Total Realism Overhaul

[monkeyboi]

eat several times a day?

 

what's your planned timescale for starvation, dehydration, and sleep deprivation?

 

i don't mean to criticize but you won't starve to death in one day, hell it takes about 3 to dehydrate to death

[Mansh00ter]

No, but if you want to keep at your optimum, you will want to have breakfast, lunch, dinner. The script will start prompting player with various cues as soon as the character goes peckish all the way to death. You don't HAVE to eat every time your stomach rumbles, and in fact will likely run into many situations where you can't, but then you'll suffer adverse effects, from just having lower stamina due to being hungry to eventually dying of starvation or thirst.

 

Planned timescale for starvation is three days, two days for dehydration, two days for sleep deprivation, with various states in between. I know a human being can go longer without food or drink (and sleep) but given the dynamics of gameplay, it would remove all danger from getting "lost in a dungeon" or stuck in the middle of nowhere, since you can effectively leisurely trek across Skyrim in little more than a day in-game time.

[rungok]

As the title says, this mod will be all about adding immersion and realism to the game, with accent on immersion. The end goal is to provide the player with a wide assortment of small "everyday" activities and gameplay requirements designed to pull them further into the game world and also make basic gameplay much more challenging and interesting.

The mod will at first come in the form of modules so that the players can mix and match the features they like, and pending availability of scripting support there will be later an ingame options menu where players will be able to set all the parameters to their liking.

 

To that end, these are the planned changes so far. If you have any suggestions I am of course open to them! Items marked with a ? mean that I am not sure they can be pulled off - need to take a closer look at the game with the Creation Set before I can make the judgment.

 

Interface changes:

 

• removal of immersion breaking elements, such as compass bar, enemy and quest indicators (I know this can be done in the settings, this is for those who don't like a temptation sitting there)
  
• overhaul of the way important information is handled, such as adding fullscreen visual and audio cues instead of a health bar
  
• figure out a suitable way to represent the mana bar with visual/audio cues
  

 

World Navigation changes:

 

• Map Check ability - the idea is to take the existing Clairvoyance and make a more immersion friendly version even for people who like to play a magic-free character, so that the process looks more like a proper map check than casting a spell; see if it is possible to add a cue as to how far the destination is
  
• removal of fast travel - temptation is a bad thing!
  

 

Survival changes:

 

• food, sleep (perchance dream) and drink requirements for the player character; to include:
  
• total consumables overhaul so that they include nutritional value; eating an apple is not the same as eating a roast pig
  
• you can get stuffed on food, which will slow you down for a little while
  
• water skins, ability to refill water in rivers and streams, wells etc.
  
• you can get drunk and pass out
  
• chance of getting sick or diseased if eating uncooked food (but it can save your life in a pinch)
  
• certain diseases making it impossible to hold food down
  
• disease progression more impactful; deadly diseases
  
• dying of thirst, starvation, visual cues for sleep deprivation
  
• combat, sprinting (maybe even running for long periods of time), intense spellcasting and other physically/mentally intensive activities reduce the time before the player needs to sleep
  
• wounds and bleeding, also bandages in case you don't have a healing spell handy. Some wounds only to be curable with proper treatment.
  
• replacement of instant healing potions with over time healing potions
  
• remove health regeneration / magicka regeneration to be tied in with "basic needs" (more tired you are, less magicka you have and slower it regenerates)
  
• health can be restored only though magic, potions or other proper healing methods (sleeping or eating have no effect)
  
• environmental hazards; going around scantily dressed in a blizzard will not be good for your health, even if you are a Nord. Trudging through rain/snowstorm for hours will make you tired. Hypothermia will slow you down.
  
• clothing overhaul; different types of clothing for different situations. You will want a nice warm fur coat (figure out if it is possible to add an "overcoat" so that the player can still wear armor underneath) high in the mountains
  
• deployable camping gear; specifically, methods to combat environmental hazards (campfire), cooking gear, small tent and a bedroll
  
• merchants are going to be ripping you off - make gold less available in the game; owning a horse should be a more impactful achievement, and the player should be encouraged to plan their way ahead, as well as forces to stealing in order to survive if they are poor with their purse management
  

 

Combat overhaul:

 

Combat to be made deadly regardless of level. Includes:

• all weapons to be made more dangerous; even an untrained bandit hitting you in the back of the head with a two handed sledgehammer can be lethal unless you have proper armor/magic up
  
• blocking to be made much more effective; make blocking practically a requirement, attack mashing no longer to be a viable tactic.
  
• ?figure out what to do with dual wielding; parry/evade mechanic
  
• make combat dynamic have as much of rhythm between attack and defense as possible
  
• ?dodge mechanic for player and NPC's
  
• reduce the impact weapon skill has on overall damage of the weapons
  
• reshuffle weapon perks if necessary
  
• deadly archery; having a piece of wood piercing your internal organs is not comfortable. Getting pierced by an arrow will slow you down. Getting shot by more than two should kill you.
  
• drastic difference between bow types; high end/long bows take much longer to draw, but offer far greater stopping power than lower tier/short bows
  
• ?headshots lethal
  
• archery skill overhaul; archery skill to affect combat accuracy (less skilled you are more you "weave" with your aim)
  
• armor overhaul; armor to be a lot more effective, killing a heavily armored foe will be more like bludgeoning them to death compared to slicing apart a measly brigand
  
• magic-armor interaction; wearing a full set of metal plates and getting hit with a lightning bolt is not a good thing. Fire, on the other hand, is more bearable. But not if you wear leather, then it's the other way around. You get the idea.
  
• lethal magic; as a mage you can expect to be sliced in half if someone hits you with a big sword. Only fair you can burn them horribly to death before they get close
  
• ?full dismemberment
  
• ?selectable (combo) finishers
  
• damn horses run off if hit in combat
  
• (optional) all NPC's killable, including children and quest/story NPC's - to be kept strictly optional for those who like it
  
• ?blood splatter overhaul; add blood splatter after combat, proportional to amount of fighting done, complete with a custom shader. This will lower player's Speechraft (Charisma) until they clean themselves. Provide methods for cleaning (linen rags, bathing).
  

 

Inventory and Item changes:

 

• overhaul weight values for all ingame items according to a new formula: weight AND volume; this means that otherwise light but bulky items will have higher weight to simulate inability to carry 100 sacks of straw on your back. The goal is to make inventory management a gameplay mechanic - the player will no longer be able to haul twenty axes into battle
  
• carry weight addon items; rucksacks, knapsacks, carts, pack horses; items players can buy, complete with an ingame model, and which can make inventory management and dungeon raiding easier
  
• ?weapon and armor durability; bring back weapon and armor condition. Weapons to require periodic maintenance, using blacksmithing skill, actions and resources. As their condition deteriorates with use, so does their effectiveness. Items never break beyond repair.
  
• ?weapon maintenance tools; portable, craftable tools for field maintenance, such as sharpening stones. Some gear will always require a proper forge to repair/maintain (such as armor/shields)
  

 

Stealth & Crime Overhaul

 

• remove stealth indicator
  
• increase duration of alert mode after NPC's get attacked or have their buddies killed by a sneak attack
  
• more stringent crime penalties; getting caught in people's homes should call in the guards unless the NPC is a friend, same-faction holds should "bleed" bounties (committing a crime in one Hold should also incur smaller bounties in adjacent friendly Holds)
  
• people remember crimes longer
  
• ?suspicion; sneaking around, committing crimes (even when undetected) and other anti-social activities lower the players reputation with that city, which incurs various penalties, such as raised prices in shops and inns, higher bounties for detected crimes etc. Decreases over time, or with socially acceptable activities, such as donating to local temples, handing out charity to beggars or buying rounds at the local inn
  

 

 

Environment Changes:

 

• dampen (not remove completely) ambient light in caves/interior cells; the aim is to produce a more atmospheric feel of being underground/in a smoky Nord lodge.
  
• torches/lanterns/illumination spells to be made actually useful; increase light radius with proper light faloff
  
• droppable lit torches
  
• darker nights
   
  

 

This much for now, I think if I manage to cram all on the list into the mod it will make for a nice start on the road of total realism. Feel free to add your suggestions or requests!

 

 

If you're looking for a way to tell on screen how much magicka you have without resorting to a UI, then why not have the level of magicka be represented by the intensity of the light your 'idle' spell effects around your hands give off? Where having no magicka causes it to be almost entirely absent. Having buffed up magicka could make it brighter than usual.

[Mansh00ter]

That would work IF I can find a way to have a script modify the necessary values on the fly. But there are issues, for example it might be a bit too weak a cue during daylight or in brightly lit areas.

 

I am toying with the idea to have magicka regenerate fairly quickly, but have that regen rate heavily modified by other values, for example how many times the player has used magic, engaged in combat, how physically (thirst, hunger) and mentally (sleep) exhausted they are. So when you are perky after a good night's rest your spell power and magical prowess would be at their peak and you could afford to be flamboyant with magic, and then have them slowly diminish both in the sense of available magicka and the rate at which it replenishes, so when you're exhausted you can barely fizzle a spark or two. Makes sense to me.

[TaranTatsuuchi]

Perhaps bright red might not be necessary, You could put your paragraph on the modular ability of it under a large 'Modular' heading like all the other changes you have planned, like 'Combat Overhaul' 'Environment Changes' etc.

 

Would make that stand out a bit more.

[Tantaburs]

Looking foreword to this mod. One comment I would like to make is in regard to what you said about metal armour being strong vs fire but weak to lightning and vice versa for leather armour. Leather would protect you from flame fairly well while a metal breastplate would heat up and eventually start to cook you.

 

Maybe just give all heavy armor a weakness to magic and light armour some magic dr it would also give amreason to go light armour as a non sneak based melee class.

 

Also weapons made from Dragon teeth/claws would be fairly awesome

[Silhouetteless]

I'm really excited for this. I favorited the thread so i can keep up to date with it. I wish you the best of luck manshooter. I really liked the post on pg 51 by aspenshadow and the "energy system" I think that this could be a really good way to incorporate all the core ideas about eating, sleeping, drinking into a single variable, although all of this must be extremely difficult.

[seanxx]

This looks good . I hope it includes making diseases mean something, diseases should only be able to be cured by one shrine or one healer, That combined with no fast travel means getting a disease forces you to travel far away to the one place that can cure that disease. The disease would stay with you longer, curing it would be a big deal.

and also keen on it to radically reduce the amount of junk you can carry, thus limiting loot/smith/enchant/sell cycles. money must mean something and be hard to come by.

[Skrdrm]

Just as an example, Spark spell has been transformed from a basic electric damage spell rendered useless at later levels into a very useful crowd control spell. Now it has an 80% chance of a light stagger if the target is already wounded and when dual-casting, and will knock the target completely down in spastic convulsions if it is under 45% health, even with one handed casting. So you could, for example, blast a group of enemies with a fireball, and then proceed to go all Palpatine on them. Doesn't work on Dragons or creatures otherwise immune to paralysis.

If you think that may be overpowered, remember that a lowly bandit can kill you with a couple of axe swings so imagine what three or four Draugr could do. You will need crowd control and lots of it.

 

Oh, and it should also work on you, so watch out. :P

 

A few ideas came to my mind reading this.

 

How do you wish to counter-balance these new, powerful magic effects? For example flame spell is available at the start of the game, if it will be poweful (as can be expected from a stream of fire) then it'll make the game fairly easy even for warrior character types because you can have 1 sword/shield for attack or defense while still having a poweful spell at your other hand. My suggestion would be to make theese spells really magica costy, like fire spell eating up ~50-70 pts of Magicka.

 

I'm currently using the Unleveled World Mod, which makes loot and level of enemies indepentent on player level, but it feels dumb that a high level enemy in leather armor has 10x more health than the lower level one next to him. Would be good to have something similiar in your mod, but with higher skill meaning better attack/defense strategy (more shield bashing, blocking, more powerattacks etc) rather than more health. And of course making hi-end equipment (Ebony, Glass, Deadric, Dragon etc) extremely rare.

 

By the way, could you share us some info on hows the locational damage and equipment degradation turns out? Is it possible with the engine?

 

Ah and have you tried experimenting with this? It shows a great potential.

 

Thanks for your time. :)

[Mansh00ter]

This looks good . I hope it includes making diseases mean something, diseases should only be able to be cured by one shrine or one healer, That combined with no fast travel means getting a disease forces you to travel far away to the one place that can cure that disease. The disease would stay with you longer, curing it would be a big deal.

and also keen on it to radically reduce the amount of junk you can carry, thus limiting loot/smith/enchant/sell cycles. money must mean something and be hard to come by.

 

Yep, that's all in the schedule. :)