MofoMojo

I also just created a mod that creates water arrows and you can douse torches in sconces with them. Not exactly the frost arrow you were looking for but you did mention dousing torches. :) Craftable Water Arrows and Dousable Sconces -MM

I just released Water Arrows and dousable sconces tonight. I haven't worked on getting guards to relight them though. I am going to create an addition to my mod that allows you to "douse" the torches in peoples hands rendering them ineffective for a few minutes. -MM

Hi Leeira, that's actually a very good idea for us to remember if we do end up implementing kill moves. I like the idea that that percentage chance of kill moves increases when you're starved, thereby forcing you to satiate through traditional means. You don't get very much satiation through attacks any way so... But yeah, on the flip side, part of that rage is to get to the blood so .... But I like it! Thanks for the kind words NiKtheALiEN. I'm kind of counting the days myself. -MM

Killmoves... that's definitely something we should keep on the list of things to consider... I personally LOVE kill moves, and ran with some KillMove mods that increased chances of kill moves, etc,. but then they interfered with getting off feed attacks so I had to tone down the percentages. That said, It would be interesting to say, do a feed attack on a combatant and if you couldn't ....reanimate them (because they're higher than your level) then finish off with a kill move. But as Jakisthe point's out we're a bit away from doing animations of that sort. We'd likely need a kill move expert to assist because there seem to be a lot to ensuring that it executes, executes when it should (conditionals) and animates well together with the ... victim. But that's one for the side notes on things to consider! Yep...most of our increases right now are rather linear, and with fewer spells on the final level (again...just currently) I think I'm looking for something to add some oomph. Increasing the odds of getting off a vampiric evasion seems like something that might translate well. As it's passive, but it's still something the player experiences. The increments in damage output are rather ... small. I think in the neighbor of 5% additional damage per stage that I feel like it may not even be noticed, but then my damage output seems to be pretty high right now. I have a lot of discussion about some of the remaining spells that I was going to post here, but .... I'm going to take that offline. -MM

Wow...it's so quiet around here lately. :) I'm not sure whether that's a good thing, or whether there's a big list of BAD waiting for me somewhere. Lol. So, I've taken a lot of time off these last few days while the Beta is rolling. It's almost been 1 week now and I hope things are running smoothly for everyone. I haven't actually opened an editor or CK since the progression bug was discovered and fixed, until today. I did notice that I never got those suggested fortify carry weight's added in to the Beta so I made those changes today. This is what I've settled on: Fledgling 25 Risen 50 Master 75 Progenitor 100 Sire 150 Alternatively I thought about the following: Fledgling 25 Risern 50 Master 100 Progenitor 150 Sire 200 Not much of a difference, accept a solid 100 bonus for Masters and then a solid 100 bonus to sire's over masters....which gets me thinking... uh oh, not more thinking!!?!? Sires are the current top of the pyramid as far as our vampirism goes. There's nothing that really holds us back from implementing more levels except time and coding but let's forget about that. As it stands, with Sires the way they are....do they feel suffeciently...... stronger than Masters? One thing I've wanted to get nailed (and I personally don't think I've done it yet) is that Sires are worth the investment you've put in to become them and that they feel suffeciently stronger and more capable as a Vampire than the other levels. I think we definitely need more than just the two additional spells, because frankly....conjuring storms just provides you with 3 more additional minutes of sunlight protection. Meh... and Mist form, while fun, doesn't change the dynamic of your dusk to dawn play where I think it really counts. So, am I off the mark here? I ask the beta testers to make sure they at least get some play time in as Sires so they can help out with this. What types of changes do you think we could make to have them really stand out as the Kings of the undead? Or do they play just fine the way they are? Should their strengths be more than just incrementally better than Progenitors as they are, or twice as good? Current thoughts: Instead of 80% chance of Vampiric evasion they get 95-100%) Instead of 30% increase in attack damage, spell magnitude, Power attack damage, etc,. they get a 50% increase (Progenitors get 25%) Instead of having 5 commanded undead followers, they get 6 (Progenitors get 4, Master's 3) Instead of having only 1 animal ally they get 2 (or +1 over whatever the ally limit is set to...or perhaps their own limit which you can set) They are already stronger just by nature of how we've set them up, but they're incrementally stronger. By that I mean, it's a relatively flat line of increased bonuses from Fledgling all the way to Sire. If fledglings get a 5% bonus of something, Sire's probably get a 25% bonus. I'm thinking perhaps Sires should get twice the bonus that Master's have. So instead of 5,10,15,20,25 it's 5,10,15,20,30. Or perhaps they should get twice as much as a Progenitor? 5,10,15,20,40. Things to think of as you test out the Sire's. I feel like they're somewhat nerfed only getting two spells during the beta but there are more spells that should come as Jakisthe has planned, things like Integra (which quite honestly I just need to figure out how to do) and the others documented on the front page that either we need to figure out if we are and can do them or remove/replace them with others. Thanks for taking the time! -MM

Effectively yes. There are four levels in aggression, 0 through 3. Agg @ 3 will make someone pretty much randomly attack anyone. -MM

Currently Mist form is the only non-passive ability that will cut out on you in direct sunlight. We don't have Bat Form implemented in the beta as there's a lot to getting it up and running. Going hungry will make you more and more susceptible to direct sunlight damage (and indirect if standing next to light sources outside even when protected by shade). I had toyed with the idea of disabling Vampire's Sprint and Vampire's Speed in the sunlight but there's something about the panicky quick movement in the sunlight when seeking shade that I enjoy so I didn't. We do still make you physically weaker in sunlight so you lose your carry fortification which can be pretty traumatic if you're close to your limit BEFORE direct sunlight kicks in and slows you down. That's happened to me on several occassions, and the stronger you are as a vampire, the more likely it will happen to you. Not fun to have your blood literally boiling you to death while you slow to a crawl because you just lost that +100 carry ability. Speaking of that...I need to check on the fortification limits. They were supposed to be boosted and I'm not sure I did it. -MM

Thanks Userper. I'm hoping we can get something publicly releases in the next few weeks. It's been a little too quiet around here lately. :) We released our private beta on Thursday and hope to collect some good positive feedback and contstructive criticism. We'll then sift through it, implement and change what we feels right based on that feedback and then I think we'll have our public release ready. We could have just pushed out the releases in stages but we really wanted to have our a majority of the framework and Vampire changes implemented and tested rather than beta testing using public incremental builds, and I hope it will be better for it. I know there's been a lot of personal challenges for myself with the mod during its incremental phases and I know it would have turned me off as a consumer if I had to deal with them, so I'm very glad of the choices we've made so far. -MM

So some changes continuing in the background. I finally managed to add some additional danger to resting. Well, it was already there but since I was ummmm....fixing.....things in the sleep events in our vampire quest I figured I'd work out some additional tweaks. To keep spoilers down for those that haven't yet experienced part of it...I'll wrap this in a spoiler tag. I hope you guys are enjoying the beta! I see that Jakisthe's been online and posting but hasn't messaged me any more showstopper bugs, so hopefully that's a good sign. I'll be AFK for the next two days most likely. Take care this weekend! -MM

And one more update. Sorry for the updates all, but the fix I implemented was really just a very quick fix to make sure you could progress. it introduced a delay in hunger management kicking in after sleep causing you to NOT lose satiation from sleeping less than 24 hours until an hour (in game time) after you woke up. That has been updated so if you want, you can use the same URL as the previous post to redownload one more updated mm_BeluaVampireQuestScript.pex file. -MM Edit: And also, please let me know if you HAVE NOT been able to get the harvest heart effect to show up.... it should show up just like Sense Blood when ever an NPC is killed and lasts for 10 seconds. If you're still in combat you can't harvest a heart but generally speaking if your last combatant was a living breathing NPC you should be able to harvest a heart. I'm asking because I've had the effect on my save game so long that when I finally switched levels today working on the progression bug I just noticed it stopped working.... I have fixed it in my build but do not know if the problem persisted in the release. I would like to be sure that it's working for you guys as it's another integral part to game balance. Thanks!

One additional comment for those that might have experienced the progression bug. You cannot progress if you have less than 25 satiation, and since the progression bug will cause you to zero out your satiation .... once you have the fix in place you may find that you still can't progress because you're starving. To work around that, from console you can enter the following cheat: Set BeluaSatiatedLevel to 26 That will put you over the satiation requirement for progression to occur. But please don't use the cheat to get around satiation implementation otherwise as we need good feedback on whether the drop duration is too quick, or too much. -MM

All, :wallbash: :psyduck: :facepalm: :confused: So sorry...stupid mistake on my part. I've neglected testing that for so long that when I added some hunger updates back to sleeping I errantly caused the OnSleepStop event functions from completing and thus no progression. My sincerest apologies. It's no fun being a Fledgling. Please download the following: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/67941642/mm_BeluaVampireQuestScript.pex And just overwrite the one in your \scripts directory for an immediate fix. -MM

</excited> The day has come! Thank you Jakisthe for managing the distribution! After we've worked on this non-stop since mid-January it's very difficult to sit back and take an objective view on the progress and changes we've made. I hope the beta meets or exceeds your expectation but if it does not, please use this opportunity to provide constructive feedback on what would make the experience more enjoyable. I feel like we've made the vampire experience a little more dynamic but there's only so much feedback that can be gained from frank discussion without having played the mod. I'm excited that at this point most of our active thread participants have the mod in hand and now have an opportunity to provide real feedback from playing the mod and experiencing it first hand. We mentioned this in the Beta Documentation but I wanted to put this out on the forums for all: A big thanks to our active supporters on the Nexus Forums. Your continued input, constructive feedback and suggestions have kept us progressing forward and allowed us to shape the mod in a way that fits our vision. ElricShan Darksun45230 WiseMan999 Leeira Deama Phil11 Yota71 FranzLiszt Nskin039 And another thanks to those that helped us with some questions or quandaries along the way: RedWood Elf – assistance with scripting RandoomNoob – assistance with scripting Draeka – assistance with scripting/flying discussion Theru – Asistance with animations (not yet used) Now get out there and make a mess of things! -Jakisthe and MofoMojo

For drain blood howabout one of these: Attero vita (Destroy, waste, weaken, impair/ Life) absorbeo sanguis (absorb blood) absorbeo vita (absorb life) Vita Vesco (Life feed) Comburo Vita (consume life) Love the suggestions! Holy cow we're at 54 pages now!?! Where's our release manager we need to get this out to our testers! :) We definitely need some well versed latin lovers here. Unfortunaley Phil11 (our resident expert) is away for a few months. I'm hoping we can make him proud on his return! :) Yes...I know all that sounds random. I'm in a mood. :) That's like "Sleeping Sleep" :) -MM

For the go to sleep power howabout: Adduco somnus (persuade/charm/influence sleep) This is my googling attempt at Latin. Any Latin expert out there please correct me. Hmmm...missing that ring to it... According to google Somnus is the NOUN form of sleep. I.e. Sleep as a condition rather to got to sleep as a verb but then I'm no latin expert either. Speaking of ... Got back together with my Romanian friend and she said that a lot of the translations into Romanian would just not sound right when spelled in english, and if spelled phonetically would just be laughable for most of them so.... Since I want to keep the language count down (we're already mixing some latin and italian) I think we'll forget about romanian naming conventions. -MM

Interesting! You must have hit a trigger box on teleport! -MM

Hey, when the beta is out I want people to think of some good names. I want some replaces for things like Vampire's Kiss, and Drain Blood. based on how they work and whatnot. Knock Knock Knocking... -MM

There's no limit to carrying hearts. They are effectively your bottled blood idea and are harvested straight from victims. The only challenge is getting to them within 10 seconds of death, and you can't still be in combat. The only thing I would change if we were to consider bottling blood would be that they'd satiate you more than hearts because of the extra work and ingredients involved. But on that note, you have full control over how much satiation a heart provides. By default it's only 5. I'm really not having a problem staying fed right now but that may be because I haven't focused, recently, on questing and more on just wandering around and getting myself into opportunities. I hope you'll be able to test this soon. :) The idea was to specifically NOT require a follower. In fact, I'm trying to think of good ways to limit using a follower that make sense to the player so that you can't exploit them. Honestly though, with Vampire's Kiss, and the current rate of harvesting hearts. I think you'll survive well enough. We'll see. -MM

Hearts serve some purpose there already. So I'm my own school of thought on this, that crosses in and out of everyother thought. I don't like the idea of bottling blood because to me, they arem't mourishing off of the blood, but off of the life force. Whichi is why I make tit so only hearts that can be harvested within 10 seconds of death have sustainable blood and I just let go the whole idea about "wouldn't it go bad". So....I'm open to the idea of bottling blood. It should be something that required some very specific ingredients that made sense. Like for starters, Blood from a bleeding victim. Maybe you have two options, Feed Attack, and Extract Blood. The blood itself wouldn't do anything for you. It would have to be combined with some other things, like...Vampire Dust. for its restorative abilities, A Destroyed Heart you''ve collected previously, and maybe something else like taproot. Assuming there's a need for it. -MM

If Jakisthe like's the current build enough to live with the current known issues (that I am having difficulty reproducing) then the answer is yes. I'll go ahead and say this. We should have something aviailable in time for the weekend. :whistling: -MM Edit: I found one major bug that was introduced somehow this morning. I'm homing it's an old savegame issue, but it's a blocking bug. Will report back. Edit: Found bug determined to be caused by using the feature to go back to normal vampire, going BACK to belua vampire afterwards, certain alias references in scripts wouldn't hold. Found a workaround. Since this is a very limited scenario and a workaround is possible. Moving on....

Haha...well all, I've sent Jakisthe one last update with MOST of the issues she pointed out fixed. I haven't been able to reproduce some of the others so we're in discussion, but it's almost time. I can feel it. If she's good with this last run, it means she's holding the Beta Release Candidate in her hands. If you're on the beta (and I have no REAL idea of who is) then please use this forum to discuss the beta constructively once it's in your hands. I know we're not going make everyone happy with every direction we've taken but know that much of our heart and soul has been put into this since before the CK was even released and the beta is for constructive feedback and a chance to steer our course. You DO NOT have to like the beta, and I'm sure there may be parts of it you won't like but let's be civil. Don't keep the oppinions to yourself, please DO SHARE your oppinion on what you like and don't like and I would ask that we all respect each others oppinions as they are. Just again, know that we've invested a lot of ourselves into making this happen and we've truly appreciated all of the suggestions and feedback you've given here so far even if they were ones we couldn't or didn't implement or having to wait until future iterations. Thank you, MofoMojo

There's nothing really useful for determining how much damage a weapon has done. I'm not sure if damage is applied BEFORE or AFTER the OnHit event triggers, but you could try something along these lines. Monitor the actors health in a tight OnUpdate() loop, say every .25 seconds. Keep it lean, only enough to track the current health. Then in an OnHit event have it compare the players last tracked health with the current health and see if they are different. Obviously timing will be a factor here but it might...approximate...what you're after. -MM

Fixed two game changing issues in the latest builds around health regeneration. Health was just not regenerating at the speed it was supposed to, and combat health was regenerating at fast speeds than it was supposed to ONCE FIXED. Took care of both issues tonight and dropped one last build to JK. Unfortunately, with the health regen changes, it might change the need to allow so many harvestable hearts....but I'm going to let playtesting determine whether that should be tweaked. Suffice to say, the health regeneration was hardly noticeable before, now it's what it should have been all along. :wallbash: -MM

hmmm... the only thing is I need the bard to look exactly like the NPC I want to sing. It is not so much that I just need someone, but that I need a specific somebody to sing. I wonder if I can maybe edit a bard to look like her, or somehow give her the bard faction so she can do it herself. I need her to sing twice, once in the Hold at whiterun and once in the wilderness. This should be completely doable. The bards are handled via a radiant quest. You'll just need to custom make the NPC and potentially pick apart the radiant quest that handles bard singing just to get an idea of how to do it. I don't see why any of this would be too difficult without some investigation and a little bit of trial and error. Now, I'm saying that it's something I have done, but there's nothing in your outline that throws any red flags. Factions are pretty easy to implement and are also sets of "Radiant Quests" and a main quest line that holds it all together. I'm not saying it's going to be cake, but again, nothing that sounds undoable. -MM

The problem with hostility is that it's all faction based, so there's no easy way to make them ... hostile to your animal and not to you if the animal is under your control. It is possible that Forma could be setup to release animal allies (which can be fun!) but there's nothing to say you just aren't a well trained animal trainer! Your bad kitties can't go into walled towns except by one exploit which I wish I could figure out how to do on purpose. Actually, if I wasn't working on this mod so feverishly I'd be working on a hunter/trainer mod, similar to what you get from the old WoW days about...oh.... 5 or more years ago? Where animals gained skills, and levelled with you and you have a perk tree for your pets some how. Problem through books and whatnot. Anyway, I digress. Added in some animations to progression and regression through the vampire ranks. Nothing spectacular, but it looks nice. Last build out to JK. I need to get my eyes off this thing for a few days. It's REALLY time for some fresh blood to call out the flaws and make some educated suggestions after play through. There are few base things we haven't implemented yet but I don't feel they detract from the overall mod at this point. -MM