I'm Back! With A Vampire Overhaul In The Works!

[JetSteele]

MOD RELEASED

 

It's been forever since I've been able to mod anything. For those that missed the post I made a while back I went on a break because I was starting up a business and no longer had the time to mod. I don't have the free time that I used to but with the free time I have (an hour here and there) I'll be able to at least mod a little bit and make some content.

 

I've got a vampire overhaul in the works. No I don't have a time stamp on when it will be available but here is a general announcement before I get into describing the mod. As my time is severally limited for modding I don't have the time to take to bug test the mod extensively. So I am asking that anyone who would like to Beta Test the mod when it's ready feel free to let me know, I'll record your name down and when I am ready I will give you guys a copy of the mod to test. What do you get out of it? Your name and a link to your profile written in a section of the credits readme file. Let me know if you'd be interested to help me out I'd really appreciate it. Now let's get into the info:

 

General Info

I was watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and got inspiration to make a vampire overhaul work similarly to how the vampires are in that show. So far the mod is coming along the feeding mechanics are left to create and polish as well as a 'feral' feature; I'll describe everything later. After everything is completed I will be pushing out the Beta Test, and once the mod is officially launched I will work on adding more spells to vampires.

 

Become a Vampire

The old vampire system forced the player to wait 3 days and they will then be transformed into a vampire. Personally, I just used the wait function which took me out the experience the game was providing. The system has been overhauled for the mod. You still contract the disease however now if you wait the 3 days the disease will leave your body and you won't be at risk of becoming a vampire. Reason being is that the disease is 'Vampire Magic' which has infected your body... that wears off in time.

 

To become a vampire you must die with Sanguinare Vampiris in your blood, afterwards the vampire magic in your dead body will transform the player into a vampire.

 

The Dark Form

After you wake up as a vampire you will have acquired a new lesser power called Dark Form and you will notice that you have not turned into a vampire. This is normal. Just as in the show Buffy; vampires now have a human appearance and a vampire appearance. To feed you must call forth your vampire form... however powers can be accessed through both forms.

 

This change allows for the player to join the Dawnguard as a Vampire. Allowing them to be a Vampire, Vampire Hunter. It allows the player to not be stuck with a vampire face forever, and to me it just makes sense that as a way to hide the vampires have a human looking face. Blending in and all that.

 

Beware of the vampire form, you will be attacked on sight by NPCs while in it.

 

Feeding

The feeding mechanics have been gutted and reworked. No longer are they tied to Vampire Progression, now it is tied to what it should be... the hunger. It takes 25 in game hours to starve yourself, around the 20 hour mark you will see the blood of those around you and hear a heartbeat for a couple seconds every hour signifying a temptation to feed.

 

When you are hungry you will have a higher chance of killing your victims; you get stronger offensively, however your defenses take a hit. And your chances of going Feral increase to 16%.

 

Finally, all vampire magic will be controlled by a custom blood system instead of the magic system. The more vampire powers you use the faster you will starve.

 

Feral

Becoming feral is just about the worst thing that can happen to a vampire, when in this state the vampire has lost total control of his vampire side and is stuck with his vampire face out. This means that you cannot enter cities as you will be attacked on sight. On top of that the sun becomes DEADLY to you, that's right when your feral the sun can kill you. There are 2 ways of going feral: one is age and the other is starvation.

 

As a young vampire your chances of going feral is pretty high because you don't have control over your vampire tendencies yet. However once you become a Master Vampire you will gain total control over becoming feral... except if your starving.

 

Starvation is pretty self-explanatory.

 

Leveling Up

Your powers are still controlled by your vampiric stage however now you don't go back to level 1 when you feed. Also, your leveling is controlled completely separately now from feeding. It is controlled by how long you've been a vampire and how many people you've fed on.

 

Vampire Fledgling: No Requirements

Vampire Childe: 25 Necks Bitten, 10 Days as a Vampire

Vampire Nightseer: 250 Necks Bitten, 30 Days as a Vampire

Master Vampire: 500 Necks Bitten, 50 Days as a Vampire

 

Also the weaknesses of vampirism have been inverted meaning you are most weak as a vampire when you are a Fledgling and you have the least amount of weaknesses once you become a Master Vampire.

 

Final Info

This mod will encompase both Skyrim and Dawnguard, also because this changes how the skyrim vampirism is handled this mod will be incompatible with Better Vampires and any other vampire overhaul mods. As I said in the beginning I am uncertain how long it will take to complete the development of the mod however I will keep you guys posted as I go along.

 

As of right now the mod has the framework all setup. What needs to be completed is:

Feeding System

Feral System

 

It may not seem like much but because these 2 systems encompass the game-play aspect of the mod they are actually the biggest and will take the most time to develop.

[JetSteele]

Progress Report.

So, I may not do progress reports every week but when the mod has a big task completed (like those 2 final systems), I will make a post about it to describe what is going on.

 

The feeding system is in place, at this moment any time you feed it will fill up your hunger completely. Some time after the mod's release and when I have free time I will upgrade the system to feature different blood types and how they will fill up the vampire and how they will affect the vampire. This type of update are in the plans for a later release date. So feeding for release is completed!

 

The feral system... well it is partially implemented.

 

Finally after the kinks are worked out of the base vampire systems, then some basic Dawnguard patching needs to be done to keep the mod fully functional with the game... this is easy to do since I made a similar patch for an old vamp mod I hadn't released (still got those notes so that will take less than 5 minutes to patch up).

 

What remains to be completed:

I need to create the sun damaging effect (Feral System)

I need to implement the 'Feral' feature on all the vampire powers (Feral System)

I need to script the random chance of turning feral for 'younger' vamps (Feral System)

Make vampire spells drain blood from the player when used (Feeding System)

Dawnguard Compatibility Patching

 

Once these 5 tasks are finished the mod will be ready to be Beta Tested! So if you would like to be part of the mod beta let me know, now is the time!

[iNaps88]

i can't wait to try your mod ! :D i wish you luck

[JetSteele]

@iNaps88

 

 

Thanks bro! Would you like to help out to test the beta?

 

 

 

Mod Beta.

The mod beta is ready for launch! I have been extremely lucky that I've had enough time to complete the mod in a really short time frame. Everything is patched and the mod will run as smoothly as it can right now.

 

What am I looking for?

I need people to help me test the mod out for gameplay (if the mod works as intended) and for story (need to play through Dawnguard quest on vampire side and on Dawnguard side) to make sure everything works 100%. I did some preliminary testing so from what I've seen you should be able to play through the story just fine but I would like some others to re-test it out to make sure that it works (more help the better which is good b/c with different mod setups etc.)

 

What won't be in the beta?

The random chance of becoming Feral feature will not be implemented in this beta. All other features are already in.

 

As I said before, if you want to help me beta test the mod you will get recognised in the credits readme file with your profile name and a link back to you.

 

Just let me know if you would like to participate and what you would like to test; gameplay or story. Thank you in advance for any help you can provide, I really appreciate it!

 

Progress Report.

The mod is pretty much finished as I mentioned before I only have to:

Script a Random Chance of Turning Feral for 'Younger' Vampires (Feral System)

 

This feature is not included in the beta and will be implemented for a later release date.

[Nekrokrist]

As an old fan of Buffy and Angel this sounds amazing. Im in for testing if you need, check your inbox. :)

[JetSteele]

Progress Report.

​All features of the mod has been built! There is some stuff that needs polish and then the mod is ready for BETA2. After which if there are any bugs left there will be one more BETA release to make the mod ready for v1.00!

 

Thanks so much to Nekrokrist for his help! Your awesome! If anyone would like to participate in Beta Testing you can still sign up, let me know and I'll put you on the list for the BETA2 release.

 

We are getting closer to a full release... Are you prepared for what is coming?

[JetSteele]

Progress Report.

This is it guys! We are at the end of development for the mod's first official release! Thanks to Labor Day weekend I had the time to really work on the mod.

 

There are only 2 things left to test:

Dawnguard Story (DG DLC)

Vampire Story (DG DLC)

 

After which any bugs found in the story will be fixed, leaving the mod ready for release. We're getting close to the v1.00 release... are you prepared?

[JetSteele]

Progress Report.

​Because of a bug with the Vampire Lord form when interacting with the new vampire mechanics I was forced to gut the vanilla VL script and rewrite it from scratch. And because of that re-scripting I've decided to push out the VL overhaul that I was going to save for later in the initial release. What does this mean?

 

You choose the type of vampire you would want to become. Note that the Vampire Lord vampirism falls under a separate vampirism and not under Sanguinare Vampiris. Which now actually gives credit to when Harkon says that VL are different. So here is how vampirism will break down:

 

Stage 1 - Fledgling

Stage 2 - Childe

Stage 3 - Nightseer

Stage 4 - Master

 

These stages are part of the original vampirism and follow the same mechanics except you get stronger as you progress not weaker, also feeding has been changed with how it is handled (all this info in the first post).

 

Stage 5 - Ancient

 

This is what you become when you get bitten by Harkon or Serana, the VL power was renamed to Turok-Han Transformation. This allows you to turn into a VL however at a cost. For one your vampire powers will not be present any longer, instead you will have varients of the Vampire Lord powers available in Human Form.

 

These powers are unlocked through the perk tree, so when you advance as a VL you also advance as a regular vampire. Also, things like sunlight and fire weakness no longer affects you as an ancient vampire.

 

You are called Ancient because of the special vampire blood that now flows through your veins and not because of how old you are. Also, you lose access to your human form. The Vampire Lord form becomes your new normal form, you can throw on a Human form disguise however that will only work for a short while.

 

If you don't feed you will revert back into a VL over time. So your vampiric powers are enhanced... but at a great cost. If you decide to follow Harkon then this is the cost.

 

If however, you decide to be changed by Serana in the Dawnguard you can be a regular vampire as a Dawnguard member no problem... but you cannot use the VL power as that is what turns you into Stage 5.

 

It's a catch 22, unleash the ultimate vampire power within but lose a part of yourself in the process. So you can return to a human form for a little while but your eyes will glow red signifying that something is off about you. Also note that this choice to turn into a VL (Turok-Han) is PERMANENT. It cannot be changed. Unless you cure your vampirism and start fresh.

 

Also after I complete this VL overhaul I will overhaul the cure quest making it more difficult to complete with special items and utilizing some ingredient you can only get from Redwater Den (yet to be created). But I won't reveal too much about the cure quest yet since I did not overhaul it yet.

 

So one question remains... What kind of vampire will you become?

[JetSteele]

Progress Report.

Here we are for a second time around, much of the VL mechanics have been prepped for overhaul. For those that don't know on this project we have currently gone threw 4 version iterations. Each vastly improving upon the last (seriously the change log per version is huge), bug fixes and polish have been happening throughout development. The mod is now in a much more stable form.

 

Just to give you guys an idea we've been through:

Beta1

Beta2

PRE-RELEASE v1.00

PRE-RELEASE v1.00-2

 

There will be one more: PRE-RELEASE v1.00-3. This is the final version I'm working on to get all the vampire systems up to date. After this version (which will contain the completed overhauled VL form and an overhauled vampire cure quest), all aspects of this mod will be completed. At which point some final bug testing will occur and an initial release will occur.

 

Release Schedule.

I don't have a timetable for the mod release, as I want to make sure everything is working properly with the mod before promising anything. Once PRE-RELEASE v1.00-3 is prepared, I will be releasing an open early access build to the public on the Nexus.

 

At which point the mod will be accessible to anyone who wants to play it and any bugs that are found, let me know and I'll get to fixing them (there shouldn't be much leftover by then). After that early access build I will polish any remaining aspects of the mod, and the full release will occur (using the same mod page). I will post in this thread when both events occur.

 

Here is the schedule plans moving forward:

EARLY ACCESS BUILD

INITIAL RELEASE

 

After which I will begin working on creating new unique powers for vampirism expanding on the foundation that this mod created.

[JetSteele]

Progress Report.

The VL form has been completed, it now has a custom way of working. Also VL vampires can only feed while in VL form... as the human form is really only an illusion disguise. It will make staying hidden in society harder for VLs. Also VL vampires have a huge boost in power compared to regular vampires so the trade off is power for a harder time cloaking your existence.

 

The human disguise is also temporary, so one cannot remain human forever as a VL. To combat this, the VL has been allowed to activate objects and do the same things that you can do in human form. Also, vanilla bugs relating to Vampires have been patched (like the Serana VL Vampire Drain bug). You won't have those tedious things happening in the mod.

 

What remains to be completed:

Fix for the Vampire Cure Quest

Final Testing

 

That's it! One more thing needs to be fixed and then we will be able to release the EARLY ACCESS build of the mod. Hope your exited because we are close to a public release of the mod! After the EARLY ACCESS build is released I will be recruiting a VA to help me overhaul the Cure Quest.