors system - are you sure you're not thinking of that?. Natural Vegetation is part of the Natural Environments setup, but All Natural replaces all of the other bits with more stable and currentl;y supported versions, Natural Vegetation is the only bit that isn't replaced. I also have Real Lights installed (from All Natural) for indoor lighting realism. I know there are alternatives to this, but I haven't yet investigated whether any are better, and Real Lights seems to be stable

My personal selection to improve the visuals is: One of the imperial city retexture mods - they vary from a very white version to a dark and dirty one. Qarl's Texture Pack 3 (I use the reduced and redimized version as my system would struggle with the full monty) All Natural Natural Vegetation one of several improved water mods - try them out to check which one you prefer one of the improved night sky mods Darnified UI (I use the dark version) Animated Window Lighting System some degree of improvement to the "viewable when distant" settings - several levels of mods for this Take a good look through the texture and mesh mods - there are some which patch specific textures or meshes to improve things like tiling on grass. There are "better" grasses and trees available too, but they should be tried one-at-a-time. Remember, if you are going to want to add other mods later, there's a limit to 255 active esm/esp files, so you may want to select mods with just one esp rather than ones with dozens of options in separate esp files. An example would be adding Better Cities and Unique Landscapes, and the myriad compatibility patches for other mods. Visually stunning, but they soon chew up the esp limit. The "All in one" Better Cities takes up far less than the modular version. I'd also suggest texture replacers for the clothing, armour and people, but that's a whole new can of worms...

Given FCOM can cover a multitude of possible mods, I'd suggest posting a full mod order (in spoiler tags) as it's obviously not a simple fix. Also check how you have built your Bashed Patch - I based my FCOM patch on the instructions given for the FCOM Superpack installation (check their forum for the settings)

Corrected bodies for Khajiit and Argonians. Wider conversation topics for npcs - and no $%^&%$ mudcrab conversations! Extra categories of weapons Light / medium / heavy armor types Short/long blade types Thrown weapons.

Check it isn't an alternative download, rather than an option at install time

The Roberts Male body has an "underwear" option, install the files for that option to the Khajiit / Argonian / Orc locations. You'll have to look at the directory structure to work it out, but it should be fairly straight forward.

You will need to find specific texture replacers for the Roberts body - the ones for other bodies do not map correctly onto the Roberts body.

There's a Russian made one called Elven Legacy that's worth a look in the RTS category. And (slightly retro) Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri / Alien Crossfire was always fun.

I believe you can already do this for the orcs and some of the custom races using Ozmos hi-res HGEC texture replacer packs - you may have to hand-install some of the underwear versions rather than using the global "everything nude" or "everything underwear" options, or run the installation twice with the relevant options selected or unselected to cover all versions. There are separate texture packs already available for Khajiit and Argonians so those should be easy. If you wanted to do assorted human races individually you might be ok with the texture packs too, but I vaguely recall some of the races use the default imperial skin texture and so whatever you do to the imperials will happen to them too

Another tip - read the readme file and if it says if requires another file or mod, install that FIRST. If the mod refers to a mesh from someone else's clothing replacer, and told you to install that first, you can't complain if you didn't do so.

If the above doesn't help: I'm not familiar with the details of the mod, but check for effects from things like the Hypothermia mod, as I would expect a chill or a fever to add shivering effects, which in turn SHOULD affect your sneak skill badly.

You might do best to ask on the CLS comment page or the forum - it's possible that if you have any other body texture replacers installed, the contrast between those and the CLS custom textures might be a little more obvious than it would be with vanilla skin textures.

Drifting a little off-topic, but... Comments on the historical style of Oblivion, and a few notes to give you a feel for the medieval period in England/Europe: Economy: The wages above would be way over-the-top for a medieval-ish real life setup - typically a skilled craftsman was on 3-5 copper coins (pennies) a day, of which maybe a copper's worth was food and drink for the day. At that earning rate, plus paying for replacement stuff for your job, it would take months to save for a semi-decent sword. That's one reason most people had a general purpose small dagger/knife as their main weapon. Also that explains the appeal of weapons such as a quarterstaff (cut down length of hard wood) or a simple bow (split and shaped yew, gut for a bowstring, straight pointed sticks with feathers for arrows). Of course, the cost of items was tied to wages too - a blacksmith would take a day to make (say) 100 horseshoe nails, so they would cost around a days wages for him - 3 coppers. There's no simple equation for seeing how prices have changed as so much these days is automated, but you could probably get some idea of prices from time taken. A farmer has to trade his crop, less enough for his family to eat from, for enough to buy next year's seed supply, so that's going to trade at (say) 500 coppers or 50 silver or 5 gold for a year's work. That level of wages would be enough to encourage characters into dungeon exploring in the hope of finding even a silver coin or two (equivalent of 10 coppers or so), let alone gold. Of course, that would mean that anything you found which was actually WORTH having would be out of the price range of most itinerant and low-class merchants - you'd be relying on those who supplied the middle/upper classes to be able to trade in gold. Character ages: While there were a few exceptions, especially among the rich and the upper clergy, the typical maximum age for a human in the 13-1400's was 45. An "adult" population would be mostly in the 18-30 age bracket, which is why it's actually not unrealistic to run a mod which makes most of the characters younger than you might expect.You'd expect beggers to be young too though, but either injured (lost hands/fingers/eyesight/whatever) or diseased to prevent them being forced to work at the menial jobs like gongscouring (mucking out the guarderobes or sewers). Veteran soldiers wouldn't be begging unless they were too badly injured to be of use. The only exception to this might be mental disability, but even then menial labour would be more likely than begging. People and animals: Generally, humans were shorter in the Medieval period - typically a male would be well under 5' 6" (1.65m) tall, horses were smaller (until the breeding programs that created the destriers and the like for knights to use) and cattle were MUCH smaller - maybe half the size of modern domestic breeds. Sheep were still uncommon - the move over to sheep farming came around the time of the Black Death, and whole villages were cleared of people where it became more economical to turn the land over to sheep farming for the wool. You probably wouldn't want to try and arm-wrestle with a swordsman though - unless you are a blacksmith you probably wouldn't have the sheer muscle bulk that someone training to swing a broadsword since age 11-12 would have built up. Crushing handshakes were probably the norm then, just because they expected other people to be a fit and strong as they were. Fighters tended to be bulky with muscle, traders were probably sometimes a little on the well padded side, and the lower classes were lean and stringy due to lots of work and not much to eat. Buildings and structures: The churches in Oblivion are somewhat Gothic in style, the pointed arches being a later development than the more simple arches seen in a lot of the human buildings around the game. This would be somewhat anachronistic in a medieval setting, as the gothic style came in later. The ships are also not shaped like medieval cogs, but are more like Elizabethan or later styles - in fact considerably later given how top-heavy ships such as the Mary Rose were. To make a little more sense of the setup in Oblivion, it's probably more Tudor in style than medieval. Post Black Death, the economy changed a lot as people became a valuable resource, and typical wages rose somewhat. The old class structures were revamped and people generally became richer. Wool brought in more money from overseas, boosting the economy too. Weaponry moved towards the longbow and crossbow, and heavily armoured knights, so horses were bred to be bigger and heavier. The beginnings of industrial processes for things like forging were creeping in, and things like swords became cheaper in real terms. Maybe a comparison with the time of Henry 8th or Elizabeth 1st is a better basis for any "real feel" mods, maybe even later.

Wrye Bash can export/import your character appearance into a new game. Alternatively there's a mod called Oblivion Face Exchange which also does so.

There is, of course, the HGEC A-Cup Clothing and Armor Replacer and HGEC AA A B and D Cup underwear to cover the stock stuff

Apologies for any annoyance I caused to any modders with what I said - maybe I should just shut up and let you people get on with it as you are managing just fine without my attempts to put both of my feet in my mouth at once.