Spellmaking and Enchantment -- major enhancements?

[moosers]

I was looking at making a mod for better spell creation and enchanting. Right now though it does look like you can:

 

1. Add Spell Effects to the game beyond a couple, at best -- I don't see anywhere that base spell effects can be edited much -- the spell effect menu seems to offer only a limited degree of customizing options.

 

You can increase the number of effects offered for enchanting and spellmaking purposes, so long as the actual effects are already in the game. It looks like there is no way to let a scripted effect be added to either menu.

 

2. Enchant an item without using sigil stones or the enchanting menu. Seems you can't add abilities to items in the game, or even make a new item with particular abilities in the game (you have to make the new item from scratch in the editor, add the mod, then you can gett it in the game).

 

3. Finding out what is in a container doesn't look like it is easy -- maybe you can get around this by keeping track of what someone does with their items or something.

 

4. Making your own menus like those of the enchanting menu and spell creating menu doesn't currently look possible. Of course how the xml files work and exactly how they are accessed hasn't been fully revealed I don't think. Perhaps OBSE will eventually have this as an option.

 

I was thinking it would be cool to making an enchanting mod where you place soul gems (perhaps any number of them or even other items too) in a container of some sort, and the item to be enchanted in another container. Then you could have some sort of menu access (or in-game interaction with casting spells) to pick out what enchantments you want on the item. Then when you have everything set and start the enchanting a nice 5-10 seconds long enchanting animation (scripted) begins complete with strange lights, lightning, etc. At the end you have your enchanted item. This would make enchanting seem more epic and special than just click-click-bam-you're-done.

 

Seems like you might be able to do this to a small degree for custom crafted items, but it looks like there is no way to allow the player to make in-game creations. Something similar is true of spells. Hence, as best I can figure, the mod someone recently made (an xml mod) that increases enchanting and spellmaking to 300/300/360 (in magnitude, area, and duration) is about the best that can be done combined with a mod that enables all base spell effects to be using in either process.

 

Maybe the few scraps of XML I have gottten (from mods already made) aren't enough, but it doesn't look like they will allow a way to give non-weapons multiple enchantments, weapons enchantments that are permanent or work some of the time, or any other neat stuff.

 

I am new to modding though, so perhaps I am mistaken. It does seem like there is a lot of potential for the OBSE (oblivion script extender, being worked on by some capable people it seems) to fix a lot of these problems in the long run. Anyhow, does that about sum up the situation?

 

-Drachasor

[Vagrant0]

Can't add any new spell effects, they're all hard coded, or at the very least protected. Can't edit very much of them for the same reason.

 

Everything else, as far as I know, is impossible without some serious scripting for detecting items in a container, and switching them out based on certain conditions. For 1 or 2 items, this wouldn't be too hard, for 20+ end results, this could be a nightmare given the length of script you would need.

 

Finding out what is in a container where the inventory of that container is not fixed or known is impossible. You can make a container check for specific items, but everything else won't be recorded.

 

Making your own menus isn't possible, at best you would use something like a message box, or physical things to interact with to make your selections.