buzzbomb

Thanks to LHammonds' screen shots, we can see a whole new level of detail from the trailer. And I have to say that what I am seeing is whole new levels of detail. In every shot, in every aspect, the level of detail is simply astounding. Oh, and did I mention the level of detail? Our modding community is highly skilled, talented and dedicated, but it's going to take some doing to top what comes in the box, I think.

Stealthy female Nord with emphasis on bow and one handed sword. Possibly with a shield, depending on how casting healing spells works and weather I like the shields or not.

Holy cow! The game just looks better and better. I agree that the pathfinding on the wolf blows though. The trees and the ground cover look awesome, I think. The new combat moves also look very fluid and realistic. No more waving a sword around as though you were path-cutting with a machete. I also like the sounds the weapons make when they strike. A visceral ka-thunk with a wet meaty finish. And did anyone notice the inside of the dragon's mouth? Just amazing. There's an elf in a chair in the assassination scene at 1:32. That's the only nonhuman player race I noticed. Every time they release some new tidbit, 11.11.11 just seems to get farther and farther away. I hope they keep it up in the interim, so I can maintain this level of excitement for the game. I got goosebumps during the trailer. If I'm still this excited when the game comes out, I may just embarrass myself in the store. This post from the youtube version kind of sums up the amount of time I expect to be spending in this game: Quote: It's fine Bethesda, I don't NEED friends anymore...

I'm a little late to this party and this is the first I've seen of this project. I'd just like to say: OH. MY. GOD. Sorry, I think I just nerdgasmed.

Have you installed all the UL mods and just gone exploring? I've been at it for a few weeks now on and off. There is some amazing stuff hiding away in there. Not just Ansel Adams style vista appreciation (though there's that aplenty) but also a lot of caves, mines, ruins and such. Suicide falls comes to mind as a must see. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=19370 Also, If you're running Deserts of Anequina you can walk from one side of Cyrodil to the other, without having to traipse around that rather large part of the landscape. There's a bunch to do within that mod as well. (I think the author of that mod currently has it hidden.) Then run a large quest-mod like Hentai Mania 2, and you'll find yourself writing down places to come back to, as you run from one part of the quest to another. Of course, MMM keeps all this trekking interesting and exciting. Always stuff to do in Oblvion-land!

I'm really liking what we've seen of the body models so far. The muscular definition looks superb. I haven't noticed any shots of a female character yet, though.

ROFL! *goes to watch again*

This is the one I use. Note that the quiver is thin, and off to the side. The arrows look awesome in third-person close-up and first-person view as well. The scrollwork on the bow is a little bright in first-person for my tastes, but I like it so much I still use it. :) http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29589 Here's another one I've used, though I had to lighten up the damage in the CS: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34870

Just wanted to say thanks Zaldiir, and you other contributors for compiling all this info on Skyrim. I find myself checking here a couple times a day to see what's new. To say I'm excited about Skyrim would be an understatement, and it's nice to have a single place to go check for news, rather than scouring the web for any new tidbit. Kudos.

It's a fantasy game, so I'm hoping for a good balance between the harsh realities of survival in a frozen wasteland/wonderland and my desire to simply play a game, have fun and be excited. Actually though, the environment is my greatest fear for Skyrim as a game. It seems as though it would simply be rocky, snowy, windy, barren and cold. All the time. Everywhere. Always. I was really looking forward to Neverwinter Nights, and never got more than a few hours of game play into it. I just couldn't stand the repetitiveness of all the snow and rock and snow and rock and snow and rock. And OH, ICE! Woots! Snow and rock and ice. Snow and rock and ice. I'm sure the developers loved it. "What's the background color palette for the entire game, Jim? Oh that's an easy one, sir. Blue and gray, with some gray and blue mixed in." It just kept piling on and got really old, really quick. Get my drift? ;p

Seems like the land of Skyrim would be ripe with undead. It's possibly my least favorite class of monster, but I've got this stereotype in my head of the lone, powerful necromancer who heads north to ply his evil trade in solitude. The locals would be like "Don't go up Uttgrm Mountain, those that do are never seen again. Or worse, they are seen again!" But if I was that lone, powerful necro-guy, why the heck would I choose to make my zombie horde from boring vanilla races? Oh no! I would make frost giant zombies, grizzly bear zombies, woolly mammoth zombies. I'd even make rat zombies and the like to be my eyes and ears in my realm. Maybe even so you couldn't tell the little critter was a zombie until you got close, so it could pass undetected through towns and villages and report back to me where the finest maidens are! BuuHaHaHa! Erm, sorry, got carried away. Of course, the Yeti (or some version of it) would have to make an appearance. And who else likes to live in the cold, high mountains? Duerger! (The Elder Scrolls, lore-friendly variety, naturally.) There is already a reference to the "Gray Beards." And if there's Duerger, there must be Dwemer! Whole Dwemer ruins. Perhaps the Duerger are pillaging the ruins for artifacts, or consider themselves caretakers and guards. Remember those sphere centurions from Morrowind? Those things freaked me out! Imagine whole ruins of such things. They could even appear to be part of the structure, unnoticed until they "unfolded" from the wall and attacked! Or until they dropped on your head from the ceiling, or rose from the floor, etc. You might even be in an otherwise nondescript cave, having no idea those seeming rocks over there are about to open up and rip you a new one. And if you have volcanic vents, then there is a whole new class of subtropical fauna that could be introduced. "Lost lands" of reptiles and insects. Whole valleys full of dinosaurs and prehistoric giant dragonflys or mantis'. Even trees that want to eat you. Holy cow, the possibilities! Skyrim, by it's very nature, would be mostly unexplored by the "recent" races of Tamriel. There's no telling what could be over the next mountain, because no one has ever come back to report on it. Oh, and let's not forget Fenris! Gotta have giant wolves gallivanting about, terrorizing the countryside and preying upon those poor yetis in their cave homes. And forget the hill giant and mountain giant clans - give me Storm Giants! Tall as a city building and mean as a junkyard dog. I really could go on and on (Drow *cough* *cough*), but most of all, I think I'd like to see the Dwemer artifacts. It's the perfect setting for their technology to make a terrifying comeback, it's classic Elder Scrolls lore, and the possibilities there would add a whole new twist to spellunking in Tamriel. The Dwemer ruins in Morrowind were the coolest, scariest, most surreal places to explore. It was always amazing to step through that door and leave the medieval trappings of Tamriel behind and enter a world where steampunk ruled. In this case, the Nords would have good reason for the classic barbarian dislike of anything "new" or "technological" - it was usually trying to kill them! Just reread the earlier posts. The first asked that a good description be used, not just names. For those of you who are unfamiliar with D&D and other mythologies (real or imagined): Duerger are evil dwarves. Drow are powerful evil elves that live underground. Yeti is another word for Abominable Snowman, or perhaps a high altitude version of the Sasquatch. Fenris is a mythological demigod in the shape of a giant wolf who is instrumental in the battle at the end of the world in classic Nordic mythos. As for trees that eat you, google "triffid." Oh, Nealus posted that there will be Dwemer ruins! Happy Day! I can only hope they live up to the potential! Wootz!

I haven't played Morrowind since completing it on the XBOX back in the day. Oblivion just totally eclipses Morrowind for me. I still haven't completed Oblivion O.o because I just got tired of running into another gate and fighting my way to the top to close it. But thanks to the modding community, there's always much more to do. (It is ironic, I think, that it is because of the modding community keeping my interest in Oblivion, that I am as excited as I am about Skyrim.) I played FO3 for a while but got bored with it. It was always another encounter with some mutants and it just got old. It's the mods for Oblivion that keep me coming back. The mods and the possibilities inherent in the Oblivion world. The FO3 mods all seem a variation on a theme. The FO3 world is just so much more limited than Oblivion's. The fantasy setting of Oblivion allows for armor and clothing that would just be ridiculous in FO3, and one can only stretch the "mutant" monster thing so far. The fantasy world of Oblivion allows for nearly any type of creature that can be imagined. The fact that I was never really happy with the body mods in FO3 played a big role in my coming back to Oblivion as well. That being said, I expect to be transitioning exclusively to Skyrim for at least a short while. If the modding community kicks in like we all hope it will, and keeps my appetite slaked, and the game doesn't basically suck, I don't know that I'll be coming back to Oblivion any time soon. I'm an eyecandy prostitute and at the very least, Skyrim should satisfy that particular hunger. The few screenies that have been released look amazing, and it's a whole new world of frozen (and hopefully not all repetitiously frozen) vistas to explore. Of course for me personally, if the skeleton has the same problems as FO3's, making it impossible to do a decent body mod (from what I understand), I'll likely end up back here in Oblivion land. So the short answer (always comes at the end of a long answer, doesn't it?) to your question is: I don't know. It completely depends on the quality and modability of Skyrim. I suspect that would be the answer of many Oblivion players: Depends on Skyrim.

Indeed they do. It's not that you haven't provided links, I was simply suggesting an addition to them, to make them more obvious for rocks for brains such as myself. When I was reading the Import and Export tut, I got to the end and realized that I had imported a file, changed the layer, and exported the nif without really accomplishing anything. It's true the tutorial was about importing and exporting and that's what it did. All depends on how you look at it, I guess. Just trying to be helpful. I'll be quiet now.

As a (very) new modder, I believe I could follow the instructions and that the tuts would be helpful. For the sake of us readers who tend to skip to the subject they are looking for, I would also include a link to the related tut within the text. For instance, in the "Import and Export" tut, a line between steps three and four that says "Make your changes" with a link to the "Modified Geometry" and/or "New Geometry" tut would be helpful. Of course the same at the end of the other two tuts, linking to the "Import and Export" tut where they say "put it in the game." Nothing serious, just saving an (probably) already confused and overwhelmed new modder a little brain work, so as to keep the frustration level with learning to mod as low as possible. I can say with conviction and current experience how amazingly frustrating and brain-burning it is to go through umpteen tutorials over the span of hours at a time, just trying to find the answer to what is usually a very simple question, but it has your project stopped cold. Anything that can be done to lessen that curve and let us new modders concentrate on being creative is good in my book. :)

Alas, I am unable to find a suitably dumbed down explanation of which maps I need to use in order to texture my model as though I had some clue as to what I was doing. All those tutorials seem to be bouncing soundly off that plate of unobtanium in my skull. Not to be dissuaded from my goal, I bravely struck forth into the wilderness and blazed my own path, boldly linking and (sort of) joining and (somewhat) creating the great workflow between Max and Photoshop. The current result, with texture and normal map on the low poly model, can be seen here: http://www.tesnexus.com/imageshare/image.php?id=80185 Both the texturing and the model still have work yet to be done, but I believe now is the time to attempt to take BBs Mechanical Buckler from the smoking ruin of my workshop, and give it life in the world of Oblivion! (Mostly because I've no clue at all what it's going to look like in-game. I expect I'll be back in Max to fix a bunch of other stuff before long.) To my many, many wellwishers I say Thank you! and wish me luck on this, the next stage of my epic journey into Modding Land.

Holy cow! You don't dream things half way, do you? That seems like an inordinate amount of work in order to get a male character with tattoos. Personally, I prefer the semi-nude (emphasis on nude) female protagonist to having a male character, but I gotta respect your vision. What you've got sounds pretty impressive. I'm looking forward to seeing where you take it.

Thanks Kool. It's encouraging to know that I'm not the only one who likes the idea, and the way it's shaping up. I should probably mention as well, that I'm using 3ds max and photoshop, you know, for all you modders out there who are knocking down the doors just to get in line and help... ;)

So I decided that my mostly nude, pretty young lady assassin-warrior simply shouldn't have to sneak around killing the evil baddy guys with a big ugly shield on her arm. Yet I wanted her delicate skin to be suitably protected from the completely unjustified harmful intentions of all those bandits, brigands, monsters (and occasional guards -- Oopsseey). So I vowed to make her a buckler shield that would stay neatly folded along her forearm, and unfold into a relatively useful shield-like object whenever she has the overpowering urge to block some incoming form of nastiness. Thus was BBs Buckler born! Unfortunately for the lovely lady (and all you other fine lasses and gents out there) I have hit upon a snag during the creation process. I have made the high poly model. It needs texturing, but I'm happy with it. I made the low poly model and uv unwrapped it so I could bake the normal map. (Which I haven't done, but I'm reasonably confident of success). However, it is here that I got stuck. If the exported uv map is of the low poly model, and the normal map is going to give the low poly the topographic detail of the high poly model, how do I texture the low poly uv map to match the detail in the high poly model normal map? In my infinite kindness and wisdom I have decreed that an image shall be placed upon this website and its location shall be thus: http://www.tesnexus.com/imageshare/image.php?id=79879 I know it's a noob question, and believe me, I've watched enough tutorials that if the aforementioned young lady friend were real, she'd be strangling me about now. However I seem to have missed, and cannot find the answer to this very simple question. So if anyone cares to answer, please do so. I, my lovely lady friend Alira, and all the rest of humanity will be greatly appreciated and your fame shall no doubt live until the end of all time. Or not.

Got the low and high poly done and need some help. Starting a new topic.

Thanks bben46. While I'm not exactly filled with confidence, there seem to be no naysayers, so I guess I'll give it a shot. At least one other person has managed a shield with an animation: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=24415 Though I've no clue how it was actually done, it does demonstrate that is possible. Besides, it'd be really cool!

Hi all. I've decided to create a mod, but before I do, I want to know if it is even possible. What I've got in mind is an unfolding shield. The static model looks something like a medallion on the back of the hand. It has a wedge of metal coming out of it, something like a pizza slice with the pointy end in the medallion and it goes up the forearm so the wider end is perhaps two-thirds or three-quarters of the way to the elbow. On block, a one or two frame animation plays, I'm thinking maybe a half second, and the pizza slice unfolds around the medallion (ala "Lost in Space" movie) into a small buckler shield. When block is released the anim reverses and the shield reverts to the medallion with a wedge of metal along the forearm. I have learned the the modelling in 3ds max, and I'm learning the texturing and n_mapping. I'm pretty sure I can figure the animation, though I'll have to ask someone else to do the coding for the anim in-game. I just want to make sure that there isn't something in the game engine that will preclude this type of animation before I invest what for me, will be a considerable amount of time and effort. So, whatcha' think?