Random Battles

[djones07]

would it be posible to make a mod that adds random attacks of big groups of enemy that would attack the player castle? (from the latest DLC)

that would be great..... a nice big battle.

maybe have a quest that would trigger it, then you would have to defened your fort with archers on the walls and the gate closed, maybe make the gate damage after a few hits from the enemy.

[Boss171]

this is just personal opinon, but i dont like large batlles in oblivion, the looks a bit ridiculous to me tbh. also, i think theres some sort of limit to the number of npcs on screen at any one time, so this may conflict

[dezdimona]

the game engine is incapable of that,the most I'have on screen is 15,with minor stuttering!

[ihateregisteringeverywhere]

I managed to get 60 skeletons.

 

Then it crashed. Then again, skeletons are pretty poly-heavy.

 

I also saw a video of 300 goblins.

[djones07]

I managed to get 60 skeletons.

 

Then it crashed. Then again, skeletons are pretty poly-heavy.

 

I also saw a video of 300 goblins.

 

i use the mod that adds 156 to impiral city and my pc is fine.

[ihateregisteringeverywhere]

The gate could be a monster, with properly set aggressions and groups the attackers would attack it before entering the castle. The death animation would be the door crumbling. It could also be spiked. Very low dmg, no attack animation - it would kill the attackers slowly while looking like any regular doors :).

 

The attackers could also be made like the skeletons from Vagrat0's Halloween mod - low hp - one or two shot kills, but HORDES of them. They could have some ranged attackers as well, your pc allies would be two-three shot kills for them, also some tank like monsters would be nice - for variations. Runners/jumpers too.

 

And the best of all, that besides a new mesh for the door which's a 2 hrs job max - you could simply use vanilla monsters - goblins, ogres, imps, trolls. This way the mod wouldn't be stuck on making new models/animating them. So everything that you'd have to do is to program the quest/AI.

 

Even a small group of mediocrelly skilled modders could probably finish this mod with a smashing success. The trick is spawning the monsters out of sight with as little AI as possible, but enough to keep 'em running - Just like in left 4 dead. There's hordes and hordes of zombies attacking, but there's rarely more than 50 or so active :). In case you could find a nice scripter that experimented with dynamic positioning and Line of Sight detection, then you're pretty much ready to rock :).

[tyreil829]

the game engine is incapable of that,the most I'have on screen is 15,with minor stuttering!

 

i think that depends on how many polys you use for armour and bodys and all that i think it can effect how many NPCS you can have in one cell

 

Dante

[Vagrant0]

The biggest problem with this is really in setting it all up since the main component of the mod is a DLC, meaning that you need to do deisolation with every aspect of the mod. For even small mods, like changing the armor of the guards, this isn't particularly easy for someone to just do. For larger mods, which have significant scripting and scene requirements, this could prove to be very difficult. It would actually be easier to set it up at a new castle somewhere, made within the mod, than it would be to use a location added by another mod.

 

Afterall, you need to setup placements where you want NPCs to stand, you need to establish spawn points which remain within the active area of the castle, and need to create opponents with packages that direct them to the castle incase their combat AI doesn't trigger right away.

 

That said, there are certain issues with how many actors you have within a scene, as mentioned, and these can't really be solved. This limit is not entirely polygon based, but also AI and processing based. If you go over this, the game tends to try and simplify things which has the unfortunate effect of totally dumbing down the AI, causing them to walk into walls or other obstacles which might be in the way... Which is why that area outside Bruma is almost completely barren. In an open field, without trees, you could probably get 20-30 actors by making sure they were as simple as possible, but at that point, most of them would be dumb a brick, poor reaction time, just running toward their opponent and attacking. From the 10-15 actor limit before performance becomes a serious issue, you have to figure that between all sides. If you want archers, you'll probably want atleast 2 or 3. You'll also probably want 3-4 melee fighters, half the budget right there, then 1 for the door. Meaning that at best, you would have 6-8 opponents at any time, not exactly an epic battle. And as my little Halloween mod proved, for the handful of people who played it, large battles against many others don't really play well, either you're getting smacked around by 5-6 at a time, or you're running and casting spells. When you have other, friendly combatants, it becomes even more chaotic. Meaning that the archers on the wall would probably end up hitting their teammates more often than anything.

 

Finally, you need to considder the implications of such a mod. Creating hundreds of scripted actors can lead to some horrible save bloat, I was only able to reduce this by using a separate worldspace which was flagged as an oblivion worldspace, and used scripted doors to clear and reset that worldspace to avoid serious bloat. Such an option may not work well here. Although scripting actors to remove themselves after death can clear up most of this, things like arrows and the rare dropped weapon would end up remaining.