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

[Siojo]

God this would be awesome! I love families histories, I have a large Irish family; and I really like my Flynn Coat of Arms. I can rarely find an official version of what it is (outside my grandfathers house). So I have to do this from what it was rather then the internet pretenders.....

 

 

http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/8666/flynncrest.jpg (I will remove the watermark later)

 

Colors:

Azure: Strength, Loyalty

Gold: Generosity

(After internet research I've been finding more and more of this) Argent:

 

Crest:

Hand holding a snake: A sign for fertility (Explains all my family members.)

 

Symbols:

Wolf: Perseverance in siege or effort

Circles: Can't find what this means, if someone knows please tell me.

 

Motto:

Honor praemium virtutis est: Honour is the reward of virtue

or

Non Sine Perculo: Not without Danger

(The latter is what I'm sure is the official as its what I saw in person, also its the more badass one.)

 

I've researched before, but have been unable to find that my family was involved in some sorta siege.... Although all my families symbols kinda points to it.

[grmblf]

@ LHammonds: could you post a blank image showing the shape of the shield you've choosen, with appropiate dimensions/resolution. I'll be pleased and thankful, and also it may help people with no skill at all at texturing or image editting, like me, to be used as a template for our own shields to share them for this project and save you a little time. That'd be great.

 

Point two: does the oblivion engine support some sort of in-game re-texturing? applying an overlaped image layer, or altering the texture path? I mention that 'cause it'll be great to be able to create your own shield in-game, choose the pattern, choose the colors and the symbols. Of course it will be much more limited than user-made pics but that'd be cool IMO.

 

And third, that's why I started this post, I've came with an idea for a quest/background story to obtain your own coat of arms in the game and for heraldry in Tamriel in general.

 

When you are at level 2 or so a group of knights come to the Imperial City after being victorious in some war on Morrowind against a tribe of rebels or so (it should be lore-friendly but in fact it doesn't matter really much as the conflict has ended and the player won't have the chance to go there and see it). The knights tell to the people amazing stories about how they fought fiercy and defeated the dunmer, etc, and how the dunmer surrended, giving them a personalized insignia painted on a shield as a gift for their brave and courageous behave on battle and all that stuff, kinda a sign of respect for the enemy. They are sou proud of their logo as they think it reflects properly their behaviour, strenghts, etc, so they walk all day showing the shield and linking in some way the stories they tell about themselves with the symbol they wear. But the people in the city really doesn't understand and reply that heroes are remembered by their names and not by a picture. The knights, annoyed, decide then to go to the Imperial Palace to speak to a responsible of the imperial register or something similar, in order to promote a bill for wich their respectives logos will be considered as their name itself.

 

The knights are convinced of their request and the person in charge doesn't want to fight war veterans so they agree. But what once was a dunmer tribal usage becomes something much more complex once it's on the hands of the imperial bureaucracy. At this stage the player could help them by talking to some scholar or librarian in the Arcane University if he has granted the acces, seeking some book, etc. Otherwise the quest should carry on and the register should be created in a few weeks (or months).

 

Once the office is already working the player may have the chance to register their own coat of arms. Below level 10 he will be told that one must be somebody before asking for a CoA, otherwise (unless he's the Champion of Cyrodiil or so) he will be required of some proof of his deeds. And that means go all thought Cyrodiil to find at least one person who could witness everyone of his important deeds, and ask them to do so. Perhaps they use your visit to ask you a little favor in exchange, and so on.

 

I know that's not very original but it may add a lot of fun and it's not like a plugin you install, go to the shop and buy the item, you must do something before to adquire it. I'd be really cool if it takes into account the fame you can prove and so it's clearly reflected on the shield. ie, you make the request at level 12 and obtain your shield, as you submited it. You make the request at level 25, beign the Champion of Cyrodiil, and it's the same pic with golden border and ribbons, etc. Perhaps 3 or 4 differents versions of each image would suffice, but that means multiplying the mod's size unless some kind of trick could be done.

 

 

well, I hope my stories don't bore you, it's just an idea.

[LHammonds]

grmblf, here are my replies:

 

Point #1 - I do not have the shield created yet but it would be a heater-type of shield. And yes, the source texture will be provided for those that wish to create the DDS file themselves. I will provide a multi-layered Photoshop image that will include the UV Map as one of the layers you can turn on and off.

 

Point #2 - Oblivion does not support dynamic textures in that way. I have seen somebody create an EXE/DLL that is called before Oblivion is started and can capture a screenshot and convert to DDS but the NIF files themselves were pre-programmed with a specific path to a texture beforehand. So, if you want to give the player a choice between 3 crests, 3 animals and 3 designs, you would have to create 27 shields to support all possible combinations. If you add another choice to pick between 3 different colors, that would require 81 shields to be created and a script that would select between them. Is it doable? Yes. Is it practical? Not really. The filesize would be gigantic for what the player actually sees in-game. You'd be better off providing a large set of pre-configured CoAs and let the player pick which one to take. If you made 20 designs and made sure to cover most areas people would want to use, maybe then you could give an option to pick one or two options for each one so that the total shields are kept to a minimum but some customizing is available. In Lost Paladins of the Divines, you are given options to customize your armor but each choice had to be pre-made which meant a LOT of entries in the Construction Set.

 

Point #3 - Interesting idea. As for the "witnessing" to be come "somebody" I would think that you could do a script check to see what vanilla quests have been completed as well as the amount of fame to determine of one qualifies as being worthy. The amount of fame affecting the look of your shield would be very cool but see Point #2. As mentioned before, this mod will start off very simplistic but if others would like to expand upon it, I would allow them to do so. However, I do not have the time to do the expanded ideas. Somebody else would have to do that.

 

LHammonds