IDEA: Coat of Arms / Family Crests of the Oblivion Community

[LHammonds]

This is an excellant idea, however would you consider a structure based on the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) rules, ie.,..actual coats of arms based on heraldic rules?

For my own personal design, probably so. As for this mod? No, I think we need to stick to the fun-factor here rather than the stringent factor. Having actual CoA's would be perfectly acceptable, I would not require it to be authentic.

 

If an expert in the field wanted to help create the plugin, I would have no problem if they wanted to establish a physical difference between authentic and non-authentic CoA's such as having an official CoA museum in-game and an unofficial knock-off vendor next door selling his wares. ;) If this were to happen, I think it largely depends on how many items fall into which category. Would be silly to have a dedicated museum building for 2 artifacts and an unofficial vendor selling 20 artifacts.

 

LHammonds

[grmblf]

That's a very interesting project, indeed it'd be nice to see all the different coats of arms from community members displayed in a huge show room in a casttle but other than that it's like people is gonna use their own shield and leave the others there, it's quite a waste of work to end up not being used at it's full potential, so I thought you might want to add your coat of arms to existing Oblivion NPC's, maybe the one you like more, or even new NPC's or renamed exiting ones. It'd be awesome facing a group of legion soldiers each one with it's own coats of arms on their shield with some distinctive sign telling they're from the same city or county. Even if not too many people join this you could use your own coats of arms for counts and high-stand people. HAha it'd be awesome meeting Skingrad's count with an M16 on his shield... well, it may break someone's experience but as it's a minor tweak it can be disabled eventually.

 

As Tullabee suggests, heraldry follows justs a few rules, but these are strict. Nobody needs permission from any society to make his/her own coat of arms, but it's good to follow conventions. As far as I know these are:

- never repeat anyone's coat of arms (obviously!)

- use the standard colors:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Tinctures.svg/175px-Tinctures.svg.png

- never overlap metal over metal, nor color over color.

- make it something recognizable.

 

There's some interesting stuff on the wiki about history and conventions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraldry

 

It's not that I know a lot about that but I like all that medieval stuff and I also have search for my family coat of arms so why not to share my little knowledge. I know what I'm suggesting here differs a bit from Hammonds original request but don't blame me for that, it's just a suggestion. I really like the idea but IMO the BIG point of a mod like this would be seeing all these unique shields around Tamriel and not all toghether in a showroom.

 

PS: May I suggest you to make a squire NPC to hold your flag and horse while you're in combat? :biggrin: that'd be amazing!

 

Good luck, I hope this project succeeds.

[tullabee]

To grmblf: Thank you for the information. To clarify a bit, the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) is an international non-profit group of historical reenactors. They create personas, build armor, make period clothing and fight with blunted weapons among many other things. What we play at they try to live. However, back to topic, their members research, create, and submit heraldric designs to their own registry, stringently following heraldric rules. Each approved submission is unique. What I was trying to suggest is that we emulate their idea. To create a registry of unique devices submitted by players and if possible, display them on a website. In game, to display unique devices on shields, surcoats, bardic armor, flags and pennants? That would be very cool, but is it possible? The key word is unique. A museum is a brilliant idea but a College of Heraldry might be more interesting. Maybe there's a quest somewhere in that idea. Heralds, Squires and men at arms would be very cool.

[grmblf]

yeah I know them, I've seen some videos on this website, well, youtube liks in fact. Having all pics in a website is nice, but I think Hammonds original idea was to use them in game. Sure it can be done, but the more and more diverse clothing and stuff the more work it'll need.

[tullabee]

If it can be done it would be great, but you know if he's asking us about it he's probably already done it, at least in his head. I suppose you could only use it on certain things. Wouldn't be possible for a lot of armor and shields. Animated flags and pennants would be the place to start, I suppose. Horse barding might also be relatively easy and surcoats for companions. I like the idea of squires.

[tullabee]

Perhaps you could have a (limited) variety of symbols and designs to choose from and mix and match from among those. It would probably make it easier to design a device while still maintaining uniqueness.

[grmblf]

Hey take a look at this: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category...f_arms_elements there's a lot of stuff here to make designs. Also check out both sub-categories, the one with crosses looks good, and it's all free resources!

[LHammonds]

grmblf, thanks for the info and links. For those interested in using SVG graphics, you can use a free editor called Inkscape.

 

A College of Heraldry would actually make more sense being that Oblivion is in the timeframe to be DOING this type of work rather than looking back at history. I would be awesome to have a shop where they sell unique items and can make some for you (place order, wait a week or two and come back).

 

But I'd like to utilize the KISS principle and start off initially with just unique shields that have several people's designs on them. Maybe initially setup at Stonewall Shields. If interest and development continues, maybe we can add additional items such as custom steel armor with the symbols on them as well...custom horses and maybe even NPC squires that carry around your banner but are not annoying like the "fan"...maybe make him always stick close by the horse at all times. It all depends on what skills people bring to the mod. If an architect comes along and designs and places a building, we can use that. If a modeler comes along and wants to create banners, we can do that. Same goes for any other aspect....quest makers, voice actors, animations, etc.

 

But I will be starting this off with CoA's being placed on shields. Where it goes from there, we'll see....but it largely depends on the community interest and what skills are brought to the "round" table.

 

I won't hoard this as my own mod. Consider this a community project. But one thing I'd like to stay away from are the DLCs and potential legal issues.

 

Thanks,

LHammonds

[Rabbit1251]

I'll play. The Rabbit Coat of Arms:

[LHammonds]

FYI - It is important to note that vanilla pieces of armor as well as many modded pieces of armor utilize mirror textures which means one half of the model's texture is spit and mirrored on the other half using the exact same texture. This means that the CoA would either be duplicated (and mirrored) on both sides or placed in the middle but the design would have to be symmetrical which most are not. This means that the pieces in this mod will have to be optimized for unique textures by removing this "mirror" effect.

 

It is a simple thing to do for most shields but it can get fairly complicated with armor pieces such as the breast plate, greaves, guantlets and pauldrons.

 

I will be providing the custom shield for placing the unique textures on but if anyone wants a different shield, you'll need to provide it.

 

Another thing to consider is how you'd like your shield to look. The entire shield can be painted to be your CoA or you can have the CoA + Family Crest (decorations) placed in the center.

 

Example: Here is a CoA design

 

 

Example: Here is the design applied to the shield with only the CoA as the base.

 

 

Example: Here is the design applied to the shield to show the CoA and the decorative crest.

 

 

I would think that the base design would be seen carried around and in use whereas the version with the decorative crest would be on display in your home.

 

Any way is doable but would need to be specified if you are not adding the texture to the shield yourself. If you go with the decorative version, you can also specify whether or not to include banners showing the name and/or a motto. In the decorative example above, I left off the banners from the original design.

 

LHammonds