[WIP] Belua Sanguinare Revisited

[MofoMojo]

Well shucks. Man, I really wish we could make perk trees...that's instrumental to so many aspects of...well, the future of modding this game, but c'est la vie. And, of course, that we can't conditionally replace them....but you're right. Stability and independence of updates is incredibly important, and I am very much willing to take the hit (so to speak) so it makes sense. I agree entirely on not wanting to meddle in things that we barely know what we're poking around in, and possibly causing some serious player issues.

 

I'm wondering though: disabling restoration at progenitor? I assume this is a LOT less troublesome than replacing it, but (as should be ridiculously apparent to anyone and everyone who's read even a lick of this) you know more about coding than I do.

 

So here's what we do. We don't mingle with the hard mechanics of the game when it comes to restoration, instead, we create higher ranking perks than any of the restoration perks, and we use Spell Magnitude Modifiers which WEAKENS your restoration skills.

 

Note: Perks have ranks which dictate which one takes precedence when two have the same entry point and matching conditions

 

 

True. I tend to try and wrap complicated things up in a way that they wouldn't become complicated, which only makes it more complicated! And here I was saying I'd try and take marginally backed securitized mortgage parallels out of the process! Curse my economist tendencies...Anyway. Is there a way such that it can check for SLEEP instead of just WAIT? Wait is such a bizarre, game-y construct, but sleep is a large part of vampire lore and effectively balances the game a little more (you actually need to have intent and safety to sleep, instead of just strangely blowing through a few days time while standing in a blacksmiths trough). If not, I'll make the concession for the point of simplicity, and, as you said, they'll all be editable.

 

I'm going to have to remember I said this so I remember to DO this. Right now as it is coded, sleep is not a mechanism for change, however I know that was your goal. We just simply need to hook up sleep as the mechanism for change IN BOTH DIRECTIONS as well as perhaps player choice. There are no "Wait" events, however we can hook into OnSleepStart and OnSleepEnd events. I haven't investigated how those work but as long as they apply to the player the way I think they do, we keep track of when they're ripe for change, and when they sleep, we track the amount of sleep time that passes between when they start and when they end, and require that they sleep a minimum of 12 or more hours. The "Sleep" could be considered when the "Metamorphisis" occurs. Does that solve the problem? We simply don't give them the choice until they find some place to sleep, even if it's a carryable bed roll mod that shows some intent.

 

Hmm...if only weight had an impact on swimming..but alas! Oh well. This part is honestly more for flavor; considering that vampires can swim (or at least some can, which is good enough for me), I can foresee them just swimming normally and walking on water if they have "grave dust". Incidentally, I do love the idea of grave dust, as that is very classic, very immersive, and very interesting. Still, it'll likely be a later inclusion since quests are post-main vampiric changes.

 

Agreed. We should remember (I'll add it to my tracking) to have "Grave Dust", have it expirable, and ultimately build in "Water Damage" if you aren't carrying it in the future releases. Let's track on doing that.

 

Hmm. Trails. Were you thinking trails like footprints (as in, they'd leave a record of where the actor had walked on recently), or more of a general glow like detect life? Either way, I think it should follow in similar function to detect life: added on when sneaking, forced upon the player when starving. Thus it becomes non-instrusive while health is maintained, but heightens their senses to danger when they're most susceptible to it.

 

So I worked in Garlic a little later last night than I should have. As a placeholder for now it looks exactly like the steam that I have rising off the vampire when you're in direct sunlight. Right now, it's got a 20' radius and it's just a quick shader and effectively is applied just like detect life, it's basically "Detect Garlic". lol. With the trailing idea I thought it would be cool if it kind of....hung in the air for a few moments as NPCs who were carrying garlic walked around. That would take two things. 1) making the effect a lot less pronounced than it is right now and 2) Me having or finding someone with a better understanding of how to craft effectshaders do to just that.

 

Indeed. That said, I still want to have the vampire receiving an initial boost to speech as they start out, only to slowly fall (yet still perhaps being higher than normal, even at sire) and the mark when starving. To what degree/what the cutoff will be for starvation, well, I don't know...there doesn't seem to be much room for a gradation of "marked for attack"; it's very binary. So we'd have to think "why would (for instance) X lvl of starvation not mark me, but X+1 would?"

 

Or, alternatively, it could be that you get marked earlier as you go up in levels (so a starved sire is marked sooner than a starved progenitor, etc) and the spell needed to mask their condition is contingent on starvation level. How's that sound to everyone? This would, in theory, allow for even fledglings to be marked, but it would require them to be VERY hungry...and with no way of masking as such. Still, if you've let yourself get into that state...well..welcome to vampirism!

 

The speech boosts and negatives are currently all in there as you designed along with "Allure" which boosts your speech at various levels once they start going down, we can tweak that up as necesary to keep with where we're heading with the new starvation direction. Marked for Attack is very binary (meaning you either are or you're not for those not sure of the meaning) so there's no real scaling it. We can definitely do the marking in a tiered fasion by vampire level.

 

Now then, as for the Silver Hand and the Vigilants. I don't want your character to be 100% safe as long as they follow the rules of the game. I want you to be sought out, or at minimum I want the random Vigilants that travel from location to location to attack you if they see you. I am, for the sake of ease, assuming they've dedicated their lives to eradicating "Evil" and have the necessary means to recognize that you're a vampire. Let's just call it a sixth sense about them.

Other bits which I am loathe to try and multiquote because I am terrible at keeping track of my quote unquote tags :wallbash: :

-Feeding on unaware people: yes, this is considered a crime, and one which is noticeable by others. A "charm victim automatically while feeding" is something that'll hopefully eventually make it in, but as it is now, that's part of the fun. Just try not to raise too much attention when you drain the lifeblood of someone :P

 

So would you like me to make sure that as long as you're sneaking, victims don't raise the alarm but others will or should you perhaps NOT be able to prevent that at lower levels, but maybe at higher levels you can sneak, and drain, without their raising the alarrm? I actually think you meant that as a goal if my memory serves...

 

-My own crappiness at responses: yep...I estimate (aka, know) that I will be RIDICULOUSLY busy till next Wednesday (3 finals, 14 page paper, accounting work, econometrics study/report all due on Tuesday :ohdear: ), after which I will issue a report to MM on my findings and we can discuss solutions.

-Spells: Oh spells. U so fickle. I'm fine with phasewalk equaling blink, since I had thought from day 1 that such a spell would be impossible to implement as in my head, but hey, that's why this topic ends in a question mark! Which I now wish I could change..but anyway. They're going to be hardest things to add, I think.

 

Cool. I'll rename Phase Walk for now to Blink, mark Blink as done and be done. I figured out last night my stupid mistake in controlling location distance of target location spells. :facepalm: So now I've limited Phase Walk/Blink to around 50-100 ft and was thinking of providing it a little earlier, say at Master with 50' being the max and then Progentiro could double that length, and Sire could triple it. Right now, while cool, you can teleport several football fields away.

 

-Beta testing: Once I finish my tests, convene with MM via email, and get it all hammered out (likely around next week depending on how fast I am), I am very much for running a beta test through signups. Yes, signups. Since this is such a large undertaking, I'd wanna make sure that the testers would give...a "full report" of their findings, instead of effectively letting it out into the wild as a beta and letting people play it, not necessarily get back to us, and forgetting about it. I hope you guys understand the logic behind this; it's 4 in the morning and I am nearly starting to hallucinate!

 

This is bat country!

 

I'm ok with a limited release, at least as far as not posting it on Nexus for download immediately and getting feedback from those that have actively helped shape the direction of the mod or shown interest. I have two requests hanging in my conversations box right now so if people want to playtest it I don't want them NOT to. That said, there's a part of me screaming that I want to put it on the Nexus as one of the first vampire mods that did more than just rearrange levels/hunger mechanics. Call it being prideful, I don't care. :)

 

-MM, Master Quotinessesist

 

P.S. - Yes FranbzLiszt, you're marked undead. What we should probably consider is how to balance the idea of Necromage Restoration with ... desensitizing Restoration as a whole as you level Vampirism.

[MofoMojo]

Ok, worked out "Sense Garlic". It's a kind of ... yellowish green whispy smoke that rises from other NPCs that are carrying it. You have a 20' detection and it trails in the air for about 2 seconds before dissapearing. I've made it a constant effect. Point being that if garlic "in the traditional sense" keeps vampire's at may or limits their abilities, you should always have some sort of way of knowing who is carrying it since your abilities won't work on them. Speaking of which...how far do we take that? Do we say that garlic protects from charming, Blood Rend, and other vampiric related offensive spells?

 

-MM

[elricshan]

Ok, worked out "Sense Garlic". It's a kind of ... yellowish green whispy smoke that rises from other NPCs that are carrying it. You have a 20' detection and it trails in the air for about 2 seconds before dissapearing. I've made it a constant effect. Point being that if garlic "in the traditional sense" keeps vampire's at may or limits their abilities, you should always have some sort of way of knowing who is carrying it since your abilities won't work on them. Speaking of which...how far do we take that? Do we say that garlic protects from charming, Blood Rend, and other vampiric related offensive spells?

 

-MM

 

hmm how about the garlic protects from body contact with a vampire (sword, knives and so on) but spells are fine just a litle weaker than normal?

[MofoMojo]

Ok, worked out "Sense Garlic". It's a kind of ... yellowish green whispy smoke that rises from other NPCs that are carrying it. You have a 20' detection and it trails in the air for about 2 seconds before dissapearing. I've made it a constant effect. Point being that if garlic "in the traditional sense" keeps vampire's at may or limits their abilities, you should always have some sort of way of knowing who is carrying it since your abilities won't work on them. Speaking of which...how far do we take that? Do we say that garlic protects from charming, Blood Rend, and other vampiric related offensive spells?

 

-MM

 

hmm how about the garlic protects from body contact with a vampire (sword, knives and so on) but spells are fine just a litle weaker than normal?

 

It kind of works that way... it actually disables all the damage modifiers that vampires get applied, as if against the victim the vampire's speed, might, etc,. were ineffective. I was however, considering ALSO disbling the "Vampire's Speed" ability so that if he's within the detection radius of Garlic carrying individuals he can't use "Vampire's Speed" (the spell that slows down time). Oh and I did kind of think about adding in repelling the player away from the "victim" but I don't want to force warrior only classes to have to runaway because they can't get close to the victim and that interferes with being able to sneak up on a victim and remove the garlic from their inventory so you can feed on them.

 

I came back to provide a quick update to everyone on the customization. I didn't realize that you could modify globalvariables in the console :facepalm: , so while there's not going to be a "Customization Menu" in the initial release, you will be able to modify the values from your console. For instance to change how much you drop every "drop cycle" you would do the following from the console:

 

Set BeluaHunderDropAmount to 2

 

This would cause you to drop your satiation level down by 2 points every 3600 ingame seconds instead of 4 (the current default). To change how often it drops:

 

Set BeluaHungerDropDurationSeconds to 360

 

That would cause you to drop every six ingame minutes instead of every hour. To adjust your maximum satiation from the default of 100 to 1000:

 

Set BeluaMaxSatiatedLevel to 1000

 

You get the point...

 

Unfortunately, realizing that you can modify all these values in the console presents a new problem to me. A lot of what I use for tracking purposes are built into the global variables system. I might have to convert them to quest variables to keep them inaccessible to the player.

 

-MM

Edited March 2, 2012 by MofoMojo

[MofoMojo]

Status update:

 

Darken is done. Unfortunately you can't put shader effects on the weapon that the player is holding and I don't want to have to do some sort of switcheroo type work with enchanted weapons or bound weapons so....

 

Darken makes a wispy vertical dark void waver upon your character (stolen from NecroSkeletons) and while under that presence, anyone you attack with a weapon (not magic) that's within range will take additional damage, while having you healed by the same amount. They also get the same "Darkness" effect for a couple of seconds so you know it worked. Additionally, BLOCKED attacks do not count.

 

The problem with a lot of these things is scalability. I'm testing with only 5 dmg hit/absorbed, unless you do a powerattack and then it's 10 dmg hit/absorbed. I'm level 24, a mage, and have 160 health. I can't survive a one on one using a sword against the Whiterun guards normally. I can't with this spell active either, but I can go toe to toe with them for about 10 times as long. The fights are actually fun, even though the guard blocks must of my attacks. To counter, I turn on "Vampire's Speed", slowing down time, and zip behind or to the side where they can't block and attack....eventually I ran out of stamina and they killed me. Point being, I survived a lot longer in the fight using that tactic than I normally would. Is that balanced? What would happen with a Warrior who had high strength and mid stamina, or whatnot. And scaling....5 and 10 dmg isn't that much but because I have so little health it helped keep my bar full. But I don't want all these to be useless at higher levels because they barely dmg/heal.

 

A lot of our stuff is scripted. I was thinking of using a level multiplier of sorts. Like the damage amount would be level/4 and for power attacks level/2. But I don't want to overpower this. As a mage that's a lot of damage to put out when I've never swung a sword. Granted, we are talking about magically enhanced weapons. Playtesting will tell more....

 

-MM

[thatperson14]

This is my first elder scrolls game, so I haven't ever played this mod, but I found the website for it and was reading through seeing what other modders did to make their mod more immersive.

 

www.4drulers.com/unholydarkness/

 

The mention of how garlic should do damage by people on this thread, looks like it was done to some degree in this mod. Also it's interesting because it has masked mode and unmasked mode where you're either hidden from society as a vampire and you have to unmask yourself to feed, which is required to maintain the illusion. Pretty interesting stuff, was a good read. Just putting it here incase it hasn't been seen before.

[FranzLiszt]

@thatperson

I think the mod "unholy darkness" is for oblivion rather than skyrim. The mod being constructed by MofoMojo and Jakisthe takes some inspiration from that mod but is rather different.

[MofoMojo]

@thatperson

I think the mod "unholy darkness" is for oblivion rather than skyrim. The mod being constructed by MofoMojo and Jakisthe takes some inspiration from that mod but is rather different.

 

If we've gotten any inspiration it's from people like you! Not, Unholy Darkness. I've never seen the mod personally (except the youtube video that was linked here). I'm ...somewhat hesitant to go investigate the mod. In fact, I try and stay away from "Vampire Mod" threads now unless I accidentally wander into one because someone was asking for help. Now, if Vanixiii came back and started posting in his thread, I'd jump in.

 

-MM

 

Edit: Wanted to throw this idea out there. While we can't create out own skill and perktree without replacing an existing one and merging with two others...something I'm not really keen on, we CAN extend our own perk branch off of an existing one. For instance, Conjuration, or Destruction. In other words when you select Destruction Perk Tree, to the right or left, we can build out an entirely seperate branch (not even connecting to the root perk) for Vampirism with being a vampire required to pick those perks, along with whatever other requirements we want to have. Now that I've built out a system almost completely devoid of perks (or perk picking) I'm a little less inclined to figure out what to do with that.

 

There is still a mod compatibility disadvantage, which is that if two different mods modify the same perk tree, the last loaded mod takes precedence. I'm not sure if Wyre Bash would/could merge mods that do that together, but even if it can, the outcome might not look pretty in the perk tree rendering.

Edited March 3, 2012 by MofoMojo

[MofoMojo]

Hi all, Not trying to hijack Jakisthe's thread, but I think we'd get more exposure and influx of constructive criticism with a more aptly titled thread. Can we continue discussion here? Jakisthe, since you're the originator of this thread, let me know if you'd rather start one yourself and I'll update and link to the new one. I think we're well beyond discussing ideas now. :) Edited March 3, 2012 by MofoMojo

[phil11]

MM,

I read the progress update from the other thread, and I can see you've done a hell of a lot of work already. Looking good! Overall I can really see this coming together, and I greatly appreciate the work you're putting in. This is shaping up to be an amazing mod. There is one thing I noticed though that could be an issue: implementing trespassing damage.... I think not being able to use potions combined with the trespassing 7dmg/second as a Sire might be overkill. (Those weaknesses both make perfect sense individually.) That might make it absurdly difficult to feed on sleeping people, unless they're bums sleeping outside. Slowing time would help when trespassing, but with no stamina regeneration and no ability to heal it might make things a bit tedious. WIthout playtesting I can't be sure, but 7dps seems like a lot.

 

I'm not sure if this might be hard to implement, but if it's possible it might balance and nicely complement the trespassing component of your mod, in my opinion: add a Vampiric Seduction/Coercion spell so that you can force an owner or resident to invite you inside. Make it so that it cannot work if you try to use it while already trespassing, and give it a chance of failure based on starvation level, speech, and/or the NPC's level. You could also restrict it to, say, one use per day at Risen, two uses per day at Progenitor, three at Master, and four at Sire. (The increasing number of uses would slightly balance with the fact that higher level vampires have less speech.) That way, you'd have to go out of your way to find/stalk residents (outside of their homes) and 'glamour' them if you wanted to be able to enter freely. I think that would be very cool, but of course, I humbly defer to you.

 

Oh, one last thing. The Attack for Blood feeding method..... how much time do you have to actually pull this off? It seems like it might be difficult, (maybe not with vampire speed.. hmm) and getting only 1% sated by this wouldn't be enough, but I'm just speculating.

Edited March 4, 2012 by phil11