Hotkeys, Animations, Crafting, & more (for both/either Oblivion or

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I personally hope to either make or at least help/overlook these mod concepts through to completion, but so far I essentially have no modding skills or works to speak of. All of these ideas are on a grand scale although do not have to be made as such. Due to both reasons I consider them community projects more than a personal modder's work, whether mine or someone else's. As such I'm willing to completely hand the ideas over to someone else if they can see them through to completion.

 

These ideas were made with Oblivion's mechanics and world in mind; however, with Skyrim approaching and due to the utility of some of the mods some or all of the mods might just be better off being Skyrim projects. While some of the mods would be practical for Skyrim, several such as the combat animations will be completely useless. Also some of the ideas will be redundant due to Skyrim including the ideas, or a few mods already touching the subject lightly. Regardless I'll post them as they stand with Oblivion in mind since the concepts may be able to be altered to fit Skyrim, or the mods may be made for Oblivion instead of Skyrim.

 

All of these mods have far more detailed descriptions and details totaling over 60 pages already when included with world concepts and storylines. Only summaries of the summaries will be here along with some of the reasoning of why the mod is needed or what it fulfills.

 

 

Mod Compilation:

 

Some of the mods would probably require the Construction Set to be edited, which I realize probably is not easy to do even for simple interfaces. Editing the CS isn't required for the mod, but would be of large benefit to modders who decide to make mods under the "standards" created.

 

CS Editing Mods:

Scripted Hotkeys:

Summary: This mod creates an interface menu that has 8 pages which have 25 toolbars each. This menu and toolbars are navigated using only the mouse wheel or page up/dn keys. Each page is categorized as spells, abilities, poses, actions, equipment equip, equipment animations, mod abilities, and misc; however, they are only labels and the user can decide what each page contains. Each toolbar works the same as any normal toolbar with keys of 1 to =. Modders can make entire toolbars for specific tools or items (example: a toolbar for FONV's Umpa's dance tool) which users can then bind to one of the 200 available toolbars on the page they desire. The user fills the toolbars just by dragging dropping abilities/spells into the toolbars (somewhat similar to mmorpgs). In addition the user can make scripted hotkeys which do multiple actions (same as mmorpgs' macro binds) so long as no cooldown occurs. This would include the possibility of using a hotkey to switch to one of the other 200 other toolbars, allowing for a chain of spell casts, abilities, or animations to be done without manually changing toolbars. Additional to the interface, CS changes will provide easy mapping of hotkeys and actions by modders, provide a new CS (for modders) and in-game interface menu that allows control of mod variables (I believe FONV's caliber or some mod does this, but no other mods use it), define and implement in the CS and in-game new gear slots to prevent gear incompatibility and allow further customization of equipment, and optional implementation through the CS and mod options interfaces to create and use new skills, spells, weapon types, and armor types. All of these options will be primarily optional to use, so both modders and users should be fine having it as a requirement for their mods.

 

Reasoning: I've always disliked having to use modifier keys or using odd hotkeys to cast spells and so forth in games. I'm also tired of hauling around 10 mod configuration items. I'm also tired of navigating through slow scrolling menus. I also dislike having menus or options forced on me. And most of all I dislike un-uniform standards for mods resulting in incompatibilities not due to personal preferences. With everything contained in this no one should have any incompatibilities so long as modders use it as the standard. While this doesn't make clothing mods uniform (unless all clothing and so forth comes in one package with its own enable/disable option in the mod options), it does make any mod with mechanics that are not supported or are incompatible with another mod to be compatible. It also allows easy chain casting, re-equiping of items with no slow menus, and less inventory junk for options, hotkeys, and controls. In addition most of my other mod ideas build off of the concept of the scripted hotkeys. For those of you who don't see the practical value, here's an example:

 

Say you want all of your 50 spells binded to only the 1-5 keys for the actual spells. With scripted hotkeys it'd be easily done and fully customized:

Press 1 to select ranged spells, 2 for touch spells, 3 for buff spells, 6 to return to previous menu (pretend you pick ranged)

Press 1 to select destruction spells, 2 for illusion, 3 for alteration, 4 for restoration, 6 to return to previous menu, 7 to return to first menu (pretend you pick illusion)

Press 1 to select charm spell, 2 for light, 3 for frenzy, 4 for demoralize, 6 to return to previous menu, 7 to return to first menu

Cast your spell

 

With just pressing 3 keys which would have no delay you can cast one of 125 spells using only the keys 1-5. I'm sure I can press 3 keys in the 1-5 range than any other method or navigating through a favorites menu. In addition you could make all the toolbars linked to each other by having 8 go to equipment's menu, 9 to abilities, and so forth.

 

 

Custom Animations:

Summary: This mod would make it where modders can give every weapon, item, and possibly NPCs its own subclass where it will have its own animations, characteristics, and so forth (FO example is cloth armor compared to metal or leather for the repair options). With such an option every weapon and spell could have its very own attack, idle, and cast animations as well as be given class specific properties if so desired. Additionally another goal of this mod would be to make viable controls for picking up objects in-game and manipulate them by rotating them or moving them closer or further away from the player (no more relying upon crosshair movement to place objects). With scripted hotkeys the player could change combat "styles" since weapons could have scripts made where pressing the action causes the player to change to a different animation scheme for that weapon. The other characteristics other than the repair and animation example would be the sound of the weapon and what kind of death blows it deals.

 

Reasoning: I've found it somewhat annoying that companions, the player, or NPCs can't have their own animations, for example sexy walk mods being forced to change vanilla NPCs (ignoring the mod compilation that I believe corrected this and gave NPCs appropriate walks). I've also found many if not all of the mods that allow you to stand objects upright to be annoying with tons of menus or limitations. Sadly with the standard PC hardware its difficult to make a mod do such without being filled with pesky menus, assumptions, or limits due to the lack of precision controls. I do believe they can be done better though, enough so that object placement takes less time than it currently does with mods. Giving every NPC and item its own subclass allows the items to act differently. For example if a modder wants objects to float on the surface of water, their only optional would be to make objects of specific weights to float on water. With this mod they can just make a subclass that would let the object float, rather than making all light weight items float or doing some coding that would be prone to bugging other mods or objects.

 

 

The following mods are probably out of date for Skyrim, as Skyrim appears to already have what these mods adds or does it possibly even better. Regardless the mods will still be posted in case someone does them for Oblivion or can borrow some concepts. Some if not all of these mods might already be made in some variation for Oblivion as well. I most likely had a problem with them which the previous two listed mods would probably correct for me personally. All or most of these will require the previous to mods, or some variation of them. Also I'm being lazy on the mods with short summaries and not clarifying them additionally since most of them are useless for Skyrim.

Fighting Revamp - Parry System:

Summary: Revamps the entire combat system to a complex version of the old Morrowind combat system. Each of the 9 different strafe maneuvers (idle, N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW) and 3 different speeds (walk/stand, run, jump) produces a different attack that varies in power, attack speed (animation as well), armor penetration, and block position. For each of the 9 strafes is a counterpart block which is the opposite movement direction (ie: move right to block their left hand attack). Blocking an attack with the correct block will slow the attacker's remaining "cooldown" to the attack opening them for attack. Parrying an attack opens the opponent as well as grants a window to perform a critical damage counter attack. Blocking or parrying an attack with the wrong strafe reduces the damage blocked by a significant amount. Blocking the attack with an ideal strafe is not required to vastly reduce damage, as only blocking the wrong direction will result in maximum damage taken. Blocking/parrying bonuses and damage reductions would decay with time used. Lowering block results in a short cooldown before being able to block again.

 

Reasoning: Probably not much reasoning here since Skyrim supposedly does some of this in addition to adding kill moves and a dual wield system. The system still may be beneficial for Oblivion. The system essentially guarantees the victor to be whoever blocks right and faster, as even a low level would be able to take nearly no damage from a high level attack with a perfect block. Due to the 9 different strafes as well as varying speed increasing/decreasing damage dealt and taken also gives more weight to the attacks, and would result in a vastly difficult combat system if fighting higher level creatures.

 

 

Fighting Revamp - Anime System:

Summary: A misleading name to a degree, as the combat is just fast paced. This fighting system relies upon sidestepping to dodge attacks and wear down enemies until they become defenseless. This system uses the previously mentioned strafe/parry system, but throws in the twist of being able to side step past or around enemies giving an advantage against the enemy or resulting in running your own head through their sword. Similar to parrying attacks, dodging attacks back to back builds up bonuses to deal crushing counter attacks.

 

Reasoning: Roughly the same as the Parry System's rational. Gives a parry system that gives fast paced combat that involves flanking your enemy. A more challenging combat system as dodging alone cannot win the fight since having an attack parried results in a devastating counter attack by the enemy. Possibly a better combat system for players who like dodge based combat rather than block/parry based.

 

 

Dual Wield Weapons:

(Oblivion only) Summary: By creating a new weapon skill and using Custom Animation's class based animations, dual wielding weapons will become possible. To give a dual wielding feeling, attacking with the weapon will alter its swing time (to match the offhand swing animation) in its combos, as well as its damage with every swing. Also to maintain balance, the Dual Wield skill's potency will require the main hand's weapon skill too. Therefore, to perform well while dual wielding with an ax in the main hand, one would need to be skilled in using axes as well as dual wielding. With Scripted Hotkeys, it is also possible to allow stance changes while dual wielding and which can change kind of attacks to use.

 

Reasoning: Everyone loves dual wielding. Using custom animations and giving each weapon its own subclass (dual wield subclasses) should open the doors to a functional dual wield weapon where both weapons at least appear to attack (vary attack speed and attack damage). Obliviously this is already done for Skyrim and won't even need to be implemented in Skyrim, outside of the concept of changing attack stances/styles.

 

 

Multi-strike Attacks:

Summary: Give each weapon swing (based on the animation) 3-9 attack vectors each with its own angle from the origin (crosshairs). Using variables it'll be possible to prevent one enemy from being hit twice from the same swing and even ignore the presence of that enemy, hence allowing stabbing 2 enemies with one thrust. On the other hand, the same enemy being hit multiple times will give the attack more realism, but this may ruin the game's balance and a bug of all 3-9 vectors always hitting the same person may result. Each consecutive hit with the same swing performs by a percent stacking with each hit. Such a mod will allow melee fighters, and even archers to a small degree, to fight multiple enemies equally to that of a mage character on top of the realism it adds.

 

Reasoning: If I'm not mistaken Skyrim performs this or something even better so Skyrim shouldn't need this. While simplistic having attacks hit multiple locations rather than just dead center of the crosshairs should add realism and some more fun to the game especially for mele fighting. As in the summary, the system may not work too well depending on the distance from the player to the enemy. The vectors could be given offset starting positions as well as angles which could correct the potential error.

 

 

Carriage:

Summary: Create carriages that travel between cities along the main roads. Honestly got nothing else on it other than some debugging information and ideas that should prevent any major bugs modders run into with the concept.

 

Reasoning: Roleplayers seem to love living the life of nobility. If anything the carriages would serve as a major aesthetic. If I'm not mistaken there's rumors or confirmation that Skyrim already has carriages or carts, so once again another unneeded Skyrim mod. This mod as all of my mods is a "prerequisite" for another mod idea I have for world spaces. As in prerequisite, I mean this mod would have to be fully functional and bugless for the other mod to work (hint: it has destructible vehicles).

 

 

These two mods probably apply to Skyrim as either improvements or additions. Far as I've seen neither have really been covered in depth in Oblivion either. The second mod gives an accurate scale of the grandness I plan for my world space mods for anyone interesting in the world content.

 

Missing Weapons:

Summary: Same process as Dual Wield Weapons (subclasses and so forth), but adding spears, crossbows, thrown weapons, tools (shovels, picks, axes - needed for the next mod), and any other lore fitting weapon classes. In combination with Scripted Hotkeys the tool weapons as well as other weapons could have "alternate" fires by switching from a diggy diggy animation to a shovel in the face animation and stats (another example: switching between slashing and piercing with a halberd polearm)

 

Reasoning: Really just shows the prime use for Custom Animations. The mod also supplies some necessities for the next and final mod I have to recommend/request/submit.

 

 

Craft & Establish:

This mod essentially has 2 parts to it but share resources and so forth, so each part will have its own summary.

 

Crafting Overall Summary: First off resources will be found across the world similarly to how it is in Morrowind Crafting, with iron ores and so forth scattered in caves. Resources will vary from pottery, metals, hides/leathers, cloth/papers, woods, gems, and ink/magical materials. Each resource will be collected or crafted by their respective sources. Extraction of resources is done by using tools (actual hitting the object with the tool - similar to "smithing" in the Real Time Settler mod for FO, but hopefully with less spammy "attacks"). The material deposits will be destroyed from extraction.Items are crafted at their specific tools, being a smith's shop or wherever. Skills determine what recipes and what materials the craftsman can create. All crafting requires blueprints of some kind, which are obtained from skill points, books, various scattered notes, random "luck" while crafting other items, or by blueprinting the item or static when you find it. Static objects or items not "registered" in the mod will be craftable, but the difficulty of the craft and materials required will be "randomly" generated for the item depending on its size or stats (glass cups may take metals, an iron chandelier might be made out of wood). All vanilla items and compatible mods will have their own specific material requirements.

 

 

 

Crafting Molds Summary: Blueprinted items and statics will not have the option of selecting molds and so forth, but for all mod added craftable items they will use this system. For every item, whether static, weapon, armor, or clutter, a variety of molds and materials exist. For sake of example I will talk about smithing a sword (armor will be done similarly, but may have more limitations due to more details and odd shaped meshes). Each respective crafting method will have different options, but follow the same pattern. When crafting a sword there are 3 molds and 3 materials required (1 mold and material are optional although may look odd). The three molds are the blade, the guard, and the hilt. Each mold has a variety of materials that can fill them. Each component will be explained separately:

 

The blade: The blade is the mesh (model) that the weapon you craft will have. The blade does restrict what kinds of guards and hilts you can use (no sense using a 2h hilt on a dagger blade) and vice versa, depending which molds you pick first. The blade determines several initial stats, such as the "volume" of material needed (weight), the damage, the attack swing timer, and the class and subclass of the weapon.

 

The guard: The guard is another mesh (mostly cosmetic) that is attached between the blade and hilt. The guard can give a few bonuses or cons to stats like how long it takes to enter and exit blocking with the weapon, as well as altering the weight, swing timer, and damage slightly.

 

The hilt: The hilt is the final required mesh located below the guard. The hilt mostly alters the swing timer. The hilt also determines what materials can be used for the blade and the durability of the equipment. Choosing a material (weight) that is outside of the hilt's supported weight will result in the attack swing timer being vastly increased. Meanwhile picking a soft grip for a lightweight blade and metal will result in a longer swing time as well as wasted materials, when a hard grip would be suffice and even better stats.

 

Blade material: The blade material determines (cosmetic) the color of the blade metal. The material also determines the weight of the blade (alters damage and attack swing timer) and can provide elemental or physical bonuses such as bonus blunt damage, bonus slice damage, or bonus damage to specific elements for enchantments (ie: copper gives a bonus to fire damage if the sword is enchanted with a fire enchant).

 

Guard material: The guard material is cosmetic as well. The material does slightly alter stats of the blade being its weight, swing timer, and durability (primarily this).

 

Hilt material: The hilt material determines (or is determined) what the weight of the blade can be. The material can serve as a counter weight reducing attack speed but decreasing damage. The material can also lower durability.

 

All weapons and armor will have similar molds and materials that are primary stats. These 6 options determine the weapon's primary looks and stats. With a variety of materials and molds (~25 each, 75 meshes and 75 textures total) already over 200 million different (by texture or mesh) swords can be crafted. Note, most of these swords (over 90%) would be impractical to be used for combat, as they would break in just a few attacks or have low damage output for their swing timers. However, these are just the primary options. Additionally are the following options:

 

Blade sockets (0-2): Some blades will come with "sockets" where cosmetic items (with minor bonuses) can be placed. Some blades will have no options while others can have up to 2. These "sockets" can be filled with a gem holster that allows the socketing of a gem. Gems can effect the weapon's enchants (ie: +5% bonus damage to fire if the sword's enchantment is fire based) or grant minor stat bonuses or even unique bonuses such as reduced damage from fire.

 

Guard sockets (0-1): Some guards also come with sockets where gems (or other "artwork") can be placed. These sockets work the same as Blade sockets.

 

Hilt sockets (0-2): Hilts can also have sockets for gems, but they can also have some more unique items that serve a purpose. On the bottom of the hilt, counterweights and other unique "cosmetic" trinkets can be placed in addition to the gem options. These counterweights can vastly alter stats (compared to other cosmetics) with few negatives. This socket could potentially be used to prevent being disarmed or to disarm enemies (if disarming is available by some mod).

 

Blade Rune (2): Blades can be imbedded with runes. These runes can vastly improve enchantments on the weapon, or provide small enchantment bonuses of their own.

 

Weapon Damage: As the weapon durability decreases (or increases past 100%), damages will show up on the blade.

 

Blood stains: Blood stains will appear on the blade until it has been cleaned or worked on in a forge.

 

Even statics and clutter items may follow suit with these options. For modders it shouldn't be too difficult, as the textures do not vary too much other than color. Mesh work may take a while, as well as positioning of the sockets (there'll only be 2-3 socket sizes for different sized gems and trinkets). And for those interested in the new number of possibilities for swords assuming just 25 models/textures for each option: over 1 quintillion (10^18). Granted over 99% of those are "unusable" as practical weapons, stats vary by only ~3%, and cosmetics vary only by a small detail. Still a huge number of weapons to choose from and to loot. Additionally unmentioned, the stats can vary vastly as there are also 5 qualities of "loot" resulting in 4x more weapons available with weaker stats and possibly even slightly altered textures.

 

 

 

Interactive Crafting Summary: The player has the choice of 3 different crafting "methods". The easiest would be that of your standard mmorpg where an interface does all the work and stats determine the outcome. The other easy option but time consuming is a system like Real Time Settler's crafting (without the spamy hammer and power swings instead). The final option, far as I know, has never been done before at least for any rpg. (Sword example again) The option for hardcore crafting players is to actually work the forge and then hammer out the impurities. The player will actively insert the blade into the forge when they desire, heat it long as they desire, and as the blade heats impurities will bubble up. The objective is to make the blade fit its "outline" 100%. This essentially is just a 2d mini game. The craftsman has to position the hammer over the impurity, choose an angle and power, and then hammer the blade. The blade will deform from the strike. There's 5 outlines (one for each quality of "loot") and once the blade's particles are all within the outline that is the quality of the blade if finished. Working faster is better for the player, as cooling the blade immediately in water results in less impurities bubbling up which deforms the blade away from the desired shape. While a player can sit there for an hour cooling immediately after every hammer hit, they can finish much faster by being skilled at it. As the player's character skills improve easy materials' outlines will expand making their production faster and easier. All other crafting will work similarly (ie: cooking will require maintaining a constant oven temp for baking while still preparing other food). Each "profession" will also have upgradeable tools and furnishing making the work easier, faster, or reducing resource consumption.

 

 

 

 

Establish Overall Summary: This portion of the mod pretty much is purely inspired by the Real Time Settler mod for FO3. The goal is to take RTS and apply this complex but satisfying crafting system concept to it, while adding in several features that RTS did poorly (usually buggy rather than poorly) or did not include at all. The first and foremost important aspect: the player can create any building they desire. The player can blueprint interiors of houses (statics included or not, but no clutter/loot or NPCs) as well as their exteriors. The player can then place this building like you could in RTS, but give that building an interior the same as the blueprinted one. Terrain will be able to be edited using static chunks of "land" to fill in holes and gaps to make a smooth surface (assuming land is difficult to edit as I assume it is especially in-game). Furthermore, the buildings won't be made instantly (NPCs will build it over time - not 100% accuracy on what the final structure will be of course) and it will consume resources as well as may require the player to do the work himself. Materials will be estimated based on the interior and exterior sizes plus statics in the interior. NPCs then can be granted permission to live within the house or business (as designated by the player). Using a small player filled "survey" the local traffic, regional traffic, daytime vs night time traffic, the patrons, and the NPC dialogue are determined (ie: questions ask to rate the building on how close to town it is, what kind of building/business is it, and so forth). The player can also obtain schematics which build homes or businesses with random generated but pre-mapped interiors so the player doesn't have to fill the building. Alternatively, the player may make their own zones within their own chosen interior and exterior. The player marks off specific "zones" that are marked as work spaces, living spaces, bedrooms, food, and sales. Furniture and clutter will fill up the spots as they see fit and will face the nearest "designated" path zone. These custom built buildings can then be sold to NPCs who will inhabit the building and fill it with clutter on their own, rather than the player paying for it. The random generated NPCs who visit these businesses or homes can be moved into nearby buildings if available, resulting in a functional town (although dull, since NPC dialogue would be limited as well as quests). Additionally this mod would receive "content patches" from any world space mods I create, allowing for more blueprints, random generated clutter, more NPCs, and more craftable items.

 

 

 

 

Reasoning: Everyone...well not everyone, but several people love to just sit around and decorate a building or to make their own touches to their equipment. Even more people like to just run around collecting 100s of tons of iron ore and never smelt the stuff. As I discovered in Borderlands and have seen/heard from Dead Island players, even just having minor stat alterations in gear is rather addicting. Having this much variety in both cosmetics and stats should add a ton of replayability. Also all the crafted items do not have to be craft only - all of them could be added to random loot spawns. Another reason why people probably would love this mod: Minecraft - collecting and building stuff. This takes that even further letting you interact with what you build. The crafting portion of the mod really shouldn't be too difficult to achieve (at least going by company's video game animations, graphics, and quality overall). Since the crafting portion only requires about 400 textures/meshes for swords (200 to 300 of which are shared with all weapons) it shouldn't be too difficult for modders to achieve. The only concern I have for the mod is the fact that the game has to piece together the items in-game. I'm afraid that the engine will be stubborn and not let you "merge" all the textures and meshes to make a single texture and mesh equivalent for the item; however, it definitely is possible to make either a 3rd party program or just using the engine itself to save the items during a loading screen or something to "merge" it to be one item. And this complexity possibly only scraps the scalp compared to some of my world space requiring mods.

 

 

Hopefully those of you fellow potential modders have as little life as me and have taken the time to read some of the ideas. Again, I honestly never once thought of these mods to be sololy made by me or by anyone. Since coming up with the first one I've expected and intended them to be projects for 20+ modder teams. If anyone can make these mods flawlessly and shares it with the public, I'm all for them "stealing" my ideas.

 

As stated, I do have additional details for most of the mods including debug information that I already expect to be a problem based on bugs with most mods. And while I have essentially no mod making experience, I do know the basics of meshes/textures as well as the very basics of C++ programing - enough to know what and how most scripts work. If anyone is considering taking up the suicidal duty of one of these grand mods, feel free to ask me for my limited supply of help. And I can't promise my help won't come in the format of 10+ pages of text.

 

 

Also, if this forum supports the use of spoilers, can someone give me the code so this looks more organized.