TenShadows

I don't know if anyone else has ever noticed anything like this, but there's been something about combat in Oblivion that's been bugging me since forever: regardless of whether I play vanilla or have put up some damage mods and stuff, always, every single time, I seem to have significant trouble finishing off my enemies. I mean, at first they seem to take damage okay - or not, if you have leveled up high enough and haven't installed any damage mods - but once they have only the tiniest sliver of HP bar left, it starts to take a lot more trouble dealing that last bit of damage than it has up until now. At first I can damage them to criticals without significant trouble, but at that point it takes about a million slashes and cuts before they finally surrender that last bit of their lives and die in front of me. Is this some engine mechanic I haven't heard of? Like, does the game actually store nine tenths of the enemy hit points right at the end of their bar, and up until that point I had only scratched them a little? Why must it be so hard to kill things?

Okay, that might sound like a strange suggestion for a mod, but bear with me here. Can you even count how often you have heard two people with the exact same voices talking about how one of them saw a mudcrab once? Do you remember the time when you asked some rumors from a beggar, and the old wheezy crone suddenly developed a smooth and classy voice like the best of noblemen? You must have noticed how almost no character in the game has any personality to speak of, because most of their lines are recycled in between one another and taken from a ridiculously small pool? Let's face it: Oblivion's voice acting is atrocious. It doesn't help with the immersion at all, and at least for me actually hurts it like an arrow to the knee. Giving each and every character in the game a voice is an ambitious thing to do, but with such a small amount of voice actors, being forced to give even them only the bare minimum of things to say, and especially sacrificing NPC personality and likeability for it, makes it all just worse instead of better. It's in a dire need of fixing, and with the game being out for seven years, I am mildly surprised no one seems to have done it yet. So what to do? Removing the voice acting is only a part of the solution, and frankly doesn't even require a mod - just turn the voice volume to zero. No, the real fun comes in replacing the whole thing, and taking the opportunity to bring back what was taken away! Here's what I suggest: - Morrowind-style text boxes. Instead of a bunch of text lines that are there only for some time, or that you need to click through several times if you've already read it all and need to get over with it fast, you have the classic choice of a box with all the text on it, like Morrowind and many other RPGs have done. It will stick around for as long as you need, and unlike with the text dia show, you could fill it with as much wall of text as you would like, and add in much more rumors and other topics when you no longer need to voice act them all. - More personality. This arrangement will allow you to bring in an infinite amount of unique stuff to say for each character, again just like how it was in Morrowind. Now, I'm not saying that Morrowind's characters were all paragons of deep personality and memorable characterization, but you had a few people such as Crassius Curio that I'm sure we all know and love. But with a bunch of dedicated fans, we could theoretically go and personalize all the NPCs in the game. - Character gestures and emotion. Oblivion's face system does an adequate job of showing how a character feels about a given situation, but quite frankly it is still rather awkward and clunky, not to mention buggy. But if we have pure text, we can easily add this sort of stuff in too, like [You can see he is uncomfortable to talk about the subject], or [umbacano's eyes light up as he sees the item]. First initiating conversation would get you a little short introduction such as [You see an old, grizzled redguard warrior. He glares at you and seems to have little patience with you.], or [You see Dar-Ma. She appears frightened and more than ready to leave this place.]. - Portraits. This one's really just purely optional, but if we got a bunch of talented artists on board, we could draw a few pictures for some of the more notable NPCs in the game, how they would look like if the rather simple NPC graphics system allowed them more detail and unique appearances. Could even make several of them for each, to show happiness, anger, and other emotion, if we really got this thing going. - NPC chatter. Another opportunity to give them some personality and things to say, but with the voice acting gone, you'd just have to go close to them to "hear" what they're saying - i.e. have it appear where it usually does. Could even get the bandits to talk about bandit stuff like loot distribution and how much fun it is to beat up merchants, rather than more mudcrab chatter. - Speechcraft minigame. Honestly, we could just keep the original faces visible for this and not change anything, but we could also take up the opportunity to completely revamp it. It's kind of silly and arbitrary, after all, and it feels weird to have to joke with a guy and then threaten him on the very next word. I can't do mods myself. I have no idea how to program things, or work with all the applications and stuff, and have far too little time and patience to learn any of it. So all I can ever do is to make a post about it on a forum and hope for the best. I might be willing to write some dialogue if this got going, though. So yeah, anyone else even remotely interested? Or am I really the only one that's at all bothered by voice acting? Please don't drive me out of town.

Men can have boners, so why are girls always as dry as ever, even in the middle of doing something fun with themselves or another person? Just a bit of moisture between the thighs would enhance it a lot.

Oh, well too bad. I was looking forward for an opportunity to feel really stupid and get some smaller boobs at the same time.

There's a variant? I never found one.

I find this to be the best body replacer mod available out there: it's pretty easy to use, just about everything I'd like on it works okay, and doesn't look ridiculous. The only problem is breast size, which is far too large for my taste and can't seem to be changed anywhere. Can it be changed somewhere?

What [Archive]? What readme? You'll need to dumb this down a little bit.

1. I have Archive Invalidation Invalidated!, for some reason - I don't remember ever downloading it - but for the life of me I can't figure out how I'm supposed to use it. Edit: For that matter, I wouldn't know how to use regular archive invalidation either. Up until you mentioned it, I didn't even know it was a thing. 2. I don't think this applies if they din't have any actual mod files, just textures and stuff? 3. How does this work on just textures, as stated in 2.?

I've attempted Fantasy Figures, Exnem's original, and Robert's of both genders. Putting the files to their right folders, and activating any mods that come with them, never works: all I get is the standard vanilla underwear version. Now, creating an OMOD does work fine, and I've used it to put up Robert's Male Bodies and Exnem's original for females (I used Fantasy Figures at first until I noticed that it was doing pretty bad for some races and genders), and played happily for a while until I found some additional mods that I would've liked to add in: there's the bouncy breast option that seems kind of complicated I'm looking into, as well as the simpler looking Fox's Argonian Textures for Exnems. Unfortunately, the above problem persists. The textures look for the Exnem body files, but for some reason only find the originals and try to use them - which only ends up a mighty unappealing mess. Turning them into another OMOD does not work either. It's like Oblivion had another place it was pulling its body textures from, that overrides everything I try to put in the "normal" folders, and requires something as heavy as an OMOD to get around - and even then it only works sometimes. Any way to fix this kind of an issue?

Steam, GOTY edition. I've been told it has been patched already and I don't need to run up the official patches - and was outright scared away from doing so when it was pointed out such a thing could break the game. The mods include Book Jackets, Better Cities, DarNified UI, Deadly Reflex, Ebony Sword Replacer, Elven Map - both for basic game and Shivering Isles - Francesco's Leveled Creatures and Items, Fundament, Let There Be Darkness, LowPoly Grass, nGCD, Skeletons, SM Combat Hide, Stealth Overhaul Redux, Unique Landscapes Compilation, and Ultimate Music Pack. Of these, Book Jackets and Deadly Reflex cause the game to not run, while Unique Landscapes at least allows it to run but without music - and playing to the supposed landscape places, it turns out nothing there has changed. Same with DarNified UI: game runs, but mod isn't active and the inventory is as it used to be. Besides OBMM, OBSE, and BOSS, I have the 4gb Patch, Fast Exit, Oblivion Graphics Extender, Fake Fullscreen, Script Optimization, Wrye Bash, and Oblivion Crash Prevention System for OBSE.

If I have just the main files and official DLCs, the game runs perfectly fine. If I load the unofficial patches, or some other mods, the game still runs, but without music - and none of the mods actually work. With some other mods... it won't start. It simply goes black for a split second after startup, like it was going to start, but then it won't. I have no idea what the problem is but would like to know. I've got OBMM, OBSE, and other things, and have run BOSS.

I don't think I will ever be truly satisfied with Skyrim's lighting situation. Without any mods, it's all just so bright that it being night or me being in a dungeon doesn't matter at all: it's utterly unrealistic, unexciting, and boring. With a mod - I've been using Realistic Lighting for most of the time - these things are fixed and it is actually exciting to run around... except now I'm very nearly literally blind in the wilderness night, usually having near-zero clue on where I am running. A torch helps very little. Just a few minutes ago I jumped off a cliff into my death because I didn't see it was there. It's during such nights that I look up into the starry sky, and I wonder... why the hell are those moons so dark and lifeless? In the real world, and especially in fiction, a full moon casts a fantastic silvery light to all creation that makes it nearly as bright as it were during the day, but in the eerie sort of way. It's easy to see but also moody and magical. In Skyrim, both Masser and Secunda are entirely black, which is both boring and results in me running down deadly cliffs. Yet, in spite of going through both Nexus and Steam Workshop several times, I've never found a mod that would add some light to them: turn them into another sun or something, one that comes up during night and whose lighting depends on the phase of the two moons. I mean, I'd guess this would be a pretty difficult thing to do, but it's not like you haven't done even crazier stuff already. Have I just missed some obvious mod, or is it really that no one ever made one?