My first mod is ready!

[DavitosanX]

Hi everyone. After a good deal of work, my first mod is finally ready for testing. It works with my setup, which is GOTY downloaded through Steam, and no other mods. Since not much was changed I doubt that there will be any problems. I would be very thankful if anybody would play it and give me some insight and positive criticism.

 

 

The file can be found here: http://infofarmaceutica.net/mods/TombOfQuintillus.zip

 

Bear in mind that the dungeon itself is supposed to be very dark, almost forcing the player to use a torch or lighting spell. I would like to know if it's too dark, as in too annoying, or straining on the eyes. Also, since a lot of people complained about map markers and leveled monsters in Oblivion, I didn't include them in this mod. You'll have to read the books and letters I've added, and explore in order to find the next part of the quest.

 

I'll be happy to answer any questions. Thanks a lot and have fun!

Edited June 6, 2011 by DavitosanX

[David Brasher]

Very good. I really didn't find very many bugs. It was a fun quest and dungeon.

 

Here are some things I noticed:

 

Typos in the book:

 

"Morbid interest in hm"

 

"arrived to Kvatch" to --> at

 

"terrified with the couple" with --> of

 

"flee from his patch"

 

"soul of his foes" soul --> souls

 

chamaleonic --> chameleonic

 

"Graccus wanted to be invovled"

 

There are intersecting light radii in the dungeon that can cause lag and stuttering. In some rooms, there are instances where it is common to have four radii intersecting with each light and numerous lights in that one room.

 

There is a flashing shadow at the base of a pillar in one of the larger rooms. If it were raised a hair, the problem would go away.

 

The treasure is a bunch of god items. Many players would just put them in their trophy room because they would not feel that it would be fair to use them in-game.

 

There is mod dirt in Abandoned Mine, Chorrol Mages Guild, and elsewhere.

 

The path-gridding is incomplete and does not interconnect, so combat AI can be irregular and enemies may not be able to chase you. As it stands, this dungeon would not work out if you bring companions.

 

This mod was well worth the download and I had a good time playing it. I enjoyed the quest and had to hunt around a bit. The books were well-written. I really liked the atmosphere of the dungeon.

[DavitosanX]

Thanks a lot for your comments, David. I'll get to the typos right away. I hope you don't mind if I ask a few questions:

 

When I interconnected the path grid, enemies could wander everywhere around the dungeon. I didn't consider that companions also used them. Is there a way to make enemies stay relatively in place, and only leave their spot when chasing the player?

 

How do I clean the mod dirt? Some items didn't make it into the final release and I think I got them all out. Do you mean the asterisk that still shows up in the construction set, or actual objects in-game?

 

About the lights, was the lag very noticeable? It would kill me to alter those. Haphazard as they may seem, each effect was thought out. The room with the crypts, where you find the boots has a LOT of intersecting radii... Also, what about the loading times? Were those acceptable, or would the mod benefit from dividing the dungeon in two?

 

About the treasure, yes, I assume it could be downgraded a bit. Say, half the bonuses? Also, as I am a little obsessive, I wanted to put in the entire armor set. Would you mind if you only found the cuirass and gauntlets, or any other partial armor?

 

And yes, those darn pillar shadows things are a pain, I'll check the pillars again. Raising them 0.2 or so in Z usually does the trick. Also, the big pillars don't fit all that well into their socket. When the environment is lighted, it's not noticeable, but in darkness you can see the 'void' through the edge of the pillar's base. I actually scaled them to 1.01 to fix that.

 

 

 

Those were a lot of questions! You don't have to answer them, but I would appreciate if you pointed me in the right direction. The CS is a vast piece of software and one can be easily lost looking for a specific feature. Thanks again for playing!

Edited June 8, 2011 by DavitosanX

[David Brasher]

You can change the AI packages on creatures so that they will not wander as far. If you remove all AI packages they stand in one spot. I would recommend giving them packages with something like 512 wander.

 

The mod dirt I saw was asterisks. It is possible that there are no actual effects of your mod dirt on gameplay, but many gamers are real connoisseurs and sticklers and freak out over mod conflicts that reports show them. Many gamers would refuse to play a mod with mod dirt in it or would take your mod and work it over with their modding software before playing it. So If you have an asterisk on Abandoned Mine, you would need to modclean out that entire cell using the CS ignore feature to remove the asterisk. If there is certain dirt that the buggy CS will not remove, then you would have to use TES4Edit which is more powerful and can usually mod-clean out anything. Here is a tutorial: Mod Cleaning Tutorial

 

I have a really powerful computer but a rather ordinary graphics card. The lag and stuttering was very noticeable and objectionable. People with totally awesome computers and graphics cards would not have a problem, but more gamers have ordinary computers than awesome computers. You might decide that your lights have to be the way they are for artistic reasons and just state in your readme file that the mod is designed to be played only on higher-end computers. Alternately, people could turn their graphics settings way down to improve framerate and smoothness.

 

I had no problems whatsoever with loading times. I think your dungeon cell size is average and on par with vanilla Oblivion.

 

I liked finding the whole set of armor and was poking around looking for a shield and weapon too. So I think it is good to have more rather than less. Some people might complain if there were pieces missing from the set.

 

I only saw one single pillar with a flashing shadow. This is caused by using the F key to drop the pillar to the floor. The standard procedure is to just raise it one click after dropping it. I don't think you need to adjust CS settings for this operation.

 

I did not notice any other problems with the pillars in the playtest. I did not see the void. The Ayleid ruin tileset is much better than the cave tileset for not seeing the void. The cave tileset is really buggy. The main problem with the Ayleid tileset is if you have the fog levels high. Be sure that your fog levels are as low as they are in a vanilla Oblivion Ayleid ruin and the void will be pitch black and will look like part of the crack rather than like the purple void.

 

You made a good dungeon and quest and you are continuing work to make your mod even better.

Edited June 8, 2011 by David Brasher

[DavitosanX]

Thanks for all the observations, David. I'm reading up on TES4Edit. I'm going to change the AI setting and complete the path grid, and test it out with a companion.