Jakisthe

So this is a bit out of the blue, but it's been at the back of my mind for years now. I was the "designer" behind a [probably definitely-over-ambitious] vampire mod years ago, before I started work/got out of school. Suffice to say I hugely underestimated how much time work would take, and on top of that, my coders house burned down and he had to remove himself from my project, and I lost the password to the email linking me to most modding accounts. Now though, I've finally fixed the email thing, and have decided that my mod users deserve at least a stable-er release than where I last left them. The issue, however, is that I can't code for the life of me, not even a little bit, and frankly don't even know where to start with what turned out to be an obscenely complicated mod. I do know, however, that I made a promise, and I don't want to renege on it. Hence the it being in the back of my mind for years now. Suggestions? Direction? I don't even know if this is the right place for it, but I need to make it right somehow :/

Truth be told, I have all BSR threads sending emails to my phone account whenever someone posts anew since I last viewed the thread (and no more till I look again). I suspect MM does something similar as well. Suffice to say, while I AM ridiculously busy, I do see and take note of just about everything :)

Mmm...finally, a long area of discussion in MY area of expertise :P Two things right off the bat though: -I am trying to keep it away from simple stat shifts, much to MMs chagrin, and actually open new doors of gameplay -Most of these are side, or at best, diagonal-grades. Very few straight up; that was by design. Avoiding power creep is one of my main focuses, and I don't want players to feel handicapped because they don't have such an such perk. Remember, it's not like the vanilla game, where less perks in one tree means more in another. Everyone is a vampire. Let's get cracking! "1. Lust for Power: Upon reaching starving, you have 10/15/20/25/30 seconds to satiate yourself, or you’ll turn into the vampire lord for 5/4/3/2/1 minutes. 0/20/40/60/80" Akumu: Does this suggest the lord transformation will not be an anytime use ability like DG vanilla? I'm hoping that's not the case. If it's just another(sort of immersive?) way to add in the vampire lord, while it still being an toggable power, then it still doesn't sound like a good perk tree ability to me. If it's the latter I think it should be added but not as a perk. Kind of like the Tales of Lycanthropy mod moon based transformation but a vampire adaptation, meaning you go berserk because of the hunger not from the moon. It makes you transform after a certain time(every 1-2 hours?), until you get off of the starvation level. "Power Bites" may can help towards getting satiated and prevent starvation. After all a vampire lord is the last stage of evolution and shouldn't be as hard to get a blood fix but should have a greater thirst than the "lesser" vampires to maintain control over such power. Pixie: Dunno if I understand this one. You use a perk to penalize yourself and force a change? Not sure it even makes sense as the change only lasts a couple minutes when starving instead of till you feed? I think it would make more sense if BSR just forced you when starving to go Lord form and hated until you feed and this perk would just maybe reduce the mana cost on Sumo Mortalis to help you hold off these affects? Me: This one, besides being an alternate way to get lord (which is to say, yes, you can use it normally), is two fold: a) to present an additional wrinkle to starvation, with all the power and weaknesses that come with it, and b) to provide an element of risk for those who partake in the skill tree. Again, I am loath to introduce things which are pure power upgrades, else it begins to eclipse the other balance in the game and the mod. I wanted this initial perk to be something which all players would have to accept in their path to greater power (along with a few added negatives). Not to mention, depending on how I balance the acquisition of using lord in the first place, considering this is free, it may very well be a good thing to begin with. "2. Vitiate: Regression is now automatic should you meet the requirements." Akumu: another perk that doesn't fit the concept of the perk tree. While the starter abilities are usually smaller compared to the later perks, this just doesn't help you "grow" at all. 1) this could be added as a regular concept and stop the current wait period required to actually regress. 2)add an extra effect to it. Since Vitiate also means to spoil or taint, adding in the vampire lords(for the transformed state) Poison Talons could fit well here or a Drain effect if not poison. This minor change still gives that sense of growth. note: I think the vampire should remain the opposite of a werewolf(more magic based) so the claws should not become too overpowered but good enough once perked as that would completely destroy the point in being a werewolf for those that still want that as an option while using this mod. Pixie: Another perk point spent to penalize yourself. Dont like this one. Me: Yep, this one is a straight up bad one, no bonuses here. What IS important to note is that it opens a much, MUCH quicker path to Transcendence. This one is meant to be "optional", in that someone who just wanted the consummate evolution of the ability would have to give up control...or wait like everyone else. What's more, it's not so much a starter perk...just the one which I labeled "2" because I was lazy :P "3. Transcendence: Vampire perk points can now be used as normal perk points." Akumu: I really do not like this idea as it unbalances, what I think, is the basic design of Skyrim. You fight and become stronger with what you use. While the idea of mixing and matching your perk points with the vanilla game tree(armor, weapon type, enchantments, etc) with the strengths you acquire by using skills, for me it changes when you add in a tree specifically for vampires/werewolves. Those are huge game changes compared to staying mortal(especially when modded). When I'm a vampire I find myself using a lot more vampire abilities(Dark sacrifice, Drain magic, etc) than regular magic which doesn't raise my destruction skill or any other. This shows how vampires and its evolution are not on equal grounds with anything a mere mortal can do. With this mod you can be a powerful vampire and never need to pick up a sword or train the normal combat abilities, especially in DG. Vampires and the abilities a mortal can practice are very much separate and I think this should remain as such. However, Transcendence can mean to go beyond. So maybe allow the regular vampire to use the Bat Form ability of the vampire lord or make it an aura that phases you partially into the soul claim, which decreases physical/magical damage by a percentage. Just some ideas playing off the name given. Pixie: Seems very unbalancing in this state, I mean you are already going to be getting perk points for your normal leveling then this stacks on a bunch more? Not sure I have any ideas how to make this better. Me: Don't just think of this as the perk by itself, think of it as an ends after all the other perks. If, for instance, you go the vitiate route asap, you need to have drained an additional 3670% blood damage from guys ( percents drained before activating the perk tree don't count in this regard), and have killed at least 45 people...and then, one more perk point in use for vanilla skyrim would require you to kill 25 more people, etc (all while ignoring the rest of the vampire tree). This is, of course, in addition to the negatives from vitiate. If you forgo vitiate entirely, then it's even harder to reach. At that point, you'll have at least 70 in the skill, which requires a whopping 15575% drained total, and 100 people killed to even activate the perk. Then, for use in vanilla, you'll need to kill 35 people for every additional perk dot while, again, ignoring the rest of the vampire tree. Frankly, looking at some of those numbers, might even be a good thing to turn it down a notch >.< "4. Umbral: Draining light from the area now restores 50% as much magica as it did before, in exchange for +20/30 to destruction, and sneak for 2 minutes." Akumu: I'm a bit confused by this perk. What ability does this relate to, as I don't think I ever used it or very often. Also it restores 50% more magica in exchange for +20/30 destruction and sneak for 2 minutes? It says in exchange so are you taking a hit to these skills or is it a gain and you lose magicka? I'm not sure about this perk so I can't really say I agree or disagree, however I'll still give an alternative for extra ideas. Pixie: Like this one quite a bit, especially the bonus to stealth which makes sense as you have made the area darker. The problem I have is that it seems to work on very few lights in the game right now. Still this is a solid perk. Me: This one might be too specialized, but I wanted it to play on the hiding in the darkness ability of the vampires...that they'd take the light away, and use it to power themselves in some manner. You recieve less mana from a successful drain light hit (right now, you regen some - you'll regen half as much), but in return, it gives you the potential to play to your strengths more instead of a perfect zero sum game that is it's use and immediate regen. Want a buff? Then you'll have to not only spent mana, but hit a target and cover a bit the world in darkness. Plus, it should also work well with the auto-embrace thing we tried our hand at. Possible changes are either having it extend it's power to darken in some way,since it's...well, named umbral, or to make drain light an AoE (which requires less targeting). I don't really know how frequently people use DL atm, so that might be a thing... [TO BE CONTINUED]

This is meant to replace the DG one entirely.

This thread is for future planning and design discussion, whereas the "main mod" thread is for general talk and bug alerts :)

We won't be adding new abilities with the perks, since that's not what perks are. They augment and change existing abilities for the player. We WILL, however, add those kind of things as quest rewards with clans. And yes, Vitiate is a definite downside. Buuuuut, of course, it leads to a much quicker path to the Transcendence perk, which could prove to be quite powerful ;P

As most anyone who cares enough about vampires to follow this thread knows, DG will be introducing perks. Not any old perks, boring ones! Ones only applicable to vampire lord form! Stat boosts and a few one dimensional spells! Sounds pretttty bland, I say. BSR will be replacing this perk tree with one a little more...hearty. More specifically, behold! http://i.imgur.com/og1n8.png Boy oh boy do I suck at paint without a mouse. And with it, but that's neither here nor there. What IS here is the following: -You gain a "point" (like one handed or smithing) for every (50+5P)% blood damage you soak up. P=your current pointage. -You gain a "perk dot thing" (you know what I mean >_<) every 10+5(E) kills you make, where E is the # of perks you've unlocked in the tree. And of course, the perks themselves. They correspond to that abomination of a picture up there, and the numbers following each one is the necessary pointage you need to access it. 1. Lust for Power: Upon reaching starving, you have 10/15/20/25/30 seconds to satiate yourself, or you’ll turn into the vampire lord for 5/4/3/2/1 minutes. 0/20/40/60/80 2. Vitiate: Regression is now automatic should you meet the requirements. (30) 3. Transcendence: Vampire perk points can now be used as normal perk points. (30) 4. Umbral: Draining light from the area now restores 50% as much magica as it did before, in exchange for +20/30 to destruction, and sneak for 2 minutes. (70/90) 5. Bound in Blood: Casting Blood Rend now soul traps the first enemy it makes contact with, placing it in the correct sized gem. (65) 6. Symbiosis: Drain Life now also drain [whichever is highest between your magica or stamina], but requires [whichever is lowest between your magica or stamina] to maintain. Equal levels mean it acts as though there is no perk. Second level drains +1 per second of (random trait), lasting [(V*D)/2]x minutes, where V=vampire level and D=the duration of the drain in seconds. (15/40) 7. Congeal: Hearts are now harvestable for 1.5/2x as long. (30/60) 8. Addictive: Racials drained last for 1.5x as long, but cannot be overridden until they run out. (50) 9. Abstain: Your “Attack on Sight” levels are now lowered by 10/20 rank. (70/90) 10. Crepuscular: While under the effects of Darken, (night hours are now an hour longer at dawn/dusk each and animation triggering kill attacks at night refills half your health). (65) 11. Overkill: Killing via feeds now grants an extra temporary +[(100-Satiation)-(npc%)] health shield to your current maximum. Satiation is…well, satiation, and npc% is the percentage of health they had before the fatal feed. So if you have 80 satiation, and your target had 10% before you drained it all at once and killed them, you’d get an extra (100-80)-(10)=10 health added to your maximum until it’s knocked off by an attack. Second rank grants twice as large a shield. (15/40) 12. Familarity: Raising a thrall is now twice as likely (contingent on thrall success rates being added >_<) (30) 13. Bloodletting: Being hit with poison now subtracts 5 satiation from your current, but your weapon has that poison applied for the next 15 attacks. (50) 14. Corpse Curse: The exact same power from DG, usable only while a lord. (55) 15. Summon Gargoyle: The exact same power from DG, usable only while a lord. (25) 16. Vampiric Grip: The exact same power from DG, usable only while a lord. (25) 17. Mist Form: The exact same power from DG, usable only while a lord. (55) So there you have it! Told you guys I actually did stuff :P. One last word of warning though: NONE OF THIS IS FINALIZED IN THE SLIGHTEST AND INCREDIBLY OPEN TO CHANGE AS PER THE DIFFICULTY OF IMPLEMENTATION.

There is no quest currently set up yet, but you will get psuedo-random hunter attacks based on how often you've fed from people of that area. You haven't done anything wrong :D

That is strange. Try using the console command to get rid of vampirism, or just go to showracemenu and manually reset your race. Glad to hear it wasn't from the mod being bad that caused an uninstall! Although you may be interested to know that we are hard at work to smooth out the DG transition and adding in the vampire lord.

Did you follow the BSR uninstallation instructions? They are...extensive. Check the manual if you haven't already (it came with the download). Incidentally, what caused you to uninstall? Not that you weren't right to do so, but I want to know issues with the mod so I may improve it :D

I wonder...would it be possible to recreate even the simplest mechanics of taking them down? Like for that guy above, if put into skyrim...possible to allow the player to walk up his sword?

As some users have been asking how I plan on going about modeling the spread of vampirism for when we DO get to siring: http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/rsmith43/Zombies.pdf - Academic study and mathematical modeling paper about spread of zombies in their event. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18571 - Game design article about the effect of a plaque as spread in a game world. http://fisica.cab.cnea.gov.ar/estadistica/abramson/notes/Epidemics-Lectures-PANDA.pdf - CDC modeling about spread of disease.

!! Time to start a new character then!!> []< THX dude! and one thing, Did you guys have a plan to improve bloodrend visual effect from life stream to blood stream?? That will probably take some time, since (afaik) there is no actual "stream" effect in the game; we'd have to make our own instead of tweaking the effects given. Given how complex fluids are....

As for Dawnguard, MM and I can only guess at the technical side of how they're going to fold in the DG questline+vampire lord transformation. HOPEFULLY, it'll be the case that players without DG will simply not get that questline+transformation when they use the updated-for-DG BSR patch, and players with DG will get the questline...all from one file. More specifically, for the powers, it seems that Beth is only introducing a quest for after the player had become a vampire, so you should be able to use BSR stuff even if you become a hunter. That is, IF they can't sense you're already a vampire or force cure you...we really can't say.

That's odd, as the vampire perk tree doesn't exist in any way whatsoever in BSR, and won't until at least the release of Dawnguard...

For general vampirism, no. It only reduces your hunger level.

Although we don't have a need juuuuuuuuust yet, I can confirm that BSR will need some expertly crafted VA in the future once we implement clans.

From what I've seen about the perk tree: -it only contains perks for the vampire lord, reinforcing my thoughts that they haven't revamped (ha!) normal vampirism -the skill of vampirism is biting people while in lord form. This is very likely editable, but I've no idea. Going back to your original ideas, MM, I think it'd be very possible to mesh them with what we have now...it would add a sense of "permanence" that's not tied as directly to vampire level.

-I haven't really given much thought to abilities outside of the form; it's mostly been me keeping a close watch to check for compatibility. -We thought of having a red effect, but it was decided to be too distracting and was replaced with the detect life. -As it happens, some of our abilities DO make you get hungrier faster ;) Also, two three ideas as borne from the community: Frost Resist: This would be based in two segments. One would be normal vampire level: you gain +5% frost resist per vampire level. Thus, a Sire is 25% more immune to frost. Doesn't seem like much? Well, it's not done...at each level of starvation past the first one, you get an additional +10% frost resist. So a fully starved Sire is 75% immune to frost. The formula for all of that would be {5v+(5-s)10]% resist, where v=vampire level and s is starvation level. Kinda makes sense in that the more starved they are, the less blood they have, and thus less susceptible to attacks which affect bolidy fluids. Blood of Last Fed Instead of using race bonuses, becoming a BSR vampire means you abandon your blood for our mutated version. But I'd been thinking...and another user on the mod thread mentioned...what about utilizing the blood of your victims? This likely won't be added for a bit, since we've bugs/DG/clans/siring to work on, but here's what I had thought of- If your last victim was a: Altmer: +60 magicka for 3 minutes Argonian: Recover health 2x as fast for 2 minutes Bosmer: +10 to archery, light armor, pickpocket, sneak and alchemy for 3 minutes Breton: +30% magic resistance for 3 minutes Dunmer: +40% fire resistance for 2 minutes Imperial: +10 to block, destruction, heavy armor, one handed, enchanting for 3 minutes Elsweyr: 1.5x as fast for 1 minute Nord: +50% frost resistance for 3 minutes Orc: +25% physical damage resist for 1 minute Redguard: Stamina regenerates 2x as fast for 2 minutes EDIT: Oh, and ideas for hearts! There exist not just human ones...so what about these? BriarHeart: +10 to all schools of magic, +10 to 1 and 2 handed for 3 minutes DeadricHeart: +20 to 1 and 2 handed for 3 minutes

Any of these :P

Too few guy mods for me to do it convincingly :T

That would be the well documented instance of them detecting the latent magic cloaks that our vampires have on them as a means of getting all our stuff to work together. The most recent patch has a version of Forma which should override things so you can complete that quest (and brawls). Hope that helps! Phil! Long time no see. I'll just echo MM here and hope you're staying safe, with a side of "get an awesome computer because those are great for games" :P. As our technically first beta tester, you get to see how far we've come! Fingers crossed for living up to expectations. The dawnguard stuff is interesting, and although I foresee some headaches, I'd also guess that we won't have to make many MASSIVE changes. In all of Beth's previous DLC for their past games (Oblivion, FO3, NV although they didn't develop that) it's been added content+abilities, not a reworking of skills. Because of that tendency, I predict we'll get the following for DG: -New vampire power: lord transformation --New lord power: force choke, auto hover, turn into bat swarm -New factions: likely Volkiars and the DG hunter group -New area: looks like some kind of ghostly graveyard place+the two strongholds for the above factions -New quest line: one where you take sides for one or another I do not think they'll be doing a drastic revamp of the system, since they never do that, but instead adding powers+quests+animations. Although I can't say for sure, it seems likely that we'll have to tie the clans/bloodlines to end with working with those vampires so players can eventually get to the Beth quests, and after those are done, back to our plans. However, I'm waiting for more information about the quests themselves to come to light so I can avoid content overlap when designing the bloodline stuff myself :). That all sounds confusing, I know, but in the end: I don't think we'll be replaced and will just have to work with compatibility. Oh, and almost forgot. TIME MAGAZINE CALLED US ONE OF THE BEST MODS OF MAY! EDIT: Looks like some information has been leaked, confirming (among other things) our much desired "vampire perk tree". This is absolutely fantastic, and we will be able to mix two progression styles: -one based on your hunger levels, which affects your stats and learned skills -one based on your overall life as a vampire in the perk tree, which means we can amp up some aspects for permanence, hopefully giving players more incentives to regress without fear of losing everything This gives us even more options and variety in how you choose to play :D

I don't know how you'd manage that without causing massive lag, having poor reflections, or both. It's an incredibly difficult part of graphical fidelity to replicate, especially on moving water (as most water in Skyrim tends to be).

Flavyneo: Looks scary! I actually have a fang model floating around somewhere, but there are...well, the bugs to worry about for now. Plus utilizing your extremely impressive quest ideas :) Also, in regards to your idea to have a sneak kill move...maybe. That could be overpowered, we don't want to have too many single use spells, and..well, you can kill as it is by being starving :P nthomas: This is actually in the game. Sorry for the last response about it, btw! At any rate, there a code which reverses the direction of sunlight damage (so a sire is most resistant). Set this to any number that's neither a 0 nor a 1 and you'll disable that + trespass damage. lolozori: Such an item is being planned and balanced for the clan content portion :D Masterzixx: Excellent idea! I'm sure it's there somewhere. Hmm...perhaps that's possible to scale to stealth level..let me see...something like sound_magnitude=(101-s)/100*mag, where s is your sneak skill. Sneakier you are, the quieter it is! How's that? SirSquidy: We're certainly interested in expanding into animations, but first...bugs. Heh. Plus, I need to learn how to get 3DxMax stuff into .nif >.<

Most spell packs have the issue of waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many mechanically identical spells, but for those which actually offer changes (Apocalypse springs to mind), the diversity and inventiveness of the large number of spells is refreshing and interesting.