[WIP] Belua Sanguinare Revisited

[Jakisthe]

Sounds good for restoration. There are, frankly, a ton of ways that could be handled, either by making them considerably less powerful or considerably more expensive. Or both! Sort of like the dark/light system in KoTOR; it remains still technically possible to cast a spell from the other side, but mentally exhaustive for a lesser result, but such is the downside of giving into vampirism. actually if we wanted to get really weird we could try to cram in some kind of dynamic resto-nullifying system wherein the higher vRank you are, the less effective they are...as opposed to a straight drop at whatever level they're at now..but..uh...yeah. over-complicating things, self!

 

The sleep/wait thing you proposed sounds like a good compromise. Doesn't allow for those "random spot waiters" to cheat the system, but still has player choice woven all over it. Hooray!

 

Garlic progress sounds good. Honestly, I'm liking that you've put such an emphasis on that part; I had intended it to be quite tiny. But thankfully, it's not! Adds a lot of flavor, that garlic. puns!. As far as nullifying effects...I think that it should effect the more "magic" vampiric abilities (Blood Rend, Darken), almost like the garlic has a protective aura against the vampires mysticism...but the physical things (Bite, charm, etc) are in full effect, as those are...well, physical.

 

Once I finish my econ paper I'll get cracking on trying to come up with a logical progression in the connections between AoS:yes|no and starvation levels. Only 3 more pages left! Then it shouldn't take too long, really. Honestly, I don't think it would take very long for me to come up with any of these systems, but it's a horrendous time for me what with finals and all that...fun.

 

Alarm raising was meant to be..hmm..if memory serves and I'm too lazy to go back to page one...but I'm pretty sure that there was supposed to be a stealth check every second up to a certain vRank, at which point the victim is automatically "charmed", so to speak. I think you had this already in the mod, so...no further complications. I hope.

 

Darken scaling: You make a good point. Again, I'm inclined to not have fixed values for the gained health, but how about if it checked for which was higher between magicka/health/stamina, selects the highest value, and runs a formula from that? Something like restoring (magicka/40), (health/20), (stamina/25) depending on which of those initial values was higher? So a lvl 2 mage with 110 magicka, 100 health and 100 stamina would get back ~3 per swing, while someone "buffer" (ie, more health or stamina) would get more back. Double whatever amount for power attacks, and bam! Also scales with level, of course.

 

I definitively get the drive to be the first in-depth vampire mod, lol...to my knowledge, we are anyway, but still. As Miyamoto once said, a delayed game is good eventually, a rushed game is bad forever. Maybe less true nowadays, but yes: private, large scale testing in order.

 

@thatperson: Never heard of it, but to be fair, a lot of vampire mods will be deriving from a very similar source...ie, vampire lore :P. It's very ingrained stuff! Although I did try to pull from ALL lore throughout the ages, instead of the normal "Dracula-onwards" lore.

 

 

@phil: You make a very good point about the trespassing...hmm...I'll have to think about that, but you're right; it would be incredibly difficult to prey on people sleeping. Of course, and this is just a guess as to how the coded-in trespassing system works, but if you had a key to the house, that might count as "having permission". I should hope so, lest I need to foist another stupid idea on MM and his masterful code work :rolleyes:

 

 

@ERRYONE: IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN TESTING THE MOD, PLEASE SEND ME A PM SO I WILL HAVE AN EASIER TIME ORGANIZING IT FOR WHEN WE'RE READY TO HAVE A TEST RUN..

 

There. Should take some of the administrative work off MM and help expedite the process in the future. Further details about what we'll be looking for in the report to come, but time to get a head start on it.

 

EDIT: oh! Another thread appears! Lol, yeah, it's fine MM; this is just as much your mod as it is mine. You're the brains, and I'm the...uh..more strategic brain of questionable usefulness! We can use that for more solid updates/announcements and this for discussion. Or it'll just move to that one. I dunno. Either way, yeah. I don't think they'll mind an extra thread..hehehehe...

Edited March 4, 2012 by Jakisthe

[phil11]

Garlic progress sounds good. Honestly, I'm liking that you've put such an emphasis on that part; I had intended it to be quite tiny. But thankfully, it's not! Adds a lot of flavor, that garlic. puns!. As far as nullifying effects...I think that it should effect the more "magic" vampiric abilities (Blood Rend, Darken), almost like the garlic has a protective aura against the vampires mysticism...but the physical things (Bite, charm, etc) are in full effect, as those are...well, physical.

lol@ garlic quip. Anyway, is charm actually physical? I tend to agree about bite though, but I think an NPC carrying garlic should have an increased stealth check or something, since bite can only be performed while sneaking. Those carrying garlic should have a higher awareness of vampires than normal people, right? It would seem too easy if you could sneak up on every garlic carrying NPC and take them out in stealth.

@phil: You make a very good point about the trespassing...hmm...I'll have to think about that, but you're right; it would be incredibly difficult to prey on people sleeping. Of course, and this is just a guess as to how the coded-in trespassing system works, but if you had a key to the house, that might count as "having permission". I should hope so, lest I need to foist another stupid idea on MM and his masterful code work :rolleyes:

Having a key to signify permission is a good idea, as it's a lot simpler. However, aren't there some places you can go that don't have a key where you'd still be considered trespassing? Actually, come to think of it, I'm not totally sure that having a key circumvents the trespassing system. If memory serves, using a stolen key (e.g. on a door at night) will often show you the red text indicating that you're trespassing. I don't want to overly complicate things either, but having a spell (at least eventually) to glamour someone would not only be very cool, but be more lore friendly. I know how ambitious this mod is, and I don't want to suggest something totally unnecessary if it can be done a simpler way. But stealing keys doesn't fit the lore of "needing to be invited" as much as glamouring or coercing someone does, in my humble opinion. I honestly have no idea how something like this would be implemented though without extreme tedium, unless residents/owners are already 'connected' to their respective properties such that glamouring them would remove said property's trespassing penalties. After all, how would the game differentiate one property from another once you've coerced an individual resident or owner? I don't know much about coding or modding, so I could be totally wrong on this. Hopefully MM will know what to do.

 

EDIT:

@MM and Jakisthe

 

Oh yeah, I forgot to ask what this meant: "Very, very rarely, when near walls in houses, the player can hear the tap sequence Di-dah-dah-dit Di-di-dah Di-di-dit Di-di-dit being tapped out on the wall"

Edited March 4, 2012 by phil11

[Hechicero]

Is this mod realiced?

[MofoMojo]

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.

 

Thanks for the kind words Phill11. I kow Jakisthe and I appreciate it!

 

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.

 

It's certainly a balancing act (we're loaded with puns aren't we?). Actually I don't see this as being much of an issue and here's why. I went to do some more research on this as I know I've broken into places but wasn't considered trespassing. Basically cells (interiors) have two fields, Owne NPC and Owner Faction. Many places are considered privately owned, such as Arcadia's Cauldron in Whiterun. She sells alchemy ingredients and potions. However, because it's a shop it's considered a public location. When she locks the doors at night, and goes to sleep. Because she sleeps in the store, he store is always open (another pun) to Vampire's. Now then, Severio Pelagia's house on the corner across the street is a House. It's owned by Severior Pelagia, and it's not considered a public area. If you break into that house, you will be considered trespassing. If the damage is to severe then we can change it but to be honest, I think it's fair. I'm just a measly 24th level mage, who incidentally spends way too much time testing some guy's theories and broken scripts to level anymore, and at 160 healt I can survive for 22 seconds. If I'm quick about it that's plenty of time to sneak in, feed and sneak out if push comes to shove.

 

But this does bring up a good point on potions and restoration dampening. If we dampen restoration and remove potion effects on top of that, that could be a little too much. To me, I consider potions to be "Magical" not "Medicinal". I don't want "Medicinal" things to work on the vampire, such as gaining health by eating food. Perhaps we should rethink the potions idea.

 

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.

 

You have to be right there on it. You've got two times to consider. How long before the DIE if they're continually getting beat to death on bended knee, or how long before they recover. It get's very difficult to pull off the more allies you have fighing for you because they tend to wail on them. Last night I stumbled upon a Thalmor (didn't see his other two friends) and had a poor farmer thrall in toe. I was able to kill him with the attack, and we turned on the other two thalmor. One was a conjurist the other a fighter. The falmer thrall went down in the first punch. I was ableo to catch the mage in bleedout and turned her too, and we quickly took out the fighter. I couldn't get to the fighter in time because I have to keep my distance...hoewver, being a conjurer I raised him after the fight was over and we had a merry party of four. Myself, two thalmore fighters and a thalmor conjurer. The guards, for some reason, didn't find their attackig me odd, so I took my revenge on them. The conjurer summoned a flame atronarch rounding out are party to five. But the thalmor are not that great against the guards and two died. No worries, again, I'm a conjurer so I re-animated them. But during that entire fight, us five against three guards, I got one chance to try and bite one of the guards. "Vampire's Speed" would have helped but I didn't use it during the fight, keeping my distance.

 

Enough story-telling. I figure you'll be fighting a lot in this game...it's not known for it's passiveness, and with probbly one or two attempts to feed per fight I didn't want the "Attack for Blood" perk to become a major source for satiation. If 1% is too little we could bump it up to say, 5%. Consider this.

 

To go from Fledgling to Risen would then require 10 "attack for blood" attempts. I can get into 10 fights from Whiterun to Falkreath easily. Is that too easy or just right? I am perfectly happy with opening the doors to "Attack for Blood" being a personal choice of the only way they gain SatiationDamage, but I don't want to encourage people for it to be their only method. I figure warriors are always in the thick of it, and have a lot of opportunity to use it, mage's maybe not. That's the life we choose.

 

Fledgling to Risen

5% = 10 attacks

3% = ~17 attacks

2% = 25 attacks

1% = 50 attacks

 

Consider Progenitor to Sire

5% = 180 attacks

3% = 300 attacks

2% = 450 attacks

1% = 900 attacks

 

Hmmm...ok, 5% is sounding like a good number. :)

 

What say everyone?

 

Is this mod realiced?

 

Not yet Hechircero.

 

 

-MM

Edited March 4, 2012 by MofoMojo

[MofoMojo]

Sounds good for restoration. There are, frankly, a ton of ways that could be handled, either by making them considerably less powerful or considerably more expensive. Or both! Sort of like the dark/light system in KoTOR; it remains still technically possible to cast a spell from the other side, but mentally exhaustive for a lesser result, but such is the downside of giving into vampirism. actually if we wanted to get really weird we could try to cram in some kind of dynamic resto-nullifying system wherein the higher vRank you are, the less effective they are...as opposed to a straight drop at whatever level they're at now..but..uh...yeah. over-complicating things, self!

 

Funny you should mention that. I have created behind the scenes a BeluaVampireFaction. Currently there are five ranks (one is a .... easter egg) because the faction has no use except to establish enemies with the Silver Hand and Vigilants.

 

Rank 0 .... easter egg....

Rank 1 Fledgling

Rank 2 Risen

Rank 3 Master

Rank 4 Male: Progenitor Femaile: Progenitoras

Rank 5 Male: Sire Female: Regina

 

Sire being King, Regina being Queen, Progenitoras is the feminine equivalent of Progenitor. Master has no male/feminine form, nor do Risen and Fledgling.

 

The sleep/wait thing you proposed sounds like a good compromise. Doesn't allow for those "random spot waiters" to cheat the system, but still has player choice woven all over it. Hooray!

 

Garlic progress sounds good. Honestly, I'm liking that you've put such an emphasis on that part; I had intended it to be quite tiny. But thankfully, it's not! Adds a lot of flavor, that garlic. puns!. As far as nullifying effects...I think that it should effect the more "magic" vampiric abilities (Blood Rend, Darken), almost like the garlic has a protective aura against the vampires mysticism...but the physical things (Bite, charm, etc) are in full effect, as those are...well, physical.

 

I could do both, I somewhat thought the reverse, that it physically repels the player and thus they'd not be able to put in their full effort to attack them, feed from them, etc,. In fact for playtesting I built out a PUSH system that literally P R O P E L S you away about 5 feet if you got too close, it was a little too funny. I thought about doing a stagger if you came into contact or something but then I don't want it to become a BIG game mechanic. It started as an easter egg of sorts and I like what's it evolved too, but any more might be too much. I can add garlic as protection from vampiric spells, that sounds pretty good actually.

 

Once I finish my econ paper I'll get cracking on trying to come up with a logical progression in the connections between AoS:yes|no and starvation levels. Only 3 more pages left! Then it shouldn't take too long, really. Honestly, I don't think it would take very long for me to come up with any of these systems, but it's a horrendous time for me what with finals and all that...fun.

 

Alarm raising was meant to be..hmm..if memory serves and I'm too lazy to go back to page one...but I'm pretty sure that there was supposed to be a stealth check every second up to a certain vRank, at which point the victim is automatically "charmed", so to speak. I think you had this already in the mod, so...no further complications. I hope.

 

Yeah, I just have to figure out the engagement. Feeding is a little complicated. It's triggered by calling into the vampire player quest feeding function. IDEA!!! I split out additional functions for when feeding normally vs. feeding attacks that handle charming and other routines. WOOT.

 

Darken scaling: You make a good point. Again, I'm inclined to not have fixed values for the gained health, but how about if it checked for which was higher between magicka/health/stamina, selects the highest value, and runs a formula from that? Something like restoring (magicka/40), (health/20), (stamina/25) depending on which of those initial values was higher? So a lvl 2 mage with 110 magicka, 100 health and 100 stamina would get back ~3 per swing, while someone "buffer" (ie, more health or stamina) would get more back. Double whatever amount for power attacks, and bam! Also scales with level, of course.

 

Sounds good. We can make darken relatively intelligent by having it check the player's baseactorvalues. The baseactorvalues are the actual total health, stamina, and magicka you are alloted. We can guess what they'd prefer to have resotred based on which baseactorvalue was the highest and for those with two higher but equal values we can choose which one is currently AT the lowest level and replenish it.

 

I definitively get the drive to be the first in-depth vampire mod, lol...to my knowledge, we are anyway, but still. As Miyamoto once said, a delayed game is good eventually, a rushed game is bad forever. Maybe less true nowadays, but yes: private, large scale testing in order.

 

Yup...yup. My pride is getting in the way. :)

 

@phil: You make a very good point about the trespassing...hmm...I'll have to think about that, but you're right; it would be incredibly difficult to prey on people sleeping. Of course, and this is just a guess as to how the coded-in trespassing system works, but if you had a key to the house, that might count as "having permission". I should hope so, lest I need to foist another stupid idea on MM and his masterful code work :rolleyes:

 

See my previous post.

 

EDIT: oh! Another thread appears! Lol, yeah, it's fine MM; this is just as much your mod as it is mine. You're the brains, and I'm the...uh..more strategic brain of questionable usefulness! We can use that for more solid updates/announcements and this for discussion. Or it'll just move to that one. I dunno. Either way, yeah. I don't think they'll mind an extra thread..hehehehe...

 

Yeah, a little impulsive of me, then I thought after posting it..hurumph, what we really need was a topic you started and a thread that have me as an immediate followup that we could use to post updates and then I looked at the beginning of this topic and BOOM, we just about have that...if only for the name of the topic wasn't IDEAS. I don't know, maybe we could reach out to a moderator to change the thread name? Given the way the URLs to the threads work, I don't think it's that simple, but perhaps it is.

 

-MM

[phil11]

It's certainly a balancing act (we're loaded with puns aren't we?). Actually I don't see this as being much of an issue and here's why. I went to do some more research on this as I know I've broken into places but wasn't considered trespassing. Basically cells (interiors) have two fields, Owne NPC and Owner Faction. Many places are considered privately owned, such as Arcadia's Cauldron in Whiterun. She sells alchemy ingredients and potions. However, because it's a shop it's considered a public location. When she locks the doors at night, and goes to sleep. Because she sleeps in the store, he store is always open (another pun) to Vampire's. Now then, Severio Pelagia's house on the corner across the street is a House. It's owned by Severior Pelagia, and it's not considered a public area. If you break into that house, you will be considered trespassing. If the damage is to severe then we can change it but to be honest, I think it's fair. I'm just a measly 24th level mage, who incidentally spends way too much time testing some guy's theories and broken scripts to level anymore, and at 160 healt I can survive for 22 seconds. If I'm quick about it that's plenty of time to sneak in, feed and sneak out if push comes to shove.

Ah, ok. Awesome. So only private residences count, and those are all fairly small if I remember right. 22 seconds is plenty of time,and even longer when time is dilated by Vampire Speed. Just out of curiosity, how long would vampire speed last with, say, 160 stamina?

 

But this does bring up a good point on potions and restoration dampening. If we dampen restoration and remove potion effects on top of that, that could be a little too much. To me, I consider potions to be "Magical" not "Medicinal". I don't want "Medicinal" things to work on the vampire, such as gaining health by eating food. Perhaps we should rethink the potions idea.

Perhaps just make them half as effective or something. Since potions can be made alchemically, it seems they're both medicinal AND magical. As a Sire with 300% health regeneration, not being able to use potions seems totally fair. It's only when that health regen is gone that not being able to use potions really sucks. So what about making potions 50% less effective when health regeneration is off, and 100% ineffective with health regeneration on. Again, I may be overcomplicating things.

 

Enough story-telling. I figure you'll be fighting a lot in this game...it's not known for it's passiveness, and with probbly one or two attempts to feed per fight I didn't want the "Attack for Blood" perk to become a major source for satiation. If 1% is too little we could bump it up to say, 5%. Consider this.

 

To go from Fledgling to Risen would then require 10 "attack for blood" attempts. I can get into 10 fights from Whiterun to Falkreath easily. Is that too easy or just right? I am perfectly happy with opening the doors to "Attack for Blood" being a personal choice of the only way they gain SatiationDamage, but I don't want to encourage people for it to be their only method. I figure warriors are always in the thick of it, and have a lot of opportunity to use it, mage's maybe not. That's the life we choose.

 

Fledgling to Risen

5% = 10 attacks

3% = ~17 attacks

2% = 25 attacks

1% = 50 attacks

 

Consider Progenitor to Sire

5% = 180 attacks

3% = 300 attacks

2% = 450 attacks

1% = 900 attacks

 

Hmmm...ok, 5% is sounding like a good number. :)

 

What say everyone?

 

Sounds good to me. But I'm also willing to playtest this later. I sent Jakisthe a PM with a request to help out whenever you guys are ready.

 

 

edit: Hey MM, any chance Bite or Attack for Blood will get their own third person animation? Even if it's..... months from now? That'd be awesome.

Edited March 4, 2012 by phil11

[MofoMojo]

Ah, ok. Awesome. So only private residences count, and those are all fairly small if I remember right. 22 seconds is plenty of time,and even longer when time is dilated by Vampire Speed. Just out of curiosity, how long would vampire speed last with, say, 160 stamina?

 

16 seconds in its current form and these are the speeds:

 

Risen - 9i0% normal time

Master - 80% normal time

Progenitor - 70% normal time

Sire - 60% normal time

 

But this does bring up a good point on potions and restoration dampening. If we dampen restoration and remove potion effects on top of that, that could be a little too much. To me, I consider potions to be "Magical" not "Medicinal". I don't want "Medicinal" things to work on the vampire, such as gaining health by eating food. Perhaps we should rethink the potions idea.

Perhaps just make them half as effective or something. Since potions can be made alchemically, it seems they're both medicinal AND magical. As a Sire with 300% health regeneration, not being able to use potions seems totally fair. It's only when that health regen is gone that not being able to use potions really sucks. So what about making potions 50% less effective when health regeneration is off, and 100% ineffective with health regeneration on. Again, I may be overcomplicating things.

 

I think we should just stick to a black/white plan here. Either it's ineffective, 50% effective or 100% effective across the board. Granted "Alchemy" is essentially medicinal as you point out, it is made up of ingredients. I think I was getting into more mystical ideals about alchemy when I was thinking that through. I don't want vampires to always be safe, being safe needs to be a very concious act. For instnace, Conjure Fog. Works great to hide from the sun, but I don't let you constantly cast it over and over and over to keep it active. If you recast it and it's already foggy, nothing happens (or I make it sunny on you...I Can't remember). You have to wait for it to dissapate exposing you to danger, before casting it again.

 

edit: Hey MM, any chance Bite or Attack for Blood will get their own third person animation? Even if it's..... months from now? That'd be awesome.

 

I think it's slightly possible. As it stands, the animations for feeding won't play unless the player is seated/lying down on furniture. The game is hardcoded for that check it appears (I turned on in game tracing to debug some problems) however if we can find an animator that can keyframe it I think we could dp something... Definitely down the road planning. Previously I said it was impossible, but a new mod came out that does increase the number of animations available. Combat animations can't be done yet, so that's why I say slightly possible. it might be a problem if we can't get creative. Who knows, by the time we're ready to do that, the tools may be available to us.

 

-MM

[MofoMojo]

Teaser Incoming...

[MofoMojo]

A quick'ish Teaser Trailer. Doesn't show off much, but it gives a simple taste of things we've added. Not suown are garlic wearing NPC, sun effects, trespassing. Hope you enjoy. I learned a few things watching this. 1) Blood Rend should probably stop working if you're full health, blood rend, still damages for too much, and then...oh yeah, I haven't implemented the scaling damage into anything yet.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blaVgu8uT1M

 

-MM

[FranzLiszt]

@MM

Wow, that is awesome.

Are we ever going to create animations for feeding? I have no modding knowledge or I would volunteer.

I have seen custom animations for other mods, so I wonder how difficult they are to program?

 

Well, good job!

I get a bit boggled trying to remember all planned features.

What exactly is left on your list? If it is not too much trouble to ask.

 

EDIT: Nvm bout the animations. just got done looking at this and it seems like animations are not supported by the CK

Edited March 6, 2012 by FranzLiszt