Seasons in Oblivion

[glensh]

Has anyone thought or tried adding seasons to Oblivion. Like have an actual fall, the leaves change colors and fall to the ground even cover maybe even be blown away by the wind. Or having a winter, having it snow all over Cyrodiil and having the wind blow the snow. And of coarse a summer that is more visible, I thought this would go great with Real Thirst mod increased thirst or more fatigue loss due to heat. I've tried making mod such as this, either it doesn't work out or is beyond my skills.

 

I am just curious if anyone else has tried or thought about doing it :confused:

[Megatarius]

I have thought about this for a long time. For a while I even considered tackling it myself. For a while. When I first started playing the game, I thought it would be like that already. I was disappointed to learn it was winter in the mountains all the time and autumn in the hills as a transition point. I understood it was size limitations.

 

To do this would basically require 4 copies of the entire outside worldspace, and several of the cities. You would need scripts that updated the quests in the other three along with you so you don't end up having to do every quest four times, once it changes worldspaces for the next season.

 

Needless to say, it would be a ton of work retexturing everything to look like snow, and changing nearly every tree. Even the evergreen trees would need snowy versions, and the deciduous trees would need four versions each.

 

Every rock would need to have snow on it. Every fort ruin surface, Aylied ruin, fence, bridge, and LOD data. The region down by Leyawiin could stay green year round, but even it would require a few trees to change four times.

 

I would have snow everywhere except south of Bravil. The Colovian region by Anvil would also be snowy. I think of Cyrodill as several different biomes crammed into a too-small space. You would stand down around the Panther river mouth and look north and literally see where the snow starts. I don't consider it an option to have snow down south. The sounds of the birds and insects down there, and the lushness of the plants, just scream humid climate. Practically tropical. If anything there should be visible heat shimmer in the air down there.

 

 

The only other option I see would be to go through and script several hundred trees, rock meshes, and ground textures to load different .nif and .dds files during each season. I'm not even sure it would be possible. I'm not a script person at all, so I would actually rather go through and change everything by hand in duplicate worldspaces. At least I know how to do that. Scripting makes my head hurt. It's basically language as math. In my literature-minded brain, that's like writing a novel in cypher with numbers. No thank you.

 

 

Anyway, I would love a mod like this. The next best thing would be to just pick a season and say, "Screw it, it's that season all the time!" A constantly snowed in Cyrodill would make for a different feeling game in many ways.

 

Or make it summer in the mountains. A really well done mod that converted all the mountainous cells to summer textures and meshes would be awesome. I grew up in environment almost exactly like that around Bruma. People always think of snow in that setting, but the truth is that summers in high mountains are actually far more beautiful and awesome. And that's saying something coming from someone who damn near worships snow.