[WIP] Belua Sanguinare Revisited

[MofoMojo]

So I've been looking at Perk Entry Points and here's a few, and I'm not saying any of these are worthwhile, just figure they're more...roguish in nature

 

Mod Detection Light - This could make it easier to sneak without boosting the sneak skill. For instance, we could check the light level of the player, and if it's below a certain threshold reduce the detection light even more for the idea that they literally do blend into the shadows a bit more

Mod Detection Movement - Similar I think, only for movement

Make Lockpicks unbreakable - perhaps a bit too powerful?

Modify Detection Sneak Skill - Not sure what this does.

Modify Lockpick Sweetpoint

Modify Lockpicking Crime Chance - I like the sound of this one. In a sense, you can't pick the locks any better but perhaps give the illusion that you're more likely able to pick a lock under scrutiny simply because of your "speed". People may not notice.

Modify PickPocket Chance -

Set Lockpicking Arc (no clue)

Set Progression Picking (no clue)

 

I think out of all of those I like two of them. Mod Detection Light where you get a boost in the shadows, Modify Lockpicking Crime Chance to reduce the chance of getting caught when picking a lock. Perhaps mod detection movement and pickpocket chance if I had to go out on a limb.

 

Just thought I'd throw this out there. Jakisthe and I have some side conversations going on whether or not we think we've made Vampire's too weak. They're just constructive discussions, neither of us are taking action on anything and to be honest I think the weaknesses are fair, but only playtesting is really going to shine a light on what needs to be tweaked. That being said, you know I spoke about disabling certain abilities with use of Forma spell. Forma spell drains magicka. Some didn't want the abilities to be taken away under forma, and some don't want forma to drain magicka but I am thinking we need to find a happy medium. It can be a very rough life with Attack On Sight up especially if you're not a mage with high amounts of magicka reserves, and let's face it. If you go through the college quest line, you'll end up decked out with gear that will pretty much allow you to keep forma up and running all the time.

 

Again, just throwing ideas out. Nothing in my mind is currently going to make me change the behavior we have today until we get some testing. But what if I proposed that you could use Forma as long as you wanted. No drain in magicka, but it disabled most of your other passive abilities. Quicker health regen, speed bonuses, fog, etc,. Essentially it forced you to blend into the world around you by not only allowing you to look normal but force you to act normal?

 

So.... what I _AM_ going to be working on however, is a way to make Attack On Sight not so.... psychic. Seriously, guards can tell you're a vampire from 100 yards away and that's ridiculous. I still have ideas in my head about how to do that, and most of it revolves around getting random actors within a 150 - 200 foot radius, and testing whether they have line of sight on you and if they do, AND you don't have forma up AND you're under the AOS effect due to hunger, THEN having them sound the alarm. It's all theory in my head. Tomorrow I'll work on POC, because I hate psychic guards.

 

Also, I drummed up a quick POC "Fear" effect tonigh after getting an....incredibly....limited grasp on NifSkope. Suffice to say, I finally was able to retrofit the Wisp Effect into a nice Black and blood red (mostly black) effect, rather than the ghostly white. Attach a small radius and fear people within that radius. It's just a POC right now. Yeah, I said I'd stop working on POCs but honestly I ran out of things to tweak (which is a good thing). I need to put in some additional playtesting though.

 

-MM

[Jakisthe]

I'm going to guess that lock picking arc deals with the width of the "successful" lockpick area, which is smaller on master locks compared to expert, etc.

 

Chow, you're right. The thing is, and MM has seen this as well, is that fighter or mage...well, they more directly tie to statistical bonuses, and their application is pretty easy to see (combat or magic). Stealthy...well, that's a bit harder. A lot of my initial ideas dealt with stealth and sneaking, although they turned out to be far harder to implement than the other boosts. Here's what we've been thinking:

-climbing: I don't know how to do this, nor anything close to this. So far, the only possible avenue might be reversing gravity, but I don't know if that works.

-lightsap: We were thinking that a negative magnitude magelight MIGHT work, but I can't say. That likely won't affect other lights in the area, but just..well, do nothing.

-dark flame: a stealthy magic attack, this one is flat out impossible. If one person raises the alarm, everyone gets alarmed.

-Sanguine form: You know, this might not be too hard. I know I saw a few spells which turned the player into a dragon, which seems a lot more complex than a bear or a skeever...

-rapture: technically possible, since I've seen it with another mod, but it was pretty limited.

-invisibility in fog/conjure local, ground level fog: these were meant to work together, but from MM plumbing the depths, there isn't actually all that much fog in the world...or rather, the fog that is there isn't attached to a texture but rather a lighting effect, which is considerably harder to detect. I...think. At any rate, it (like all the others) is.. difficult.

 

Now that fear effect....I dunno where it would fit in by itself as a whole new spell, but I feel as though...that should be usable to help with one of the above issues...like a burst of fear that gets triggered to facilitate...something. I'll have to think about it. Otherwise, MM, I just know you'll make a ton of POCs which we'd have to pare down :tongue:

[nskin039]

what if I proposed that you could use Forma as long as you wanted. No drain in magicka, but it disabled most of your other passive abilities. Quicker health regen, speed bonuses, fog, etc,. Essentially it forced you to blend into the world around you by not only allowing you to look normal but force you to act normal?

 

So.... what I _AM_ going to be working on however, is a way to make Attack On Sight not so.... psychic. Seriously, guards can tell you're a vampire from 100 yards away and that's ridiculous. I still have ideas in my head about how to do that, and most of it revolves around getting random actors within a 150 - 200 foot radius, and testing whether they have line of sight on you and if they do, AND you don't have forma up AND you're under the AOS effect due to hunger, THEN having them sound the alarm. It's all theory in my head. Tomorrow I'll work on POC, because I hate psychic guards.

 

Also, I drummed up a quick POC "Fear" effect tonigh after getting an....incredibly....limited grasp on NifSkope. Suffice to say, I finally was able to retrofit the Wisp Effect into a nice Black and blood red (mostly black) effect, rather than the ghostly white. Attach a small radius and fear people within that radius. It's just a POC right now. Yeah, I said I'd stop working on POCs but honestly I ran out of things to tweak (which is a good thing). I need to put in some additional playtesting though.

 

-MM

Forma spell. The ability for constant use is actually what I wanted in the first place. Fine with me! I am also fine with removing spells/ abilities. However, I recommend NOT removing the extra carry weight bonus. I can just see that as supper annoying to lose extra carry capacity and becoming over encumbered. Whether vamps are hiding their true form they still should have super strength (and possibly speed too).

 

I would love it if you could make AOS work only if you were within a certain distance (maybe 10 feet or so) or better yet only if you were detected.

 

Also this is a little out of scope, but do you guys think that sleep-able coffins are a possibility?

 

P.S. I am glad you all are testing this so thoroughly in the alpha stage. I know this is going to be an epic mod once it is done. You can't rush perfection. Don't feel like you have to rush.

[noctara]

First off:

 

I am following this thread since the very first minute. I am glad someone takes the effort to make a profound vampire-overhaul :thumbsup:

This Mod-Project looks extremely promissing to me. I especially like the fact that u seem to care a lot about balancing... the game as is, is already easy enough so I would really dislike another mod which makes u even more powerfull without appropriate tradeoffs.

 

Another Plus of this mod seems to me, that it probably will not deliver half baked implementations... i d rather have a few propper implementations than a bunch of crappy functions/ abilities.

 

Well thats enough cheering up i guess... keep on the good work :thumbsup:

 

Now, to my actual point :biggrin:

 

Also this is a little out of scope, but do you guys think that sleep-able coffins are a possibility?

 

Making sleepable coffins is actually not difficult at all. When I remeber correctly, the beds in skyrim dont have a playeranimation attached to them... so they basically just open the sleepmenu. You could probably easily doing that for coffins as well... i can imagine creating a questscript which launches the activate() function on refalias as a bed (when u activate an object with a keyword "coffin" or somthing similar if u want to create a new keyword)

 

I am currently working on a mod which adds a coffin shop for vampires to skyrim. The Objective is, to get like 3-4 different types (some lying, some standing) all of them are going to get a exit animation attached to them.

If that is what u want, the whole stuff becomes a bit more complex as u would have to edit/ add quite a few locations (wherever the player wants his/her coffin to be)... as far as i understand, this mod wont edit/ add any locations in the near future (until quests are added maybe). The only way around i can imagine would be to create a spell which moves the coffin (and all attached objects/ markers to the desired location... however i dont even know if that is possible.

 

Hope thiss helps... :confused:

[MofoMojo]

 

Now that fear effect....I dunno where it would fit in by itself as a whole new spell, but I feel as though...that should be usable to help with one of the above issues...like a burst of fear that gets triggered to facilitate...something. I'll have to think about it. Otherwise, MM, I just know you'll make a ton of POCs which we'd have to pare down :tongue:

 

 

It's not intended to be a new spell. It's just me fartin' around with ideas for being AOS. Next up is to figure out how the glowy skeleton eyes work and see if that's something we can do. Ultimately the idea is this. When in AOS mode, have it work only withint a 50-100' radius. Only people that are withint Line of Sight get it. People of levels much less than the player will be feared, and people at levels higher than that will be alerted and behave based on how their typical AI would tell them to behave. I want to get some fear into the vampire's eyes but baring that I may use this visual effect.

 

I've got idea on how to do the fear/aos thing now. More concrete ideas than I had last night. It'll be similar to how my ideas for constant and movable detect blood/dead/life works. Just use a cloak but this time, don't disable Line of Sight for the cloak.

 

Noctara! Welcome to the thread. Cool to see we have some lurkers still out there and it means a lot to us to get some fresh blood on the thread. I do hope we can live up to everyone's expectations. As I mentioned in a prior post, us Vampire loving folk can be a fickle/perculiar bunch.

 

-MM

[chow404]

How about this, there's a 90% cap on the liklyhood of pickpocketing, raise that to a 95% if your a vampire, for there extra speed, vampires can, at the cost of something, sort of shroud themselves at night, and when picking up something that's not yours and someone sees you a 20% chance they don't notice because of your speed. Sound fair?

[MofoMojo]

How about this, there's a 90% cap on the liklyhood of pickpocketing, raise that to a 95% if your a vampire, for there extra speed, vampires can, at the cost of something, sort of shroud themselves at night, and when picking up something that's not yours and someone sees you a 20% chance they don't notice because of your speed. Sound fair?

 

Sounds somewhat fair, I just need to think about the implementation.

 

So I'm off of work today, and this weekend is pretty free to spend tweaking. I defeated the psychic gaurds this morning. Basically a few things have to happen for them to react to you.

 

• 
   
  
• You have to be marked AOS
  
• You have to be within 50 feet of a guard
  
• The guard can't be sleeping (they can be just attempting to sleep or waking up though)
  
• They have to have Line of Sight AND
  
• They have to detect you
  

 

The idea here is that Forma consumes mana, and can consume quite a bit of it actually if you're not a mage and I think I want to leave that alone...not sure on that.

 

Either way, It'll be enough to get you into a hold or area if you need to, since most all entrances to things civilized are guarded. Once inside, if you run out of mana, if you can avoid the guards whether it's staying out of LOS or sneaking skill exceeds their observational abilities, then they won't see you and won't psychically know that you're a vampire. Currently the Attack on Sight only works on Guards. I figure everyone else is either out to get you anyway or shouldn't be attacking you in the first place but that may need to be tweaked. There's A LOT I can do in the scripting to tweak this. The biggest thing about hunger was to make hunger a pain in the rear to be amongst civilized people.

 

I do, however, need to consider perhaps fearing people that aren't guards. I do allow you to fear the guards if the guards are less than twice your level. I don't know if that's even possible (that a guard would be less than twice your level) but it's coded. I'd like to do some more work around confidence, etc,. but ultimately it gets obfuscated by the fact that if a single guard gets alarmed they ALL get alarmed so, there's not much value in it.

 

-MM

Edited March 30, 2012 by MofoMojo

[nskin039]

 

I am currently working on a mod which adds a coffin shop for vampires to skyrim. The Objective is, to get like 3-4 different types (some lying, some standing) all of them are going to get a exit animation attached to them.

If that is what u want, the whole stuff becomes a bit more complex as u would have to edit/ add quite a few locations (wherever the player wants his/her coffin to be)... as far as i understand, this mod wont edit/ add any locations in the near future (until quests are added maybe). The only way around i can imagine would be to create a spell which moves the coffin (and all attached objects/ markers to the desired location... however i dont even know if that is possible.

 

Hope thiss helps... :confused:

 

I hope you can make that work. I am planning to start a vampire hideout/home mod soon. I would really like the ability to have a sleepable coffin.

Honestly I would really like to see a see you sleep mod. One that lets you see the PC in 3rd person when sleeping and that has animations for sleeping and rising from sleep. Different ones for vamps of course. But I hope your mod succeeds. It is about time someone made something like that!. :yes:

[nskin039]

So Forma still uses Magicka :sad:

I was hoping, (based of one of your previous comments) that you were going to change that. Making it cost a lot of magika to cast but once cast it stays up but also disables certain abilities.

[Jakisthe]

Well, hopefully the optimal settings will work their way out of the woodwork in the beta. One idea we were tossing around, however, was that it would take 100% of your mana to cast...and then stay up for a certain amount of time, from a fledgling with 10 minutes, to a Sire with 5.