Total Realism Overhaul

[Oomo]

And the usual answer is: when it's done. :P

Actually I have the system working nicely, there are just a few minor bugs with duplicate effect descriptions - what remains is to go through the item lists and add nutritional value for all edible food stuffs, and also make drinks quench thirst. That's just plain old manual labor, so there isn't much more to do before it is ready for release.

 

Regarding food scarcity, see a few posts above.

 

Awesome to hear it's working nicely :)

 

Ah yes I see the post now. I find the cutthroat merchants mod on Very Hard makes food VERY expensive so that problem would be solved. I know nothing about the deeper levels of Bethsoft modding but is it possible to run scripts that remove any food laying about inside a dungeon? You mentioned making them rotten, so without affecting say, cheese wheels bought from the merchant, wouldn't you have to by hand remove all the cheese wheels laying about in a dungeon or is there a faster way? Cheers!

[icomc]

I've been planning a mod like this for a while now (even though I can't mod for s*** and never plan to,) so I guess I'll give you some of my ideas instead:

 

Critical strike - There should be chance to crit with all weapons instead of just swords, although increasing all damage could make them ridiculously overpowered, or annoying when on the receiving end. Sword spec could be changed to either increase attack speed or crit multiplier. If you can implement locational damage this would be pretty moot.

 

Stealth - Stealth scaling is way off, its impossible to sneak up on people when below 30 and impossible to get caught when above 70. Need to find a sweet spot so that the challenge of staying unnoticed remains even at higher level and make lighting/conditions (such as mist or rain) much more essential.

 

Enchanting - Very inbalanced as it is. Needs massive nerfs to melee/archery dmg increasing enchants and some implanted magic damage increase enchants for good measure. Same goes for smithing, though not as much.

 

Pickpocket & Lockpicking - I don't think anybody ever levels Pickpocketing, unless they go from city to city, sneaking NPC to NPC, stealing everything. Lockpicking also has some issues; I leveled it to 70 or so without ever putting a single perk in it. There has to be a way to make the tree more tempting, such as skill requirements for opening certain level locks, or making lockpicks much harder to come by. One way could be to conjoin these two into good ol' Security, design a new tree for it and go with that.

 

Illusion - A pretty poor tree if I may say so. Needs some paralyzing, chameleon, blind or noise spells, which could be used to distract guards and draw them to desired location while stealthed.

 

Potions - Over time healing instead of instant and make it so you can't use them in rapid succession.

 

Restoration/Alteration - These trees could also do with some work. Resto needs dispelling spells or healing over time/AoE spells. Alteration maybe something like telekinesis to make it a tad more useful.

 

Bandit, Draugr etc. scaling - It's pretty stupid how one bandit dies from one hit and other is harder than a dragon. The higher ranks need some toning down, save for Draugr Dreadlords/Bandit Chiefs.

[Mansh00ter]

And the usual answer is: when it's done. :P

Actually I have the system working nicely, there are just a few minor bugs with duplicate effect descriptions - what remains is to go through the item lists and add nutritional value for all edible food stuffs, and also make drinks quench thirst. That's just plain old manual labor, so there isn't much more to do before it is ready for release.

 

Regarding food scarcity, see a few posts above.

 

Awesome to hear it's working nicely :)

 

Ah yes I see the post now. I find the cutthroat merchants mod on Very Hard makes food VERY expensive so that problem would be solved. I know nothing about the deeper levels of Bethsoft modding but is it possible to run scripts that remove any food laying about inside a dungeon? You mentioned making them rotten, so without affecting say, cheese wheels bought from the merchant, wouldn't you have to by hand remove all the cheese wheels laying about in a dungeon or is there a faster way? Cheers!

 

No, the way I'm doing it will make MOST vanilla food stale/old etc. Stale food still gives you some nutritional value, but it also has a chance to make you sick - if you get sick, you don't get anything out of it, and may even get worse if you were not hungry before eating stale food.

Merchants and cooking will be the only way to get proper, fresh food. This means that there will still be some fresh meals out there, mostly items ties to cooking recipes, but omnipresent items like bread, cheese etc. will be stale if they are just lying in dungeons and tables. The process is automatic and doesn't require me to change anything placed in the world by hand.

 

I have also decided, for compatibility reasons, not to include portable camping gear in the mod itself. There are already some nice camping gear mods out there, so I prefer to leave the choice to the players. TRO Basic Needs will function with any one of them.

[Oomo]

Sounds fantastic. Thanks for all the hard work, I know myself and many others are waiting impatiently for the first alpha of this mod to be released :)

[Lokiron]

Like everyone else, I'm looking forward to this. My only concern is the system's tranparency. I hope you will make it quite clear what hunger level you are at so you don't puke by accident. This would in no way be realistic. When you eat, you're very much aware how much you can handle before vomiting. Gambling with bad food is interesting, but good food is no gamble.

I know numbers are not exactly immersive, but real people, I think, have an acute sense of their hunger. So much so, that numbers would not be unrealistic.

[ElysiumVIII]

Could you edit the first post of this thread with updates about what you are currently working on and any changes you are adding/omitting?

 

If this mod still has a large "overhaul" scope:

 

1. Balance magic if you can. I've looked at other mods that try to balance magic and it seems like they just make it overpowered for fun. Midas' magic looks like he created it with zero balance or immersion in mind. I mean come on, machine gun fireballs?? Yea its "awesome" but its also really unfeasible even in a fantasy world.

 

2. Add an adrenaline feature. Where if you are in combat or your life is suddenly threatened or if you are sneaking and a guard is on the verge of detecting you, your adrenaline increases and temporarily reduces any negative effects i.e. hunger, sleepiness, disease, pain.

 

3. Balance crafting. There is still an enchanting/alchemy/smithing loophole that lets you craft ridiculous armor in the beginning of the game. The leveling system is also broken because it is tied to this. I always try to optimize my character asap, and thus level crafting skills to 100 and get the best armor I can early, but then I am level 30 with no combat skills. I've read an article on the web about this but currently cant find it.

[Mansh00ter]

Like everyone else, I'm looking forward to this. My only concern is the system's tranparency. I hope you will make it quite clear what hunger level you are at so you don't puke by accident. This would in no way be realistic. When you eat, you're very much aware how much you can handle before vomiting. Gambling with bad food is interesting, but good food is no gamble.

I know numbers are not exactly immersive, but real people, I think, have an acute sense of their hunger. So much so, that numbers would not be unrealistic.

 

TRO Basic Needs has plenty of prompts to let you know how your character is doing. Depending on the severity of your current hunger, sleep and thirst state, you will get more or fewer messages including text messages and audio cues (later versions may add visual cues in the form of special screen effects, but only for most severe cases) including stomach growling for hunger, yawning for sleep and dry coughing for thirst. Audio cues only start coming up once you pass the normal states and enter more critical ones, in other words if you begin to starve, are severely dehydrated or severely sleep deprived. Prior to that it's text prompts only.

 

I chose not to be too specific with information - players should get a good feel at which foods are appropriate for which situation relatively soon (just use common sense, if you eat three huge meals at once, what will happen?), and besides if you knew *exactly* how hungry you were, there would never be any risk of overdoing it. Ever thought you could eat that one more whatever, just to find out that it was one too many? That sort of thing. :)

[Mansh00ter]

Could you edit the first post of this thread with updates about what you are currently working on and any changes you are adding/omitting?

 

If this mod still has a large "overhaul" scope:

 

1. Balance magic if you can. I've looked at other mods that try to balance magic and it seems like they just make it overpowered for fun. Midas' magic looks like he created it with zero balance or immersion in mind. I mean come on, machine gun fireballs?? Yea its "awesome" but its also really unfeasible even in a fantasy world.

 

Magic balancing will be done as part of the larger TR Combat Overhaul, which is coming up next after I release the TR Basic Needs. I firmly believe many spells can be made much more fun, while maintaining the challenge and "fantasy realism". For example, many spells will have an appropriate Havok component to them, so that when you blow up a group of bandits with a fireball, you are going to actually blow them up, as in send them flying (not too far of course). Spells will also have more utility, so that if you cast a lightning spell on someone and they are below certain health threshold, they are going to spasm helplessly on the floor. Fire spells will set things on fire. Ice spells will, well, freeze things. Conjuration spells will have a chance to fail catastrophically, so no longer will you be able to win impossible fights by chain summoning. And so on. And it will all happen to you as well. It may sound overpowered, but combined with melee and ranged combat overhaul, it actually isn't - it will be more challenging.

 

 

 

2. Add an adrenaline feature. Where if you are in combat or your life is suddenly threatened or if you are sneaking and a guard is on the verge of detecting you, your adrenaline increases and temporarily reduces any negative effects i.e. hunger, sleepiness, disease, pain.

 

While it sounds interesting, adding such a feature would defeat the purpose of the basic needs, and the need for the player to pay close attention to what they are doing (TR Basic Needs will take into account many player actions like sprinting, fighting etc. so gameplay will be more involved - you will have to plan ahead).

 

3. Balance crafting. There is still an enchanting/alchemy/smithing loophole that lets you craft ridiculous armor in the beginning of the game. The leveling system is also broken because it is tied to this. I always try to optimize my character asap, and thus level crafting skills to 100 and get the best armor I can early, but then I am level 30 with no combat skills. I've read an article on the web about this but currently cant find it.

 

That also is planned as part of the larger overhaul schedule. Keep in mind this is a pretty large mod, so it will take some time before all the changes are worked in.

Edited February 19, 2012 by Mansh00ter

[mercuito]

I'd hate to be the one who comes in a bursts everyone's bubble, but people tend to get carried away with over ambitious mod ideas before thinking about basic things that will crop up -- and if those thins are even possible. For example, the OP's statement in more realistic combat:

 

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

 

 

Let me propose you with a question to get my point across, how would you get if a bandit hit you in the head, let alone the back of the head? I will save you the time from scouring the Papyrus reference, there is no function for getting body part damage. An arrow to the middle toe is just as fatal as arrow to the heart/lung/head. This is a huge roadblock in making combat 'realistic'. If you can solve this problem in 'scripting in' locational damage -- you should think about moving forward, but if you can't, take the combat overhaul out of the game for now until someone gets a solution for this.

[Mansh00ter]

I'd hate to be the one who comes in a bursts everyone's bubble, but people tend to get carried away with over ambitious mod ideas before thinking about basic things that will crop up -- and if those thins are even possible. For example, the OP's statement in more realistic combat:

 

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

 

 

Let me propose you with a question to get my point across, how would you get if a bandit hit you in the head, let alone the back of the head? I will save you the time from scouring the Papyrus reference, there is no function for getting body part damage. An arrow to the middle toe is just as fatal as arrow to the heart/lung/head. This is a huge roadblock in making combat 'realistic'. If you can solve this problem in 'scripting in' locational damage -- you should think about moving forward, but if you can't, take the combat overhaul out of the game for now until someone gets a solution for this.

 

Eh, that was just flavor talk. I meant to say that getting hit with a 2H hammer should be lethal or close to lethal unless you have proper defenses up. I have no intention of going to such details, because it would pointless - good game design always tries to accomplish an *effect* of an event, few games actually try to accurately model the physical world to such detail. Hell, even modern shooters like Red Orchestra 2, with their ultra-realistic combat mechanics do not make a difference between getting hit in the front and in the back of the head.

 

And I am fully aware of scripting limitations. In fact, I don't think locational damage is possible at all, given current circumstances (limb damage is completely disabled) - and I did mention that everything in the OP is subject to change pending the release of the CK (OP was written before the CK was released).

 

Instead, I will make combat as realistic as possible. This means that getting hit with a 2H sledge will be a very huge deal. You WILL want to block it, or otherwise avoid getting hit. Combat will be more dangerous, and you won't be able to soak up damage just like that, even in full armor. There will be wounds. Not location based, but I can base them on chance and circumstance. There will be armor classes and weapon damage types. And so on.

 

So TRO may not end up to be the most advanced melee combat simulator out there, but I will do my best to make it the best combat mechanics mod for Skyrim.