Help on modding Spellmaking menus

[SprueRubble]

Hi,

 

Two of the things I really didn't like about Oblivion's Spellmaking system were:

 

1. Inability to make 0 duration spells.

2. Inability to set an area for Cast on Self spells.

 

I managed to fix 1 by creating a new slider for spell duration which allowed values from 0 to 100 (actually 1 to 101, then subtract 1). However, I'm completely stumped when it comes to 2.

 

In the part of enchantmentsetting_menu.xml dealing with the area of effect, the visibility of the Area tile seems to be based on the visibility of the area slider. That makes sense.

 

However, in the part that defines the slider (effset_area_scroll), there is a setting:

 

<user19> &true; </user19> <!-- visibility override - set by code -->

 

To be honest I don't really know what this does. Setting it to false doesn't work as that just results in the slider initially not being visible, but then correcting itself when the range is changed.

 

All combinations of changing this variable and trying to add <visible> &true; </visible> have failed. I could set the parent tile to always be visible but that doesn't really help when the slider remains stubbornly not-there.

 

Does anyone know how to make this work? I'm slightly worried that Oblivion might be hard-coded to remove the Area slider for Cast on Self spells or even just ignore the value of Area when creating such spells, which would pretty much make this impossible.

 

EDIT: I know it's possible to create area of effect cast on self spells in the CS, but it's just not the same and it's much more annoying that way.

[Vagrant0]

Don't know xml, so you're kinda on your own there. However there are several limitations you'll have to deal with since most of the spell system is hard coded. The .xml files really only allow for visual changes to the menu, or different slider values, not anything that changes the rules of the spells system itself.

 

That said, 0 second duration simply wouldn't work. Not only does the spell need a duration for the cost to be calculated, but it also needs that 1 second to say what to do. A spell of 0 seconds would likely just hit the target and do nothing since the spell effect stops the moment it is added.