[WIP] Belua Sanguinare Revisited

[Darksun45230]

Uh oh... Uh. Sorry guys, my statement was a matter of state of mind, not that we're actually ready to do it.

I understood that.

[MofoMojo]

Uh oh... Uh. Sorry guys, my statement was a matter of state of mind, not that we're actually ready to do it.

I understood that.

 

Whew....

 

Not much work done last night specifically on the mod. Got our titles in the journal fixed back up and wrote a 13 page document covering the basics of the mod and customizing your experience.

 

-MM

[MofoMojo]

Status Update:

Still some polishing going on. I have the basic Thrall logic built in now as well. I need to make this adjustable, but if you feed on the same person 5 (and don't kill them) they'll become your Thrall, identified by a nice "Msjilnor's Thrall" type name. Since thralls can talk, I need to hook up some basic inventory management and dismissal dialogue for them but I think I may wait until after our beta test for that.

 

Having done some quick playtesting as a level 1 Vampire, at lower levels Darken is still pretty good to use for healing, but Blood Rend is terribly ineffective at healing and damaging. Need to revisit that before the release so I'll try and get eyes on it tonight and see what's up.

 

I might make one last teaser video tonight that shows off everything again running through as a Sire. It's the easiest way for me to spot things that need polishing and go do it. I know there's some magic spells that have no casting art that need to be fixed up. Please keep the feedback and ideas coming in! I know it's tough since you haven't gotten a chance to test it, but I REALLY hope it's going to be VERY soon.

 

-MM

[phil11]

Well I'm very excited about the coming beta... except for the fact that I just found out I'm going to have to take a 2 month hiatus from any contribution. I'm in the US Navy and was just reassigned. I won't have access to my computer for two and a half months after March 26th.

 

:confused:

Edited March 20, 2012 by phil11

[MofoMojo]

Well I'm very excited about the coming beta... except for the fact that I just found out I'm going to have to take a 2 month hiatus from any contribution. I'm in the US Navy and was just reassigned. I won't have access to my computer for two and a half months after March 26th.

 

:confused:

 

Phil11! First off let me say thanks for serving! Thank you for the contributions you've made on the topic and to us personally in PMs, and I hope we can repay you in some fashion soon.

 

Tonight I made a few tweaks...

 

• 
   
  
• Polished off the casting animations (still all built in stuff as I have no clue on using Nifskope),
  
• Got thralls working,
  
• tweaked sneak feed
  
• Tweaked slow fall descent speed (a little faster than slower)
  
• tweaks titles on Thralls and ....other NPCs,
  
• Adjusted Vampire's Sprint so that it goes back to the original speeds I had before our modification discussion...don't shoot me. I made it better. If you sprint for 1.5 seconds, a secondary speed boost kicks in bringing it BACK up to speed if you're outdoors. The point of this...even outdoors running around with a speed multiplier of 240 can be difficult for short jolts. It now kicks in after 1.5 seconds AND you remain boosted for about 3/4 seconds after letting off sprint or running out of stamina which makes the transition much more subtle.
  
• Readjusted Blood Rend. It just wasn't as effective as it should be. Still drains magicka faster, but now absorbs just a tad more health to make it beneficial.
  
• Various minor tweaks here and there.
  

 

So I leave you with this. It doesn't show everything but there's a glimpse of our radiant quest in action if you watch it closely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybh6IIenkGo&feature=youtube_gdata

 

-MM

Edited March 21, 2012 by MofoMojo

[MofoMojo]

Update:

 

Getting closer! I had added AttackOnSight for starved vampires at some point and had removed it for some other testing (made things difficult). Added AOS back in when your satiation level is 0.

 

Added Asbonditus Informis (if someone can come up with proper latin...it just sounded cool). Basically this will allow the player to conceal his form from others when he is starving. It's a channelled spell with the idea that it requires great concentration when you're hungered, although that might not work out well in the end because you can't channel through doors. May make it toggleable power that consumes magicka.

 

-MM

[nskin039]

Update:

 

Getting closer! I had added AttackOnSight for starved vampires at some point and had removed it for some other testing (made things difficult). Added AOS back in when your satiation level is 0.

 

Added Asbonditus Informis (if someone can come up with proper latin...it just sounded cool). Basically this will allow the player to conceal his form from others when he is starving. It's a channelled spell with the idea that it requires great concentration when you're hungered, although that might not work out well in the end because you can't channel through doors. May make it toggleable power that consumes magicka.

 

-MM

 

Can I make a request? Instead of just guarding against attack on sight, why don't you make it so that you have toggalgle power to assume the form of a human. (maybe call it mortal mask or something). In this form, you look completely normal: no vampire eyes, no vampire skin, no feeding etc but you maybe you still have some of your vampire powers/weaknesses (super speed and strength, maybe even weakness to light). Humans cannot see through the illusion and thus are friendly to you. The only people that can see through the illusion are other vampires and thralls. Finally, maybe if you are starving you cannot maintain the illusion at all or you can only sustain it for a very limited time frame.

 

Second, I personally feel that vamps should always be attacked on sight by everyone (except for Thralls, followers, and other vampires and their thralls).

Can you make it (a separate version if necessary) where everyone attacks you on sight at all levels of vampirism. This would give the illusion power described above a purpose.

 

Justification: All vampire lore i have seen, talk about vampires as masters of trickery and illusion. In fact, one book in one the elders scrolls games (can't remember which book or if it was in Skyrim) talks about someone discussing vampires to another individual who he doesn't even realize is a vampire until it is too late.

With the current vampires, everyone knows you are vampire. They talk about your pale skin and your eyes. A vampire master of illusion should be able to conceal his true vampire nature at least for a limited time.

Edited March 22, 2012 by nskin039

[Jakisthe]

Sorry nskin...I can totally see where you're coming from, and the fact that you provided lore justification is awesome and does make your case stronger...but I'm going to have to say no. I have reasons though!

 

Mainly, besides there being the lore reasoning, we must also worry about gameplay. I think your suggestion, besides the attack-on-sight-always thing, wouldn't really add much. Players generally know when they're going to be interacting with NPCs; it's not like combat where you're thrust into a situation and you have to find a way out, or coming across a dungeon where you need to sneak past some briarhearts.

 

Instead, players would foresee interactions, and have it up every time anyway. The only difficulty would be remembering to have it up, not actually having it up. It would become like trying to sell something for a high price to a merchant every time you want to interact with anyone: you can chug a potion pretty easily, but if you have to do that every time you talk to the merchant, it only starts to waste time and not actually present anything novel to the player. Or, say, in Dark Souls, where if you die you have to re-equip all your gear, which is still in your inventory. It feels, essentially, very artificial.

 

Now, if putting up that mask cost magica, well, that does change things, since players need to be strategic about when to use it..but it might be demanding for a low lever character, or simply too difficult. The same with always being attacked; it's a gamechanger, but a fairly difficult one that not a lot of people would want to contend with. Not to say that you won't be able to console change it yourself when we release, but atm, we're going to have it as not AoS. Remember, there is a "disguise self" spell, and you will get attacked on sight at certain levels, but we want it to be meaningful and strategic.

 

I think people just think you might be sick...not actually a vampire. The immortal blood vampire, he could disguise his true nature even when absolutely starving - that's something a BSR vampire can't do, at least not without a massive amount of concentration, and even then, vampire hunters can still tell, unlike the hunter in the book.

 

Please please please don't think it's a dumb suggestion or that this is me exercising my "executive power" or somesuch. I love suggestions! Just as I love being able to explain why I chose what I chose when I originally planned the vampire. It's just one girls opinion...and the opinion is that it doesn't add anything to gameplay.

 

What does everyone else think?

[MofoMojo]

Going to add some thoughts here:

 

Can I make a request? Instead of just guarding against attack on sight, why don't you make it so that you have toggalgle power to assume the form of a human. (maybe call it mortal mask or something). In this form, you look completely normal: no vampire eyes, no vampire skin, no feeding etc but you maybe you still have some of your vampire powers/weaknesses (super speed and strength, maybe even weakness to light). Humans cannot see through the illusion and thus are friendly to you. The only people that can see through the illusion are other vampires and thralls. Finally, maybe if you are starving you cannot maintain the illusion at all or you can only sustain it for a very limited time frame.

 

I love the idea of potentially changing thing the race back. Just like the standard vampire script, I keep track of the original player race. I could work up a POC so that "Verita Nascosta" actually changes you back to what you would look like under a normal NPC of your race before the change. I am leary of doing too many race changes for fear that people have discussed problems with race changes before, but that was when switching to radically different races. Perhaps switching back and forth between say, NordRace and NordVampireRace isn't problematic. That would require some testing.

 

Second, I personally feel that vamps should always be attacked on sight by everyone (except for Thralls, followers, and other vampires and their thralls).

Can you make it (a separate version if necessary) where everyone attacks you on sight at all levels of vampirism. This would give the illusion power described above a purpose.

 

Justification: All vampire lore i have seen, talk about vampires as masters of trickery and illusion. In fact, one book in one the elders scrolls games (can't remember which book or if it was in Skyrim) talks about someone discussing vampires to another individual who he doesn't even realize is a vampire until it is too late.

With the current vampires, everyone knows you are vampire. They talk about your pale skin and your eyes. A vampire master of illusion should be able to conceal his true vampire nature at least for a limited time.

 

So, I love this idea but it might present certain challenges. At the onset Jakisthe and I wanted the final stage to be AOS always, and you'd have to do just that. That was almost 1.5 months ago and the general consensus back then was it was too much. So... I've spent quite a lot of time in NOT worrying about that and thus a lot of work may have to be done to retrofit those changes that we're not slated to do. That being said...

 

I do plan on allowing two things to be customizable.

 

• 
   
  
• The percentage at which hunger effects kick in
  
• The value at which hunger turns on AOS.
  

 

The first in that list is already in the game. it's 25% by default and right now, I'm ashamed to say I have nothing in the negative effects work done except turning on Detect Blood permanently.

 

The second thing could be added, and... .theoretically... you could set the hunger level requirement to 0 and so the hunger manager would always set you to be KOS, but without the negative hunger side effects. I just need to make an adjustment to the hunger manager so it checks to see if you have the Verita Nascosta applied so it doesn't set your AOS during game update.

 

I will say, that's going to make it challenging for anyone. The Range Of Sight on NPCs, guards especially, is INCREDIBLE. When I was testing AOS and Verita Nascosta coming anywhere within about 300 feet of a guard and they'd attack me.

 

So, long story short, you MIGHT get what you want right out of the box once I implement the second configurable option. It just might have unexpected....issues as I don't know that we'll do much testing with it. But if you're one of the beta testers and I get that in there, you're more than welcome to report back what you find and I'll consider it, but I will need to prioritize appropriately.

 

Note: Veritas Nascosta drains 5 mana per sec.

 

Sorry nskin...I can totally see where you're coming from, and the fact that you provided lore justification is awesome and does make your case stronger...but I'm going to have to say no. I have reasons though!

 

Mainly, besides there being the lore reasoning, we must also worry about gameplay. I think your suggestion, besides the attack-on-sight-always thing, wouldn't really add much. Players generally know when they're going to be interacting with NPCs; it's not like combat where you're thrust into a situation and you have to find a way out, or coming across a dungeon where you need to sneak past some briarhearts.

 

Instead, players would foresee interactions, and have it up every time anyway. The only difficulty would be remembering to have it up, not actually having it up. It would become like trying to sell something for a high price to a merchant every time you want to interact with anyone: you can chug a potion pretty easily, but if you have to do that every time you talk to the merchant, it only starts to waste time and not actually present anything novel to the player. Or, say, in Dark Souls, where if you die you have to re-equip all your gear, which is still in your inventory. It feels, essentially, very artificial.

 

Did you just say Dark Souls?!?! Sweet. So...quick side step. I bought Demon's Souls for the PS3 when it first came out. Had it for a week and thought it was the most frustratingly difficult game I had ever played. So I sold it to someone else. And for another two weeks I couldn't get the game out of my head so I went out and bought it again. A couple weeks later I stopped playing...but never got the game out of my head. So what happened when Dark Souls came out? I bought it too....yeah....I can't get past the first boss. You know...the stupid boss in the Jail, the one that essentially behaves like the first boss in Demon's Souls. Yeah, Can't get by him. After trying 15-20 times. I stopped playing. Have I sold the game? Of course not. edit: and probably the only reason I haven't gone back to it is because Skyrim came out.

 

Back on track...

 

So like I said, theoretically the ability to do ALWAYS ON AOS can be hooked up in about 15 minutes worth of work and controlling when the AOS kicks in is something I was planning to allow for in the customization using the global variables. I need to make sure that Veritas Nasosta doesn't get overriden by the hunger manager when it's in effect anyway, so really...this is kind of all planned out and just want be something I focus on in testing. What I don't plan to do is to provide varying levels of when AOS kicks in (like Master kicks in at 75% hunger, Progenitor 33% hunger, Sire, 10% hunger).

 

 

Now, if putting up that mask cost magica, well, that does change things, since players need to be strategic about when to use it..but it might be demanding for a low lever character, or simply too difficult. The same with always being attacked; it's a gamechanger, but a fairly difficult one that not a lot of people would want to contend with. Not to say that you won't be able to console change it yourself when we release, but atm, we're going to have it as not AoS. Remember, there is a "disguise self" spell, and you will get attacked on sight at certain levels, but we want it to be meaningful and strategic.

 

Remember, we took out AOS at Sire as some thought it was too demanding. Now ... if you DO want me to implement the AOS switch as configurable per level, I'll gladly do it. Currently I've made putting up the mask a magicka drain. It's 1 per second. Factor that in with your regen and it's not too bad. In fact, I would wager that at higher levels 5 per second drains don't even register. At level 2 (the level my CURRENT test characer is who is NOT a mage) she can keep the mask up for more than 20-30 seconds just due to the magicak regen rate offsetting the drain a bit. For that matter, I could have the drain do this:

 

Drain Magicka -> OUT

Drain Stamina -> OUT

Drain Health -> Below 50% disable

 

However, there's no ....lore spin... I can place on it draining health. Stamina either, except perhaps it's also a physical strain because you've physically changed shape... I dunno, at some point it probably start getting too complicated but the idea draining both magicka and then stamina until out at least supports 2 primary play types.

 

I think people just think you might be sick...not actually a vampire. The immortal blood vampire, he could disguise his true nature even when absolutely starving - that's something a BSR vampire can't do, at least not without a massive amount of concentration, and even then, vampire hunters can still tell, unlike the hunter in the book.

 

Please please please don't think it's a dumb suggestion or that this is me exercising my "executive power" or somesuch. I love suggestions! Just as I love being able to explain why I chose what I chose when I originally planned the vampire. It's just one girls opinion...and the opinion is that it doesn't add anything to gameplay.

 

What does everyone else think?

 

So the above is what I think. I don't think it's something we planned for (once we started the dev phase), but the customization I DID plan for and so, theoretically it should work. We just need to prioritize the bugs we get in during the beta appropriately. If they're using the settings in ways, perhaps it wasn't intended, then those might have to be in the back of the list or not addressed.

 

Thoughts?

 

-MM

Edited March 22, 2012 by MofoMojo

[MofoMojo]

So I did some quick POC work on changing the race back and it works...but there's some bugs. Switching back and forth sometimes would cause the actor to go completely invisible. Nice effect, but no way to recover from it. Disregard the name of the spell in the debug logs. I haven't updated that into:

 

[03/22/2012 - 05:18:29PM] Absconditus Informis Cast
[03/22/2012 - 05:18:29PM] Turning On
[03/22/2012 - 05:18:29PM] Player Race is [Race <RedguardRaceVampire (00088846)>]
[03/22/2012 - 05:18:30PM] Player Race changed to [Race <RedguardRace (00013748)>]
[03/22/2012 - 05:18:31PM] Updating Absconditus Informis
[03/22/2012 - 05:18:33PM] Updating Absconditus Informis
[03/22/2012 - 05:18:34PM] Updating Absconditus Informis
[03/22/2012 - 05:18:35PM] Updating Absconditus Informis
[03/22/2012 - 05:18:36PM] Updating Absconditus Informis
[03/22/2012 - 05:18:37PM] Updating Absconditus Informis
[03/22/2012 - 05:18:43PM] Updating Absconditus Informis
[03/22/2012 - 05:18:45PM] Updating Absconditus Informis
[03/22/2012 - 05:18:46PM] Updating Absconditus Informis
[03/22/2012 - 05:18:47PM] Updating Absconditus Informis
[03/22/2012 - 05:18:48PM] Finishing Absconditus Informis
[03/22/2012 - 05:18:48PM] Set Race Back to: [Race <RedguardRaceVampire (00088846)>]
[03/22/2012 - 05:19:15PM] Applying Allow Harvest Heart Cloak to [Actor < (000DC553)>]

 

A few other things, it unequips spells that were equipped and sets turns off your alert state (where you have weapons drawn, etc,.). Don't know if it removes weapons. That's not hard to handle, but the random invisible PC bug is a showstopper for me. I even took some video of it but....

 

-MM

Edited March 22, 2012 by MofoMojo