Racial Reconstruction

[Cryogenius333]

I've been looking through the Nexus, and I have found so many races and creations that were,frankly, more creative than the original ones.

Nothing against Bethesda and what not, but I think, if they had looked into hiring some of you guys(And had the technology to do these things when the game was made) then Oblivion as a whole would have been more awesome.

Think about it. I found a Tolkien Elves mod, and his(her?) Elves look more fantastic than the ones already in the game.

Drow... Dunmer? You choose.

Ice Elves. Grey Elves. Demoness. Khajit Sub races. They are all there. Even the Synx race mod could pass over the Imperials and the Breton.

 

To the point, I'm thinking of Overhauling my races. Naturally, I would give due credit, as I don't rip peoples ideas.

However I did have some questions.

 

 

1- What kind of tax is that on a system. My machine is pretty powerful, but there are limits to everything.

 

2-How much would people appreciate something like this? Don't want to upload something, then have it flagged as witch magic and burned

 

3- Just how many attachements and downloads would I need? besides the custom race fix, better bodies, and whatever each of those races entitles.

 

4-Could someone help me write dialogue. Most Drow don't want to be called Dunmer, I would think, and while it would take a year and then some to sift through all the dialogue, I'd still like to try it.

 

5-Would this have too likely a chance to crash a system instead of slowing it down? I have found consistently that other peoples computers are more capable of running mods than mine, despite it's relative power, and when I try to do something, such as, enter TES and place a Demoness, when I enter that cell in the game, the game explodes. Same with the Synx.

I ask because I don't know if this is native to my computer at all.

 

6-How would this effect game experience? I don't want to make it public if people think this would suck.

 

7- I probably should have asked this first, but are there ALREADY ANY MODS LIKE THIS ONE FLOATING AROUND? I've looked, and looked, but I'm not sure if I'm looking in the right place.

 

8-Any ideas in general would be appreciated. Just don't slander me for trying to be creative in my thoughts.

[Keirgarth]

Are you saying you want to mod the game to replace all existing people with some of the races from the race mods?

 

Different races require different body types as they were created with specific body types in mind. The game doesn't like to have several body replacers trying to work at the same time, so having races based on HGEC might not work well with races that are based on another replacer mod.

 

Another issue is going to be the extra items that the races depend on. For instance the eyes and hair. Some races are a little finicky when it comes to alignment of the hair and eyes and only really look good with certain body replacers active. Textures is going to be an issue as well. Some body replacers map the texture differently than others. What might work well for one replacer might show up totally strange for another replacer.

 

In order to get things to all work together, someone is going to have to take the time to revamp each race to work with a specific texture design, make sure all hair and eyes are aligned correctly and also ensure that each race is adjusted to the same body replacer or to vanilla, the latter being less than appealing to most.

Edited October 21, 2011 by Keirgarth

[Matth85]

many races and creations that were,frankly, more creative than the original ones.

 

There is a lore built for this game. In that lore there is no half-naked elves running about flawless in look.

Oblivion is also a very old game now, and about everything is outdated to max. So the existing races are sub-optimal for todays standard.

 

What kind of tax is that on a system. My machine is pretty powerful, but there are limits to everything.

 

The limits are getting less and less, comuter wise. However, the game engine can get troubled fast. So revamping every race would not tax you at all. We could up to triple the polycount per NPC in game, and yet it would go smooth on new computer. I am still not sure how the game engine would hold up having to deal with the doubled polycount pre-scene.

 

2-How much would people appreciate something like this? Don't want to upload something, then have it flagged as witch magic and burned

Frankly, you would not be able to finish this before Skyrim. Hence I would say it would not get wat it deserved. No mod now gets what it deserves, since half the people are waiting for Skyrim. Heck, the best modders are doing the same.

 

 

3- Just how many attachements and downloads would I need? besides the custom race fix, better bodies, and whatever each of those races entitles.

I'd assume a good deal. If you want to download every decent race mod out there, and fix any problems with issues merging them.

 

I have found consistently that other peoples computers are more capable of running mods than mine, despite it's relative power

This can be issues with the mods themself crashing with other mods, like having 2 things at the same place, under the same ID.

Or it could be your computer having problems with mods. This would be because of security within your OS, I'd assume.

 

 

 

6-How would this effect game experience? I don't want to make it public if people think this would suck.

 

It could be refreshing, however, not lorefriendly enough to be amazing. Playing a Daedra, helping the 'mortals' killing dadreas, is very illogical. As well as playing Legolas or any other weird race.

 

Different races require different body types as they were created with specific body types in mind.

That is easy fixed. All you need is either:

A) pack in the body models in the packacke. This would become messy, but still usable.

B) re-fit every mesh to look like one body type.

C) Modify every body slightly, and save it as 1 kind. This could become problematic with copyrights and stuff from the authors. Not sure if they want their bodies modified.

 

Some body replacers map the texture differently than others.

Right point, kind of. The UVW is different per-model. So 1 body replacer got a different UVW field than the other. Not that it makes any problems. If you export 5 diferent Races, it does not matter if they all got different UVW-field. They still got their texture.

The only way this would become problematic, is if you planned to fit 1 texture to 5 different models. Then you'd need to fit the UVW to the texture.

 

someone is going to have to take the time to revamp each race to work with a specific texture design, make sure all hair and eyes are aligned correctly and also ensure that each race is adjusted to the same body replacer or to vanilla, the latter being less than appealing to most.

 

The only thing a person would need to do, is to get all the races, switch all the races, add the new ones, change the NPCs, make sure everything works. There will be very little alligmenting and texturing to do. Unless this is an all custom race built off of other meshes. Though that is not what I understand from the OP.

 

Generally, this is doable. Though not worth the time, nor energy, right before SKyrim is being released. Nothing big must be done, but a lot of small things. This includes:

- a LOT of CS work.

- a LOT of mailing authors and ask for permission to use certain models.

- a LOT of testing to make sure things go right.

- a LOT of debugging. I bet you a lot of texture pathings will go wrong, and you got to fix that.

 

 

In the end I want to quote again, just to get out the subtle point I had in the start:

if they had looked into hiring some of you guys(And had the technology to do these things when the game was made)

Today the Game Industry is the fastest moving industry there is. Look back 10 years, to 2001. Look at the games. Look at them last year, look at them now. We went from 1024x1024 textures to up towards 4096x4096 today. We went from 1k polygons max per character, and 10k per scene, to 10k-30k per character and 100k per scene. We've gone from low poly, to normal mapping mid polygon models.

Oblivion was a very early game to use Normal Maps to the max. Something every model uses today.

 

I promise you, the industry proffesionals are tenfolds better than most of the freelancers. Just because they get the newer technology as soon as it is out. We freelancer find it out when we get told about it. We must also struggle to get the softwares. We must either go illegal, pay up to 2000 dollars for a software, or go study digital art to get it for cheap/free.

 

 

 

TL;DR

 

- Not worth doing, in my humble opinion.

- Lots of small work, annoying things.

- Not too lore friendly.

- Don't give the freelance artist of today too much credit, up against what Bethesda made years ago. It's unfair against the time Oblivion was made :)

 

Cheers,

Matth

[Perrinwolf]

Currently their is one race replacer. Called XEO05. It's uses "more beautiful people" as it's base races to replace all the vanilla npcs in the game. If you wanted to gather together races and make your own version of more beautiful people. And call it something else, and create your own version of XEO 05 go for it. I guess peeking at what XEO did, and then doing so for your own races would be great. Sure are some races. That I would loved as alternate replacements for the ones added by mbp. Edited October 23, 2011 by Perrinwolf

[Cryogenius333]

 

if they had looked into hiring some of you guys(And had the technology to do these things when the game was made)

Today the Game Industry is the fastest moving industry there is. Look back 10 years, to 2001. Look at the games. Look at them last year, look at them now. We went from 1024x1024 textures to up towards 4096x4096 today. We went from 1k polygons max per character, and 10k per scene, to 10k-30k per character and 100k per scene. We've gone from low poly, to normal mapping mid polygon models.

Oblivion was a very early game to use Normal Maps to the max. Something every model uses today.

 

I promise you, the industry proffesionals are tenfolds better than most of the freelancers. Just because they get the newer technology as soon as it is out. We freelancer find it out when we get told about it. We must also struggle to get the softwares. We must either go illegal, pay up to 2000 dollars for a software, or go study digital art to get it for cheap/free.

 

 

Of course, I meant no offense. I am aware of just how much better most professionals are compared to freelancers. One of my best friends is a graphic designer working for Blizzard. He's usually too busy to talk to me, but I've known him for a while.

All I meant was, even in games we see today, there are a lot of things that can be done in games to make them better, and they aren't done.

I am aware that there are time limits, and certain things would overtax machines, and there are money restraints and the mod I proposed would only make the game better to certain people who might want something like this. I'm not trying to trash the designers. That's why I said "If they had the technology" as well. I'm sure the designers would have done a better job them.

In terms of gameplay, though I'm sure that falls under a different department, many people, at least who I know, claim that Morrowind, for having poorer graphics, was ultimately better than Oblivion, because so may things were cut out of Oblvion to make way for the graphics, which were good for the time.

Although, personally, the voice cast might need a little tuning up. Four hundred year old Elves, and whatnot.

Naturally, I got excited in my writing, probably should have been a bit more careful what I said. I'mma dunce sometimes yup.